Obama '08?

That's where the line I mentioned is important, though.

I don't think it's possible to advance in politics while being absolutely above the fray -- I think he's struck a really good balance of responding strongly to attacks and taking advantage of strategic openings without playing dirty. There was SO much gotcha stuff available on Hillary that he never pursued. He'd respond to in-the-moment stuff -- and I think he stayed on the right side of the line in doing so -- but there are so many places he could have gone, for political gain, and didn't.

Interesting analysis by Poblano (FiveThirtyEight stats guy, turns out to do this professionally for baseball stats):

Quote:

Incoming!

Incoming!

It's hard to come up with an objective measure of which candidates are being attacked the most, but this ought to be a reasonably interesting proxy.

I looked at the press releases from five sources: the Clinton campaign, the Obama campaign, the McCain campaign, the RNC, and the DNC, and counted the number of times that McCain, Clinton or Obama was mentioned in the headline of the press release. (For Obama press releases, which tend to have vague headlines like "Barack Obama Statement on Iran", I also counted hits in the press release abstract). Then I sorted the hits by the month of the campaign from September onward.

These figures were tallied by hand and so may be slightly imprecise, but you should certainly get the general idea. Also, this should be obvious, but the idea was to account for attacks only, so I didn't count instances in which say a DNC press release mentioned Clinton, or a McCain release mentioned McCain himself.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/05/incoming.html

Look how little dark-blue is on that chart! And note he's using the same metric you are -- stuff coming out of the campaign, not just what Obama is saying/ doing, himself.

I understand that you're not saying that Hillary and Obama (or McCain and Obama) are equivalent, anyway, but look how UNequivalent that is.

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sozobe wrote:

Quote:

Interesting to see that in May, the Hillary campaign slashed its number of attacks on Obama by two-thirds and doubled its number of attacks on McCain.

There may still be a lot of sound and fury from that camp about the primaries and Michigan etc, but it seems like they know what time it is...

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Yep...

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

McCain has proposed an indefinite stay in Iraq. He hasn't outlined they way in which we will win in Iraq in any way, other then to say 'do what we are doing now.' He has not given any time frame for this to happen in. [..]

And the American people don't want to hear McCain's crap.

Ticomaya wrote:

No ... the left wing of the Democratic party doesn't want to hear "that crap." The left wing of the Democratic party wants to tuck tail and run.

And the left wing of the Democratic party does not speak for the American people.

Wrong. An overwhelming majority of Americans is in favour of a time frame, and opposed to an indefinite stay.

Given the choice of withdrawing as soon as possible, setting a timetable, and the McCain position which Cyclo describes as the crap the American people dont want to hear anymore -- "Keep Troops As Long as Needed" -- just 28% of respondents in a May 8-12 Quinnipiac poll agreed with McCain's position. A full 70% was in favour of at least a timetable.

A CBS/NYT poll from late April shows similar numbers. It asked, "what would you prefer the next president do about the war in Iraq? Would you prefer the next president try to end the Iraq war within the next year or two, no matter what, or continue to fight the Iraq war as long as they felt it was necessary?"

A full 62% said, end the war within two years no matter what, and just 34% said to continue as long as necessary.

It seems the American people have changed their mind about this over the past four years, and you havent caught on yet. The position you describe as that of "the left wing of the Democratic party" is now the mainstream opinion, shared by two-thirds of Americans.

That majority who wants to leave can still disagree, of course, about whether to withdraw immediately or to set a timetable for gradually withdrawing over the course of the next one or two years. But both position stand in stark contrast with McCain's position that the US should stay there as long as it takes to create a stable, pacified and halfway democratic Iraq - something that would take more than a year or two, as even he acknowledges.

This is no fringe stuff - this is what two-thirds of your fellow Americans think. They are fed up with the war. Those two polls I mentioned and USA Today/Gallup and ABC/WaPo polls from April all asked various phrasings of the question, was it a mistake to send troops to Iraq in the first place? Did the US do the right thing in taking military action? Was it worth it? The results are time and time again roughly the same: 57-64% say it was a mistake, it was the wrong choice, you should have stayed out, it wasnt worth it; just 33-37% disagree.

As long as the Republicans keep telling themselves that if only they'd kept spending in rein and stayed good conservatives, they would still be keeping control of Congress now, they're liable to lose.

