2008 Primaries Thread 3: The Rejecting and Denouncening

Don't shit where you eat, Hillary.

gross

Though the past few weeks have been painful (I haven't been around these parts much because I made a conscious decision not to follow the primaries so closely anymore), I think at the end of the day everybody looked at the turnout they were getting for these other primaries, looked ahead to the GE, and decided it would be better to let voters in these states feel like they had their say, even though Hillary can't win. If it's a done deal, why not let Pennsylvania vote? Of course I'm in the "McCain has no chance in hell" camp.

Despite the best efforts of the national news media, this protracted nomination process is good for the Democrats - the news that's being made, the speeches being given, are all about Democratic issues - that's where the conversation is, where the "center" os the debate is - health care, getting out of Iraq, etc - and McCain's going to have to address those issues or swiftly be deemed irrelevant

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2008-04/37983329.jpg

Red Johnson (Laurence Fishburne) is one week away from retiring from the Secret Service when...

WAHT

http://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/041908DailyUpdateGraph1_trew634.gif

That's unfortunate.

Wait a second...hold the phone!

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t214/ZachRScott/gallupjk.jpg

the gallup lol

its a shop lol xp

the news that's being made, the speeches being given, are all about Democratic issues - that's where the conversation is, where the "center" os the debate is - health care, getting out of Iraq, etc - and McCain's going to have to address those issues or swiftly be deemed irrelevant

i don't know, it looks like the issues are more like, which democrat is more Out Of Touch With America -- the radical muslim black nationalist who wants to raise your capital gains taxes, or the shrewish millionaire conniver who everyone hates? and how badly will either get beat by a Real American like john mccain (who was being tortured for his country while the clintons and obama's black panther/weather underground buddies were destroying america)? i'm not saying that reflects what anyone really cares aobut or what is going to actually happen in november, but that's what the campaign coverage has sounded like recently. the democrats are not setting the agenda; the whole agenda seems to be, who is most vulnerable to the Republican Attack Machine? (the Republican Attack Machine seems to have migrated from being something the republicans sort of try to downplay to being a gleefully acknowledged and shame-free fixture of the political landscape. nobody ever talks about which republican will be most vulnerable to the Democratic Attack Machine.)

so no, i don't really think this thing is helping the democrats much at this point.

is vulnerability (or not) of democrats to the republican attack machine the foremost thing on voters' minds though? it's not for me. i think that's a kind of obscure inside-baseball angle. i'm as interested in how the national political media in the us covers these things as anybody, and the stories they tell certainly have a lot to do with how people conceptualize the candidates - and it's unquestionably true that these stewards of our national discourse would rather get given a cuban necktie than report on substantive differences in policy proposals, but the fact is that mccain has no ideas - none - and while he does get to "swan around looking like a statesman" (-- jeremy paxman) while obama and clinton land blows on each other, the steady drumbeat of news and polls ever since mccain clinched the nomination has been on democrats, their issues, in nevada, mississippi, texas, vermont, all over the local papers and in peoples' conversations. when the focus snaps to the general election, how can the republicans help but look bad? a $600 bribe check every year isn't going to cut it.

i agree with all of that. but as that debate showed, there's a disconnect between the things on voters' minds and the day-to-day obsessions of the campaign coverage (and therefore of the campaigns). on the issues the democrats obviously have the opportunity to set the agenda this year, and maybe that will be true if/when the campaign ever becomes about the "issues." but getting to that point is going to take a lot of fighting by the democratic ticket to keep the whole thing from being about imagined or real "republican attacks."

i mean, i saw larry sabato on cnn yesterday outlining in detail a weather-underground attack ad that he imagines the republicans would run against obama. this ad doesn't even exist, and sabato more or less acknowledged it would be distorted and unfair, but he enthusiastically described what a 30-second spot would look and sound like, right down to the wording. it pretty much illustrates that josh marshall post that was linked up above: the media has so much absorbed the gop viewpoint as part of the landscape that the "attack machine" practically doesn't even have to attack anymore; everybody just imagines what it will say and do. (and of course hillary's campaign has been doing this for months now too. the republicans will say this, they republicans will say that, booga booga booga!)

meanwhile their chosen candidate remains a blubbering old sack of nonsense who has absolutely nothing relevant and very little that's even comprendible to say on any of the issues whatsoever

see also ...

xpost: right right, but look, this is what's in the news in april. ok, april is still early. but it's not that early. there seems to be an assumption that at some point all this silliness will stop and we'll get to the real campaign where the democrats will have a massive edge. but this is the real campaign. just like al gore inventing the internet was the real campaign. we're in this weird meta-narrative where the actual campaign might never happen, or might be so marginalized by the campaign about the campaign (who's "shaping the storyline," who's elitist, who's doing the best job of courting the media) that the "issues" never really come into focus. obviously settling on a democratic candidate would help, but it's not like all this other stuff is going to suddenly disappear. in the most likely scenario at the moment, the mccain campaign just takes the baton from the clinton campaign and obama's still answering questions about his pastor in october.

ok maybe not "most likely," but at least a possible scenario. and then the analysis in november seamlessly becomes how the democrats never managed to "break through" all the "distractions," without anyone having to take responsibility for how those "distractions" became something that couldn't be "broken through." the media will say they were just reflecting the campaigns, the campaigns will say they were just reflecting the media, and pious columnists will write columns about how democrats just don't get the values of real americans.

yeah but I'm talking about voters, not the msm and definitely not bloggers

if the debates leading up to november never rise above the last one and the msm narrative remains as stagnant as you describe, if our electorate votes to that narrative, I wouldn't worry too much, because it just confirms that we have effectively absolved our franchise, and I'm too tired to tell america that's a bad idea

well there is part of me that wonders if a 70-yr-old white guy with no ideas is actually a more honest representation of america '08 than a pioneering first-black-guy or first-woman president with at least a few new ideas.

but yeah, i don't know. i wish i had the self-control to not pay attention to any of it for about 3 months and then see where things stand.

