2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

that is like when you listen to those really good records and the left channel crosses over to the right channel and the right channel changes places with the left channel and it sounds like the band just rotated around your head

this graph makes me lol for some reason

Any PA numbers?

DNA. xpost Ed did you shot speach?

we need to turn to sexier things, like poll numbers. Daniel, where are you? How's Obama doing this hour?

Don't know. Mr. Que apparently has me covered upthread.

Offering up this moment's latest poll numbers is my only contribution to society.

I am shotting.

This is what bar conversations were like on the day of the "I Have A Dream" speech.

Tomasky: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_tomasky/2008/03/imperfect_union.html

ha that graph is funny! oh well...

aren't those always 3 days behind as a rule?

air america is basically replaying the speech now and oh man <3 <3 <3 obama

http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/gallery/screenshots/lists/news_198.jpg

-- omar little, Tuesday, March 18, 2008 2:16 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

this is the best morbius yet

can someone find an mp3 of the speech?

The Root article is really depressing but im reminded that similar-minded articles were written that obama wouldn't get as far as he already has. pessimism is always right only when everyone is overwhelmingly pessimistic. i reject the article's conclusions in the end, not because they aren't well thought out or largely accurate (they are) but because i am genuinely hopeful

what article deej?

The alehouses sounded like this on the day of the Gettysburg Address as well.

The juicebars sounded like this the day Ford pardoned Nixon

XPOST http://www.theroot.com/id/45336

The pardoning wasn't about ideas and ideals.

SAVING US FROM MORE PAIN

"A More Perfect Union" MP3: http://sundaygang.com/obama/2008/03/18/speech.mp3

"We know from the 2004 "Swift Boat" campaign against Senator Kerry that, in this era of multiple media sources, viral attack campaigns are very hard to combat and can be effectively deadly"

BUT unlike 2004 'viral campaigns' now extend beyond the reach of politicians & corporations; cf colberts white house speech, which to be honest this 'event' reminded me of.

Michelle Malkin responds:

Obama’s bottom line: Everyone’s a victim. You’re part of the problem if you keep talking about Jeremiah Wright. Everyone’s churches have crazy demagogues. Schools need more money. Leave illegal aliens alone. Never mind all the black grievance-mongers who have built careers sowing seeds of divisions. Look at all the talk show hosts and conservative commentators! Elect Obama. Fixer of souls.

what a toxic cunt, amirite?

you're so rite.

The right now thinks Obama's fully embraced "blackhood," abandoning his super awesome specialness.

You Obama guys: you never bought this "transcendence" stuff, right? The Obama supporters I've met seem taken with the man's immense gifts, not because he meets a Platonic ideal.

i just like his suits

can you clarify that alfred because i really have no idea what yr talking about

the man's immense gifts

the man's immense .gifs

I think he means the whole narrative of Obama as a "post-race" figure and all that stuff.

which is and always was bullshit but a lot of people ran with it

Obama's success as a death knell to "the race problem" / "if barack can do it why can't you" etc.

who's saying that, exactly?

Every Obama critic I've ever met harps on his "cult's" fascination with his specialness – how he won't "play the game," he'll avoid partisan clichés, etc. But this is totally incorrect. To me he's a superb politician who doesn't appeal to people's fears, which means, of course, that opponents twist this to mean that he fills their head with uplifting banalities.

just because an Obama critic says something about Obama's supporters, it don't make it so.

Not one of the Obama fans I know regard him as "transcending race" or "lifting us" out of partisan politics. The dude seems like the only politician of his generation who hasn't squelched his natural intelligence in the way that Garry Willis once accused Nixon of doing for the sake of victories.

just because an Obama critic says something about Obama's supporters, it don't make it so.

erm, that's my point! But now that we're on the subject, why are some of you guys supporting him?

Start at the beginning of the thread...

he's got a better u.s. serving/self serving ratio then most pols, let alone those running for president.

he went to my college

I am supporting Obama because his positions and record align more closely to my own beliefs than any other candidate running.

he's a babe

also it is not totally painful to listen to him speak - which is not the case with Dubya, or Hillary, or McCain

Robbie Baitz puts it well:
If there was any doubt about what we have missed in the anti-intellectual, ruthlessly incurious Bush years, and even the slippery Clinton ones, those doubts were laid to rest by Barack Obama's magisterial speech today.

insofar as Obama's blackness is not the primary characteristic I ascribe to him I guess he does "transcend race" - but implying that he should somehow NOT transcend race seems, well, implicitly racist.

he's a babe

-- horseshoe, Tuesday, March 18, 2008 1:32 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

OTM

"like omg a black man is running for president and the first thing that comes into your mind isn't that he's black! you CRAZY"

alfred, i wouldve been 100% behind you before today (and i was 100% an obama supporter before today) - i understand where yr coming from but todays speech was without question not 'clever' or politics as usual in any way. it was a guy telling america what he believed & why he believed it.

maybe im naive, i dunno. im open to arguments that say as much.

i don't really think a president by him or her self can change things in any drastic way but obama seems like a sort who could do a little bit more in a positive manner than anyone else, and what he would represent as a face and a name to the rest of the world might be a little bit better than the assholes we've had over the last 28 years. mccain is barely better than bush and i don't trust hillary to do anything other than tread water, at best.

There are a lot of reasons, really:

1. I think that the coalition that Obama has amasses will really help the democrats win elections nation-wide, get a working majority, and they'll be able to actually CHANGE things instead of bitching about how they don't have enough votes to do anything. Foster winning that House seat is a good example of how powerful the Obama brand can be.

2. His approach to foreign policiy (more fluid, less dogmatic) and the people that he surrounds himself with (Samantha Power, Susan Rice,etc.) make me confident that his approach to leadership will be a lot different than what we've seen for the past few decades...

3. Judgement. I know it's become one of his talking points, but I really do believe that he has displayed superior judgement to both Hillary and McCain, and he does have the "judgement to lead".

4. He seems like a nice, centered, moral and I'm just going to be blunt - it would make me proud to have an African-American president. It won't change the way our government is run, obviously, but symbollically it would be incredible.

Initially I was rooting for Joe Biden, so it's not as though I was always for Obama, but he has really impressed me. The way he has run his campaign, the way he has stood tall and gracefully in the face of conrtoversy, etc. His honesty and forthrightness is refreshing. I think he'd be an excellent president.