Seventy-six years ago, to many ears on the left, Franklin D. Roosevelt sounded way too much like a centrist. True, he was eloquent, and he'd generated enthusiasm in a Democratic base eager to evict Republicans from the White House. But his campaign was moderate -- with policy proposals that didn't indicate he would try to take the country in bold new directions if he won the presidency.

Yet FDR's triumph in 1932 opened the door for progressives. After several years of hitting the Hoover administration's immovable walls, the organizing capacities of labor and other downtrodden constituencies could have major impacts on policy decisions in Washington.

Today, segments of the corporate media have teamed up with the Clinton campaign to attack Barack Obama. Many of the rhetorical weapons used against him in recent weeks -- from invocations of religious faith and guns to flag-pin lapels -- may as well have been ripped from a Karl Rove playbook. The key subtexts have included racial stereotyping and hostility to a populist upsurge.

Do we have a major stake in this fight? Does it really matter whether

A new collection of essays edited by Mark Crispin Miller called "Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008," tells the story better than any single source I've seen yet.

The Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida in 2000 that would have made Al Gore president. This is not speculation. The recount was later done.

Numerous elections were stolen in 2002, in Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and elsewhere, including Senate, Governor, and House races in Georgia that were practically openly swiped by Diebold's elections unit president flying in at the last minute and altering the election machines. The theft of Don Siegelman's 2002 election as governor of Alabama was almost as transparent. One county reported a set of results from electronic machines that made Siegelman governor, then recalculated and reported a different set of results. The new results were statistically impossible, and the pair of reports strongly suggested exactly how the machines were rigged, first mistakenly and later as intended.

So what ever happened to George W. Bush, the worst chief executive this nation has ever endured?

This is an election year. Aren't we supposed to be evaluating the legacy of the previous administration?

In this case, we have a man whose approval ratings are subterranean. Who's sunk us into an endless war based on impeachable lies. Who's dragged our national honor into the toxic mud. Who's brought us to the brink of depression. Who's dropped the dollar into the toilet. Who wants more subsidies for terror-target nuke reactors and more tax breaks for CO2-spewing oil barons.

Who screams "Terror! Terror! Terror!" at every possible moment, but lets Osama bin Laden run free.

What would Limbaugh, O'Reilly and the rest of the corporate bloviators be screaming today if a Democrat had hosted the 9/11 attacks and then let their perpetrator roam the world without capture for more than six years?

The only thing the American people can say with pride about George W. Bush is that we never elected him president of the United States.

If politics is the art of saying nothing, then Barack Obama is sure blowing it, isn’t he?

His latest “gaffe,” to proclaim at a private fundraiser in San Francisco (of all places) that small-town Americans are bitter and cling to guns and God in lieu of financial security — these words purveyed to the American public by way of a scratchy, Osama-quality recording — triggered such heartfelt hypocrisy from his opponents.

“It is hard to imagine,” said John McCain, “someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.”

I almost agree with this. Obama is definitely out of touch with something. However, it isn’t “average Americans” — who, it turns out, really are bitter in large numbers — so much as what I would call “the tacit covenant of presidential politics.”

From the beginning of Barack Obama's quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, there were African-American critics who accused him of not being "black enough." Ironically, some of those questioning his ethnic credentials were neoconservatives, or apologists for the Republican Right Wing.

For example, conservative writer Debra Dickerson, author of The End of Blackness declared in January, 2007, that "Obama would be the great black hope in the next presidential race, if he were actually black." Journalist Stanley Crouch took a similarly negative approach, stating that while Obama "has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own – nor has he lived the life of a black American." Juan Williams, of FOX News, warned that "there are widespread questions whether this son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father really understands the black American experience." Even Al Sharpton challenged Obama's legitimacy, stating, "Just because you are our color doesn't make you our kind … It's not about his genealogy, it's about his policies … What is it that you're going to represent?"