Given this year’s introduction to the Lower 48 of the term “Hockey Mom,” I was struck this morning by a hockey analogy that perfectly describes the current dynamic of the 2008 campaign.  In a year in which there is, for the third campaign in a row, a bitterly divided electorate, the campaign is almost exactly like the 3rd period of Game 7 of the final round of the Stanley Cup.  There is no tomorrow.  There is no Game 8.  On November 4, we are going to choose a President and a Vice President, and we are going to have to live with that choice for the next 4 years – indeed, when one considers the Supreme Court and our capacity for global self-destruction, we may have to live with the consequences of this election a lot longer than that.

As anybody who follows professional hockey knows, in the Stanley Cup playoffs, the referee’s don’t call as many penalties as they do in the regular season.  The players on both teams are generally playing more aggressively because it is playoff time, and the refs don’t want a close call (resulting in a 2 minute one man advantage) to influence the outcome of the game unless the penalty is pretty egregious.  Now for some types of penalties – like hooking, tripping, or interference  --  they start calling it only when it happens on a play where a legitimate chance on goal is directly frustrated by the infraction (whereas in the regular season, they might call it away from the puck, or completely outside of a scoring situation, up ice).  For other types of penalties – say cross-checking (which is blindsiding somebody in the back) or high sticking (where you can seriously lacerate an opponent’s face or neck with a sharp stick) -- it has to be especially flagrant (as in drawing blood, or knocking a player unconscious) or it must happen right in front of the ref (so it can’t be ignored) before they will call it.   Of course, the reality is that, in a close game, not calling a legitimate penalty can often influence the outcome every bit as much as giving one team a power play on a close call.  More aggressive teams can and do commit more penalties and if they get away with them, they will keep doing it, and like it or not, it usually influences the outcome of the game.  But for whatever reason, the refs clearly have a preference for influencing the outcome of games by refraining from making the call when they should, rather than calling the penalty and giving the victimized team a one man advantage when it isn’t flagrant, or is away from the action. 

As the playoffs continue into the later rounds, and as you get to the deciding game of a 7-game series, with the stakes that much higher, the playoff referee typically becomes even more “hands off”.  The desire not to influence the outcome leads to a situation where anything that isn’t completely flagrant, right in front of the ref, and in the area of the goal will not get called.  And in the third and final period of the deciding game of the final round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, with the score tied, anything short of a decapitation in front of the goal is not going to be called a penalty.  There is no other moment in a hockey season that the players play more aggressively than in the third period of Game 7 of the final round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, with the score tied, and it is tough and ugly, and the team that is willing to go over the line of decency and fair play without remorse often ends up the winner.    And that’s exactly where we find Campaign 2008 at this moment.  

This is the third and final period of the final game of the Cup.  The stakes have never been higher.  If we didn’t believe that before now, then McCain’s reckless judgment in selecting Sarah Palin, and his immoral decision to engage in a campaign built on of bald-faced lies, gross distortions, phony outrage, personal belittling, insults to the national intelligence and thinly veiled racist smears, has surely convinced us.  He has now shown us that. to win this election, he will lie about his record, his running mate’s record, and Obama’s record, and continue to do it even after being called out on it, and then he showed us that, to win this election, he would risk our future by picking as his running mate a person who might shake up a nearly dead campaign politically, but who is, at the same time, demonstrably unprepared to fulfill her most important responsibility – to become President, and to be capable of achieving a smooth transition in government at the height of a national tragedy (especially in the area of foreign policy and national security in a very dangerous and changing world).   If someone was to sincerely believe, at face value, that McCain really is a different kind of Republican, one who will be inclusive and non-partisan, who will not merely be an agent of special interests and lobbyists, who will work toward the middle and not put in place an ideological foreign policy agenda that the country does not support –if that’s what someone honestly believed –to vote for him now, they must also risk everything by electing at his side a VP who is , at best, unqualified and far out of her league, and at worst, dangerously shallow and unprepared (and a fanatical religious extremist to boot).    

