Obama '08?

Foxfyre wrote:

I personally would like to the seethe first woman President of the United States be somebody of Margaret Thatcher's stature and not somebody that half the country does not fully trust or trust at all and/or doesn't like.

I suppose, Thatcher even today is one of the most "controversal" persons in the UK (but although most people didn't like Margaret Thatcher, they respected her). :wink:

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

I personally would like to the seethe first woman President of the United States be somebody of Margaret Thatcher's stature and not somebody that half the country does not fully trust or trust at all and/or doesn't like.

I suppose, Thatcher even today is one of the most "controversal" persons in the UK (but although most people didn't like Margaret Thatcher, they respected her). :wink:

In fact, more than half the country "did not fully trust" Maggie. She first came to power thanks to her Conservatives getting just 44% of the vote in the 1979 elections - which in the British district system, was enough for a comfortable parliamentary majority. In 1983 she was reelected with just 42%, and only then after a hastily executed Falklands war turned around disastrous polling numbers; and in 1987 she was reelected once more with just 42%.

Thatcher probably became both the most loved and most hated British Prime Minister of the last fourty years, and certainly the most polarising one in all that time -- as a result of a far-reaching transformation of the country she pursued without ever having gotten more than 44% of the vote.

So if Fox is looking for somebody who would not divide the country in two opposing halves, Maggie is probably be the last example to follow...

Or is it only the writer pundits commenting on it that think it is 'surprising?' Which might suggest some latent racism on their part that would have nothing to do with why the people are voting in the south.

Foxfyre wrote:

Or is it only the writer pundits commenting on it that think it is 'surprising?' Which might suggest some latent racism on their part that would have nothing to do with why the people are voting in the south.

Well, I was responding to where Georgeob1 said that the "more surprising" thing about these primaries has been the extent to which white voters have preferred Obama, rather than any remaining reluctance to do so. He wrote that this should have been commented on more.

I replied that I've seen plenty of people commenting on how many white voters have voted for Obama, even in the presumably most hostile states, and how surprising/encouraging/reassuring this is.

Now is pointing out that it's "surprising" that Obama got as many white votes as he has an expression of latent racism? I dunno. I dont think George is a racist... :wink:

Oh and there is THIS in the Huffington Post. Does anybody want to accuse Arianna Huffington of being a paid operative of the GOP? Admittedly it was three months ago, but apparently Armstrong Williams didn't make this stuff up.

Obama-Bloomberg '08? NYC Meeting Raises Eyebrows
Marc Ambinder | November 30, 2007 02:13 AM


At 7:45 this morning, Sen. Barack Obama will set vice presidential speculation on fire with a brief stop to say hello to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself an occasional presidential flirt. The meeting appeared on Bloomberg's schedule, which was distributed to reporters last night.

An Obama aide said the meeting was scheduled because of "mutual interest" and did not know whether the two had met before.

If you go on approval ratings, for sure.

Contrast that with Tony Blair and George Bush, both who enjoyed initial great approval ratings? Will either go down in history as among the greats? Probably not.

It is stature I'm looking for. I probably misspoke when I tied that to affection or trust [..]. Walter used a better word. Respect. I would like for our first female President to be somebody that most of the country could at least respect.

Better?

Contrast that with Tony Blair and George Bush, both who enjoyed initial great approval ratings? Will either go down in history as among the greats? Probably not.

Why Obama Is Jay-Z and Hillary Is Cam'ron

Guest poster Adam Leon, co-proprietor of the popular Philly/NYC music blog BadmintonStamps, offers his take on the recent controversey over Barack Obama's alleged plagiarism.

Hillary Clinton's plagiarism ploy brings to mind the classic beef between rappers Cam'ron and Jay-Z. In 2006, Cam'ron released several dis tracks aimed at his former labelmate, the generally unimpeachable Jay-Z. The fracas stemmed from Jay's decision to leave Roc-A-Fella Records for the presidency of another label, Def Jam, a move that Cam'ron, who always played second (or third) fiddle to Jay in terms of sales and esteem, felt disrespected both himself and Jay's former business partner, Damon Dash.

One of the songs Cam dropped was "Swagger Jacker," a seven-and-a-half-minute epic sonic collage sampling instances where Jay-Z "plagiarized" from other rappers. The parallels to Hillary's YouTube dis video are undeniable. Both Hillary and Cam'ron, unable to gain the respect or popularity of their rival, resort to calling their opponent a plagiarist. The arguments are thin at best, although at least Cam included multiple examples. As Noam Scheiber (No'am?) pointed out, almost all politicians bite each others' rhymes, and Senator Clinton is in no way a stranger to the practice. The same is true in hip-hop, where rappers often pay homage to their peers by "borrowing" their lines. This is why "Swagger Jacker" was greeted with a generally tepid reception.

