2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

clintonite clinton-lite to endorse clinton...developing...

is the 'is mccain a warhero really?' thing the left version of the right's 'is obama black really?' ? how likely is it to get more traction than the right's version did? when's the last time a leftwing version of a rightwing tactic worked better than the right's version did?

I haven't seen anybody on the left questioning his war hero status...?

Otoh, I think a fairly strong case could be made that his war experience rendered him totally fucking nuts.

I think McCain was probably nuts long before then.

I haven't seen anybody on the left questioning his war hero status...?

ya rly, where are you getting this, balls?

I mean I saw muttering about it on the RIGHT, but not from the left (who tend to concede national security dick-waving contests)

shakey read above; admittedly i haven't seen this anywhere in the real world. and yeah re: 'nuts', alot of his more personal grudges 'fuck protestors, yes to vietnam/iraq to the bitter end fuxors' i could vaguely nod politely at and not really engage seriously if it was just the cantankerous bitter old vet (the way ppl patronize morbs for example) but coming from someone who can enact policy eh, not so much. that said no need to deny his backstory - guy is the biggest warhero to see november in any of our (excepting morbs of course) lifetimes. and bob dole was funny and reagan was good in the killers and nixon...i can't think of anything nice to say about nixon. point being that nice decent guy whatevah i don't need to tear down the man to vote against him or to get others to vote against him - his politics in general but ESP his politics on the most important issue right now (war or economy - take yr pick) are fundamentally wrong and (perhaps)(thankfully) out of step w/ the american ppl and THE VERY THINGS he is making the cornerstone of his campaign. obama isn't gonna have to work very hard to paint mccain as '4 more years of bush' since mccain's half determined to do it himself. which is why the one thing i really like about obama's speech today is that while yes, yes nuanced, genuinely thoughtful speech actually dealing w/ race in america in a way noone in our (excepting morbs) lifetimes has given, but what i really take away from it is how it works into the (unspoken? i don't know) central theme of obama's campaign ie. (gabbneb get ready to cream all over yr pate) 'change vs. more of the same'.

although lol even at this the right is better at it than the left since the left version of questioning mccain's warhero status is hippydippy 'is there such a thing as a warhero really?' whereas the murmurings on the right were 'maybe perhaps he was a collaborator w/ the viet cong?'. you will never beat the right at limbo.

admittedly i haven't seen this anywhere in the real world.

then why suggest it here...?

xpost PROJECTING, MUCH?

What's most horrifying about McCain is that, of the generals we've elected president (Washington, Grant, Eisenhower; I won't count Taylor), he's the only one whose war lust is part of his campaign. Goddamn Grant, one of our least impressive presidents, had as his campaign slogan, "Let us have peace"! A banality, sure, and it signalled his party's later betrayal of Lincoln's principles, but telling.

More and more the only Cold War president I admire is Eisenhower, who still did his share of fucked up shit in Guatemala and responding to Brown vs Board of Education, but he'd seen enough blood in his lifetime to pause before committing American troops ANYWHERE, even in Little Rock.

Andrew Jackson? I guess he wasn't a general.

Neither was McCain though.

mccain is a general d-bag imo

well more than war lust it's a replay/continuation of 'we coulda/shoulda won vietnam' myth that the right's been hanging (bizarrely successfully) on dems for thirtyodd years updated for a new war/new generation cf. kinison v. dangerfield.

no one on the Democrats' side has said, "Who cares?" History has proven it didn't matter.

been enjoying these threads but just loved the way the two Obama stories on Yahoo right now basically dovetail

Analysis: Obama grabs race issue
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080318/ap_on_el_pr/obama_race_matters;_ylt=Anxh28oVs5flhUWtM1OCPINh24cA

Most of the speech was fairly high-minded, with few if any overt appeals for votes. Obama doubtlessly raised eyebrows in many circles, however, with a populist pivot that named a new villain in the racial divide.

"Black anger" and "white resentments," he said, have "distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze: a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed."

Obama's Bid Doesn't Have Support of Most Black Corporate Elite
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080318/pl_bloomberg/aomovfb7iaz8;_ylt=AlmhAeo9WyiJ8aOfPBxpxOus0NUE

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama's quest to become the first African-American president is being run without the financial support of much of the black corporate elite.

