2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

more interesting stuff from first read:

Clinton’s super problem: By our count, the Clinton campaign hasn’t publicly announced the support of a new superdelegate since just after February 5. Indeed, since Super Tuesday, Obama has gained 47 new superdelegates, while Clinton has lost seven (including Eliot Spitzer). Does Clinton have a bigger problem on the superdelegate front than folks realize? Why do we think party leaders -- who saw the Democrats lose governorships, state legislatures, and the control of Congress during the Clinton years -- suddenly jump on board the Clinton campaign? Isn't this the reason the Clinton campaign has only been able to keep uncommitted supers from climbing board Obama's bandwagon but they haven't been able to woo a new super to their side in a month? ? Isn't this also an explanation for why the Clinton campaign has done so poorly in the caucuses? The caucuses are made up of the activists who follow this stuff closer and think about things like electability and who can help the party keep Congress, etc. If Clinton's not winning over caucus activists, why should we believe she'll win over a large enough chunk of superdelegates to overcome Obama's pledged delegate lead? Ultimately, her best chance is to convince supers that Obama is completely unelectable on par with McGovern, an argument that might have been helped a tad by Rev. Wright.

And beyond the supers... Heed the Grand Moff Ickes:

A pledged-delegate loophole for Rodham?

After the 1980 battle between Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, her chief strategist Harold Ickes noted, the party changed a rule that required pledged delegates to stick with their candidates no matter what. The current rule, adopted in 1982, states that pledged delegates "shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them." A "good conscience" reason for a delegate to switch, Ickes told NEWSWEEK, would be if one candidate—such as, say, Clinton—was deemed more "electable." If delegates believe she has a better chance in November than Obama, Ickes said, "you bet" that would be a reason to change their vote. (He added, however, that the campaign is "focused" on winning over uncommitted superdelegates "at this point.")

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/17/many_voting_for_clinton_to_boost_gop/

For a party that loves to hate the Clintons, Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.

IT'S RUSH HOUR

sooo both democrats and republicans believe obama to be more electable and he has an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates

hmmmm

seems so bizarre to me -- The Clinton camp, in response, says Obama should release his tax returns for every year he's been in public office and every earmark he requested as a state senator. i.e. "i'm going to challenge you to do something that i'm extremely reluctant to do myself, take that!!!"

You've never been married, have you.

it would not surprise me in the slightest if hillary goes after the pledged delegates (assuming this thing goes to the convention, which i still don't think will happen), but i don't know how successful she'd be. aren't pledged delegates some of the most adamant supporters of the candidate they pledged to support? barring some enormous catastrophe for obama (and no, i don't think wright is going to be that catastrophe, even though he is/will be a problem), i don't see obama's pledged delegates ditching him.

xpost - ha, i haven't been married, no. i know what you mean, we've done similarly hypocritical things in personal relationships. i guess i was saying it's a bizarre move for the campaign because it's just so transparent - hillary's very clearly, very publicly shown reluctance to release her tax returns (it was even asked at one of the debates), so it seems like a weird move to make when it could so easily backfire.

i could be wrong on the backfire, though, as it all depends on how it's portrayed by the media, blah blah.

Yeah, it's a silly tactic but so is asking for her papers in the first place. I personally can think of few things I care less about than Hillary Clinton's tax returns.

http://i25.tinypic.com/2md1dlf.jpg

hahahahahaha

xp: I can think of many (like what expatriates think about them?).

How exciting for you.

didn't she say she's been 'vetted'?

obama's gearing up to assault clinton on transparency -- he recently sat down with the hicago Tribune and answered all questions they had regarding his relationship with Rezko, his campaign has released the list of charities where the Rezko contributions went, plus the disclosure of earmarks and tax returns... he's been laying the groundwork for the assault by airing out everything of his that could be brought into question.

Veteran columnist/activist Doug Ireland writing in NY's Gay City News on supporting Obama (w/ eyes wide open):

Half a Cheer for Obama

Bill Clinton's paradigmatic triangulation - at the urging of Dick Morris - which destroyed the social welfare programs inherited from Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson was not only supported by Hillary, but according to George Stephanopoulos' memoir, when Bill wavered Hillary insisted that he go through with it. Obama wrote in one of his books that the Clintons' evisceration of social welfare was the right thing to do, and criticized FDR's New Deal.

While Obama did oppose the war in Iraq from its inception, a politically popular thing to do in his Illinois state senate district, which included the University of Chicago's anti-war campus, and Hillary voted for the war, both have voted numerous times to continue fully funding it - and Obama went to Connecticut to campaign for Joe Lieberman against the primary challenge to his re-nomination by anti-war candidate Ned Lamont.

