2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

"pretty much got the nomination sewn up"

I wouldn't be so sure Obama pretty much has the nomination sewn up, but I get your point.

This is basically a contest between two different potential Democratic coalitions - the traditional one in which coastal and northern urbanites seek enough white working class voters in the Northeast, Great Lakes and edges of the south to go three yards over the electoral college line that hasn't worked so well in recent years but is looking up this time due to Iraq and the economy, and an alternative in which we risk losing more of our traditional swingable adjuncts while trying to pass to previously-unfamiliar quasi-libertarian and populist (in the traditional sense) types, particularly in the West and upper midwest/plains states, who have become more willing to look our way with the right guy.

I'm not sure which is the better strategy, though the polls if they can be believed consistently give the alternative a marginal, if potentially riskier, advantage, but I admit to preferring the alternative coalition brand. No offense to those from the racist states. XD

There's plenty of evidence that just because an issue comes up and gets whacked down in the primary doesn't mean it won't come back, zombie-like, in the G.E.

insurmountable pledged delegate lead, destroying hillary in super delegates since super tuesday, winning the florida/michigan situation, lol hueg popular vote lead etc

but dont let any facts get in the way of yr eeyore routine daniel

yah tracer obv these things can continue to do damage - still i think this was a good time to get the initial shock n awe part of the situation out of the way

Wright will definitely come up in the GE, and be a big deal. Lots of things will. There's a big market for reasons to rule out Obama that are socially acceptable to say, like "he's a terrorist."

Mark Halperin has said that successfully casting Obama as the other/non-American is the *only* way for McCain to beat him in the general.

Xp - Hillary can still win despite the insurmountable elected delegate lead.

but dont let any facts get in the way of yr eeyore routine daniel

Don't let my expressing a reasonably-grounded fear get in the way of your snide remarks.

i'm not a mccain booster but i trust his campaign to not actually stoop to those pandering measures. although, i have no doubt there will be 527s sprouting up like fungus to promote fear of a black president.

i take it you've all seen the obama/malcolm x/public enemy mashup video put out by laura ingraham's producer then

srsly daniel 90% of yr post here are like "i think mccain will win"

i think were all well aware of yr generally pessimistic outlook by now

in the future when composing a post that starts like "I wouldn't be so sure Obama has the nomination sewn up" try following it w/one of these "because" then just let it flow from there ok.

hillary's politeness re: the wright 'issue' is coming to a close

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lanny-davis/two-questions-for-senator_b_92386.html

No, he won't personally get his hands dirty.

Daniel, my swing voter sample is now on the fence between McCain and Obama. While I think you are right to be cautious it's a long way from November, and actually still a long way from Pennsylvania.

It's not just the South I'm willing to lose, tho. As long as we do the electoral college dance, I can live without Romneychusetts too.

I've repeatedly set forth the "because" clauses you mention, tho -- like virtually anyone here -- I'm sure you can find counterexamples. And I've repeatedly set forth why I think McCain will win, while admitting lots can change between now and November.

yeah, hillary camp wtf -- what is the substantive distance between hillary's surrogates pressing the meta-concern to undecided superdelegates of how the wright issue hurts to obama's GE electability vs. pressing the wright issue directly to the voters?

We done Huckabee's response to the Obama speech yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNwMPNxwHmQ

OK, everyone get some air. We have a loooooong time.

We need more 'coastal elites' to take over the interior West. Here, here's your electoral college.

Jeremiah Wright doesn't know nothin' about burnin' no crosses, Miss Hillary. Unlike the Klan.

They just jumped the fucking shark. Again. Is this Sea World?

yeah that lanny whateverhername thing is pretty little-o-underscore-big-o

the first two replies to that Lanny thing are pretty major pwnz

and she's a man: "Mr. Davis, a partner in the Washington, D.C. office, is a member of the Litigation Group"

He was WH counsel in the Clinton admin

Lanny Davis is a man

obama's address today on the war & the economy:

http://thepage.time.com/full-text-of-obamas-speech-the-cost-of-war/

god the whole comments thread is one pwn after another!

