Presidential election may be up for grabs

[a_majoor]

If the Clinton campaign manages to use insiders to steal the nomination, I can see lots of bad blood being spilled in the US Democratic party. I wonder if they will be able to effectively govern under these conditions (although the separation of powers means they won't have the "Stephan Dion" problem).

http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2008/02/16/top-clinton-adviser-says-superdelegates-will-decide-election-obamas-victories-irrelevant/

Top Clinton Adviser Says Superdelegates Will Decide Election, Obama’s Victories ‘Irrelevant’
by FOXNews.com
Saturday, February 16, 2008

A top Hillary Clinton adviser on Saturday boldly predicted his candidate would lock down the nomination before the August convention by definitively winning over party insiders and officials known as superdelegates, claiming the number of state elections won by rival Barack Obama would be “irrelevant” to their decision.

The claims no doubt will escalate the war of words between the campaigns, as Obama continues to argue superdelegates should vote the way of their districts. But the special class of delegates, which make up about 20 percent of the total delegate haul, are not bound to vote the way of their states and districts, as pledged delegates are.

Obama leads handily in the pledged delegate count and has won more states but trails Clinton in superdelegates, making them potential and controversial deadlock-breakers if the race ends up a dead heat come convention time.

Harold Ickes, a 40-year party operative charged with winning over superdelegates for the Clinton campaign, made no apologies on Saturday for the campaign’s convention strategy.

“We’re going to win this nomination,” Ickes said, adding that they would do so soon after the last contest on June 7 in Puerto Rico. “You’re not going to see this go to the convention floor.”

Ickes predicted Clinton and Obama would run “neck and neck” in the remaining states and that there would be a “minuscule amount of difference” between the two in pledged delegates.

But he said superdelegates — who “have a sense of what it takes to get elected” — would determine the outcome and side in larger numbers for Clinton.

Even though averages of head-to-head polls on RealClearPolitics.com show Obama beating presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in a general election and Clinton losing, the Clinton camp is stressing the electability argument.

Ickes said superdelegates must “exercise their best judgment” about who can win the White House.

In essence, he argued the party’s 795 superdelegates (Connecticut Independent-Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman recently was stripped of his superdelegate status) were in a better position to assess electability and suitability for the presidency than party regulars who will attend the national convention in late August as pledged delegates.

He also said Michigan and Florida, which voted for Clinton, should have delegates seated at the convention, even though he originally voted with the national party last year to strip the delegates because the states violated party rules by holding early primaries.

Ickes explained that his different position is due to the different hats he wears as both a Democratic National Committee member and a Clinton adviser in charge of delegate counting.

Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe on Saturday blasted Clinton for the strategy.

“The Clinton campaign just said they have two options for trying to win the nomination — attempting to have superdelegates overturn the will of the Democratic voters or change the rules they agreed to at the eleventh hour in order to seat non-existent delegates from Florida and Michigan,” he said in a statement.

“The Clinton campaign should focus on winning pledged delegates as a result of elections, not these say-or-do-anything-to-win tactics that could undermine Democrats’ ability to win the general election.”

Many top Democrats, among them House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have said superdelegates should follow the will of voters expressed through primaries and caucuses and not trump those votes.

The Obama campaign also circulated a Bloomberg story from Friday quoting Pelosi, who said Michigan and Florida should not decide the race since they broke party rules.

Though he predicted the superdelegates basically would turn the election, Ickes in the same phone call Saturday said he objected to the term because it implied they had too much power. He said from here out, he’s calling them “automatic delegates.”

“The Fourth Estate created the term ’superdelegate,’” Ickes said, though Democrats have used the term widely in the roiling debate of their allegiances and responsibilities in the increasingly competitive and high-stakes battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“They don’t have super powers,” Ickes said. “It’s one person, one vote. They have no more power than any other delegate. But they do have a sense of what it takes to get elected.”

Superdelegates consist of members of Congress, former presidents, governors and other party officials and insiders. The class was created in 1982 to take power away from activists and hand it to party insiders. Rarely have their votes decided the nominee.

“They are closely in touch with the issues and ideas of the jurisdiction they represent and they are as much or more in touch than delegates won or recruited by presidential campaigns,” Ickes said.

Obama currently leads Clinton by 136 in pledged delegates but trails by 95 in superdelegates, according to calculations given by both campaigns.

“Hillary will end up with more automatic delegates than Obama,” Ickes said, and the number of elections won by Obama is “irrelevant to the obligations of automatic delegates.”

That support, however, could be eroding for Clinton, as recent reports have said some black superdelegate supporters are reconsidering their endorsements since their districts voted mostly for Obama.

