Obama '08?

http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2008/01/rasmussen_obama_up_by_12_in_new_hampshire.php

Update on the earlier poll showing Obama up by 10; today's poll has him up by 12.

OBAMARAMA

Cycloptichorn

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nimh wrote:

snood wrote:
You seem to be asking if there is more 'creative interpretation' going on when people look at Obama, than when they look at the others.

Yeah, something like that...

And although I know Obama's put out a sleigh of concrete proposals too, I do think his - discourse, for lack of a better word - and his political strategies, play into that, or partly lie at the root of it...

and see, I think Hillary is much less specific and open to interpretation...

...so it goes...

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Reagan comparisons are apt (though he is far younger!)

Ah, yes - but Reagan didnt push through the revolution in US politics and the American economy that took place in the early 80s by sitting around the table with all stakeholders.

He laid down the law, made sure that any opposing entrenched interests knew right from the bat that he wouldnt be intimidated into compromise, and forced it through.

Now in the case of Reagan, IMO, the resuls were disastrous. But if you want to effect a similarly structural change in America to the other direction, you can learn a lesson from that.

Who are the presidents of the last 100 years whose policies really effected deep, structural change in society, for better or for worse? Bush did, with his enormous tax cuts for the richest, with the war in Iraq and everything that comes with that; he almost went to work on Social Security too. Clinton didnt - even his most structural achievement, balancing the budget, was reversed within a coupla years. Bush Sr didnt. Reagan did; after just 4 years of Reagan, America was a changed country, for better or worse. Carter and Ford didnt. LBJ tried to do it with the Great Society, but that got lost in the thing that did change America during his term, the Vietnam war. Ike didnt - but Roosevelt sure did.

So Bush, Reagan, Roosevelt - coming from opposite directions, they share one thing: they effected deep, structural change, pushed through a drastic change in course. And two of the three are, justifiably or not, considered Great Presidents for it. How did they do it? By aiming for cautious, consensual incremental change? By opening a respectful dialogue in good faith with all stakeholders, including the most deeply entrenched interests opposing them (say, unions in the case of Reagan, Big Business in the case of FDR)? I dont think so.

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snood wrote:

nimh wrote:
And although I know Obama's put out a sleigh of concrete proposals too, I do think his - discourse, for lack of a better word - and his political strategies, play into that, or partly lie at the root of it...

and see, I think Hillary is much less specific and open to interpretation...

...so it goes...

I guess so...

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I think that there is a certain acceptance among voters that, whatever a candidate promises to do, there are no guarantees once they are elected. There is just no way to know what kind of president you will get until he/she gets in there. So, absent major disqualifying flaws, we find ourselves relying on more ethereal qualities, like hope, inspiration, trust etc...

The fact is, when Hillary makes comparisons between Bush's candidacy and Obama's, as she did last night, she's not completely off. Apparently people were inspired by GW, god only knows how, and so they overlooked obvious gaps in experience and judgment. So I'm wary of making the same kind of misjudgment with Obama. But there are many differences between Obama and Bush. Motivation, belief in our system of government, commitment to public service, intelligence, responsibility and literacy being just a few. I guess what I'm saying in a very round about way is that every election is a leap of faith or a gamble, and so once we've eliminated the most risky candidates, it's ok if we use whatever criteria feels right to make our choice. I'll never get to meet any of the candidates, and I can only assume that roughly half of what they say is the truth. So I rely on my personal impressions, as I did when Bush ran and I got the distinct impression that he was borderline retarded and had absolutely no idea what he was running for.

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Promises are usually not worth the rhetoric, but that's all the voters can listen to from candidates.

What then, can the voters do to base their choice on more solid information about each candidate?

Is there anything that provdes us with a clue before we cast our vote??

