Letters to the Editor
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It is Obama's time
As the Democrat son of a Repulican father, I have to say that the great and only remaining virtue of the Republican Party is their understanding that politics is more important than policy and that it should be in a free a country. The Democrats consistently have the right policy and the wrong politics, including a politics which perversely claims that policy is more important than politics and constantly whines about winning the policy debate but losing the election.
HRC embodies this disease. Her so-called progressive and a"feminist" candidacy is really about restoration and dynasty and perversely sets women of 45 and over and blue collar workers against the young and minorities. This politics probably cannot win the election, will certainly not advance the policies which she claims to stand for even if she does win, and hurts the long run cause of the Democratic Party.
In contrast, Obama exhibits a winning a congruence of policy and politics. The policies he wants (similar to HRC) naturally divide the electorate primarily by generation, which is at bottom the politics he is preaching and practicing. This kind of politics is congruent with his policies and can win under present circumstances. (1) Bush 43 has discredited "conservatism" -- i.e. Reaganism -- as a framework for meeting th challenges faced by the US in an era of accelerating globalization, technological change, demographic transition and looming ecological crisis. (2) For the first time, half of the electorate are post-boomers who are fed up with the staleness and stasis of politics in the Age of Reagan (1974--????) and want something new which will actually address America's problems in a constructive way.
Obama is seeing and seizing the moment. HRC does not see the moment and cannot seize it. She is an obstacle to national renewal. Clintonism, an unhealthy mix of unwarranted 90s nostalgia, older female grievance and restorationism, is just another form a boomer narcissism --not much different from the boomer "conservatism" of Bush43 and DeLay. Clintonism, if successful, will reinvigorate and reempower "conservatism." Ann Coulter is actually right about that.
HRC's candidacy is hurting the causes she believes in, including the cause of female empowerment in our society, culture and politics, and the Democratic Party. She should bow out.
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It was the self absorption of Caligula and the ignoring of politial realities that caused it to fall.
Learn your history. Caligula was only the third emperor. The Roman Empire fell three centuries after Caligula's brief horror show. Rome fell for many reasons: growing nationalism, more powerful exterior threats, rampant corruption...AND farming the military out to mercenaries. Can you say Blackwater, Haliburton?
Clinton will win Texas. I say Obama takes Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Democrats worst nightmare would be the super delegates giving the nomination to a fading Clinton.
A drawn out battle for the nomination spells bad news for McCain. Clinton and Obama are very different characters and would have to be delt with in very different way. The Republicans can't focus until they know who they're running against. Plus, all the attention, all the news will be focused on the Democrats and their positions. Obama has a much better chance of drawing votes away from McCain. Clinton poses a greater danger of directing votes to McCain. The Democrats will win their usual states; the Republicans, theirs. Clinton doesn't stand much of chance of broadening the base. Obama could very well win a number of states normally leaning Republican. Plus, Obama's coat tails would be much longer. If Hillary clinton were to lose in November she could also be responsible for losing the Senate. Even if Obama himself were to lose, I still think he would pull a number of downticket Democrats to victory.
Obama vs McCain. I say Obama wins by 4 or 5 points with increases in the Senate.
Clinton vs McCain. I say Clinton loses by 6 to 8 point and possible loes the Senate.
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Riversofexile
Rather than not voting, if Obama loses vote Green.
Okay, you will get accused of throwing away your vote and all of that, but really, if you aren't going to vote anyway you may as well help build up the third party and adress the root of America's current political problem.
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the logic of age=wisdom?
Ana by your logic then you should vote for McCain because he is older than Hillary and hence has more 'experience.'
But the real trump card that exposes your underlying support is her position on Iraq and it is one I disagree with. I was angered at her support of Bush and her more recent support behind the Kyl-Lierberman amendment. Hillary won her second term because the Republicans didn't bother to run any one of substance (strawman).
I'm a New Yorker and I don't like Hillary. As SlackieOnasis has pointed out her campaign is/was run by people I really don't like and her unabashed support of Israel also sickens me. But she is not alone in that department as the majority of both aisles are in bed with too many PAC's for my liking.
But opening page 8 of the letters today made me aware of my own bias
an anonymous of reason (not the hate filled obama is a loser anonymous) wrote to realitycounts. I had threatened and joked that I would vote for McCain over Hillary but one sentence he or she wrote made me see my own dark reflection. I will push for Obama but should Hillary win, well "the election is too important to waste."
Am I all warm and fuzzy over Obama? No as someone who supported Dodd and Edwards he has me by default, his record or non-record on key votes disturbs me but since I've been examining his career and record I've begun to understand what I think is his strategy.
No black man could win without being someone trying to unite and lord knows regardless of the deep social and economic divisions in this country we need some of that, his 'hope' message is an echo of the propaganda that Reagan used to get elected. Reagan made people, not me, feel good about the 'US of A' and after Watergate, the Oil Crisis, Iranian Hostage Crisis, etc it worked for him. Deluded we are. The Republicans would tar and feather him as 'LIBERAL, LIBERAL, LIBERAL' and so he has avoided that pitfall by what "appears" to be his voting record, still too middle of the corporate highway for my liking.
He is just as much in bed with corporate interests as Hillary, his health care package is not as good as hers but at the end of the day when I stack pro v con. A health care package by Hillary isn't enough to sway me now, as I said her war votes, her packaging of self, her triangulation puts me off. More importantly she will galvanize the right not because she is a woman but because she is Hillary and even though the subtext of such is the fact she is a strong woman that engenders such hate, just the mantra of Hillary will make rise the evangelical hate machine.
They will try and succeed in some states to use the race card against Obama but the publicly acceptable level of such racism is fading fast and the spotlight will fall heavily in disfavor of racial attacks because most people consciously like to believe that "we" are beyond that (truth of that is another thing entirely).
At the end of the day I think, it is my opinion that the US would be better served by a President Obama than Hillary. I think, my opinion is that a President Hillary would give us another 4 maybe 8 years of Rove, Gingrich republican shit.
But 4 distasteful years of more Rove politics is preferable to 100 years of war McCain.