US 2008 Presidential Campaign/Debate Discussion Thread - The Fifth Installment

[susanp6]

Not good then eh? do the have 'any' compassion for poor people over there? terrible if not!


I'm glad i live in Scotland if that's true!!!!

[Vincent Vega]

It's basically the case with any European country in comparison to the US that what is considered left in the US still would fall under the category of right politics here.

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by deep


Obama will appoint a non-Catholic, non-male to the supreme court

a Senator from N Y

this may well be in the cards, i agree.

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by susanp6
Not good then eh? do the have 'any' compassion for poor people over there? terrible if not!


I'm glad i live in Scotland if that's true!!!!

i love Europe. i've been all over, and i've spent well more than a month in Scotland.

but we are talking about two different cultures who do have different -- compatible, shared, but still different -- values.

some of what is "left" and "right" aren't all that applicable, and the US has concerns that European nations don't, and vice versa.

there are 300m people who live over here. it's an insanely complex society, and the worst thing to try and understand it via soundbytes from across an ocean.

[deep]

Originally posted by Irvine511

this may well be in the cards, i agree.

Obama in the Whitehouse
Hillary on the SC
Bill in the Senate

tri-fec-ta

whatever brain cells
the GOP have left would explode

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by deep


Obama in the Whitehouse
Hillary on the SC
Bill in the Senate

tri-fec-ta

whatever brain cells
the GOP have left would explode

as fun a scenario as this would be,

i still can't applaud nepotism in any shape or form

nor dynasties.

[deep]

Originally posted by Irvine511

as fun a scenario as this would be,

i still can't applaud nepotism in any shape or form

nor dynasties.

nepotism

don't fall into that trap

Hillary may or may not be qualified to be on the court

she certainly is no worse than a few who are on there now

I think she is better qualified than that Harriet Miers that Bush nominated

I do think that Hillary has proven that she is qualified to have her own political career and earned her re election to the Senate by her own deeds

she has been more successful as a Presidential candidate when she has separated herself from Bill and made her own case

I don't think it is likely she will be appointed to the court

But, if she left the Senate?
I do think the people of N Y and the Country would be well served by having Bill Clinton with all his skills and intelligence serve in the Senate.

The tri-fec-ta ?

was just amusing to me.

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Originally posted by deep
a Senator from N Y

and an ex-President will be appointed to replace her.

well at least in this scenario we'd finally have a qualified person in our senate seat... maybe one that will actually do something for, ya know, new york.

but, alas, i wouldn't hold my breath... hillary seems determined to press on. it's sad, really.

[melon]

Originally posted by Irvine511
i love Europe. i've been all over, and i've spent well more than a month in Scotland.

but we are talking about two different cultures who do have different -- compatible, shared, but still different -- values.

some of what is "left" and "right" aren't all that applicable, and the US has concerns that European nations don't, and vice versa.

there are 300m people who live over here. it's an insanely complex society, and the worst thing to try and understand it via soundbytes from across an ocean.

I agree. I find it's quite difficult to compare U.S. and U.K./European politics directly, because we are talking about differences in cultures, traditions, and forms of government. Multiparty parliamentary democracy most certainly has a different political dynamic than a two-party representative democracy with fixed election cycles. We have also seen, for instance, that even "liberal" nations like France can still have fairly paralyzing issues about race that rival those historically found in the U.S.

Even so, I'm not about to call our system "perfect," let alone wholly functional right now. There's quite a bit of nonsense going on here that makes me jealous when I realize that even the U.K. Conservative Party is considerably further to the left on issues of gay rights than the U.S. Democratic Party.

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by deep

I think she is better qualified than that Harriet Miers that Bush nominated

well, yes, but is this really going to be our standard? i guess Bush really has lowered the bar for just about everything, and we're thrilled when government rises above the level of incompetence.

I do think that Hillary has proven that she is qualified to have her own political career and earned her re election to the Senate by her own deeds

i do agree.

[deep]

Obama picks up 6 superdelegates

By JOAN LOWY 05.09.08, 3:11 PM ET

WASHINGTON -

Barack Obama all but erased Hillary Rodham Clinton's once-imposing lead among national convention superdelegates on Friday and won fresh labor backing as elements of the Democratic Party began coalescing around the Illinois senator for the fall campaign.

