Comments on: Hope for Obama

By: Justin

Justin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:06:17 +0000

Have you seen the change.gov website? I think we might be about to see the birth of government 2.0.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:49:15 +0000

One point I’d add, though, is that any politician who on the biggest night of his life, making the most powerful speech of his life, builds that entire speech around paraphrasing Sam Cooke’s finest song (”It’s been a long time coming… but at last change has come”) is too cool not to have for your president. Seriously if its a choice between that and John McCain’s musical contributions to the campaign (letting that moron Hank Williams Jr follow him around and singing “bomb, bomb, bomb – bomb Iran” to the tune of The Regents/Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”) – then there really is only one winner.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:10:38 +0000

Hi Linda. I agree with some of that. Obviously when you stand on a “change” agenda you build people’s expectations of the scope of that change – but if you look at Obama’s actual policy pledges they’re pretty modest. As with Tony Blair in the UK people happily fill in the blanks for themselves. Should the candidate trying to get elected deliberately pour cold water on the enthusiastic expectations of committed followers – well perhaps in an ideal world, but we don’t live in an ideal world and if you stand in an election you want votes. Did McCain and Palin do anything to stop the wilder rumours about “muslim” Obama, or “terrorist” Obama. Of course not. But the real point is that Obama didn’t have to manipulate people to get their hopes up – after 8 years of Bush and 14 years of Republican dominated politcs people were happy to fill in the blanks for themselves.

By: Linda

Linda — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:03:24 +0000

I think you need to go back and listen to some of Obama’s campaign speeches. He encouraged plenty of chanting in order to raise the emotional level of his crowds. Psychologically it was to his advantage to raise the emotional levels. During these campaign rallies ,he did promise the world to his cult of followers. Now you have a group of followers who are expecting big returns, and they are expecting Change which must come quickly. One only needs to talk to some of these people in order to understand the great spell of delusion they are still under. When as a lesder you convince people that you have the POWER and they don’t have the power within themselves,you will automatically draw the kind of people who will be attracted to the idea that the Great Obama is the only ONE who can Change your life. Obama, himself, will need to deal with what he, alone, created which would be a group of followers who do not look inward as to why they are unable to fulfill their own needs. But rather they always will look to the Outside Source as the rational for their success or failure. Obama definitely understands how to manipulate a group of people in order to achieve his desires.