Election 2008: So is Barrack Obama finished?

I'm for Obama. But I would not mind seeing Obama quitting the race and becoming Hillary's VP. My reasoning is this: 1. Obama is younger. 2. If hillary loses, then Obama can run again in 2012. If she doesn't then he's VP for a while and then can run for president.

Anyway it's a win win situation for him.

Interesting article. It raises important distinctions about the appeal of either democratic candidate.

at the same time, he seems to be criticizing Obama for the ridiculously unrealistic claims that some people made on his behalf (he'd be some kind of heavenly savior). Well, those expectations aren't Obama's fault, nor does not meeting them somehow catapult Hillary ahead.

The 'magic' of Obama took a youngish political rookie and catapulted him into a dead heat with one of the most washington-experienced candidates out there. now comes the part where the electorate picks which candidate they like more. but faulting obama for not turning political water into wine? seems like a red herring to me.

Hillary's platform clearly appeals to blue collar and rural voters. Obama's platform appeals to young people, and those who are passionately disenchanted with what's gone on in Washington the past 8 years and beyond. Hence we have a primary election to decide who our nominee will be.

So far Obama has a near insurmountable lead in popular vote and pledged delegates. Now Hillary has to decide that, barring Obama getting arrested for underage sex tomorrow, she is willing to stake her victory on the super-delegates going against the popular vote of the party.

alafairnadia wrote: I'm not so sure about his lead among the popular vote - let's not forget florida and michigan.

Without FL and MI it's going to be extremely difficult, neigh impossible. Otherwise the hypocrisy of the Clinton staffers who were gung ho for excluding those states, but have now completely flipped their position makes me sick to my stomach.

first: obama has a lot of unrealistic goals and his supporters echo them. his claim that he'll pull the troops out of iraq on his first day in office is absurd. seriously absurd. if he does that he'll cause worse havoc in the international community than GWB, and that's sayin' something. what he NEEDS to do is go to the UN and NATO, should he have a first day in office, and beg for help in fixing something he didn't have a hand in starting. but that doesn't mean bringing our troops home anytime soon.

Hasn't Hillary promised to bring most troops home within the first two months? I'm not convinced there's a huge difference between the plans of the two democrats. Knock Obama for his false pledge to bring them home on 'day 1', but realistically both Dems have basically pledged the same plan: most troops out, as quickly as possible.

second: clinton is a straight shooter. yes, of course, she's told some total b.s. lies (the sniper fire) but in terms of policy the woman is straight up - whether you want to hear the truth or not. why can't we have universal healthcare? because insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are more powerful than congress. how does she know this? cause she's been in the trenches on these issues for years. can it be changed? maybe - sure as shit if she stays in senate after losing the primary she'll do her damnedest to fix it but really? it'll take a long time.

I'm really wary of 'straight shooter' labels. Nobody in America today can run for President without making tons of promises to appease special interest audiences. Promises that they have no intention of carrying out.

Hillary Clinton is far from being above politics as usual.

third: the working class don't care about transcendence - they care about their families, their jobs and their security. it is the luxury of the middle and upper classes to vote on the issues equality and morality and ideals and social justice. do we not recall "no new taxes"?

and foreign policy. and the environment. and a host of other issues. As I said, both candidates have their base support.

in any case, great piece, a definite counterpoint to the horribly written and clearly non-feminist editorial from liberal-coulter-wannabe maureen dowd on wednesday. did anyone else read that? she's all "clinton emasculates obama which is why he can't crack her over the head and seal the deal so he hates standing next to her at debates and loses them to his detriment. clinton should withdraw from the race, obvi!"

Personally I don't think it's 'great'. I think part of Krugman's article was criticizing the strawman of Obama-as-political-Jesus. Just because people see Obama as a 'new kind of politician' doesn't mean he's going to take the country by storm and win 90% of the general election vote.

As for Dowd, I strongly dislike her. I haven't read her column in over a year. Ever since I read that during the 2000 election she fell prey as much as any other writer to the shallow garbage talking points that 'Gore sucks because he is a policy wonk', but Bush is interesting because he is 'down to earth', I lost all respect for her.

I find her writing extremely shallow. She basically writes a humor/satire column that I don't find funny or satirical.

wait, kids got suspended for cutting class? really?

alafairnadia wrote: in any case, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if obama wins the nomination (which is almost a given) he needs to hire someone to help him, in the words of one of the judges from step it up and dance, butch it up. mccain is already firing away at him under the assumption that obama is the candidate and obama needs to get used to it. this isn't going to be pretty - and it's gonna be way uglier than clinton v. obama. I liked that krugman echoed this thought for me - sometimes I think I'm the only one with my "crazy" ideas.