Obama picked up the backing of six superdelegates, including Rep. Donald Payne of New Jersey, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who had been a Clinton supporter.

I think I predicted this Monday, before the Tuesday elections.

[anitram]

Hillary, just pack it in already.

[A_Wanderer]

General article on the nature of running for president

Will Barack Obama's presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago?

It is all about context. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is presented to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical.

Perhaps viewing Obama as a Chicago political creature would conflict with the established national media narrative of Obama as a reformer. Actually, there's no "perhaps" about it.

"I think I have done a good job in rising politically in this environment without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics," Obama told reporters and editors at a Tribune editorial board meeting several weeks ago.

Yes, an excellent job. Except for his dalliance with his indicted real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, a relationship Obama considers a mistake, the senator has not played the fly to Mayor Richard Daley's spider. Almost, but not quite.

"I know there are those like John Kass who would like me to decry Chicago politics more frequently, and I'll leave that to his editorial commentary," Obama said.

Not the politics, just the corruption, I said then, wishing silently that he had decried it all, that he'd stood up years ago and pointed to the list of sleazy deals, pointed an angry finger at the Duffs, the white, Outfit-connected drinking buddies of Daley who received $100 million in affirmative action contracts through City Hall.

That's an easy political commercial for the Republicans: Mobbed-up white guys party at the old Como Inn with Daley, and they get $100 million in city affirmative action contracts and Daley doesn't know how it happened and Obama endorses the mayor in the name of reform.

Obama had nothing to do with the Duff deal. But he kept mum. He has endorsed Daley, endorsed Daley's hapless stooge Todd Stroger for president of the Cook County Board. These are not the acts of a reformer, but of a guy who, as we say in Chicago, won't make no waves and won't back no losers.

Obama the reformer is backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Daley boys. He is spoken for by Daley's own spokesman, David Axelrod. He was launched into his U.S. Senate by machine power broker and state Senate President Emil Jones (D-ComEd).

Sen. Obama did give his word of honor that if elected president, he would retain corruption-busting U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, no easy vow, given that Daley is threatened by Fitzgerald, and that the corruption case against Rezko is about to be handed to the jury.

As a candidate, Obama will do what he has to do to win. My argument is not with him--but with the national political media pack that refuses to look closely at what Chicago is. They're fixated on what it was, and they think it's clean now.

And they've spent years crafting, then cleaving to their eager and trembling Obama narrative, a tale of great yearning, almost mythic and ardently adolescent, a tale in which Obama is portrayed as a reformer, a dynamic change agent about to do away with the old thuggish politics.

It's as if Axelrod channeled it, wearing a peaked Merlin hat. Obama is a South Sider and does not hail from Camelot or Mt. Olympus or the lush forests of mythical Narnia.

I've joked that reporters feel compelled to hug him, in their copy, as if he were the cuddly faun, the Mr. Tumnus of American politics. But I was only kidding. The real Mr. Tumnus never had Billy Daley or Ted Kennedy carving up Cabinet appointments.

So why the disconnect? Why is Obama allowed to campaign as a reformer, virtually unchallenged by the media, though he's a product of Chicago politics and has never condemned the wholesale political corruption in his home town the way he condemns those darn Washington lobbyists.

For an answer as to when pundits will ever put Illinois corruption in context, I called on Tom Bevan, executive director of the popular political Web site Real Clear Politics (which directs readers to my column on occasion) and a Chicagoan.

"To a large degree, the media has accepted much of the Obama narrative thus far," Bevan told me. "He's risen so quickly, but his history hasn't been bogged down with an association of Chicago politics and I can't tell you why exactly, except perhaps that some may have bought into the established narrative and can't separate themselves from it."

"And I don't know if the country understands just how corrupt the system is in Illinois. People don't see it. They're flying over us, cruising at 30,000 feet," Bevan said.

Our Chicago politics sure must seem sweet from that high altitude as journalists fly by. From up there, our politics must smell pretty, like vanilla beans in a jar, or lavender potpourri: you know, something truly authentic and real.

http://weblogs.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/blog/2008/05/obama_unstained_by_chicago_way.html

[deep]

http://politics.nytimes.com/election...map/index.html

I think this map is a good starting point in evaluating the election, at this point in time.

