Heh!
Pretty much. :-)
(And if you are really into it it's terribly exciting!) (Never said I wasn't a dweeb.)
Obama (from what little i have seen) would get my vote.
However I suspect Joe public would vote Hillary as a safer option.
I don't think your a dweeb.
Soz, I just found your thread. I am interested that you reacted the same way as I did to Hillary's "experience" which seems pretty unremarkable for a presidential candidate.
Did you read the piece by William Crystal in the NYTimes a few days ago, called "The Democrats' Fairy Tale"? He stirred up a hornet's nest of commentary and many of the letters were bickering about the surge. Now I see that Obama is being criticized for saying he wouldn't have voted for the war in 2002 and 2003 while now he has voted in the Senate to support bills to fund the war.
The Iraq invasion can be seen as akin to the situation of a woman who gets pregnant because of an ill-considered, and life-changing, error on her part. She decides not to add a second mistake to her first and dedicates herself to carrying the baby to full term and then bringing it up as best she can.
We who opposed the war in every way available to us might have added a second mistake to our Administration's awful first error by continually demanding that US troops be withdrawn from the chaos created by our invasion. It might seem illogical to some observers when legislators who opposed the war from the beginning vote to continue payments for ammunition, armor, and support to protect our soldiers on the ground, but their actions are the only reasonable ones under the circumstances. Their votes are not inconsistent with their unsuccessful attempts to stop the war before it began
If -- sometime down the line and perhaps many years hence -- we can rally assistance from our own countrymen and from abroad in overseeing any kind of stability in Iraq, then we will be as lucky as the woman who gave birth to that child if she can somehow rally support from family, friends, or institutions whose warnings she previously eschewed. Until we get that lucky, we'd better stick to the path that is becoming every day more painfully difficult than any of the "visionaries" could have imagined and try to raise this child as best we can.
Hi Kara! Welcome.
I like your metaphor re: Iraq, and I agree that not wanting the war to start at all but wanting to fund it once it's started are consistent positions.
I just saw Hillary say someplace, again, that Obama had promised not to vote to fund it -- I'd seen that debunked somewhere but I don't remember where. (Maybe I posted it here? I'll go back and look, just here for a second now.) Anyway, that's a note to myself to keep an eye out for the debunking if I haven't already posted it.
Interesting article about Michelle Obama here, although it repeats the weird assertion that her "ain't no black people in Iowa" comment is, ya know, not completely accurate.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/barackobama/story/0,,2243386,00.html
OK, I looked back through and the debunking thing isn't here. Shoot. Will keep an eye out for it, or for any repetitions since Hillary seems to keep hitting that point (that Obama promised not to fund the war if he was elected, which doesn't seem to be the case).
This wasn't what I had in mind but seems a bit more thorough yet:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/01/6786_desperate_in_nh_1.html
Quote:Yesterday, in an interview with CNN, Clinton said:
If someone is going to claim that by their very words they are making change, then if those words say... I'm against the war in Iraq and I'll never vote for funding and then, when they go to the Senate, they vote for 300 billion dollars' worth of funding [for the war], I think it's time for people to say, "Wait a minute, let's get real here." There's a big difference between talking and acting, between rhetoric and reality.
Just this week, when I was asked, would I have voted for the $87 billion dollars [in a war funding], I said no. I said no unequivocally because, at a certain point, we have to say no to George Bush. If we keep on getting steamrolled, we are not going to stand a chance.
Is it possible to read that statement as a promise never to vote for Iraq war funds? Not by any reasonable interpretation. In fact, during Obama's Senate campaign, he explained his opposition to this particular war funding bill in detail. From a September 29, 2003 Obama press release:
Obama challenged the Congress to 'stand up to the misplaced priorities of this Administration' by delaying the $87 billion for Iraq until the President provides a specific plan and timetable for ending the U.S. occupation, justifies each and every dollar to ensure it is not going to reward Bush political friends and contributors, and provides 'investment in our own schools, health care, economic development and job creation that is at least comparable' to what is going to Iraq. 'It's not just Iraq that needs rebuilding. It's America, too,' Obama said.
