Lost in the Cacophony

Lost in the midst of reports of Democratic violence and the return of the incessantly whiny urban liberal set, there is actually, you know, an election going on. In case you forgot, the Obama campaign spent millions on a particularly milquetoast propaganda piece might have jolted you back into that reality.

What has been lost in the cacophony of whining and relatively irrelevant issues is the fact that this election next Tuesday could realistically be on of the biggest fundamental changes in the American body politic. While Obama plays make believe and runs as a centrist (or, if you watched his little movie, damn near a Republican) his campaign has been running on a platform that is possibly as far to the left, as far outside of the political mainstream as any "major" candidate for President since Henry Wallace. This is a fundamental shift in American politics, and a fundamental shift in the American ideology. Obama's campaign to date essentially boils down to the following points:

• Government spending will increase: With all of Obama's pie-in-the-sky rhetoric about all of the new programs that he is going to implement, government would need to exponentially grow in an Obama administration. Which means....
  
  
• Your taxes are going to go up: if you earn a paycheck, your taxes are going to go up. There is no earthly way with all of the programs and increase in government spending that tax hikes are not going to be part of the equation. You can forget a $250,000 threshold, or a $180,000 threshold ; if you make money, your taxes are going to up, as Barney Frank recently promised the Democratic congress will pass.
  
  
• American Retreat: Precisely at the time when the U.S. needs to become more engaged in fighting international terrorism and to work to stop nuclear proliferation, an Obama administration would signal retreat, not just in Iraq but also in the international arena. That's not to say that we would be isolationist, but that Barack Obama cannot be trusted to be tough with our enemies, something that has given pause to our European allies (immature is what Nicolas Sarkozy said).
  

While we argue about stupid who struck John stuff, these issues that matter to American voters are still out there on the table. Those are the issues, the issues where Barack Obama falls substantially out of the mainstream, that we need to be talking about. These are the issues that are lost in the cacophony that we need to be focusing on; that fact that on the issues, Barack Obama policies will make the American people less secure and threaten to bankrupt American middle and working class families.

What else matters besides that?