It's interesting that we can both look at Obama's style & tactics and see something completely different. I think he's handled himself fairly well so far.

I like how he handled the Wright scandal (a 40 minute national speech on race, while simultaneously not throwing Wright under a bus).

I like how during the last debate he repeatedly and openly confronted the two moronic moderators about their obsession with shallow sound bite issues that distract from real issues like Iraq, the economy and jobs.

On speech after speech, Obama has spoken to the American people as if they were intelligent. It's what I've been begging politicians and the media to do for years. Let's raise our level of national discourse. Finally someone is doing it.

Cynics think this may be his undoing. But it isn't so far.

boredom? there's an element of the irritating to all this, but c'mon -- the first time we've had a contest past SC and you're bored? i'm many things, but not bored. wasn't it cool to get to vote in a primary and feel like there was some chance your vote mattered?

unelectable, my ass. i think their both proving what terrific candidates they are -- after this much wrangling, there's still nothing truly deal-breaking stuck to either of them.

enough with the dreary defeatism! go dems! w00t!

Livetotravel wrote: And if the misogyny argument is legitimate than so is the fact that white lunch bucket guys will never, ever vote for a black guy.

I hate to pull the history card but ... who got the vote first?

alafairnadia wrote: [quote=Livetotravel]And if the misogyny argument is legitimate than so is the fact that white lunch bucket guys will never, ever vote for a black guy.

I hate to pull the history card but ... who got the vote first?

Old, stocky, white men - like McCain

sprite wrote: [quote=Boygabriel]McCain is going to get smoked. Talk of the Democratic civil-war-demise are greatly exaggerated.

Everyone thought Kerry would win the last election in a walk. Apparently his electability was greatly exaggerated as well.

McCain has some real problems - he's old and a significant portion of his own party can't stand him - but the press loves him, his bio and bipartisan efforts make him attractive to independents and more conservative Dems, and polls right now have him beating both Obama and Clinton, even though a generic Dem beats a generic Rep by 10 percentage points. I wouldn't write him off.

Not to mention that a majority of the electorate hasn't a clue as to McCain's real positions - they just "like" him - Regan Democrats just "like" him - isn't that nice. At least Anna Quindlen is trying to educate the electorate...especially women who haven't a clue about his real stance on reproductive freedom...

Once Upon a Principle
There was a time when John McCain had positions. Then he ran for president, and everything was suddenly up for grabs.

Anna Quindlen
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 12:08 PM ET Apr 19, 2008
Barack Obama morphed in the public mind from populist to elitist with one ill-wrought comment about guns and faith and the "bitter" working class. Hillary Clinton responded by improbably re-creating herself as the kind of woman who knows her way around a shot glass and a rifle. But neither Democrat can match the transformation of the Republican candidate, who is running for president by turning his back on much of what he once was.

What John McCain really stands for came up most recently in light of his position on abortion. Planned Parenthood commissioned a survey showing that more than half of those women polled don't know much about McCain's stance, and a quarter of those who are in favor of keeping abortion legal mistakenly think the senator agrees.

That confusion may be because McCain has sometimes seemed confused as well. In 1999, during a campaign swing through California, he challenged conservative orthodoxy and said he did not support overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that found a constitutional right to abortion. He explained that a reversal could lead some women to undergo illegal and dangerous operations.

This is just the sort of nuanced position that has led to the widespread notion of McCain as maverick. But it didn't last long. After the right went nuts, McCain backtracked and said he did favor the repeal of Roe, adding, however, that it might lead to dangerous illegal abortions. A day later, his campaign issued a "clarification," and by that time McCain was saying that if elected president he would actually work to overturn the court's decision. Any concern over the effects of illegal abortions disappeared overnight in the cold clear light of must-win.

What's interesting about all this is not the flip-flopping. All pols flip-flop: if they're Republicans, they describe it as "evolving," and if they're Democrats, they get pounded for it. (If either Clinton or Obama had followed the trajectory described above on an important issue, it would be running on a continuous loop around the digital news wire in Times Square.) And McCain's voting record on abortion is clear. He has a zero lifetime rating from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund because of his opposition to, among other things, family-planning funding and sex education. When benighted friends used to suggest that McCain was a stealth moderate, I urged them to look at his voting record, which was about as moderate as Strom Thurmond's.