I looked at the quote [you cited]. He was clearly speaking about the $87 billion package. But what Sen. Clinton told CNN was that Obama said, "I'll never vote for [Iraq war] funding." He doesn't say that in the quote. Was she accurately quoting him?
I received no response.
As Hillary Clinton was leaving Dover, I attempted to put the question to her. She had just finished the interview with Fox and another with a local station. Inside the gym, I was two feet away from her. "Can I ask you one question about Iraq and Senator Obama?" I inquired. She looked at me for a nanosecond and walked away.
During her speech to supporters at Dover, Clinton said, that it's important to disseminate information on all the candidates "so voters can make a well-informed decision.... I will do whatever I can to make sure voters have the information they need." But ascertaining that this information is accurate is apparently not on her to-do list.
sozobe wrote:sozobe wrote:It occurred to me that it would allow Hillary to brush off a loss in SC as an unfortunate result of that unfortunate race row that wasn't even her fault, WHILE scoring long-term points by making Obama the black candidate, bouyed by black voters, and scaring off some white votes. And very handily shunting aside the inspirational, WOW aspect of an Obama win in SC. Just the race card, that's all.
Another way to put it:
Quote:Okay, let him carry South Carolina, as long as he is tagged with Afrocentrism.
http://cdobs.com/archive/our-columns/why-the-clintons-play-the-race-card706/
First paragraph from a news item in the Boston Globe:
Quote:Hillary Clinton's support among black Democrats has cratered as racial politics emerged in the nomination fight, a new poll suggested today.
As opposed to "Barack Obama's support among black Democrats has surged as his win in Iowa and close second in New Hampshire demonstrated his ability to win."
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/01/clinton_loses_s.html
Obama wrote:Just this week, when I was asked, would I have voted for the $87 billion dollars [in a war funding], I said no. I said no unequivocally because, at a certain point, we have to say no to George Bush. If we keep on getting steamrolled, we are not going to stand a chance.
He said no before he said yes
I don't think so -- he wasn't in the U.S. Senate yet at that point.
This seems to be the transcript of the interview Crouch links to (YouTube):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21771034/
This is an interesting article. Some good insight from David Axelrod, I think:
Quote:"We came into New Hampshire on a high," said David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser. "The iconic rallies, combined with the polling, conveyed a sense that we were taking it for granted. She [Clinton] looked like she was working for it, scraping for it." He added, "This is a long process, and this is how you learn."
I also tend to agree with this:
Quote:Watching the new course Obama has taken, some campaign insiders like to think the New Hampshire loss was not the worst outcome for a candidate who is relatively new to the national stage, compared with Clinton, and followed a relatively easy path to the Senate. Had Obama won in New Hampshire, said one prominent Democrat, he might have become the prohibitive favorite for the nomination, "but he wouldn't be ready for the general election, he wouldn't be ready for the White House."
Well not so much "wouldn't have been ready" as "will be more ready as a result of this than if the path to the nomination had been a cakewalk."
The article also has a pretty good collection of debunkings -- what Clinton alleged vs. the truth. (For example the mailings about Obama voting "present" on some abortion votes indicating that he was iffy about abortion rights, while Pam Sutherland, head of Planned Parenthood in IL said that the votes were a purposeful strategy; ""The facts are the facts -- he helped us with a winning strategy.")
"When Attacked, Obama's Now Hitting Back"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/18/AR2008011803765_2.html?sid=ST2008011900229
My concern -- rock and a hard place. Clinton keeps up the steady barrage of attacks -- whether they're true or not -- and Obama has to keep staying above the fray or else respond. The problem with responding is that it becomes this whole "they're squabbling" thing, with too many voters reacting as if it is something coming from both of them equally.
How about if Edwards wins Nevada (I'm not going so far as to predict but I'm really not ruling it out) and then Clinton trains her sights on him...
