Note to Obama: You're Not Running Against George W. Bush...And Other Things I've Been Mulling Over

For months I have been making the argument that Democrats are making a mistake by literally running against President Bush. Obama has spent much of his time trying to tie John McCain to the failed presidency of George W. Bush. Listen to any Obama speech and you'll hear him use the term Bush-McCain just as much as, if not more than, John McCain alone. It seems that Democrats feel that they have to run against Bush because they feel that running on their own merits, even with a favorable electorate, will not result in success. Well, President Bush is not running for office. Obama is running against John McCain and whoever his VP candidate will be. A day will come when Bush will no longer be the antagonist and Democrats will have to stand for something rather than standing against someone.

Here is what Dick Morris had to say on this issue: "The truth is, of course, that McCain is the most unlike Bush of any of the Republican senators. (When Obama's people claim that Bush and McCain voted the same 94 percent of the time, they forget that most of the votes in the Senate are unanimous.) The fact that McCain backs commending a basketball team on its victory doesn't mean that he is in lockstep ideologically with the president." Morris went on to list key issues on which McCain has broken with President Bush and worked with the other party. (Read the article here.)

There will also come a time (and I hope it comes sooner than later) when many Americans will wake up and realize that the same old Democratic tactics and policies packaged as a "change we can believe in" is no change at all. If Obama really believed in bringing change to Washington, then why did he choose Joe Biden as his running mate? This is not change, Mr. Obama, this truly is more of the same old politics.

Obama, who just set himself up as the post-partisan candidate in his convention speech, is also giving Americans false hope of bi-partisanship. Bi-partisan means compromising your own beliefs from time to time if it is in the best interest of the country. For Obama compromise will come only from Republicans. For Obama bi-partisanship means forcing those with differing opinions into accepting his own views. For Obama bi-partisanship also means voting with his party the majority of the times he actually showed up to vote in the Senate. Out of about 500 votes between 1/31/07 to 7/31/08, he voted with his party about 275 times and for the majority of the other votes he did not vote at all. On just a few occasions he voted against his party. (These figures are are the result of rough count of the number of votes and my count can be checked here. Even though the numbers may not prove to be 100% accurate, my argument still stands.) This is not bi-partisanship and just plain deceitful.

Now, let's talk about fear-mongering. Yes it is true that Republicans have often resorted to fear-mongering, but to think that they are the only ones to do it is, well, stupid and misinformed. With the end of the Democratic National Convention I am left feeling that the Democrats have done a good job scaring the American people. They want us to be afraid of Republicans. They want us to think that Republicans are evil and greedy. They want us to think that Republicans are to blame for poverty. (As if poor and homeless people did not exist prior to the Bush administration) They want us to think that Republicans will take your jobs away. They want us to think that Republicans will take your health insurance away. They want us to believe that Republicans will end social security. They want us to think that unless we vote for Barack Obama and other Democrats, we will be held in virtual slavery to "evil" businessmen and oil tycoons. To put it bluntly: BULLSHIT!!!!

I am in no way saying that John McCain and other Republicans do not employ some of the same tactics. I am merely putting forth the argument that Obama is one of the most hypocritical candidates that has ever run for office. He scolds McCain for resorting to the politics of old as he is doing the same while preaching monumental change. After all, it will be hard for Obama to bring change to Washington when his running mate is the ultimate Washington insider. He preaches about the coming of a post-partisan politics while running side-by-side with one of the most partisan members of the Democratic Party. I hope that in November Americans will caste their votes wisely, but I can't say that I'm too optimistic that this will happen.