2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

haven't you said bye like 47 times now

morbs you keep promising to go away but you keep coming back. MORE POLITICS AS USUAL.

lol morbs resorts to the marge schott defense. saw it coming btw.

Word leaked out yesterday evening that Obama was coming to Portland to the hockey arena. Tickets were free and are already gone, of course.

Guardian reporting Hillary generally nowhere to be found when policy relevant to "experience" being reported YET was in WH when Monica happened.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/19/hillaryclinton.uselections20081

http://images.politico.com/global/naftasked.jpg

lol i already have the scheds from 96 on my flash drive

why didn't the press come to you then?!?

bias

anti-hoos

So none of you really care about where Obama's getting his $$$ from, huh? Even if it's the subprime/pre- and post-post-Katrina bandits? I thought his was a NEW politics...

-- Dr Morbius, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:48 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

hes getting it from over 1 million people, including me

yeah, to attempt a serious response to that:

wall street has and will always have a shit ton of money to throw around, and will spend on politics. i can't really do anything about that, i can only control what i do with my own money.

it seems unlikely to me that Obama will do anything for these people because they've given him a lot of money, & having a shitload of tiny donors like me insulates him from needing them too much...hopefully. big donations like that don't come from enthusiasm and belief, like an individual, they are tactical. the minimal chance at some access down the road is worth whatever figure they've given (a pittance, no matter how big it looks).

wall street types are betting people: if they're giving Obama money it means they are betting he's going to win.

^^otm

Today: yet another pretty great speech (on foreign policy)

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGBFrl

lol i already have the scheds from 96 on my flash drive

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 4:07 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

whats your sched manana?

Sully links to this American Conservative post that's worth reading. Highlights:

I am more sanguine about Obama’s Wright problem, in part because I was not aggrieved by Rep. Paul’s association with that newsletter business, and because I generally regard most anti-racism crusades as a lot of hyperventilating by professional activists and hacks. It still puzzles me how angry and even hateful words are regarded as virtual stoning offenses, but warmongering is a mainstream, respectable, even “responsible” thing to do. For the most part, the former are awful but do no real harm, while the latter leads to the slaughter of thousands, but it is the former that disqualifies someone while the latter is virtually a requirement to wield executive power.

The telling point is that most of Wright’s critics on the right were primarily offended by his “anti-Americanism,” a term that they deploy so frequently that one wonders if even they know what they mean by it any longer. It was his offenses against their sense of what nationalism requires that have bothered them the most. Meanwhile, the reaction in Middle America generally will often be similar to the one this reader reported: mockery and disbelief. Imagine that you are someone living in the middle of the country and have been lectured to your entire life about the prejudices that you need to overcome, and then you hear that Obama, the great reconciler, has ties to someone who possesses what you have been conditioned your entire life to believe is the absolute worst sort of sentiment, and then add to that the recognition that Obama’s actual politics are far removed from yours and then guess what the response will be to his speech addressing this issue. The very resentments that Obama was explaining in his speech, for which he demonstrated at least some understanding, were inevitably going to be summoned up by any major speech he gave on this question; it is a pity that his supporters cannot make some similar display of understanding. For my part, I have given Obama the benefit of the doubt on this, probably to the annoyance of many of my readers–should the same courtesy not be extended to his critics?

Obama thinks O.J. did it.

the Wright thing is pretty obviously hurting Obama in the polls:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/105205/Gallup-Daily-Clinton-Moves-Into-Lead-Over-Obama.aspx

Most of that was taken prior to Obama's speech yesterday.

Having said that, I think the speech -- great as it was -- will help him far less than I gather many of you think it will (especially in the GE).

It's only March and the GOP are still palpably more worried abt facing Obama than Hillary. Who may well have her own problems to rise above in the next few days.

man rap moves fast with the internet:

Crooked I, on this week's hip-hop dx freestyle over the big dreams beat:

"this how us criminal's ride
i talk reckless like john mccain's spiritual guide
i talk greasy like barack obama's preacher
but on the lyrical side
so greasy it's like my lyrics are fried"

Yeah, I don't think the speech is going to help him enough either. Question is more whether the media continues to run with the issue and how it plays the issue. Obama's opponents (I think this is primarily the right's doing but maybe Clinton too) have gradually been planting doubts in people's mind, building this narrative that Obama is a mysterious stranger who can't be trusted and is secretly anti-American in some way or other. The Michelle Obama comment played into that, the Wright coverage really fueled the fire, and now they're going to try to make political hay out of other connections Obama has, and even more tenuous ones may stick if people buy the overall narrative. That's my concern anyway.

