2008 Primaries Thread

B+ (lobster is not screaming)

at least inside the beltway.

Well sure, but what I'm saying is, how does this begin to translate to primary votes?

the more you look like a winner, the more likely you are to become one. the question is how the endorsement gets played.

haha. gabbneb = our generation's Mark Hanna

who's got a screaming bill for me?

bleep u a hero dawg

How significant, really, is Ted Kennedy's endorsement, though?

-- jaymc, Friday, January 25, 2008 9:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

his decision to endorse obama (or establisment dems in aggregate) might tell you he knows which way the wind is blowing.

that's fine, but that doesn't mean he's being nasty or hitting below the belt - this is such totally standard-issue give-and-take it's pretty crazy the way some of you, and many elsewhere (in the pundit class) have reacted

the press have overreacted in this way because he has directly impugned their motives and behavior on more than one occasion recently. So the punditry has their feathers ruffled (see last night's Daily Show bit). BUT, this should not obscure the fact that Clinton is still being a dishonest jackass attack dog for Hillary, and that its pretty nauseating. At least for those of us who find blatant self-righteous hypocristy nauseating.

yeah, but see, HRC represents a triumph of feminism!

seriously what was that bullshit Bill was spewing about how Obama and the unions wanted their caucus-goers votes to count 5 times more than everyone else's votes, and that's why there was a lawsuit challenging the caucus arrangement? that didn't even make any sense (and that lawsuit was appropriately thrown out - not that it won Obama Nevada anyway)

In retrospect it seems clear the Clintons knew that the lawsuit was bullshit would fail and pushed it anyway just to smear Obama. They were probably planning all along to flood the at-large precincts with nurses and other workers from the vicinity who were technically allowed to vote there, even though they don't work on Saturdays. I hate them, but they're crafty.

They also got ABC News to "break" this story that Obama maybe didn't return all the Rezko money, an investigation that was already done by the Sun-Times. On the night before the SC election, too. All the while whining, "boo hoo the media is for Obama and against us."

^i take it this is what hillary was referring to before about "there being more" to the obama-rezko thing?

Clinton: Hey, maybe I want those Florida and Michigan delegates after all

Surprised they aren't worried about "Hillary will do anything" backlash.

what fucking backlash? america doesn't have enough energy to be angry at any of this shit anymore. let her have it, what is she going to do, run us further into the ground?

Honestly: If Obama is a Reaganite, then I am a salamander.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/24/AR2008012402801_pf.html

guys, this is easy. the dems are not the 'party of the powerless'. fuck that noise. they are the party that is inclusive of and willing to stand up for minorities. which means that the majority, including the less well-off, are more than willing to eschew them as long as times are ok. of course even the less well-off have been relatively comfortable since the end of wwii and especially after Dem presidents have helped give them a rising tide. this primary is a race between a democratic standardbearer (and, probably permanently sidelined, her runner-up whose daddy worked in a meal) whose claim on electability lies in no small part in her demographic majoritarian identity, and a minority representative whose claim on electability lies in his rhetorical appeal to majoritarian consensus. it's two sides of a coin, but count me among those who believe that the narrative of the latter of the two will ring truer with more people in the end.

because of authen-tic-i-ty

was someone talking about Obama's kumbaya naivete?

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/25/bill-clinton-john-mccain-and-hillary-are-very-close/

is Feingold positioning himself as a veep candidate against his better half in well-known legislation?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/25/feingold-rips-edwards-aga_n_83225.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_01/012967.php

again, i look not just at the spread but at the actual numbers. the best story here, giving credence to the bobby mcferrin school of mccain-watching, is that no republican breaks 46%, while dems exceed 50 several times. but right, we care about comparing the candidates. hil again gets a higher number than O against Mc, but again Mc is almost in striking distance against her but not against him. and when you see how high O and H's numbers go, it helps confirm what H's negatives suggest - O has a higher ceiling than she does. the only candidate against whom she does better than he is Romney. I'm not sure why that is, but one supposition is that O-Romney produces the lowest gross name id of any matchup. another is that it's the only matchup in which a quasi-Southern Dem faces a non-national Northern Repug, '92 all over again.

(well, ok GHWB was a national figure, but you know what i mean)

dude its friday night, hit the bar and argue about the election there

dude, i've already had several glasses out, thanks

MSNBC has a Miracle Microphone that can amplify thoughts and words from the future!

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/MSNBC_blames_Romney_whisper_on_microphone_0125.html

Clinton’s admirers counter that, as a member of the U.S. Senate, she has learned the art of compromise. In just seven years, she has mastered the power relationships and legislative labyrinths of this most difficult club. “Hillary believes in governing,” Neera Tanden said. When Tanden worked as her legislative director, Clinton would call again and again from the Senate floor to gauge the effect that a new amendment would have on a bill. Such attention to minutiae is rare in a legislator. The question, though, is whether her indisputable virtues—hard work, intellectual acuity, a command of policy—are ideally suited for the White House. A senator must convince fifty to sixty fellow-politicians; a President must rouse three hundred million fellow-citizens.

fantastic article - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/28/080128fa_fact_packer

Packer's tone is all over the place -- admiration, pity, revulsion for HRC.

that's a rather, well, dramatic take on it. i think it's an even-handed examination of someone's strengths and weaknesses.

