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Progressives question Obama's bona fides

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Point of Order, Dec 19, 2007.

  1. One man's tough is another man's dishonest.
     
  2. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    He's got an answer on smoking dope:

    "I inhaled. That was the point."

    As for an answer on his name, well, what should the answer be? "It's my name. Perhaps other candidates would change theirs if they thought a new one would poll better, but I'm going to stick with the one I have."

    And it isn't "Who killed Vince Foster" territory to suggest that she is using Karl Rove's GWB playbook. It's simply paying attention.

    Annoint yourself the frontrunner.

    Answer no serious questions. Do no press that doesn't promise to script the interview.

    Stage rallies where the candidate appears in front of screened supporters with planted questions.

    Smear your opponents on their strengths.

    Say nothing of substance.

    Cudgel moneyed interest groups into supporting you. Use the threat of being completely cut off if necessary.

    As for dishonest:

    Don't you think it's dishonest to claim you're the most experienced candidate when by any measure you aren't? What must run through Chris Dodd's mind when she says that shit?

    Don't you think it's dishonest to have your New Hampshire chair out accusing your competition of dealing cocaine?

    Don't you think it's dishonest to disperse emails claiming that your competition is secretly a Muslim bent on jihad against the United States?

    She has yet to offer one reason she is qualified for this job that isn't utter and complete bullshit. She doesn't get the job -- or the nomination -- without doing so. And if, lord help us, she is the nominee, say hello to President Romney.

    She would do a much better job in office than Shrub. But as far as a campaigner goes, she's George W. Bush... without the likability.
     
  3. You honestly believe that she is no different than Karl Rove?
    Seriously?
    Obama hasn't exactly been the transparency king, either. None of these people are. It's how you run campaigns these days. Each one of them is roughly as "substantive" as all the others are. The position papers are on the website.
    Pointing out that Obama's SS answer was half-neocon talking-point isn't a "smear." It's politics. Asking whether Obama is experienced enough to be president isn't a "smear." It's what you ask of rookie senators who run for president. Popping him on his health-care plan on the grounds that it's coverage is not universal is not a "smear." It's the truth. Pointing out that an awful lot of his bring-us-together kumbaya bullshit requires us to make nicey-nice to the people who are going to be gnawing on his balls come October isn't a "smear." It's the truth, and he still doesn't have an answer to why he's running around with a wingnut like Donnie McClurkin.
    His answer on smoking dope, while clever, isn't going to be good enough in the fall.
    I don't think "moneyed interest" need to be "cudgeled" into supporting HRC -- or Obama, for all that. I think they'd need to be "cudgeled" into supporting Kucinich.
    In all campaigns, including this one, in which Obama is citing his experience in that hotbed of policy genius, the Illinois State Legislature, "experience" is what you say it is.
    I don't think she "had" Bill Shaheen come out and say what he did. The guy's been a loon for 20 years.
    I'd like to see an offer of proof on that e-mails thing. Otherwise, it's, well, a "smear."
    I am not a HRC fan. Nor will I vote for her. To tell you the truth, though, I'm becoming les of an Obama fan almost by the day. I don't think he has the faintest freaking clue how politics has been changed by the wingnuts over the past 15 years -- Clinton's impeachment was 10 years ago today, BTW -- nor how badly the next D to become president is going to get nuked. His answers on the crisis of Executive power and the Constitution are thin and worthless. I don't think he recognizes the forces arrayed against him and this whole "beyond politics" thing is an invitation to become Jimmy Carter in about a week.
     
  4. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    First and foremost, you bring up a lot of things that I did not. I certainly did not say some of those things were "smears". Of course, some of them are...

    Of emails and Iowa: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22181497/

    Of experience, if it is so important, I ask you, why doesn't she drop out and support Dodd or Biden? And what is her substantive experience? She's used to the Republicans being mean to her? So fucking what?

    Of social security, what's wrong with raising the cap? When did that get to be some kind of backwards-assed litmus test? Because Paul Krugman got his feelings hurt, no one can try and be proactive with social security?

    Of smoking dope, if it matters that much to the general electorate, they deserve President Romney. Bill Clinton didn't seem to have a problem, nor did GWB.

    Of Donnie McLurkin, I don't care. You're right. The guy's a nut. He never should have been on the same stage with him.

