In what is being widely acclaimed as a gracious and effective concession speech, Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed Sen. Obama, on Saturday. In the most telling words of her speech Sen. Clinton said, “You will always find me on the frontlines of democracy”. The frontline for Hillary, has for sixteen months, been the fight for her own candidacy; now she is trying to explain to her supporters that the general election is the new frontline, and Obama the best hope for progress for the issues that she has fought for all these years.
Hillary Clinton is a good senator and a historic candidate. There are those things that she holds sole responsibility for. It was she who recalled sniper fire in Bosnia; it was she who seemed to diminish the accomplishments Martin Luther King; it was she who trusted George W. Bush on Iraq. These things played a role, but much of what has been so widely criticized about her campaign, in deed much of what led to its downfall, was not of her doing. Her advisers, particularly Mark Penn, gave her terrible advice. Her husband at times lots his temper at any challenge on the extent of his administrations accomplishments or more often stole the show when the focus should have been on the Clinton who was running for the highest office. (President, not God)
Perhaps it is not the best thing for women’s equality that the first woman president also be the wife of the former Commander-n-Chief. Perhaps it is not wise to run as the inevitable incumbent nominee in a “change election” when the sitting president is the most unpopular in generations. Perhaps a big state strategy doesn’t make a lot of since when the democratic primary contest is won on delegates that are distributed proportionally. These are the flaws that have undone the campaign, but they are not Sen. Clinton’s alone, and they are not reflections of a bad candidate, or a bad legislator.
Saturday’s concession speech was that of a woman who knows that her political future is still promising. Describing the impact of her campaign on women around the nation she said that while she had not broken the highest of glass ceilings she had put eighteen million cracks in it, referring to her number of votes. As Barack Obama said in his victory speech this past Tuesday, when our nation finally secures healthcare for all of its citizens, Hillary Clinton’s name will be on that project.
The coming opportunity to achieve universal healthcare along with so many other progressive initiatives has called Clinton to this moment. In pointing to the fact that democrats have only won three out of the last ten elections she urged her supporters to seize the moment and win back the White House for the Democratic Party. And in her concession speech she not only endorsed Obama but even implied that the whole Clinton family was standing with her. Back in January in South Carolina at a campaign event for his wife, Bill Clinton spoke with me about how he hoped he might get a chance to vote for Obama someday, now they both will get their chance.
It was announced on Wednesday that Caroline Kennedy, Daughter of J.F.K., will be one of three people who are heading up the search for Obama’s VP. This reminded me that when G.W.B. was the republican “presumptive nominee’ back in 2000, he put former Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney in charge of finding a VP, he would of course eventually suggest himself.
Despite the buzz, Hillary Clinton seems a very unlikely choice because of Bill Clinton if for no other reason. As big of a figure as Obama is, even he could find himself being overshadowed by the former president, whose political judgment seems to be past it’s prime, and who has shown himself this primary season to be impossible for even his wife to control.
Look for someone with executive experience, so a governor is better than a legislator, since being governor is like being the president of your state. When you’re running against John McCain having someone with military experience could sure help. Also given Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign and the left over rifts in the “traditional democratic alliance”, maybe Obama should consider a Woman for VP. Also the Obama team has to think about swing states, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, someone from these states could tip the election his way. Along with all of that you have to think about the well healed notion of a balanced ticket, so if you are from Chicago (/Hawaii/Indonesia/Kenya/Kansas) then having a southerner would make a lot of since.Now it might be true that no single person can satisfy all of those needs but you can be sure whoever is chosen will address some of these issues.
It was announced today that MassachusettsSenate elder Ted Kennedy who suffered a seizure last week has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of Cancer that will require radiation and chemotherapy. As Madam Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday, Ted Kennedy has always been a fighter for the poor, for his constituents, and now it is widely expected he will fight this disease as well. Kennedy survived the assignation of two of his brothers to launch a daunting and eventually unsuccessful attempt to unset the sitting president Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Party’s nomination in 1980. A complicated and nuanced man of privilege and tragedy as the Senator faces treatment courage is an attribute that he will not lack..
To some he is almost a cliché politically. His name, a well understood reference to an ideology that has turned into a straw man or an icon, depending upon whose mouth it has come from. But the surprising truth is that in the senate Kennedy is known as someone who was often wiling to work across the partisan divide with republicans, perhaps most notably, with John McCain on immigration reform. Many in the senate who disagree with his politics count him among their friends. Earlier this year, the Senator took a politically difficult stand to support Barack Obama’s candidacy in January before anyone else of his stature got of the fence..
As the Senate second longest serving member with 46 years, Ted Kennedy is looked to by every democratic senatorial candidate not only as a pillar of American politics that connect us to our collective past, but also as a model of what can be achieved in the chamber.As MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said, “He is one of the greatest senators in American history.”.
Ted Kennedy known to be a night-owl and a drinker has been described, notably often by his political opponents, as a profoundly decent man with a giant heart. Through out the day, congressmen and staff have been speaking of his attention to the personal details of life that make him so special to the people who know him. His Charm and his wit have been sighted regularly, but more often his thoughtfulness. More than one Washington insider described today Sen. Kennedy’s having called them in the past with recommendations of doctors and specialist when they had be diagnosed with health problems.
Coursing throughout all the anecdotes is awareness by Kennedy of the subtle and graceful language of the politics of the everyday interactions in our lives. The picture that emerges is of an expansive twinkle-eyed gentleman that, while complicated and flawed, possesses an essential commitment to the statesman’s application of friendliness otherwise known as lost art of diplomacy. Given that politics is known to be such a dirty business we should be grateful that any well intentioned people are willing to wade it to it at all. Considering the price that involvement in American politics has exacted from his family and his unwavering and longstanding commitment to public service, partisanship aside, we should all be especially thankful for this man. A New Day Post asks all readers to keep Sen. Kennedy and his storied family and many friends in your thoughts and prayers.
What many will remember as Ted Kennedy’s finest moment, his eulogy of his brother RFK, and his speech to the 1980 democratic convention
Civil unions, yes, equal protection under the law, yes, hate crimes legislation, yes, equal employment grantees, yes, but sex changes for children, that’s where I draw the line. And on the other side of that line is Dr. Norman Spack, a Boston area pediatric specialist who has opened a clinic for “trans-gendered children”.
