Obama '08?

He may be a hero in the forests of voters but soon he will have to enter the valley of politics where the arrows are sharp.

Echo that. Its not about 'socially unacceptable' points of view. There are posters who are as conservative as you are, but who do not invite the responses you get. Georgeob1, for example. That should give one pause.

Hell, there have been posters even further right still than you whom I, at least, never had any quarrel with, beyond obvious differences in POV - Fedral, for example. He was rightwing as sin; his politics, to me, were unpalatable - but he had a mind of his own, rarely spouted talking points, came out against the government when questions of conscience came up as well, and didnt fudge or dissemble.

Yep. You're totally right. Especially re 2000.

But even still in 2004 - remember the second and third Bush/Kerry debate? The first one was a disaster for Bush, so he shaped up and the other two were mostly judged to have been ties - with the common take being that Kerry may have argued a bit more deftly and knowledgeably, but Bush came off looking at least as well simply because he once more used that folksy touch. Putting things in the words regular folks do - if you had to invite one of 'em over for a BBQ, one of the standard "analyses" was, you'd choose Bush anyday, and that was one of Bush's prime selling points. There was lots of that.

Foxfyre, if you read this, don't be bothered with this prattle. Sensible people in the real world agree with you. Only the extreme lefties, that hold sway on this forum and therefore think they do the same in the entire country, think you make unreasonable comments. They never prove what they are anyway. They make the accusation, at which time a half dozen chime in to reinforce their delusional leftist thinking.

Barack Obama can be whatever he wants to be

Those who deride Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) lack of experience and criticize the broad generalities and banalities that festoon his best-selling book miss the key point: His inexperience is an asset because he enters national politics as a blank canvas on which he can paint whatever he chooses. With only two years in the Senate, he is less like a politician running for president than like a general ?- think Eisenhower in 1952 or even the abortive candidacy of Colin Powell in 1995 ?- or a businessman, like Ross Perot in 1992.

It's not that he doesn't have a record. It's that the record doesn't really matter because it is so short. His Senate tenure is so abbreviated that he can be whatever he says he is, not just as a political contrivance to get elected, but genuinely to articulate a philosophy and make it his guiding principle both while seeking office and serving in it. He's that virginal.

So far, Obama seems very conscious that his liberal, party-line voting record is not a good foundation for his national ambitions. He seems aware that the country wants more of a post-partisan, embodying the consensus to which Americans have come over these recent dangerous and bitter years.

American politics alternates between periods in which we welcome partisan debate and those in which we demand consensus and conclusion. Confronted by new issues we turn to the left and to the right and ask each side to develop its ideas and flesh out its alternative for our consideration. During these times, moderates and synthesizers are doomed to defeat since they seem to ignore the problem, while polarizing figures take over. But once the debate has run its course, we make our collective national decisions and are no longer in the mood for unending debate. We want our will to be done by our elected officials with no more quarreling or sniping.

Obama has the opportunity to embody the emerging consensus, a broad national agreement reached from observation of trial and error over the past half decade. The bloody futility of our efforts to build a nation in Iraq have left us still committed to aggressive efforts to hunt down terrorists but determined to extricate ourselves from the mire. The effectiveness of our homeland security efforts and our concomitant horror at instances of mistaken imprisonment and unnecessarily intrusive government investigations have led us to demand a balance between aggressive investigation and protection of civil liberties. We want terrorists caught, interrogated, and locked up, but not tortured or sadistically humiliated.

Obama's book reflects an intuitive grasp of this emerging consensus even if his voting record does not signal his agreement with it.

But if the Illinois senator decides to articulate this synthesis, the question will be whether he can find sufficient traction on the center-left to give his candidacy viability. He will have to compete for that ground with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), but her reputation for strident advocacy and take-no-prisoners partisanship will likely give him an edge in going after Bill Clinton's former constituents among the New Democrats. And Obama enjoys an ethnic and demographic base that can augment his converts among moderate white Democrats.

