Letters to the Editor
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@W.E.S. and others
Free speech is a healthy part of our political system, and I defend your right to it, regardless of my own opinions.
But it's over the top for rational people to demand that any human being leave his church. We have separation of church and state in this country for a good reason. Religion is a private and personal belief and religious tolerance is the hallmark of a free society.
Voters may use any reasoning they want to, including their own judgments about a person's religion, in making up their minds. But no one has the right to tell anyone, not even a candidate, to leave his church or leave the race. That is outrageous.
There have been many scandalous, humiliating, offensive, and sometimes laughable words and deeds uttered by church leaders in every religious organization in the world. People have the right to deal with this in their own way; most people tend to see the TEACHINGS and the MEANING of their church community as being more important to them than one pastor, minister, rabbi, priest, imam or whatever ...
Would you expect me to move out of my neighborhood in order to run for office if it turned out that my next-door neighbor, to whom I spoke every day for all the years I lived there, turned out to be a pedophile, or a bank robber, or a lunatic liberal?
We can't blame Barack Obama for his preacher's statements; and we can't blame the preacher for Barack Obama; and we can't expect the church to be a pawn in a political game.
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@ w.e.s.
"If Obama is not the nominee for whatever reason no black will vote democratic for a generation? That sounds a bit like blackmail to me."
Well, I think you need to make a distinction here. If Clinton was beating Obama in the pledged delegate count and the popular vote, most African-Americans, I'm sure, wouldn't hold it against Clinton if she won the nomination. But that's not the case here.
Now, I can't pretend to speak for African-Americans, because I'm not one. But if I was an African-American, I would be thinking "Here's a black guy (Obama) who beat all the white candidates according to the rules set by the party and now the party insiders want to rig things so that the white person wins anyway! Even when we win, we lose! Fuck 'em!"
Now, if Obama lost fair and square, that would be another thing. After all, African-Americans have a long history of black candidates not winning the Democratic nomination. So far, it hasn't seemed to affect party loyalty. But if Obama wins by all the traditional yardsticks but still doesn't get the nomination, I wouldn't blame African-Americans from wondering if their loyalty isn't misplaced.
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the Ethos of a Clintonite
WES Demostrates the Ethos of a Clintonite
Oh please. I'm no fan of Clinton, but WES demonstrates squat about Clintonites or anyone other than WES.
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I Didn't Demand He Leave his Church
I said it's not fair to the entire party to drag that church with him in to the general.
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@jebldmm
wow...way to twist my words! What I said was that if, in the highly unlikely scenario WES described, Obama steps aside because it is honorable (in light of the Wright brouhaha) then it would be perceived TERRIBLY by what I'm guessing is a HUGE swath of the Democrat African American voting bloc...I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to surmise that this bloc would not be rallying behind the donkey anytime soon (think LBJ and losing the south for a generation...only worse)
but hey, if it makes you feel better to paint me as a racist - go right on ahead.
cheers
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@ fooledagain
Not a slick campaigner? Senator Clinton?
Imagine, for a moment, that the positions were reversed. Senator Obama would be out of the race already. Whereas Senator Clinton has managed to spin herself as having a chance (a notion that Salon aids in their small way, cherry-picking the title for this piece out of a much darker and more realistic NYT story). Her constant rebranding, her flights of revisionism, her fabled "35 years" of experience when she holds a total of 7 in an actual elected office. To say that she is not a slick campaigner is to assert that the sun rises in the West.
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Hey Listen
I'm mellow about this stuff. I had dinner with my brother the other night. He's not political at all. He dislikes Hillary immensely. He thinks the republicans are turds. He just follows the news and comments. He thinks Obama is the front man for the black radicals. I have no idea what percentage of the population he represents.
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Interesting choice of presentation
On the front page of Salon, the abbreviated headline for this article is the extremely optimistic:
"NYT's Nagourney: 'Clinton could win'"
Click on the link, and you're taken to the War Room, where the headline is a slightly less exuberant:
"Nagourney: 'At least one scenario where Clinton could win'"
Click on the actual article link, though, and you're taken to a real downer of an article entitled:
"Obama poll collapse may be Clinton's best hope"
Salon.com: We report, you decide.
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Earth to Hillary Clinton
Drop out.
Clinton wins, America loses.
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So in other words...
She just has to sabotage Obama's chances by throwing up every form of character assassination she can. Basically and attempt to destroy him rather than promote herself.
Isn't she already doing this?
Quit, Hillary. Now.
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I'm all for it
I said it's not fair to the entire party to drag that church with him in to the general.
Actually, let's do it. And then let's drag all of the right-wing pastors and preachers who have endorsed McCain into the general. Let's cherry-pick the absolute worst of their sermons and public statements and play them in a repeating loop on all of the 24-hour news shows. Let's demonize every one of these bastards.
And then maybe some of these jerk-offs will think twice about the hate that they spew from the pulpit, and maybe some Americans will start to think twice about requiring their candidates to believe in an invisible dad who lives in the clouds.
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On the bright side...
I'm mellow about this stuff. I had dinner with my brother the other night. He's not political at all. He dislikes Hillary immensely. He thinks the republicans are turds. He just follows the news and comments. He thinks Obama is the front man for the black radicals. I have no idea what percentage of the population he represents.
Yeah, but I bet he doesn't think he's a Muslim anymore. :)