This story makes me feel like Rush Limbaugh or worse Michael Savage (the most hateful pundit I could think of) . So maybe I should offer the disclaimer that I am a ‘bleeding-heart’ leftist when I comes to economics and taxes and war vs. peace. I tend to line up with San Franciscans when it comes to natural selection vs. intelligent design, and climate change, and stem cells research, and a woman’s right to choose. I like polar bears. I was against the war ‘from the beginning’ (1990). And I think Al Gore won in 2000. But this is where I and many of my lefty friends part ways.
Only a completely negligent and wholly unfit parent would consider allowing a seven year old child, who probable can’t decide on green or purple as a favorite color, to make a life changing and irreversible decision about altering their gender. While ‘open minded’ parents may think they are doing the ‘enlightened’ thing by ‘empowering’ their children to make ‘out side of the box’ (pun intended) choices, in truth they are engaging in the most irresponsible of activities.
This is another example of what plays out all the time in American house holds (starting with the boomers) where people treat their young children and sometimes pets as if they are their equals, who just need a little love and understanding. But that’s not what a parent is, I should say, that’s not all that it is. Even the smartest most mature child, can never make an adult decision. They don’t yet understand the stakes they are playing with. And for the record, most pets i know do a very poor job of distinguishing food from poop, and little kids arnt much better. A little gidance is what is needed.
Being a man or a woman involves respectively, challenges and privileges that no seven year old can understand much less evaluate. How can a prepubescent boy decide that he doesn’t like having male genitals if he has yet to put them to their sexual purpose? Do they show that Paris Hilton video before the little guy gives the final ok? No they don’t because it would be illegal to show a minor anything so depraved (wonderful), but he can give consent to have is gender changed? Now wait, I know what many of you are thinking, this is the perfect justification for sex with little boys, and I’m quite sure that this justification will eventually be sited by the well known radical pedophilia lobby, but keep your priest’s robes on for now, that is not what I am suggesting here. I know this might sound crazy but what if decisions about changing one’s gender were made only by people who are old enough to understand at least what the word gender means?
To go a step further perhaps towards provoking those few who still may have other wise been on my side I will say this: a child is not a medium upon which to paint one’s own political or social message for the world, how ever impressive those views maybe. To be completely honest, I don’t think it’s even a good idea to read “Cindy has Two Mommies” to grade school kids. In my estimation a prepubescent child only needs to be instructed on the concepts of private areas and abuse, until such age that they are sexual active and or reproductively viable, which ever comes first. At which point I tend to jump ship with the conservative, who until this point might have been with me, and say that teenagers should be encouraged to consider the varied routs to sexual literacy, including but not limited to the Kama Sutra as well as a traditional education about contraception and STDs, and hopefully a less dogmatic and more progressive conception of the intimacy and ecstasy of the celebration of their (adult) sexuality.
What’s more, I confess a fear that in some cases, the desire of homosexual couples to raise children in the first place, has less to do with providing what may well be a loving family environment and more to do with a need to normalize the parent’s lifestyle and seek the societies approval vicariously through a child who the parent imagines will be harder for others to reject than them selves. Unfortunately it is most often not true that people will be more accepting of any young person who is confused about their gender roles.
We should be simultaneously working to fight homophobia and discrimination, and also telling young people the truth about the difficulties facing an openly gay person in our society, to say nothing of the trials of a closeted or otherwise contradictorily oriented person (transgender, bisexual, etc). In this as in any struggle for growth as a society we must never use human beings, in this case children, as merely a means unto an end, however noble we may imagine that end to be.
Some in the media call it a split decision but on the whole, Tuesday was a win for the Obama campaign. With his 14% point victory in North Carolina, Obama won the considerably bigger state by the considerable bigger margin, over performing the polling going in to the vote that had suggested a Clinton surge. The importance of this contest was not lost on Obama; in his own words, North Carolina is a “big state, a swing state, and a state where we will compete in November, if I am the nominee.” Obama’s total vote count from both North Carolina and Indiana was 1,506,557 to Hillary Clinton’s 1,296,194 which breaks out to 54% to 46% in favor of Obama and a net gain of about 13 pledged delegates.
Since the Iowa Primary, there has been this huge story that everyone could see coming like a ripening fruit hanging low in American springtime. And while this story is bigger than much of what has been in the news, few have been willing to write what has now become clear: in the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination, the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, has defeated the inevitable Hillary Clinton. It is one of the greatest upsets in the history of the Democratic Party, but out of respect the media has, for the most part, gone along with the narrative that this was a photo finish contest. Now the facts and the numbers are laid bare. After North Carolina and Indiana, more uncommitted super delegates are up for grabs than total remain pledged delegates in the states yet to vote. That means that the ground war of this nomination race is over.
With the guilt by association argument played out, only the ‘big state’ argument is left. This is where the Clinton campaign says that her wins in California and New York primaries show that she is stronger candidate against McCain in the big states that a democrat must carry to win the White House. That argument may fly on the street but it will never work with the well informed party insiders to whom it is now being pitched. The super delegates understand that those big states aren’t up for grabs in 2008. Hillary is saying that only she can win California? Dennis Kucinich could beat John McCain in California and New York this year.
Now that the ‘kitchen sink’ has been emptied and with so few states left to vote, the only remaining path to the nomination for Clinton evolves the so-called ‘nuclear option’ which is a cocktail of Obama character assassination and an insistence on changing the rules to included the votes in the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries. To carry the metaphor further, for Clinton that ‘nuclear option’ path involves mutually assured destruction and a generational setback for the Democratic Party. As Rachel Maddow said tonight on MSNCB, all Hillary has now is “a post-rational approach to getting the nomination”.
Rumors swirled Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning of a 5-15 super delegate rollout today by the Obama campaign, what is fact is that Hillary Clinton has canceled a planed whirl wind of morning show appearances today. Talkingpointsmemo.com is reporting that Clinton is in fact canceling all public events Wednesday. The Campaign is said to be in finical peril and there is speculation that Hillary has again loaned money to the campaign. In her victory speech in Indiana, however, Hillary reassured her supporters and the nation that, “No mater what happens [she] will work for the nominee for the Democratic Party.” Perhaps these are signs of things to come.
Whether Hillary Clinton’s coming exit from the race is graceful or not, focus must turn to the general election contest that now finally begins to take form. In Raleigh on Tuesday Obama said of that coming contest and the dirt that remains to be slung, “The question is not what kind of campaign they will run; it’s what kind of campaign we will run”. Obama is calling his supporters, many of them new voters, to a new kind of campaign and to this point they have responded.
