2008 Primaries Thread

you gotta be kidding me

The ad plays a portion of his interview with the Reno Journal-Gazette in which Obama said in part, "The Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years."

The ad's narrator asks, "Really? Aren't those the ideas that got us into the economic mess we're in today? Ideas like special tax breaks for Wall Street?"

The narrator goes on to say, "Running up a $9 trillion debt. Refusing to raise the minimum wage or deal with the housing crisis. Are those the ideas Barack Obama's talking about?"

yeah, two sides of the same coin there daria

shh!! it's all about pragmatism!

Daria, I've given you the benefit of the doubt as a play hard/play fair/nobody hurt partisan in this thread up to now, but you done gone batshit. Obama's comments on Reagan and the GOP were right on the money*, and the Clinton camp has distorted them because they know it's impossible to underestimate the stupidity of the general public, and they think the public will accept their distortion.

*he just forgot to add that the ideas that the GOP were the party of were bad ideas

It was pretty foolish to say something like that during the primaries. Of course his opponents will distort his meaning. Lefties were freaking out before Edwards or Clinton made anything of it.

I say this as an Obama supporter who is frickin' pissed about how people are reacting.

The Reagan comment was a soft pitch to his opponents. Edwards made a comment about the Reagan thing, too. Having said that, I'd like to note that there is an appreciable difference between how Edwards and Clinton reacted. Clinton actually lied about what Obama said, too his face, while smiling. The Clintons are sharks. They creep me out.

I meant that it's impossible to overestimate the stupidity of the general public.

Yeah, if I have to vote for Clinton to put a Dem in the WH in November, I'm going to put my finger down my throat afterwards. I didn't think that until the last couple of days.

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT: REAGAN WAS FUCKING GOOD AT DELIVERING SPEECHES. EVERYONE MOVE ON ALREADY.

New Florida Poll: Romney Rising (Giuliani Falling), with -- Ugh -- McCain Still Leading.

Methinks the Clintons took the timespan invoked a little personally in that Reagan comment.

i wanted giuliani to darkhorse that shit and pull out florida. clusterfuck would be fun to watch.

Huckabee should be torn limb-from-limb by a pack of badgers. If he splits the anti-McCain vote with Romney, allowing McCain to win here, I'll f----g scream.

Daria-g, I hope you're right that HRC can beat McCain.

some florida GOP voter on NPR today was saying he hopes it goes all the way to the convention and they have to choose a candidate there, apparently because he hopes they would choose rudy. best thing for the Dems ever.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Gore_endorses_gay_marriage__0123.html

Yes, I am lying to you all. I also can't read, and I'm batshit, and feeling like deej's logic has got me overmatched in any argument. You got me.

If Obama were precise and specific about what change he'd actually bring, I guess it'd be harder to debate the interpretation of what he said about Reagan.

Obama is obviously a new democrat, a triangulator, a centrist democrat who speaks positively about Reagan, unlike populist lefties like Bill and Hillary Clinton. Obama is also obviously a hypocrite about the Iraq war who had a direct link to intelligence which conclusively contradicted the administration's lies, yet he not only supported the invasion, but he acted as a hawkish Democratic enabler up through the 2004 election, unlike Hillary Clinton who consistently opposed the war in Iraq. </sarcasm>

It's nice that Clinton has re-cast herself as an anti-war populist, but pardon me if I find her less credible than Obama in the mold.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring_fallacy

daria, you've been on Clinton's wang as long as I can remmeber lolool

dear daria:
who are you leaning towards in 08?

-- j blount (papa la bas), Saturday, April 15, 2006

gabbneb: shtoo shtoo, my little babushka

daria, it's okay, i understand you just can't be hassled to look up Obama's policy positions for yourself and are content to accept the Clintons' misrepresentation of his words and record. just continue to disingenuously parrot Clintonian talking points as you have been. we don't expect much more from you at this point.

who this "we", crazy person?

myself and anyone else nonplussed by daria's adherence to the HRC script? surely i am not alone in this.

yeah, i'm perfectly willing to accept that daria's right about hrc electability, tho i lean the other way for now, but her take on the candidates' intentions, character and rhetoric has been terminally unobjective since at least when she admitted she took hil (and O?) personally (as i recall), and people started calling it out.

