WATCHING AMERICA THROUGH THE EYES OF THOSE WATCHING AMERICA

By Bernd Pickert

What McCain’s campaign is doing now is both disgusting and dangerous.

Translated By Ron Argentati

16 October 2008

Edited by Sonia Mladin

Germany - die Tageszeitung - Original Article (German)


John McCain left a better impression among viewers of the third and final debate with Barack Obama than he did in the previous two. That’s not bad news for the Republican Senator three weeks before election day except for the fact that snap polls by all major broadcasters right after the debate showed Obama to be the clear winner. Obama’s lead in the polls, currently between 7 and 14 percent, was obviously not affected by the last debate.

Despite the positive trend for the first black presidential candidate, it’s still too early to write off John McCain already. Karl Rove, the architect of George Bush’s successful campaign, thinks McCain will have to pull off a comeback the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Harry Truman’s surprise victory in 1948. Still, there are signs that the dirty campaign being waged over the last ten days by the McCain/Palin team may well pay off on election day. The slogan “Barack Obama – too risky for America” along with Sarah Palin’s assertion that Obama “pals around” with terrorists and “doesn’t see America like you and I do” – is about as racist as it can only get in the 2008 presidential campaign.

When confronted with these matters in the debate, McCain’s eyes opened wide in mock surprise. He pretended to know nothing about them and he feigned shock. But of course these attacks are well planned – they pursue a goal that McCain is beginning to see as his only hope: that in the anonymity of the voting booth voters will be afraid to vote for a black man.

We’ll have to wait until November 4th to see whether or not the strategy worked. But one person has already lost: John McCain. The respect he’s earned from people across the whole political spectrum has been squandered. The very choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate was an insult. What McCain’s campaign is doing now is both disgusting and dangerous.

Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany

The Silent Minority
Plans a Rebellion

By Christian Wernicke

Translated By Ron Argentati

17 October 2008


Germany - Süddeutsche Zeitung - Original Article (German)

Latinos are the power in America’s West that could decide the election in Obama’s favor – provided they actually vote.

The situation in the Wild West is serious. More serious than ever. A lot of folks in the small northern Colorado town of Greeley will tell you that. Here, where the Stars and Stripes flies from every other porch and the faint odor of cow manure permeates the town, covering the well-tended lawns like a cowboy’s dirty blanket, you can’t help but notice that rebellion is in the air.

There, for example, is Tom Selders, the quiet gentleman with a silver-gray mane of hair and laughter lines around his eyes. For nearly 62 years, the businessman sporting the Rotary Club pin in his lapel has belonged to the red-staters, i.e., the Republicans who virtually rule this flat part of Colorado they call “God’s country". Selders served as mayor here and says, “Being a Republican around here sort of goes without saying.” Then he grins mischievously, takes a sip of coffee and says, “Meanwhile, I’ve registered as a Democrat and I’m voting for Obama.”

Then there’s Sylvia Martinez, who lives in the eastern quarter of Greeley. That is to say, she lives there where the asphalt on the roads is rougher and the white paint is peeling from the small, wood frame houses. Here, one-third of Greeley’s darker-skinned residents live, those who work as day laborers gathering onions and sugar beet during the harvest season. These are the Latinos who go to work every morning in the gigantic meat processing plants at the edge of the city and spend their day cutting up sides of beef. Sylvia Martinez, mother of two and an untiring activist in her Latino neighborhood, is really fired up today because she thinks now is the moment for big change: “This time we can stop the Republicans,” she says.

At the beginning of the week, Martinez tanked up with the power of that optimism that has kept her going for months. The power that enables her to get through the twelve and sometimes even fourteen hour days as a volunteer for the Obama campaign. A representative of the agricultural worker’s union has come to Joe’s Garage, the backyard Democratic headquarters in the Latino quarter. He has come to drill into the volunteers the thought they’ve already long ago put up on the walls: “The road to the presidency runs right through Greeley.”

Between the buckets of paint and the workbenches, the union rep gives a breakdown of why, especially here in a hard-core, conservative part of America’s West, they will be the deciding factor in the race to the White House. “In order for Obama to win, we have to conquer Colorado. And to win Colorado, we have to start right here in this county,” the union rep from Denver argues. Everyone nods in agreement, and a smile sweeps across Sylvia Martinez’s face at the back of the hall as he concludes his rule of three by saying, “And in order to win here, we have to get out the Latino vote."