Then consider the opponent in this race, Barack Obama, who is a very serious, articulate and inspiring candidate.  His life story is a model of the American dream, his devotion to grass roots, bottom up service to nation – to pursue a purpose higher than any individual – is revolutionary, and his intelligent, even tempered  and non-contentious way of dealing respectfully towards every issue and every person – including most of all those who disagree with him, or who hold different (but equally passionate) views -- has earned him the respect of everybody who voted for him in the primaries and caucuses, and  virtually every major Western world leader, and has inspired a generation (maybe two!) in ways that the Presidents we have elected since Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 simply have never achieved.  He is graceful in ways that few politicians ever achieve, and he is definitely the smartest person in the room.   Nobody speaks better for him than he does himself, and almost everything he says is measured, respectful, thoughtful and perceptive.  Most of us are amazed that he has made it this far, because people that good or talented usually get destroyed on the national stage for some idiosyncracy.  The fact that he had to run against Hillary Clinton -- an extremely talented and passionate public servant with a world of political chops, a very passionate following, and who was also seeking the opportunity to bring about change, but in a different, but no less legitimate way (by the mere act of bringing a progressive female perspective into the White House) -- made Obama an acquired taste for many Democrats (none more than Hillary’s most passionate supporters). But after Denver, the rest of us, even Howard Wolfson for crying out loud, finally saw in Obama what so many of us have come to see over the past 6 or 7 months – that he is literally a catalyst for everything that  we want to bring about when we say that we are seeking change in Washington.  

So confronted with facing a nearly perfect candidate in November, in the third period of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup of American politics, McCain took a huge gamble, and went dirty and political.  Integrity, honor and experience went out the window, and (ersatz) change became the GOP mantra.  The TV ads have been either dishonest or insultingly disrespectful, or both; the campaign rhetoric became belittling, personal, and completely detached from reality – lie after lie (followed either by lame defenses and stonewalling, or even more outrageous lies that replace the last set of lies).   They took on Rove-trained GOP political operatives, like Steve Schmidt.  They signaled to 527s – conservative political action committees – that it was OK to unleash a media campaign of hate and lies and smears (with the help of huge, unregulated financial support from America’s wealthiest and most reactionary right wing fringe – many of whom have made millions and even billions as a direct result of GOP economic and tax policies, and privatization of governmental functions ).  These tactics are often quite effective, especially with an inattentive electorate.  And, sadly, too many America’s are willing to make life and death decisions based on visceral personality judgments – “I just like her” or “he is so dedicated and honorable” rather than looking at what these politicians actually do.    And so McCain and his team did a total makeover – from experienced steady leader into a reformer seeking change.  Right before our eyes, in a matter of weeks, and assisted by his choice of Governor Palin, who is new, attractive, and feisty, and definitely outside the GOP box in ways that no other choice would have been, we have witnessed a born again John McCain.    

Now the effect of this, in the short term (and with the help of a compliant media) has been to energize right wing social conservatives – the middle class of the GOP – who had previously been moribund, and to create some “celebrity” of their own to help them achieve their own form of self-realization (of a very right wing, socially conservative kind).  This is not, as some would like to think, a wonderful development for the Obama campaign, or the Democratic national campaign generally, because the far right seemed resigned to defeat, to hold their noses and vote for McCain, or even to stay home or vote for Bob Barr or Ron Paul (if they happened to be on the ballot), so that a truly sweeping blue victory in Senate and House races really seemed possible.   Now that seems less likely, because in many areas where Republicans were vulnerable, that vulnerability was in some measure due to tepid support for the top of the ticket and a general weariness with politics in general.  Now, many of these people are pumped about the prospect of a social conservative like Palin being one brain aneurysm, or heart attack, or cancer recurrence away from the Presidency (and with it two or three socially conservative lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court --  after all, she’s “just like one of us”).   And as the horrifying truth of the Palin appointment and McCain’s sacrifice of integrity to move to the gutter sinks in for the rest of us, we stare in disbelief as it seems, in the television media anyway, that people don’t care, that Palin actually seems to be generating new and possibly winning support for McCain, and his tired old campaign, that wasn’t there before.  It is as if the last 7 years didn’t happen, and we are about to see a repeat of 2000 all over again. 

Yes, the GOP is playing this campaign like we are in the third period of game 7 of a tie game, determined to play as dirty as they can until the referees put them in the penalty box.  If they don’t get penalized, then they will keep doing it, even more aggressively, until the refs do something.  And if they finally do get called, they will back off only slightly, until the ref is once again looking somewhere else, and then they will do it some more until they get caught again.  If those penalties don’t get called, then they may well win the game, even though they are the inferior team, or so we think or fear.  And the press, thinking that it has an obligation to be even handed even when one side never lies, and the other side does nothing but lie, does not want to influence the outcome, even though, by failing to do their job, and point out lies when they occur, and by parroting false narratives spoon fed by the campaign in exchange for access and ego gratification, they are in fact influencing the outcome. 

