Obama '08?

Richardson will be Obama's VP choice.

Wow. What a really, really bad idea.

But for the record: Chuck Hagel did indeed, the other day, laboriously and at length refuse to say if he endorsed "McCain, or anyone".

He was lobbying hard to be Hillary's VP choice. You don't think he burned some bridges?

Bonus odd article:

Post-racial
Even white supremacists don't hate Obama.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
by Michael Crowley

Based on prior observations, it seems quite a bit of the time your lips move -- or your fingers start typing -- you're lying, Chrissee. (And if you want me to remind you that I can prove it, I'm just waiting for you to ask.)

RL's last post appears very reasonable and appropriate.

More oddity in the category, "when a campaign flyer flutters in the wind in Ohio, it can cause a tornado in China" - or Kenya, anyhow:



From: Obama's Kenyan Roots, New York Times, February 24 -- an endearing if poignant report, by the way.

Aaaack.

I'm not so sure about that.

It does make sense -- I don't think it's way out of left field or anything. Richardson has a lot of good experience, including foreign policy experience, and the Latino vote is still a worry.

But I don't think he's the best of the options, experience-wise, and I also don't think the Latino vote is much of a worry in the general election. When Hillary is the other option, yes; when McCain is the other option, no (even given his relatively nuanced stance on immigration). (Interesting article in the NYT today on this question, can get it on request.)

I also think it's too dangerous to have a Black/Latino ticket, as transcendent as both of them have been.

(Why aaaack though, Osso?)

I cant say Richardson impressed me much when he was still running. Seemed like a sympathetic enough guy, but without much of either depth or skill.

Richardson always seems to me to be a grandstanding buffoon, about as sophisticated as cornpone, with the gravitas of Maxwell Smart.

Some things I can't give citations for. So I'll just say he's been a lame speaker repeatedly, in my opinion.

The Latino vote is not an issue.

Republicans... with their immigration slurs and their Spanish is a ghetto language slurs... and the crime slurs... and their Miami is a third world nation slurs... have pretty much given the Latino vote to any Democrat.

You may think that McCain has the best shot at getting some percentage of the Latino vote, but you would be wrong. McCain is still a Republican and he has wasted any goodwill he had from his immigration reform work by dithering. He has been forced to choose between trying to win back a bit of the Latino vote, or to fall prostate to the conservative Nativism at the core of his party. His choice has been to throw away any chance at goodwill from Latinos.

The Republicans have managed to lose the Cubans... who were once one of their most reliable constituencies.

The VP choice of either party doesn't matter.

I will be amazed if McCain gets even 20% of the Latino vote in November.

I agree with snood re: Richardson. I still like him, though-- what can I say?... he's Horatio Sanz.

I haven't followed this thread too closely; have we already shot down Kathleen Sebelius as a possible VP?

[edit]
I agree with snood AND osso!

The Obama campaign picks up an extra delegate - but not without creating some bad blood among its own supporters.

This is too cute! Thanks, for posting it!

:wink:

Now that you mention it, I wouldn't be surprised!

An encouraging story of hope from Texas -- with an Obama angle:



Some Democrats in Texas are daring to dream of the unthinkable - that even Texas, "this reddest of red-meat states", might be in play for November:



And there's the crucial note - who would be better able to help the Texan Democrats with that wave? Hillary or Obama?

I've thought that about alot of candidates, snood, not the least of which are the Clintons, most Democrats in fact. Funny, I don't see Obama that way, but I just disagree with him big time, and he is still an unknown quantity in terms of what he will do, etc.

Obama's Hollow "Judgment" and Empty Record
I expressed the same opinion about why the U.S. should not invade Iraq even before Obama did. Does that qualify me to be president? No! ---BBB

Obama's Hollow "Judgment" and Empty Record
by Joseph C. Wilson
Posted March 2, 2008

Barack Obama argues that he deserves the Democratic nomination and Hillary Clinton doesn't because he possesses superior "judgment," as he calls it, on the key issues we face as a nation. As definitive proof he offers one speech he made in 2002 during a reelection campaign for an Illinois senate seat in the most liberal district in the state, so liberal that no other position would have been viable. When he made that speech, Obama was not privy to the briefings by, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in support of the Authorization of Use of Military Force as a diplomatic tool to push the international community to impose intrusive inspections on Saddam Hussein.