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./ Having confessed to not fully getting the Barack Obama phenomenon upon leaving Iowa, I've worked harder to see it in New Hampshire. Here's what I get, three days in:

Obama's up-close-and-personal political charm, even in a huge crowd. When the campaign began, I was pleasantly surprised by how much better at it Hillary Clinton was than I expected. But Obama makes warmth in a big audience look effortless. At today's Palace Theatre rally, before an audience of 900 people, he did something he often does but that I've never seen before: he summoned a young campaign supporter and brought him up on stage to thank him. This time it was Jack Shapiro, his New Hampshire field coordinator, who shambled up the steps, embarrassed but presumably thrilled. "Jack dreams of all of you going to the primary. He dreams of getting all of you to vote for me. My job is to help Jack do his job. So I am going to try to be so persuasive a light will shine on your head: 'I have to vote for Obama!'" Then he thanked his young field coordinator and told the audience "Give Jack a big round of applause." The crowd, packed with volunteers, loved it: They are Jack, and he is them. It struck me that even at the all-volunteer event last night, Hillary Clinton, while gracious, didn't single out anyone by name.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/election_2008/2008/01/06/obama/index.html?source=rss&aim=/opinion/walsh/election_2008

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I think Obama's social skills is a plus, but is that enough?

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Here's a link to the Newsweek cover story on Obama...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/84581

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Thanks Snood. I made reference to it in another thread and meant to provide a link here and got distracted.

What did you think of the debate last night, Snood?

I'll crosspost what I said in the other thread so we don't pollute Nimh's statistics and graphs topic.

-----

Haven't been on the computer yet today, had a lot of storm debris to clean up around my apartment during the lull in rain this morning.

I watched both debates and came away with surprisingly mixed feelings about both.

First of all, ABC sure did a better job of it. Charlie has so much more skill and class as a moderator than George. It is too bad they had to pander to George's ego and allow him to push viewers toward what he wanted us to think about the candidates before each debate.

I really enjoyed the Republican debate and learned a lot about each of them that caused me to change my perception about a few of them.

Ron Paul is in the wrong party. He sounded a lot more like Dennis Kucinich and the others seemed to respond to him that way.

Romney seemed more enamoured with the sound of his own voice than in actually saying anything but the same phrase over and over again as he continuously interrupted everyone else. He's not a good listener.

McCain was a lot more layed back than I expected. I found myself wondering if maybe he was ill.

I enjoyed the fact that they all were allowed to actually talk among themselves with several layers of follow up comments and that Charlie didn't barge in and try to manipulate the interchange.

That's what greatly disappointed me about the Democratic side of the debate. Charlie did not allow those same layers of follow up comments and continually barged in to cut off discussion among any two of them that he didn't orchestrate with his question.

Like Soz, I was disappointed with hearing many of the same catch phrases from all four of the Democratic candidates, Obama especially. He had an opportunity to really sparkle and sounded too exhausted to do so.

I was also disappointed that no one called Hillary on the experience question and asked what she herself had done during those 35 years she claims as her training for the White House.

Richardson seemed to be the Eddie Haskel of the night, saying anything to get on the good side of all three of the others so they'll make him VP. I did like the bit where he detailed his years of actual front line experience after Hillary's tirade about her many years as a candidate's wife.

Overall it was a good debate, a much much better format and moderation than I've seen elsewhere this season. Obama needs to freshen up his mantra a bit. Many people have heard it for more than a year now. He needs to keep attracting that interest with a rewritten version to change things up a bit. It is great that he stays on message, but he's more than capable of rewording the expression of that message now and then. He also needs to take a day and catch up on sleep!

If you haven't seen it yet, Newsweek has a great cover story on Obama.

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AFTER so many years of fear and loathing, we had almost forgotten what it's like to feel good about our country. On Thursday night, that long-dormant emotion came rushing back, like an old dream that pops out of the deepest recesses of memory, suddenly as clear as light. "They said this day would never come," said Barack Obama, and yet here, right before us, was indisputable evidence that it had.

