Great work everyone. Now let’s finish the job.
I guess my blogging has been more of a sprint than a marathon, but in my defense I have been preoccupied with a number of non campaign related responsibilities like life, income, and planning the next 4 or 5 years.
But also, I will freely admit that fatigue took its toll as well, particularly as this race has dragged on and on, and on. I don’t believe I am any fair weather supporter, or thinker - but the enthusiasm this campaign has generated in me, in most of us, is hard to cultivate over this longest haul. The media, and most especially - Hillary Clinton’s campaign tactics - have worn me down. And while I still read as much as I can, I find myself skimming more instead, flinching with every reload of the five or six main blogs I frequent.
But this is the state of things in our country, our media, our politics - and I realize that to pay less attention is to allow the forces I wish to push back against more latitude than they deserve. So I think I will try to re-engage, beginning next week, at least a few hours a day. Additionally, I have been digesting the major news of the past month or so, regarding the Wright/bitter controversies, as well as some undeniable tactical errors by the Obama campaign - I hope to have substantially formed input on these subjects soon.
In the meantime, I feel 100% confidence that the campaign is still won, and my seething distrust of the Clintons has long since peaked. What now concerns me, and concerns me greatly - is what the ultimate cost of this war of attrition, in my mind useless, will end up being, and what the party has the mettle to do about it.
Until next week, remember to feel humble when you are most frustrated:
Clinton believes Obama’s support is largely a mirage–a bunch of true believers whose passion might help him cinch the nomination, but that may prove an insufficient bedrock for winning a general election when the spell might be broken by tough questions about national-security credentials, economic-policy plans and rich experience. She can’t stop from shaking her head in disbelief when longtime friends who are elected officials inform her that they are going to endorse Obama and were chiefly convinced by their children’s enthusiasm for his candidacy.
Mr. Casey decided to back Mr. Obama, the person close to him said, because of his “ability to bring disparate groups together and transcend some of these racial and other kinds of divides.”
“Also, his kids were on his case, his four daughters,” the person said about Mr. Casey. “Not that they dictate to him, but he was paying attention. He was wondering, Why are these kids, who aren’t very political, so interested? He does have the ability to light up a younger generation.”
Been stuck on some projects and will be posting again soon
Especially with some thoughts on what I thought was an extraordinary week last week…
In the meantime, as far as I can tell, this is exactly why you have kids:
I won’t pretend to have a lot of readers. In fact I have absolutely no idea how many readers this thing has… save the daily page views which honestly I little idea how to interpret. I have gotten all of maybe 4 or 5 comments total on all the 300+ posts I have made to this blog. But increasingly, as I roam the web reading articles and blog entries, I find my dislike for comments to be reaching a fever pitch. I have always been uneasy with the way message boards and comment threads have given people the opportunity to be people I have always figured they are not in real life. The disguise of anonymity allows people to often just disregard civil discourse and just be as big an asshole (or imbecile) as they please. Again I always figure that if you took these people and put them in a room together without a computer to hide behind they would probably be perfectly polite - but online, they adopt personas which are, as far as I’m concerned, simply inexcusable. No one has behaved that way here, not by a long shot, and I am grateful for that - but particularly as I read the occasional comments on political stories regarding this campaign - I typically find them to be crude or blatantly inflammatory, or perhaps even worse - a simple parroting of blunt talking points. (Unfortunately, especially Obama supporters a lot of the time)
So I have decided that since my gut reaction is pure uneasiness over comment threads, I am just going to disable them entirely on my own little piece of the web. I want the "peace and quiet" of commentless blogs to be what andyeswecan.com aspires to.
However, I still would love to hear what anybody thinks - about anything at all.
So please email me at andyeswecan@gmailINSERTDOTCOM and let me know that you’re reading, or that you think Obama is a Hindu, or that I mispelled misspelled.
I’ll leave the comments on this post open, one last time….
According to witnesses, a loud black man approached a crowd of some 4,000 strangers in downtown Chicago Tuesday and made repeated demands for change.
