2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

surely to be followed tuesday night by we won ohio and rhode island dont u see we have the mo now! and thursday morning senator obama ran a great campaign and i look forward to supporting him in the general election

i have no idea if he's going to win ohio (or texas for that matter, polls are tight despite his lead), but is clinton seriously gonna try to get mileage merely if there's an obama non-sweep or tight victories?

surely to be followed tuesday night by we won ohio and rhode island dont u see we have the mo now! and thursday morning senator obama ran a great campaign and i look forward to supporting him in the general election

haha

al qaedeep dish

is clinton seriously gonna try to get mileage merely if there's an obama non-sweep or tight victories?

i don't think her plan is to look as bad as possible so yeah

Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date

lol again w/the caucuses do not count

In New Brunswick there were two unaffiliated chicken carry-outs a block apart called "Picken Chicken."

One of them, angered by the copycatting, had rechristened itself "The Original Picken Chicken"

Democrats, the majority of whom have favored Hillary in the primary contests held to date, have their doubts about Senator Obama and are having second thoughts about him as a prospective standard-bearer.

sounding like the Huckabee campaign here

Hillary needs to go on Tyra.

but she cant play bass :(

So the logic is basically "Obama doesn't have 100% of democrat support, so the candidate with even less support should win"

I take that back -- everyone needs to appear on Tyra.

i don't know where else to post this

http://www.muslimgirlworld.com/

(sfw)

How great would McCain on Tyra be?

i'd love for tyra to say something and he'd laugh his crunchy old geezer laugh and she'd stare at him and say "that wasn't a joke"

obama responds to the new scaaary hillary ads http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/obama_respnds_i_will_never_use.php

its really sort of shocking and refreshing to see what it looks like when a democrat has enough confidence in their convictions to stand up to this kind of bullshit

I said that a war in Iraq would be unwise. It cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars. I said that it would distract us from the real threat that we face, and that we should take the fight to al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

There's your "Democrat war" for the next 4 years, changemakers.

hey one war better than two right!

There's your "Democrat war" for the next 4 years, changemakers.

you would rather not get bin laden?

i.e. I'm all for going after people that actually hit the U.S.

I'm sure occupying Pakistan and Afghanistan can turn into a black hole, too. Obama's "war on terror" figures to be just as endless.

(and, of course, he's not withdrawing from Iraq)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M70emIFxETs

^ lol @ rating

killing real actual alQ dudes is a good thing, imo. babysitting a civil war and paying $200bn+ a year for the privilege is not.

any 'nation building' project in afganistan is probably just as doomed long term as trying to remake iraq

xp "of course"

The Hillary gameplan is to claim victory if she wins Ohio - which she's probably gonna do, by a small margin - and momentum if she wins Texas too.

lol at max

xp: bet, gff?

I think "actual alQ dudes" are frequently going to be identified the way "Cong" were in Vietnam -- if they're dead, they're Cong!

sure, i'll bet. his stated timeline means it'll take what, two years?

how they are identified is sort of not the point -- alQ does exist, still. s

ha whoops

somewhere.

if Obama is smart (and I think he is) he will frame and approach catching Bin Laden and dismantling Al Qaeda as primarily a police/intelligence operation, and not a military one. Indiscriminate bombing and invading with large scale military forces accomplishes nothing and in many ways makes things worse.

Al Qaeda isn't ontological. We're paying lots of Sunnis in Iraq who were once "AlQ" (in Iraq), some of whom will be so again once we stop throwing cash at them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022703842_pf.html

xpost

I'm glad that Obama is highlighting what is so blatantly clear -- that Hillary is trying to win the election with almost exactly the same tactics that Bush and Rove used in 2000/2004 (even in her complain of Obama using "Karl Rove tactics"):

I do want to take a moment to respond, because the press is, I’m sure, curious, to an ad that Senator Clinton is apparently running today. It asks a legitimate question. It says, who do you want answering the phone in the White House when it's 3:00 a.m. and something has happened in the world. It’s a legitimate question. And we’ve seen these ads before. They’re usually the kind that play upon people's fears and try to scare up votes.

I don't think these ads will work this time because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is, what kind of judgment will you exercise when you pick up that phone. In fact, we have had a red phone moment; it was the decision to invade Iraq.
Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer. I stood up and I said that a war in Iraq would be unwise. It cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars. I said that it would distract us from the real threat that we face, and that we should take the fight to al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That’s the judgment I made on the most important foreign policy decision of our generation.

I will never see the threat of terrorism as a way to scare up votes, because it's a threat that should rally the country around our common enemies. That is the judgment we need at 3:00 a.m., and that's the judgment that I am running for as president of the United States of America.

dismantling Al Qaeda as primarily a police/intelligence operation, and not a military one.

Absolutely what it always should've been... and an idea ridiculed by the MSM and all of Washington for 6-1/2 years. And particularly given his historic ascent to the White House, Obama will be expected to do plaenty of bombing to show he's really a president. To take that as anything but a given is Pollyannish.

Obama will be expected to do plaenty of bombing to show he's really a president.

What will he bomb that isn't already being bombed? Do you mean Pakistan or what? Because I don't think anyone would jump the gun like that.

I dunno Morbz I don't see him doing a lot of military chest-thumping

He'll do it with a heavy sigh and "great reluctance," as befits a good self-described Chicago politician.

As for where, a good opportunity always knocks.

Obama's candidacy indicates an exhaustion with military chest-thumping, yes? I've thought it's weird that no one in the MSM says that the "hope" message is basically a sublimated anti-war theme. O's the only candidate with even marginal antiwar cred.

Dr Morbius, I'm all for heavy doses of cynicism when it comes to U.S. politics, but this is just blustering.

Maybe "plenty of bombing" is the wrong phrase; not as much as his predecessor. And that will satisfy the "left."

morbius would you like to actually stake anything on this prediction? right now you sound like don weiner saying he'll bet his balls that giuliani get the nom

is anybody laying claims to Don's balls, btw? does ILX have a trophy room?

whats a wiener without its balls

banned

He'll do it with a heavy sigh and "great reluctance," as befits a good self-described Chicago politician.

What Chicago politicans, machine or otherwise, have done this?

what don't you remember when Mayor Daley bombed Cuba

now we're gettin' somewhere!

Dynastic entitlement, policies that build personal wealth and power, a populism that still negotiates for titans of industry: yeah, Obama is just another cog in that machine.

Sounds like the Clintons to me.

WP: Possible GOP Lines of Attack Against Obama

To me, the standout quote is from HRC's chief strategist, Mark Penn:

"But the truth is, if he is ever in a general election, a lot of positions he took in 2003 and 2004 will come back to haunt him in a big way and a lot of the vetting that didn’t happen will happen. The independent and Republican support that he has had will evaporate really quickly.”

yeah Penn's been real OTM so far hasn't he

no surprise here but I think Penn is full of shit - lol xpost