For the last few weeks, I’ve been warning folks who were already making plans for the Obama inaugural that the Billarys are like the cinematic monster-fiend who, despite being decapitated, eviscerated and incinerated, rises from the depths just before they roll the credits for one last savage swipe at the noble but naive folks who are joyously celebrating its demise. On the morning after the Texas and Ohio primaries, I’m guessing they finally get the message. The Billarys will be around when the cockroaches and rats have long since given up the ghost, making one last pitch, spinning one last sorta-truth. The pundits seem to think that the Texas and Ohio results suggest that the Billarys “kitchen sink” assault on Oby has finally gained some traction, and there’s surely some truth to this. However, I began to pick up on a sense of some bumpy air ahead for the Obama squadron back on Feb. 24 when I read Nicholas Kristof’s NYT op-ed piece on “Obama’s Kenyan Roots.”
In the course of telling the remarkable story of “Mama Sarah,” Oby’s stepgranny, who lives in a house without electricity or running water--thank God, though, she does have a cell phone with solar charger—and other Kenyan relations who are sky-high about their kinsman’s presidential prospects, Kristof offered these tidbits about Sen. Obama’s father and grandfather:
Mr. Obama’s late grandfather is said to have been the first person in the area to wear Western clothes rather than just a loincloth. For a time he converted to Christianity and adopted the family name Johnson.
Later he converted to Islam, taking four wives. Senator Obama’s father, who apparently converted to Catholicism while attending a Catholic school, was also polygamous in keeping with local custom, taking an informal Kenyan wife who preceded Mr. Obama’s mother but remained a consort, according to accounts by local people and the senator himself.
The father, also named Barack Hussein Obama, was as much of a path breaker as his son. He went from herding goats in Kogelo to studying in Hawaii and at Harvard, even if his career as an economist was frustrated in part by ethnic rivalries.
As I read this, I was asking myself, “Did the Billarys by any chance suggest that Kenya was a great place to visit this time of year?”
Kristof was surely correct in observing that “If we call ourselves a land of opportunity, then Mr. Obama’s heritage doesn’t threaten American values but showcases them,” but he is surely a prospect for beachfront property in the Nebraska sandhills if he thinks that a lot of folks who are not terribly reactionary by most objective standards aren’t going to give a second thought to the prospect of electing a president whose grandpa was a Muslim polygamist who even hung out with somebody wearing a loincloth.
Even amid his fog of liberal delusion, Kristof confessed to worrying “that enemies of Senator Obama will seize upon details like his grandfather’s Islamic faith or his father’s polygamy to portray him as an alien or a threat to American values.” Thanks to you, Nicky Boy, Oby’s enemies don’t even have to concoct something to use against him. They can simply cite the New Yawk Times. Sure enough, the photo of Obama in a turban surfaced about this time. Then there was the hate-radio dude railing against “Barack Hussein Obama,” an incident that ultimately worked to the advantage of Clinton and (because of his swift, strong response) McCain, no matter how you slice it. As the still-presumed nominee, Oby now has to fight a two-front war against Johnny Mac and the Billarys, while facing the prospect of tougher questions about his association with some pretty sleazy Chicago types. The persistent buzz that Oby himself is really a Muslim (which Steve Croft helped to legitimize by asking Ms. Clinton about it on “60 Minutes” last week) is bound to prompt more serious scrutiny of his actual affiliation with the controversial Africentric Trinity United Christian Church in Chicago, an affiliation that, at best, ill comports with his efforts to portray himself as a race-transcendent candidate.
The upside for Oby is that no math exists that will allow the Billarys to come to the convention with more pledged delegates than he has. The potential downside for the Democratic Party is that if he does not succeed in the remaining primaries in reversing the impression of lost momentum, the superdelegate lean might start to shift back Billary-ward. At this point, a number of Obama’s highly energized black supporters might have a hard time accepting Hillary as the nominee under any circumstances, but with the Hillary as a brokered nominee, the Dems can probably expect the lowest black turnout in many moons. If the rap on Oby has been that he hasn’t been tested or hasn’t shown his mettle under fire, he’s about to get his chance. The drug-crazed porker, Rush Limbaugh, urged Republicans in Texas to cross over and vote for Hillary Clinton, explaining “I want Hillary to stay in this…. We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically, and it's obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don't have the stomach for it.”l The Repubs may think they will benefit from a bloodied Obama, but if he emerges from the next few weeks unbowed, he may well be an even more formidable opponent than the one who already seems to have Rush doubling his oxycontin intake.