FOX News’ Major Garrett and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

[TCBF]

Obama's Texas state campaign HQ has an Ernesto (Che) Guevarra flag hanging on the wall.  A photo of which is now making the rounds of the conservative cyber-space.  When working-class Americans start calling him "Osama Obama", you know Clinton has a good chance.

 

[a_majoor]

So many possibilities:

http://thecanadianrepublic.blogspot.com/2008/02/could-al-gore-throw-his-hat-in-ring-for.html

Saturday, February 16, 2008
Could Al Gore Throw His Hat In The Ring For A Second Democratic Ballot?

My money is still on a Clinton/Obama ticket but an Obama/Gore combo isn't beyond the realm of possibility either. In fact, it makes a lot of sense. Most people I've talked to who thought a Clinton/Obama ticket would never happen cited their egos and the acrimony the campaign has stirred up between the two Democratic frontrunners. If the problems between them are as deep as they are said to be, could this save the Democrats from a bitter and divisive second ballot, if it comes to that?

Theoretically, Gore would help mitigate some of the concerns voters have about the Obamessiah's lack of experience and, for his part, Obama's inspiring oratory would certainly lend some charisma points to Gore's campaign. So, what are we thinking? Could it happen?

Story at Newsweek:

    The last time a political convention went to a second ballot was 1952, but this is a year with so many twists and turns that nothing is impossible. Gore would be tempted on so many levels. He would only have to endure two months of campaigning, not long enough for voters to remember what they didn't like about him eight years ago. Gore has sat out the primary process, refusing to offer even so much as a hint of where his sentiments lie. Years of playing second-fiddle to Hillary in the White House no doubt precluded his endorsement for her. Surely he would happily take Obama as his running mate, ending the Clinton dynasty and positioning the Democrats for a potential 16-year reign at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A Gore-Obama ticket would be unstoppable, the thinking goes, matching the presumptive Republican nominee, McCain, on national security and experience, while embodying a powerful message of change.

    The Gore second-ballot scenario isn't being seriously considered by Democratic Party leaders (as far as we know). But a number of individual high-profile Democrats are talking about it, along with any number of other ideas to end the seemingly intractable stalemate.

    How could this unfold? Superdelegates are not bound to any candidate. They can do what they want, including changing their mind or withholding an endorsement until the balloting begins. Delegates won in the primaries go to the party's convention with a signed pledge of support for a particular candidate, but one of the biggest myths of the delegate selection process, according to a Democratic National Committee document, is that delegates are bound to follow that pledge on the first ballot. A delegate is asked to "in good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them," a provision designed in part to make the convention a deliberative body. If Hillary's attempts to secure the nomination are seen as illegitimate, and they fail, yet Obama is not seen as a clear victor, Gore's name could be introduced. All it would take is a delegate perhaps from Tennessee, his home state, to raise a point of order, and with backing from five other state delegations, Gore's name could be put in play as a prospective nominee.

Gore's global warming agenda has been one of biggest and most transparent power grabs in the history of Western politics and it was only a matter of time before he felt the time was right to throw his hat back in the race.

Allah has some good insight, as always:

    Solomonic broker between the Glacier and Messiah — or consensus second-ballot nominee himself? He’s the worst of both worlds: As left-wing as Obama but without the likeability, as establishment as Hillary but without the organization. Or is it the best of both worlds: As messianic as Obama and as experienced as Hillary? Whatevs. “Gore 2008: Another white man after all.”

    Exit question: Tougher to beat than Hill or Barry O? McCain’s maverickiness on global warming would neutralize the Goracle on his signature issue so he’d run mainly on his personal credentials, likely with Obama as VP to leverage his personnel and fundraising. Supplementary exit question: Why would Obama go for it?

 

[TCBF]

- Clinton-Gore would be the result.  If I was Gore, I would let Hillary take the lead.  With Hillary as vice, Gore would know that his existance was depending on the whim of a VERY ambitous woman. 

;D

 

[Edward Campbell]

I was looking at the Globe and Mail web edition early this Sunday morning (17 Feb 08) and noted two juxtaposed headlines:

• Clinton aide argues for seating Michigan, Florida delegates; and

• Fears of vote-rigging, violence, hang over Pakistan elections.

Maybe the headline writers could have saved some brain cells and presented a more accurate picture by simply saying:

• Fears of vote-rigging hang over Pakistan elections; and

• Fears of vote-rigging hang over US Democrats' primary elections.

