Letters to the Editor
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Tanya Harding option
It implies that Clinton is so set on ensuring that Obama doesn't get the nomination, not only is she willing to take extra-ruthless steps, but in the end neither she nor Obama win the gold.
And this is exactly her intention IMHO. She ruins Obama's chances in the general election (and her own), and then has another go in 2012.
The question is, who will be left to vote for her then?
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@senorplaid
And of course the cycle continues ... here you are wondering about it, you post, I respond, others read.
So if you or I were to suddenly say something really super controverisal ... that cycle really multiplies ... ultimately that increases the chances someone will buy something adverised on Salon.com ...
To be fair, I think all commerical websites do this on some (even unconscious) level. I know Salon.com had its share of financial problems some time back.
It's just to ignore the feeling that one's honest response to other readers/writers' comments is being deliberately stoked for purely commerical reasons. Such is the media today perhaps?
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The real dude vote:
I think that the real dudes are too busy bong smoking and watching GGW videos when they are not sleeping on the beach after getting up at 4:30 in the morning to go surf some 'way offshore gnarly wall, dude'.
If Obama is president, man, he'll change the weather, and we'll, like, have perfect tubes forever! I'm so stoked! I was going to vote in the primary, you know, but then I forgot I wasn't registered, and then I had to score, but then the polls were closed. Did you see the lastest Warren Miller, man? I was so stoked.
Seriously, for all the recent criticism of fire and brimstone theology/marketing practices I thought the dude piece was a page right out of that book. It's the story of the sinner who sees the light and is redeemed. He comes back to sell us, I mean tell us, of those poor bastards who are still mired in ignorance, and how we should vote, oops, I mean pray. for their liberation.
And if you act NOW, operators are standing by, for your FREE Fester's church of the eternal lightbulb toolkit; S&H only $19.99. Eternal self-illumination can be yours FREE, for only $19.99 S&H.
Color me unimpressed.
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@ Reality-based Liberal
Please elaborate on what you see as the political equivalent of the "Tonya Harding" option? Jeremiah Wright is something Senator Obama wittingly did to himself. It is not as if the Republicans won't utilize those Wright clips.
Voters in the fall may never read Obama's speech on race. They won't research Obama's church. They won't look at the good things Wright may have done as well as the bad, carefully weighing them and not putting patriotism -- that old outworn concept -- on the scales. So if Wright doesn't take Obama out of the running, then what?
You can use innuendo, but real scandals -- girlfriends prostitutes, toe-tapping, bribe-taking -- are all things people do themselves. If Clinton should uncover some really unseemly dirt on Obama, it would also be something that the Republicans could uncover. Currently, they have far more funds for oppositional research than Senator Clinton has. She barely has money for a few television ads.
I think she is just hanging on to see if he shoots himself in the foot. If he does, then he should have emptied the bullets before he tried to clean the gun -- just like he should have distanced himself from Wright about three years back.
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ljwalker: On Obama and the Illinois State Senate.
I don't have the time or inclination anymore to get into everything you're wrong and/or cherry-picking about these days. So I'll just pick one: Obama's record in the Illinois legislature.
I did a google search for Obama and "taking a powder" -- guess what came up? Your Salon posts, not any remarks by Illinois State Senators. The guy you seem to be citing is Dan Cronin, a GOP state legislator there, and even he gives Obama a mixed record:
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Vote2008/story?id=4339659
In fact, members of the Illinois State Senate and Illinois observers have said over and over again that voting "present" is a viable third option there according to state law, and those who use it to denigrate Obama's record have no understanding of politics in Illinois.
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=274863
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=12&year=2007&base_name=present#102958
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18348437
Now, regarding Obama's state Senate record, he's received wide acclaim from both sides of the aisle for his guiding of the first comprehensive campaign finance law in Illinois in a generation, his managing to get the cops to sign off on videotaped interrogations, and his championing of a controversial death penalty overhaul that he managed to get passed unanimously. See, for example:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802262.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html
If anything, the crack on Obama's state senate record is that he made a lot of controversial votes, not that he ducked them:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/17/politics/main2369157.shtml
The ducking-the-vote charge you bring up stems mainly from one incident when he was on vacation during a gun bill that failed by four votes -- see the 2/7/07 WP article above. There are also six votes where Obama said he "goofed."
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obamavotes24jan24,0,713086.story
Otherwise, there's no there there. Here's a NYT graphic covering Obama's more important votes in the Illinois Senate:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/07/29/us/politics/20070730_OBAMA_GRAPHIC.html
So, in short, saying Obama's state senate record is flimsy and insubstantial is not borne out at all by the facts. So, basically, you're either wrong or you're being intellectually dishonest. And, frankly, this goes for all too many of your numbered points in your last post.
Also, just to stay on message of late, it's over.
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Every time I read the words "Crafty Obama" in that one reader's posts...
... I keep seeing a picture of Obama at a crafts table making crafts. Sometimes I see him doing it with his daughters. Maybe he's building a birdhouse for the backyard -- that would be nice.
Surely you can come up with a slur that doesn't imply he's Martha Stewart.
Please keep working on it, or I'm never going to get this image of glue guns and popsicle sticks out of my head.