2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

(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.)

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Ethan, that article was so gross.

It was discussed upthread, no? It does get grosser: OF COURSE your parents are multiracial – they're COMMIES!

excellent detectiving guy!

Obama's parents met while questioning McCain @ Hanoi Hilton

It's the kind of framing device that the GOP has perfected in the past couple of presidential races

Yes, but I very much doubt that the GOP is breaking into the Dem National Headquarters in the night (not yet at least) to dig up dirt about Hillary maybe having some shaky character issues. That story writes itself. And they'd almost certainly rather run against Hillary in the GE.

That story writes itself

Sure, and the media needs to have some kind of storyline to follow. I understand why these frames take hold. But it still can make you wonder - what the media created, the media can also destroy.

her record on the war from 02 to now indicates strenuously following the centrist CW -- i've no idea the 'character motivation' behind this, 'poll-driven' 'triangulating' or whatever -- it's kind of suckass on its face and reason enough to look elsewhere. her foreign policy crew is derived from this set of people, while obama's (and other candidates in the earlier part of the primary) were more frankly and openly against the iraq war

her campaign has been rooted in the brand power of the clinton name and in the inevitability of her win coupled with the value of her experience in the halls of power.

NONE of those things look good to me: 1. the name 'clinton' brings as much autonomic contempt among half the populace to make a thorough end to the bush/rove years really unlikely. especially in a year when the real flesh-eating zombies on the right hate their candidate openly, why give them an excuse to get out of bed on 11/2?

2. campaigning on inevitability looks pretty stupid when you're losing, and have to resort to increasingly strained threats to rig the deck (supers), fuck about with intra-party lawsuits to open up previously settled conflicts (FL & MI), or make offensive excuses about every contest you lose (mark penn).

3. 'experience' is a meme just as surely cemented by a somnambulant press, and has been discussed to death in any case. her operation certainly doesn't look that experienced -- witness the sudden complaints about the delegate rules in TX, whereas a group of 'canny operators' would know what they were and have a plan in place for them.

in other words my mind is made up about hillary clinton, pretty much independent of what 'the press' has ever 'said' about her -- i liked her just fine, a year ago. it's based on what has been straightforwardly reported what her campaign has done. chris matthews didn't just make up that penn called my state insignificant.

i don't like this idea coming from Tracer and o.nate that i'm following some kind of institutionalized misogynist meme pathway when i come to the conclusion that her candidacy is a dog and a sure loser in the bargain.

I've said before, and I'll say it again- I'm not saying there aren't any good reasons to support Obama over Clinton. I'm not questioning anyone's motives on this thread either. I'm just pointing out that Obama has benefited from relatively favorable media coverage vis-a-vis Clinton.

gff, it's an unfortunate teleology in a some feminisms that privileging a man over a woman for pretty much any reason makes one implicit in all injustice against women everywhere forever.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2008_02_17_archive.html#3701114073843181344

posting this here.... just because

the ironing is... oh so bitter.

also via atrios. holy shit.

I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels -- that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever -- then that's legit. We'll track it down.

-- Bill O'RLY

in other words my mind is made up about hillary clinton, pretty much independent of what 'the press' has ever 'said' about her -- i liked her just fine, a year ago. it's based on what has been straightforwardly reported what her campaign has done.

Me too. A couple years back I was against Hillary because I worried about electability. Then maybe a year ago, I began to read articles about her that cast her in a very favorable light, in terms of her sharpness in regards to the issues, and I thought, "Well, maybe she won't be so bad if she ends up winning the nomination." But any positive feelings I've had toward her have pretty much evaporated during this primary season.

not to defend o'reilly but he probably didn't consciously intend to bring up those connotations, and the obama campaign aren't big enough crybabies to make a case out of it, I think (unlike the clintons and the whole 'pimping' comment)

not to defend o'reilly but he probably didn't consciously intend to bring up those connotations

LOL, r u crazee

i dont really see what the big deal about the oreilly comment is

if you read the whole transcript he's basically saying his crazy ass listener wants to lynch michelle obama and he dosnt

gimme a break O'Reilly is TOTALLY cognizant of subtext.

and come on ethan his statement implies that he's okay with a lynching party so long as there's "evidence"! wtf man

but yr right I didn't read the whole transcript.

O'REILLY: Maryanne, Woodbury, Connecticut: What say you, Maryanne? Maryanne --

CALLER: I'm here.

O'REILLY: -- you're on the air.

CALLER: Here I am.

O'REILLY: OK.

CALLER: I just wanted to say that I think Michelle Obama is an angry woman -- is speaking, I think, with her real voice for the first time. And --

O'REILLY: But how do you -- what do you base that on? You're basing that on what?

CALLER: Well, your representative asked me not to talk about this, but I have a friend who had knowledge of her and said to me months ago, "This is a very angry," her word was "militant woman."

O'REILLY: All right. What I want you do then, Maryanne, if -- I want you to stay on the line.

CALLER: OK.

