Letters to the Editor
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If the HRC campaign is so confident
of their experienced people and their "proven" methods and their "overperformance", why was the campaign manager just replaced? I don't know if HRC is as teflon-coated as her husband, and the thought of what the Repubs would try to do to her upon her election scares me even more than the thought of what they'd undoubtedly pull during the campaign.
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Let's get REAL about that imaginary Obama Movement....
Obama wins mainly in caucus states...historically caucuses are attended by between 2-4% of registered voters. This campaign cycle the caucus numbers are up, but not much!
All those BANNER HEADLINES about his huge wins are an illusion -- yes, he garnered the most "votes" in certain caucus states, but in my state -- Washington -- fewer than 50,000 people participated in Saturday's caucus for BOTH PARTIES combined. THAT IS LESS THAN 1.3% of Washington State voters!
This isn't just a Washington phenomenon. In the more than 20 Super Tuesday contests, average turnout at caucuses was only about 6% of eligible voters, while primaries averaged about 29%, nearly five times as many, according to the U.S. Elections Project at George Mason University.
Hillary Clinton has won most of the primary states, where turnout is much, much larger than caucus states.
(BTW, Huckabee is contesting the results in Washington State -- the Repub pooh-bahs quit counting the votes when he got too close for comfort to McCain.)
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let's see through the BS here
I have no problem with Hillary Clinton continuing to campaign, even though I prefer Obama. Duh. She does almost as well as Obama in national polls. It's not a McCain/Romney situation.
Mark Penn works for Clinton, and whether he is sleazy or saintly, it is his job to make her case (and hence it is rather embarrassing and lazy journalism to simply transcribe his words as if they were an expression of "neutral" expertise).
Most of the "venom" that ostensibly characterizes the Democrat primary is fake. The clumsy Republican operatives disguising themselves as "Clinton supporters" and posting as "anonymous" are good examples. The "liberal" media is desperate to harm the Democrats by falsely claiming that the two Democrat candidates have gone beyond the pale in attacking each other. In reality, the Democrat race has been remarkable for the relative discipline and civility that the candidates have shown, and the Republican primary has been transparently characterized by extreme ill will and "venom". And still is. Huckabee is still running.
If anyone still believes that the two major parties are "the same", the media certainly doesn't seem to concur.
On the other hand, in the painful absence of serious policy differences, the question of which candidate is most "electable" becomes highly relevant.
If you are going to decide who is the most "electable", you have two choices. You can blow smoke out your a$$ or you can go with the data. Incomplete data is better than no data at all. Naturally, complete data - an exact prediction of how each individual US citizen will behave on election day - is not available.
Obama seems to have an edge. This doesn't surprise me, because, having seen him speak (at an event long before this year's primary), I can testify that he is an unusually gifted speaker.
Obviously I will vote for whoever can keep McCain out of the white house, but I think it is rational to favor Obama, on the simple grounds that his policy stances and competence are highly similar to those of Clinton, but he polls better (now) against McCain.
Incidentally, in 2004, John Kerry, who was not as strong a candidate as Clinton or Obama is, ran a well-meaning but remarkably lazy campaign against an incumbent. Bush had not yet attacked social security, or made SCOTUS appointments. A majority of Americans still believed that invading and occupying Iraq was the "right decision"; many still believed that Iraq was connected to the 9/11 attack. And of course, Bush was still cynically milking the 9/11 attack with some success. John Kerry was subjected to the full brunt of the "Republican attack machine", and failed to respond, largely, in my opinion as one who volunteered for the campaign, because his campaign staff took vacations (literal and/or mental) during August, with an election in November. John Kerry was nevertheless almost elected president, and Bush did worse than any winning incumbent in history. There is no reason to run afraid.
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Diptheria45 wrote:
"The guy's right and it will be sheer joy watching him proven right. Obama has Kerry's glass jaw combined with Al Gore's nose-in-the-air elitism. The Rovian minions will bring him down as easily as Cheney bags ducks."
You Rovian minions are so full of yourselves. But you're wrong about the Democrats this time. We're going to fight it out, figure it out, and then kick your asses.
And you are scared shitless.
Bwahahahahahaha
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What exactly, is the dirt that the Republicans, will throw at Obama?
We keep hearing about how, as soon as Obama is nominated, this horrid stuff will hit the fan. So far, Obama, has withstood the, "weird Muslim name, must be a terrorist" meme. He's shown that he can win vast numbers of white voters, everywhere from Iowa, to Maine, to Washington, to N. Dakota, of all places, so the "OMG, he's black!" thing, isn't exactly a problem.
People seem to feel that, although he hasn't been in Washington for very long, that doesn't mean they can't trust him. He's run a top notch, grass roots campaign, that depends largely on average citizens, as opposed to party fat cats. Plus, he may be one of the few politicians out there, who will bring all sorts of people from the right and the left together.
That the media is impressed by him, will only help in the fall.
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Politics as unusual
This bit from Penn stood out at me...
And Hillary's core voters -- working class, women, Latinos, Catholics -- are exactly the voters that comprise the key swing voters the party has needed in the past to win.
Since when are working class, women, Latinos, and Catholics swing votes for the Democrats? Seems like Penn's spinning the true-blue core into something it's not, trying to spin momentum out of something that's stationary. Clinton's doing best with people who would vote Democratic, anyway, but if Penn wants to call them "swing voters," he can, if it's a saccharine substitute for momentum.
Even though Penn and his PR guys are going to throw every dirty trick they've got at Obama, I think the "politics as unusual" approach to Obama's run, and Obama's character as a candidate, will let him deftly resist this latest PR assault from the Clinton team -- for all of Penn's efforts to spin Obama as Gore or Kerry, for anybody who remembers, Clinton's campaign more closely resembles the lackluster, cautious, corporate, losing candidacies of Gore and Kerry than Obama's, which has proven to be exciting, inspiring, and dynamic, even though those are apparently dirty words these days.