General Elections: We have a long season coming ahead

I can already tell that we are not going to have a smooth general election. The low jabs that George Bush threw yesterday are an indication of this. America’s right-wing radio is busy at work disparaging anything or anyone that supports Barack Obama. Now the President has jumped into attack mode and has started firing jabs. The jabs are illegal not only because they are low-brow, but because they were thrown from out of the ring. If the President wants to attack Barack Obama, why not do it here in the US?

The answer to that question is simple - nobody likes him anymore here, not even his republican base. American politicians have an unwritten code that you do not wash your dirty linen in a foreign country. Jimmy Carter knows all about that.

George Bush has created a mess in this country that will take a long time to clean up. In his two terms in office, he did nothing substantial to stem the long-standing feud in that part of the world even though he had the power to influence politics and outcomes there, so as a parting shot he went to plant doubts about Barack Obama in Israel, somehow believing that he was helping Israel and John McCain.

Israeli lawmaker Yossi Beilin, a member of the dovish Meretz party and one of the prime architects of the Oslo peace accords said, “It was an embarrassing speech, a collection of slogans that somebody wrote for him in order to be nice to Israel, or what he thinks is Israel, and to steer well clear of anything concrete.” He added, “It’s a shame and a scandal, in my opinion.”

The Obama-Clinton feud has had one positive impact - it has brought out masses of first-time voters to the voting booths. Records were broken all over the country. Elections officials were not prepared for this kind of turnout. What this means is that there will be a record number of voters turning out for the general election in November. As an observer of the election in the last 2 cycles, I am certain that there will be problems - both unintentional and intentional.

According to a report jointly compiled and distributed by the Lawyers Committee and the National Campaign for Fair Elections called the “Election Protection 2008 Primary Report”, elections officials were not prepared for the heavy turnout. 5,000 complaint calls were handled by hotlines spread all over the country.

In Indiana, there is the controversial Indiana voter ID law which requires everyone to have an ID before the general election. While it might seem like common sense that everyone carry an ID, this issue must be looked at in the context of institutional racism and intimidation around every election season in this country going back decades. Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution Journal gives this contextual background in a commentary published on the paper.

As a volunteer for the Obama campaign in the primary and hopefully in the general elections, we are looking for a long, tough road ahead. Our cell phones will definitely be charged that night.