2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

how does campaign financing work after the primaries? are donations reset once the nominee is picked, ie: if a person/group maxed out their donation to obama, can they re-donate to him once he gets the nomination? I'm just wondering since ti seems like so much of obama's donations have come from individuals.... if the charge was to point the finger about him taking loads of special interest money, I don't know that this will be the case

as obama and mccain turn towards each other and preview a general election fight, the clinton campaign is going to be largely forsaken by the press. her attacks against obama are going to be seen as supplementing mccain's attacks. obama will increasingly turn towards his presumed opponent, and mccain has all but written clinton off. but she'll get attention in the press when she goes negative. it doesn't look good for her.

Clinton's only hope is to go negative.

It might not "look good," but it's still her best shot. Her campaign probably hopes it can inspire a last minute panic about Obama.

akm, the individual limit is $2,300 for the primary and $2,300 for the general election. if a campaign has accepted general election funds during the primary but loses the nomination, the g.e. funds have to be returned.

Clinton went pretty negative up here and it didn't work -- in fact, polling data suggests that it backfired big-time.

the problem with clinton going negative is she can only hope to erode the positive associations people have with obama, but she risks increasing her negatives at the same time. if her only press coverage of negative attacks, she'll be quicly and popularly perceived as the negative, status-quo politician, and that's how she'll lose.

it is incredibly unlikely, in any case, that obama will lose the primary for a lack of financial support

i like that clinton's latest attacks are "Obama uses WORDS to dazzle you all"

<i>didn't Obama and McCain sponsor some climate change legislation? I can't see McCain getting very nasty – he'll let the right wing propaganda arm do his dirty work – but I do see a lot of stern finger-wagging.</i>

I dunno, I thought he was particularly aggressive in his speech last night.

Byron York reports:

On the same conference call, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson pointed out the inability of an Obama surrogate, appearing last night on MSNBC, to name a single legislative accomplishment that Obama has achieved. "That is a major moment for voters," Wolfson said. In addition, Wolfson continued, "when you have Sen. Obama found lifting portions of speeches…that is a major moment for voters."

On another issue, Wolfson said he knew nothing about a new 527 group that is reportedly planning to spend millions of dollars attacking Barack Obama in Ohio. "I'm not familiar with the 527 group that has been reported on," Wolfson said. "I don't know anything about it." But Wolfson said it should not be an issue because other 527s have helped Obama in the past. "I can't imagine that Sen. Obama is in any position to make an issue of this, given that there was a 527, I think it was called Vote Hope, that spent millions on his behalf in California."

My response: if a voter can't identify any of Obama's legislative "accompmlishments," how is it Obama's fault?

Clinton is screwed, as I have been noting for at least several months. give it up already lady

i did actually see that msnbc bit with matthews, it was embarassing, but only for Watson, not Obama.

also, Vote Hope didn't do massive amounts of negative, attack ads against Clinton in California, or if they did, I completly missed them. I haven't seen ANY negative advertising from the obama side

McCain will never win, I hope he gets the Rep nod after a bruising primary.

-- Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, November 14, 2006 8:41 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

still feel this way too

Doing negative ads on Hilary seems like shooting fish in a barrell.

im curious to see waht sorts of things obama starts saying abt mccain now - cause if his strategy toward hillary is any indication he'll have something deceptively good and he'll stick w/it - staying on message though out the general election

what he accomplished here in the primaries is bonkers - making the stacked experienced favored clinton campaign scramble looking like total amatuers - they were changing their message every day while obamas just kept playing - dude is ahead of the game and i am totes impressed1

Obama Accomplishment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Funding_Accountability_and_Transparency_Act_of_2006

also a McCain accomplishment, ironically

what if mccain secretly has obamamania

he does!

http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/mlasalle/2007/07/02/mccain.jpg

(we can't run this photo often enough)

someone pls to complete that picture, add sailor hat and can of spinach and pipe to make McCain into Popeye, thx

or Poopdeck Pappy

teamsters to endorse obama:

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/teamsters_plan_to_endorse_obam_1.php

lol @ Nothing says tough, or evokes "gruff," more than the Teamsters.

i'm a little worried that they haven't really defined mccain yet; i'm guessing it will be some variation of "more of the same"; still, you can't start this stuff too early

don't make me evoke my gruff son

mccain/obama beef history: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/179217.php

crazy/cynical tired old man meme should work pretty well

i remember that letter very distinctly -- many said at the time that it was a shot across obama's bow looking forward to '08

but i think the letter backfires on mccain like every other petulant, self-important, faux-ingenuous, green-ink letter-to-one's-detractor that has ever been written and i would imagine mccain would like to imagine that it never existed

Doing negative ads on Hilary seems like shooting fish in a barrell.

It's more like - why bother when you can have the media do it for free? What's he going to say? That she's an amoral, calculating triangulator who will do or say anything to win? The press has already made that the conventional wisdom.

^^

you know, you can toss out reams and reams of sexist garbage printed about hillary and still come to that conclusion

crazy/cynical tired old man meme should work pretty well

yah itll be that but more subtle and incisive.

it took me a while to appreciate how ingenious the politics of the baby boom v change angle was when applied to hillary - at first i was all wtf everyone loves the 90s? it turned her strength against her.

you cant be too obvious w/this stuff - peoples minds need a chance to do a little of the lifting themselves.

i'm a little worried that they haven't really defined mccain yet; i'm guessing it will be some variation of "more of the same"

it'll basically be variations on "he so OLD."

just like the subtext of a lot of the anti-obama stuff will be "he so BLACK."

it's gonna be a fairly ugly general election.

I am as guilty as anyone of projecting Bill's failures on Hillary and assuming her presidency would have the same priorities and the same failures, and that may be unfair -- but it seems more likely to me that it's not unfair at all.

you know, you can toss out reams and reams of sexist garbage printed about hillary and still come to that conclusion

Sure, people could independently come to that conclusion - but the interesting thing is that the media has made it the frame through which they view and interpret everything that Clinton does. It's the inescapable subtext to any story about her.

its true too!

so you're not actually guilty of anything! score!

xxpost you guys are kind of gross. seriously

well, i am not actually guilty of anything.

omg everyone is guilty dont u see

But notice the kind of claim that it is - a claim that's just about impossible to disprove. It's the kind of framing device that the GOP has perfected in the past couple of presidential races: Gore was an inveterate exaggerator who felt superior to everyone else. Kerry was an effete flip-flopper. At bottom, it's a "character" issue. Once the frame is in place, it's nearly impossible to dislodge. No matter how sincere Clinton is, anything she does could still be construed as "trying to win".

xposts

I am guilty of having a brain and distrusting a corrupt unprincipled liar when I see one

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmM2NDQ3ZWQ1YWM0Y2QyZTUxMDdkY2M2OTJlNGE5MWE=

Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City — a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics. (During the Clinton Administration we were all introduced to then U. of Pennsylvania Professor Lani Guinier — also a half black/half Jewish, red diaper baby.)

that was to kenan's latest justification for clinton hatred, shakey, not yours

yah but these frames dont come from nowhere - theyre cynical and reductionist but not entirely untrue is the thing

since the president is only the Corporate Manager these days, how could Hil's interests and priorities differ from Bill's?

Bill in NH two months ago was saying "Well, we still hafta solve those problems I talked about in '92..." YEAH, WHY is that fucking so?

(I don't care so much about this "trying to win" frame crap as much as I care about the fact that she voted for the war, the patriot act, supporting and voting to expand NAFTA, etc.)

x-post

Ethan, that article was so gross.