Sozobe, I'm pasting this in its entirety because I find often that links to WSJ pieces don't work.
I often disagree with Chris Hitchins but he's always a good read.
The Perils of Identity Politics
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
January 18, 2008; Page A13
Let us give hearty thanks and credit to Rudy Giuliani, who has never by word or gesture implied that we would fracture any kind of "ceiling" if we elected as chief executive a man whose surname ends in a vowel.
Yet actually, it would be unprecedented if someone of Italian descent became the president of the United States and there was a time -- not long ago at that -- when the very idea would have aroused considerable passion. Now that it doesn't, is it not possible to think that that very indifference is the real "change"?
I recall thinking, when Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman on a major-party ticket in 1984, that she would also, if elected, be the first vowel-ending Veep. Indeed, in San Francisco for the Democratic convention that year, I listened to the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti muse over drinks on the possibility of a future Cuomo-Ferraro "all wop" ticket.
The fact that these were now joking words and not fighting words struck me as happily suggestive. (I also thought that a President Walter Mondale would be a very high price to pay for having the first female vice president, and that President Mario Cuomo would be an even higher price to pay to prove that we no longer held any rooted prejudice against the descendants of Mediterranean immigrants.)
People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of "race" or "gender" alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.
Madeleine Albright has said that there is "a special place in hell for women who don't help each other." What are the implications of this statement? Would it be an argument in favor of the candidacy of Mrs. Clinton? Would this mean that Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama don't deserve the help of fellow females? If the Republicans nominated a woman would Ms. Albright instantly switch parties out of sheer sisterhood? Of course not. (And this wearisome tripe from someone who was once our secretary of state . . .)
Those of us who follow politics seriously rather than view it as a game show do not look at Hillary Clinton and simply think "first woman president." We think -- for example -- "first ex-co-president" or "first wife of a disbarred lawyer and impeached former incumbent" or "first person to use her daughter as photo-op protection during her husband's perjury rap."
One might come up with other and kinder distinctions (I shall not be doing so) but the plain fact about the senator from New York is surely that she is a known quantity who has already been in the White House purely as the result of a relationship with a man, and not at all a quixotic outsider who represents the aspirations of an "out" group, let alone a whole sex or gender.
Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like "a plantation," adding in a significant tone of voice that "you know what I mean . . ."
She did not repeat this trope, for some reason, when addressing the electors of Iowa or New Hampshire. She's willing to ring the other bell, though, if it suits her. But when an actual African-American challenger comes along, she rather tends to pout and wince at his presumption (or did until recently).
Here again, the problem is that Sen. Obama wants us to transcend something at the same time he implicitly asks us to give that same something as a reason to vote for him. I must say that the lyricism with which he does this has double and triple the charm of Mrs. Clinton's heavily-scripted trudge through the landscape, but the irony is still the same.
What are we trying to "get over" here? We are trying to get over the hideous legacy of slavery and segregation. But Mr. Obama is not a part of this legacy. His father was a citizen of Kenya, an independent African country, and his mother was a "white" American. He is as distant from the real "plantation" as I am. How -- unless one thinks obsessively about color while affecting not to do so -- does this make him "black"?
Far from taking us forward, this sort of discussion actually keeps us anchored in the past. The enormous advances in genome studies have effectively discredited the whole idea of "race" as a means of categorizing humans. And however ethnicity may be defined or subdivided, it is utterly unscientific and retrograde to confuse it with color. The number of subjective definitions of "racist" is almost infinite but the only objective definition of the word is "one who believes that there are human races."
For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my "race," unless I was permitted to put "human." The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put "white," which is not even a color let alone a "race," and I sternly declined to put "Caucasian," which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King's campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you "black."
I remember going to several of the mass events generated by Colin Powell's memoirs a few years ago, and being very touched by the eagerness with which young and old "white" people hoped he would give them the chance to elect (what would in fact have been) our first West Indian president. It was all book-tour hype as it turned out -- I could have told you that then -- but now it has resurfaced in a similarly naïve way.