HILLARY CLINTON CAMP SHAME ON YOU WHY DESTROID THE PARTY YOU GONNA LOOSE ANYWAY. REMBER THIS MAKE A DIRTY POLITICS AGAINST OBAMA AND NOVEMBER NO BLACK GONA VOTE HILLARY SHAME ON YOU

Posted by: ERIC BARTHEL | Mar 20, 2008 12:22:34 PM

otm

One could even call them racist.

passive voice cop out

that's not passive, it's subjunctive.

ABC --

One interesting event in Sen. Hillary Clinton's just-released schedules from the 1990s comes on Nov. 10 1993, when the former first lady was to serve as the closing act during a briefing on NAFTA, the trade agreement she now assails…"It wasn’t a drop-by it was organized around her participation," said one attendee. "Her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA and what a good thing it would be for the economy. There was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time. Folks were pleased that she came by. If this is a still a question about what Hillary's position when she was First Lady, she was totally supportive if NAFTA."

Obama campaign now making this case to the press in their daily conference call

1. If a white minister preached sermons to his congregation and had used the "N" word and used rhetoric and words similar to members of the KKK, would you support a Democratic presidential candidate who decided to continue to be a member of that congregation?

so Wright saying "white people are oppressing black people" is equivalent to the KKK murdering blacks. stfu Lanny.

c'mon it's a clever thought experiment! what if martin luther king had been WHITE! i bet black people wouldn't have listened to him as much. thus proving the hypocrisy of the civil rights movement.

but guys white and black experiences are totally interchangeable dontchaknow

lol xpost

HOORAY! Over on HuffPo, one of my heroines is putting the boot in to Hill's own religious alliances:

huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/hillarys-nasty-pastorate_b_92361.html

UH www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/hillarys-nasty-pastorate_b_92361.html

UH did I not mean: www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/hillarys-nasty-pastorate_b_92361.html

http://

Wow, that article. It also nicely illustrates how embedded is in the Washington establishment, perhaps helping Obama's argument that she isn't the candidate to bring real change.

Wow, that article. It also nicely illustrates how embedded HRC is in the Washington establishment, perhaps helping Obama's argument that she isn't the candidate to bring real change.

Fixed.

speaking of huffpo one of my favorite professors wrote a great open letter to geraldine ferraro:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/p-gabrielle-foreman/an-open-letter-to-geraldi_b_91956.html

Damn! That is really impressive.

Onion classic this week.

i was watching some of the cable news last night and the daily show this AM which show "highlights" of the reaction and am i wrong or is this speech -- this great, thoughtful, speech -- actually going to hurt obama???

that seemed to be how it was being received.

even through all the bush stuff, the last 8 years and the war and everything i guess i always thought that ppl could be convinced if they just heard this said the right way by the right person -- not some d-bag like kerry -- but now even this might just get chewed up in the maw of all those hideous white asshole talking heads....like that makes me more depressed than 8 years of bush ever could, that maybe now there's not even a chance of any kind of real dialogue about race or anything else.

It's been a conservative strategy for some time now to turn white guilt on its head and make it seem as though it's actually white people who are the perennial victims of both racism (or "reverse racism") AND false accusations of racism. It reminds me of that Zvi Rex quote: "Germany will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust."

Obviously this perverse twisting of the race issue wouldn't work if it didn't play on people's very real guilt/denial regarding their own racism and their fears of black people.

Obama took a step toward addressing that, but it's a really tricky issue.

It was a smart speech. Generally, most people don't trust people smarter than themselves.

However at a Thursday press availability in Terra Haute, Indiana after a report surfaced that the Clinton campaign was pushing the Wright story to superdelegates arguing that the relationship hurt Obama's electibility -– Clinton refused to deny that her campaign was pushing the story.

When asked, Clinton ignored the Wright portion of the question and said “well my campaign has been making the case that I am the most electable that I have said that for a year or more that I am the person best able to make the challenges that our country faces as commander in chief.”

When Clinton was then asked specifically if her campaign was pushing the Wright story –- she shrugged and took the next question, ignoring the reporter.