Both Clinton and Obama support the Constitution-shredding Patriot Act, the endlessly wasteful war on drugs, charter schools (which would destroy public control of public education), the dreadful bureaucratic nightmare that is the No Child Left Behind Act, a Real ID national identity card, and the death penalty.

Both oppose single-payer health care, which is the only real way to achieve universal coverage, and instead favor complicated, Rube Goldberg-like, pro-business schemes that genuflect to the insurance companies and HMOs.

The programmatic affinities of the two candidates reflect just how unsettlingly far to the right the Democratic Party's center of gravity has moved in these last decades....

Five of Hillary's top fundraisers have pled either guilty or no contest to various crimes. For just a taste of Hillary's sleazy frequentations, Google the names of Denise Rich, Peter Paul, and Norman Hsu, or examine the public record of her boodling presidential campaign chairman, the notorious bagman Terry McAuliffe...

But if there is one thing that makes it imperative that Hillary Clinton be defeated, it is the ignoble race-baiting tactics she and her campaign have deployed in this year's primaries and caucuses in order to try to win votes, from false fear-mongering designed to inflame Latinos in Nevada to Bill Clinton's repeated playing of the race card in the run-up to South Carolina... Such stomach-turning cynicism recalls the worst days of Richard Nixon's race-based "Southern Strategy" and the scarcely-coded panderings to prejudice of George Wallace. It must be repudiated, and decisively.

Both Clinton and Obama support the Constitution-shredding Patriot Act, is incorrect, as Obama wasn't in the Senate in 2002.

2001, rather.

He supported the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2006.

Floor Statement of Senator Barack Obama on S.2271 - USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Mr. President, four years ago, following one of the most devastating attacks in our nation's history, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act to give our nation's law enforcement the tools they needed to track down terrorists who plot and lurk within our own borders and all over the world - terrorists who, right now, are looking to exploit weaknesses in our laws and our security to carry out even deadlier attacks than we saw on September 11th.

We all agreed that we needed legislation to make it harder for suspected terrorists to go undetected in this country. Americans everywhere wanted that.

But soon after the PATRIOT Act passed, a few years before I ever arrived in the Senate, I began hearing concerns from people of every background and political leaning that this law didn't just provide law enforcement the powers it needed to keep us safe, but powers it didn't need to invade our privacy without cause or suspicion.

Now, at times this issue has tended to degenerate into an "either-or" type of debate. Either we protect our people from terror or we protect our most cherished principles. But that is a false choice. It asks too little of us and assumes too little about America.

Fortunately, last year, the Senate recognized that this was a false choice. We put patriotism before partisanship and engaged in a real, open, and substantive debate about how to fix the PATRIOT Act. And Republicans and Democrats came together to propose sensible improvements to the Act. Unfortunately, the House was resistant to these changes, and that's why we're voting on the compromise before us.

Let me be clear: this compromise is not as good as the Senate version of the bill, nor is it as good as the SAFE Act that I have cosponsored. I suspect the vast majority of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle feel the same way. But, it's still better than what the House originally proposed.

This compromise does modestly improve the PATRIOT Act by strengthening civil liberties protections without sacrificing the tools that law enforcement needs to keep us safe. In this compromise:

We strengthened judicial review of both National Security Letters, the administrative subpoenas used by the FBI, and Section 215 orders, which can be used to obtain medical, financial and other personal records.

We established hard time limits on sneak-and-peak searches and limits on roving wiretaps.

We protected most libraries from being subject to National Security Letters.

We preserved an individual's right to seek counsel and hire an attorney without fearing the FBI's wrath.

And we allowed judicial review of the gag orders that accompany Section 215 searches.

The compromise is far from perfect. I would have liked to see stronger judicial review of National Security Letters and shorter time limits on sneak and peak searches, among other things.

Sen. Feingold has proposed several sensible amendments - that I support - to address these issues. Unfortunately, the Majority Leader is preventing Sen. Feingold from offering these amendments through procedural tactics. That is regrettable because it flies in the face of the bipartisan cooperation that allowed the Senate to pass unanimously its version of the Patriot Act - a version that balanced security and civil liberties, partisanship and patriotism.

The Majority Leader's tactics are even more troubling because we will need to work on a bipartisan basis to address national security challenges in the weeks and months to come. In particular, members on both sides of the aisle will need to take a careful look at President Bush's use of warrantless wiretaps and determine the right balance between protecting our security and safeguarding our civil liberties. This is a complex issue. But only by working together and avoiding election-year politicking will we be able to give our government the necessary tools to wage the war on terror without sacrificing the rule of law.