Now, finally, in the past few days, the infractions have become so flagrant, and so “in the face” of the refs, that they finally are starting to blow the whistle.   But surveying the landscape of the mainstream media, it is hard to feel any level of confidence that they will “keep up the good work” rather than falling back into the usual pattern the next time the McCain campaign hurls a slightly different Molotov cocktail at Obama.  The good news is that the game is still tied.  Even thought the GOP is energized, and the playing field is not as one sided as it once seemed, the social conservatives are only a minority of voting Americans.  Whether it is only 20% or 30%, as some of us believe, or 40 or 45%, as the social conservatives would like us to believe, it is not enough, by itself, to win this election.  And the choice of Palin, and the sacrifice of integrity, has energized our base, and taken its toll on those Republicans who are less about social conservatism, and more about tax policy, national security and foreign policy.  Many of them are deeply concerned – and more than a few will not vote for McCain with Palin on the ticket.  I personally know several people who fall into this category, lifelong republicans who have never voted for a democrat (and who may not this time either – but they will not vote for McCain, period – they feel deeply betrayed by this).  And it is a slap into the face of Hillary Clinton supporters, to appoint (in some measure) a person who can better pander for their votes based on gender alone, but who is so thinly qualified, shrill and socially conservative – who stands against almost everything Hillary has stood for in her life as a public servant – that it is an insult to suggest you would sacrifice your intellectual honesty and integrity because of the sex organs of the candidate.   The refs are finally starting to see the mugging that’s taking place, and they are finally starting to call the penalties, but we cannot depend on them to regulate the game until the end.

What we must do is clear.  First of all, when a penalty is called, we need to take advantage of it.  We need to juxtapose the real life examples of hypocrisy, and the doubletalk and double standards, the almost frightening similarities that exist between McCain’s convention speech rhetoric in 2008, and Dubya’s convention speech rhetoric in 2000 – to expose it as empty words, cynical rhetoric whose sole purpose is to win an election no matter how despicable and dishonest the methods involved.  And to pin it on McCain, whose reputation for honor and integrity is now proven to be undeserved.   Second, we must take the game back to the other team.  We must still use our grace, and speed, and strategic genius – our ground game -- but we must also hit back, and hold, and push our game to the limit of the rules in order to play the game as it is being played, on the playing field that we have been dealt.   One of the two main reasons Obama defeated Hillary Clinton – the other being her vote on the war – was because Obama and his inner circle had a better strategic understanding of the contest at hand– which involved caucuses, and delegates in traditionally red states, and other approaches largely or completely ignored by mainstream, status quo democratic party thinking.    50-state strategy.  Internet mobilization.  It seems obvious now, but Howard Dean and then Barack Obama took these concepts to a new level, one that offers the potential of a long term shift towards a more progressive and less corrosive politics.

Now we find ourselves in a different game .  This game is one game, one period, for all the marbles.  It’s played in 50 states, but many of the 50 are already fundamentally decided.  So there are really only 10 or 15 states in which there is a contest, and in those states, we cannot let up on our aggressiveness.  The ads need to be sharpened.  The contrasts need to be sharpened.  The lies must be exposed over and over until the refs cannot ignore them.  We need to hit the streets to make sure everybody hears it and sees it – that we want our country back, that we want a better world, that we need to turn the page on history, and the tired old arguments of the past, into the future.  And the sum total of the McCain campaign’s despicable behavior needs to become a narrative of its own, just like the narrative the GOP used against Gore and Kerry (e.g., embellishment and inauthenticity for Gore, elitism, indecision and inauthenticity for Kerry, only our narrative is actually reality based).  We must follow our candidate’s lead on speaking truth even when it seems to be counterintuitive, because the imperative for truth (and the importance of contrasting integrity against sleaze) has never been greater.    We must use the tools – the internet (You Tube, the Blogosphere, etc.) and the street (grass roots organizing, registering voters, making sure they vote, and making sure the GOP doesn’t get away with preventing them from voting ) for everything it is worth, and we can never stop being vigilant. 

The graceful team does win the Stanley Cup every now and then – more often than you might think.  The thugs and cheaters win also, but not when the other team uses its powers and skills to fight back, to create the moment when the graceful superstar can score, or make a brilliant pass to the open man to nail down the winner.  Just ask Wayne Gretzky, who won the Cup many times not because he was  bigger, or meaner or dirtier, but because he took his exceptional gifts, and integrated them into a team game, a team effort, to win the top prize.

This is where we find ourselves.  It is time to stop worrying, and start fighting, but fighting with intelligence and razor sharp precision, and with all of our skills and passion.   My next post will explore a number of thoughts for how to do that, in concrete terms.  Love and peace to all.