2008 Primaries Thread 3: The Rejecting and Denouncening

Nine years ago she was lobbying for gun control with Rendell. How long will pundits take to raise this issue?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E7D9173FF93AA35756C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Also saw three CNN heads not take the 'elitist' bait yesterday, citing eight McCain residences and $109 million Clintondollars.

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/18372/thumbs/r-HILLARY-DRINKING-huge.jpg

lol @ DAD

im enjoying this bear wrestling whiskey swilling hillary incarnation - but three sips to finish a shot is just amateur - step it up tough guy

Pic or do I mean hic! one = clearly already trolleyed.

Clinton stood by the bar and took a shot of Crown Royal whiskey.

drinking Canadian whiskey in Indiana = coded NAFTA support message

For the household of J0hn D. and others: http://www.lolbama.com/

Hillary was just telling us who her favorite driver is

http://images.athlonsports.com/d/3992-1/McMurray_07.jpg

Right, but that twist in meaning is somewhat bizarre. Because the word doesn't actually mean "snooty," it means you subscribe to the idea that there exists an elite that's better than other people and should be given more deference/more power/better treatment, etc. Representative democracy has enormous potential for elitism built into it, and I'd say both Clinton and McCain are more elitist in their approaches than Obama.

Yeah absolutely agree! I know this is probably a huge sidetrack for everybody else so just disregard if boring/tl;dr but: I think for many people the word "elitist" means/signifies more "you think you are above me" than "you are actually socioeconomically from a different world than I." (Usage = meaning, right.) I think, too, that plenty of people hear how good Obama is at expressing complex ideas and are eager to put a name to how they don't like that quality in him - how his thoughts require thought in kind from the listener. Like, you know how on this thread people've said "Christ, it's refreshing for a candidate to talk to use like we're adults"? Not everybody thinks like that. Some people, when you talk to them as if they had brains they were capable of using, get real defensive: are you trying to show them how smart you are? Etc. I don't think this is a modern/recent development, I think it's an ages-old political reality: if you presume to demonstrate your intelligence, some people are going to feel talked-down to, even if they aren't in fact dumbasses - complicated weird social dynamic at work in that I think. But that's what Clinton & McCain hope to exploit here - to worm in through the back door of the "which one would you have a beer with?" question.

Which annoys the piss out of me, because I don't hate Clinton the way pretty much all my peers do, nor do I think she's showing her "true colors" in being so tenacious - I think she's lost the plot rather and is so pissed off at the party for not rallying behind her that she's determined to do some damage on her way out, which is total bullshit. Which really sucks for those of us who are so completely and totally desperate for a woman Presidential nominee that we'd even vote for an asshole like Hilary Clinton.

xpost thank you Suzy

What does it say that the Republican nominee and the Democratic rival are making identical attacks?

FWIW, it says they both think they can use the rhetoric of the attack to convince voters they do not like Obama, and by extension to convince suceptible voters that, as the deliverer of the attack, they are more in alignment with the voter's sympathies. The fact that they are of different parties does not affect the desire for increasing the number of votes detached from Obama, and this particular method for seeking them is not party-specific.

OTOH, you are using another rhetorical argument to deflect the effectiveness of the attack. This particular construct will only work for voters with a strong party identification, who believe that whatever a Republican does is, by definition, heinous, and any Democrat who resembles a Republican in any particular is, by definition, untrustworthy.

Hmmmm. I can get behind that!

ha

Are they identical? I thought Hillary was attacking the "bitter," and McCain the "cling."

You pretty much zeroed in on my point, but I was trying to suggest that while McCain has an obvious reason for making these attacks (GE votes), HRC's reasons are considerably murkier. She clearly has no shot at the nom nom nom, what reason would she have for deliberately pushing voters towards McCain?

I really don't understand it.

xpost

Such is the state of politics. We are treated like sharecroppers, with malice aforethought, and the hell of it is we justify the treatment by falling for it.

She clearly has no shot at the nom nom nom

She would disagree. After Super Tuesday knocked her back, she set her sights on playing the long game and squeaking it out with superdelegates. Mathematically and politically, she could make that strategy work.

As for why she thinks it is worth it? She believes the Repubs are in such bad odor with voters that whoever wins the Dem nomination will be in the White House for four years, starting next January. She's treating the nomination as the GE.

http://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/041308DailyUpdateGraph1_xz7yt6jk.gif

Beat to the whiskey wisecrack.

"She clearly has no shot at the nom nom nom"

She would disagree

a++ @ ignoring the lolbait

http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v233/249/73/2908083/n2908083_31798112_2414.jpg

She's treating the nomination as the GE.

But what if she goes too far? The fears she's playing on could be our undoing, but I don't think she would admit it if it happened that way. If Obama were on the verge of greatness, he would never acknowledge the divisions, if not as a matter of conviction, then as a matter of strategy. (But maybe he's getting there.)

So basically Obama hates white people and himself for being half-white.

So he wants to take his guilt-trip out on America by becoming president.