Not to dampen any parade, but if one asks if there is a single thing about Mr. Obama's Senate record, or state legislature record, or current program, that could possibly justify his claim to the presidency one gets . . . what? Not much. Similarly lightweight unqualified "white" candidates have overcome this objection, to be sure, but what kind of standard is that?
I shall not vote for Sen. Obama and it will not be because he -- like me and like all of us -- carries African genes. And I shall not be voting for Mrs. Clinton, who has the gall to inform me after a career of overweening entitlement that there is "a double standard" at work for women in politics; and I assure you now that this decision of mine has only to do with the content of her character. We will know that we have put this behind us when -- as with the vowel -- we have outgrown and forgotten the original prejudice.
Mr. Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of "No One Left To Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton" (Verso, 2000).
One more spare thought -- as I research more of these allegations and find the fact-checks, I get more and more impatient with Hillary. A lot of them could conceivably fall in the "honest mistake" category -- something looks bad in some way and her campaign doesn't know all of the details and makes a mistaken but understandable misreading -- but so many of them have already come up and have already been debunked, but she just keeps on saying it.
Interesting, Kara. I'm not sure I agree with this, though:
Quote:What are we trying to "get over" here? We are trying to get over the hideous legacy of slavery and segregation. But Mr. Obama is not a part of this legacy. His father was a citizen of Kenya, an independent African country, and his mother was a "white" American. He is as distant from the real "plantation" as I am. How -- unless one thinks obsessively about color while affecting not to do so -- does this make him "black"?
He's American. He listened to his high school basketball coach call an opposing team "niggers," and explain why that was so. He "is" -- in the sense of what he looks like -- black. That gets reactions on a day-to-day basis in America, still, whether it's in terms of hailing a cab or electing a president.
I don't think anyone doubts that, Hitchens notwithstanding, there ARE people in America who won't vote for Obama simply because he's black.
And that there are black people who don't want to vote for him because , based on their own experience, they don't think there is any way that America will elect a black president; or that if a black president is elected, he'll be assassinated soon enough.
That's what Michelle is asking people to get over. I think that's valid.
You'll be interested in this one, Soz.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/18/trying_to_heal_a_rift_in_new_h_1.html
An excerpt:
Trying to Heal a Rift in New Hampshire
By Alec MacGillis
Three New Hampshire Democratic leaders who signed a letter two days before the state's primary at the request of Hillary Clinton's campaign, attacking Barack Obama as soft in his support for abortion rights, are asking Obama supporters in the state to put the rifts of the primary campaign behind them and praising Obama for being "strongly pro-choice."
Of the two dozen prominent women who signed the critical letter, e-mailed by the Clinton campaign to a list of supporters and undecided voters, three have now signed their names to another missive asking abortion rights supporters in the state to come together and take comfort in the fact that all of the Democratic presidential candidates are firmly pro-choice. One of the three Clinton supporters went even further, saying in an interview Thursday that signing the letter attacking Obama was a "mistake."
Katie Wheeler, a former state senator, said the Clinton campaign had not given her background information about Obama's record on abortion rights when it asked her to sign the letter calling him weak on the issue, and said that, as a result, she did not understand the context of the votes that the letter was attacking him over.
"It should never have gotten to the point where anyone thought Obama was not pro-choice," said Wheeler, a founder of the New Hampshire chapter of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "I don't think the Clinton campaign should have done that. It was divisive and unnecessary...I think it was a mistake and I've spoken to the national [Clinton campaign] and told them it caused problems in New Hampshire, and am hoping they won't do it again."
Soz
I thought you were one of the people on this site whose word could be believed but when I went to your site I found that it wasn't fact check but a political ad posted by someone who is a Obama supporter. I went to fact check to verify the article and couldn't find it there. When I tried to access your political article I couldn't get it up again. Strange.