I'm talking about the article (which I read on the bus yesterday). The "touching" part is reeling at Packer's idea of HRC's sense of humor: singing "Stop! In the Name of Love" while traipsing down a hallway.

i know you're talking about the article

http://www.slate.com/id/2182689

Gary Wills points out Constitutional problems with a Clinton presidency:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/opinion/26wills.html

Bob Herbert is shocked, shocked at the Clinton campaign's activities (though he does bring up some stuff I was unaware of):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/opinion/26herbert.html

Herbert is righteously indignant

The Clinton camp knows what it’s doing, and its slimy maneuvers have been working. Bob Kerrey apologized and Andrew Young said at the time of his comment that he was just fooling around. But the damage to Senator Obama has been real, and so have the benefits to Senator Clinton of these and other lowlife tactics.

The "touching" part is reeling at Packer's idea of HRC's sense of humor: singing "Stop! In the Name of Love" while traipsing down a hallway.

I dunno, seems like something my mom would do. Definitely warms me up to Hillary, at least a tiny bit.

Two things stood out for me in the Packer article, both of which expressed my feelings pretty well.

On Hillary:

“There is a quality of playing the embattled, beleaguered victim that I find unappealing and depressing.”

On Obama:

"If you’ve got the votes, you will beat them and do it with a smile on your face.” It was a summons to reasonableness, yet Obama made it sound thrilling.

packer is a robot designed to regurgitate conventional wisdom; so is herbert (though he positions himself more leftward - packer appears to be one of those people who tries to have no discernable judgment about anything)

Also, it made me realize just how dumb the LBJ argument is:

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do—the President before had not even tried—but it took a President to get it done.”

JFK wasn't able to get it done, at least in part, because he was murdered after three years in office, and LBJ definitely wouldn't have been able to get it done had Kennedy not been murdered. The LBJ comparison actually reflects poorly on Hillary I think--besides the fact that she's nowhere near the power politics sensei Johnson was, she shares his habit for micro-managing which got us mired in Vietnam. Johnson was effective in Congress but an absolute slimeball as a human being, and he screwed the Democratic party up for decades.

Also, who knows if MLK could've gotten it passed if he was president (though he wouldn't have been elected), but he was just as effective and canny a political actor as LBJ was, just in a different role. Arguably he also boxed LBJ into a corner where he was forced to support civil rights, not where he was able to.

I thought this was very perceptive:

Similarly, if this campaign is, among other things, a referendum on the current occupant of the White House—as elections at the end of failed Presidencies inevitably are—then its outcome will be determined partly by whether voters find George W. Bush guilty of incompetence or of demeaning American politics.

...

These rival conceptions of the Presidency—Clinton as executive, Obama as visionary—reflect a deeper difference in how the two candidates analyze what ails the country. Obama’s diagnosis is more fundamental: for him, the illness precedes the Bush years and the partisan deadlock in Washington, originating in a basic failure of politicians to bring Americans together. A strong hand on the wheel won’t make a difference if your car is stuck in the mud; a good leader has to persuade enough people to get out and push. Whereas Clinton echoes Churchill, who proclaimed, “Give us the tools and we will finish the job,” Obama invokes Lincoln, who said, “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

the gary wills article reminds me that the democrats, should they take the white house, will be paying for the sins of this bush adminstration for many, many years

Also, who knows if MLK could've gotten it passed if he was president (though he wouldn't have been elected), but he was just as effective and canny a political actor as LBJ was, just in a different role.

Which, when you think about it, really does skew Hillary's comments to race. Does "It took a president to get it done" mean: "It took a white person to get it done"?

Yeah, I totally understand the Johnson fetish for political junkies--dude was definitely impressive--but every few years they should really go back and read one of his bios. They can just read the Goodwin one, that's shorter, but it still reminds you that he was a horrible human being.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/HR.jpg

I tried so hard my dear to show that you're my every dream
Yet you're afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme
A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart
Why cant I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart

lol, hillary is a beacon of warmth and light and everyone who questions her is a robot

“In her personal life, she’s always seemed like she had something to hide,” Dee Dee Myers, who was a top adviser on Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, and who served as White House press secretary for the first two years of his Presidency, said. “She had a difficult father, and she spent a lot of time trying to create an image of a functional family when she could have just said, ‘It’s my family.’ The burden of perfection was upon her, and she carried it into her marriage. There’s always this fear of letting people see what they already know.”

one more sexist asshole, amirite?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/104430

The burden of perfection was upon her, and she carried it into her marriage. There’s always this fear of letting people see what they already know.

Ha. This reminds me of so many of my friends' parents, back in grade school and high school, keeping up an image of a perfect family because everyone else did too. I wish I had some articles I've read on this to bring up here, some.. reflections on the feminist movement and wondering how.. it opened doors for women but at the same time, had many feeling like now they had to be perfect at everything. advance all the way up the corporate ladder, break that glass ceiling, and iron everybody's shirts..

I'm baffled at Herbert quoting a random posting on a "major news blog" to make a point. You know, I do wonder if there's been a concerted effort on the part of the Obama campaign to portray the Clintons as responsible for the "Obama is a Muslim manchurian candidate" smear making the rounds. That's such garbage - those right wing emails have been circulating since his Senate campaign four years ago - only different is, now the so-called liberal blogosphere has realized it and thinks it's new news.

packer appears to be one of those people who tries to have no discernable judgment about anything)

Have you read The Assassins' Gate?