Todd Gitlin, of Columbia University
First, Obama took the high road, which is also the long and demanding road. He refused to "move on" with a cursory acknowledgment that "mistakes were made." He did not acknowledge. He preached and he reasoned. The law professor was in the pulpit. He refused to settle for sprinkling what have become the automatic contemporary word-drops of "distancing." It will still be possible to parse his words for insufficiencies of denunciation, but Obama’s gamble was that he could turn Wright’s damnable sins into a pivot for a sermon about how the past can be overcome, about how American it would be to accomplish that hard and necessary objective. "We may have different stories but we hold common hopes"–that was the theme. I don’t know if this is true, but we will find out whether it is what America needs to believe.
And finally, the temperature of this speech is one of its messages; or should I say invitations? Obama kept his cool and turned up the heat at the same time. For those who have not yet voted, and crucially to the superdelegates, he raised the stakes, asking them all: Can you, too, keep your cool and your heat at the same time? The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, he said, had spoken in an "incendiary" manner, but Obama offered himself as the man who rises from flames and invites you to rise from your own. He took a grievous embarrassment and moved his lesson to the plane of prophecy. Talk about hope; talk about audacity. Tears came to my eyes. I don’t think I’m especially hard-hearted, but I cannot think of another time when the speech of a presidential candidate watered me up.
With that, Obama broke with the pattern, played out by both major contenders for the Democratic nomination, of distancing themselves from controversial supporters, applauding their resignations and plunging back into the talking points. Obama used the constant harping on Wright’s strident remarks as an opening to delve into the thorny complications of race in America.
Afterward Obama’s aides applauded the speech as a way to take control of the narrative on race—and weave into it the story of his own life. "He has wanted to make this speech for a long time," says David Axelrod, Obama’s senior strategist. "The question was when. He knew this was the right time. The firestorm about Wright and [former representative Geraldine] Ferraro meant that race was creeping up as a kind of dominant discussion." (Ferraro, a Clinton finance committee member, resigned her post after her own comments about Obama—suggesting he would not be enjoying such success as a candidate if he were white—caused a firestorm.)
Obama dictated a first draft to his young speechwriter Jon Favreau on Saturday, then reworked the speech until 3 a.m. Monday. He went at it anew on Tuesday, tweaking away until 2 a.m. Did Obama’s political aides try to warn him off the idea? "It wasn’t even a discussion," says Axelrod. "He was going to do it. I know this sounds perhaps corny, but he actually believes in the fairness and good sense of the American people, and the importance of this issue. His candidacy is predicated on the fact that we can talk to each other in an honest and forthright way on this and other issues."
He pegged Wright’s recreational alienation as wrong, as stereotyping, as a "profound mistake," as founded upon a canard that America has made no progress on race.
It must be understood what a maverick statement this is from a 40-something black politician. In the black community one does not sass one’s elders. One is expected to show a particular deference, understandably, to the generation who fought on the barricades of the Civil Rights movement. That is, to people of Jeremiah Wright’s vintage.
For a light-skinned half-white Ivy League-educated black man to repudiate, in clear language and repeatedly, the take on race of people like Julian Bond and Nikki Giovanni is not only honest but truly bold.
Alas, I cannot give a more considered response right now as I have to get on the road. But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.
I love this country. I don’t remember loving it or hoping more from it than today.
The kind of white resentment Obama is talking about here has been a problem for the Democratic Party for decades now notwithstanding the fact that you rarely see the party nominating African-Americans to run in majority white constituencies. What Obama is showing us here is that precisely because he’s black, he’s able to acknowledge and validate these resentments in a way that would be very difficult for a white liberal politician.
At any rate, I’d say things are back on track. The Wright business had opened up a vague sliver of hope for Hillary Clinton’s campaign — if they could produce a result in Pennsylvania that looked like a Wright-induced collapse in Obama’s white support, maybe they could convince superdelegates that he’s unelectable. After this speech, I don’t see it happening.
In no uncertain terms did Obama renounce — morally condemn — the hateful, anti-Semitic, anti-American and just plain bizarre rants of his pastor — "former pastor," as Obama now calls him. But he did not reject him. He refused to reject him. He is daring, in essence, his white liberal supporters to accept what Wright’s anger represents — a legacy of oppression — and daring the rest of white supporters to take a leap of faith him… and asking them to expand their minds a bit and see that Wright is preaching in a tradition that has a context that is directly related to the material and spiritual conditions of all Americans.