Strangely, going into the vote in the democratic primary in North Carolina, the last of the “big states”, the talk is all about issues. In an attempt to recast herself as a populist Hillary Clinton has found her self in what might have seemed far fetched circumstances only a few months ago. The New York Senator has called Barack Obama an elitist and sought to contrast herself; recently pumping gas with and blue collar worker who gave her a lift on his morning commute. In an irresistible photo opportunity, the multitasking Clinton road shotgun in the pickup truck while conducting a telephone interview and waving to cameras.
Now the ‘rural voter debate’ (media echo chamber) is centering the question of a summer holiday from the federal gas tax.The idea that was originally put forth by John McCain now has Hillary Clinton’s Support. Obama though says that the gas tax break is a political gimmick that will actually make the problem worse. The experts are on Obama’s side but in this debate the poorest voters might be on Clinton’s, which will surly serve to reinforce the argument that Obama is an elitist. But is standing on principle and telling the truth more elitist than cynically pandering to the people who have got the least time to try to figure out what is in their long-term economic interest?
There is wide ranging consensus amongst economist and pundits, that the saving to the consumer would be minimal, in the range of about 30 dollars across the three month tax break. That is, if the price of gas stays the same, however it is likely that the savings would just be passed to the oil companies who could just raise the prices and who would surly benefit from increased demand. The real solution to the rising price of oil (which has in the last few minutes reach 120 dollars per barrel for the first time) and its effect on our weakening economy, is for our nation to have an energy policy that focuses on new technologies and renewable resources and an end to our dependency on Middle Eastern oil. That is the only thing that will ever solve this long range and fundamental problem that poses a real and present threat to our national security, environmental conditions, and national sovereignty.As for your 30 dollars, Obama has for some time called for a broad middle class tax cut, and currently supports senate plan for a second and more robust economic stimulus package.
Obama was against invading Iraq because he understood it would take our eye off the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Get your “If you want to catch Osama you’ve gotta vote Obama” bumper sticker here! Send an email to Chris@anewdaypost.com with your mailing address and the number of stickers you need!
This should add the all important radical-libertarian-constitutional-internet-fringe. I for one think that if we get to a point where Ralph Nader and Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan and Denis Kucinich all agree on Obama’s candidacy then he has to be the guy, or maybe that should disqualify him, (Isn’t this like one of those books that Thich Nhat Hanhwrites about how Jesus and the Buddha are really getting at the same thing?)
On April 6th, while speaking to a group in San Francisco, Obama made comment about the tendency of working class rural voters to distrust Washington to such a point that their political allegiances tend to be formed on the social issues, religious values, or the 2nd amendment, rather than on economics. The result of this phenomenon is that struggling white families in the rust belt, or in the south, often vote against their own economic self-interest.This is how people with no savings, who live pay check, end up siding with those who want to give tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our nation, even as homes are foreclosed on and children go with out health care.
The former first lady, who ran as the inevitable candidate all summer, is now calling the Obama an “out-of-touch elitist” over these comments, though her campaign is simultaneously arguing that her major attributes when compared to Obama are her experience in the White House and that she was a known quality among party insiders. What’s more she has been for sometime arguing that her candidacy remains viable because of the Hail Mary strategy of having super delegates (party bosses) overturn the will of the common people and install her as the nominee. This ‘Obama is an elitist’ argument is being circulated even as resent reports show that she and her husband have made over a hundred million dollars since leaving the White House less than 8 years ago. Now it is Obama who is out of touch with ordinary working people?
Just as an example of the two candidate’s respective timelines; In 1979 Hillary Rodham-Clinton was the first lady of Arkansas while Barack Obama was a senior in high school in Hawaii. Then in 1986, while married to the next democratic president, Clinton was sitting on the board of Wal-Mart, one of the world largest and most notorious corporations, while Obama worked as a community organizer and prepared to go to law school. Later in 1991 Obama graduated from Harvard law school, meanwhile Hillary Clinton was the first lady of the United States of America. She lived at White House, flew on Air Force One, and apparently spent time lobbying for the NAFTA Agreement she now claims to have apposed. In 1996 Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate, and Hillary Clinton still lived at the White House, having congressman, lobbyist and political contributors over for lunch. Finally in 2005, though he was still paying off student loans, Obama is sworn in as a US Senator. He joined the former first lady Hillary Clinton, who has been a member of that chamber since 2000.
This is not to say that Sen. Obama doesn’t have political experience or powerful connection, but as the wife of Bill Clinton, Hillary had an access to some of the most powerful people in the world, unparallel by any of the other candidates in either party’s primary. She was instrumental in her husbands restocking of the Democratic Party infrastructure with influential friends and loyal colleagues. And as evidenced by her successful senate campaigns, she commanded the attention of the party’s donors as well as political handlers. The agility needed to pivot mid-campaign and go from inevitable ‘incumbent’ to anti-elitist woman of the people, isn’t only beyond Hillary, its superhuman.
Rank and File Democrats who have been hit hardest by the Bush years also blame the Clinton administration for leaving them behind. Even during Bill Clinton’s ‘miracle economy’ (according to noted anthropologist Stanley Eitzen) in 1999, 12 % of Americans lived in poverty. In 1997 the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a study that showed that one in five U.S. poor (7.4 million persons) were classified as working poor. For these Americans, Clintons hypocritical charge that Obama is an elitist might ring hollow, regardless of how they might feel about him.
On April 4, 1968 the Revered Dr. Martin Luther King was shot dead the morning after delivering his “mountain top” sermon in Memphis Tennessee. CNN reported in their recent special that he slept in and even started a pillow fight on that morning . Though an imperfect man, Dr. King was a wise and a kind and a decent man, a man of God, and for all time a hero, not just to African Americans but to everyone who cares about human rights. It’s hard not to imagine that if he were alive today, the 79 year old non-violent civil rights icon would be a critic of the current war in Iraq, and perhaps heartened by the historic democratic primary race.
(This is not news, this is an unmeasured, and sure to be regretted later, reaction to all the anti-reproductive rights, anti-woman’s rights, anti-black equality, anti-Islam propaganda that I have the misfortune of being privy to. If you too have been wanting to vent self-righteously about this subject then you might well enjoy what follows, but if you are worried that the angst contained here in might harsh your ‘one love’ / ‘yes we can’ mellow, then by all means skip this piece.)
