ShoutyBear: Politics. Foreign Affairs. Zarf.

I’m so glad that I finally overcame my Apple H8 and bought an iPod because I never would have discovered The Bugle, the best political podcast in the world. John Oliver (“The Daily Show,” yep) and Andy Zaltzman are genius.

From a recent episode:

Zaltzman: “But I wonder if this proves, John — the fact that Obama rather than Hillary has won — that America as a nation is more sexist than racist. Is that so? Or are they just saving up the racism for the really big one when the whole world is watching?”

Oliver: “I mean the beauty there is… they can just vote for John McCain and make a sexist and racist choice. That is for your quintessential American voter there.”

Boo-ya. Tell me how they’re wrong, people.

This does bring me to the very thing that has my tummy in knots these days. The Obamaniacs I know are just ecstatic and all I-Told-You-So because I was a Barry doubter from the beginning. Enjoy it while you can kids, cuz this election’s about to get super fug.

People doing postmortems on the 16 months of hell that was the Democratic primary campaign will say how it was the ugliest, most combative in recent memory, yada yada. Sure, it was fairly intense. But in politics, the knives really come out during battles of ideology, and there were no substantive ideological differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I don’t foresee one in the general election campaign between Obama and John McCain, but that’s mostly because I can’t really tell what either man’s ideology actually is. Obama because he hasn’t had to spell it out yet  — thanks again, MSM — and McCain because he may have had one in the past but is rewriting it as he goes along.

What’s with that, anyway? McCain had two roads before him after he clinched the nomination: campaign as the fabled “maverick” that he is and give his party a real chance at winning this thing, or sing for his supper before a conservative base that despises him. I don’t know who in his still wobbly campaign apparatus decided he should tack right and adopt the language of the neocons, but s/he should be fired. Even neocons are rethinking that whole neocon thing. And conservatives are so dispirited these days that they’re almost willing to forfeit the 2008 election because, hey, could the Democrats do any worse? (The answer: One can dream.)

I digress. If there is a great ideological clash ahead it might revolve around education and taxes, since all the Democrats want to do about the former is throw money at it while Republicans realize that part of the problem is cultural and government can do little there. And Obama will have to seriously man up and tell the American public that taxes must, must be raised if they are to have all the goodies they demand (Social Security, health care)  and McCain risks mutiny if he waivers from his current stance of “I was against the Bush tax cuts before I was for them.” There’s reason to doubt either issue takes center stage, but you never know.

Other than ideological battles, the knives also come out over cultural differences. We saw glimmers of that during the primary campaign, but expect that drumbeat to be deafening a couple of months from now. It isn’t because McCain will lead us there — his distaste for that style of politicking, which burned him in 2000, is palpable. But he has little control over what the Republican National Committee does, and nearly zero control over what Republican state parties do.

So all those whisperings about Barry being a secret Muslim, or an Angry Black Man who hates this country, or a Harvard Law Elite who hates “hardworking white people,” will soon meld into a roar. That silliness regarding the Michelle Obama “whitey” tape is but a trickle. Maybe all this means is I am a cynic who believes all white Americans are racists, which I can tell you right now isn’t the case.

For one, there are some real cultural differences in this country, and liberals do themselves no favors by pretending that isn’t the case. The double-whammy of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Rev. Michael Pfleger could really hurt Obama if he doesn’t do an aces job of explaining what he believes to the wider electorate. There are a lot of white Americans for whom those videos were their very first glimpse into a black church, and they’re still scratching their heads. There’s no running around or shouting on their Sunday mornings, much less politics — a distasteful addition to Sunday service if ever there was one.

So maybe they don’t get it but that’s OK, it’s just… different. Check out the title of this Pfleger video on YouTube. There’s a decent chance you will hear the words “black liberation theology” a lot in the coming months. All this talk about Obama proving that Americans are ready to elect a black man is just hooey, because he isn’t just any black man. He largely eschewed race issues during his primary campaign, inspiring some commentators to remark that he “transcends” race while Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson accused him of avoiding it. It was more likely a combination of both. White Americans won’t vote for Sharpton or Jackson because of the suspicion that race is all these guys think about. You can’t exactly blame voters for not wanting to elect someone who resents them.

The Obama we know is far from an Angry Black Man. But he hasn’t exactly been forceful in disputing that suspicion, which should worry anyone who’s written a check to him. I interviewed Tom DeLay last week for an article, and he spent a good 10 minutes explaining that Obama is actually a practitioner of “Marxist socialism” — as proven by his membership in a church that espouses black liberation theology. Maybe that’s silly, and one might question who’s still listening to DeLay these days, but he did ask one very good question: “You’re gonna tell me that for 20 years every Sunday this theology is being preached and he’s against it, but he wanted to be in the church anyway? I’m sorry.”

DeLay has a point there, but it isn’t the one he was trying to make. For one, we shouldn’t be talking about Obama’s church or faith, that’s his affair, but whatevs, we are where we are. Why it took Obama so long to sever ties to Trinity United Church may have been borne of naivete, but it was definitely bad politics. His campaign should have seen this much sooner, and the fact that he waited until just before the general to resign from Trinity may indicate a lack of commitment to that decision, thereby keeping the issue alive and kicking.

So, yeah. Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who hates America and loves Marxism because it makes the troops cry. Get used to it, kids. It’s going to get much, much worse.