Less than one-third of the 191 black members of the boards of the largest 250 U.S. companies have contributed to the Illinois senator's campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. The list of board members was compiled by Black Enterprise magazine.

duh, they're hillary supporters. alot of black pols did the same bet hedging themselves and came to vocally regret it once the votes came in; black ceo's can afford to play 'wait and see' longer. i'd be surprised if come november bob johnson was a heavy mccain contributer. that said if obama was in a market sistah souljah bob johnson would make a beautiful one. maybe wait til after north carolina though.

what

someone explain the killfile thing to me again

McCain's campaign immediately responded, saying the "Democrats have launched political attacks today because they know the American people have deep concerns about their candidates’ judgment and readiness to lead as commander in chief.”

This reminds me of the Dick Cheney line that, when violence escalated in Iraq in 2006, it proved that the insurgency was at its "last gasp" and throwing every last resource into the affray out of desperation. This sort of sad stuff seems to satisfy the faithful, though.

...the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze: a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed.

This line, if pursued by Obama, will no doubt elicit the old "fomenting class warfare" bromide from McCain with the required tsking and finger wagging. However, if the Fed sparks off 15% - 20% inflation by the election (which isn't wholly out of the question the way they're going right now) then the electorate will be in the mood for much more red-meat "eat the rich" rhetoric than this little opening tidbit.

shit it's an amazing speech

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4473132

hasselback can kiss my ass

I've got no real hate for Hasselback, because she's not smart enough to arrive at conclusions herself. She just listens to Hannity on her way back home every afternoon and then recycles his bullshit the following morning.

BTW, Hannity today said "I'm no longer a Republican." I don't know if that's a relatively new thing or what.

Great, if all the dudes of his ilk exit the Republican party officially, they can go back to at least being a little more respectable an opponent.

this is getting into primary fanfic territory, but i really want Obama to deliver a message that puts the victim-politics, anti-patriotism, AND funny-name memes to bed: that he <3 America like a son of a bitch because a life like his could not have occurred in any other country

-- gff, Friday, March 14, 2008 12:32 PM (4 days ago)

o man did i call it or what.

just watched the address, and yeah it's really something. very careful, clear, measured. you could tell he was working a smaller room (sort of wish the cameras were farther back in these things, demme-in-stop-making-sense style). maybe it wasn't his A game but the speech had a cumulative power, i think it's better in reflection, and that's unfakeable.

agree with the general tenor of most liberal commentary (and charles murray, heh) that this is a singular gem of analysis and rhetoric -- you can tell this is a dude who has spent a lifetime explaining difficult shit to people. the self cribbing and the dig at ferraro was a bit much, i guess.

politically, what will this do? i don't know. it's a remarkably beautiful end to an ugly news cycle, but it'll never be done with. hannityland is immune to fact but also to embarrassment; we're going to be hearing about wright forever now. the science says bullshit sticks; once the negatives come up they never go down again. he expects america to be very patient and attentive. maybe that's presidential, maybe it's stupid. if i were to make a prediction, though, i think that this speech will have a long, long shelf life, maybe it will be a real long term blessing.

in pure electoral/charater-ological terms, can anyone believe that either HRC or mccain have the guts or the brains for an address like this? does anyone have any idea what they think this country is and where it comes from, and what their place in it is? it's not mere words; i can't think of another candidate in my lifetime, not even poor sweating Bill, who sees this country as it is with this kind of clarity. and to be able to summon up this kind of acuity in the middle of a huge political crisis is astonishing. here's john dickerson:

Even if you didn't buy everything he said, you might be impressed with a person who can take on such a subject so quickly with such scope. Obama managed to chart the topography of the black church and failures within the African-American community as well as put his finger on the elements of anger that exist in the white community. Remember also that he did all of this while in the middle of a sleep-stealing, gut-punching presidential campaign, which is like writing the speech while riding backward on a flaming unicycle.

my longass .02, thx.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/pictures/20080318SheehanBerkeley.jpg
lol left wing 'morans'

rip?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1658599/bio

http://minx.cc/?post=258049

Now, once again: Watch Wright's relish -- his nearly orgasmic delight -- in saying "America's chickens... have come home... to roost." Watch this blackhearted monster dance and flutter his hands in a happy flourish as he celebrates and exults in the deaths of 3000 Americans and foreign nationals, all civilians and all innocents, as it represents a vindication of his sickening worldview and a well-deserved comeupppance for the nation he so deeply hates.

Now, Mr. Barack Hussein Obama: As your disgusting spiritual mentor and political guide is publicly celebrating the terrorism of 9/11 as blatantly as the Palestinian terrorists did that very day, and as excitedly as Al Qaeda does:

Would you say these comments are merely "controversial" or potentially "controversial"?

Would you like a second try at that, you rotten bastard?