I’m sorry, but I have to say something about all these closet racists who keep passing around their outrageously ignorant, stubbornly uninformed, not-so-subtly bigoted propaganda. I grew up in the church and spend a lot of time standing up for people who have values, and beliefs, and faith communities, but I must say that this stuff come almost exclusively from people who are quick to identify them selves as good Christians. Some of you folks out there are being duped by these people. If you’ve come in contact with this, then perhaps it came from your barley literate, never been out of the country, family members/co-worker/classmate; Mr. or Ms. White Anglo-Saxon (so called) Jesus-fan..
(These particular) Jesus-fans who, mind you, know nothing about Judaism, or ancient Israel, or Roman Occupation, or the crusades, or the dark ages, or the reformation, or any fair notion of anything from modern philosophy. I cant understand why anyone would trust these people about the unknowable; what happens when you die, the meaning of life, the origin of the universe, when they have made no effort to become informed about the knowable; natural selection, climate change, world history!
Now I am a person who has a lot of sympathy for working class people, and poor people, and rural people, and religion, tradition. I am white myself, and not as well educated or well traveled as I wish I was, and I, like Sen. Obama and almost every american, am even related to people who share some of these views. I’m the last person who wants to hold working class American traditionalist feet to the fire. But I have my limits.
Everyday I get email forwards from people who I actually know in which the racism is about as subtle as a big burning cross in your front yard. Do people not realize that their racism is showing? Do these people not worry what others will think of them, or do they assume that everyone shares their prejudices?Some of us are intellectually curious adults, some have read a book or two, a few have even been to philosophy class. That fact in mind, you shouldn’t send us this of hardly disguised white power rhetoric.
Last week Hillary Clinton described a trip she took as first lady to Bosnia. She began, “when a place was too small or too dangerous for the president to go they sent the first lady…” According to Hillary it was quite a scene. Complete with the first lady covering her head and ducking to avoid incoming sniper fire as she ran from her airplane to the car. Now this is the type of thing that really sets Clinton apart form her democratic rival, she has first hand experience in a war zone. The only problem is it isn’t true.
Just days after Hillary retold the story; video footage surfaced showing the first lady and a teenage Chelsea Clinton strolling off their plane and being formally received. Ms Clinton is even seen taking time to meet a little girl who she stoops down to speak with for some time. No one has on a Kevlar helmet, no one is ducking or running for the car and there is no sniper fire.
Today Clinton acknowledged that her original story wasn’t correct, but worsening the political impart of this blunder, she attempted to justify her faulty memory by saying she was sleep deprived. That’s right, the same lady who Americans are supposed to trust to take that 3 A.M. phone call, was too sleepy to remember whether or not she and her teenage daughter had been shot at. Who knows what she might say if she answered that red phone. This race, and the coverage of it as a still competitive contest, is before our eyes, leaving the realm of reality.
NBC’s coverage of this story with footage from Bosnia
The department of defense confirms that four solders killed by a roadside bomb this morning in southern Baghdad move the United States death toll in Iraq to 4000. This is a moment to consider how much these young Americans and their families have sacrificed and to ponder what their lives were traded for. In this story the American wounded often get over looked by the media, and almost no one is even attempting to keep up with how many Iraqis have died in the five year conflict.
It has now been five years since the United States military invaded Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction, which he didn’t have, to help terrorist who he wasn’t connected to. That’s not liberal spin, but the conclusion of the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group co-chaired by the former Sec. of State republican James Baker. Now, according to the Department of Defense 3992 Americans have died in the war. Despite Bush adviser Paul Wolfowitz’s prewar assurance that with Iraq, “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction”, Estimates say that the cost of the war is between $700 billion to $2 trillion. Reporting on the issue of Iraqi civilian dead has been shamefully poor but 1000000 is an often pointed to figure. And of course, Osama bin Laden is still at large in Pakistan..
Five years on, with 97% of the US deaths coming since the president declaired declared “Mission Accomplished”, and with all the original justifications for the war proven false, and the Bush administrations unraveling credibility having left the American people with a true crises of leadership, we as a nation are no closer to an idea of what victory in Iraq would look like. The policy makers on the war still have no time tables and misses their own benchmarks casually. As Eric Kleefeld of talking points memo points out George Bush’s popularity has fallen 40 points over the five years of the Iraq war. Now as the race to replace Bush heats up, the republican nominee still doesn’t quite have the facts straight. While visiting the Middle East John McCain repeatedly states that Shia Iran is training Sunni Al-Qaida. Not one to be over shadowed, McCain’s Iraq traveling buddy Dick Cheney, when asked by ABC about polls that show two thirds of Americans think the war is not worth it said “so?” that before leavening to go fishing on the yacht of the Sultan of Oman.
Some in the media and opposition operatives have been working hard to bring into focus Barack Obama’s connection to Jeremiah Wright, his retired pastor from the United Church of Christ in Chicago, whose controversial comments the senator has denounced.But in a time when Obama’s connection to Wright, is coming to be a big story we should remember the role that neoconservative ideologues and evangelical fanatics played in the approach of the Bush administration. If the media and rival campaigns think that the political integrity of a candidate’s spiritual adviser is worth investigating, then they should look closer at the people from whom John McCain is taking council.
For seven years now the foreign policy of the United States seems to have been loosely based on one organizing principle, ‘don’t’ mess with Texas’. Now that the Bush years are drawing to a close, many around the country are hopeful that our next president will have a more sophisticated world view than does the current occupant of the oval office. Most people assume that the next Commander-in-chief will bring to the office, an understanding of the world that is more nuanced, one painted with more shades of gray and less black and white; not so fast.
If John McCain is elected the country might be in for more of the same. Though he is known as a reformer and a maverick, and though conservatives are quick to point out all the ways he has failed to tow the party line (on immigration, torture, campaign finance, tax cuts or the rich), indications are that McCain may not be free from the type of absolutist dogmatic ideology that ruined the Bush administration.
Recently Rod Parsley, one of the evangelical preachers who McCain counts as an spiritual adviser, said that America should aim to destroy Islam. Now that really is a daunting goal, perhaps not as daunting as when George W. Bush’s pledge to wipe evil of the face of the earth; he couldn’t even get it out of his White House.But Islam is the one of the world’s largest religion with over a billion adherents. Maybe that is what McCain has in mind for the troops he says he might keep in Iraq for the next hundred years. However most educated adults understand that a war with Islam is the last things anyone should want.This is the stuff that makes s everyone from Ron Paul to Ralph Nader go nuts. This is just an idea, but what if we keep the American Government out of the business of regulating what people believe about what happens after you die.
