August 2nd, 2008
In his latest attack ad John McCain compares Senator Obama to Britney Spears. Yeah, Senator Obama to Britney-friggin’-Spears. Let’s take a closer look, and see who sounds more like the tabloid princess, via Political Insider:
Speaking of celebrity, the Obama campaign sent out this interesting comparison of Sen. John McCain and Britney Spears:
Britney Spears (CNN, 10/30/03):
CARLSON: A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?
SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.
CARLSON: Do you trust this president?
SPEARS: Yes, I do.
John McCain (The Mike Gallgher Show, March 2008)
“No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have.”
John McCain (MSNBC, 8/20/06):
GREGORY: Do you have confidence in the President and his national security team to lead the war at this stage?
MCCAIN: I do. I do. I have confidence in the President, and I believe that he is well aware of the severity of the situation.
June 5th, 2008
I‘ve expressed early reservations about Sen. Obama as the Democratic nominee because of what I’ve interpreted as a cautious nature, and an over conciliatory tone towards republicans. I’m a partisan Democrat that prefers my candidates with strong accents of Progressive Populism, thus I preferred John Edwards over the other Democratic nominees.
However, after Edwards dropped his bid for the Democratic nomination, I turned my support for Sen. Obama, though I remained guarded over his caution and the conciliatory nature of his campaign (of course, I realized that during the general election the Democratic candidate would need to pivot and make necessary adjustments; but while the electorate was largely composed of Democratic party voters, I expected some meat — the bloodier the better, silly me).
All that said, I’ve come to appreciate the value of Sen. Obama’s approach, and I especially respect the decision making process that he has exhibited. Here, for example, is another illustration of Sen. Obama’s thinking and decision making approach:
Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday that he’s in no rush to pick a vice presidential candidate, telling CNN “everybody needs to settle down” and let the vetting process run its course.
Speaking with CNN’s Candy Crowley on Thursday in Bristow, Virginia, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said it’s not in his best interest — or in the interest of former rival Sen. Hillary Clinton — to make a hasty decision about whom his running mate will be.
“We just completed this arduous process,” Obama said. “It’s only been two days, and I think it’s not just in my interest and Sen. Clinton’s interest, but in the Democratic Party’s interest and the country’s interest to make sure I make this decision well.”
Calling his choice of running mate “the most important decision that I will make before I am president,” the senator from Illinois said he would “be deliberate and systematic about it, because this will be my final counselor when I am making decisions in the White House, and I want to make sure I get it right.”
Sure, that’s a great answer that skirts the question; however, it is an answer that is consistent with the approach to issues that Sen. Obama has exhibited thus far, and it is reassuring — considering the last seven years under Bush’s republican administration.
Now, if his approach to making tough decisions weren’t reason enough to feel reassured and confident about Sen. Obama, he’s gone and officially endorsed Howard Dean’s “50 State Strategy,” which is simply brilliant:
A slew of political factors will determine Obama’s success in turning red states blue. But the Senator, in no small measure, will be aided in his task by reforms that preceded his run for the presidency. For all of the hoopla surrounding the candidates, the 2008 presidential election will be the first truly national test of the viability and prescience of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.
Four years ago, when Dean was vaulted to the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee — following a failed presidential bid months earlier — he pledged to rewrite the rules concerning where and how Democrats would compete. In the subsequent months, resources and staff were invested into unconventional and even previously untouched locales. The idea was that the party simply couldn’t compete without a margin for error.
[…]
On Thursday, Obama symbolically endorsed the DNC’s efforts, declaring that Dean would remain party chairman heading into the general election.
As Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, told The Huffington Post: “I think that we are going to have a larger battlefield in 2008… I think we are going to stretch the Republicans. I don’t think they can take for granted nearly as many states as they have in the past. And I think we are going to add several to the Democratic column this year and so our coalition is going to be broader.”
This is huge, and it can easily translate into major gains for Democratic candidates down the ballot all across our country, marking the beginning of a new realignment. Yes, it’s a long shot, but it’s possible.
May 27th, 2008
There’s been a lot chatter about Sen. Obama tapping Jim Webb for the VP slot in an Obama administration; however, I’ve been less than enthused about seeing Jim Webb on the number two slot. My reservation against the junior Senator from Virginia, Jim Webb, boils down to a simple fact: the man is not progressive, in spite of his recent reliance on populist rhetoric.
Luckily, I’m not alone in my reservations against Sen. Webb. Blogger Kathy G., guest writing in Matthew Yglesias’ blog, makes a compelling case against Sen. Webb as the VP in an Obama administration.
First, the practical argument against Sen. Webb:
Back in February, Ezra Klein made the case against Webb, and the reasons Ezra gave then still hold. For one thing, if President Obama wants to get anything done, he’ll need a filibuster-proof majority in the senate. It would not be wise for him to choose a red state senator, because who knows if another Democrat could be elected to that seat? Also, as Ezra argued, the things that make Webb valuable as a “gadfly senator,” such as his “brashness” and his “willingness to push the conversation forward,” would be a bad match for the vice presidency, which would require him to “constantly watch his mouth” and not say anything that conflicts with the president’s agenda.