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Are you saying, nimh, that two thirds of Americans are now out-of-the-mainstream America haters with a left wing bias? Wow.

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Robert Gentel wrote:

sozobe wrote:

They didn't lie, they didn't make anything up -- they went ahead and drew the press' attention to stuff from third parties (Olbermann). This is substantially different from Hillary's mailers re: his "present" votes on abortion issues in the Illinois State Senate, for example. (Mailers -- he's anti-abortion. Reality -- many of the "present" votes were strategic, and he did so at the request of abortion-rights groups.)

But Hillary isn't running on being above this kind of gotcha politics. Obama attacked others politicians for "gotcha" politics but doesn't refrain from playing the same game. He makes appeals for unity after friction his campaign actively propagated, in this case off of the "gotcha" politics he promises to "change".

Obama will play dirty with the best of them, his short political history is already full of great strategic, and sometimes dirty, moves. And I wish he'd truly take the higher road he professes to because his campaign depends on selling his character and judgment in lieu of experience.

FINALLY! I won't speak for Bear, but this is EXACTLY my understanding of what he has been trying to get at here all of this time. Obama claims to be above... but in the end...

The line between the response to what is an attack or isn't an attack, what is just truth and what is a misunderstanding, what is by association or what is a planned attack, has never been more obvious to me in politics than this year. One gets a pass, the other cried on purpose as some twisted political ploy.

I've tried to stay out of all of this. I've been too angry for my own good over the past 8 years as I've watched EXACTLY what I saw/felt/"knew" would happen during the '00 and '04 campaign come to fruition. I'll vote for the Dem nominee in November just because the stakes are too high, and I really do not have a preference between Obama and Clinton. But, don't think for one second that one is any "cleaner" than the other. Obama and his campaign people know EXACTLY what they are doing.

Bear and I have practically perfected the good cop/bad cop approach. Whether it's a solicitor, teacher, client, doctor... We automatically know which one is supposed to speak and when. If I came home complaining about something at work, Bear would tell me what he would do (which usually included things like "kick ass" etc) and then add "That's what I would do, but you need to do it your squinney way." I'm sure over the years, you have picked up that we have different approaches to things. Laughing

My point is, that we may be saying the same thing, mines just "nicer" and less in your face.

The whole Obama / Clinton thing is the same way. Clintons approach is percieved as "in your face" and political and Obamas is being percieved as diplomatic and nice while they are BOTH playing politics.

If an attorney (Clinton) tells a client they do not have a case and explains why, the client may get defensive, claim some kind of personal slight, storm out of the office bound and determined to make sure none of their friends ever go to that attorney. But, the same information coming from a sympathetic paralegal (Obama) can be taken as truth. Do you think the attorney and paralegal didn't already discuss which one should talk to the client based on their knowledge of the client?

Obama knows his client just as well as Hillary does.

Just as there were little things I couldn't quite put my finger on with Bush, I have radar going off about Obama. Most of that is fueled by the lack of real scrutiny and continued (wrong) perception that he is different and will bring change.

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squinny, Your last paragraph pretty much sums up how I've perceived the democratic battle for the white house. Obama is still a huge question mark in my mind, and am unable to put my finger on it.

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Squinney writes

Quote:

Just as there were little things I couldn't quite put my finger on with Bush, I have radar going off about Obama. Most of that is fueled by the lack of real scrutiny and continued (wrong) perception that he is different and will bring change.

So Obama is a politician just like everybody else. This is true. He might be more clever in using surrogates as attack machines so that he can appear to be 'above the fray' and not compromise his unruffled, classy demeanor. But of course you are right that he is in no way above the fray, but then nobody is so that in itself is not a damning characteristic.

There are many of us who think the 'lack of real scrutiny' is obscuring the fact that Obama puts his pants on one leg at a time just like other guys do. His messianic rock star image has to be carefully groomed and protected. As the John Fund piece I posted recently illustrates, Obama has to be carefully scripted as his terrific image erodes when he speaks more extemporaneously. You can get a pass with the 'what I really meant' tactic only so often and can expect the people to overlook shifts in position for political expediency only so many times.

We can honestly attach a lot of negative adjectives to Hillary, but she is a known quantity. She lacks some of Obama's more attractive qualities and is guilty of most of Obama's faults except one. She is transparent and he is not. Transparency is a very good thing in an elected leader.

