Obama '08?

nimh wrote:

Also, why is it inherently "difficult to believe" that this 527 wasn't coordinating with Edwards' campaign, because it was run by a former Edwards campaign manager? Former campaign managers have to do something in the next elections as well, and it would stand to reason that they still sympathise with the same guys. Not saying that it shouldnt have raised questions - it's a tricky enough constellation to warrant 'em. But I wonder what your response would have been if, say, Obama's former campaigner from when he was running for Senate was now leading a 527 effort supporting him. I'm guessing it might be similar to what I just wrote.

I didn't have a particular problem with it. I knew about it at the time -- what I've said so far is from my memory of what I read about it when it was an issue (I did look up the former campaign manager part to make sure that was right, it was), and I didn't take it up here, for example. (As in, at the time I didn't say "Edwards is a hypocrite because of this 527 run by his former campaign manager!") I'm just saying that a lot of the criticism I read from Obama and about the situation in general was about the campaign manager aspect. Not the only criticism, obviously.

nimh wrote:

OK, roger. Thanks for the update!

Sure thing.

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I'm liking the YouTube factor by the way! I realize that the audience skews pretty young and therefore probably doesn't reach that many people in the demographics he really needs, but I still think it's a really great way to get the word out in a nice democratic way. If it's interesting, people will watch. If it's not, they won't.

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After this long labourious, tedious years of endurance under out high intellectual compassionate comrade in arms or commander-in-chief
, I appeal to the active participants and passerby visitors of A2K not to wash the dirty linen/history of the future participant of the NEW WORLD ORDER(Change or Hope or both)

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nimh, It doesn't surprise me that Brittany Spears has as much or more pulling power than anybody in our presidential campaign.

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If Brittany Spears runs for president...

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C I
perhaps she has a bewitching smile and penetrating look.
I adore Mother Theresa and i love my wonderful German christian tolent wife.

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nimh wrote:

Butrflynet wrote:
Ah, this is where that stuff about the Vote Hope group is coming from...

More of the same half-truth politics...

http://www.myfoxla.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5613805&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1

Quote:
[..] "The first thing the `Truth Squad' should clarify is how Senator Obama can condemn 527s in Iowa knowing full well about Vote Hope, the 527 helping the Obama campaign here in California," said Luis Vizcaino, the Clinton campaign's California spokesman.

Um. Just because the Clinton campaign commented on it and, God forbid, even used it in the campaign, doesnt need to mean the story is from them. Seems like journalists are surprisingly able of finding out about possible issues like this all by themselves.

Half-truth politics meaning repeating half-truths, reporting and not validating for correctness. You're right, I should have included journalists in that practice of repeating half-truths, reporting and not validating for correctness and made mention of Fox being another Murdoch-owned media entity.

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teenyboone wrote:

eoe wrote:
sad.

Unbeknownst to many, you and I are on the same page! :wink: :wink:
Get it? They're just "itching" for a fight, but the "JOKE" is on them! I'm hear to apologize for calling you names, but I didn't get the nuance, until I looked it up. If you saw the endorsement, our brother received from the Kennedy's, I think, I can deal with any of the "priviledged" white guy stuff, going on in this group. Again, I apologize, for any misunderstanding. PEACE, out!
PS Thanks Glitter! Can't answer private emails. Sorry

and now teenyboone is going to the us versus them speech, privileged white guy remarks... yes indeed... I feel the unity....

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Bi-Polar Bear wrote:

teenyboone wrote:
eoe wrote:
sad.

Unbeknownst to many, you and I are on the same page! :wink: :wink:
Get it? They're just "itching" for a fight, but the "JOKE" is on them! I'm hear to apologize for calling you names, but I didn't get the nuance, until I looked it up. If you saw the endorsement, our brother received from the Kennedy's, I think, I can deal with any of the "priviledged" white guy stuff, going on in this group. Again, I apologize, for any misunderstanding. PEACE, out!
PS Thanks Glitter! Can't answer private emails. Sorry

and now teenyboone is going to the us versus them speech, privileged white guy remarks... yes indeed... I feel the unity....

Obama never promised unity, he just promised to work towards it.

I think that you are habitually exaggerating his position in order to attack it. But in the interests of unity I'm willing to work with you to solve this problem.

Cycloptichorn

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Another interesting item I bookmarked about a week ago - it was interesting to me, anyhow.