Now for the more substantive case against Jim Webb:
To quote a Rolling Stone profile of the man, just a few years ago he was saying that “Liberals were ‘cultural Marxists,’ and ‘the upper crust of academia and the pampered salons of Hollywood’ were a fifth column waging war on American traditions.”
In 2000, Webb opined that affirmative action was “state-sponsored racism”; that same year he endorsed the ultra-conservative Republican George Allen for the senate. In 2004, Webb wrote an op-ed for USA Today arguing that John Kerry “deserved condemnation” for his opposition to the Vietnam War (to be fair, in the op-ed Webb is also critical of George Bush; but then again, in the same piece Webb also takes a swipe at the “liberal media”).
Kathy G. goes on to present a series of sexist statements made by Sen. Webb against women in the military; which, as she points out, in a year where many women have been inspired by a candidate with a real chance of becoming the first female president, selecting Sen. Webb as the VP nominee may be seen as an insult.
Above all, though, I am very troubled by the idea that a man who has held such sexists views, and has done so much to damage the cause of gender equality in the military, would be one heartbeat away from the presidency. I do not think Webb is at all trustworthy on women’s issues, and women’s issues are very important to me and to millions of others besides. I think it’s essential that any Democratic president or vice president have a good record on women’s, civil rights, and labor issues. It’s not just that women, African-Americans, and unions are the core constituencies of the Democratic party. It’s that advancing the causes of racial, gender, and economic equality are the among the most important moral and political issues of our time. These are core values to me and millions of other Democrats, and elevating a man who has been so awful on one of them to the second most powerful position in the party is completely unacceptable.
Stepping away from all that high-minded rhetoric, I’ll add that, in practical terms, selecting Webb would be a slap in the face to the Hillary Clinton supporters. I’m not saying that Obama has to pick Hillary as veep (and indeed, I think that would be a bad idea). I’m not even saying that he needs to pick a woman.
But Hillary was the first woman to ever have a serious shot at the presidency, and she came so close. So the Hillary supporters (of whom, to be clear, I am not one) will feel frustrated enough that their candidate didn’t win. But for Obama to choose — out of all the well-qualified candidates out there — the one person who has a really awful record on gender issues would be like rubbing salt in the wound. It would be seen as a big “screw you” to Hillary’s supporters and to feminists in general.
Read the full post, Kathy G. makes many points worth thinking about.
May 26th, 2008
Well, it’s happened, after reading hundreds of thousands of Paul Krugman’s words, he’s finally put together a string of words that I disagree with.
Here’s the tricky part, I don’t disagree with his description of the situation, but I completely disagree with his prescription. First, his description of the symptoms:
Mr. Obama will be the Democratic nominee. But he has a problem: many grass-roots Clinton supporters feel that she has received unfair, even grotesque treatment. And the lingering bitterness from the primary campaign could cost Mr. Obama the White House.
To the extent that the general election is about the issues, Mr. Obama should have no trouble winning over former Clinton supporters, especially the white working-class voters he lost in the primaries. His health care plan is seriously deficient, but he will nonetheless be running on a far more worker-friendly platform than his opponent.
From this, what does Krugman conclude? First, he reasonably suggests that both the Obama and Clinton camps need to come together, but then he goes too far. Here’s Krugman’s recommendation:
What about offering Mrs. Clinton the vice presidency? If I were Mr. Obama, I’d do it. Adding Mrs. Clinton to the ticket — or at least making the offer — might help heal the wounds of an ugly primary fight.
I just don’t see this happening because having Sen. Clinton on the ticket would undermine Sen. Obama’s major themes: Change and consistent opposition to the Iraq war. Now, are there practical reasons to offer Sen. Clinton the VP position? Yes, clearly. The question is, do the practical reason out weight the thematic and substantive reason that don’t make Sen. Clinton a good fit during a change election? And in my mind that question is already settled, and the answer is, No, Sen. Clinton would subtract more than what she would add to the Democratic ticket during this election cycle.
May 18th, 2008
I was concerned that Sen. Obama’s conciliatory tone earlier in the campaign signified that he would be reluctant to throw a punch. However, if this is any indication of how he’ll respond to republican attacks, well, then, I say Bring it! Because Sen. Obama is showing that he can counter punch, and that he’s not afraid to get bruised:
ABC News Sunlen Miller reports: Sen. Barack Obama went one step further today in his pushback against presumptive GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and President Bush on appeasement, suggesting that both Republicans have a problem with presidents past who have engaged in direct diplomacy.
“If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy, led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy because that’s what he did with [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev, or Ronald Reagan, ’cause that’s what he did with [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev, or Richard Nixon ’cause that’s what they did with [Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung],” Obama said in Roseburg, Ore. “That’s exactly the kind of diplomacy we need to keep us safe.”
