Letters to the Editor
-
No. He. Can't. - rulez is rulez
Anybody notice that Obama talks in the same stilted way Captain Kirk used to talk in the Star Trek series?
"Obama can't close the deal" True... as long as fear, ignorance and racism continue to propel the American electorate. -- ChinaMade
I would modify slightly to say, fear, ignorance, racism and sexism propel the American electorate. But thats not why Obama cannot close the deal, any biased white voting is offset by biased black voting. (winning 89% of the black vote is not "issues" voting) Obama can't close the deal because simply put, he is not a strong enough candidate under current rules to do so.
-----------
Yet, I - like many Obama supporters who skew more affluent and educated... --HP
According to exit polls people with "just" graduate degrees favored Obama but people with post-graduate degrees favored Clinton. Sorry you need to go back to school, because you ain't cutting it in the educated department compared to Clinton supporters. Also Obama is favored only by people making less than 15,0000 and people making more than 150,000. I did not realize all of the affluent and educated Obama folks hung out with low income folks at barbecues, wine tasting parties and such.
The reality is this, under current rules, neither Obama or Clinton are a strong enough candidate to win the delegates needed.
The Democratic primaries are being strangled by 1,001 special interest groups, otherwise the Democratic primaries would be winner take all and Clinton would be leading more substantially than Obama is now. And the DNC would not have alienated the voters of two of the most important states in the general election, and Clinton would have already won the primaries. But rulez is rulez and 1,001 special interest groups are 1,001 special interest groups.
-
he can't close the deal because the real democrats don't want him
Obama does well with young people (notoriously unreliable voters) and the upper income level (republicans who cross over to sabotage the democratic primary).
True democrats (blue collar, elderly, and the middle/lower income voters) want Hillary.
-
Deceptive math
I'm sure I'm not the first to say this, and it should be utterly irrelevant, but since so much psychological weight has been put on a "double-digit" win, I'd like to point out that Clinton did NOT win by "10 points" unless you accept the media's compounded rounding error. They round Clinton's percentage up to 55%, and Obama's down to 45%, and get a 10-point gap. In fact, Clinton got a bit less than 54.7%, Obama a bit more than 45.3%, for a difference of a little less than 9.4%, which properly rounda to 9, not 10. So this was a single-digit victory for Clinton.
As I said, it should be utterly irrelevant. She would have claimed a great victory, and vowed to go on, if she had won by 5 points. But in the headlines and the minds of many voters, "nine percent," or even "nine and a half percent" would sound like significantly less than "10 percent."
-
A little obvious
To actually parrot Clinton in your title.
I had thought that Salon was a step above the MSM, but here we are. For some reason the story is why Obama can't seal the deal. Why isn't the story about how Clinton, the presumptive nominee in January can't get on her feet? Her campaign is struggling financially and she could win every remaining state 54-46 and she still won't have enough delegates.
Why isn't the story about the sisyphusian nature of Clinton's staying in the race? She rolled the PA rock up the hill, and now it's just going to roll back down again. And we all lose because in the meantime, the Clinton campaign and its supporters are going to continue to show their true colors, talking about the race card and then denying it, drumming up fear, and talking about how everyone who doesn't cote Clinton doesn't matter. It's a shame.
-
Convention, Michigan, Florida, Superdelegates
We haven't seen a glimmer of true bloodletting yet.
AlGore ? Ahhhhhhhhh.....he'll be too busy chasing Manbearpig.
Seriously (though I hate to go there), do we imagine that either HRC or Barry could be dragged into THAT VP slot?
-
The dumbest industrialized nation on earth ...
... just flexed its dumb muscles again yesterday. This is embarrassing. And before I get torn apart by the Deceptacons (aka Hillbots), I'm not saying that it's embarrassing that Hillary beat Obama in and of itself.
It's HOW she beat him. It's the total bullshit that worked on the masses. It's our 8 second national attention span. It's our thirst for gladiator battles. It's our rejection of intellectualism. It's everything that will prevent this country from solving our problems. That's what's embarrassing about yesterday. Not that she won. But HOW she won.
-
We're better at "dealing with it"
Face it - you and I may be angry about numerous issues, but we are more likely to get over it and make a compromise since we have had a more positive American experience that urban blacks. We are used to getting what we want, in general. Although in most cases that means compromising and having a Southerner represent the party in November. Even then it usually works out for us.
But if we were among a group that had historically been disenfranched, and then you see your candidate winning only to have party insiders take it away at the 11th hour and hand it to a party insider, what would you say? Would that look fishy? Would it make you bitter?
Would it make you unplug from the party, even if just for one election cycle?
We can say that is wrong, short-sighted, even undemocratic. But it is a political reality that must be dealt with and must be part of any dialogue involving Clinton and SD's.
To do otherwise is to assume we'll be "greeted as liberators".
-
Why not go Cuomo's route?
HRC and BO seem to be unable to cut into each other's core demographics. The result is akin to classic WWI trench warfare. Supporters on either side may sit out the general election if their candidate loses. As Cuomo has proposed, why not agree right now that regardless of the outcome, the ticket in the general election will be either BO/HRC or HRC/BO? The VP candidate is usually chosen to shore up either demographic, geographic or policy weaknesses of the presidential candidate. That would seem to be the situation here.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/29/how_to_avoid_a_democratic_disaster/
Once this agreement is made, then the contest can go all the way to the convention (if needed) to decide the order of the ticket.
If both candidates (and their respective supporters) sincerely believe their rhetoric about change and bringing people together, then it should not be a problem for them subsume their egos and join forces to effect change for the greater good.
Its a very interesting situation. BO and HRC (as well as this country) are in a classic Prisoner's Dilemma situation. In this case, the prison sentence is a continuation of the existing policies that led us to this place.