It is for that reason that I would prefer Hillary to be the Democratic candidate. We are unlikely to have any unpleasant surprises and there is always a chance we could be pleasantly surprised.

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Obama has made some policy speeches during the campaign, and I sometimes wonder if his speech writers actually read any of the speeches he gives.

For instance, during his 2004 Senate campaign Obama declared that it was "time for us to end the embargo with Cuba.... It's time for us to acknowledge that that particular policy has failed."

But in a speech he gave in Miami recently he said...

Quote:

So, does he favor ending the embargo or not?

Personally, I favor ending the embargo.

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nimh wrote:

It seems the American people have changed their mind about this over the past four years, and you havent caught on yet. The position you describe as that of "the left wing of the Democratic party" is now the mainstream opinion, shared by two-thirds of Americans.

Here's the thing, nimh ... I don't buy a lot of what the polls are saying, much of the time. You might recall -- but I wouldn't fault you for not remembering -- that prior to the last US Presidential election, I was discounting the polls foretelling Bush's demise, pointing out that the only poll that counted would take place in November. And I'm rather sure you were touting said polls as indicating the feelings of the "American people" prior to the election, if memory serves. You might have tried to tell me the "American people" don't want Bush to be re-elected. If not you, there were certainly plenty of others doing that.

But we both know the results of the final poll, don't we?

Now, because Iraq remains an important issue in the election, if the "American people" choose to not elect McCain, I would take from that that a majority of American's would be happy with the leftist "tuck tail and run" philosophy, since they must know that's what they will get with Obama. I wouldn't be pleased with that outcome -- setting an artificial timeframe is not the right approach -- but the majority is not known to always do the right thing, as I'm sure you will agree. It would really be a sad turn of events if the "American people" feel confident in Obama as Commander in Chief. But Cyclops does not speak for the "American people" any more than you or I do.

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Ticomaya wrote:

nimh wrote:
It seems the American people have changed their mind about this over the past four years, and you havent caught on yet. The position you describe as that of "the left wing of the Democratic party" is now the mainstream opinion, shared by two-thirds of Americans.

Here's the thing, nimh ... I don't buy a lot of what the polls are saying, much of the time. You might recall -- but I wouldn't fault you for not remembering -- that prior to the last US Presidential election, I was discounting the polls foretelling Bush's demise, pointing out that the only poll that counted would take place in November. And I'm rather sure you were touting said polls as indicating the feelings of the "American people" prior to the election, if memory serves. You might have tried to tell me the "American people" don't want Bush to be re-elected. If not you, there were certainly plenty of others doing that.

But we both know the results of the final poll, don't we?

Now, because Iraq remains an important issue in the election, if the "American people" choose to not elect McCain, I would take from that that a majority of American's would be happy with the leftist "tuck tail and run" philosophy, since they must know that's what they will get with Obama. I wouldn't be pleased with that outcome -- setting an artificial timeframe is not the right approach -- but the majority is not known to always do the right thing, as I'm sure you will agree. It would really be a sad turn of events if the "American people" feel confident in Obama as Commander in Chief. But Cyclops does not speak for the "American people" any more than you or I do.

"Tuck, tail and run philosphy?" How about the survival of the US? We can't continue to spend 12 billion dollars every month on and endless Bush war while our economy tanks further down the sewer. Nobody has yet delineated what "success in Iraq" is or when that might happen. Maybe you haven't noticed, but our military is stretched to bare-bones, and most of the new recruits have criminal records. One third of those who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan come home with mental problems, and many committ suicide.

How much more sacrifice are you willing to provide from others that you yourself refrain from?

I wouldn't want any of my children, relatives, or friends to give their lives for a cause that's open-ended like Iraq.

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It's bad enough our own country's infrastructure, schools, and hospitals are going bankrupt, while more Americans continue to lose their jobs and homes.

My choice is to bring our soldiers home from Iraq on a fixed timeline, and let the Iraqis take full responsibility for their own country.

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David Axelrod ("The King Maker"), Chief Strategist for Barack Obama -- "Axelrod's Obama"[/url]

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Ticomaya wrote:

nimh wrote:
It seems the American people have changed their mind about this over the past four years, and you havent caught on yet. The position you describe as that of "the left wing of the Democratic party" is now the mainstream opinion, shared by two-thirds of Americans.