The sell will be easier for white liberals, I think. The speech was magnificently written. It was internally consistent with Obama apparently believes.
I do think that Obama’s speech was a marvel of contemporary political rhetoric. Politically, analytically and emotively, it hit many high notes. His acknowledgment of white working class resentments (busing) and about the perception that there’s been no racial progress, his willingness to stick by his friends, his grasp of history, his sense that our views of race are cramped and caricatured… all of that is something that even those who disagree with the substance of his speech, can, I think, appreciate.
It’s quite a speech: autobiographical, embracing complexity, and answering questions about Wright — whose most offensive words, he says, are beyond anything he’d heard in church — without ultimately disavowing him.
Throughout, he insists on things that you don’t get much of in politics: context and nuance.
Indeed, Obama could have given another speech. Shorter, to start. More focused on hope than on pain. More talk of tomorrow and less emphasis on the past. More dismissive of Wright and less insistent on the legitimacy of Wright’s experience, and the ubiquity of his thinking. He didn’t have to dwell on the black community’s frustration and the white community’s bigotry.
But this speech was something I didn’t expect: Honest. It was honest about Obama’s affection for Wright, even as it repudiated Wright’s comments. It was honest about the tragic history of race in America, even as it expressed faith in a redemptive future. It was honest about the resentment peddlers and racial charlatans who try and recast the increasing rarity of the American Dream as the consequence of ethnic competition rather than gross power imbalances. It was honest in its recognition that racial memory influences contemporary thought, honest in admitting that there’s anger in this country, and it’s justified, and that there’s fear in this country, and it’s real.
We’ll see. But that alone is a shock. Obama could have simply preached unity and forgiveness without recognizing the realities of anger and resentment. He could have done as Mitt Romney did, and sought to protect his political vulnerabilities by picking new enemies. Obama could have made this a speech about Fox News, and divisive commentators, and right wing talkshow hosts, and sleaze artists who need to be stopped. But he didn’t. He’s betting he can universalize this experience, too, and that he’ll find more votes in unity than in division. It is, at best, a gamble. But at least it’s an honest one.
Charles Murray, that guy who wrote the Bell Curve, and one of the few conservative chatterers who seemed to get it:
Has any other major American politician ever made a speech on race that comes even close to this one? As far as I’m concerned, it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we’re used to from our pols….
One of my personal maxims has been that politicians will disappoint you. The ones you like will have personal failings, while the ones you detest will fail time and time again. With Senator Obama, for the first time in my life, I have watched a political leader who I don’t worry if he’ll be up to the task.
1.) I thought the nod at the conservative intellectual’s critique of welfare policy was very shrewd. As in: "A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families–a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened." Obama was essentially saying to conservative elites, "You can’t exactly be surprised when black pathologies seep out into the open. You’re the same people who said public policy had been nurturing those pathologies." I’m not sure conservatives will be won over by this, but it could make them stop and say, "Okay, good point."
2.) Even if you disagree with the logic of the speech, I think the basic emotional case was sound. It’s a case Obama often makes when he talks about race and his candidacy in general, but which he made pretty explicitly here:
The campaign for the Democratic nomination has already gripped the nation for two reasons: It offers either the first woman or the first African-American as the candidate of a major party, and it has been as close as the last Super Bowl. Now we have a third reason for our fascination: We have been asked to reflect in the most serious of ways about the role that race plays in the life of our country. I cannot recall any leader or potential leader in the last two or three decades asking us to do that. I hope we are up to the challenge. I do not believe–nor, from his speech, do I think that Obama believes–that to think seriously about race we have to vote for him. But I do think that when we address race, we ought to do it, not by running endless videos of people, black or white, who have said outrageous things but by finally having the honest conversation about race we keep promising ourselves–and keep postponing. Agree or disagree with Obama, I ask people who are less inspired by him that I am, but at least acknowledge that in this presidential candidate, we have a man of honor–and an honest man.
a speech unlike any delivered by a major political figure in modern American history.
No other presidential candidate in the past 40 years has managed to speak so much truth so eloquently at such a crucial juncture in his campaign as Barack Obama did today. And he did it by speaking about race, the most persistent source of hatred among us since America began.
as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney’s speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy’s famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.
