There has been a lot of talk about race and identity politics during this campaign, perhaps more than any other political campaign in history. The media and pundits are showing this election as a classic case of the old America vs. the new America, the crusty old white guy against the young, hip, cosmopolitan Black candidate. However, this is not a blog about the media’s tingle in the leg that they get for Obama, or even the Obamessiah himself. I want to talk about Obama’s hopeandchangeandhopeandchange and their effects on Obama’s supposed base of the urban poor. And so because I love a political fistfight like John Edwards loves his campaign staffers, I would like to take this opportunity to take on Senator Hopeandchange in his own arena, which is change from the way things are traditionally done in Washington. It has been revealed that in every arena from his policies to his rhetoric to his Vice President, that Obama is nothing more than the same socialist candidate with the same failed policies from the 1960s that the Democrats trot out every year to run for president, fire up their base and leave on the short end of the stick, howling about disenfranchisement and stolen votes.

Many of my friends have asked me why I cannot support Obama. I am not driven by social issues, and indeed I would even say I am socially liberal. And after all, what’s wrong with change? That my friends, is a fair and accurate question that ought to be posed to the Senator himself. Since Obama clinched the nomination, he has been running for his life towards the political center, seeking to grasp the same independent right leaning voters that have eluded the Democrats for five out of the last seven elections. But one would think that the Boy Wonder could win simply with his base of young and Black voters just as his did in the primaries, especially considering that these were the only two groups that bought into his message that he was going to be different from every other politician. However, when he talks, the only change that Obama is delivering is the skin color of the man delivering the same message.

When looking at his policies concerning education, Obama does not support school vouchers. He tows the Democratic Party line that more funding is needed, always more funding, while ignoring the fact that high needs schools have gotten better funding than at any other point in their history. Ignoring the success that charter schools private schools have had on African-American males, a significant part of Obama’s base, he chooses to tow the line of the party. Sounds like Washington to me if I’ve ever read it.

When looking as his policies on energy, the economy, and Iraq, once again Obama sounds like every other politician. Save the environment, tax the rich (who are always you) and bring all the troops home, consequences be damned. Of course, I’d be lying if I said those were Obama’s positions today-those were his positions when he was running against Hillary Clinton. Theses are his positions now that he’s running against McCain/Palin-I’d look into offshore drilling, there needs to be tax cuts for the middle class, and I’d look into hearing what the generals on the ground say about Iraq (which is a good thing, since Obama’s only been once since his nomination, three times overall and is about as qualified to speak on Iraq as he is to be president.) Talk about being for something before you were against it; Obama has gone through positions on the issues this election like Joe Biden goes through speeches that he didn’t write. What’s next-is he going to give hunting lessons to all of those people who were bitterly clinging to their God and their guns?

We all know about the famous rhetoric of the Obamessiah, but the funny thing about it all is how he attempts to define himself as different, a new kind of politician when he is very much the same liberal elite snob just like the rest of his party. Someone who claims to take the high road as a new politician however, wouldn’t be caught up in the Chicago machine and mixed up with mobsters and crooks like Tony Rezko, who helped Obama purchase his house in the wealthy Hyde Park community on Chicago’s South Side. This is just the tip of the iceberg on Obama’s supposedly new politics. Who did he pick for his Vice President-not someone who would reinforce his message of change. Not someone who had been on board with him on the issues-he picked Senator Joe Plagiarism Biden, a man who has been in Washington for over 30 years. That’s change? A 30 year Senator who voted for the War and called your Iraq plan gravely irresponsible? Senator, what happened to hope? What happened to change? Or did they get in the way of your real slogan-power, by any means necessary.

I have always believed that the Democratic Party leadership was full of liars and hypocrites, people who would say anything to get elected. I used to think that this was personified in the Clintons, and watching Obama send the Clintons to their political death was a moment of great joy and satisfaction to me. However, right now Obama is the greatest threat to youth and African-Americans, his two core groups and the groups that will die with him to the very end of this bloody cage match. I titled this burning down my master’s house because as a Black male generally you are born into Democratic politics-the same mentality that had slaves trapped and afraid to leave the reservation even after they were free has blacks afraid to leave a Democratic Party that takes the African-American vote every four years and leaves them with absolutely nothing. So my solution is to burn the whole damn thing down-destroy the Democratic Party and call them out as the faithless, gutless cowards that they are. Obama can and must be questioned and exposed as the America hating messiah that he truly is. Someone who does not need to wear a flag lapel pin, that has a wife who does not love her country, and has friends in the mob and in the Weather Underground is not someone who should be in charge of holding the nukes and protecting the American people. Obama has already shown that when the going gets tough in times of war, he will fold like a used chair. Once again, this is the same tendencies that all of the cut and run Democrats (which is all Democrats sans Lieberman) have shown; if it is a tough fight, we will wave the white flag. Obama will embolden and strengthen our enemies, between his willingness to meet with terrorist leaders and enemies of the state (something that his vice president once Joe Biden called gravely irresponsible) and his belief that we should give all illegal aliens drivers licenses (what you thought we forgot about that one Barry?), Obama has shown countless times t hat he cannot be trusted with our national security, and far from being a change candidate on national security, he gives us the same Democratic Party French foreign policy.

Fortunately, where there is darkness, there is a light, because there is another man running for President, believe it or not, who has a history of acting on real change. John McCain has been the corrupt pork barrelers worst enemy, calling out members of his own party and the other party, accepting $0 in earmarks, and being a hawk on fiscal spending. John McCain, unlike Obama supports the right of young people to save and invest tour own money in private accounts, rather than raising the payroll tax as Obama advocates to continue to pay for a Social Security program that we will never receive benefits for. John McCain advocates cutting wasteful spending and look at revamping our fiscal budget, rather that continuing to throw money at things such as the education system which have borne no fruits. And just as important, John McCain has cultivated this great image with the selection of the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin as his running mate. While Obama succumbs to the corruption of the Illinois and Chicago political organizations, Palin has made her political name by fighting against the corruption in her own Party and in the Democratic Party. She has made enemies in Alaska by fighting for ethics reform and the fact that she spent time as a mayor and a governor gives her more executive experience than anyone on the Democratic side of the ticket, especially when the top of that ticket spent his four years in the Senate writing books and running for President. McCain and Palin advocate offshore drilling as well as looking into nuclear energy (and finally entering the US into the 21st century). This is a real ticket of change-this is Americas winning ticket for the future. Lower gas prices, money back in the pockets of Americans, and tax and spending cuts-now that’s change we can all really believe in.