Senator Obama, I hope you learned something yesterday on the Saddleback Church/Store stage. The thoughtful, considered answers you craft in hopes of sharing your faith with the greedy prosperity-Xtians aren’t going to sway them. John McCain’s angry snappish answers — his rigidity, his soundbiteiness, his "clarity" — provoked rabid applause. Your cautious conversational style as you tried to reveal what moves you and how your faith manifests itself: not so gripping.

It’s time to return to first principles, Senator Obama. It’s time to remind the American people what John McCain stands for: another four years of the disastrous presidency of George W Bush. You can try talking nicely about how we shouldn’t pass our debt on to the children, but you must also assign blame for that. You can speak diplomatically about restoring America’s moral authority in world affairs, but you must state clearly who squandered that. You can talk loftily about change, but you must also make very clear to Americans who represents the status quo. Americans yearn to hear how you are going to change the rigged system in Washington so that it no longer benefits the rich, the privileged, the owners of the megaphones. We need to hear from you, Senator Obama, how you plan to strike at the heart of what ails our nation.

You, sir, are the change you are waiting for.

Have you noticed, Senator Obama, how President Bush has receded into the background? How his recent photo opportunities have been with Olympic athletes in faraway Beijing and alongside his failed Secretary of State at the pig farm in Crawford, while your presumptive opponent for the presidency dispatches his buttboys to a non-American warzone to — well, to do what, exactly? To bully Vladimir Putin into submission with Droopydog’s drone and Huckleberry’s charm?

It’s up to you, Senator Obama, to remind Americans why we find ourselves in such a dire state.

Who got our economy in this mess? Who instigated the worst foreign policy blunder in American history? Who let a great American city drown? Whose war has killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein? Who ignored the real peril of climate change so that his oil buddies could get rich? Who promised to jawbone the oil sheiks, only to preside over record prices at the pump and in the heating oil tank at home? Who betrayed a national security asset in a time of war? Who is still writing rules at insider-riddled agencies, endangering our environment and our health and our water and our air and our food and our mines and our factories and our clinics and our schools and our streets and our law-enforcement? Who is the President of the United States and the head of the GOP? And who is his designated successor to lead the criminal enterprise that is their party into the Oval Office?

How often do Americans need reminding, Senator Obama? Every day. By you, please.

As digby wrote, John McCain is the man George W Bush is pretending to be, right down to the flight suit. It’s up to you, Senator Obama, to remind Americans that the pale imitation, while awful for America in the past two presidential terms, is likely not to be worse than the real thing. And John McCain is the real thing. The genuine article.

Horrific temper. Unable to succeed in school. Misogyny. Disloyalty and dishonor to family who awaited his return from Vietnam. Carpetbagger for political success. Interfered in public regulatory agencies for a donor, family friend, and political patron. Architect of the Abramoff coverup in the US Senate. A presidential campaign so breathtaking in its influence-peddling even Traditional Media is stumped about how, quite, to convey the sense of impropriety. Sheltered for years by a fighter-jocksniffing national media for whom he admits he developed a specific seduction technique in order to gain their trust. Tutored in economics by the designer of the loophole that bankrupted thousands of American families, turned off the lights in California, and destroyed a Fortune 100 company, its employees and shareholders. The stink of hired foreign agents on McCain’s campaign bus, writing his speeches off of wikipedia and on the back of their own invoices to those same countries he encourages in their war against a nuclear power.

Senator Obama! Hello?

You are the change you are waiting for.

It is time for change, sir. You must change your approach to this campaign. You must do so right now. It’s time for a return to first principles: campaign hard against the president more hated than any in American history. Illustrate every single day to Americans exactly how your opponent will continue our economy’s destruction, our foreign policy’s corruption, our environment’s despoilage, and the children’s indebtedness. Demonstrate daily, in clear and comprehensible English sentences, that this utter ruin all around us is the fault of years of cronyism and corruption directed by George W Bush and enabled by Republican officeholders elected from coast to coast.

You have asked all of us to step up on our own behalf, Senator Obama. It is, again, time for you to step up on behalf of all of us, and on your own behalf. Time to be the change.

Seize the day, sir. There are less than ninety left.

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