Letters to the Editor
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Obama, Rice...
aren't they the same thing?
So hard to tell dark people apart...
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ummmmm...
"The solution for Obama is clear: Reply in kind, but do it through surrogates."
Isn't that already being done?
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Dick Morris?
Yes, high on my list of people who's advice I should not take.
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Why Should Obama Listen to Old Guard Advice?
He's running using a different paradigm. These people are strictly old school.
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Why?
If Obama has an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, but neither he nor Clinton will be able to clinch the nomination before the convention, why should he change anything at all about how he's running or what he's doing? It's working. I don't see how practicing the same old politics advances his candidacy, and I don't see why he needs to. He's winning right now.
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Dick Morris = concern troll
Dick Morris's advice is worth about as much as the remaindered copies of his books, which is to say, less than nothing.
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Oh, ples, please, please, please, please put Condi Rice on the ticket - top OR bottom.
As both Doug Feith AND Phillip Sheldon tell the tale, Rice was a monument to incompetence as National Security Advisor.
Why?
We don't know for sure - maybe the rumors about George taking a walk on the wild side are true, maybe its just that Condi would rather talk sports with the Prez than do her job.
What we do know is that when 9/11 came, there were stacks and stacks of memos sitting unread on her desk, memos that a competent National Security Advisor would have used to make the president pay attention to the obvious and identified threat.
Condi: Bring her on.
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Thanks for the advice Dick
Keep it all in the Clinton crime family.
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How often does Morris, et al, have to be wrong before people stop paying attention?
In the aftermath of Katrina, Morris ecstatically predicted on Hannity & Colmes that Bush's popularity would SOAR! Bush believes that government's only business is to fight wars and help in disasters, he said, and now he has "both on his plate."
But it's not only Morris. Every pundit who was wrong about Bush and Iraq -- Kristol, Coulter, Norquist, Ingram, etc. etc. -- keeps getting air time on all the screaming head programs, while those who were correct are barely mentioned. No one had Bush's number better than the late Molly Ivins, but how often were her opinions and insights heard in the main stream media?
This isn't media balance, it's fear and stupidity.
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We're simply going to have to drop
any notion that being woefully, consistently, and completely wrong is any impediment to a career in punditry.
The list of proclimations and predictions by William Kristol that were proven wrong is astonishingly long, and his reward for such utter uselessness was to be given a much-coveted editorial slot at the NY Times no less.
Once we understand that it's only about name recognition, not any actual skill at what they do, we can get on with ignoring these people and listening to those who are actually aware of reality. Or better yet, figure it out for ourselves.
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Two Points
1. As should now be abundantly clear, Talking-Heads, Pundits and other Opinionators are not judged on the value of their predictions and/or knowledge but merely on their presumed stature or perhaps telegenicness.
2. Though Morris does accurately name the Clinton presidency as a time of bitter politics, lumping him in with Bush administrations, he conveniently fails to point out that the bitterness all came from the republican/conservative side of the political spectrum.
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Wish...
... I could say something more constructive than Dick Morris is an imbecile.
Maybe a better wish is that people ignore him and he just goes away.
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I predict that pundits and political advisors will be wrong
Anyone want to give me odds?
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Broken Clocks
Yes, Morris is quite often wrong about things, but how is his advice to Obama here wrongheaded? Is it that Obama shouldn't reply to negative attack ads? Or that he should take the lead himself, rather than his surrogates, in hammering back?
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Condi Won't Run
She would have to explain why she is a 50-something never married woman who owns property with another woman.
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Morris is right, and Obama has to take his advice.
The Condi bit is a strage non sequitur and should be ignored. The real issue is responding to Hillary effectively, and Morris is exactly right. Obama does have to respond -- ask John Kerry what happens when these kinds of things are allowed to stand unchallenged -- but how he does it is critical. And doing it through surrogates is the only way. But which surrogates? It would have to be someone pretty heavy to have the desire effect.
Enter John Edwards?
Back before the Iowa Caucus, Edwards repeatedly slammed Clinton on everything from lobbyists to how wrong her "experience" is for America. I don't know if Obama can swing it, but he should use Edwards or someone of such weight and popular support in this election cycle to answer the charges in a strong, merciless, direct-through-the-heart fashion.
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Dick Morris advising Obama?
Obama hires Brzezinski as advisor, and, now Morris is also advising Obama, and, with these friends, we're all certain that Obama is something "new" and "fresh," and not Old School?
Someone wrote to this list, that Obama doesn't need Morris, and was winning all by himself. Obama has the odds on his side. But he wasn't in Mississippi, yesterday, begging people to vote for him, because he's confident of victory. Obama may be some delegates ahead of Hillary, but she remains ahead in Super Delegates; but most importantly, Obama is currentlty "ahead" of Clinton by all of 0.2% in the popular vote, a lead so small, it could vanish in a Pennsylvania second, "if" Clinton has some luck. Oh, by the way. A poll just revealed, that Americans favor giving the nomination to the candidate that has the most "popular votes," by 57%, and to the candidate that has the most delegates by 36%. It ain't over till it's over.
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Clinton: The audacity of mendacity
I think the Obama camp needs to factcheck claims made by Clinton that exaggerate or distort her foreign policy experience.
The case for invading Iraq was a matter of distortion and exaggeration. Even taking Clinton at her word, she fell for it.
Obama did not fall for the Iraq story, and has stated that. His campaign has also pointed out generally that Clinton has parlayed her foreign travel into crisis-handling experience.
What would help would be to find specific points (eg Clinton's Northern Ireland claims) where Clinton has outright lied about her resume.
That sort of response hardly even qualifies as negative. Do we want the person who answers the phone at 3AM to be a credulous believer in falsehoods, someone who has faked her own resume on foreign policy?