The background was this: Krugman slammed Obama (again). Blogger Matt Yglesias responded to defend Barack. But he also sighed that "I'll freely grant that I'm getting a bit tired of defending Obama and his campaign". Why, he lamented, doesnt Obama just himself once and for all deflect these "claims that he is the more conservative choice" in "a clear and direct way"?

That had Kevin Drum, one of my favourite bloggers, observing the following:

Quote:

Believe me, I sympathize. But look: Obama has clearly chosen his course, and there's really no way for him to give a wink and a nudge to folks like Matt and me to let us know that he's just kidding about all this kumbaya stuff. After all, it's part of his whole appeal to both independents and moderate conservatives, and his candidacy depends on that. So if you're a liberal in Obama's camp, you just have to cross your fingers and trust him.

Because in the end, this is what it all comes down to. Is Obama kidding or not? Does he really believe that he can enact a progressive agenda by reaching out to Republicans and bridging the red-blue divide, or is he just saying this as a way of shaping public opinion and winning an election? And if he does believe it, is he right?

As a lot of us point out endlessly, both Obama and Hillary Clinton have very similar views on both domestic and foreign policy. Not identical, but pretty close. So really, the key question for progressives ought to be this: Which political style is most likely to advance the cause of progressivism? The soothing, post-partisan Obama style, or the more directly political Clinton style? Can Obama move public opinion in a progressive direction via stealth? Or will the public need something more? I suspect the latter, and it's the reason I continue to have more of a skeptical Krugmanesque attitude toward Obama than an upbeat Yglesias-esque one.

On a related subject, Matt also brings up the electability argument again, suggesting that Obama is more electable than Hillary against an opponent like John McCain because he appeals more to independent voters. And you know what? My gut agrees. But my gut is a well educated, middle class, politically active blogger gut, and that's a pretty small constituency. I'm the classic "wine track" voter of the kind Obama attracts, and I'm also a strong believer that, recent elections to the contrary, the middle is more important than the base in presidential elections.

So this argument appeals to me. Hillary will draw fewer independents than Obama. She'll probably also draw fewer men. And the fever swamp will go absolutely nuts. (Though whether, in the end, that helps or hurts, is hard to say.)

But in the real world, there are lots of other demographic and constituency issues than that. Hillary's strengths are considerable: She'll draw more women than Obama would. She'll draw more Hispanics. Unless things go way off the rails in the next few weeks, she'll draw 90% of the black vote, the same as Obama. She'll appeal more to blue collar workers and union members. She'll draw more of the white vote. She'll appeal more to moderate hawks. She'll be more immune to attacks based on experience.

The electability question ?- or, more accurately, the coattails question, since I think either candidate can win in November ?- is worth thinking about. And independents are an important part of it. But they aren't the end of the story, and us white, middle-class, well-educated, wine track technocrats should probably keep that in mind.

It's a bit "from the loose pulse" of course, but he really makes two distinct points.

One is about how to read Obama's bipartisanism shtick. This part will probably stick in the craw of some Obamaites, but I've had the same feeling. There's progressives who question how Obama seems to frequently attack his Democratic rivals from the right, and then there are progressives who respond that you have to see Obama's approach in its strategical light. What Obama's learned in his community activism days, they say, is that you first need to create a broad base of support in public opinion, if you are to forcefully push through real progressive programs past the resistance of established interests. So it's kind of like a curveball - while Obama seems to be on the right of his rivals in style and approach, he's really to the left of them (or Hillary at least) when it comes to the political seachange he's aiming for.

I've always felt a little uneasy with this line of reasoning because it's basically all built on personal trust, on just believing the guy enough - but, like I pointed out here before, if you've got people as varied as Snood and O'Bill believing in him, how do you know that you're the one with the right expectations of him?

Anyhow, thats actually the less directly interesting of the two points Drum makes, and certainly the less well worked out. It's the other point that speaks directly to my heart: the hesitations about the width of Obama's (cross-over) appeal. There he makes the point that I've been boringly preoccupied with myself.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Bi-Polar Bear wrote:
teenyboone wrote:
eoe wrote:
sad.

Unbeknownst to many, you and I are on the same page! :wink: :wink:
Get it? They're just "itching" for a fight, but the "JOKE" is on them! I'm hear to apologize for calling you names, but I didn't get the nuance, until I looked it up. If you saw the endorsement, our brother received from the Kennedy's, I think, I can deal with any of the "priviledged" white guy stuff, going on in this group. Again, I apologize, for any misunderstanding. PEACE, out!
PS Thanks Glitter! Can't answer private emails. Sorry

and now teenyboone is going to the us versus them speech, privileged white guy remarks... yes indeed... I feel the unity....