As David Corn of Mother Jones points out, Parsley calls Islam an “antichrist religion” and charges that Mohammad “received [his] revelations from demons”. Perhaps somehow there is still some debate about the inherent ethnocentrism, foolishness and disrespect contained in those words, but this must is for sure, it clearly makes you politicaly dangerous for a Presidential Candidate to stand with.
Parsley is not the only fundamentalist fanatic that McCain has courted in his attempt to win over the Republican party’s evangelical fringe. We shouldn’t forget about McCain spiritual adviser John Hagee, who called the Catholic Church “the great whore”. If Sen. McCain wants to have any chance of appealing to moderate voters in the general election, he must distance himself from these phonies who use their ‘spirituality’ as a front for their hateful, intolerant, bigotry.What do you know? Here’s one of those things that really is black or white; either you reject the political support of hateful Fanatics or you don’t.
Clinton backer, and former democratic vice-presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro says of Barack Obama “If he was a white man, he wouldn’t be in this position”.The economy may or may not be in a recession but I had no idea that times are s tough for white, Harvard law school graduate, family men in America. Consider it, if Obama was white, he wouldn’t be in the position of being accused of faking his Christian faith to hide his secret Islamic identity. If he was white, I imagine that the issue of his admitted experimentation with drugs as a teenager would have been viewed differently. George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Howard Dean, and John Edwards are just a few examples of white politicians whose “youthful indiscretions ” were seen as benign . If Barack Obama were white, many of his supporters wouldn’t be worried day and night for his safety. And if he was white, I doubt his experience would so openly be questioned, as he has held elected office longer than his Democratic challenger. So I guess Ferraro is right in away. If Obama was white he would be in a different position.
. Apparently Ferraro, who worked on the Clinton campaign’s finance comity, made a statement about Jesse Jackson in 1988 that is very similar to the one she has recently made about Obama. What is it about Hillary’s surrogates that makes them say out loud what must be their wishful thinking, ‘Obama’s like Jesse Jackson’? Bill Clinton too famously Compared Obama to Jackson after the South Carolina primary..
“If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race”, Ferraro said. If she hadn’t made these comments, it would be impolite for anyone to point out that Ferraro was not in a leadership position in the congress before joining Walter Mondale’s ticket, and that it is she who would never have been a vice-presidential candidate if she were not a woman. The race for the democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988 were fundamentally different from the one Ferraro has injected herself into now. In ‘88 Jesse Jackson really was ‘the black candidate’ for president; in 2008 Barack Obama has won Wyoming and Iowa and Kansas and Missouri and Minnesota, states where there are almost no black voters. In ‘88, Geraldine Ferraro was a token woman vice-presidential nominee; now in ‘08 Hillary Clinton is a serious candidate for president, who has been a leader in the Senate, and possess a resume as solid as all of her male rivals..
The funny thing about embodiment is you, for the most part, have to play the hand you’re dealt. Ferraro could not have been non-woman anymore than Obama could be white. People are what they are, and the experience that affords them does make a difference in their biography, almost always for the better. And for the record, I would be more likely to vote for Hillary as a woman than I would if she were non-woman. Moreover, Obama’s experience as a person of mixed raced with an international background might make him slower to think that everyone in the world is like us, or should be like us. That would be a real improvement, many think, over son of privilege, who currently holds the office..
It’s interesting that in this election cycle when we have heard so much about republicans and independents crossing over to vote for Barack Obama, we now have Hillary Clinton possible picking up republican votes. The difference of course is that Obama’s cross over voters have been genuinely swayed and seem to be planning to vote for him in the general election; where as Clinton’s republican votes are being inspired by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh is encouraging listeners to vote in democratic primaries in with cynical hopes of dragging out the fight for the nomination. Giving time for the Clinton campaign to sling mud at Obama that Limbaugh says the republics wouldn’t use. It is amazing that after all these months of Hilary telling us that Obama wasn’t ready to stand up to the republican attack machine, one of the spokesman for that republican attack machine says it’s the Clintons who will stoop the lowest.
It is worth noting that Bill Clinton was a guest on Limbaugh’s show the day before the primary. As too the phenomena of ‘Clintpublicans’, one the one hand, there does seem to be something happening here; the people at the Jed report have done some work towards providing statistical evidence to that end. On the other hand, if Rush Limbaugh is all this powerful, why is John McCain the presumptive republican nominee?
A reader recently made me aware of something I thought I would pass along. Apparently ABC news reporting about my back and forth with Bill Clinton, in South Carolina, was sited to dispute Clinton’s charge that the media had dreamed up the controversy over the issue of race in the battle for the democratic nomination.
In Charleston on January 23rd just one day after I spoke with former president in Greenville, he had, (what has become in the age of viral video) the infamous “shame on you” moment . After being asked by CNN reporter Jessica Yellin, how race had come to be an issue in the lead up to the South Carolina primary, Clinton said, “You asked me about this…Not one single solitary soul asked me about any of this. And they never do… people don’t care about this. They never ask about it.” The part of his response that was seen by most viewers came next as he is leaving more questions about the issue are being asked and Clinton repeats “Shame on you” to the group of reporters. However a little of the shame has to be on the fellow who is clearly being dishonest.
Following Clinton’s comments, Kate Snow, Sunlen Miller and Sarah Amos of ABC news used excerpts from my brief conversation with Clinton about race and his increasingly questionable tactics, to show that people do in fact ask him about that issue on the campaign trail. As has been noted, on the evening before Clinton’s comments to CNN’s Yellin, he was asked three questions about the issue of his attacks against Obama by voters, at just that one event.This might not be breaking news, but it appears that Bill Clinton is willing to misrepresent the truth when it is politically convenient for him to do so.
The ugliest campaign tactics so far this season have been seen in the mailings and internet sites that question Sen. Obama’s Christian faith, and patriotism. It has been a whispered misconception that Obama took the oath of office on the Koran and that Obama doesn’t pledge elegance to the flag, but the favorite fabrication of fanatics, racist and fear-baiter alike is that claims that Obama is secretly a Muslim.
This week on CBS’ 60 Minuets Hillary Clinton had an opportunity to send a signal to anyone in her campaign who might be spreading these reprehensible lies, but she passed on that opportunity. When Steve Kroft asked Clinton if she believe that Obama was secretly a Muslim She said, “No” but when pressed added the caveat, “as far as I know”.