    Of cudgeling, well, I'd keep reading the Iowa and New Hampshire papers and keep watching union locals breaking off from their nationals in protest of having their votes overridden somewhere up the chain -- and plenty of them want to support Edwards, too, to be fair. Keep watching people who work for NOW having to hide who they are supporting, because word came down from on high.

    Of this,
    Reactive and weak. Why, oh why, must any candidate accept how "politics has been changed by the wingnuts over the past 15 years"? If they changed it, logic tells us it can be changed again, right? I mean, really, just because that's the way Shrub came to power and operated doesn't mean that's the only way it has been done. And as to answers on executive power and the consitution, the only one I recall from the stump speech is that on his first day in office he will assign his AG to go back through all of GWB's executive orders and signing statements and he will overturn all that are unconstitutional. Of course, Obama used to lecture in Con. Law at the U of Chicago school of law, but I'm sure he has an experience deficit there, too.

    Oh, and of experience:

    "The same old experience is not relevant: You can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience. ’’
    -- Bill Clinton, 1992

    I agree with Bill.

    Further,

    “Experience is like tail-lights on a boat which illuminate where we have been when we should be focusing on where we should be going.”
    -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

    I agree with JFK.
     
  5. No, his SS answer was bad because referring to it as in "crisis" is a privatization talking-point. And it was aimed at winning the vital Green Room Primary. The system is not in crisis. It doesn't need the attention of the next president, who certainly doesn't need to be "open" and "bipartisan" on the subject in the current definitions of those terms. Krugman is dead-on right about that.
    Being "used to the Republicans being mean to her" is a damn sight better than assuming that your shiny charisma and your ability to give a good speech will immunize you against it, and will allow you to "reach across the partisan divide" and the rest of that flapdoodle.
    Appears to me that the e-mails thing was responded to quickly and decisively by the HRC campaign. If you've got proof they were behind it in the first place, I'd like to see it. They responded faster than the Obama people did on McClurkin, to use one example.
    If locals are splitting off from their national unions for the primaries, good on them. I hope they always will. And "moneyed interests" morphed into unions right quick there.
    That answer from the stump is kind of dead-assed. He and his AG will decide which of W's "signing statements" are unconstitutional? Gee, that's one I'll believe when I see it.
     
  6. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    I ask this in all honesty: What is more important, electing a good president or getting back at Republicans? Why are Democrats so damn reactive? Social security most certainly does need attention -- maybe not tomorrow, but it needs attention just like global warming and energy independence need attention. If we're going to talk the talk, we better walk the walk and start dealing with long term problems now, when they are manageable. Raising the cap is a good idea. Jiminy fucking Christmas, the Democrats won on Social Security! And we're still supposed to cower in fear of their talking points? Why? What are we afraid of?

    And, while the use of flapdoodle was truly righteous, why in the fuck must we accept that the only way to campaign is to the base? Why? Why is Rove's playbook the only operative model?

    You're right about one thing: The fact that Hillary canned the emailers as well as Shaheen shows she can be shamed, so, I guess, that's one place she and Rove differ. And no, I can't prove that they originate with Hillary. But I do know that their propogation only tends to benefit one person.

    As far as executive power, what answer are you looking for? I'm sure Kucinich has a good one. Something along the lines of, "Ima throw Shrub in the clink and then nail my hot ass wife in the Rose Garden. Have you seen my pocket Constitution?"
     
  7. Ben_Hecht

    Ben_Hecht Active Member


    Regrettably, the optimum strategy to have a shot of winning a party's nomination is to campaign to the base . . . especially in a wide-open session such as this one. Huckabee and Romney are proving it, in spades. It's too bad.
     
  8. Hey, zeke. This is fun. We should do this more often.
    The most important thing the next president has to do is bring everything back into balance. He has to crush the theory of the unitary executive forever, so it never rises again. He has to wrench the "center" back to the middle. Right now, the "center" is what we used to call "Rockefeller Republicans." And he has to be a one-man Truth Commission so that we find out a) all of what was done in our names for the past 7 years and, b) how to avoid it ever happening again. The Republicans allowed their party to get hijacked by its extremes and those extremes took the country in a dark and bloody direction. They have shown themselves unable to shake this off, and so any Democratic president must, for the good of the country, disenthrall them from the extremes as firmly as he/she can.
    That's what I meant.
     
  9. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Well, why didn't you just say so.

    And yes, it has been fun. Next time with pints.
     
  10. Don't get me started, youngster.
     
  11. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

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    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 15, 2014
  12. OK, I agree with anything you say.
     
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