2008 Primaries Thread

is it just the name?? some kind of generational memory of 'muhammad ali'? or are those emails getting around to everyone?

i've even talked to liberals from up here who said "yeah, he seems interesting. it might be good to have a muslim president"!!

Obama has taken a high-road of a sort, and I do respect him for it. I think it shows a form of personal integrity. However, I think that Clinton also has shown integrity. I don't think that her campaign has engaged in quite the all-out slime war that has been portrayed in this thread. What else can she criticize him on if not his public statements and record? His stated positions on the issues are almost identical to hers. I think that her criticisms have been within the bounds of fair play. How well does any of us know what Obama really thinks about Reagan and his ideas or why he chose that moment to bring them up? Those who like him assume he meant the best. But on the other hand if Obama's vague talk about transcending political differences makes you a bit suspicious, then remarks like that might set off a red flag.

xposts

i've even talked to liberals from up here who said "yeah, he seems interesting. it might be good to have a muslim president"!!

Yeah, I think my dad's girlfriend said something to this effect.

I thought he did a good job of giving the context to his Reagan statement after Hillary distorted it.

Hillary saying over and over in the debate "I didn't say Reagan! I didn't say Reagan!" seemed like a lawyerly parsing of words that people associate with the Clinton brand (and I loved this guys until recently).

it's the email! that was what my dad referenced. "a guy at work showed me this email..." (my dad is a furniture salesman, so not fortune 500 but...)

obama's vagueties def worry me. not that i think he's secretly conservative but that i'm still not entirely sure what his convictions are. but i do trust his intellect and whatever else i've been able to gather about him. but the crossover thing is totally true: going back to my family, all of them are SERIOUSLY hardcore conservatives, and when i was home for xmas none of them had anything bad to say about him at all, and i got more than an earful about edwards/clinton.

and i don't think he's done. he wins sc and suddenly momentum is his again. i don't put *any* stock in 2/5 polls yet. remember how giuliani was gonna run away with this thing?

Fwiw, Obama has adopted a Southern accent while in the South as well.

Obama has at times adopted the cadence of the black church, his belonging to one and being a black man and all

but I guess Hils can be our 2nd black president rite? lol.

I fuckin applauded the dude on CNN last night calling out Toni Morrison on that moronic 'first black president' shit

true, but i'm sort of deferring to josh marshall's judgement:

in iowa, O had time time time to get personal and work the magic to come out from under HRC. in NH, he didn't. in SC, he has, but for the rest of the 2/5 states she is probably just too far ahead in too many places. it's a matter of d = r x t at this point.

xp to YGS

From my reading of the transcript of Obama's remarks - and this is just my interpretation, I'm not trying to slime him - it sounds like he was saying that the pendulum had swung too far in the liberal direction by 1980, and that Reagan was actually kind of right to take the anti-government tack that he took, but that now the pendulum has swung too far in that direction, and it's time to maybe turn towards a more proactive government again. It actually makes a lot of sense to me, though naturally it's not what you'd expect to hear from a die-hard liberal.

Here's the part I'm referring to, btw:

I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different.

I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.

I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

I think Kennedy, twenty years earlier, moved the country in a fundamentally different direction. So I think a lot of it just has to do with the times.

I think we’re in one of those times right now. Where people feel like things as they are going aren’t working. We’re bogged down in the same arguments that we’ve been having, and they’re not useful.

And, you know, the Republican approach, I think, has played itself out.

I think it’s fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last ten, fifteen years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom.

One analysis of what Clinton said last night re Obama and Reagan.

That commentary about Reagan sort of points toward a long-game approach of wooing conservatives for the GE.

RE Reagan comment: Once again, Obama underestimated the ability of the base to be deliberately obtuse.

RE 1st black pres: "Toni Morrison owes black America an apology." Yeah, I felt the same way.

RE Muslim email: How smart was it to start sending out these emails and making these allegations years before the GE. People have been talking about Obama the Muslim for years. The longer one believes something, the truer it feels.

yeah, my take on Obama's basic political character is that it's defined in part by what he inherited from his secular humanist liberal Mom and in part by his academic questioning of what wisdom he received from her

which is basically me, too, I'll admit

McCain's knowledge of economics (or lack thereof)

Just saw an Obama interview on CNN. He interviews really well. He is a fantastic orator. He is not as strong a debater as I'd like him to be.

Kerry writes like he speaks:

As a veteran, it disgusts me that the Swift Boats we loved while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta have been rendered, in Karl Rove's twisted politics, an ugly verb meaning to lie about someone's character just to win an election. But as someone who cares about winning this election and changing the country I love, I know it's not enough to complain about a past we can't change when our challenge is to win the future -- which is why we must stop the Swiftboating, stop the push-polling, stop the front groups, and stop the email chain smears.

incomprehensibly?

Obama has taken a high-road of a sort, and I do respect him for it. I think it shows a form of personal integrity. However, I think that Clinton also has shown integrity. I don't think that her campaign has engaged in quite the all-out slime war that has been portrayed in this thread. What else can she criticize him on if not his public statements and record?

-- o. nate, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 5:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

thats.not.what.shes. doing

Kerry writes like he speaks

Yep. Like my in-laws (diehard Republicans) said during the 04 GE debates: Kerry "speaks to the Senators," while Bush "speaks to the PEOPLE!"

(They're awesome in-laws, despite being Republican and all).

I mean seriously: "As a veteran, it disgusts me that the Swift Boats we loved while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta have been rendered, in Karl Rove's twisted politics, an ugly verb meaning to lie about someone's character just to win an election."