I do think the problem Jeremiah Wright creates for Obama’s campaign remains unresolved, to some extent, since there was nothing Obama could say in a single speech that would undo the perception created by his long affiliation with Wright and his church - the perception that he’s only confronting what’s wrong with Wright’s style of black politics because the media narrative is forcing him too, and that when the spotlight isn’t on him, he’s more interested in fitting in and feeling comfortable than in, well, speaking truth to power. But by using the Wright controversy as an opportunity to play up their candidate’s strengths - as an orator, but more importantly as the rare politician who can deliver a thoughtful, nuanced speech and make you feel like he means it - the Obama campaign made some sweet-tasting lemonade out of some awfully sour lemons.
But Obama did not do the politically "smart" thing. He did the right thing. And that is why his campaign will weather this storm.
At the most basic level, Obama did what the media has failed to do. He presented Wright and Wright’s comments on U.S. domestic and foreign policies in context: the context of the African-American religious experience, the context of the candidate’s connection to the church and, above all, the context of this country’s unresolved experience of what Obama correctly refers to as "the original sin" of the American experiment — human bondage — and its legacy.
The speech was masterful in this regard. Obama took the time to explore questions that rarely if ever get a fair hearing in American politics.
I have a multitude of thoughts on this, but they are still formulating at this hour. I will say, that it is the most coherent and frank explanation of the status quo of race in this country that I have probably ever heard. His honesty and demeanor were powerful and sobering - and although it is already happening among the usual suspects in the whacky right-o-sphere, I challenge any thinking person in America to deny it’s importance. It is the stark portrait of America that almost everyone is afraid to say, and Obama took advantage of this exact moment to deliver it - almost saying: fine, if you want to talk about Wright - then we will, but don’t you dare - intellectually, spiritually, or historically - ignore why someone like Wright, or the black community at large, or America itself - is the way that it is. And he refused to insert the easy distance between himself and it, instead he practically gave it a bear hug. Just the kind of courage and vision I have come to expect from him. He pitched to win, and I think he did. And I don’t care if the press agrees.
This is an important moment. Attention must be paid.
I am an unabashed Andrew Sullivan fan, even thru the holy-cow-he-hates-Clinton vitriol - and this kind of post is why I admire him as a writer, admire the function he gets to play as someone with such an expansive audience, and admire him, most of all, as a complex and thoughtful human being trying to figure it all out - which is all anyone should aspire to be…
Maybe this is a bridge too far. But in thinking about Obama for this past year, and reading the subtle critique of, say, Shelby Steele, as well as the palpable racial discomfort of some white conservatives, I have to say that it is precisely the wide span of Obama’s bridge that makes me admire him. He has refused to disown Wright, while also refusing to endorse all of his message. You can call that opportunistic or expedient or cynical. You can also call it intelligent and brave and principled. Obama could have chosen the Shelby Steele route or even the Alan Keyes or Condi Rice path. He could equally have chosen the Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton path. But what is unique about Obama is that he tried and is trying to do much more than any of them have - to express all of these racial strategies and to transcend them. While being human. He isn’t a saint or a savior. But he is trying.
I think this is part of his appeal to the next generation. And maybe it’s appropriate for me at this point to express how he has inspired me as a gay man to keep trying to maintain the bridge over the gulfs of my own various identities rather than to burn it. It is possible in American public life to be defined as a gay person and to embrace every aspect of gay culture - the good, the bad and the ugly. It is also possible to be closeted or semi-closeted so that these questions do not easily arise. And it is possible to be a gay man completely divorced from gay culture, and to buy access to power and influence by simply adopting a relationship to the gay world that is indistinguishable from many straight people. I don’t think there’s any perfect solution to this terrible dilemma of identity - of belonging and transcending, of empathizing and maintaining a proper distance. I don’t blame any gay man or woman for failing to make all this work. We live in many worlds and not all of them fit. And there have been times in my life when the roughest edges of a gay subculture I do not want to disown and have been a full part of reach out and target me again. Whether it be an embarrassing online personal ad or sexual mishaps or a long night at the Black Party, I know that part of the straight world stands poised to attack and condemn, pigeon-hole and dismiss. So be it. I have no desire to disown much of gay culture that the straight world finds abhorrent. At the same time, I also know that not all of this subculture is healthy or good and I have an obligation to address and engage and reform those parts of it. That I have also tried to do - with uneven success. And I know, as I watch Obama, that these strains are not easy and those who have never had to walk this path do not fully know how hard it can be.