i would've remotely bought hrc's electability until the last week or two, in which her campaign has basically gone full-on rovian divide-and-conquer style. i think it's a foolhardy gambit to pull this shit in the primary, because unlike a general election where you can live without 49.9% provided you have 50.1, you actually need the people you are pissing off in a primary run. she's completely sabotaging her chances in the general by alienating black voters (who likely won't cross party lines, but will stay home should she get the nomination) and playing a strategy that wins her democratic party loyalists but doesn't bring new voters into the fray. democrats can't win a general without independents/moderates and she's not going to get them, especially if mccain is the nom.

no, i think the rovian stuff may work for her in the primary, perhaps moreso in the general, where it is more likely to emphasize her caricature

moreso than

assuming she's being ingenuous, daria's basically admitted her problem all along - it's a failure of perception

fwiw, ge polls are looking bad for dems if mccain wins

mccain vs clinton

mccain vs obama

mccain vs edwards

xpost to gabbneb

i'm not doubting its effectiveness in the primaries, it just seems unwise to potentially piss off people you want to win back should you become the nominee

what can the dems do to regain their advantage over the repubs in the coming general election?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/national.html

i just don't know why people need "calling out" for their defense or advocacy of a candidate. daria support la hills. so what? so do i! i also support obama and edwards. you guys need to chill a little and milo you specifically are coming across like an utter jerk.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/blogphotos/Blog_LAT_Clinton_Obama_McCain_January_2008.gif

-- LA Times

the real clear politics links take those la times polls into account, and the aggregate of the polls indicates that it's basically a tie with mccain regardless of who the dems nominate.

I don't think Hilary's attack politics are working in the Democrats favor right now. They certainly aren't working in her favor. Unfortunately, she is taking Obama down with her.

A lot of voters just see infighting and they make their big frowny faces and both candidates are bad meenies so they both loose, or the sad frowny face voters maybe stay home because everybody's a bunch of meanies, or maybe they will vote for mccain because he's not a meanie and what's the difference he supported campaign finance reform and he shoots straight and is a very nice man maybe they will have a happy face again.

people don't need calling out for their defense or advocacy of a candidate, they need calling out for their myopic, summary rejection of another candidate, which has been daria's take on Obama all along (if not calling him a fake, then the purportedly-ingenuous "i don't get it"), or for their apparent presumption that their favored candidate will best win over others based upon the strength of their own personal affinity for the candidate, apparently without examining the extent to which they personally match up with the electorate (while applying that standard stringently to the other side on other measures).

their myopic, summary rejection of another candidate

http://www.imperialtea.com/AB1002000Store/images/accessories/kettles/blackkettlesolo300.jpg

when I look at polls, I like to look not just at the spreads, but at the actual numbers the candidates are getting, i.e. how many people are actually willing to vote for this guy? the increased-undecideds factor against obama means that on the RCP average a notch more are willing to go for clinton than obama, but i think it's more revealing to look at the mccain side - against hillary, he's consistently at or in striking distance of 50% in every poll since December, but against Obama, he's held below that level in half the polls.

i'm just playing daria's game back at her, Tracer, I might even vote for Hillary yet! (tho not likely, of course)

and i don't pretend not to get hillary - i get her just fine, thanks

2008 elections: polls u can rely on

yea in any case i don't think polls taken 10 months before an election really mean that much.

edwards might in fact be the most electable in a vacuum, but now marginally the least electable because he's the biggest loser

Tracer always reminds me on this thread how Southerners really have learned to expect so much less from pols than the rest of us.

I was kinda saddened to hear on Morning Edition a nice old lady-on-the-street in South Carolina say Billy Blythe's recent hatchet work was unbecoming for a former ruthless, triangulating war criminal president.

Listen closely, you can already hear the Dems shrieking "THE SUPREME COURT! THE SUPREME COURT!" trying to convince folx to turn out on 11/4 for Her Lying Ladyship, sigh...

gabbneb, either you’re a master of playing devils advocate, or retarded.

i am the biggest devil, dude

Setting aside, for the moment, our advocacy for our fave dem candidates, can someone explain this to me:

The two biggest concerns of the electorate are:
1. the economy
2. iraq

They think president Bush's policies are:
1. economy = bad, wrong direction
2. iraq = terrible mistake, pull out now

McCain's positions are:
1. has been and continues to be in line with Bush economic policies, says he doesn't understand economics
2. war hawk, we could be in Iraq forever

McCain still has popular support. Could conceivably beat any of the three leading Democratic candidates who:
1. have real stimulus packages and will move economy in new direction
2. advocate pulling out of iraq as soon as possible

?????????????????