Letters to the Editor
dog-walker
Published Letters: 81
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soren report
[Read the article: Looking past Pennsylvania]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obama is not "being forced down the throat of the electorate." He's been CHOSEN by the electorate.
What's so difficult about that to comprehend?
If she's a stronger candidate, why isn't she ahead? Why is it all but impossible for her to catch up? With her universal name recognition, why didn't she sew up the nomination on Super Tuesday?
I didn't start out this cycle as an Obama supporter. I was excited about John Edwards and hopeful about Hillary. Obama was essentially unknown to me. I (unlike most) wasn't particularly moved by his '04 convention speech. But John Edwards got blacked out by the media and we'll never know how the public might have responded to his ideas; and Hillary hired some truly icky people who ran an awful campaign. And she lost.
Meanwhile we all got to know more about Obama. And he's just really compelling. Not only is he charismatic, he's also courageous. His response to the Wright controversy was revolutionary. I cannot remember a politician responding to one of these endless, mindless, made-up, play-ground scandals by confronting it directly as he did, as an adult . And as I began to understand his central argument -- that in order to achieve some of the goals we've been failing to achieve through successive administrations for the past 28 years (could the Clintons have messed up the health care reform effort worse than they did, under the most favorable of circumstances?), we need to change the terms of the debate, we need to address the decision making process itself -- I had to agree. It's self-evidently true. It's common knowledge that lobbyists and moneyed insiders quash initiative. And he has a demonstrated theory about how to address it: get your money from Everyman. It's true that he won't have to court the money-bags and he won't have to entertain the lobbyists, the way Bill Clinton did, the way Hillary Clinton does. He can simply shut the door to them. He won't need them. That's not airy rhetoric; it's something he's actually accomplishing.
So after all, I came to be an Obama supporter. I don't like the cult of personality aspect of his support. That Obama video gives me the creeps: "Obama. Obama. Obama..." But I've never liked politics in the first place because ALL campaigns seem to have a strong dose of that mindless group-think. The support for Hillary against all evidence that she is a weaker candidate and, increasingly, a morally compromised person, has much of the same flavor.
So you make that statement that Obama is "being forced down the throat of the electorate." But it's not true. It's not why so many have eventually chosen to vote for him, to donate small sums of money to his campaign, to take the time to reason these issues out on threads like this one.
And there's the central flaw with the entire Clinton push of the moment: it's based almost entirely on false and shifting premises. BTW, does that sound familiar? What else in our recent political life has been based almost entirely on false and shifting premises? How did that turn out?
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ELECTABILITY...
[Read the article: Looking past Pennsylvania]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is a load of b.s. It's just how we achieved the magnificently stultifying and incompetent campaign of John Kerry.
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Carol Richards
[Read the article: Looking past Pennsylvania]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Trying to follow your (sarcastic?) reasoning.
Did Obama or any of his supporters ever actually suggest that he might be perfect? If so, I missed that part. Please fill me in.
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Carol Richards...
[Read the article: Looking past Pennsylvania]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]okay. Got it. But I disagree. I think it's more effective just to state the truth:
1. Obama is winning because he is a stronger candidate (DESPITE being black. He's taken whatever advantage theremight be in his race, but anyone who believes that overall his race has helped him along is blind to American history. Hillary said that a woman has to do everything better than a man to get the same recognition. That's true. It's also true of blacks. Moreso? Less so? Who knows? As an outsider to the argument -- white male -- my sense is that here in the US of A, it's been toughest of all to be a black male. The history of it is just astoundingly drenched in blood and tragedy. )
2. Hillary's losing proves she is the weaker candidate.
3. Hillary squandered the most propitious of opportunities (name recognition, funding going in, establishment support) to win this in a walk months ago.
4. Obama has made the absolute most of practically nothing at all (hardly anybody knew him, he had little financial support going in, the establishment loathes and fears him)
5. The tactics Hillary is using to stave off elimination are weakening her further. The NYTIMES was right about that today (or was it yesterday?)
6. Hillary appears forthrightly to lie, and then to lie about it, and then to lie about that.
7. She has never provided a sufficient explanation for her Iraq vote, probably because there is none.
8. If she contemplates throwing up a nuclear umbrella over Saudi Arabia, I hope she doesn't expect to charge it on her feminist leadership card. (Right?)
9. Suggesting you'd nuke Iran is flatly depraved.
10. A list of small initiatives you hope to achieve is not the same thing as a theory of how to do it.
11. She doesn't really have experience. (I don't count going on T.V. and complaining about a right wing conspiracy counts, really, as experience. Do you?)
12. She whines about unfair treatment more than anybody else. (See above.)
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Joan, if you're reading this, can you refute any of these points?