The ease of pure victimology is as phony as the release of complete assimilation. For an intelligent and principled person, the struggle lies in the interstices. What I have come to despise about much of the Republican party is its refusal even to empathize with this difficulty - or, worse, to choose to exploit these struggles for easy, cheap and callow political gain. And as I have grown older and felt the tug of all these identities more strongly, and understood more deeply the immense difficulty of resolving all of them, I can see few role models older than I am - and more, mercifully more, younger than I am.
The next 24 hours feels like a playoff game suddenly, as much as any big state primary. A week of tension has been building, and the campaign has addressed it with increasing frequency, and frankly I don’t think they’ve done all that bad - but obviously Obama or someone close to him thought it was time to address it point blank. I think, in all honesty, its what I want to see - the Ebeneezer sermon of a response to all the deep seeded concerns that white people have about the way black people do or do not feel about them - which can’t be proved except I guess for some YouTube assault by self-anointed vetters. It was going to have to happen, to prove that the whole thing is real. That the post-________ world we seem to have been promised is really possible.
This is about something deep in a person like Obama - about not only the consequences a politician must face as a result of being the human being that they are, the product of their experiences and environment long before one public eye was fixed on them - but the way they then deal with those consequences. One major principle I have come to respect in a person like Obama is the cognizant way he dealt with the complexities of his experience and his identity. Indeed he wrote a brilliantly honest memoir about overcoming pretty much exactly that. Because you can be a product of something out of your control, like your upbringing, Life’s contests won and failed, or say - your race and all that entails - but you still get your chances, even make your chances to redefine who you are and what your life will be thus forth. As I began to mention before, I agree - I believe - that there is good and bad in everything. From a man to an idea to history itself, the content of your character is defined by whatever good - the purpose and the principle - that you can mine out of whatever life has provided you. That’s about as religious as I get. And it’s a struggle I haven’t won like I imagine Obama has.
However, if this speech is a playoff game… let me tell you that I am very excited about which pitcher my team is starting. The ultimate Big Game speaker. Just words gonna kick some ass.
Vandehei and Harris via Ben Smith:
Democrats who worry that Barack Obama is untested can put their concerns to rest.
The inflammatory rhetoric of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has confronted Obama with the most severe test of his presidential campaign and, quite likely, of his public career.
He is now facing a full-blown and fast-moving political crisis in which his reputation as a leader with a singular ability to transcend racial divisions and unite Americans is in jeopardy.
A convergence of factors — a media firestorm, a Democratic rival eager to exploit his stumbles and, most of all, a Republican opposition eager to rough up the man they expect to face in the general election — have raised the stakes to new heights for Obama with the speech he will deliver in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning.
The stakes really are that high. Obama (and Michelle, Axelrod, Favreau, et al.) has a blank piece of paper and one of the great challenges in the history of American politics in writing the speech tonight.
Sullivan, who’s been basically pleading for a speech like this: (this post is a must read of must reads by the way)
But I see Obama as a pioneer on this path - a brave and principled pioneer. I would think much, much less of him if he disowned a spiritual guide because of that man’s explicable if inexcusable resort to paranoia and racial separatism and anger. And I would think much, much less of Obama if he had never opened himself to this subculture and its fears, hopes and resentments. That he has done all this - while still attempting to reform and explain it - is a remarkable achievement. Maybe America is not ready for this bridge, for these contradictions, for this complexity. But the promise of Obama is that his campaign appears poised to show that America is ready for this - and the immense healing it would bring.
But he may also succeed - and what a mighty success that would be. These things are never easy; and we were lulled perhaps into an illusion that they could be. So now the real struggle starts. And it will not end with an Obama presidency; it ends with a shift from below that makes an Obama presidency possible.
I am not a religious man, but I understand the way that one’s pastor, or rabbi, or priest, or anything - can become a part of your family. And I can understand being selective in what you agree or disagree with regarding the advice they give - the same way I understand how to listen without agreeing to a family member or friend who imparts mis-aligned wisdom around the holidays or whatever.