Jay-Z came out the victor in the beef, in part because he reacted with no more than a shrug, refusing to release a response song directly aimed at his foe. Jay was able to position himself as above such childish and desperate mud-slinging, a strategy Senator Obama seems to have successfully, um, borrowed.

--Adam Leon

History may or may not judge him harshly.

As Noam Scheiber (No'am?)

"Clinton campaign argues that Hillary can lift from other people's speeches because her rhetoric isn't as good.

18.02.2008

Obama's "Plagiarism"

Mike and Noam have already done a great job explaining the ridiculousness of the Clinton campaign's charge that Obama plagiarized from Deval Patrick, but I thought I'd add one more point. Obama's already on record as admitting he borrows lines from Patrick (and vice versa).

Stumping in New Hampshire last December, Obama said:

"But you know in the end, don't vote your fears. I'm stealing this line from my buddy (Massachusetts Gov.) Deval Patrick who stole a whole bunch of lines from me when he ran for the governorship, but it's the right one, don't vote your fears, vote your aspirations. Vote what you believe."

(And yet another one for the "No anti-Obama media bias? HAH!" column.)

georgeob1 wrote:

The fact is the overall tendency of white voters in all the primaries so far has been more surprising in their preference for Obama than in any supposed continued racial antipathy. Odd that there has been so relatively little comment on that.

We must have been reading different articles. Perhaps all the commentary I've seen hailing the success Obama has had among whites, especially young whites, was all concentrated in those dastardly liberal blogs I read.

Personally, I agree up to a point - it is certainly encouraging to see Obama getting a large share of the white vote, and even in the South getting double-digit support among whites. Especially encouraging is his success among the youngest voters - about half of white voters aged under 30 voted for Obama in South Carolina, for example, more still in Georgia - not to mention states elsewhere in the country. Such things have certainly been commented (and cheered) on a lot here on A2K too; even just that nugget from SC must have been posted about a dozen times.

To my taste, perhaps even a little bit too much. I mean, it's great that even in the South, the kids apparently have no hesitation voting for a black man anymore (at least not in SC or GA; Alabama was another matter). But I mean - even in SC, Obama got a grand 24% of the overall white vote. OK, back then Edwards was still in the race, so the white vote was split three ways. But in Tennessee and Alabama, he also got just 25-26% of the white vote, and in Louisiana 30%, with Hillary taking a landslide of the white vote in each. Regardless of whether one posits that Hillary won that landslide purely on the basis of her personal appeal, or partly on the basis of being the white person in the race, I dont see a whole lot to celebrate in a black guy getting a quarter of the white vote. I know, I know - Jesse Jackson never even got out of the single digits; all I'm saying is that as long as people think it's "surprising," to use your word, or "encouraging" or whatnot, that a black man can get a quarter of the white vote in a certain state, race is still very much an issue in that state.

sozobe wrote:

(And yet another one for the "No anti-Obama media bias? HAH!" column.)

Eh. Dobbs has always sounded like a hateful idiot to me, from what I read of him. But an anti-Obama bias in the media, overall? Really? Dont tell me you really believe that..

Seems to me like Hillary has gotten a lot harsher a deal from the media, almost throughout the campaign, than Obama. (Perhaps with the single exception of a few months of interval last autumn, at the height of her professional/inevitable stature.)

To me, the complaints from Obama backers about how Krugman, for one random example, is on a crusade against Obama just confirm to me how little they're used to. I mean, he wrote, what?, five columns lambasting Obama's health care plan? How often have Rich and Dowd gone after Hillary in the same newspaper, month after month after month? But thats par for the course apparently.

Obama's still having a clear sympathy edge among the journos, when it comes to the Democratic race. The distaste many feel for Hillary is often palpable.

A few days before Senator Barack Obama swept the Democratic primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, people across the country, picking up their favorite newspaper, were greeted with the following headline:


OLD FRIENDS SAY DRUGS PLAYED
BIG PART IN OBAMA'S YOUNG LIFE

In any event, that's what some readers thought they read. On second glance, they realized their mistake. The headline actually said this:


OLD FRIENDS SAY DRUGS PLAYED
BIT PART IN OBAMA'S YOUNG LIFE

Maybe, though, the mistake wasn't just the readers', especially the bleary-eyed among them who hadn't yet had their morning coffee. After all, it wasn't exactly news that "drugs" had played a part (and only a "bit part" at that) in the adolescence of the junior senator from Illinois. That particular factoid had been on the public record for more than twelve years. And if it wasn't news, what was it doing on the front page of the New York Times?