But now even his record has become irrelevant, since to become the front runner McCain has jettisoned many of his past positions. The Bush tax cuts: McCain voted against them as a senator, but now says he would make them permanent as president. Immigration: he cosponsored a bill in 2005 to make it easier for those in the country illegally to become citizens, but now says that if his own bill—his own bill!—came to a vote on the Senate floor, he would vote against it. After Columbine, he called for more gun control; after Virginia Tech, he said more gun control was unnecessary.

Sen. James Webb has been trying to nail McCain down on a revamped GI Bill that would fund education for veterans. But the closest McCain has come to a position is to say he needs to examine it more closely. Both Obama and Clinton support the bill, and it's fair to assume that neither senator has any more leisure time than McCain. If the point is that the Republican candidate is incapable of multitasking, that's something he might want to lick before he becomes president, a job in which, to paraphrase the White Queen from "Alice in Wonderland," a person is often asked to tackle six impossible things before breakfast. Or maybe it's just safer not to take a position than to take one, to try to be all things to all people by being nothing at all.

This is completely at odds with the patented McCain persona, the alleged guy who speaks his mind without fear or favor. His notorious irascibility is often mistaken for principled candor, but experience teaches that McCain's principles remain consistent now only when they appear to lead to the West Wing. Sadly, no one understands better the personal cost of such pandering. In 2000 he was asked about the Confederate battle flag, which flew from the capitol dome in South Carolina. McCain first called it a "symbol of racism and slavery," then backed off with a "clarification" that described it as a "symbol of heritage." Later he admitted, "I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles."

He has done that over and over during this race. The Straight Talk Express is all over the road. There are those optimists who like to believe that once elected, McCain would again emerge as a small-government progressive who would set his own course. But it is the greatest of illusions to believe that a man will masquerade to win, then revert to his authentic self—after all, there is always another election coming. "Important principles may, and must be, inflexible," said Abraham Lincoln. Or maybe this says it best: "I wanted them to think me still an honest man, who simply had to cut a corner a little here and there so that I could go on to be an honest president." That's from McCain's 2002 memoir, but perhaps there's been a "clarification" issued since.

sweet tea wrote: you disappoint me, LTT. a while back, you were all on fire for obama. now the going gets slightly less sunny, and you're resigned to mccain? it's APRIL. unless you want mccain to win, why aren't you fired up to fight?

Sweet Tea - you're so very right. I was. But in the ensuing months BO and his handlers have proven to be pedestrian - not different and ready to forge a new paradigm - but just ordinary. So call me disillusioned, tired, bored, whatever - I'm suffering 3rd degree political malaise.

And what's even scarier - I work for a predominately feminist organization, who is majorly involved in 501c4 political work - we're all so over this campaign - can't wait for it to be over - strong supporters of a particular Dem candidate don't even care any more about their "person" - God, just get it over - enough is enough. And we fear, that in her thirst for victory, which seems improbable at this juncture, Hillary (and Bubba) will resort to a slash and burn strategy that will leave BO even more crippled then his self-inflicted wounds have.

And, re Bubba - if he isn't currently the typical "angry white man" - I don't know who is.

In the final analysis - I'm disgusted and burned out. This is just politics as usual with a different cast of characters.

Livetotravel wrote: [quote=sweet tea]you disappoint me, LTT. a while back, you were all on fire for obama. now the going gets slightly less sunny, and you're resigned to mccain? it's APRIL. unless you want mccain to win, why aren't you fired up to fight?

Sweet Tea - you're so very right. I was. But in the ensuing months BO and his handlers have proven to be pedestrian - not different and ready to forge a new paradigm - but just ordinary. So call me disillusioned, tired, bored, whatever - I'm suffering 3rd degree political malaise.

And what's even scarier - I work for a predominately feminist organization, who is majorly involved in 501c4 political work - we're all so over this campaign - can't wait for it to be over - strong supporters of a particular Dem candidate don't even care any more about their "person" - God, just get it over - enough is enough. And we fear, that in her thirst for victory, which seems improbable at this juncture, Hillary (and Bubba) will resort to a slash and burn strategy that will leave BO even more crippled then his self-inflicted wounds have.

And, re Bubba - if he isn't currently the typical "angry white man" - I don't know who is.

In the final analysis - I'm disgusted and burned out. This is just politics as usual with a different cast of characters.

Bubba is running for president?

I thought David Brooks's op-ed this morning was insightful. A quote:

In Pennsylvania, Obama did everything conceivable to win over Clinton’s working-class voters. The effort was a failure. The great uniter failed to unite. In this election, persuasion isn’t important. Social identity is everything. Demography is king.

