"Sen. Obama speaks passionately on the trail about empowering American people."

Sen Clinton;

Recently, Sen Obama served an indictment to US political discourse concerning race: no longer, he implored eloquently, should racial issues be treated as divergence and distraction at the expense of legitimate political dialogue.

Artfully and appropriately, you've handled this discursive turn with delicacy:

I did not have a chance to see or to read yet Sen. Obama's speech. But I'm very glad that he gave it. It's an important topic. Issues of race and gender in America have been complicated throughout our history, and they are complicated in this primary campaign.

There have been detours and pitfalls along the way. But we should remember that this is an historic moment for the Democratic Party, and for our country. We will be nominating the first African-American or woman for the Presidency of the United States, and that is something that all Americans can and should celebrate.

Despite your momentary ignorance as to the actual content of Sen Obama's much-ballyhooed speech, the celebratory deferral you displayed is worthy of approbation. Nonetheless, the topic to which you deferred is no less surreptitiously divergent than the uproar regarding Rev Jeremiah Wright's jeremiads; indeed, I was disappointed to learn that now you've promulgated a position even more transparent in its attempt to distract the legitimate conversation of these campaigns:

Sen. Obama speaks passionately on the trail about empowering American people. Today, I am urging him to match those words with actions to make sure people of Michigan and Florida have a voice and a vote in this election.

This is a crucial test [for Sen Obama] -- does he mean what he says or not?

Pardon my bluntness: how, in any fashion, is this any kind of "test" for Sen Obama — much less a "crucial test"? More importantly: do you mean what you say or not? If, in this case, you do indeed mean what you say, the contorted corollary of that meaning exposes a considerable fissure in your campaign logic.

First, the competitive methodology you display in this question underscores the complaint, lodged by Gov Richardson in Portland, with respect to the Democratic campaign's recent tonal vector:

I believe the campaign has gotten too negative. I want it to be positive. I think that’s what’s been very good about Senator Obama’s campaign — it’s a positive campaign about hope and opportunity.

And, indeed, you have appropriated what is already a negative situation – for both the Democratic Party and the nation generally – involving the mostly-guiltless voters of Michigan and Florida – and from this negativity have crafted an even-more-inimical situation; this detrimental discourse is directed, once again, at both your own political party and your patris.

Moreover: secondly, and more significantly, you – the self-proclaimed candidate of concrete proposals and kitchen-table concerns – have constructed a massive and unambiguous rhetorical straw-man, which has been deployed in your attempt to augur better outcomes in the final ten primary-season contests. Certainly, it fails to move the operative structure of political discourse "beyond [any of the] static paradigm[s]" which are currently well-entrenched.

My greatest concern, however, is not that your methodology lacks a progressive element; while it is a legitimate cause for disquiet, much more troubling is the acutely negative consequence of your methodological errata. In your endeavor to felicitously navigate the discursive waters of the current campaign, you have promulgated an intensely fallacious indictment of Sen Obama: namely, that he desires to disenfranchise some segment of this nation's voting population – or, at least, that he doesn't desire to enfranchise them "enough."

Most important, you err in attaching any culpability to Sen Obama: not only has he merely followed the delineated rules of your party – to which each of you subscribed before contesting the nomination – but, furthermore, he (like you) has absolutely no legitimate authority or material agency to effect any resolution, whatever its final form might be. You have charged him with a task for which – it is patently obvious – neither of you is equipped, because neither you nor Sen Obama administers the nominative infrastructure mandated by Democratic Party, nor are either of you instilled with any powers of formal oversight. Neither of you elected to accelerate the Michigan and Florida primaries; neither of you selected the corresponding punitive measures placed upon those states; likewise, neither of you are actively or passively invested in watching voters be want of representative votes.

However, it now appears your campaign is actively invested in a matter of candidate-specific convenience: seeing the unsanctioned and inequitable results of 15 January (Michigan) and 29 January (Florida) contribute to your personal vision of the delegate mathematics, while knowing fully that any proposal to organize a secondary (and sanctioned) vote is nothing but an empty challenge – the bait for a subsequent switch. If Sen Obama takes this 'bait', the best result for which he can reasonably hope is better results than those of the invalid primaries; if you are successful with the correlative 'switch', then you would enjoin Sen Obama to advocate a "resolution" which cedes a decided but undeserved strategic advantage to you. From each perspective, the logical fissures and practical flaws are manifold.

In essence: you have purposed a discursive system in which "success" is defined as "impossible" for Sen Obama.

