Barack's Campaign

I just got an email from Barack's campaign containing a response to yesterday's Republican Convention, featuring none other than Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani on the prowl.

I saw John McCain's attack squad of negative, cynical politicians. They lied about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and they attacked you for being a part of this campaign.

But worst of all -- and this deserves to be noted -- they insulted the very idea that ordinary people have a role to play in our political process....

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack's experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.

Let's clarify something for them right now.

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

Damn straight. And powerful.

I've been getting this a lot lately about my dismissal of Palin and McCain's ability to lead this country: I just don't understand the perspective of people to my right. Maybe.

But the opposite is certainly true: Belittle the citizens who care first about our communities at a peril.

Few would go from finishing in the top 3% of Harvard's Law School, Editor of its Law Review, to becoming a community organizer, making a paltry salary. Only the most patriotic - the people most committed to our country and its people - would choose to do that. Obama passed out on millions of dollars, instead choosing years of struggling both as a family and to make a difference in the community. He was a resounding success, succeeding despite the fact that he took the road less travelled - serving our country's communities, instead of abandoning them.

It's widely held that all politics is local, at least the kind that stirs a voter's passions. People are moved by what's happening in their community and the things that directly effect their lives. If that's true - and Palin/McSame want to attack Obama's community organizing bonafides - they better watch out. It will come back to bite them.

Update: For those who don't get what a community organizer does, a pastor is a kind of community organizer.

In other news: Read my post on Joe Klein, the media and the McCain campaign over at BlueMassGroup.

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