What felt good was not merely the improbable and historic political triumph of an African-American candidate carrying a state with a black population of under 3 percent. It was the palpable sense that our history was turning a page whether or not Mr. Obama or his doppelgänger in improbability, Mike Huckabee, end up in the White House. We could allow ourselves a big what-if: What if we could have an election that was not a referendum on either the Clinton or Bush presidencies? For the first time, we found ourselves on that long-awaited bridge to the 21st century, the one that was blown up in the ninth month of the new millennium's maiden year.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080101faessay87112/michael-d-huckabee/america-s-priorities-in-the-war-on-terror.html

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2008/01/rasmussen_obama_up_by_12_in_new_hampshire.php

Update on the earlier poll showing Obama up by 10; today's poll has him up by 12.

OBAMARAMA

Cycloptichorn

If this holds up, Obama is a shoe-in!

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Don't forget that leading up to the Iowa caucus every single one of these polls was wrong except for the Des Moines Register's poll.

I'm not taking anything for granted. We still have a lot of hard work to do.

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Snood --

Needless to say, you don't have to answer my questions. But the following one does interest me, and maybe you just overlooked it, so I'll bump it for you.

Thomas wrote:

snood wrote:
Meanwhile, this is an article from the NYTimes about how blacks are encouraged and excited by Obama's win...

Are you excited and encouraged by Obama's win? Has it changed your opinion that Americans aren't ready for a Black president?

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"Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters."

Bob Dylan.

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Butrflynet wrote:

Don't forget that leading up to the Iowa caucus every single one of these polls was wrong except for the Des Moines Register's poll.

What do you mean?

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nimh wrote:

sozobe wrote:
I posted this a while back, but I posted a TON of stuff at the same time so I'm not surprised if it got lost... it's not my whole answer to the above but it's a lot of it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html

nimh wrote:
To think that reaching out to national Republicans, beyond the dozen or so usual dissenting suspects, can be done the same way as reaching out to Illinois Republicans - that experience and success in doing the latter is in any way proof of the possibility to do the former - to me seems just incredibly naive. Let alone when you're thinking that you can deal with the insurance companies the same way you'd deal with local business interests.[/list]

Did you read the whole article, though? It wasn't really about reaching out to Republicans per se. That's not why I posted it. It's about how he made something politically very difficult happen.

I thought of it and re-posted it because I think that something very similar could be said about his quest to have interrogations and confessions videotaped as is being said about drug companies, etc. Yeah, right, the police will just lay down and say "Sure, no problem, kneecap my ability to do my job, I don't care." What, he's going to nice them to death?

Quote:
[the bill Obama proposed about videotaping]seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to "solve" crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it.

Obama had his work cut out for him.

He responded with an all-out campaign of cajolery. It had not been easy for a Harvard man to become a regular guy to his colleagues. Obama had managed to do so by playing basketball and poker with them and, most of all, by listening to their concerns. Even Republicans came to respect him. One Republican state senator, Kirk Dillard, has said that "Barack had a way both intellectually and in demeanor that defused skeptics."

The police proved to be Obama's toughest opponent. Legislators tend to quail when cops say things like, "This means we won't be able to protect your children." The police tried to limit the videotaping to confessions, but Obama, knowing that the beatings were most likely to occur during questioning, fought -- successfully -- to keep interrogations included in the required videotaping.

By showing officers that he shared many of their concerns, even going so far as to help pass other legislation they wanted, he was able to quiet the fears of many.

Re: the bold parts...

One of the biggest points I keep making about Obama is that things don't have to always fit in some binary fight or not-fight, nice or not-nice formulation. He's more complex than that... and I like that complexity a great deal.

He didn't roll over. He didn't say "Well, OK, I see your point, forget it." He FOUGHT... in a certain way.

And he won this fight.

Quote:
Obama proved persuasive enough that the bill passed both houses of the legislature, the Senate by an incredible 35 to 0. Then he talked Blagojevich into signing the bill, making Illinois the first state to require such videotaping.