Nevertheless, as you illegitimately impugn Sen Obama's credibility, the truly criminal corollary resides in the untested status of Sen McCain's discursive integrity. Indeed – though he is a mutual opponent of both you and Sen Obama; and though his credibility is less-than-tenable on myriad material issues – at present Sen McCain's viability as a candidate is taken mostly on his personal authority. Yet, as the twin campaigns of the Democratic Party languish at their own hands, the ostensible invulnerability Sen McCain enjoys is the directly resultant condition of your campaign's decision to propagate divisions, distractions, and vacuous discriminations amongst your own [potential] constituents. As you undermine the solidarity of your sympathetic citizens, as you compromise the integrity of their discursive community, you likewise subvert the entire community's ability to defend itself against external and oppositional forces – such as Sen McCain and the opposing party.

Considering the fundamental premises of the opposition's campaign, one might expect such in-credible commentary generated by Sen McCain to elicit a measure of meaningful castigation or criticism from either or both of the two Democratic contenders:

Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate."

Without Sen Lieberman's surreptitious correction amongst the Jordanese, Sen McCain's acute circumstantial erroneousness might have continued unmitigated, being not the first instance that Sen McCain has professed this critical inaccuracy. What is clear, however, is the fact that Sen Lieberman's emendation provides more salient criticism than anything you have proffered regarding the topic: by actively correcting Sen McCain, Sen Lieberman at the very least exposed Sen McCain's state of misinformation. Nevertheless, you have elected not to parlay the auspices of Sen McCain's ostensible ignorance into the promotion of your own well-informed judgment; furthermore – despite the potential propitiousness to both Democratic candidates – you have strategically eschewed any statements which might appear to promote Sen Obama's well-informed judgment.

All of which underscores Gov Richardson's adroit recognition of the larger, contextual campaign that pervades this conversation: the greater presidential and political discourse, which both surrounds and transcends the individual nominative campaigns of the two candidates who still remain amongst the Democratic Party's field of contestants, being determinative of more than political fates of individuals:


The recurrent thematic thrust: to be progressive, division and divisiveness is not desideratum — particularly not at the intra-national stratum of political discourse, which houses the campaign conversations of all three Senators aspirant to the US Presidency.

In fact, it is probable that joining Sen McCain in the discursive space of Chinese political operation would be much more advantageous to the cause of the Democratic Party than unsubstantiated and inflammatory assessments of Sen Obama's "credibility" — especially when Sen Obama has been nothing short of credible with respect to Michigan and Florida. Instead, this smoke-and-mirror strategy of intimating potential litigious action furnishes a clarion exemplar of Gov Richardson's suggested distaste of your current campaign vector; more than distaste, it may breed internal dissent and diffidence, and the artificial divisions you conjure at the very least provide additional fodder for certain divisive segments of the journalistic medium.

And, indeed, both Democratic candidates should be vigilant in their repudiation of infantile yellow journalists (such as Ms Malkin) whose views have polluted the discursive medium of networked news: this journalistic interface has become so necessary (for better or worse) to the discursive political system of the United States, and is therefore fecund soil for the seeds of nefarious discursive manipulations. Clearly – considering the recent history of distortion directed towards Democratic campaigns from without – it is imperative that there exists a unified discursive integrity to buttress the Democratic Party from within.

But, despite less-than-subtle imputations otherwise, your discursive actions and campaigns operations have not reflected a unifying spirit of earnest debate, of receptivity to novel ideas and individuals, of amenability to genuine progress; on this point, Gov Richardson submitted a succinct and considerate exegesis:

I’m not going to advise any other candidate when to get in and out of the race. Senator Clinton has a right to stay in the race, but eventually we don’t want to go into the Democratic convention bloodied. This was another reason for my getting in and endorsing, the need to perhaps send a message that we need unity.

Senator Barack Obama addressed the issue of race with the eloquence and sincerity and decency and optimism we have come to expect of him. He did not seek to evade tough issues or to soothe us with comforting half-truths. Rather, he inspired us by reminding us of the awesome potential residing in our own responsibility.

Such progressive and constructive rhetorical contributions stand in stark contradistinction to the pejorative verbiage being broadcast, presently, by certain surrogate components of your campaign. For instance, James Carville categorized Gov Richardson's "betrayal" of your candidacy as such:

Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.

Using the analogy supplied by Mr Carville – in conjunction with your own words – as my heuristic, it would appear your campaign purposes a discursive paradigm in which any phenomenon beneficial to Sen Obama is a phenomenon tinged with "betrayal". If Sen Obama does not crusade to apportion the delegates of Michigan and Florida according to the inequitable and invalid January results, he has "betrayed" the voters in those states; if one of your potential supporters instead elects to endorse Sen Obama's candidacy, that too is an act of "betrayal." It almost appears that, in your mind, any personally-unhelpful or politically-inconvenient condition is held to be a fundamental violation of the natural order of things — as if any given problem for you is not your problem, but a "betrayal" visited upon you by existence itself.

For such a logical abyss, it is quite difficult to find remedy or redress; but, amongst the words of the great feminist-poet Gertrude Stein you might discover some other logic to rectify your campaign's current perspective:

A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

Ponder, perhaps, Ms Stein's poetic proposal.

Yours.
Jonathan

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