Some of these states will go solid in the next few months.

There will be no more than 3-5 states, that will be up in the air on election day.

[Earnie Shavers]

What a fucking idiot: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2a50425a-1...658,s01=1.html

[yolland]

A decidedly more optimistic, if admittedly more longterm-oriented view:

In Dixie, Signs of a Rising Biracial Politics

By JACK BASS
New York Times, May 11

Across the South, Barack Obama’s smashing primary victory in North Carolina last week reflects a new reality—a half-century of rising Republican red tide has crested, with signs of receding. A week ago yesterday, Democrats won a special Congressional election in a Louisiana district held by Republicans since 1974. That outcome might well be replicated Tuesday in Mississippi, where a biracial Democratic coalition is optimistic in the second round of another special Congressional election.

...In response to Mr. Obama’s energizing of black Southern voters, enlightened self-interest may well convince many of the region’s undecided superdelegates to endorse him. Over the last two years, there have been little-noticed Democratic gains in Congressional and state legislative elections across the South, as the solid black Democratic base has been joined by whites disenchanted with the Bush administration. New concern about the economy may be adding momentum. The Republican tide surged across the region in the 1990s, bringing large gains in state legislatures and a vault from 39 members of the House of Representatives before the 1992 elections to a 71-53 majority in 2000. But in 2006 and 2007, Democrats in the 11 states of the Confederacy gained six Congressional seats—a Senate seat in Virginia and five House seats—and added 30 state legislators. Florida’s battered Democrats gained two House seats in 2006 and five in the Statehouse. Arkansas elected a Democratic governor to join the party’s two United States senators and the majorities of both legislative houses. Democrats control both legislative houses in Mississippi as well. The story is most dramatic in Virginia, which in 1976 was the only state in the South that failed to back Jimmy Carter for president. Republicans still hold a majority in the House of Delegates and an 8-3 dominance in seats in United States House. But with their second Democratic governor in a row, the party in control of the State Senate, and the likelihood of Mark Warner being elected their second Democratic senator, Virginians may have reached a Democratic tipping point.

The trends suggest a region in transformation, with dynamic economic growth, an expanded black middle class, the arrival of millions of white migrants, the return of scores of thousands of African-American expatriates, and an emerging native white generation with little or no memory of racial segregation. The result has been greater tolerance, an expanded pool of talent, and growing openness to new ideas.

In the South Carolina presidential primary in January, one factor in Mr. Obama’s decisive victory was his ability to draw 25% of the white vote against two strong white opponents, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. But the turnout may have been the strongest sign of change. Almost 100,000 more South Carolinians voted in the Democratic primary than in the Republican contest. The surge smashed the previous Democratic presidential primary record by more than 80%—this in a state where Republicans hold both Senate seats, the offices of governor and attorney general, and both houses of the legislature. The more astute white Democrats saw an energized black electorate as a core element for a future biracial comeback.

A bit of Southern political history can help in understanding the present. In 1948 the Dixiecrat campaign of South Carolina’s theretofore liberal governor, Strom Thurmond, aroused the region’s most racially conservative voters, striking a powerful psychological blow to the Democratic “solid South” that had emerged from the Compromise of 1877. (That agreement resolved a disputed election by giving the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes, the electoral votes from three Southern states, providing a one-vote margin to win the presidency; in return, conservative Southern Democrats obtained the withdrawal of federal troops from Southern states, and Reconstruction ended.) In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower became the first Republican presidential candidate ever to campaign in the South. He won four upper South states in 1952 and added Louisiana in 1956. In 1961, Barry Goldwater launched the Republican “Southern strategy” at a gathering of Republican leaders in Atlanta. “We’re not going to get the Negro vote as a bloc in 1964,” he declared, “so we ought to go hunting where the ducks are.” He voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and Mr. Thurmond, by then a senator, switched parties, bringing his Dixiecrat followers with him.