Not an isolated incident, either:

Quote:
Obama didn't stop there. He played a major role in passing many other bills, including the state's first earned-income tax credit to help the working poor and the first ethics and campaign finance law in 25 years (a law a Post story said made Illinois "one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure"). Obama's commitment to ethics continued in the U.S. Senate, where he co-authored the new lobbying reform law that, among its hard-to-sell provisions, requires lawmakers to disclose the names of lobbyists who "bundle" contributions for them.

So that last one is something he's already done in the U.S. Senate, not just at the state level. An this author makes the argument that we shoiuldn't consider it "just" the state level:

Quote:
I am a rarity among Washington journalists in that I have served in a state legislature. I know from my time in the West Virginia legislature that the challenges faced by reform-minded state representatives are no less, if indeed not more, formidable than those encountered in Congress. For me, at least, trying to deal with those challenges involved as much drama as any election. And the "heart and soul" bill, the one for which a legislator gives everything he or she has to get passed, has long told me more than anything else about a person's character and ability.

I've seen that other places, as well. I don't know enough about that to say anything definitive.

But what I think this shows is that Obama is very, very willing to fight for what he believes in -- it's not that he just wants everyone to be nice, and thinks everyone is nice, and walks around surrounded by little animated birdies and cuddly animals.

I don't want a benevolent dictator. I want someone who believes in balance of power, Democratic principles. Bush got a heckuva lot done by trampling on the constitution and grabbing power wherever possible. A president is not supposed to have that much power. I don't want a president with that much power. An actual, Democratic president will have to do a certain amount of negotiating, reaching across the aisle, getting things done. That applies to a whole lot of things besides health care. If he needs to fight the drug companies tooth and nail to get things done, I have no doubt that he will.

Quote:
And Obama went on this theme of optimism and hope about how words DO count, they have an influence, they can get things done, by inspiring people, by bringing people around, by creating new majorities for better policies (as, the implication was, Bill Clinton didnt, Hillary couldnt, and he would).

It was at that point that I blurted out, OK, THIS is why I dont like Obama. He really seems to believe that when he is President, and he is faced with this disciplined, obstructing Republican party in Congress, with the huge corporations governing health care, with Fox News and all that, that he can just bring them round by persuading them. That if you're just a special enough person, if you just have the power to inspire and inspire confidence, if you treat them with respect and in dialogue, you can persuade them to at least co-operate. I think that is so eye-blinkingly naive.

I think I want to comment on that, but I want to figure out which part you mean, first. This part?

Quote:
[Obama:]But what I also believe, if we're going to bring about real change, then we have to bring in the American people. We have to bet on them.

OBAMA: And that's what's been lost. People, I think, feel that they are not heard at all, they are not involved. And the only way we're going to muster enough power over the long term to actually get something done is if we've got a working majority, which is why it's so important...

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/Story?id=4092530&page=3

(By the way, does that quote settle the whole thing about "Obama hates populism, won't have anything to do with it, etc." or do I still have to come back to that? ;-))

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Oh, probably this part

Quote:

[OBAMA:]But we never built the majority and coalesced the American people around being able to get the other stuff done.

And, you know, so, the truth is, actually, words do inspire, words do help people get involved, words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health-care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy.

Don't discount that power.

OBAMA: Because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't.

I'm running for president because I want to tell them, "Yes, we can," and that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.

(I'll wait for confirmation before responding though.)

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Soz and Snood:

My grandchildren who are part African/American are thrilled, but not as thrilled as I am. I wanted to believe this would happen because I know Obama having lived in Hyde Park/Kenwood in Chicago and I know the work he has done and what he is capable of....CAPABLE! HOPE is not just words...Lincoln and FDR had words for us too that were so filled with the promise of change. Even when there were dark clouds on a very vast horizon.

I now really believe he can get the nomination....and I also feel he can win.
Words fail me!

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Hi Vietnamnurse!

It's pretty amazing, isn't it? I'm on pins and needles about NH though. I just can't tell what's going to happen.

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