 

[observor 69]

I was looking at the Globe and Mail web edition early this Sunday morning (17 Feb 08) and noted two juxtaposed headlines:

So you have that G&M fix even if it is only the online version ?
It's all your fault that I am buying that paper every day now. Even got my wife hooked on it.
Seriously I have great respect for the paper and share my wife's addiction.

 

[TCBF]

So you have that G&M fix even if it is only the online version ?
It's all your fault that I am buying that paper every day now. Even got my wife hooked on it.
Seriously I have great respect for the paper and share my wife's addiction.

- Since they poached a lot of good scribes from the National Post, they have gotten a bit better.

 

[a_majoor]

More on the Republican side. Interesting choices for Presidential running mates (I would think Dr Rice would be a very interesting candidate for VP, but the others mentioned have much more political experience)

http://thecanadianrepublic.blogspot.com/2008/02/who-will-mccain-choose-as-his-running.html

Sunday, February 17, 2008
Who Will McCain Choose As His Running Mate: The Charmer Or The Quarterback?

The debate surrounding McCain's likely choices for a running mate has been drawing a lot of speculation on the right in recent days. There have been a lot of interesting, and in some cases even exciting, names thrown out there as possibilities. Early on there was talk about Romney or Huckabee filling the slot but McCain really doesn't like Mitt and that acrimony, combined with their divergent policies, would be more than enough to make for an awkward campaign. On the other hand, Huck shares some of McCain's more centrist convictions but would do little to nothing to satisfy the socially and fiscally conservative base that simply cannot be left behind for this election to yield a Republican to the White House.

Although a lot of other names have been proposed for the slot, two in particular jumped out at me as the most probable choices. These are Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts.

Vin Weber outlines why we might be seeing Pawlenty's name of the ticket in a Jonathan Martin article at Politico:

    “First of all, his age is attractive,” Weber says, hinting at the nearly quarter-century difference between his fellow Minnesotan and the 71-year-old McCain. “Second, he’s from outside Washington. Third, he represents a battleground part of the country. And he has a nice balance of, on one hand being totally acceptable to conservative wing of the party, especially to social conservatives, but at the same time sharing a couple of key maverick strains of thought with McCain.”

Although you hate to bring it up, the age factor will probably be a central issue in the federal campaign. McCain is not a young man and Pawlenty's youth, coupled with his social conservatism and his strong stance on immigration, may go a long way towards convincing some of the Ann Coulter "I'd vote for Hillary before McCain" social conservatives to fall in line to keep the Democratic candidate out of office.

The article continues:

    Declining to say how she got wind of the story, Taylor lavished praise on Pawlenty. "By far, he's the strongest candidate" to serve as McCain's running mate, she said.

    "He's a conservative, rock-n-roll Republican and is counterintuitive to the party stereotype that we're old and rich,” says Taylor, who recalled visiting St. Paul and finding the governor jamming in his office to recording artist Bruce Springsteen. “He's young and blue-collar."

    And, Taylor said, in a potential race against the 46-year-old Barack Obama, Pawlenty would be "as good as our party has for that [match-up].

    ...

    “Politically, he’s pretty skilled, no question about it,” says Moe, who lost in a three-way gubernatorial race to Pawlenty in 2002. “He’s a bright guy and very charming, no question about it.”

Another name being tossed around is that of J.C. Watts, best known in Canada as the former quarterback and Grey Cup MVP for the CFL's Ottawa Rough Riders. The possibility of Watts as the Mav's running mate was mentioned over at the Halls of Macademia earlier today. The arguments for Watts filling the veep slot are strong.

The National Post elaborates:

    Mr. Watts used to be considered a rising star in the party, and delivered a highly praised speech on character at the 1996 Republican national convention. He was selected to deliver his party's response to president Bill Clinton's State of the Union Address in 1997, and addressed the nation after Mr. Clinton's impeachment in 1998.

    Now he is a multi-millionaire, running a variety of businesses, including selling John Deere tractors in Texas, offering companies strategies for business development, communications and public affairs, and lobbying government for small businesses, Fortune 500 companies, trade groups and historically black colleges and universities.

    An outspoken conservative who once worked as a youth minister and associate pastor with the Southern Baptist Church, Mr. Watts has a congressional record sponsoring tax incentives for businesses in low-income areas. He also helped write U.S. President George W. Bush's "faith-based initiative," which was a key domestic part of his "compassionate conservatism.
    ...
    The 51-year-old has courted controversy in the past by chastising some black Democrats and civil-rights leaders as "race-hustling poverty pimps."

    Like Mr. McCain, he has not hesitated to speak his mind and criticize his own party's leaders."