Never before have America’s Latinos felt so powerfully courted, especially in America’s West. Of course, many white voters in states like New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, states that all went Republican in the 2004 election, are tending toward the Democrats as well. But despite the anger against George W. Bush, despite all the frustration over the war in Iraq and the economic crisis at home, Obama’s lead is only slight. In Colorado, for example, the black Senator’s advantage in most polls among white voters fluctuates within the margin of error. Only among Latinos is there a clear trend: two of every three Coloradoans whose parents or ancestors immigrated from Mexico or Central America express a clear preference for Obama.

A silent revolution via postal voting

Right now, nobody in the state knows how many votes this will amount to on November 4th. Too many Latinos have never registered to vote and far too many registered Hispanics haven’t bothered to vote in the past. “That’s what’s going to change this time,” Sylvia Martinez believes. And that’s what she’s working to accomplish everywhere. That was her purpose in assembling the whole family in her living room on Wednesday. The little sisters, the favorite cousins, the silent brother-in-law and even her mother are seated on the sofa, watching the TV debate between Obama and McCain.

Sylvia’s prospective sister-in-law, Carmen, admits to skipping many past elections. “It wasn’t until Sylvia got me going,” she shyly admits, that her outlook changed. Now, she proudly says, “I nagged both my brothers into registering.” That’s the first step, and the second step is about to be taken. The television debate is hardly finished before Sylvia pushes the vote by mail applications out on the dining room table. Her mother is first to take one: family name, first name, address and Juanita Martinez seems relieved to have all the paperwork behind her. She gives her daughter a kiss and says, “I’d never in my life” vote Republican, “but too often in the past I haven’t bothered to vote at all.”

Colorado has registered 21,700 new voters this year. In Weld County alone, the large country to which Greeley belongs, 2,000 were registered and nearly half of those eligible have since applied to vote by mail. Both figures are an indication that the Obama campaign’s efforts to mobilize Colorado’s so far silent minority are succeeding. Like most Latinos, whoever works for an hourly wage can’t afford to take time off work to stand in line at the polling station on the first Tuesday in November. Voting by mail, agrees Sylvia Martinez, is “the best way for our silent revolution to succeed.” If she’s right, the underdogs of Greeley will become the king makers of Washington.

Former mayor Tom Selders isn’t convinced. He’s been burned before: “When it came down to it last time, the Latinos stayed home.” It’s exactly one year since a Republican replaced him in office. He “showed too much sympathy for brown people.” At least that’s how an anonymous contemporary observer of Greeley history put it in recounting the incident that put Greeley on the national map during the 2006 election: Immigration police had lined up outside the meat packing plant and arrested, jailed and eventually deported 265 illegal workers. At the invitation of religious solidarity groups, Selders traveled to Washington a few months later in order to testify about the inhumane treatment of those arrested by the authorities. All hell broke loose among Republicans and Selders ended up being replaced by a beefy ex-police officer who isn’t plagued by so many scruples.

Selders whispers when he talks about that “terrible time” and also when he recalls that as a typical young man of the time, he didn’t have much to do with “those people". He says that East Greeley was like a foreign country to him. In those days, window signs often proclaimed “no dogs, no Mexicans” and Latinos were only allowed in the municipal swimming pool the day before the pool was scheduled for cleaning.

Since then, of course, a lot has changed. “Not even many Latinos have grasped how strong we’ve become,” laughs Sylvia Martinez. “But that’s going to change on November 4th, too.” She admits that she and the people in her neighborhood let Tom Selders down in the last election, but she’s “absolutely certain” that it will be different this time around. “Viva Obama!” Where does this confidence come from? “Sometimes I don’t know myself,” Sylvia says. “But sometimes confidence is all we have.”

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Corriere della Sera, Italy

McCain’s Hits Are Not
Going to Bruise Obama

The Republican candidate has tried to put up a defense against Barack Obama, but there has never been a K.O. blow.

Translated By Randi Johnson

16 October 2008

Edited by Jessica Tesoriero

Italy - Corriere della Sera - Original Article (Italian)

HEMPSTEAD (New York) – At the final round, at Hofstra University in Long Island, John McCain went on the offensive. At times with an angry tone, at times so lucid and systematic, the Republican candidate has tried to put up a defense against Barack Obama, pointing his arrows now against his economic recipes, now on his character, now on his relations with former terrorist William Ayers. However, the last presidential debate between the two candidates for the White House did not see a K.O.

Obama saved all or almost all the shots, some very effective brought on by McCain. However, above all he never lost his calm, in this respect by offering a more presidential opponent. The first poll, conducted on the spot by CNN among those who saw the debate on TV, give reason to the Democratic senator: 51% indicated him as the winner, against 31% who chose McCain.

