2008 Primaries Thread

Look, said the stories, rich men can do more than make fools of themselves on TV game shows: They can speak seriously about the environment, about guns that shouldn't be sold, and about schools that don't teach. His solutions for these ailments are only modest and of the most pedestrian variety. But he has been elected mayor of New York twice and he is hugely wealthy, so he must be taken very seriously.

I think this is a little unfair. Bloomberg has been an excellent administrator, and some of his proposed initiatives, like congestion-pricing, have been a bit more than pedestrian. I don't see why his being rich should take away from the credit due to him.

i suppose if you dont like plutocrats you ought to want an extra one in the race, no?

(xpost)

westside stadium transfat initiative

if bloomberg was prez then we could finally outlaw smoking in this country altogether

then i could finally start my blackmarket cigarette business

westside stadium transfat initiative

lol

aorta congestion pricing

Bloomberg can also lock up any protesters on the Mall like he did at RNC '04 here

http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/AP_Photo/2008/01/10/1199980228_5889/539w.jpg
barack looks appropriately concerned

kerry's still wearing a livestrong bracelet

cancer hasn't been cured yet

the congestion pricing thing totally fell apart though didn't it?

xp: I think that's a security tracking device Howard Dean clamped on him

that's a drink tag, come on

xp

ban john kerry

You can't shuck and jive at a press conference. All those moves you can make with the press don't work when you're in someone's living room.

- new york attorney general and hillary supporter andrew cuomo offering his deep analysis of obama

uh...

ughhhh

fuck i was hoping this wouldn't get totally insane with racial politics, but between donna brazile and jesse jackson jr.'s statements over the past few days + shit like that, this is gonna get bumpy

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/andrewcuomo-small.jpg

brazile...? what did she say?

the congestion pricing thing totally fell apart though didn't it?

yeah. as maybe it should have, it was an interesting idea but in some ways it would have functioned as manhattan imposing a tax on queens and brooklyn (anyone who knows more about it feel free to correct me on this if I'm rong)

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/Brazile_on_Bill_Depressing.html

david brooks said on pbs last night obama has the educated, elitist, "bill bradley voters" AND the black vote so he still has a shot.

what did mark shields say

"jesus christ why am i sitting anywhere near you, you fucking halfwit"

he didn't agree, but his comments weren't as memorable as brooks'

oh yeah...he said the african american vote is important and in play in southern states

the phrase "i found my voice" bugged me the moment i heard it... and the more i think about Bill's politicking in NH the angrier i get: this is the 'fairytale' comment, which was a response to a question about mark penn's judgement:

Second, it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, numerating the years, and never got asked one time, not once, ‘Well, how could you say, that when you said in 2004 you didn’t know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you’re now running on off your website in 2004 and there’s no difference in your voting record and Hillary’s ever since?’ Give me a break. “This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen…So you can talk about Mark Penn all you want.

another classic brooks paraphrase, this time on edwards: 60 % of americans dont like big government and only 20% don't like corporations so he doesn't give a shit about edwards

thats the classic republican move of creating the illusion that big government and big, multinational corporations are somehow seperate, distinct entities

Bill is totally misrepresenting Obama there, no surprise

ugh why is this party so dysfunctional

the hilary camp keeps using that tact w/obama. hilary has said a number of times that obama voted for the patriot act and war funding too.

trying to crush everyone's hope for change?

My impression of Obama is that he probably would have voted for the Iraq war resolution if he had been in the US Senate at that time. It's one thing to give a speech opposing the war when you're a state senator, it's quite another to vote against a resolution that enjoys high public support and is being presented as necessary in order for the country to take a hard-line against a dictator on a matter of national security when you're on the national stage. This is all speculation, of course, but I think that his centrist instincts would have probably trumped his anti-war skepticism.

you're probably right

when will the obama campaign bring up the fact that he's held elected office longer than HRC?

This is all speculation, of course, but I think that his centrist instincts would have probably trumped his anti-war skepticism.

totally unfair speculation - stick to the facts. Obama was against the war at the outset. Hillary voted for it and parrotted Dubya's talking points justifying it.

There were actual principled senators that voted against the resolution, you know.

xxxpost, what the hell does that have to do with anything? what's important is that he came out against it when it was in vogue to support it.

Mikulski, Feingold, etc.

(x-post)

yah he prob wouldve voted for it wtf is this based on besides "centrist instincts"

I'm just going by what he says about national security now. He's willing to keep the use of force on the table for dealing with Pakistan - so why wouldn't he have wanted to keep it on the table for dealing with Saddam?

gee, I dunno cuz we have ACTUAL ENEMIES in Pakistan? and Saddam posed no threat (as any non-idiot in 2002 could've told you?)

the context of obama's statement that he did not know how he would have voted on the war resolution comes from an interview at the DNC by a reporter trying to find inconsistency with his endorsement of john kerry and their differing stances on the war, in case anyone forgot

I mean lolz @ muslim countries they're all the same, lets bomb 'em amirite

WAHT THE DIF BETWEEN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ ITS ALL ALQUEDA RIGHT DUUUUUHH

"I said then that I certainly do not oppose all wars, but dumb wars -- rash wars."

the 'use of force in pakistan' issue looks dangerous on its face but it's of a piece with criticizing the bush approach to foreign policy, where every decision is warped around the black hole of iraq: scrimp on afghanistan, talk shit about iran, effectively ignore al qaeda everywhere outside of baghdad, and make a devil's bargain with musharraf (who we then have to babysit no matter what)

lol xps