Watts has been the source of quite a bit of controversy in his day and so would also bring a few of the maverick qualities - as well as the youth - that McCain will likely be looking for in a running mate.

A lot of other, less likely, names are getting attention too, including Condi Rice and, ridiculously, Joe Lieberman. All considered, Watts and Pawlenty seem to be in prime position for the slot. Only time will tell.

 

[muskrat89]

From this article in the Aspen Times: http://www.aspentimes.com/article/2008198091324

In election 2008, don’t forget Angry White Man


Gary Hubbell
February 9, 2008

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.

He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.

His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”

He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.

Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

Gary Hubbell is a regular columnist with the Aspen Times Weekly.

 

[a_majoor]

More on Senator Obama by the incomparable Mark Styen

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGJkMWFmZmIxMDY0M2Q5NzdjN2I0ODU4MGFiNDdmNzA=

You Say You Want a Revolution
Political worshippers of the new Messiah.

By Mark Steyn

These days, Obama worshippers file two kinds of columns. The first school is well represented by Ezra Klein, the elderly bobbysoxer of The American Prospect:

        Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.

Er, okay, if you say so. I got a bit bored halfway through and switched over to the Golden Girls rerun. But to each his own. Still, it seems to me that Barack Obama is the triumph of flesh, color, and despair over word — that’s to say, he offers an appealing embodiment of identity politics plus a ludicrously despairing vision of contemporary America (sample: “Trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart”) that triumphs over anything so prosaic as a policy platform. Mrs. Clinton, the earthbound wonk, is reduced to fulminating that this race is about “speeches versus solutions.” But a lot of Democrats seem to have concluded that Hillary’s the problem, and Obama’s speech is the solution.

On the other hand, if you’re running for president not as an unexceptional first-term senator with a thin resume but as the new Messiah, the new Kennedy, the new Gandhi, the new Martin Luther King, you can’t blame folks for leaping ahead to the next stage in the mythic narrative. Around the world, a second instant sub-genre has sprung up in which commentators speculate how long it will be before some deranged Christian-fundamentalist neo-Nazi gun-nut deprives America of its fleeting wisp of glory. Setting a new standard for fevered slavering Obama-assassination porn, Earl MacRae warned Canadians in the Ottawa Sun this week:

    To be black and catapulting towards the presidency on charm, intellect, and popularity is unacceptable to the racist paranoid and scary in America the beautiful… They do not want to hear that he is a better American than they are, these right-wing extremist fascists in the land of America who no doubt believe it’s God’s will Barack Obama not get to the White House, no method of deterrence out of bounds, in their zealotry to protect and perpetuate Roy Rogers, John Wayne, Mom's apple pie, and the cross of Jesus in every home.

And you can’t protect and perpetuate Roy Rogers without a Trigger. By this point, Mr. MacRae wasn’t so much warming to his theme as typing up his first draft for Miramax: “Barack Obama is waving his arms. The crowd is cheering. I see the image I don’t want to see. I see the image that is the terrible sickness in the great republic. I see Barack Obama one minute smiling, the people crying his name. I see Barack Obama grab his chest and his eyes widen and his mouth opens and the crowd screams as Barack Obama, black candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, falls to the ground dead, an assassin’s bullet inside him.”

Er, okay. But would it help if I made you a nice cup of chamomile tea and you lie down in a darkened room for half an hour? Right now Obama’s more at risk of being taken out by traces of polonium-210 left in his hotel by a Clinton operative than by Roy Rogers saddling up for Jesus. Every president is a target for assassination, though George W. Bush is unique in having been the subject of explicit murder fantasies by so many non-right-wing non-extremist impeccably reasonable artists (the British movie Death Of A President; the novella Checkpoint by Nicholson Baker) and even the occasional straightforward exhortation: “On November 2, the entire civilized world will be praying, praying Bush loses,” wrote Charlie Brooker in London’s Guardian in 2004. “John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”

Well, wherever they are, they’re probably saying: “Why bring us into it? When ol’ Lee Harvey decided it was time for JFK to get assassinated, he didn’t sit around whining, ‘John Wilkes Booth, where are you now that I need you?’ Get off your butt and do it yourself, you big Euro-ninny.” Ah, but for the armchair insurgents of the western Left, the vicarious frisson is more than delicious enough. Anything else would interfere with dinner plans.