Obama never promised unity, he just promised to work towards it.

I think that you are habitually exaggerating his position in order to attack it. But in the interests of unity I'm willing to work with you to solve this problem.

Cycloptichorn

well he'll have to work a little harder if the tone this thread has taken is any indicator....

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Nimh, if you're interested in reading the letter from Bauer to Phillips, Ben Smith has the pdf of it on his blog at Politico:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/Bauer_PAC_Undermines_Obamas_message.html

or you can just link directly to the pdf here:

http://www.politico.com/static/PPM43_080125_robertbauer.html

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Butrflynet wrote:

Half-truth politics meaning repeating half-truths, reporting and not validating for correctness. You're right, I should have included journalists in that practice of repeating half-truths, reporting and not validating for correctness and made mention of Fox being another Murdoch-owned media entity.

Hm. Well, the place I found the story was ABC News, which in turn sourced it to Politico.

As for half-truths, it's nice that Obama wrote to VoteHope to tell them to stop its activities on his behalf in December already. But - I dont have the exact timeline in my head, but wouldnt that then be around the same time that he was castigating Edwards for having a 527 supporting him in Iowa? Isnt that a bit odd, then, for him to go after Edwards with such indignant rhetorics, when he knew that there was a 527 in California working for his candidacy in the same way, whom he couldnt shut down either?

I mean, I'll readily believe the answer is somewhere in the middle here. Its not as clear to me that it's just all a smearing-by-halftruths by the evil media and Hillary.

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Quote:

I've always felt a little uneasy with this line of reasoning because it's basically all built on personal trust, on just believing the guy enough - but, like I pointed out here before, if you've got people as varied as Snood and O'Bill believing in him, how do you know that you're the one with the right expectations of him?

Trusting him, or trusting the idea that his plan could work?

I don't know Obama personally but I do know that cooperation works as well as contention - if you can motivate people to focus on something other then their differences.

He is getting a good response from it. I watched some CSPAN for a while after the SOTU last night and counted at least 15 Republican callers who stated that they liked Obama's willingness to compromise and would consider voting for him.

Cycloptichorn

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To take just one point for now, have you read my pretty lengthy by this point list of reasons why I think Obama is more electable than Hillary? Finn gave a great response (thanks again Finn!) but I don't think I've seen any response from you.

If you have a hard time finding them back, I'll go ahead and condense them into one (new) post.

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Butrflynet wrote:

Nimh, if you're interested in reading the letter from Bauer to Phillips, Ben Smith has the pdf of it on his blog at Politico:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0108/Bauer_PAC_Undermines_Obamas_message.html

Thanks for the link. Yeah, that's exactly what I meant then. Here, let me get this right:

On December 23, Obama mocked Edwards indignantly over how Edwards wasnt able to shut down an independent 527 run by his former campaign manager that was supporting his candidacy. Note: Edwards had apparently asked the 527 to cease, but it didnt. This is what Obama had to say about that:

"He said yesterday that he's going to ask [Baldick] to do it, and my attitude is that if you can't get your former campaign manager and political director to do what you'd like, then it's going to be hard to get the insurance companies and drug companies to do what you want." [..] "The fact is this is somebody who worked for John Edwards, [..] who's a good friend and colleague of Edwards, who's now running a 527 that is running ads on behalf of John Edwards. [Laugh] You're telling me he has no influence over him? That's not true. [..] "We can't argue on the one hand that we're going to be reformers unless the things that need to be reformed advantage us ?- and then we're less the fighter on behalf of reforms," he said, referring to Edwards, who refers to himself as a "fighter."Right. It's ridiculous that Edwards couldnt shut down a 527 run to support him - yeah, sure, he told them, or wrote them, to ask them to stop, but they didnt listen. Well, if he really wanted to shut down that 527, he could. And if he really couldnt, well then he's not capable of much is he?

Five days later, Obama's campaign itself had to write a letter of its own to a 527 supporting his campaign asking it to stop. To which it didnt listen. And that 527 is still active now.

