Reply #40: Anyone else get the feeling the Clinton camp got some ideas last night? [View All]

[SoFlaJet]

from The Nation:

Obama v.Recount, Democracy v. Thugocracy
posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 05/25/2008 @ 11:27pm


This Memorial Day Sunday, Barack Obama did what he described as "pinch-hitting" for one of his personal heroes, Senator Edward Kennedy. From many accounts, Obama's commencement address at Wesleyan College was rousing and inspiring. The Nation's Katha Pollitt was there and wrote on a listserv, "he was really excellent. ... the college opened graduation to outsiders -- LOTS of people, black and white, came from the area to hear him. My daughter, a junior, said she found it inspiring. she not very political, so that is a high compliment." What an antidote to Sunday night's HBO special, "Recount" --with scenes bringing back memories of Florida's slithery Secretary of State Katherine Harris --and other GOP thugs--stealing away our democracy. Remember Justice Antonin Scalia's three word sneer, "Get Over It." Those were words the Justice invoked in defending the stealing of the 2000 election. So, this May 25th, 2008, we had two Americas at work: One on our tv screens--a docudrama (more drama than docu) about the selection of a President; the other, a real-life drama with Senator Barack Obama standing in one for one of America's greatest Senators, speaking to students and calling them, and all of us, to our better angels, with determined idealism and grounded pragmatism. You choose. Thugocracy or Democracy.