Hillary knows very well that Sen. Obama has been a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for 20 years. She also knows that this misconception on the part of some voters benefits here politically, so she lets it stand, some might say even encourages it. The Clinton Campaigns “kitchen sink” approach sows the seeds of her destruction when she has this on her hands. It is possible to kneecap the most promising young democrat on the national stage in a generation, it is not possible to do it an simultaneously appear likeable and presidential.
The risk to the Democratic Party’s eventual nominee was evident in Hillary Clinton’s attack of Barack Obama on Monday (3/3/08). It came several days ago the New York Times warned that the Clinton campaign planed to throw the kitchen sink at Obama. Willing to do anything to fight back into the race, the Clintons used public displays of emotion in New Hampshire, raised the issue of race in South Carolina and used ambiguous language that encourage doubt about Obama’s religion and patriotism on CBS’ 60 Minutes.
Her willingness to try to diminish the man, who will most likely be her party’s nominee, shows yet again that the Clintons value their own political ambitions above most anything else. And that is something that voters should consider. McCain wins this round.
Famously Bill Clinton claimed on 11/27/07 that he had been against the war in Iraq“from the beginning.” Which raises the question, how could he tell when he had become against the war from the start? Was he against it when Hillary voted for it as a US senator? Was he against it when he was president and he regularly bombed Iraq for a weapons program that FBI agent George Piro, recently said Saddam faked hoping to deter an Iranian invasion? And what were his thoughts when theWashington thinktank the Project for the New American Century ( including soon to be G.W. Bush administration officials: Rumsfeld, Armitage, Bolton, Wolfowitz, and Perle) sent him a letter in January 1998 asking him to invade Iraq? Was he against the Sanction imposed on Iraq all during the 1990’s that caused untold hardship, sorrow, and death to civilians all across Iraq? Wasn’t it when his wife started running for president that he decided he had always been against the war in iraq from the start?
Check out the letter PNAC sent to Bill Clinton about Iraq in 1998
At a time when the biggest story in Washington is about advisers intervening to protect a candidate from himself, Hillary Clinton seems to be intervening to protect herself from her advisers. With all the focus on the campaign’s questionable tactics, finical difficulties, the roll of the former president, and the hand ringing about the potential for a nomination decided by super delegates, pundits may have lost sight of one mitigating factor. Perhaps there is a cool head among the Clinton campaign, Hillary.
Going into Thursday night’s debate, some expected fireworks but most of Clinton’s well rehearsed shots missed their mark. Heralding the opening of “silly season in politics”, Obama was able to side step Hillary’s charge. In a move of political judo, Obama was able to use the strength of his opponents attack against her.
When Clinton tried that “change you can Xerox” line, you could see that even she knew that it wasn’t going come out in “her voice”. The crowd’s reaction was similar to the reaction of voters to the negative politics her campaign has been engaged in since her Iowa defeat. From that moment on things changed, not just in the debate, but in the race itself.
By the end of the debate, Clinton said she was “honored to be [on the stage] with Barack Obama”. The tone that Clinton ended the night on seemed to acknowledge Obama as a historical figure and suggests that she has decided against the so-called nuclear option. A scenario some in her campaign put forward, where she stays in the race until the August convention, clawing away at Obama’s electability, and hoping to convince party insiders to go against the wishes of democratic primary voters.
In the debate’s closing moments Hillary Clinton sounded like a woman with her eye on the party’s future and a disposition to care about her own legacy, even if her husband is no longer concerned with his. The fact that it has taken until now for her to distinguish herself from all the power players around her is one of the reasons for the collapse of her campaign. In coming days an invaluable opportunity arises for Hilary to be graceful in defeat and transform herself into a party unifying elder
During the very first minute of (2/18/08) MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews (202 885 4000), he mentioned the current back and forth about Sen. Obama’s use of words that were taken from a speech his supporter Gov. Deval Patrick had given earlier. The subject of the comment was Senator Barrack Obama, but the picture beside Mathew’s head was of Osama bin Laden.
Concerning MSNBC’s inadequate response to the Osama/Obama moment, viewers deserve to know how and why this mistake was made. Presumably, graphics of the terrorist leader have some kind of OBL (Osama bin Laden) demarcation vs. graphic for the Senator, which one imagines might have a more formal title, maybe US Sen. Barack Obama. The standard here is full discloser about who made the mistake and what MSNBC (212 664 4444) is doing about it. You would think the network of the Don Imus and David Schuster scandals would know how to handle these things by now.
Given the fact that serious journalist and pundits and even candidates can’t keep the words Osama and Obama separate, and in light of the heat Sen. Obama took over his statement that he would go after bin Laden inside of Pakistan, I say ‘if you want to catch Osama you’ve gotta vote Obama’.
There are reasons to think that the Democratic primary contest might end before it gets to that smoke filled room that’s been making everyone so nervous since Super Tuesday. There’s the growing lead that Sen. Obama has in total votes 706,813, and in states 21-11, and pledged delegates 1133-996. There are the eight consecutive primary wins that his campaign has run off since Feb. 5th. There’s also the fact that upcoming showdowns will take place in the states of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Texas that have open primaries. When independents and Republicans are allowed to vote, Obama tends to do very well.
Those factors aside, the math of proportional representation suggests that even if one candidate runs away with the rest of the states they will still not have enough delegates to reach the 2025 threshold for the nomination. That very likely situation would result in super delegates holding the deciding votes.
Many around the country are shocked to learn that the candidate with the most votes, and the most states, and the most pledged delegates, could lose the nomination because of this group of political elites. According to MSNBC’s Dan Abrams there are 10,000 voters for every one super delegate. 10,000:1 seems an unreasonable weight given to these insider’s votes. Americans are raised on the idea of one person one vote, and this process has the potential to fly in the face of that notion.
The crisis for the party comes if the super delegates (among whom Clinton is leading) go against the wishes of the voters across the nation and select the candidate who is behind. Recently, in comments to Bloomberg TV’s Al Hunt, House Speaker Pelosi weighed in on this gathering storm saying, “It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided.” A problem indeed, so much so that Al Gore’s former Campaign manager, Dona Brazile, said in recent days to CNN that she would quit the Democratic Party if super delegates overturned the choice of the voters.
This all might sound farfetched but it is something that must be considered, given the Democratic Party’s propensity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. To call a split decision circumstance, a crisis, might be an understatement, especially if the candidate who is overturned by the establishment is Barack Obama.