Here's the thing, nimh ... I don't buy a lot of what the polls are saying, much of the time. You might recall -- but I wouldn't fault you for not remembering -- that prior to the last US Presidential election, I was discounting the polls foretelling Bush's demise, pointing out that the only poll that counted would take place in November. And I'm rather sure you were touting said polls as indicating the feelings of the "American people" prior to the election, if memory serves. You might have tried to tell me the "American people" don't want Bush to be re-elected. If not you, there were certainly plenty of others doing that.

But we both know the results of the final poll, don't we?

cnn.com

Quote:

Bush was ahead of Kerry among likely voters 52 percent to 44 percent in the Gallup poll conducted September 24-26, 2004

As usual, Ticomaya presents an alternative view of reality.

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Roxxxanne wrote:

As usual, Ticomaya presents an alternative view of reality.

You present an alternative view of reality every day, Chrissee.

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Ticomaya wrote:

Here's the thing, nimh ... I don't buy a lot of what the polls are saying, much of the time.

"Much of the time" usually meaning, "when I dont like the results". :wink:

Ticomaya wrote:

You might recall -- but I wouldn't fault you for not remembering -- that prior to the last US Presidential election, I was discounting the polls foretelling Bush's demise, pointing out that the only poll that counted would take place in November.

Problem with that. Those polls foretelling Bush's demise never did so to anything like the extent we're talking about here. Throughout 2004, the polls were close -- very close. And from the Republican convention onward, Bush was actually ahead.

I know - I was tracking the polls back then here as well. Look at these graphs. From January through August, every ten days, I calculated the average of all the polls that matched up Bush against Kerry. Then from September on, I did it every week.

Look at the top graph for what those averages looked like (the graphs below show the results by individual pollster). Not once, not a single time period, was Kerry ahead in the average of polls by 4% or more. The best he ever did was in July, when he led Bush by an average of 3.7%.

3.7% - that's the equivalent of Kerry 51.5%, Bush 48%. The race was close; the electorate evenly divided.

Now back to the subject at hand. In these polls about Iraq, on the other hand, as you can see, we're talking about majorities of two-to-one disagreeing with McCain. And we're talking about 60% vs 40% majorities thinking the war was a mistake to begin with.

Now polls can fail to call a close race correctly, for sure. But if the polls are consistently showing a 60:40 or 70:30 majority -- not just one poll, but a whole consecutive series of polls, by different pollsers -- really, you can trust the majority is real.

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nimh wrote:

As long as the Republicans keep telling themselves that if only they'd kept spending in rein and stayed good conservatives, they would still be keeping control of Congress now, they're liable to lose.

I read Frank Rich just hours after I wrote that...

Quote:

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Those same polls have been 60+% for about two years now. Hard to believe that ALL of them are wrong.

Cycloptichorn

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Some people have a difficult time with truth when it disagrees with their own beliefs.

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cicerone imposter wrote:

It's bad enough our own country's infrastructure, schools, and hospitals are going bankrupt, while more Americans continue to lose their jobs and homes.

How is it the govts fault if someone loses their home because of their own bad decisions?
Before you get your panties in a knot, I know some have lost their homes thru no fault of their own, but I am talking about the people that bought homes they couldnt afford, or those who took out mortgages they couldnt afford.
How is that the govts fault?

Since when does the govt decide who works or who doesnt?
If the govt should make sure that people work, should the govt subsidize buggy whip makers so that the people that make them dont lose their jobs?
What about the people that lose their jobs because of their own incompetence or because they dont deserve to keep their jobs?
Should the govt force companies to keep those employees?

Since many hospitals are "for profit" businesses, should the govt step in and take all of them over?
Schools are a local concern, not the feds.
If your local school district cant take care of their schools, then you need a new school board.

My choice is to bring our soldiers home from Iraq on a fixed timeline, and let the Iraqis take full responsibility for their own country.

OK, what timeline?
And if once we start withdrawing our troops, what do you do about all their equipment?
Its easy to say "bring the troops home", but it then takes weeks or months to get all of the equipment back.
Who will stay and protect that gear?
Will they be allowed to defend themselves?
And will the soldiers leaving Iraq be allowed to defend themselves if attacked?

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