I'm almost afraid to hear my in-laws' take on this. They had started to come around to supporting Obama, and they're exactly the sort of voters who I fear could be swayed by this sort of thing.

BTW, I think Gabbnebb above called me a "Clintonista," which I just want to clarify is not true. I much prefer Obama. I'm just concerned this issue isn't going to go away so easily, and I hope the Obama is crafting an ingenious strategy to deal with this without looking overly defensive.

the Obama campaign

dude its March. the media is hyperventilating about this crap right now because the primaries are draggin on and they need fodder. there will be bigger issues than this that bubble to the fore between now and the convention, and especially between the convention and the GE.

i guess you know you live in berkeley when nothing wright said sounds very surprising or shocking at all. he sounds like everyone I knew in college.

^^^ yeah, I was like "lolz, Ice Cube record"

yeah, none of it sounded shocking to me either - had lefty grandparents, went to a mostly black high school in DC, etc. But I think it's obvious a lot of America does not appreciate the context of Rev. Wright and Trinity Church.

Believe me, I hope this does blow over. I'm not suggesting anyone switch their primary vote. Even if this turns out to be real baggage for Obama I still think he's ultimately the stronger Dem candidate.

the thing that caught my mom off guard -- she got most of what Wright was saying but the bits about manufactured AIDS broadsided her, she was shocked to see the crowd applauding a 'conspiracy theory' -- and I found myself talking about that sample at the beginning of PE's "Meet The G That Killed Me" & Ice Cube records released 18 years ago, these ideas are multi-platinum mainstream

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton bluntly challenged Barack Obama to agree to new primaries in Michigan and Florida on Wednesday and said it was "wrong, and frankly un-American" not to have the two delegations seated at the Democratic National Convention

Which is of course bullshit, since dude said repeated that they should be seated.

i need to get out of this bubble more often to keep myself from flipping out and doing things like spending half an hour googling reactions to the speech out of fear it was poorly received and now oh noes the election is over and mccain is presidetn

yea i know. this shit is driving me insane. i waste hours and hours reading blogs/news netorks/polls/campaign memos/talk show transcripts/right-wing wingnuts' reactions/this thread and i've been pretty consistently stressed out basically since the south carolina primary.

my girlfriend just reads the emails the obama campaign sends out, for her updates. she's not stressed at all and certainly doesn't have campaign rhetoric running through her head when she's falling asleep at night.

http://portland.craigslist.org/search/sss?query=obama

People going nuts for tickets already

Somebody quite a ways upthread asked for "foreign" perspectives on this race, so I'm going to try and put across something that's been bothering me a lot since this Reverend Wright controversy.

But first of all, I have to say that this entire thread (which I've lurked all over in its entirety!) is testimony to a healthy, surviving democracy in America that has clearly -- if not fully escaped -- at least survived the ravages of the cynical neocons thus far, which you have to say is a victory in itself.

Also, that suzy is consistently, profoundly OTM over the course of this long, long thread, even if she isn't the only one (just the most consistent/prominent).

But here's my take on Reverend Wright:

What exactly is so reprehensible about what he said? To someone who is a citizen of a country that still believes in the separation of church and state (Canada, y'all, in which that remains largely true, thanks be to Whatever), the difference between "god bless America" and "god damn America" is quite honestly pretty fucking negligible. Why should this even matter to politics? It's an empty slogan whichever way you slice it. The fact that the former is the dominant mainstream soundbite, ubiquitous as any other two- or three-word phrase coined since 2001 (mission accomplished, bring it on, let's roll), makes as much difference to the economy, the failed war in Iraq, health care, education, etc., as does a sticker declaring "Support Our Troops" slapped slightly askew yet prominent on the hornet-yellow ass-end of an H3.

Okay, the "US of KKK" is pretty silly and inflammatory and old-skool, but I think Barack dealt with that one in his speech, pretty much by not going there fully. In other words, it's a generational thing, and he was careful to acknowledge where the madness of our (collective) crazy uncles originates -- within the pain of the past -- while urging all of us (and as a non-American I hear this call too) to move forward and onward, assimilating the traumatic strands of history while simultaneously reconciling them, perhaps coming to terms with them in order to transcend them.

I know this is boilerplate preaching to the choir, but hear me out.