Barack Obama, has in his life, a person who is politically dangerous… this pastor, Reverend Wright who goes off occasionally and sounds a little crazy too. I cringe whenever someone mentions his name. And I do agree that Afro-Centric Christianity has both benefits and detriments. To hear Wright declare "God Damn America" for whatever sins we have perpetrated - I first disagree, then get a little pissed, then worry about the effect on Barack. But I temper that concern with the memory of the goose bumps I got when I read Dreams Of My Father and realized how the entire idea of Hope was born to Obama in a single sermon at the very beginning of what became a new more spiritual life, and indeed it was a Reverend Wright sermon.
And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of the ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had been spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until the black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world.
And let me tell you, if there is one thing I do worship, it is Ideas - the origins of Ideas - and this grand idea that shaped Barack Obama’s life, that has in turn shaped my life and the lives of millions of others, and perhaps exponentially more - was born in that church on the South Side of Chicago, and this pastor and all his baggage was a part of it’s birth. And I am grateful for that.
I often say of family and old friends, that the great thing about them is that you and them don’t really have a choice but to put up with each other, that faults must be accepted and worked through. That an old friend at some point can be an asshole to you of all people, and that’s ok, because you won’t let them shake free that easy. The eccentric family member no one else likes, you need to keep trying to get to know them just better enough, to mine whatever connection you can find, on nothing other the principle of family. Sometimes the people that are important in your life weren’t choices that you made - but yet there they still are, and you have to appreciate them as is.
And so my point is that this Wright character, and he is a character, can really harm Obama now and in the general. But the way Barack has responded to this situation just makes me respect and admire him even more. Because Obama can take his name off some honorary list - make sure there is no official connection - but he will not repudiate the man himself. He will not promise to stop talking to him or tell the world he has suddenly seen the (Fox News) light, and now understands this character is something vile to be rejected after the fact. He won’t quit the only church he has known in his spiritual life and go someplace safer for the public to consume. Instead Obama compromises: I take the good with the bad, the good maybe is worth the bad - and he will not jettison family so he can be more easily elected President of the United States.
Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.
The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments. But because Rev. Wright was on the verge of retirement, and because of my strong links to the Trinity faith community, where I married my wife and where my daughters were baptized, I did not think it appropriate to leave the church.
Amen.
And hell, maybe a few people will finally realize he isn’t a Muslim after this all hashes out.
That I’ll have to think about some more, in the meantime - help yourself, to the argument against "Rankism"
Rankism distorts personal relationships, erodes the will to learn, taxes economic productivity, and stokes international enmities. The effects on its victims are like those of racism and sexism on minorities and women. But, unlike these better-known isms, rankism knows no limits and plays no favorites. So long as anyone’s dignity is at risk, everyone’s is. With its inclusiveness, Obama’s politics of dignity has struck a chord.
And one last thing. What I saw that ugly week with Tex/Ohio, was a woman yelling, shrieking, mocking, changing her strategy every day. I can understand the desperation, but I can’t understand smart women mistaking that for strength. When she said shame on you, I was ashamed. Does that make me a sexist? Since I am her peer and a woman? No, I wanted her to be strong but consistent, not lose her cool at 3 a.m. The way Senator Obama had behaved all week.
And now she is the killer of Hope. (It was just too delusional to manage). We are not that multi-racial post-oppression society that shocked the world and for a moment was its wonder. We are, thanks to Hillary’s kitchen sink and staff, the same old America they thought we were. The racially charged, fractured America Bush & Rush left us with that Obama has the prescription to heal. The one that attracted us original believers during his miraculous 2004 convention speech then swept 11 primaries in a row and apparently had to be stopped (thanks, SNL). We are the broken polarized America she wants to rule, will do anything to rule.
That we have learned can’t be ruled.
Which is why I was an original Barack Boomer Woman in the first place.
Someone has to stand between the Clintons and this strategy. Who… Us? Edwards/Gore? Someone must or this whole think could just explode….
[Clinton] needs to convince the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to split for her by about a 2-to-1 margin. The only way she can get a split like that is if she can persuasively argue that Obama is unelectable. And the only way she can do that is to make him unelectable. Some people have treated this as an unfortunate byproduct of Clinton’s decision to continue her campaign. It’s actually a central element of the strategy. Penn is already saying he’s unelectable. It’s not true, but by the time the convention rolls around, it may well be.