I don't think it's that simple. It could go either way. I think he's conflicted, but that it could lead to greatness.

I think his vision of belonging might evolve.

I think the Republican party is smarter than all of you put together, and I think McCain won the GOP nomination because they hate him and know he will lose.

this is one of the more insightful things that's ever been said on one of these threads.

After Super Tuesday knocked her back, she set her sights on playing the long game and squeaking it out with superdelegates kneecapping Obama over-and-over, such that he would become totally unelectable and she would, by default, be handed the nomination from frightened superdelegates. Mathematically and politically, she could make that strategy work.

Fixed.

I think the Republican party is smarter than all of you put together, and I think McCain won the GOP nomination because they hate him and know he will lose.

this is one of the more insightful baseless & completely made-up things that's ever been said on one of these threads.

-- J.D., Sunday, April 13, 2008 6:11 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Yeah, and one that has been said many times throughout these threads.

wait is that some of that drunko spew I covered the thread with the night you guys decided two threads wasn't good enough for your painfully redundant cheerleading

because it is true that I am a pretty insightful guy

some of us think that GOP voters reckoned that McCain was the best of an overall sorry lot of nominees ... and folks would be snowed by his 2000-era press coverage.

And the left always thinks that the right are Machiavellian geniuses anyway. They never make mistakes - they just ant us to think they make mistakes...

McCain slipped through to the nomination because the GOP base was horribly fractured. Tho I think I agreed with other points made in the "drunko spew."

http://i29.tinypic.com/107rfyh.jpg

this whole obama/elitist/"bitter" flap has been interesting. it worries me.

he clearly was alluding to the line that working-class voters have a kind of "false consciousness" which explains why they repeatedly vote for candidates who are effectively working against their economic and other interests. in the open field of presidential politics this canard doesn't play too well.

in trying to explain himself obama could have dug himself a deeper hole. he (i think tellingly) jumbled up guns, religion, and immigrant-hating into one package. strangely i don't see the media jumping on him for this, perhaps because the sentence was a bit incoherent and would be hard to package as a soundbite without contextualization (which of course the media hates).

i figured that the "elitist" charge against obama was gonna come up eventually. in fact, i'm more surprised that it's taken this long for the issue to become explicit than that it's been raised at all.

for such an alleged "non-issue," class has a funny way of tripping up american politicians.

lol clinton and mccain are amateurs - the bush campaign never said kerry was elitist - they said he windsurfed - THAT is how its done

btw brogress jpg is quite terrifying

Anyone else watching this "compassion forum" on CNN right now? Obama's getting applause at obvious applause lines, but I think overall Clinton totally smoked him. :(

This forum is the nadir of the entire campaign season.

do people still care about his pastor?

i don't ... dunno if others do, but i don't think that it's a big issue in PA (the "elitist" flap is 100% about class, an issue that [despite the fervent wish of certain ILXors] hasn't been purged from the post-bill clinton democratic party).

lol clinton and mccain are amateurs - the bush campaign never said kerry was elitist - they said he windsurfed - THAT is how its done

lol OTM but in the absence of the kind of easy ammo the kerry campaign kept presenting on silver platters the anti-obama folks gotta do the best they can

This forum is the nadir of the entire campaign season.

I don't think that's true, actually. I'm completely fascinated that, in 2008, we're just now getting around to having an open forum where candidates can publicly discuss how faith would inform policy decisions instead of just waiting until after the inauguration and finding out later.

I agree that it could really great to do that, it would be spectacular. But the forum tonight was just a bunch of fluff from where I was sitting. Though I did like Obama's answers re: science and I enjoyed the generally light atmosphere, considering the subject matter. Both the candidates and the moderators had me laughing and kind of enjoying it.

Carl Bernstein on HRC:

What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like?

The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency.

Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don’t go right. Which is to say, often.

And endless psychodrama: the essential Clintonian experience that mesmerizes the press, confuses the citizenry, confounds members of both parties in Congress (not to mention the Clintons themselves, at times) and pretty much keeps the rest of the world constantly amused and fixated.

Such a picture of Clinton Redux is, by definition, speculation. But it is speculation based on the best evidence at hand: the demonstrable and familiar record of Hillary and Bill Clinton coupled together in Permanent Campaign-mode for a generation, waging a continuous fight on the national political stage since 1992, an unceasing campaign for the White House, for redemption, for their ideas (sometimes) and for themselves (almost always), especially in 2008.

O'shea otm with the windsurfing.

god bernstein has become such a hack

this is the heaviest obama's hit back yet y/n

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/tobyharnden/april08/godgunsshame.htm

bernstein's always been a hack. have you read any of his excellent hillary book?

no, but i did note his appearances on talk shows where in trying to sell that book he basically did what he does above, i.e. recycle old dowd and rich columns

Forgive me if this particular "Hillary slammin' back a cold brew" photo has already been posted:

http://observer.cast.advomatic.com/files/imagecache/vertical/files/hillarydrinksweb.jpg

"Waiiiiit...did someone pee in this?"