fear the self-fulfilling prophecy

I hope it isn't so, but I fear that all this political back-and-forth about "electability" and who is "prepared to withstand the Republican attack machine" in the general election may have an adverse influence and bring about the very thing the Democratic candidates fear: an invigorated and unified Republican party and an American electorate skeptical about the Democratic candidate's ability to lead.

It is my belief that the Democratic party has the general election handily wrapped up. They are facing a weak opponent with no real coalition at his back. Plenty of Evangelicals, the core of George Bush's base, will be holding their noses at the polls in November, while the rest stay home and pray. The country is in shambles on the domestic front. As home prices fall and the stock market flags, Americans have watched the equity they counted on disappear and their retirement prospects grow ever bleaker. Many Americans cannot get a job to save their lives. Those that find even lucrative work fail despite their income to cover the rising costs of food, home heating and electricity. We are fighting a war without end in Iraq and the country has gone too long with a foreign policy that says, in essence, "shoot first, ask questions later." Americans have been hankering for a change for a long while now, and it frankly seems fool-hardy to lend so much power to the Republican party as to suggest the possibility that they might prevail.

But this has been precisely the modus operandi of Hillary Clinton's campaign. She has decided that since she cannot distinguish herself from Barack Obama on any issue of substance (saying nothing of her inability to compete in sheer charisma and oratory skill), she is going to question his capability to lead and to win. She is a fool to imagine that, should Obama indeed secure the nomination, the Republicans won't take her oft-repeated warnings in hand and replay them ad nauseam in an effort to engender as much doubt as possible in the minds of the American people. She will be her own party's downfall if she does not take better care with her words.

There is such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy -I know it sounds trite, but it's true. To act as though the Republicans have any chance of winning in November is to give them that very opportunity. This is how politics works in this country. Americans live their lives in a giant media echo-chamber (otherwise known as MSNBCBSABCFOXNews). We are effortlessly lulled into complacency and mindless consumption when fear is in the air (immediately after September 11, President Bush asked nothing of Americans excepting their "continued participation and confidence in the American economy"). And we are urged to violence and anger when war is on the menu (in 2003 nearly 7 in 10 Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11th attacks). I hesitate to say it (see my post on elitism vs. honesty), but Americans sometimes strike me as little more than sociological lab rats insofar as any idea that is given broad circulation and repeated play is generally accepted as true.

And so it is that I find myself anxiously wringing my hands in fear that the American people are going to buy this idea whole-hog: that Barack Obama is not capable of winning; that the Republicans actually stand a chance of carrying on their destructive and dehumanizing policies; that America will yet again turn on a dime and decide, against their own better judgment, that the Republicans have the "strength to lead."