Also a wise Sullivan reader picking up on the NPR interview madness from earlier:
I think the thing I hate the most about Clinton/Bush style politics is that it completely disables the press. It was obvious that Inskeep thought she was full of shit, but what can he do? Her answers were divorced from reality, but in a way that makes them sound reasonable. The only word that comes to mind is "double-speak." Either Inskeep can accept the rhetorical landscape that she presents, or he can call her a liar. Either way he’s screwed. If he plays by her terms, she wins. If he calls her a liar, she plays the victim card, rails about the biased media, and wins. Trying to merely challenge her assertions in an intellectual way is bound to fail as well, because she’ll just spit out more double-speak, putting the interviewer back at square one.
If all Obama accomplishes as President is to cripple this kind of politics, I will consider him a resounding success.
Can you be off message - if you’re the one that shapes the message?
"We believe that [the Pennsylvania primary result] will show that Hillary is ready to win, and that Senator Obama really can’t win the general election."
Ok, fine - I’ll cave and post this.
Not making fun. Cause I really don’t even have to.
Common sense…. imagine that!? From a presidential candidate?
I mean what we want is a opportunity for the Florida and Michigan delegates to participate in the convention, to be seated, but, well, but what we don’t think makes sense is for example, the Michigan delegation to be seated when my name wasn’t on the ballot. I saw an interview where Senator Clinton suggested that we had competed in this race. I don’t know exactly how she drew that conclusion since I didn’t step foot in Michigan and my name wasn’t on the ballot, so the notion that somehow it would be fair for her to obtain significantly more delegates than me in a contest where we both agreed it wouldn’t count, I wasn’t on the ballot, and I didn’t campaign there, just defies logic. I think you could ask my 6 year old whether that was fair, and she would probably be able to say no that isn’t. So…well, what we’ve tried to do is not push one way of resolving it, we just laid out some criteria, our campaign has been in conversations with the Michigan delegation, the Florida delegation, and the DNC, and, you know, talked about what options are out there, and I think they’re going to be explored in the next several weeks. We’re not going to make the final decision on it, and I’ll abide by whatever rules the DNC lays out.
why don’t just take a poll at the beginning of this whole contest 13 months ago. We could have saved ourselves millions of dollars and a lot of travel time, and she would have won by 20 points, because nobody campaigned, and she would have been the designated Democratic nominee. The whole point of campaigning is that the voters actually start getting to know who the candidates are. If we had made that determination in all these states, just put my name on the ballot without me campaigning or running any significant ads, I would have lost by 20 points across the country, right? I don’t think anybody would think that was fair.
it wasn’t just me, it was the entire Florida House Delegation, including Clinton supporters who expressed concern about it. In Oregon they’ve got a mail in system, but it’s something that’s been in place for a long time, and they’ve scanned all the signatures of all the registered voters so that there’s a verification system in place. I know that some of the Florida folks are also concerned that, since there’s a large number of Florida residents who don’t live in Florida during the summer they would also be missing and disenfranchised. So the logistical concerns about a mail in system are not unique to us, actually many Clinton’s most prominent backers share those same concerns.
Hillary Clinton deserves everything that is coming to her. My god the incredulousness of this politician is beyond belief. My brain almost explodes when I hear crap like this…
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88165077
Who on Earth can support this kind of person? How do you do that? Is whatever Obama’s downside is really that bad? - that you could listen to this unhinged bullshit and actually nod your head and think, "Way to go Hillary, You do whatever it takes!"
The way she keeps calling Steve Inskeep "Steve" in the interview bugs me too, just sounds so incredibly patronizing, especially on which answers she does it…
She will never receive a vote from me, ever, in my entire life. Period. I can say this as a New Yorker and know it has virtually no real effect, which is fine - and if you live in a state where a vote in the general really matters, that’s up to you and I don’t envy that decision - but to vote for Hillary Clinton would be to respect the kind of politician she is, and doing that would betray every principle I have come to believe about what this country should be. This is what I have learned in this election - That the lesser of two evils is not good enough. That principles matter.