2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

Man, this article. I know BritBart is a Drudge cohort, but this one appears to be from the AP wire. And two lines in it are amazing:

• Obama leading in Wisconsin over a “fading Hillary Rodham Clinton”
• Obama is “cut(ting) deeply into Clinton's political bedrock”

If that's the way the media stories read coming out of Wisconsin, it may be too late for HRC.

mccain launching scare campaign 08 right now

What's he saying?

i dont think ive heard them use this formulation before - its either calling it from exit polls or wait and see

no, they've said that before. they may be waiting for a few preliminary results to confirm - when they've called it before, hasn't it been in low-number caucuses? while the impulse is usually to be first, my cynical side says they're gonna wait a little while to keep the people who would turn their tv's off when the result is announced. guess is they know he won from the exits alone, but are gonna wait

he's talking about the growing threat against american lives, how leadership is called for and how "others" just want to sit down and make out with terror-supporters and bomb our allies.

What's he saying?

My friends. My friends, my friends. My friends.

basically it's bush since 9/11/rudy guliani's oh-so-successful campaign tactics

For such a "straight-talking maverick," McCain sure poaches the George W. Bush neocon playbook liberally.

now dig at michelle obama -- "i am proud to be an american [unlike that bitch]"

Clay, that's why I can't watch McCain's speeches. That phrase makes me crazy.

oh my golly! He just totally did the John Locke from L O S T. "Don't tell me what we can't do."

and msnbc projects obama to win wisconsin

Wait, you're kidding. He implied that she's an ungrateful traitor?

he did. the right is clamoring about this today. she made this "i am finally proud of my country" twice now in speeches, and so she is now indicative of blame-america-first liberals. as if african-american women have been living in an american utopia these past 222 years.

Yeah Daniel, the "my friends" thing -- which he just seems to be ramping up more and more every speech I end up seeing -- is so grating. Something about how terribly sincere he seem, while it being such a disingenuous thing to say.

CNN just projected for obama as well.

Just tuned in (then off). One of the TV chatterheads says that, inside the McCain camp, their main strategy is to (a) position McCain as "The Patriot" versus Obama "The Confused Youngster" and (b) portray Obama as being to the left of M. Dukakis and G. McGovern.

It will be an ugly -- and familiar -- type of GE.

BARACK OBAMA: AMERICA'S MOST LIBERAL SENATOR.

Yeah, that will be the line. That any "Blame America First," "Pessimist," "Not A War Hero," "Defeatist," and so forth.

Ugly. But Obama's the kind of candidate who can overcome it.

my biggest obama fear, btw, is mcgovern-related: when everyone loved mcgovern it was because he was the anti-candidate, a non-pol who talked straight, obsessed with decency and honesty, etc. and so when the eagleton mess started and he waffled a bit, it suddenly made him seem more like a politician (which of course he always was) and less like a real movement leader.

what it also did was give the press a big opening to attack him. the halo was gone, and suddenly he was a bumbler, just another washington rat like all the rest. when obama flubs -- and of course he will -- he will similarly get hit hard, much harder than mccain, just because the expectations are so much higher. as much as the press has really aided him so far, it can easily destroy him as well.

It would seem like it'll be that vs. "McCain is a Bush proxy" / "More of the same here and abroad" which should at least keep Obama coming across as less of an attack artist.

xpost.

I hear you, YGS, but I think Obama's more savvy -- and far more charismatic -- than McGovern.

barack obama = black osama. end of story.

i cant see that "what a liberal he is!!" thing working v well, just like how during the confirmations of alito + roberts their reasonableness under fire from dem pols belied their actual nuttiness (esp in the case of alito)

Besides, as between Obama and McCain, I think it far more likely that McCain will make flubs and flip-flops, which Obama can exploit. And, FWIW, I don't think McCain has ever been tested in the way he'll be tested by Obama.

And all this from somebody (me) who thinks McCain will be the favorite in a GE against Obama.

(McCain was tested by GWB, but that's a very -- very -- different kind of test. Obama won't win by secretly accusing McCain of having an illegimate black baby).

Remember the throngs of Republicans who were all like "I kinda like this McGovern guy"?

actually, gabbneb, mcgovern did VERY well with hardhats/wallace supporters in the beginning for this very reason

aka democrats?

obama already has a Dem problem, just like McCain has a GOP problem

Sorry, what do you mean?

(i.e., what's Obama's Dem problem?)

some democrats aren't gonna be comfortable voting for him?

fuck 'em

that's what i say

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

Why? Because he's black? Because he's liberal? Because he's cool and detached?

because he's black and/or too young

guys he's a muslim

do you want a president sworn in on the koran???

his nomination'll be a good way to axe the fucking lame dead wood from the plodding bulk of the toothless donkey party

i tried to sink another metaphor into that sentence, but i couldn't

he's gonna make nancy reagan wear a burkha!!!

He's going to stone Bill Kristol to death on the steps of the Capitol.

state dinners all halal

He's going to stone Bill Kristol to death on the steps of the Capitol.

Tempting.

this is the most boring obama speech so far. it's all over.

he stole it from mike wallace

Wow, so he came through with that wide margin here (WI) after all, huh?

now can he win PA?

http://www.geocities.com/lager57/sixpacks/yuengling1.jpg

Oh we need more men like Victor Davis Hanson, spotting perfidy under every stone:

Re: Michelle Obama's astounding admission that she hitherto had no reason to feel pride in the U.S., and Obama's supposed Biden-like lifting of a campaign refrain from someone else.

The problem is deeper than occasional slips. For most of the last 25 years the Obamas' contacts have been largely confined to universities (Occidental, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, Chicago) as both students and employees, or to government-sponsored social agencies, or to the incestuous world of Chicago minority politics. These landscapes have proven liberal, sympathetic, and non-confrontational. I doubt very seriously in those environments that the Obamas have had any of their sometimes bewildering statements seriously cross-examined or questioned.

Michelle Obama, true, recites a litany of slights and grievances, but more likely she encountered highly educated white liberal audiences that were not about to cross her or challenge her assertions-a world away from steelworkers in Ohio, the Nascar crowd, the Mexican Americans in LA, the hungry wolves of the D.C. press corps for whom controversy trumps even shared liberal ideology — or Clinton, Inc. for whom power, status, and adulation outweigh everything, including liberal head-nodding, white guilt, and identity politics.

The result is that finally out on the campaign trail both are beginning to enter an arena where most of America does not faint at an Obama rally, but resents deeply a candidate's spouse suggesting that she previously had no pride in her own country, and would think that generous college admission practices, scholarships, and loans were cause more for gratitude rather than resentment.

Some old cynical campaign veteran, cigar in mouth-a Tip O'Neill-type, with the more scars the better-should sit the two kids down, explain the no-holds-barred rules of the arena outside the university and liberal government agency, remind them that African Americans and elite white liberals probably make up about at most a fourth of the electorate, and emphasize to them that by the public's own standard of living, the Obamas have been very privileged and done quite well-and that Michelle and Barack should start to say something uplifting other than the current mantra that the U.S. is a depressing and unfair place and has only one chance of 'hope" and "change" and "redemption" by allowing Barack and Michelle to lead us out of our collective ignorance.