Letters to the Editor
Chernobyl Kid
Published Letters: 79 Editor's Choice: 13
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Charisma is what wins elections.
[Read the article: Undecided '08: Should I vote for Clinton or Obama?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For what it's worth, I'm Canadian and I don't have a say on Election Day. But, "no annihilation without representation."
People don't really vote with their heads. They vote with their hearts.
If John Kerry had really moved us (yes, us, all of us, Americans as well as the other six billion people on this planet who have a stake in the outcome) would any of the Swift Boat stuff have stuck? When someone slanders someone we love, we turn to him and say, "Say it isn't so." And then we listen while he tells us it isn't so. If John Kerry had made us love him he would have won.
If Al Gore had run against George Bush--the REAL Al Gore, the one that was in the movie and came this close to being drafted this time around--he would have won. As it is, the Al Gore that ran had nothing but intelligence, competence, experience and integrity going for him. It did him no good against the pampered, alcoholic deserter and life failure who nonetheless was Someone You'd Like To Have A Beer With.
They loved Ronald Reagan and how he made them feel and they did not love Jimmy Carter and how he made them feel. It's as simple as that.
They did not love Michael Dukakis or George Bush, but Bush basked in the glow of Reagan so they gave him a chance. Then Bill Clinton came along and it was no contest, and again it was no contest when he ran against Bob Dole, despite every piece of filth the GOP could fling at him. When you smear someone, that person looks bad, but when you smear someone we love, you look even worse.
When it comes to politics, I would rather have people's hearts than their heads because your head turns but your heart does not.
So, Democrats, choose wisely. Choose with your hearts.
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Obama isn't stupid.
[Read the article: Can Obama survive the "Freak Show"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He knows when he has to hit back and when it's not worth it.
The attacks that have come so far haven't affected his ability to win the nomination and so they haven't been worth fighting back against.
Every one of us--American or not--has spent the past seven years imagining what we would do if we were the Democratic candidate or the target du jour. That's what's been so frustrating--watching Al Gore and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid just sit there and take it when they should hit back, and then hitting back when the other guy is out of reach. Come ON come ON COME ON!!! Gaaaa!
I'm sure Obama has been doing the same thing. And he's gone through every possible flaw they could bring up--no matter how trivial, how desperate, how irrelevant--and he's prepared an answer for if/when he needs it.
So his middle name is Hussein? "Well, if my name is important, why stop there? My last name sounds like Osama and my first name rhymes with Iraq. Why not go for the trifecta?"
They think he's a Muslim? "No, I'm not a Muslim. My father was a Muslim. If some people think that's a bad thing then that's unfortunate. But I think the fact that I've actually had some contact with Islam over the years is a plus, not a minus, and I think most Americans understand that. Let's face it, if George Bush had spent some time in that culture, maybe he'd know the difference between Al-Quaeda and Saddam Hussein and maybe we wouldn't be stuck in Iraq now."
So he did coke once or twice? "Ronald Reagan once said that above all he wanted America to be a place where someone could get rich. I want America to be a place where you can afford to make a mistake. That's the America I grew up in and for all those kids like I was, who have maybe done something foolish, I want them to have the same chance I had."
etcetera etcetera. The thing is that, unlike every other election I can rememnber, I don't have to hope against hope that the candidate is going to stumble across my post on Salon and say, "Hey, that's a good line, I'm going to use that." I know he's already planning for the freak show.
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Hillary's strategy or lack thereof
[Read the article: Hillary at twilight]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was glad to see Hillary get elected in 2000 but since then I've become disgusted with her. Of course she stuck out as the best candidate the Democrats could muster--the spineless cowardice of the federal Dems has lowered the bar so far that you risk tripping over it. She's spent seven years planning to get the nomination by being a dwarf among midgets, and expecting to win on the not-being-George-Bush issue alone.
Her inability/unwillingness to seriously organize at the grassroots level, and her preference to do just enough to win just enough to win (that repetition is not a typo) has finally tripped her up. (It's not just her, of course. John Kerry basically played dead throughout the primary season, came to life just long enough to get the nomination, and then went back to sleep for the rest of the campaign.)
Frankly, it's poetic justice. If she was really serious about democracy, why hasn't she done anything in her seven years in the Senate to fix this godawful, theft-prone voting-machine system? From both a principled and a pragmatic standpoint, that should have been Job One for the Democrats, starting on January 21, 2000. But why bother fixing the system when you know the current president is so bad that the next election will be barely not close enough to steal?
Obama will win because he's neither lazy nor a coward, which puts him head and shoulders above all the other Democratic contenders.
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"fed up with the media's treatment of the candidate?"
[Read the article: The numbers crunch Hillary in Texas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What treatment? You mean continuing to talk about her as if she's a viable candidate after losing eleven straight primaries?