Letters to the Editor
Whispers
Published Letters: 349 Editor's Choice: 9
-
Obama has appealed to plenty of working-class voters
[Read the article: Looking past Pennsylvania]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The blurb for this column says "Obama's still struggling with white working-class voters".
Does Joan think that Obama has managed to win primaries and caucuses in Iowa, South Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Utah, Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington, Maine, DC, Maryland, Virginia, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Texas (caucuses), Vermont, Wyoming, and Mississippi without having any appeal to the working class?
It is interesting how "working class" has become synonymous in the media with "white, rural, working class". Obama got 75% of the vote in DC. Do you think that the "working class" is somehow excluded from his base of support there?
I read through the column with interest to see where this point was supported. In fact, Joan never mentions "working-class" voters at all. So where did the blurb come from?
I do not understand why the hand-wringing about Obama needing to win the white, rural vote comes from. This feels a lot like fake concern for a candidate - concern that is not terribly well-placed. We can worry about the general election when it comes, and it certainly is not necessary for Obama to do well in the Republican enclave known as Indiana to win in November. No Democrat has won Indiana since the Goldwater debacle of 1964. If we are concerned about Obama's ability to connect with white, rural voters, are there not plenty of them in Kansas? Idaho? North Dakota?
It's sad when an explanation doesn't fit the data, and yet the pundits plow forward with the explanation anyway. The truth is that Obama has, on the whole, been doing better in the rural states than Clinton has. Remember the complaint about how she was winning the "big, important states"? So let's skip the facile explanations, please.
-
Buckwheat?
[Read the article: Whose fault is the Clinton-Obama stalemate?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow, W.E.S., you've stooped to racist name-calling.
Very appealing.
-
easy but dull explanation
[Read the article: Krugman asks "what's gone wrong" with Obama campaign]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obama has not been losing support, nor has Clinton been gaining support. Obama's support lies among different groups than Clinton's. That's been true all along back to when Obama won Iowa and Clinton won New Hampshire.
Obama's support isn't flagging, it's just that the primary calendar has moved away from the long string of states that favored him to a few that favor her. But at the end, Clinton will still not have enough delegates. And I think it's also clear that Obama has more crossover appeal to independents and Republicans.
Paul Krugman is a good economist, but when it comes to analyzing political demographics he's not necessarily an expert.
-
Joan Walsh, concern troll
[Read the article: Why Jeremiah Wright is so wrong]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I had thought the Jeremiah Wright story was dead. Apparently Joan Walsh thinks that the Wright story hurts Obama because the press will focus on negative possible connotations. And then to prove her point, she focuses on negative possible connotations.
Joan, you should not pretend that your actions are not part of the story at this point.
Why does the Jeremiah Wright story get so much more coverage than the story about the reality of what is happening in Iraq and Afganistan?
-
McCain's flag
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And yet, McCain doesn't even wear a flag himself. Nor does Clinton, as far as I can tell. How did this ever become an Obama issue?
-
clinton long gone
[Read the article: Clinton to appear on "The O'Reilly Factor"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]She's gone way past the "I'll vote for her because she's a Democrat" point. The Clinton version of what it means to be a Democrat is to constantly pander to rich special interests. It's really sad they don't like her more!
-
Electro Robot obviously not living in the US
[Read the article: The Democrats' God problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a previous letter writer noted, by every objective measure of religious devotion, the US is becoming more and more non-religious by decade.
(Incidentally, I would prefer to separate the word 'secular' from 'non-religious'. A bus driver can be as devout as Muhammad, but his job is still secular. And the US government is supposed to be secular, i.e. not in the business of spreading religion.)
For the past 30 years, we have been told that the US is undergoing a "new great awakening". And yet church attendance is down, atheism is up (check the numbers) and more and more people are demanding that the religious dominionists not hold sway in government.
As a measure of the relative religiousness of the US, consider that it was basically uncontroversial in the 1950s when the phrase "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. The pushback against this inappropriate insertion of religiosity has been growing and growing in the past 15 years. People in the Bible Belt know that there is a "culture war" going on (for lack of a better phrase), and they also know they've been losing it for decades.
Unfortunately, devout extremists carry a disproportionate voice in government, since they are far more willing to spend huge portions of their incomes on delusions of grandeur. See, for example, the crowning ceremony of Rev. Moon - in the Senate Office Building!
Whether the government is more or less religious than it used to be is debatable. I think a good case can be made that it is more so. But society at large does not want to play along with any of the particular (heretical) cominglings of church and state that the dominionists seek.
The idea that Democrats can somehow make a dent into the evangelical Christian vote by putting on evangelical clothing is pathetic. Voters can tell the difference between pandering and true believers, and Democratic candidates should know that they are going to lose a lot of votes from non-believers and believers of minority religions if they do more than give lip service to the religious extremists. And if they are only giving lip service, everybody will know it.
In other words, most Democratic "consultants" should be fired and sent to work in menial labor. Most of these losers have horrible track records giving bad advice to Democratic candidates. And the worst advice is "pretend to be Republican". Either fight for the ideals of the Democratic party or get out of the way.