Three weeks before the elections, the outcome of the debate does not seem able to reverse the trend of a country that sees Obama firmly in the lead. From the beginning, the debate was scintillating. To Obama reviving the accusation of his being a photocopy of Bush, McCain replied with one of the best jokes of the evening: "I am not President Bush. If you wanted to stand as a candidate against him, you should have done it four years ago." However, others did not come as a surprise: "If I occasionally mistake your policies for those of Bush’s, it’s because on the issues that are dear to the American people, you were an ardent supporter."
Against the backdrop of the economic crisis, which occupied most of the ninety minutes, the great protagonist (in absentia) of the evening was an unknown plumber from Ohio, Joe Wurzelbacher, who a few days ago in Toledo had told Barack Obama of the fear that his tax proposals would come to harm his small business. His name was mentioned 24 times. McCain made him his prototype: "Why does Senator Obama want to tax small entrepreneurs like Joe and redistribute the wealth?” "It is not true," relied Obama, "I want to cut taxes by 95% of working families, of the plumber, but also of the fireman, the teacher, the small entrepreneur."

When moderator Bob Schieffer raised the issue of negative tone of the campaign, McCain brought up the relationship of Obama with Ayers for the first time. "I am not interested in a washed up former terrorist, but we need to know everything about his relationship with him."

Obama's response was very effective: "Ayers is a university professor in Chicago, who 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, committed detestable acts. Ten years ago, he and I were members of the board of an educational project, sponsored by a former ambassador and a good friend of Ronald Reagan."

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Words of a Republican and a soldier will shake McCain

From Australia

• Michael Tomasky
• October 21, 2008

In endorsing Obama, Colin Powell did much more than cross the floor.

PSSST - the truth is that, among the people who are likely to be the most ardent supporters of Barack Obama, Colin Powell would not win any popularity polls.

Even factoring in his endorsement of Obama at the weekend, he will long be best remembered by America's liberals for his now-infamous presentation to the United Nations about Saddam Hussein's phantom weapons

of mass destruction, flanked by then CIA director George Tenet and then US ambassador to the UN John Negroponte, and for not going public with what everyone assumes were his serious reservations about the war in Iraq to begin with.

But he did manage to make up for some of it on Sunday. Powell's announcement on the Meet the Press television show was thoughtful and deliberate, and while there will surely be a segment of the US population who will dismiss his move as an act of racial solidarity, I felt he managed to make a broader case that most fair-minded people will find convincing.

Powell - who affirmed, for what it's worth, that he is still a member of the Republican Party - said that he liked John McCain tremendously, but he did not like his choice of running mate. He thought his party has moved too far to the right, and he declared himself "disappointed by some of the approaches" that the McCain campaign has taken against Obama. He cited Obama's "steadiness" and "intellectual curiosity".

When asked the race question, he said: "If I had only had that in mind, I could have done this six or eight, or 10 months ago," instead of taking the time to watch the two contenders on the trail and judge their performance under pressure.

But he really shone when discussing some of the smear tactics being used against Obama.

Obama is not a Muslim, Powell said. "But what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?"

He then described a picture he'd seen in a magazine of a grieving mother at the tombstone of her son, a soldier who had died in Iraq. The tombstone, in Arlington National Cemetery, listed his age and awards, Powell said. But across the top, "it didn't have a Christian cross. It didn't have a Star of David. It had a crescent and a star of the Islamic faith."

It was incredibly moving. The words and the anecdote were extremely well chosen and they're worth dwelling on for two reasons.

First, it has needed saying for months now that there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim in America. And second, it's not too much to say that of all the political leaders in America, only Colin Powell could have said these things and made them stick. A Democrat making that case would be seen as just another politically correct harpy. It's pretty different coming from a Republican and a soldier.

How much impact will Powell's endorsement have? It will be considerable in Washington, where the general's standing among political professionals and the high priests of the punditry is lofty. For two days - and every day is crucial when there are only 15 left - McCain's minions will have to answer questions on television about how big a blow this is to their man's chances.

Around the country, I'm not sure. Undecided voters in swing states are probably inclined towards a generally positive view of Powell, so his imprimatur will be one more sign that it's all right to vote

for Obama. And if they're still trying to get comfortable with Obama at this late date, a friendly nod from a familiar face probably will factor into their deliberations when they close the curtain and vote.

Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America.

Source: www.theage.com

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