2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

No, but Russert's investment in the efficacy of our political parties is douchey; he's genuinely appalled that someone would not accept party politics.

word up homos: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/24/nader.politics/index.html

yah russert is the biggest sycophant in the whole fucking world

Damn, someone already posted that Nader's running. Well, he's getting mine and my 5 semi-legal non-paid house maintenance interns to vote NADER 08.

loool over/under, nader gets 1%?

i got a hundo on the under

over/under, nader gets 0.1%?

I was thinking about Clinton's new "Obama = Bush" argument and I've concluded that it's a really gracious strategy for her endgame, actually. The reason is that it doesn't tarnish Obama in a way that will have repercussions should he be the candidate in the general election. I doubt the GOP will pull out the "Obama = Bush" argument. But if she went with the "Obama isn't qualified to be the commander-in-chief" argument, it could legitimize a damaging attack in the general election. I suspect this attack (which doesn't seem very convincing to me, anyway) was motivated by these considerations.

i suspect it was motivated more by abject, panicked desperation

i was talkin to someone last night who said he thought obama was the new tony blair

weak

that's kind of mindboggling.

just saw the fey/hillary clip... does it look odd to anyone else? she looks really uncomfortable going through it. maybe she knows her audience is probably anti-hillary, i dunno.

I was thinking about Clinton's new "Obama = Bush" argument and I've concluded that it's a really gracious strategy for her endgame, actually.

I was thinking about Clinton's new "aggressive" arguments and I've concluded that, if things aren't going well for her in the Ohio debate, she will reach across the desk and try to strangle Obama to death.

i was talkin to someone last night who said he thought obama was the new tony blair

Well he is running a lot of the Blair playbook

political systems are so different there's not much point in making the connect other than, if you don't like obama, you can say "he's the new tony blair".

people in 1996 were (iirc) saying that blair was the new clinton -- and what with blair's xeroxing clinton's triangulation steez, they had a point.

The big question on Obama isn't whether he will govern as a centrist. He will. That's how the office works. The real question is whether he can, through the power of his position and the so-called bully pulpit, move the center leftward. I think he has a better chance of doing this than Hillary Clinton.

As for his running the Tony Blair playbook, that would come down to what substantive policies he lays out in his first six months, not how he chooses to fish for votes.

just to bite, a little, blair became party leader, ie "presidential candidate" (but not), almost years before the next election, in 1994. he rapidly made symbolic gestures toward not being the loony left labour party of the 1980s, though nostalgists tend to forget how little chance of a revival there was for the labour left under any leader. (being specific, he ended labour's commitment to nationalization -- this was never going to come back on the table... until last week, in fact!)

but at that point 'old labour' had no rival to blair. his rival was also his ally, gordon brown. the party establishment was fucked by then, and his guy peter mandelson had assiduously put him and brown in good positions since the late 1980s.

i don't see strong obama parallels there.

on the other hand blair did usher in a new era of post-racial politics, his public-school-and-oxford education a radical break with british politics past, so yeah i concede that one.

http://images.teamsugar.com/files/users/1/13839/15_2007/rok_119_05.jpg

NADERRRRRRRR!

Nadir.

Poll has Obama in front in both Ohio and Texas:

http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/articles/decision-analyst-obama-texas-ohio-mccain-022308005.html

jimmy the mod otm

oh man, this is not good:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/24/hillary-clinton-mocks-bar_n_88194.html

plus she's wearing that awful yellow blazer again.

thaaaat video holy shit ^^^^^

uh yah hillary we have your voting record to prove that people dont always do the right thing

i am shocked and appalled that this photo isnt up on drudge yet - u slippin matt

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/12717/thumbs/r-CLINTON-MOCKS-OBAMA-large.jpg

pathetic.

whoa girl u mad!! i dunno what else she could do at this point other than get really negative, i guess we'll see how that goes. if your opponent has a lock on hope and sunshine i guess that's all you have left? still, it should be yet another lesson: you have to have managerial competence and a willingness to fight as part of your candidacy's values. but that's a baseline, innit -- running on those things as the central plank of your appeal is just not enough for people.

this thread, and my life-world at the moment, is Baraquiste central, so my sense of how turns like the yellow-blazer speech above will play out there in the world are a bit skewed. i can't see it doing her any good at this point.

this thread, and my life-world at the moment, is Baraquiste central

what the hell does this mean?

Loyal Barack Obama supporters not liking Clinton attacks on Barack Obama shocker

i mean, Hil has seemed irritatingly fake to me since the "i ain't noways tired" speech a year ago at Selma, which was like listening to my aunt diane doing a chapelle skit or something... but apparently people liked it! it is a mystery.

xp it means all my political chat these days, online, friends, family, is with ppl strongly pro-Obama. i don't have any contact with people for whom hillary's style is resonating, so maybe i just don't get it.

Loyal Barack Obama supporters not liking lolling at Clinton attacks on Barack Obama shocker

if your opponent has a lock on hope and sunshine i guess that's all you have left?

yeah and the "watch out for false hope" message has really resonated so far

If your opponent has a lock on hope and sunshine i guess that's all you have left?

It's beginning to seem like Hillary & McCain are a divorced couple trying to warn their daughter away from dating some handsome poor loft artist type.

whoa @ snl clips ... weird

Even though I support Obama I think Hillary & her style are just fine. She reminds me a bit of my mom's family. Her amping up the negative is really awful though.

yeah and the "watch out for false hope" message has really resonated so far

-- dmr, Sunday, February 24, 2008 5:07 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Wait til the general election.

i don't have any contact with people for whom hillary's style is resonating, so maybe i just don't get it.

-- gff, Sunday, February 24, 2008 4:59 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

People who like Hillary might be basing their choice on something other than campaign style. It's a possibility you might consider.

her hair?

i don't get the 'she reminds me' thing - she reminds me of, um, everyone i know? her chief problem may be that she adopts different styles willy-nilly. maybe a good executive should be able to do that, but she does it with little finesse, and anyway people expect politicians, who now live in public more than ever before, to present a consistent image/message - in 2008 you can no longer target different groups in different ways, and she's still trying to get away with it.

2008 is gonna be the first presidential election of the youtube era

God, Rodham is like Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People with this shrill "SHAME ON U, OBAMA -- BUSH BROUGHT CHANGE TOO!" hysteria.

lol good comparison

what is obama like

Franchot Tone.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518J3VKY75L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

sorry

gabbneb otm

The negative strategy is a strange about-face from her graciousness at the last debate. I guess the "outrage" about Obama's mailings gave her the pretext to change tactics? Still, the disconnect is odd and hard to reconcile. I suppose at high-profile events, like the debates, she can be gracious, giving her a pathway to standing-down gracefully, but at lower-profile events, like individual rallies in Tx. and Ohio, she can be negative, in a final effort to derail Obama's momentum. Too little, too late on that front, I suspect.

this should give her a bump actually. that and the 'unpatriotic' charges seem to be on a slow burn.

I watched the "Hillary mocks Obama" clip up there, and frankly I thought it was pretty mild stuff. By now I've gotten used to reading about how Hillary has gone off the rails with negativity this time, and then when I watch the clip, it's utterly unremarkable, but I'm still surprised that different people react so differently to her.

Even Wait Wait Don't Tell Me was joking about being sick of hearing about "change" today. It's probably too late for a real backlash though.

also o. nate otm

By now I've gotten used to reading about how Hillary has gone off the rails with negativity this time, and then when I watch the clip, it's utterly unremarkable

Totally agree.