(or even the option to not pay attention to it, since i'm surrounded by it at work every day)

tipsy, shut up and watch those scintillating geniuses David Axelrod and whoever HRC's new campaign advisor is "debate" on Tim Russert's show.

i'm actually watching mccain on stephanopoulos. god help me.

That's just wrong under any circumstances.

argh. mccain's playing the weather underground thing. ok i'm done with this.

My mom, on Thursday, wanted to know precisely who was giving the orders to stitch up Obama on Wednesday. She thought he coped well enough regardless of this and that Wright is still worse, much worse, in her mind than Ayers. Obama the candidate will win our state easily *unless* McCain picks our governor for VP, at which point her GOP vote might matter because MN is the capital of voting for the local guy riding shotgun regardless of party.

My feeling is that Obama is actually the cleanest candidate on offer for some time so like a fresh new shirt, any 'stain' is exaggerated. I think his campaign might have to say that this isn't going to be about wives, preachers (notice how they are 'ministers' when they're white, like Hagee) or casual acquaintances, because Americans tell them over and over that they are sick of seeing elections played out at this level. There was already a high interest and attendant ratings when the coverage was genuinely more issues-based and when it hasn't been, the public have complained if it stretches past a news cycle.

One thing the regular media could do to save our collective sanity, however, is to vet their comments sections and not post any of the incoherent, misspelled variety, just to raise the bar a bit. It's not like they run this shit in Letters to the Editor - those communications have to adhere to standard written English, whatever is said. Why not in other places where the public contribute?

I... no words...

http://i26.tinypic.com/mjbmlt.gif

lock thread

that is one of the most perfected animated gifs I have ever seen

well there is part of me that wonders if a 70-yr-old white guy with no ideas is actually a more honest representation of america '08 than a pioneering first-black-guy or first-woman president with at least a few new ideas.

America: A 70-Year-Old White Guy With No Ideas

http://media.gallup.com/poll/graphs/042008DailyUpdateGraph1_rn3w9kl2as.gif

dont worry i have located the latest gallup poll

thank god

sweet relief

TS: margin of error vs. statistical insignificance :\

51:40 was a nicer pic.

xpost they're both great

too close to call. +/- 3 pts means we can't tell to closely what's been going on for the last coupla days.

The one thing we can point out as being consistantly redemonstrated w.r.t the matchup polls with mccain is that something is seriously fucked with his coverage. I.e. the dude who wants massively unpopular occupation forever and another four years of dubya everything is matching up stats-even with the two folks who _don't_ rep for the 26-percenter bullshit.

It reminds me of nothing so much as when Lakoff writes about talking to one of the main guys behind Reagan's first campaign; voters didn't support jack shit what the candidate was for, they just really wanted to vote for the dude who had been sold to them.

I mean, nothing new here; packaged candidates and simplistic narratives beat out everything every single time in the Modern Era, even with plenty of people completely cognizant of the process as it occurs each time round.

my opinion on this primary has taken a turn from wanting what i think is best for the country to wanting what i think is best to make gabbneb look like a flippant dick

FT endorses Obama; meanwhile shock and surprise that flippant dickery contained in hypocriticism.

Reagan's first presidential campaign, that is

It's been really clear from the start that McCain will invoke Reagan all the time; he wants to sign bills with some old Bic given to him by the Gipper. WHAT EV ER. Obama is doing a reverse-Reagan but he is running a judo campaign in lots of ways - it will become very boring to the electorate to see the admiral's grandson go on about elitism when so many are sick of family privilege allowing candidates to even run in the first place.

McCain's numbers are so strong right now because Dems are still in FITE! mode. That's all there is to it.

Whatever the polls say now I simply cannot see McCain winning. Basically, the economy will get worse and Iraq will get no better, and that is a fatal combination for McCain. No troop reduction is planned before November; McCain has made his open-ended commitment to Iraq plain and inescapable; and a deepening recession will turn the occupation into a huge economic issue, over and above all the other issues that surround it. McCain won't be able to survive that.

"Flippant dickery" = best phrase I've heard this year

ILX alum weighs in. http://imomus.livejournal.com/368458.html

Your turn, Darnie11e. ;-)

i'm stil O.O re: dusting shoulders off

he is such a mack

countdown to fake right-wing outrage over obama's "coded reference to a song by controversial gangster rapper and former drug dealer jay-z." followed by burst of blog posts and op-ed columns explaining the history and sociology of brushing your shoulders off, plus assorted defenses of jay-z the entrepreneur. chris matthews: "yeah but he's using this kind of, ok, you know, urban gesture, and how does that play to all those guys in the bowling alleys? lot of rap fans there?" rush limbaugh: "gangsta candidate barack obama..." clinton operative: "you can just imagine the republican attack ad, showing obama brushing his shoulders off combined with, you know, scary images from violent rap videos..." tim russert: "let's talk about shoulder-gate..."

lolololol pitch perfect manufactured mathews quote!

yep