Huffington Calls for 'Cosmic Rage' From Obama

By Tammy Daniels
iBerkshires Staff
09:03PM / Friday, September 12, 2008

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Arianna Huffington

WILLIAMSTOWN — Political pundit Arianna Huffington thinks the Democrats need more fire in their bellies.

The founder of The Huffington Post said on Thursday that Sen. Barack Obama needs to get angry — not with the distractions of his competitors but over the state of the union.

"Every transformational leader has to show his cosmic rage to change the world," said Huffington, speaking to journalists in a classroom at Williams College. "It can't just come from his head, it has to come from his gut."

Issues once seen as to the left have now become the center, she said: People are worried about education, environmentalism, energy alternatives, ending the Iraq War. It's an anger Obama can tap into, a righteous rage that leaders such as Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. have tapped into.

"Electing McCain is continuing the Bush policies," said Huffington. "That's what's at stake."

It was a theme that Huffington continued later that evening when she spoke to a packed Chapin Hall about the 2008 presidential campaign.

Elaborating more, she said she believed there is a groundswell within the nation just waiting to be called to action, as it was not called after the terrorist attacks seven years ago. Instead, Americans were told to do go shopping.

"I think we are waiting to be called to do great things."

An author and frequent commentator on radio and news talk shows, Huffington was also on campus to get students (and others) involved in blogging on The Post. Next week, she's speaking to the Yale Political Union.

"We are doing outreach to colleges because we want to get more college students writing, blogging on The Huffington Post, being part of our citizens in journalism project, called OfftheBus," said Huffington. "We have upwards of 10,000 contributing readers."

The unabashedly left-leaning Post is part blog, part news aggregator and, to a lesser extent, part online newspaper. Created in 2005, it covers style, entertainment, environmentalism and comedy, too, but it's likely it's 4 million unique users a month are logging on to read about politics.

Blog sites like The Post have had a definite affect on the campaign, said Huffington, because they're breaking and highlighting stories that the mainstream media ("the old media") might once have ignored. One citizen journalist broke the story on The Post about Obama's comment about small-town people are "bitter, they cling to guns or religion."

In Alaska, for example, the frenzy over Gov. Sarah Palin's selection as Sen. John McCain's running mate has turned some of the state's bloggers into celebrities as the traditional media scrambled to cover the breaking story.

News is now 24/7 and that hasn't escaped the notice of the MSM, said Huffington. "They are devoting more and more resources online ... the new media is definitely affecting the campaign."

Huffington Post Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington displays  words and phrases summing up the Bush years ('Heck of a job, Brownie').

It's not just news sources. "I don't think it's an exaggeration to say if not for the Internet, Obama would not be the Democratic nominee," she said.

Despite the Democratic royalty of the Clinton's and their powerful fundraising machine, Obama was able to the channel the force of the Internet into a formidable street organization. "He's really been able to get hundreds of thousands of people out of their houses and knocking on doors."

It's a feat that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean couldn't manage, she said, even though he was able to place himself on the national stage almost entire through the Internet. But much of his support stayed online and he was never able marshal the ground forces for a lengthy campaign.

McCain, as well, has been able to take advantage of the Internet by posting advertisements that may never get a lot of play on television.

But Huffington said the soap opera that's become the Republican ticket is threatening to derail any talk of issues.

Calling Palin the "Trojan Moose," she described the governor as a "major distraction." 

"If McCain makes this about Palin, they win," said Huffington. "Even if the Democrats prove all the little lies, even if they prove all that they still lose, because the election becomes all about Palin's small lies and not about the big truth."

The big truth, according to Huffington, is the failed policies of President Bush and the nation's future.

"She's a compelling figure. She's a smart, accomplished woman," Huffington said of Palin. "There's something fearless about her. I wrote a book about fearlessness and there's something about that that's very, very appealing."

Huffington thinks the young adults may well decide the winner in this presidential election.

"Youth are making a big difference in this campaign like never before," she told the reporters with the Williams Record. "Young people voting is not traditionally high ... but young unlikely voters may become young likely voters, and that can make all the difference in a close election."

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