So, I will be supporting the Patriot Act compromise. But I urge my colleagues to continue working on ways to improve the civil liberties protections in the Patriot Act after it is reauthorized.

I thank the chair and yield the floor.

JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER POLITICIAN
SAY ONE THING AND BE MISREPRESENTED AS BELIEVING ANOTHER

But I urge my colleagues to continue working on ways to improve the civil liberties protections in the Patriot Act after it is reauthorized.

and has that happened, and did he truly think it would?

That's the point, deej -- you can SAY anything...

yeah if only he could somehow strongarm everyone into believing what he believes. its almost as if he has to work in a representative democracy with people who disagree, representing people who disagree

OK somebody photoshop a wistful Obama's face on Cusack's body holding up that radio, please please please.

fine deej, YOU WIN; how bout all of Ireland's other points?

(I knew that was comin, TH)

http://i28.tinypic.com/fok4fl.jpg

YES

HELL YES

Will America hear the music?

yeah if only he could somehow strongarm everyone into believing what he believes. its almost as if he has to work in a representative democracy with people who disagree, representing people who disagree

-- deej, Monday, March 17, 2008 12:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

morbius only participates in democracy as outlined in the bestselling self-help book 'the secret'

I only participate in democracy as outlined by a mob stoning inbred Southern gangbang nerds.

Love you guys "voting against beliefs" = cleareyed virtue. No wonder THESE ARE GREAT CANDIDATES!

http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2008/03/usa-todaygallup.html?csp=34

........

I only participate in democracy as outlined by a mob stoning inbred Southern gangbang nerds.

ILEpitaphs

heh...The college I work at in PA just sent around a flustered e-mail about the security risk posed by the flood of Obama campaigners showing up on campus.

lock up your daughters!

How much does it benefit to McCain to get to fly to Iraq and look concerned/Presidential while the Democrats are still giving each other purple nurples?

considering he's there at the same time as Dick Cheney, who's calling the war a 'successful endeavor', and that their travel to the area provides a context in which journos can write up the newest suicide attack... debatable.

they also get to bring up mccain's "safe stroll through the marketplace" accompanied by gunship helicopters

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/17/obama_plans_speech_on_race_1.html

guess we'll see whether the Wright thing gets put to bed

According to WaPo, Obama's giving a speech tomorrow in PA. About race.

In the comments following the report I saw this, it's part of a larger post:

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.

Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of imminent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.

Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.

Who is s/he?

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/03/a_last_minute_hurdle_erected_i.php

The proposed primary re-vote legislation in Michigan prevents those who've voted in the Republican primary from voting in the re-vote.

Fair enough, right?

But about 32% of the those who voted in the GOP primary, according to the exit polls, were Democrats or independents.

It's a fair bet that many of them were Obama supporters, as he was not on the original Michigan ballot.

This could be a dealbreaker for the Obama campaign in Michigan.

xpost Someone called Frank Schaeffer, who I cross referenced in HuffPo, where he contributes. In the WaPo blog post he continues:

My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.

The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called down damnation on America as "fallen away from God" at their national meetings where I was keynote speaker, including the annual meeting of the ultraconservative Southern Baptist convention, and the religious broadcasters that I addressed.

Today we have a marriage of convenience between the right wing fundamentalists who hate Obama, and the "progressive" Clintons who are playing the race card through their own smear machine. As Jane Smiley writes in the Huffington Post "[The Clinton's] are, indeed, now part of the 'vast right wing conspiracy.' (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/im-already-against-the-n_b_90628.html )

Both the far right Republicans and the stop-at-nothing Clintons are using the "scandal" of Obama's preacher to undermine the first black American candidate with a serious shot at the presidency. Funny thing is, the racist Clinton/Far Right smear machine proves that Obama's minister had a valid point. There is plenty to yell about these days.

damn i read some schaffer back inna day, never saw the nazi ish. the strain ran through all his work though. didn't know his son had moved left?

He could have moved left. More importantly, someone pointing out the blindingly obvious about the religious right from his vantage point has to be taken seriously by those he criticizes.

somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

(ie partisanship trumps logic every time)

full transcript of Obama on News Hour here:

http://thepage.time.com/transcript-of-obamas-interview-on-newshour/

^^^ so sharp

dmx speaks out on the presidential race

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=20332

that fucking guy