Last but not least is his declaration that 9/11 was the hawkish chickens of late 20th Century U.S. foreign policy returning to their henhouse. Let me state the obvious that most U.S. commentators are studiously, assiduously ignoring: of course it fucking was. Alongside a defensive, self-pitying aspect of fundamentalist Islam, 9/11 was a perfect storm of ugliness, horror and outrage. Personally, I still feel traumatised after witnessing the events of that day as portrayed on our TV screens. I dearly wish that those 3000 people -- representing a cross section of the world, really -- hadn't died that day, and so horribly. But my sorrow for those people does not preclude my sense that American foreign policy was partly responsible for the vicious and callous attacks as carried out by Bin Laden and his deluded, murderous followers, as well as incompetence on the part of a new administration both steeped in Cold War anachronisms and hellbent on not heeding the real world warnings of their loathed predecessors, the Clinton administration. Reverend Wright is completely rational in his assertion that foreign attacks on America tend to follow egregious foreign policy on the part of the United States internationally. Hell, I'm English by birth, and I always understood that the IRA attacks on the English mainland followed British foreign policy in Northern Ireland, however complex the issues. It's simple logic.

So why is Obama, brilliant and perhaps even revolutionary as his speech was, unable to completely extricate himself from this mess? I have no idea. I know that the media is trying to paint him into a corner of effete Yankee intellectualism a la John Kerry, as well as sow seeds of outsider doubt in regard to his "differences". There's a palpable sense of resistance toward Obama that feels like racism and yet is so diffuse and amorphous that you cannot make that accusation directly toward any one source. Which indicates the depth to which racism infects America (something I don't feel any smugness about, given my own country's record vis a vis First Nations peoples).

I don't know. I just think that the existence of the so-called netroots, of the slightly unhinged and bloviating blogosphere, of youth and passionate hope in the pursuit of the concrete instead of the fantastic, of this (and the previous and the next) thread of ilxors grappling with this historic race, all of this gives me hope that some of the disastrous consequences of the last seven or eight years can begin to be undone, even if it might mean unpicking one thread at a time.

Sorry if the above is a bit of a rhetorical jungle, but someone did ask earlier for different (non-American) perspectives, and this is as honest and uncensored a viewpoint as I could muster, given my own biases and my white Anglo-Irish-Canadian working class background.

any bible-reader who has any passing familiarity with the book of jeremiah could tell you that wright was not the first guy to invoke the prophetic device of calling woe, woe unto his corrupt, backsliding nation.

just sayin'.

Also, that suzy is consistently, profoundly OTM over the course of this long, long thread, even if she isn't the only one (just the most consistent/prominent).

uh what? didnt she start posting in this thread pretty recently?

i don't think the religious aspect of the speech has gotten enough attention. it was almost as much about religion as it was about race. all that church talk, bonding over crazy pastors that they love, was a curve ball around the filter of the religious right media. he turned it into a church story. i don't know how successfully, because i'm probably not one of the people it's aimed at. but i think mike huckabee's reaction is kind of telling.

Deej, I have been all over these threads but more intensively than usual in the past week or so.

Elmo, that's the basis of cheap, ironic laughs over here in Atheism Corner, where we have read Bibles an' ting. When you consider that this C21 Jeremiah has beefs, comes from a line of ministers and also has a scholarly, loyal pal called Barack it just becomes LOLtastic. Huckabee knows his Jeremiahs from his bullfrogs and we already know he can do irony.

Lostandfound, I do notice a disturbing 'hmph, he seems like an honest man and a decent person but he still has to CONVINCE ME' amongst undecided white voters whose institutionalized racism is still couched in sentences like 'I'm not racist, but...' Also they do not realise that it's a white privilege thing - they don't feel privileged - to be able to keep moving the goalposts on a black man the way they do, to be able to say 'I liked him but NOW THIS, disappointed ex-Obama voter, he's just One Of Them' or worse, as if they are waiting for a way to be excused from supporting a candidate that all rationality would suggest is the best of the three still standing.

Among this cohort is also a tendency to vilify Michelle Obama for appearing to complain about America when she's so lucky and because of her opportunities she's entitled to zero beefs whatsoever? Fuck off, there is no threshold you pass where you suddenly have too much money or opportunity to tell your own damned country it could be doing better.