John Edwards, for all of the eloquence of his announcement statement, is ultimately running on the issue of national poverty against a woman and an African-American. That's not going to work. His campaign might have gained traction against another field of candidates, but it is unlikely that he can get it on track against these two particular opponents.

So we wait for Barack Obama to define himself. If he runs to the left, he will be a worthy successor to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. If he runs to the center, he might be a successor to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He might just make it to the White House.

Not at all. The only reason I addressed Snood was to shove my debating morality down his throat. I wanted to make him talk about the issues, rather than about other posters' failure to talk about the issues. So, strictly preachiness and arrogance on my part. No reason why you shouldn't respond as well.


I agree. That's why I edited my post to say "he lost points with me" instead of "he lost a lot of points with me."


I understand -- although we probably disagree about the extent to which a party should preemptively surrender to the Zeitgeist of the day. There was a time when nobody could imagine a governor Ventura, a governor Schwarzenegger, or a governor and president Reagan. Yet these "unelectable" people were elected. There also was a time when Robert Kennedy would have swept the presidential elections, had he not been assassinated. Robert Kennedy was arguably more liberal than Edward Kennedy, and would surely fail your electability test today.

In my opinion, there is a real danger that "electability" filters for the next election turn into self-fulfilling prophesies by which you trade the presidents you want in the long run for the president you think your opponents will settle for. That's why I barely use this filter myself.

I don't know. I think all of the people you mention were, for their time, electable. I mean, that's where the political junkie part comes in, trying to determine what electability really means in that particular political moment. I thought Ventura would win, and I thought Schwartzenegger had a great chance though I wasn't sure. Kennedy was before my time, but he was the brother of an extremely popular and martyred president.

I just think it's extremely bad news for the Democrats to field a patently unelectable candidate, and I think Feingold for example fits in that category, as much as I like him. I wish him well, I don't want him to win the Democratic nomination.

This goes back to the two-party system and problems therein, of course. But in terms of the current system.

Let me add that in terms of "There was a time when nobody could imagine...," there may well come a time when Feingold will be electable and if so I'd support him wholeheartedly -- I just don't think that time will happen between now and 2008. (But I'm open to the possibility.)

I don't know about Feingold, but we can agree it would be bad news for the Democrats if they nominated Al Sharpton. Let's make sure that doesn't happen!

I think Mr. Notso Sharpton would be a great Democratic candidate.

Yes, perhaps he would run against the republican candidate Pat Robertson.

This is from Google and Wikipedia.com

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (black muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District , Kenya , and Ann Dunham of Wichita , Kansas . (white atheist ).

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya . His mother married Lolo Soetoro -- a Muslim -- moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language Obama spent "two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school" in Jakarta . Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school.

Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who migrated from Kenya to Jakarta, Indonesia . He met Obama's mother, Ann Dunham?-a white atheist from Wichita , Kansas ?-at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama, Sr. and Dunham divorced when Barack, Jr. was two. Obama's spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct influence over his son's education. Dunham married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta 's Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world. Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States , Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim.

Cage match!

I'd watch that for a buck.

If his mother is an atheist, he seems as likely to still be an atheist as a Muslim. Have you considered the possibility that he joined this church because he's an atheist and wants to conceal it? (I read somewhere that few Americans would vote for an Muslim president, but even fewer would vote for an atheist.)

Since it's clear to you that Obama's move was tactical, why are you assuming it's a Muslim faith he's concealing, rather than the lack of any faith at all?

He had attended a Roman Catholic school in Indonesia, which makes him even worse. (My primary school was one, too!)

Bummer. No American presidency for you, Walter!

Could you give links to the info you found on Google please? I've just reread the wikipedia articles on Obama and don't find much of what you posted there. I'd like to read the info you found elsewhere in its entirety.

Second that. Makes you think: would a desired candidate really have done much worse than the "electable" candidate the Dem primary voters settled for in 2000 and 2004?

I'll run only after Ahnold succeeded.