Over the years, different theories have emerged to describe the educated/less-educated divide. Conservatives have gravitated toward the culture war narrative, dividing the country between the wholesome masses and the decadent cultural elites. Some liberals believe income inequality drives everything. They wait for an uprising of economic populism. Other liberals divide the country morally, between the enlightened urbanites and the racist rednecks who will never vote for a black man.

None of these theories really fit the facts. It’s more accurate to say that the country has simply drifted apart into different subcultures. There’s no great hostility between the cultures. Americans have a fuzzy sense of where the boundaries lie. But people in different niches have developed different unconscious maps of reality. They have developed different communal understandings of what constitutes a good leader, of what sort of world they live in. They have developed different communal definitions, which they can’t even articulate, of what they mean by liberty, security and virtue. Demographic groups have begun to function like tribes or cultures.

A Daily News editorial hit some of my concerns today as far as trust issues.

it is hard to trust Obama's leadership instincts if he truly admired Jeremiah Wright. Can Obama tell friend from foe? Or is he an appeaser who always looks for accommodation? Amazingly, even Wright suggested the answer to the latter is yes.

Part of Obama's continuing political problem is that he has not been honest about his relationship with Wright.

For example, he knew Wright was trouble, which is why he rescinded an invitation to have Wright speak at his campaign launch on Feb. 10, 2007. Now we learn, according to Wright, that he and Obama prayed secretly in the basement of Illinois' Old State Capitol before Obama went outside to speak to the public that day.

Wright, literally then, was the crazy uncle Obama kept in the basement. And now he has come charging out, spewing nonsense, for all the world to see. And for voters to wonder about the candidate who tried to hide him.

link

From March 2007:

Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, “The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.”

According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, “You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/us/politics/06obama.html

From the great speech:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

So what changed? (new speech)

Now, I've already denounced the comments that had appeared in these previous sermons. As I said, I had not heard them before. And I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church. He's built a wonderful congregation. The people of Trinity are wonderful people. And what attracted me has always been their ministry's reach beyond the church walls.

But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS, when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century, when he equates the United States wartime efforts with terrorism, then there are no excuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced. And that's what I'm doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.

And does anyone really believe this?

Q: Why the change of tone from yesterday? When you spoke to us on the tarmac yesterday, you didn't have this sense of anger, outrage --

SEN. OBAMA: Yeah. I'll be honest with you: because I hadn't seen it yet.

In the end, I think that there is one thing that Wright is probably right about, as much as it pains me:

Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever's doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they're pastors. They have a different person to whom they're accountable. As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God November 5 and January 21. That's what I mean. I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do.

I'm just hoping that Hillary has some magic she can pull off. The reality is that she is obviously no less of a dirty politician than is Obama, but at least you know what you are getting with her. I just don't feel like anyone really has a clue about what they are truly getting with Barack and Michelle Obama. Even with McCain I feel like I have a much better idea of where he stands. With Barack I feel like he just wants to eat his waffles and hope that everything bad just goes away, and that he is willing to say pretty much whatever to facilitate that. It is like he thinks that everything will be just fine once he is President. That isn't the end of the journey though, it is the beginning. Clinton and McCain have shown a MUCH greater ability to work with Congress and to work in general than he has. I'd like to see him take a greater leadership role in Congress and try for President some years down the road. For instance, in regard to the Iraq war, Obama supporters I've spoke with generally make a big deal out of the fact that Hillary voted to authorize the President to use force against Iraq. They say that Obama never voted to authorize force, and was against the war from day one. I tend to be a bit of a devil's advocate, and have used this exact point with people who are against Obama. It is, of course, a bit ingenious. Obama never had the chance to make that vote, because he was in the IL State Senate at the time (2002.) (Clinton's rationale) He has been a US Senator for three years, the last one of which has been spent largely campaigning for President. The more I see of him, and the more I listen to him over the long term, the more I feel like he just isn't ready yet.

daver wrote: Even with McCain I feel like I have a much better idea of where he stands.

I don't understand how this can be true. I understand dismay at how Obama's dealt with Wright criticism, but Obama's been very consistent and upfront about pretty much every other major campaign issue and policy position, from Iraq to the economy to foreign policy to the environment.

McCain, on the other hand, has changed positions on a slew of major issues over the past 8 years, from taxes, to campaign finance, to lobbyists, to economic policies and a host of other things.

Oh, he also cheated on his wife of 35 years, who raised his kids while he was a POW, and then left her for a woman 18 years younger than him, who happened to be heir to an incredible fortune which was then used to launch his political career in Arizona. Talk about opportunism and trustworthiness.