Super delegates must ask themselves if that an outcome that the Party can live with, history would suggest that it is not. Bill Clinton, the last democrat to win the White House, got 83 % and 84 % of the black vote in ‘92 and ‘96 respectively. If you take those voters out of the process he loses both times. The Democratic Party can’t afford to disenfranchise and thus alienate their most reliable voters in 2008.
While the feud between Jon McCain and the right wing might not split the Republican Party it certainly threatens to divide the majority that carried George W. Bush twice to victory. Opinion polls have for some time now, shown the public to be fed up with the president’s party and its failed policies on the war, the economy, education, infrastructure etc. An energized base could carry a democrat to a relatively easy victory in the fall, or a demoralized base could lead to another disappointment.
This situation begs the question, what kind of a candidate would want to win a nomination despite the wishes of the voters, and how could the democratic party ask its members to believe in a process that is so undemocratic. For the good of the party the Super delegates must join with the voters and say no to any attempt by the candidates to subvert the will of the people. It’s nothing personal Clintons; we wouldn’t want Ken Starr or Newt Gingrich back either. The American people have moved on, maybe its time you did too.
*The picture here is from the Cabarrus County Democratic Party who are in no way associated with my outrageous and inflammatory opinions. See more http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q310/LiberalNC/blue-democratic-donkey-ornament.jpg (Please don’t sue)
We have heard him compared to great presidents of the past and civil rights leaders. We have noted that he gives voice to believers whose faith calls them to social responsibility rather than smug condemnation. We have noticed that his speaking style evokes images from the historical black church, and the Ivy League lecture hall. And we have seen him argue that politics can be conducted in a more humane way. But some are wondering out loud if Barack Obama is more than just a candidate. Now admittedly, those people doing the wondering are nuts, but its still something to keep an eye on.
As ABC news senior correspondent Jake Tapper points out in his blog Political Punch, there are those who are calling the Illinois Senator the Messiah. And just as a side note here, there is actual real speculation that Obama could be the Antichrist as well. I mean after all, he is a smooth talking, young, non white, who used to ride on a magic carpet to his Madrasahevery day when he was an opium dealing child in Mecca.
Now that Satan has hidden all those fake dinosaur bones that have fooled scientist into believing that the earth is more than 10,000 years old, he really hasn’t had that much to work on. There was that time when he caused the wardrobe malfunction at the super bowl, but until Obama came along who was he going to corrupt into a world dominating tyrant with no regard for human life. It sure is a good thing that the united Church of Christ going, inner city organizer, Harvard law school graduate Obama wasn’t in office after 9/11 or Satin could have manipulated him into opportunistically parlaying the tragedy into a power grab. Maybe after Obama consolidated his power the devil could have convinced him to play upon the public’s fears to justify a war that would funnel our national treasure into the hands of unaccountable war profiteers. Too bad for the devil, that there wasn’t anyone around who he could fool.
Now as ridiculous as all this is, I tend to think that this type of thing help make the argument that Obama supports are naive or that they have unrealistic expectations about what a President Obama would be able to accomplish. But the phenomenon is real; the websites do exist, so I guess that makes it real. And when a story comes along that is this rich in potential for jokes that only my buddies from the philosophy and religion department would appreciate, I have to use it.
The Clintons and some in the media may say it was a draw, but it was not. Super Tuesday was an Obama win, though an indecisive one. What I think the pundits are trying to say is that neither candidate was driven out of the race. No one was knocked out so they say it was a tie, but that’s not what a tie is. Sen. Obama won 13 states to Sen. Clinton’s 9, and while the numbers have been shifting, it now appears that Obama will also win the delegate count, something like 838 to 834. And in this year’s race to the nomination it really is all about the delegates. As Sen. Obama said on Tuesday night, “Our time has come”.
Despite all of the lowering of expectations that goes on before every big vote in this race, it defies reason to think that the candidate (Hillary Clinton) who has been the prohibitive front-runner since John Kerry lost Ohio to George W. Bush in 2004, was anything but the favorite, going into the Feb 5th contest. Only a few weeks ago Hillary Clinton’s Campaign was talking about having the race wrapped up by now, but voters from all around the country have rewritten the script.
Several factors tipped the Super Tuesday contest towards Sen. Obama. First, one must acknowledge the remarkable momentum that Barack Obama comes into February with. He has, in the last two weeks closed a 15 point gap between himself and Clinton in national polls. It is a phenomenon with few parallels in recent American politics. As Chris Mathews said to the New York Observer’s Filex Gillette, “This is bigger than Kennedy”. While that might be a reach, it does suggest the trajectory and potential of the movement this generational candidacy inspires. Also helpful for Obama, was his continued success in caucus states, something that will potentially play to his strength in the next states of Nebraska, Washington, and Maine. Another factor was the role of proportional representation, where delegates are apportioned according to percentage of votes, as apposed to the winner-take-all primaries held by the Republican Party.
Beyond the state and delegate counts there was other good news in the results for the Obama Campaign. Most notable was his ability win in the heartland, decisively in the red state of Kansas (74-26), and narrowly in ‘bellwether’ Missouri (49-48). Those wins coupled with Obama’s dramatic victories in predominantly white Idaho (80-17) and swing-state Minnesota (67-32), go a long way towards breaking out of the ‘Jesse Jackson narrative’ that the Clintons had tried to paint him into after South Carolina. In this way Barack Obama may have passed the most important test, by winning in every corner of the nation and in states where Democrats will have to compete with Republicans in November.
Going forward, the biggest factor in the race might turn out to be the financial one. It has been widely reported that the Obama campaign raised 32 million dollars in January and is on pace to match that in February. Meanwhile Wednesday’s political media cycle was dominated by the news that Clinton has put 5 million of her own money into her campaign, even as some of senior staff go without pay. No matter how you spin it that cannot be good news. This may reflect the fact that much of the Clinton campaign cash has come from high-dollar donors who are now at their limit; as apposed to the Obama campaign’s money that has been raised in small dollar amounts from ordinary people, who the campaign can go back to again and again.
As I watched the returns come in on Tuesday night I couldn’t help but think of Obama’s victory speech in South Carolina On that Saturday night Obama said, “The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor, young versus old, and it is not about black versus white. This election is about the past versus the future.” I wonder if Sen. Obama wasn’t setting us up for the general election contest that is now coming into focus, Obama vs. McCain. And while both say they are willing to work with the other side, the contrast between their visions for the country couldn’t be clearer.