<i>To someone who is a citizen of a country that still believes in the separation of church and state (Canada, y'all, in which that remains largely true, thanks be to Whatever)</i>

Isn't the Queen the head of state there? ie head of the Anglican Church?

I doubt that Obama's speech, good though it was, will have much effect where it needs to now, ie white blue collar voters. Giving a speech about race - whatever its content - is ultimately going to have the effect of making him look 'more black' to white people who already have doubts about Obama's supposed 'otherness'.

Zelda, the irony of countries like Britain or Canada being less spun by religion than America despite having a state role for religion (and by giving religion a state role, some here argue that it is effectively ring-fenced) is not lost on ILX. I always explain American religious fucknuttery away to my London neighbours as being evidence of why America historically needed a cordon sanitaire between church and state and continues to do so. Being as it was initially colonized piecemeal by different groups of white religious refugees given to fire'n'brimstone (or not) the writers of the Constitution wanted not just to break with the British tradition but to ensure that no one religion would dominate the new country.

The other point I am keen to address is the privileging of WWC/LMC voters in this cycle, the creation of this spooked demographic frightened of the Other. Sure, they feel this way, but with all the facts in, are they entitled to? No. Obama's speech was right to say this media pandering gets us exactly nowhere as a country. It is totally racist to repeatedly demand Obama delayer himself one step further than any of the other candidates because he is a black man with a pastor whose comments are not as incendiary as their manner of delivery comes across to white ears. I am reminded of the archetypal black candidate running against a corrupt insider who is disproportionately hounded for unpaid parking tickets. It is totally classist to expect that the WWC/LMC voter's doubts will only become more entrenched when these people are also human beings with a boredom threshold and a sense of fairness. There are lots of ways to underestimate a demographic so let's not do it here as it is only March.

Speaking of moving the goalposts, Adam Nagourney now says that Clinton doesn't just need to get as many delegates as Obama. Oh no. Now, he says, Clinton needs also to gain a lead in the total popular vote. But not even that would be enough to legitimize a Clinton nomination! In addition to getting more delegates and the majority of the popular vote, Nagourney decrees that Clinton must beat Obama "soundly" in Pennsylvania "to buttress her argument that she holds an advantage in big general election states." And here I was thinking that this was just about the delegates!

xpost to Suzy

I agree we're in unchartered waters with Obama's candidacy, and we'll just have to see how that plays out. But we've reached a point where Obama felt he had to give a major speech explaining 'blackness', and his own relationship to it. No other candidate will have to do anything like this. It's a dangerous moment for Obama, who up until recently has been (just about) able to portray himself as a post-racial candidate. This could open up his candidacy, but it could ghettoize it as well.

He swiftly followed that speech with a meaty and challenging speech about defense, so I think he realizes what you're saying and is moving on

He may be moving on, the question is whether the media will. Media was all over the race speech, the defense speech, not so much...

It's not just up to the media.

I'm very YAY about two substantial addresses in as many days about concrete things affecting America and its place in the world, with real and challenging ideas about policy. Totally needed.

the world is quite YAY about them too. A politician who seems to believe that there are more important things than politics is an unusual thing to witness, especially when compared to the homogenous bunch of nomarks we have in the UK.

Less YAY about this however: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7305731.stm

Dick Morris on Obama: This too shall pass:

Will the Gospel According to Jeremiah Wright sink the Obama candidacy? Not very likely.

Let’s start with two basic facts:

(a) Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) has already won the Democratic nomination. It’s over. Regardless of how the remaining primaries and caucuses go, including Michigan and even Florida, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) can never catch Obama in elected delegates. His current lead of 170 pledged delegates will not be overcome no matter what happens. Even if Clinton beats him by 10 points in each of these primaries, he will still lead among elected delegates by over 100. The superdelegates will not override the will of the voters unless Obama is in jail. They will not let themselves in for a civil war by overruling a black man who is beloved by the young by going over the heads of the electorate and naming the candidate that lost the primaries as the nominee. Regardless of how damaged Obama may be by the Wright tapes, it will not provide sufficient cover or cause for them to do so.

(b) Wright’s rantings are not reflective of Obama’s views on anything. Why did he stay in the church? Because he’s a black Chicago politician who comes from a mixed marriage and went to Columbia and Harvard. Suspected of not being black enough or sufficiently tied to the minority community, he needed the networking opportunities Wright afforded him in his church to get elected. If he had not risen to the top of Chicago black politics, we would never have heard of him. But obviously, he can’t say that. So what should he say?