Letters to the Editor
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Vote for Edwards anyway
Don't pretend you're a "player."
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@steve hall
Anonymous: 98% bipartisan support? Where do you get your figures?
you're right in that I should have said a 98% bipartisan approval rating which I will remind you Bush enjoyed for months after 9/11. The entire country wanted to wrap ourselves in the American flag and outpatriot each other.
Later about the only prominent Democrat vocally against giving the president unilateral power to declare war was Bobby Byrd.
Byrd was correct of course, but he also was at the end of his career and could afford to take a politically unpopular position.
Two years after that with Bush and the neocons typically having failed miserably to have any contigency plan for the on-going civil war Iraq amounted to and it going south, suddenly a lot of liberals and aspiring politicians like Obama suddenly found their anti-war voices.
I don't agree with the Democrats or Republicans that voted for Bush to have that, but to say they voted for the Iraq war is a patent lie, and it's also mighty convenient that much of the antiwar crowd found it's voice AFTER Iraq went south.
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@Anonymous
I can't keep up with which Anonymous is which, but...
Anonymous: "You tell me. Obama's fervent supporters...keep insisting he is all Hope and Enthusiasm. He doesn't enthuse me at all."
So what if people like him? Hillary's supporters like her too, tout their enthusiasm and hopefulness too. Nothing wrong with that on either side.
Anon: "['I don't think that Hillary's experience is so impressive that it trumps Obama's qualifications.'] Then you need to scroll back a few pages where someone went to great lengths to explain it to you."
I did read that. It was unconvincing.
Anon: "Whereas they will do what to Clinton , bring up the ever-tired overly-investigaged and nothing found Wastewater again?"
For starters, Hillary won't have a leg to stand on for anything she says about the Iraq war or torture policy. As for Whitewater, I don't know whether Reps will go after her on that again. But I am less concerned with that the Republicans might do than I am with who is the actual best candidate.
Anon: "He has consistently placed his own self-interest over the interest of the poor, of poor blacks, of all the people Democrats are supposed to care about."
This is laughable. You're just spewing empty charges at this point.
Anon: "Very Republican to play dirty campaign tricks and then accuse your opponents of it. But then Obama's campaign reeks of Rove all around."
Crazy. I haven't heard about any push polls accusing Hillary of having an illegitimate baby. I haven't heard about many other dirty Obama campaign tricks either. The examples I was thinking of include the one where Robert Novak reported that a Clinton staffer leaked they have dirt on Obama, and then Obama called on Clinton to repudiate this report, and then Clinton avoided the issue while calling Obama naive for falling for a Republican propaganda machine, basically tarring Obama with two strikes while pretending not to. The other example I think of is when Hillary's campaign purposely took Obama's Reagan quote out of context. This backfired, though, so lately she's played nicer. Obama has in fact attempted to maintain a pretty above-board campaign, and certainly he hasn't defended anything dirty that his campaign has done like Hillary has.
Anon: "I'm sure you do. But that's not what the record shows. HIllary vs. McCain and Hillary gets the independents. Obama vs. McCain and McCain becomes the centrist candidate and he will."
Pure speculation and not very well supported speculation at that. Hillary doesn't get the independents, she loses them. McCain is independent-friendly. Hillary turns off many independents.
Anon: "Nonsense. And furthermore he'd paint Obama as a soft-on-terror unpatriotic leftwing Kennedy endorsed liberal in about half an hour."
And he'd look foolish doing so. Here is what I personally believe -- that both Hillary AND Obama would wipe the floor with McCain. Honestly, I think either candidate will win without much trouble. Either way, I think the whole "Vote for Hillary because she can win and Obama can't!" argument is stupid, and it's an easy way to get people off the central subject of WHO IS THE BEST CANDIDATE.
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Vote for Hillary now and Obama in GE
No, really. For all the curses that are thrown at her; she remains in my opinion one of the smartest, courageous and dare I say visionary women politicians that we are likely to see in a long time. People nowadays laugh at the failure of her healthcare proposal; but I really doubt if we would have been discussing this nowadays were it not for that courageous attempt in 1990's. Yes, people think that she did not make the right plan, but I think Republicans would have shot down any plan-it is afterall one of those things that will make Democrats the majority party for a long time. For that reason, I think we will also not get any universal healthcare plan.
Senator Obama is definitely promising, but frankly I have not seen enough to judge whether he has a real vision in his guts.
I do not agree that ``change'' is a vision-who has not craved for change several times. But the fact remains that change was the battle cry behind Reagan, Clinton and Bush 43 election campaigns. Unfortunately, Senator Obama's change comes with even less intellectual meet (as far as I could discern) than any of those campaigns. Considering that one of this was Bush 43, that is quite an achievement.
There is another reason why, in your predicament, you should vote for Hillary. I am sure that even if Senator Obama does not become President Obama; a few years down the line he will be back- a bit more defined, a bit more ready and a bit more seasoned. I do not see any woman becoming a candidate anytime soon; especially after seeing the blatant sexism on television/media going virtually unchallenged. At least if you vote for Hillary now and Barack in General Election, you could tell your (future) daughter that you did pull lever but that there was just not enough oil to take the candidate beyond the goal post. At least this will give her ``hope.''