HALLI CASSER-JAYNE - bio
RED, WHITE 'N TRUE™
OBAMA'S HAWAIIAN LOVESONG OF DISUNITY
Posted, August 13, 2008,  12:01 p.m. est

    

Underreported and worth taking a look at is the fact that while Barack Obama was vacationing in Hawaii he granted his old white grandmother a mere hour audience with He, the Anointed One, her grandson. The Lady Michelle and the Obama children, on the other hand, chose not to visit with the grandmother, but to remain behind at the rented sprawling Kailua 8 million dollar, 12,000 square foot ocean front estate with 10.5 bathrooms owned by Democratic Party contributor Jill Tate Higgins.

The grandmother, 85-year-old Madelyn Dunham by the way, is the same grandmother Obama referred to in his over-heralded speech on race in which the quote, "I can no more disown [Rev. Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe," nearly overshadowed the message.

Apparently, all is not love and strumming ukuleles in the Obama family anymore than it is in the Democratic Party of which Barack Obama reigns as titular head.

I bring this up as the schism in the Democratic Party intensifies and the PUMA’S and the Obamamots voices of discontent build to a crescendo of disunity as the Democratic Party’s convention nears.

On the blogosphere those in Obama’s camp deride the pro-Hillary comments made on websites, the name-calling the mean-spirited stuff of schoolyards and teenage phone calls.  Hillary delegates are being intimidated, and one such delegate, Sacha Millstone of Boulder, Colorado was forced to hire a lawyer after a Democratic Party e-mail ordered her to come to headquarters and explain disparaging remarks she made about Barack Obama. Groups of the disgruntled Democrats have been formed such as The Denver Group with slogans such as “Keep the Democratic Party Democratic.” And protests and parades are already scheduled for Denver and one can only hope the convention doesn’t turn into another 1968.

No, all is not well in the Democrack Up Party and it is clear that despite the show the tell is that the Democratic Party Convention is not going to be a happy family luau.

Blame it on the weakness of Barack Obama as the party leader and look at his performance as the pre-crowning under-achievement of The Anointed One, and be worried, very, very worried.

Yes, these schisms following close races aren’t anything new. But this cycle the division is different begun like a boil beneath the surface, growing ever-larger day by day, a festering wound, a blister of discontent needing to be lanced unless it rupture.

Could not Barack Obama have waved his white Hawaiian shirt of surrender earlier and tended to this discontent? Why was he reluctant to appease the disenchanted? Why did he hire Patty Solis Doyle and wave his hiring Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager in the face of Hillary’s followers? Why did the victor still feel the need to subjugate she which he’d already vanquished? What is it about Barack Obama that the forty-seven year old man still holds some sort of grudge against the ailing woman who sacrificed so much for he, her grandson?

Is Obama thinking this will all go away? Is he thinking this is much ado about nothing? Some people thrive on tension because it is what they are used to. How would Obama’s flaws manifest in foreign policy decisions? The man advocates speaking to our enemies. He can’t seem to resolve the conflict in his own family, let alone the Party.

Many are surprised that in this year of American discontent and pure disgust with the Republican administration of George W. Bush, that Obama isn’t running away with this election in a landslide victory. Other Democrats, including those that lost the general election, were way ahead in the polls at this time in the election cycle.

Theories abound as to why Obama is barely holding his own. His race is the big excuse. And then there’s the wait until the fall when the real campaign gets under way. There are accusations that Obama is an elitist. And, by the way, his vacationing on the chi-chi Hawaiian Islands holed up in a lavish oceanfront mansion isn’t helping that image. The people don’t really know him yet, other pundits say.

I disagree. The voters do know Barack Obama, and what they know about him they find worrisome, which is why Obama hasn’t closed the deal. Unfortunately for Obama, time is running short.

If Barack Obama doesn’t do something about allaying those fears, throw a lei around the shoulder of Hillary Clinton and offer her a Big Island hug (why didn’t he make her the keynote speaker), or do something to show that the man is truly a leader with vast ideas that can unite, not divide the Dems, the not-yet-the-King Obama can say aloha to Obama’s chances of becoming the next President of the United States.