At the very least, there's been some karma at work here :wink:

Could Edwards have persuaded that 527 in Iowa to shut it already if he had really, really wanted? Could Obama persuade Phillips to shut it, if he really, really tried? One isnt quite on the level of the other - Phillips isnt Obama's long-standing friend, so it would be a little more difficult. But I'm sure if Obama personally called them to plead them to stop, or publicly renounced them, or whatever - well, we never know. All we know is that both candidates did file a formal request to the respective 527s to stop, and both left it at that when they didnt; and that one ridiculed the other for doing it just before it basically had to do the same thing.

Important? Nah, not really, no major big thing. Just a small minus on Obama's scorecard, thazall. But not just all a smear either.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Trusting him, or trusting the idea that his plan could work?

Trusting that when he repeatedly criticizes his rivals from the right, that doesnt mean that he'll be governing to their right, but just that he is trying to create a working majority that would allow him to eventually govern to their left. That's the working theory here, crassly summarised, right?

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nimh wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
Trusting him, or trusting the idea that his plan could work?

Trusting that when he repeatedly criticizes his rivals from the right, that doesnt mean that he'll be governing to their right, but just that he is trying to create a working majority that would allow him to eventually govern to their left. That's the working theory here, crassly summarised, right?

I don't think he criticizes his rivals from policy positions which are to the right of them, but from moral positions - and I don't mean abortion, but a sense that Republicans aren't all wrong and evil all the time. That further polarization of an already polarized country is not going to get us what we want in the long run.

And it makes sense, even if it is hard for a Liberal for me to swallow sometimes. Look at the current group: they have been successful in getting many right-wing things done, but the list of things they have been unsuccessful on is far longer and they have managed to alienate most of the country while doing it. Is that where we want to be in 4 or 8 years? I'd rather see a presidency which focuses on limited achievements then one which over-reaches and ends us back in the minority.

So, I wouldn't necessarily agree with your theory.

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

I don't think he criticizes his rivals from policy positions which are to the right of them, but from moral positions - and I don't mean abortion, but a sense that Republicans aren't all wrong and evil all the time. That further polarization of an already polarized country is not going to get us what we want in the long run.

That, yes, but also substantive positions. His health care plan is undeniably more moderate than those of the others.

And again, in defense one can argue that, well, at least it's feasible, and he'll better be able to actually get a majority for it -- and, really, you can trust that in his heart Obama is at least as progressive as the other two, so as soon as more does become possible he will strive for that, instead.

But then you're down to trust, arent you? Trust that the candidate you're looking at now is just the momentary adjustment to what is considered feasible, but that (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) really, he'll still be the passionate liberal he's been in the Senate as President - just as soon as it's more feasible to do so.

That just sort of reminds me of Bill Clinton anno 1992, whose "Sista Souljah" moments were stoically accepted by the left as just the kind of things you need to do as a left-of-centre candidate to get elected, in the confidence that as President he would still steer the country clearly to the left. But he never did. Did he lack the will, or just the capacity?

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nimh wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
I don't think he criticizes his rivals from policy positions which are to the right of them, but from moral positions - and I don't mean abortion, but a sense that Republicans aren't all wrong and evil all the time. That further polarization of an already polarized country is not going to get us what we want in the long run.

That, yes, but also substantive positions. His health care plan is undeniably more moderate than those of the others.

And again, in defense one can argue that, well, at least it's feasible, and he'll better be able to actually get a majority for it -- and, really, you can trust that in his heart Obama is at least as progressive as the other two, so as soon as more does become possible he will strive for that, instead.

But then you're down to trust, arent you? Trust that the candidate you're looking at now is just the momentary adjustment to what is considered feasible, but that (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) really, he'll still be the passionate liberal he's been in the Senate as President - just as soon as it's more feasible to do so.

That just sort of reminds me of Bill Clinton anno 1992, whose "Sista Souljah" moments were stoically accepted by the left as just the kind of things you need to do as a left-of-centre candidate to get elected, in the confidence that as President he would still steer the country clearly to the left. But he never did. Did he lack the will, or just the capacity?

But, i don't have a problem with Obama's health care proposal. So it's not that I'm trusting him to propose one thing now and do something else later.

One of my Profs. in college called this the 'foot in the door vs. door in your face' theory. Incremental change over time is usually effective in swaying the opinions of others then insisting upon dramatic change.

I don't think that Obama is as progressive as Edwards or Clinton on all issues at all. I just think that his approach will make a better president and lead to legislation being passed!

Cycloptichorn

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