What, he has no one to look this shit over?

i like this new angry hillary

'new'

so for general election

kerry taking high road=looks like frenchified wussbag
but
obama taking high road would = looks like a principled guy?

hes got a better shot at success w/ it than kerry but...

taking the high road doesn't mean not hitting back or not having your supporters hit back

Obama did a good thing in last night's debate with his body language, as far as raising a finger (or was it a hand) as a way of objecting to what Hillary was saying without interrupting her.

when obama hits back, he's not gonna do it in the look-at-me-I'm-so-clever style of hil or howard dean.

Fred's out. Who's getting his votes?

Fred's out. Who's getting his votes?

What votes?

What about the path Reagan put us on was positive? Did he do anything positive to deal with "excesses" of the 60s and 70s or is it my limited knowledge of, you know, gutting social services and turning a bunch of mentally ill people out on the streets. I was in grade school the whole time, I don't know. I saw Obama bringing him up, I guess as a way to present himself as potentially the same kind of transformative figure, and.. that's again where I get lost, because policy wise none of the three candidates are that different.

Daria, let's let Obama answer your question:

What I said — and I will provide you with a quote — what I said
was is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure
because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic
interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda
that I objected to. Because while I was working on those streets
watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a
corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: I was fighting these fights. I was fighting these
fights. So — but I want to be clear.

So I want to be clear. What I said had nothing to do with their
policies. I spent a lifetime fighting a lifetime against Ronald
Reagan's policies. But what I did say is that we have to be thinking
in the same transformative way about our Democratic agenda.

We've got to appeal to Independents and Republicans in order to
build a working majority to move an agenda forward. That is what I
said.

Still lost?

I mean seriously: "As a veteran, it disgusts me that the Swift Boats we loved while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta have been rendered, in Karl Rove's twisted politics, an ugly verb meaning to lie about someone's character just to win an election."

Huh? What's wrong with it?

Clearer would be:
"As a veteran, I am disgusted. Karl Rove's twisted politics turned the Swift Boats of the Mekong Delta into an ugly verb. Swift Boat now means to lie about someone's character just to win an election."

Kerry's formulation is much better. If he lost because he favored sentences of more than five words then it's the country that has a problem, not him.

yeah, that's gore's excuse too.

Kerry's formulation is much better. If he lost because he favored sentences of more than five words then it's the country that has a problem, not him.

+

Let's just say that if you wrote like Kerry in my class, mullah, your ass is getting kicked.

as for the Reagan chatter: dudes, Bill Clinton's been praising Reagan's oratory for years!

and Hillary's been praising Reagan's presidency, as I pointed out upthread, which Obama's never done

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Groups_internal_memo_points_to_Obamas_0122.html

but you know, far be it from the chief practitioner of rovian politics to be fair

Obama did a good thing in last night's debate with his body language, as far as raising a finger (or was it a hand) as a way of objecting to what Hillary was saying without interrupting her.

He's lucky; if his last name was Gore, that raised hand or finger would have been replayed in slow-motion all over the news for days and referred to as "finger wagging", and we would have been told that voters are "turned off" by that kind of "condescension". "Does he think he's better than everyone else?"

Let's just say that if you wrote like Kerry in my class, mullah, your ass is getting kicked.

Skerry.

He's lucky

no, his body language is far superior to Gore's

from Mark Halperin's The Way to Win:

When Clinton's team anticipates a challenge from a critic, it assumes that the attacker inevitably will make a mistake that can be exploited. Then, when the accuser has been forced to lose control of his or her public image, there are benefits to reap. (Bush's team has followed this same strategy.)

First, the Old Media begins to see the critic as some combination of goofy and extreme, and everything the person does, says, or writes is viewed skeptically. Rove's operation, for instance, used derisive humor, scornful Internet videos, and tirelessly repetitive talking points to turn liberal icons such as MoveOn.org, Al Gore, and Howard Dean into wild, left-wing caricatures. rue, not everyone in the Old Media was swayed, but the opinions of many Old Media-ites could be colored this way.

...

A second benefit of counterattack: The activists on the same political side as the disfigured accuser are demoralized and defanged. Ed Klein's over-reaching gave anti-Hillary Clinton reporting a bad name, just as CBS News's bogus piece on Bush's draft record served to put that topic off-limits. Pros on both sides who understand the game (such as Morris) realize that the capacity to criticize, on any topic, is undermined after such a well-publicized misfire.

...

Finally, demoralizing the other team and polluting your accusers are great ways to rev up your own base. Every new embarrassing error exposed or outlandish statement uttered just makes your base more committed. Each additional Old Media reinforcement of a foe's negative image gets the base jazzed up, because sophisticated supporters rightly see such coverage as a victory.

hence
Obama-ites: Clinton's weak, defensive, angry, and not someone people like or feel easy around; we don't need that shit
Clinton-ites: thatssexist.jpg

Obama-ites: we could be map-changing game-changers like Reagan; she's never gonna get past 50+1
Clinton-ites: lol, you love Reagan

Obama-ites: thatsracist.jpg
Clinton-ites: Obama's the black candidate; I'm the candidate for everybody

You're satirizing yourself now, right?

Bill Clinton enacted more of Reagan's agenda than any prez ever had or will, the triangulating stone-liar motherfucker

i know that you withdraw from engaging in all this analysis, Tracer, but are you actually challenging the notion that Obama is a better politician than Al Gore?

Al Gore was a good enough politician to get re-elected three times as my Tennessee senator and good enough to be asked to be vice president of the United States. I'd say that's pretty good. My point wasn't to compare Obama and Gore's "goodness" as politicians but to compare how one gesture can be interpreted by a dysfunctional press corps as revealing the sick soul of a man they hate, on the one hand, and (correctly) as totally irrelevant on the other.