O'REILLY: Because it's not fair to Michelle Obama for you --

CALLER: Oh no, all I'm saying is --

O'REILLY: -- because we don't know who you are, and we don't know who your friend is, but we want to know. We want to know, OK. But it's not fair at this point for you to say, "My friend said X and Y," because we just don't know. But if you would give us your information, we would like to talk to your friend. And then whatever your friend tells us, we'll track it down. We'll do it in a fair and balanced and methodical way. That's how we're going to cover this campaign -- all of them, all of them. So stay on the line, give us your information. If indeed Michelle Obama is angry about something, if she has a history, we would like to know that, and then we can put it into some kind of context so that we can be fair to everybody.

You know, I have a lot of sympathy for Michelle Obama, for Bill Clinton, for all of these people. Bill Clinton, I have sympathy for him, because they're thrown into a hopper where everybody is waiting for them to make a mistake, so that they can just go and bludgeon them. And, you know, Bill Clinton and I don't agree on a lot of things, and I think I've made that clear over the years, but he's trying to stick up for his wife, and every time the guy turns around, there's another demagogue or another ideologue in his face trying to humiliate him because they're rooting for Obama.

If he's repeating "lynch" because that's the term his caller used, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. If he's the one who introduced it into the conversation, though, it's totally boneheaded.

im not some kinda capn save-a-o' but dude is clearly exaggerating for effect - 'michelle obama is a crazy woman who hates america!!' 'now, lets not organize a lynching party just yet...'

dude, he introduced the lynching idea into the conversation

its pretty standard to exaggerate the position of someone you disagree in "now, let's not _____ just yet..." statements

Actually I think Ethan's right here.

he could have said pitchfork party, what's wrong with a pitchfork party

@ Mr. Que

Okay, I see that he did. In that case, feck-a-Bill O'Reilly.

Lousy music on the stereo?

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Ryan Schreiber

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You know, I'd love to jump in and get all excitable about Bill O'Reilly here, cuz he's a dick and I hate him, but I agree w/ and what. He's using that language to distance himself from the caller's accusations. At the same time, sure, I guess you could say he's pulling some NLP shit, introducing that specific phrase ("lynching party against Michelle Obama!"), but I'm not quite that paranoid. This isn't inspiring me to outrage.

yeah let's just go back to how hillary hating is sexist

listened to rush on my lunchbreak field a bizarre call from some woman who claimed hillary clinton never had a chance because of the backsliding nature of the female sex going back to eve and pandora, in whose fabled box the only thing that remained after evil was unleashed in the world was HOPE o_0??lol

i don't like this idea coming from Tracer and o.nate that i'm following some kind of institutionalized misogynist meme pathway when i come to the conclusion that her candidacy is a dog and a sure loser in the bargain

i'm sure you don't, but it's worth thinking about what we really know about hillary clinton and barack obama -- given that none of us has ever met them, given that the national political press is probably the most broken, tribal sector of a broken, tribal profession, given that frames around democratic "character issues" have been a signature of every election in recent memory, and given the fact that we humans love to create binaries and justify them to ourselves

So if you guys vote for:

Obama, you're a sexist and an ageist
Clinton, you're a racist and an ageist
McCain, you're a sexist and a racist

? Nice.

lol ageist

i don't like this idea coming from Tracer and o.nate that i'm following some kind of institutionalized misogynist meme pathway when i come to the conclusion that her candidacy is a dog and a sure loser in the bargain

No offense, Tracer, but I don't like it either. Nobody here is saying "I like Obama 'cuz teh TV told me to." Most of us are making reasonably well-informed criticisms of Clinton's history and character.

I guess I have to vote for Dan Perry, but I'm a Dan Perryist.

Vote RuPaul! (male and female and black and 47 - but has grey wigs)

xpost: yeah, Dan Perry '08 - he promised he would run!

I hate O Reilly, but that exchange with the caller may be the most reasonable thing I've ever heard him say.

Should I vote for Dan Perry, if I am a periodontist?

Dan Perry '08 - he promised he would run!

dude, lying politicians.

meanwhile, RuPaul reminded me of this guy (sad picture though)

http://i27.tinypic.com/2zoxma0.jpg

But O'Reilly's like this! He can get protective in the oddest times and with the most unexpected people. I think he genuinely likes Obama. Slate ran a feature in 2004 about how EASY it is to get on his good side: you flatter his swollen ego (just not in a hotel room).

his throbbing, swollen ego

For an example of the power of frames, think of what a field day the press would be having now if it was Clinton who was waffling on a pledge to take public financing in the general.

Vote Clooney and you're sexy and racy.

When I watched Super Tuesday results with Jenny and Jesse a few weeks ago, I suggested an Obama/Clooney ticket and they both liked that.

...what a field day the press would be having now if it was Clinton who was waffling on a pledge to take public financing in the general.

-- o. nate

You mean like the MASSIVE field day they had when Clinton abstained from the immunity vote? Yeah, that got front page coverage from coast to coast. Totally unfair.

Um, she didn't abstain, she just didn't vote. Also, I think that Obama himself made public financing a much bigger issue when it was politically expedient for him to do so, and now that he's in a different situation, and it doesn't seem so expedient, he is back-pedaling. I don't really see the parallels in the case of the telecom immunity vote - hardly something Clinton made a cornerstone of her campaign.