Letters to the Editor
Baloo.
Published Letters: 223 Editor's Choice: 8
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The Liberal fear of success!
[Read the article: How will it all end?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Democratic Party needs a psychiatric evaluation. It is anxious about not being good enough, feels undeserving of a win, and employs self-sabotage as a means of avoiding having to perform and/or make public its insecurities. That is the evaluation I would give if a backroom deal decides the nominee, especially if it's the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton. If super delegates decide our nominee, the other candidates' supporters would likely desert in large numbers and we would lose to the Republicans in the general election.
If we get our nominee through a fair and transparent process then there is no doubt we will win in November. Those of you who write otherwise are old, tired naysayer. Slap yourselves a few times and wake the eff up! The Republican party is divided, in disarray, and weaker than it has been in a long time. We have a candidate that is, by no stretch of the imagination, a superstar! He has won election after election, is admired on both the right and the left, is young, brilliant, fresh, and charismatic and you all just want to toss him aside? If the Republicans had anything even close to what we have in Obama, you could very well kiss this election goodbye. The Republicans don't get bogged down by sentimental notions. They know how to pick a winner. Some of them have even told us which of our candidates would be harder to beat, or negatively, which they would prefer to run against. The Democratic Party on the other hand seems married to a loser mentality.
If we mess this one up Donna Brazile won't be the only one to desert the party!
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McCain/Colin Powell ticket--be afraid, be very afraid!
[Read the article: Obama's surge extends down the Potomac]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]John Adams called the vice presidency "the most insignificant office ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." This would be doubly true if the president has for a spouse an ex-president.
I doubt Obama would accept a VP slot from Clinton unless he's pressured to do so by his party. It didn't seem to do Al Gore all that much good. In any case, Obama will probably come out ahead of Clinton in the popular vote and in the state delegate count without achieving the required number for a victory. The super delegates will decide this race any way you cut it. They are already behind the curve by not responding to the bad press they've been getting thus far, i.e. smokey rooms, etc. If the American public goes into the convention without a clear winner and with the idea that these dudes will will chose the nominee willy nilly in a smokey room, the party will be ruined and John McCain will be the next president.
Having heard McCain's victory speech from Alexandria, VA last Tuesday night, I couldn't help but think how much he sounded like Bush. He's a variation on a theme. He talks like a real life version of GI Joe, the greatest American hero. I believe he would wear the mantle of "war president" with greater pride than any before him in recent history and, given his personal history, more convincingly than GW. Therein lies the rub though. He has no real military or command experience and yet I think McCain will be the 'secretary of defense president.' Even if he delegates taking care of the economy to someone competent, he will bankrupt the country with his relentless pursuit of "the enemy." In this sense, he is a neoconservative's neoconservative.
Get a load of this: some news outlet suggested a McCain/Colin Powell ticket. If that were to happen, it would undercut a great deal of Obama's appeal and outline his inexeperience sharply.
The short end of it is that the super delegates of the Democratic Party need to figure out what they're going to do and go public with it before the primary races end. That would confer legitimacy on the eventual winner, however that is determined.
Obama and Clinton supporters both need to keep their eyes on the ball. Support your candidate but stand united against the Republicans.
The candidates need to chose their running mates sooner rather than later. It could help Americans decide who they want for the nomination, even if it is symbolic more than anything else.
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Trojan horse?
[Read the article: How Obama won Wisconsin ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The only thing here worth commenting on has to do with the intriguing notion that Barack Obama may be a Trojan horse. This idea seems to have a component of truth in it. I'm not convinced, however, because all the numbers thus far suggest that Obama's support is real. Some might say this support is based in part on Republicans voting for Obama out of displeasure with their nominee but who will, in all likelihood, vote for the Republican nominee in the general election. Has anyone compared the numbers in the closed primaries vs. the open ones? If they are smaller margins then this idea may have some legs. Just how big is this Obmican phenomenon?
Furthermore, could this line of thinking be part of the same rhetoric of fear that Obama preaches against, the same "moving bar" that Michelle Obama talked about the other night? If it is, it only serves to make Obama's case stronger. If it isn't, Democrats ought to figure this out sooner rather than later.