Now things are changing again. In Tennessee’s 2006 Senate race, the moderate Democrat Harold Ford Jr., a five-term African-American congressman, faced Chattanooga’s mayor, Bob Corker, a moderate Republican. With the race in a dead heat, the Republican National Committee aired an ad ending with an attractive young blonde woman saying with a come-hither look, “Harold, call me.” The “Southern strategy” still worked, but barely. Mr. Ford lost, 51% to 48%, but he did get 40% of the white vote. Another sign was George Allen’s loss of his Senate seat in Virginia, after he used the term “macaca” to insult a heckler. Both experiences reinforced the Democratic allegiances of African-Americans, and Mr. Obama’s mass canvassing to register and turn out new voters has now energized an expanding base.

Although the effects of past discrimination still include widespread poverty among African-Americans, it’s mostly hidden from view. The outlawing of discrimination in employment, under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, has resulted in a unified, biracial work force in which white and black Southerners can more easily acknowledge a common regional identity and biracial culture, as found in music, literature, religion, food and a sense of place.

...After the 1990 census, the first Bush administration reached an agreement with civil rights groups under which the Justice Department required legislatures to increase the number of voting districts in which minority groups were concentrated. As a result, Southern blacks more than tripled their numbers in Congress; many now have seniority and status as committee chairmen or other posts. But with the removal of blacks from predominantly white districts that had tended to vote Democratic, Republicans too made huge gains, and the ranks of moderate white Democrats were decimated. Similar patterns emerged in state governments, like South Carolina’s. Now, however, there are established and seasoned African-American Congressional Democrats like James Clyburn of South Carolina, the majority whip, and the civil rights hero John Lewis of Georgia, deputy whip. So the potential exists to launch a renewed equivalent of the Voter Education Project of the late 1960s. Such an effort would include energizing often-complacent black legislators and lesser officials elected in safe districts to mobilize their voter base for statewide and Congressional Democratic candidates.

The demonstrated capacity of black elected officials to gain and hold white support could lead a future Department of Justice to decide that blacks need not be quite so concentrated in districts any more. And that would open expanded electoral opportunities for Democrats across the South. Like Americans across the country, many Southerners, black and white, are troubled by the war in Iraq, rising deficits and a plummeting economy symbolized by the soaring price of gasoline. Race itself is receding as a divisive issue. Like the late afternoon sky across the region, there’s a purple hue across one horizon.

[Irvine511]

this makes me giggle.



[q]Source: Huckabee Tops McCain's Veep List
May 12, 2008 11:38 AM ET | James Pethokoukis | Permanent Link

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and defeated contender for the GOP presidential nomination, is currently at the top of John McCain's short list for a running mate. At least that's the word from a top McCain fundraiser and longtime Republican moneyman who has spoken to McCain's inner circle. The fundraiser is less than thrilled with the idea of Huckabee as the vice presidential nominee, and many economic conservatives—turned off by the populist tone of Huckabee's campaign and his tax record as governor—are likely to share that marked lack of enthusiasm. But here is the logic of picking Huckabee:

1) He is a great campaigner and communicator who could both shore up support in the South among social conservatives (Huckabee is a former Baptist minister) and appeal to working-class voters in the critical "Big 10" states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio.

2) As any pollster knows, voters search for candidates who "care about people like me," and Huckabee would probably score a lot higher on that quality than millionaire investor Mitt Romney. Plus, given all the turmoil on Wall Street, 2008 would seem to be a bad year to pick a former investment banker for veep.

3) Economic conservatives and supply-siders may balk, but the threat of four years of Obamanomics and higher investment, income, and corporate taxes might be enough to keep them on board.

Let me add that a top Republican political strategist told me about a month ago that he also believed Huckabee to be the leading veep contender.[/q]

[deep]

Here is another "giggle" for you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH0...-of-57-states/

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by deep
Here is another "giggle" for you

that's not nearly as giggly as running for cover from sniper fire.

[Butterscotch]

I just found this article on how racist some people have been toward Obama's campaign, and how field workers have been abused. He's been called half breed muslim n word and more. Some of the people described in this story sound very backward and ignorant, still I am surprised we haven't heard a lot more about this before. Maybe it's been going on but it never got media coverage. Anyway I am convinced racism is the only reason she won in WV and some other places, and if Hillary would have been running against a white man democrat she wouldn't be nearly as close as she is.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...T2008051301359