Buzz up!on Yahoo!Would Obama have acted differently had he been in Washington or had he had the benefit of the arguments and the intelligence that the administration was offering to the Congress debating that resolution? During the 2002-2003 timeframe, he was a minor local official uninvolved in the national debate on the war so we can only judge from his own statements prior to the 2008 campaign. Obama repeated these points in a whole host of interviews prior to announcing his candidacy. On July 27, 2004, he told the Chicago Tribune on Iraq: "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." In his book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, he wrote, "...on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried." And, in 2006, he clearly said, "I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of US intelligence. And for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices."

I was involved in that debate in every step of the effort to prevent this senseless war and I profoundly resent Obama's distortion of George Bush's folly into Hillary Clinton's responsibility. I was in the middle of the debate in Washington. Obama wasn't there. I remember what was said and done. In fact, the administration lied in order to secure support for its war of choice, including cooking the intelligence and misleading Congress about the intent of the authorization. Senator Clinton's position, stated in her floor speech, was in favor of allowing the United Nations weapons inspectors to complete their mission and to build a broad international coalition. Bush rejected her path. It was his war of choice.

There is no credible reason to conclude that Obama would have acted any differently in voting for the authorization had he been in the Senate at that time. Indeed, he has said as much. The supposed intuitive judgment he exercised in his 2002 speech was nothing more than the pander of a local election campaign, just as his current assertions of superior judgment and scurrilous attacks on Hillary Clinton are a pander to those who now retroactively think the war was a mistake without bothering to acknowledge Senator Clinton's actual position at the time and instead fantasizing that she was nothing but a Bush clone. Obama willfully encourages and plays off this falsehood.

What should we make of Obama's other judgments in foreign affairs? Take Afghanistan, for example. It has been evident for some time that our efforts there are going badly and that cooperation and support from our NATO allies would be helpful. As chairman of the subcommittee on Senate Foreign Relations responsible for NATO and Europe, Obama could have used his lofty position actually to engage the issue and pressure the administration to take some action to improve our chance of success in that conflict against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Of course, that would have involved holding hearings, questioning administration witnesses, and taking a position and offering alternatives. That is what we expect that from senators in a democracy. It is called oversight.

But, instead, Obama, by his own admission, offers the excuse that he has been too busy running for president to do anything substantive, such as direct his staff to organize a single hearing. "Well, first of all," Obama was forced to confess in the Democratic debate in Ohio on February 26, "I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan." To date, his subcommittee has held no policy hearings at all -- none. At the same time that Obama claimed he was too busy campaigning to do anything substantive, racking up one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, Senator Clinton chaired extensive hearings of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health and attended many others as a member of the Armed Service Committee.

As a consequence of Obama's dereliction of duty on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a feckless administration has had absolutely no oversight as it careens from disaster to disaster in Afghanistan, including the central governments loss of control over 70 percent of the country and yet another bumper crop of opium to fuel the efforts of the Taliban and their terrorist allies. Of course, if you don't hold hearings, conduct oversight, make recommendations or sponsor legislation, then you have no record to explain or defend and you are free to take whatever position is convenient when attacking those who actually did address issues. Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Obama holds forth on Afghanistan, chiding the administration and our allies as though he's a profile in courage and not someone who has abandoned his post in establishing accountability.

On Iran and the question of designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, the junior senator from Illinois was not quite so clever at avoiding taking a position. He first co-sponsored the "Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007," which contained explicit language identifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. He subsequently claimed to oppose the Kyl-Lieberman sense of the Senate resolution proposing the same thing. Obama's accountability problem here is that he didn't show up for the vote on that resolution -- a vote that would have put him on record. Then he declined to sign on to a letter put forward by Senator Clinton making explicit that the resolution could not be used as authority to take military action. All we have is Obama's rhetoric juxtaposed with his co-sponsorship of a piece of legislation that proposed what he says he opposed.

Obama's gyrations on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are not the actions of one imbued with superior intuitive judgment, but rather the machinations of a political opportunist looking to avoid having his fingerprints on any issue that might be controversial, and require real judgment, while preserving his freedom to bludgeon his adversary for actually taking positions as elected office demands. It is hard to discern whether Senator Obama is a man of principle, but it is clear that he is not a man of substance. And that judgment, based on his hollow record, is inescapable.