My little politics blog

Cropped to show us:




:-D


(sozlet's head is barely peeking out over the gate.)

Heh, we're in this one!



:-D


(sozlet's head is barely peeking out over the gate.)

From Texas: Why I Voted For Obama Today
by EmperorHadrian
Thu Feb 28, 2008 at 07:23:44 PM PST
I have spent most of this campaign season supporting Hillary, and critizing Obama. If you don't believe me, read some of my past diaries here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Today I voted in the Texas primary, and I voted for Obama.

EmperorHadrian's diary :: ::
A lot of people here decided to vote for Obama because of an event that occurred. Maybe it was Hillary's Iraq or Iran vote. Maybe it was Obama's 2002 speech, where he publically opposed the invasion. Maybe it was Bill's comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson. Maybe it was Hillary's suggestions that she may attempt to override the will of the voters, and steal the nomination with the superdelegates.

This was not how I decided to vote for Obama. I am very deliberative, and rarely (if ever) make big decisions based off of a single reason or outrage.

...

I then saw two additional occurrences. First, Obama actually tied Hillary in delegates, despite the fact that his focus was on states with a very small number of delegates. Second, Hillary's campaign collapsed and staggered into the post-February 5 states without any plan. In contrast, Obama was now in the middle of a post-February 5 plan that had been long ago decided on.

And then, he started polling much better against McCain than Hillary.

Instead of deciding to vote for Obama then and there, I decided that I was no longer decided. Instead, I was going to wait to see how the other February races went.

And then Hillary continued belittling states (like mine) that are either small, red, caucus states, states with open primaries, or states with high numbers of blacks, affluent voters, or young voters. This wasn't enough to push me to Obama yet.

Then she started losing state after state, making the bizarre excuse that she was losing them because she wasn't competing. The reality was that she wasn't competing because she didn't think she could win. Being broke and without a plan didn't help much either.

She even said that Texas doesn't matter. I assume, therefore, that she won't miss my vote.



...

In the end, everything built up, and finally reached critical mass. I realized that it isn't experience that makes a good president. Compare Nixon with Lincoln. It isn't an understanding of senate procedure that will break a republican filibuster on a national healthcare bill. 60 votes is 60 votes. What can break such a filibuster is having a movement on your side. When Hillary said that it was LBJ, not Martin Luther King, who passed the Civil Rights Act, I agreed with her because she was factually correct. But then I realized that the reality was actually much more complex. There would have been no political desire to pass a Civil Rights Act, if it weren't for Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement.

Hillary has more "experience" than Obama, as does John McCain. The fact that this is her big selling point, means that she could do no more than nullify McCain's advantage on this. She doesn't have any selling point that he doesn't have. Maybe that would be enough for 270 electoral votes. Maybe it wouldn't be.

What neither she nor McCain have, which Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that he does have, is judgment. And I don't just mean with regards to his early opposition to the Iraq invasion. The experience of McCain and Hillary amounts to little more than voting "aye" or "nay". Hillary also does have the experience of being a yes-woman for Bill. But no experience prepares you for the presidency. If it did, Nixon would have been a great success, and Lincoln would have been a failure. George W. Bush should have been a good president, because he had some of the most experienced people in Washington working for him (such as Cheney and Rumsfeld).

No job, other than president, prepares you to be president. And even this isn't completely the case, because second presidential terms are usually much less successful than are first terms. Hillary's claim that we need someone with a lot of experience to defeat McCain doesn't make logical sense, when you consider the outcome of the 1960 and 2000 elections.

Experience isn't what makes a good president. If it was, Joe Biden would be on his way to being elected in November. No matter how experienced you are, you are still ignorant of almost everything. A "foreign policy expert" may know a lot about Iraq, but very little about Russia or South Africa or Tunisia. An "economic policy expert" may know a lot about taxes and the stock market, but very little about mortgage securitization or the bond markets. This is why it takes so much more to be a good president. You have to have judgment, insight, a good learning curve, and a decision making process that does not presume that you are always right.

Hillary and McCain claim to be more experienced than Obama. And yet, only Obama hasn't had a collapse of his campaign at some point. The other two became so hubristic with their own inevitability that they lost touch with reality, and paid for it. Hillary, for example, didn't bother competiting in the caucus states, which is probably what will end up costing her the nomination. After the collapse of his campaign, McCain used federal matching funds as collateral for a loan, which will at least be an albatross of hypocrisy that will hang around his neck.

While Obama has less experience, he has shown the traits that actually make a good president. This is why he is beating Hillary, and why he will beat John McCain.

The McCain campaign dismissed the complaint, but some legal scholars say the issues are not as clear-cut as the Arizona senator says. Although his campaign has not received any government checks, McCain last year used his qualification for matching funds to automatically get on the primary ballots in Ohio and Delaware, instead of taking the time - and expense - of gathering signatures. And in December, when his campaign took out a $1 million bank loan, it cited its eligibility to apply for public matching funds as potential collateral.

Here's an account of the rally yesterday with video.

(We're not in it.)

The Texas papers are reporting today that the Clinton campaign is apparently raising the specter of a lawsuit to challenge the Dem-sanctioned caucuses in the state that will occur on top of the regular primary voting. The motivation here by the Clinton camp is to discount the delegates Obama potentially wins during the caucus portion. Obviously, they are worried that narrow victories in Ohio and Texas will get overshadowed if Obama ends up with more delegates for the night, which is very possible because of his likely landslide win in Vermont and the caucus portion of the Texas prima-caucus. Is the state's delegate-selection process screwy? Definitely. But how does Team Clinton overturn a process that had been approved for quite some time? This would be the third time -- the Nevada caucus sites on the Vegas strip, and Michigan/Florida being the others -- that the campaign has questioned rules that had already been established.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said, "She had her red-phone moment; she had it in 2002," when she and President Bush voted for the war.

The red phone reference is to an ad run by Walter Mondale in the Democratic primary against Gary Hart.

"We don't think the ad's going to be effective at all," Plouffe also said, continuing, "she's already had her red-phone moment… she answered affirmatively" on her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. "She did not read the NIE, so she did not do her homework either."

When asked repeatedly about the ad on the call, Plouffe focused on "judgment."

"Sen. Clinton's red-phone moment in her career was in 2002," he said again. "And she supported the Iraq war, supported president Bush. ... Ultimately an ad like this is going to make people focus on judgment."

Remember: when activists started to push hard to raise awareness of the dangers of torture and indefinite detention, many on the Hill were scared to join the fight because it was then politically unpopular. But to me, if you are not really against torture -- always and under every political change in climate, and let us note that former torture victim and prisoner of war John McCain shamefully dropped his fight against the torture loopholes in the law as well -- then you are not really, in my view, fit to be an American President.

Gender has nothing to do with it. Race has nothing to do with it.

Integrity has something to do with it.

That is why Barack Obama has my vote. Of all the leading candidates, he is the only one on these issues who has consistently acted like a true American.

And if I hear -- as I am likely to -- from legions of US feminists outraged at me for choosing this man over that woman, I will gladly sit down and explain why I am certain that these issues are so urgent that they overshadow absolutely everything else.

Anyway, the man is a feminist; he has a woman-friendly policy vision. And while it would be a thrill to see the first woman elected President, in the last analysis, a real feminist need not define people or support on the basis of gender. Certainly not when our house -- with the precious Constitution held without representation within it -- is burning down.