How many prisoners did he minister to to cancel out this disgusting celebration of mass murder on a mega scale?

How much Hope and Change have you actually delivered to cancel out your own voluntary, bear-hug embrace of this repellent seditionist?

I read in wiki that he had enlisted in the Navy. But, Obama says he was a marine. Which is it?

Posted by: Mack at March 18, 2008 03:58 PM (6b+T9)

Okay reading that broke my brain.

both:

He then joined the United States Marine Corps and later transferred to the United States Navy where he worked as a cardiopulmonary technician.

Mack, the correct answer to the question "was Jeremiah Wright in the Navy or the Marines?" is, "who gives a damn what some America-hating racist demagogue did between when he got out of school and when he started attracting thousands of America-hating racist supporters?"

Posted by: bgates at March 18, 2008 04:04 PM (z6drm)

jesus fucking harold christ

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120588322321046835.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/18/AR2008031802594.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2007/09/07/PH2007090702320.gif

"Ms. Ferraro was, at worst, saying that Mr. Obama is helped because many Americans want to vote for someone who is black."

hahahaha fuck this guy

Noncompassionate conversatism

also lol dems be vaugely populist shocka

the number of people who would vote for somebody just because he/she is black is probably roughly equal to the number of people who would vote for somebody just because she is female

i eagerly await the wsj's 'revelation' that homie was a community organizer that 'men like us have fought against for nearly a century'

cavalcade of stupid editorials continue

http://www.slate.com/id/2186845/

deej are you giving us a cross-section here or am i to understand you're seeking out the stupid/frustrating ones

stop the presses mickey kaus is a big prick

When even Joe Scarborough on MSNBC says "What Barack Obama did today was historic," and Chris Matthews says "I've never heard a speech so free of BS on race as I have in the one by Barack Obama today," then something is up.

Around the blogosphere, reaction was generally positive to Obama's speech in Philadelphia. James Fellows of the Atlantic, who lives in China, watched it and was very impressed:

This was as good a job as anyone could have done in these circumstances, and as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney's speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy's famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.

At Tapped, the American Prospect blog, Kate Sheppard compared it to Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech:

King's speech may have been more powerful rhetorically, but this speech really laid down the complexities of race in America in a way that someone with Barack Obama can appreciate in unique ways.

More reaction...

Fellows's colleague at the Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan - an Obama supporter - was effusive:

It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

Eve Fairbanks at the New Republic's The Plank put the speech into the context of Obama's campaign:

I do think Obama defined his candidacy more in terms of race today, but I guess from my perspective that's a good thing. His calls for 'change' always left me a little cold: change what? After hearing his speech, the 'what?' feels clearer.

Ana Marie Cox on Time's Swampland blog wonders if the speech worked:

Who was Obama talking to? Who was listening? Would any working class white person change their mind after listening to this speech? Would anyone who had decided that Obama has been tainted by Wright now be swayed to vote for him?

On the progressive-left blogosphere, reaction was more muted than in the conventional media. At OpenLeft, one poster headlined it "incredible," and commented: "His biggest gamble is to treat the subject with the depth and seriousness and complexity that it deserves."

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD struck a different note, and was highly critical of what he saw as the politics behind the speech:

What Obama wants to do is pivot it back to Clinton vs Obama, and get the Republican attack on him through Wright off the table, so he's equated Wright and Ferraro multiple times in the speech.... This is pretty ugly and unfair though of Obama, to equate statements by Ferraro with Wright. Obama goes on and on about how great a person Wright is, without a single kind word about Ferraro, just rubbing it in further. I believe the campaign has reached a new low.

Over at the National Review's The Corner - always a harbour of differing opinion - there are some strong reactions or counter-reactions. Charles Murray - that's right, the author of The Bell Curve - posted:

Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I'm concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant - rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols.

But several others at the Corner were less impressed. Stanley Kurtz replied:

Far from pulling a Hubert Humphrey or a Tony Blair and casting the radical left out of the party, Obama seems to see his job as getting the rest of the country to adopt a stance of relative complacency toward the most egregious sorts of anti-Americanism - all under the guise of achieving national unity.

Over at Daily Kos, a series of open threads on the subject racked up over 2,000 comments from readers. One, from a reader in Britain, read:

Here in the UK, that speech could never have been made. While racism certainly exists here, it is never acknowledged in the way that Barack Obama just did in his speech. I am heartened by seeing such an honest and heartfelt examination of the issue, and have never been as proud of my country as I was today, watching from abroad.

lol worldnetdaily haaaaaaated it

awesome

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