Until South Carolina, this year’s democratic primaries had produced anything but a clear front runner. This was not only because Obama and Clinton had each won, but also because in each case, the second place finisher was not badly beaten by the voters. Now that has changed, as Sen. Obama got significantly more votes on Saturday than the other candidates combined. Despite that fact, the Clinton campaign explains, Obama’s win in South Carolina as a product of African-Americans siding with him. After the Clintons cast the line, newspapers in some cases, took the bait. Papers like the Boston Globe, who on Sunday said black voter Rachael Holland “sided with Obama”.
“Siding” is an interesting word; as it makes you think of an elementary school playground more than a voting both and it implies that the African-Americans in South Carolina voted out of some instinctual allegiance. Nobody said white voters in New Hampshire sided with Clinton; they used words like choose or selected and Sen. Obama’s campaign didn’t belittle their decision.
Besides all this, the charge just doesn’t hold up. When you look at the size of the victory, (28 points) the largest of the primary season, it is clear that while Sen. Obama did very well among S.C.’s African Americans, his margin of victory was more about his ability to bring new voters into the process. Moreover Barack Obama’s win in Iowa and two point second place finish in New Hampshire, where he captured 33 and 36 percent of the white vote respectively, show that he is not Jesse Jackson, despite what the Clinton spin machine would have us believe. Like in Iowa, many of Obama’s votes in S.C. came from young people, new voters, Independents and Republicans. That is the broad coalition the next president will need, to enact the kinds of reform that our nation needs.
In this contest, we must be Americans first and partisans second. A candidate who can bring new people in and form a working compromise with those, who democrats have bickered with in the past, can deliver what a more divisive candidate never will, far reaching, meaningful change. That’s what Ronald Reagan did for the Republican Party when he inspired the phenomenon we call Reagan democrats. All these years later, those who seek his party’s nomination invoke his name daily. A public figure of that scale is what a President Obama could be, but in a different direction, and in the name of very different interests.
The last week of the S.C. campaign shed light on the aspect of the Clintons that people are most reluctant to relive, namely a willingness to play fast and lose with the truth when it is politically expedient. For the Clintons, it “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”. So we must ask, is the country ready to put up with more poll-tested, focus-grouped positions when what we really need is leadership and healing? Can we take more triangulation, or political battles of attrition, where so long as the Clintons stay in power they will feel that they have won, no matter the cost to the Nation?
As Carl Bernstein recently said to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, people within the Democratic Party are starting to wonder “how much this is about the Clintons and how much is it about the country”. Today our military is bogged down in Iraq’s Civil War,our economy staggering, and working families are struggling to compete in the age of illegal immigration and outsourcing. What this time calls for is an inspirational president who can turn our collective eyes towards a new “morning in America” where we work together with goodhearted people of other political persuasions to confront our mounting challenges.
It’s hard to know what expect next from a Former President who seems to be losing his cool in the throws of this year’s democratic primary season.Reportedly congressman Emanuel and Sen. Kennedy have told former President Bill Clinton to turn his criticism of Barack Obama down a notch, and the global news agency AFP reports that Former Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle has said that Clinton’s actions are “not presidential”. A few days ago CNN told us thatleading African American lawmaker Jim Clyburn wants Bill Clinton “to Chill”, in reference to his attracts on Sen. Obama.
Let us not forget that When George W. Bush ran, his father stayed a respectable distance from the political campaign that his son was waging. As heated as that contest got, we never saw the former President Bush kneecapping John McCain, or Al Gore or John Kerry. But now we have Bill Clinton calling Obama’s position on the Iraq war a “fairytale” and criticizing him for acknowledging the transformative role that Ronald Reagan played in American politics. We have heard that nominating Obama would be “a role of the dice” and so on and so forth.
This past weekend Bill Clinton alleged that the Nevada Caucuses were being compromised by voter suppression. It goes without saying what a serious allegation that is, and as of yet it is unclear if it was mere political theater or if the Clinton campaign will follow up on the irregularities now that they have won that contest. When, in talking about those irregularities, the former President said that he hadn’t seen anything like this in the past thirty years of American politics, I wondered where he was in 2000. That year in Florida, especially in southern Florida, there were wide spread reports of voter suppression and violations of the voting rights act. The victims of this suppression were largely African Americans, and yet when they needed an advocate Mr. and Ms. Clinton were not there to speak for them. I know because I was there.
With all this as background, I relished my opportunity Tuesday afternoon in GreenvilleS.C. to ask President Clinton how he thought the negative tone of his attacks of Sen. Obama would affect his legacy in the south, most notably with the African American community that he has been so popular with. He said that he didn’t worry about his legacy and that he “is not standing in Obama’s way.” But what I thought was truly telling was that he went on to say that he admired Senator Obama and that he “hoped to be able to vote for him one day”. I think the former President’s admission that he hoped to get a chance to vote for Obama goes to undermine all the dirty tactics that the Clinton campaign has engaged in to this point. If you’re Bill Clinton, you can’t pretend to think Sen. Obama shares Ronald Reagan’s political philosophy one day and the very next say that you would like to vote for him. And I’m sorry, but if a former President takes the attack dog role in a political campaign it can’t help but diminish that President’s legacy.
Recently it was brought to my attention that my brief conversation with Bill Clinton quickly came up as evidence in the court of public opinion. Several South Carolina voters waited to ask Clinton about the tone of his attacks against Sen. Obama, but only hours later he told reporters that the subject never comes up.
On Tuesday January 15, With no other major candidates names on the ballot, Hillary Clinton was able to get 55% of the vote in the Michigan Democratic primary, but the real story should be the 225,506 + who left their house and went down to their precinct, knowing their state had been striped of its delegates, and voted uncommitted.
When “nobody” runs against her, “nobody” starts with 40%. And “nobody” didn’t even have to campaign. “Nobody” spent no money in this race. “Nobody” didn’t even run one ad. What happens when you add John McCain or Rudy Giuliani in place of “nobody”?
As democrats we have to think long and hard about nominating a candidate who is so divisive. We shouldn’t spend these preciously important years ahead re-fighting old fights or addressing political grudges. If we are what we say we are than we must love our country more than this, and choose a leader who can bring Americans together. Our society’s needs are too great, the time to pivotal, for anything but fundamental change backed by broad-based support from the American people. Senator Obama proved in Iowa that he can get this type of support from Democrats Republicans and Independents, and nobody proved it on Tuesday.
