Letters to the Editor
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@tp
It's so easy to get laid for free that it astonishes me a powerful man would have to go commercial.
Yes, and don't even get me started on it. If you must screw around while in public office you do it with a consensual adult that has as much to lose if it goes public as you do, which does not include a gum chewing, uneducated 22 year old twit from California nor someone where the police could break down the door at any moment.
Pin the tail on Honest John.
Gonna be hard to do that with the press fawning over him and trashing the Dems and you can count on that. It's obvious to me at least that McCain sang like a bird in 'Nam or he'd have never have survived that long, but yet all these years the press has painted him as a bona fida "war hero" and let him milk it (and milk it and milk it) for years on end. What in the hell is heroic about getting caught and held hostage I'm not sure, much less dumping your wife to take up with someone who has money to start your political career.
We can win this with either candidate. We'd better
Oh, I agree perfectly the stakes are high as in "this is our last chance to save Rome" high. I just wish I shared your optimism that it will happen.
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shawn
I wouldn't go so far as to call it optimism, but I think national circumstances favor us greatly. The lid on the war will come off, the economy is in a death spiral, and gas prices will be a daily reminder of just how inept the Bush policies have been, policies that Honest John endorses almost in their entirety- tax cuts, warmongering, et al. He's only close to sane on immigration, and that dog won't hunt with the reich wingers. He's gonna have to do some fancy tapdancing for a stiff old fart. The nominee should propose a debate a week, two hours each, until the aging faker crumbles. If he ducks, so much for profiles in courage.
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swift boating john mccain?
sang like a bird?
good grief.
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Hey Shawn
I understand your concerns about how states will go in the general.
Frankly I think its really impossible to tell. This election is SO DIFFERENT from any prior elections - on our side and on the Republican side as well. Its just as easy to speculate from the other vantage points as well. Basically it will all come down to the campaigns, which will be dirty....we're all speculating at this point and trying to make our best eductaed guess. There's no way to call it. And that IS scary, considering all that's at stake.
On the issue of the black vote and racial reconciliation...I don't presume to be the mouth piece for all blacks but as a black woman I can tell you what I and some of my black friends (and the white ones too which may not be relevant to this discussion) think (if you'll be open enough to consider this):
It was not the SC comments that did it. I know a lot of people want to say it was Bill's comments. But it wasn't. No sane person believes the Clintons are racists. I was sort of shocked by the comments - not in a racial way - but frankly i was thinking "why would he say something so stupid!" Bill is the consummate politician and i couldn't imagine what he was thinking when he made those comments. The spin on it was political and well, this is politics.
But it didn't sway me. Didn't sway a lot of blacks. What swayed us was Iowa. See, we never for one minute thought white folks would vote for Barak. We may have liked him (like a lot of whites in the US) but we thought he was unelectable. Until Iowa. IOWA! CORN STATE! WHITE FARMER TYPES! We were shocked and it made us think - "Hey maybe we (meaning the country) HAS made some progress after all"!
Sometimes for many blacks there is no evidence in their day-to-day lives that there is any major difference, any progress. I live is a small town in FL and literally all the black people live on the 'other side of the tracks'. I and my husband (who is NOT black) live on the "white side" of town. We've not had any problems here but the people living on the 'other side of town' wouldn't know that. Instead they park their cars outside the country club gates and take the provided shuttle inside to work. But I digress.
At SOUTH CAROLINA, it just so happened that Bill made the dumbest comments of his life (yes even dumber that I did not have sexual relations with that woman) and I think oprah's endorsement came around that time too. So it LOOKS like all the blacks ran over to Obama because of those factors. Its JUST NOT TRUE.
It has to do with a feeling of (dare i say it) HOPE that we as a nation have 'gotten over it'. And there's not a single black person in America who doesn't hope that. THATS why the black turnout for him is nearly 100%. Plain and simple.
I don;t think you are a racist Shawn (you've been accused of it). I just think you may not have had an informed perspective. (Like the way I put that? In university, I found that a lot of people who were accused of being racists just didn't have enough information from the people they were being accused by. It was ignorance not racism. I made it my job to try to be an informer first. Results were pretty damn good.)
As for reconciliation. I wouldn't worry about it. Many American Blacks have learned to (and our families have a heritage of) patience. After all, only 40 or so years ago I would've been drinking from 'Blacks Only' water fountains right here in America. I wouldn't be married to my husband (not in this town anyway) and I wouldn't be living on 'this side of town' either. I'm too young to remember that world, but my parents aren't. MY PARENTS!! Its not 100 or 150 years ago. ITS JUST 40 YEARS AGO!!!! It boggles my mind.
In the end, if Hillary gets the nomination, with a few exceptions, we will behave with decorum and class despite disappointment. We, as a whole, always have. I know this belies the images of wild blacks rioting in the streets but these are the exceptions...there are millions of Blacks in this country. In the end, we'll all be able to move forward.