The Bush-assassination fantasies are concocted by his political opponents and at least arise from his acts — invading the world; slaughtering 14 million Iraqi civilians or whatever it’s up to by now; shredding the constitution. By contrast, the Obama-assassination porn is written by his worshippers and testifies to one of the most palpable features of the senator’s campaign — its faintly ersatz quality, its determination to appropriate Camelot and every other mythic narrative. A few days ago, a local news team went to shoot some film at the Houston campaign headquarters for Obama. Behind the desks of the perky gals answering the phones were posters of Che Guevara and Cuban flags. Needless to say, the news reporters were either indifferent to this curious veneration or too sensitive to mention it, and it was left to the right-wing extremist Roy Rogers fascists of the blogosphere to point it out.

Do Obama’s volunteers even know who Che is? Apart from being a really cool guy on posters and T-shirts, like James Dean or Bart Simpson, I doubt it. They’re pseudo-revolutionaries. Very few people in America want a real revolution: Life is great, this is a terrific country, with unparalleled economic opportunities. To be sure, it’s a tougher break if you have the misfortune to be the victim of one of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs or a decrepit inner-city grade school with a higher per-student budget than the wealthiest parts of Switzerland. But even so, to be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life. Not even Obama supporters want real revolution: They’re messy, your cities get torched, the economy collapses, much of your talent flees. Ask the many peoples around the world for whom revolution means not a lame-o Sixties poster above your desk but the carnage and horror of the day before yesterday.

Poor mean vengeful Hillary, heading for a one-way ticket on the oblivion express, has a point. Barack Obama is an elevator Muzak dinner-theater reduction of all the glibbest hand-me-down myths in liberal iconography — which is probably why he’s a shoo-in. The problems facing America — unsustainable entitlements, broken borders, nuclearizing enemies — require tough solutions not gaseous Sesame Street platitudes. But, unlike the whose-turn-is-it? GOP, Mrs. Clinton’s crowd generally picks the new kid on the block: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. I wonder if Hillary Rodham, Goldwater Girl of 1964, ever wishes she stuck with her original party.

© 2008 Mark Steyn

 

[tdr_aust]

Fundamentally the whole US elections are about “change”..
But what that change will really deliver is still very vague as per norm with anything of this nature. Unfortunately I don’t see much being offered by the Democrats nor really lots from the Republicans.
But Change there seems to be a coming..

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/geoffelliott/index.php/theaustralian/comments/stumping_up_my_two_cents_worth

Stumping up my two cents’ worth
Geoff Elliott Blog | February 08, 2008 |
I TRAVELLED with Barack Obama this week. I saw him deliver a bunch of his stump speeches. I’ve seen about a gazillion of them now and, as inspirational as they are, they can get a bit, well, the same to your journo covering them. 

Stuck in Chicago yesterday trying to get a flight out in heavy snowstorms I killed 30 minutes writing a new stump speech for Obama, only this time with tongue firmly in cheek.

I found it therapeutic after a month on the campaign trail in which I’ve clocked up nine states in the union and it feels like about the same number of hours in sleep. Over to Barack!

CHANGE YOU CAN TAKE TO THE BANK

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank YOU!

They said today would not come. Theeeeey said this journey to find change was just too hard.

Tonight, America, I’m happy to report we’ve found change. Lots of it.

(wild applause)

Thank you. Thank you. Thank YOU.

We’re not talking just loose change. We’re talking real change. One dollar. Two dollars. Ten dollars, even 100 DOLLARS.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank YOU.

You know a year ago, not far from here I started on this improbable journey. On the steps of the building of the city of the state of the place of the country that gave us Lincoln, I found a talisman, a token that represented what this journey was going to be all about.

(holds a quarter up to ecstatic crowd).

This quarter, this quarter, (switch to deep baritone) thhheeeiiis quartah I had dropped the day before. You know the story, I tell it a lot. It’s not some old okey doke – hey I even have the word change – nothing else - on my signs … but that day, because I dropped this quarter, it had left me without change, yes change, when I went to park my car.

No matter what I told the officer when I returned as he placed that ticket on my car he would not reverse his decision. All the goodwill in the world to fill that meter was for naught. Why, America, why? Because I – HAD – NO – CHANGE.

And what started on the cold Springfield day, a whisper of frustration, spread to voices around me, block by block, city by city, county by county to spread all across this great land.

WE WANT CHANGE.

Tucked down the back of the old sofa in a house in the granite hills of New Hampshire, in an old pair of jeans in drawers in a trailer in the plains of North Dakota, to the quarters and notes that the kids stuffed into the shifter housing in a car in San Diego – the lure of change is all around us - there within reach but out of sight.

But join with me America, look with me and together we can reach for what seemed impossible, what the cynics said we could never do: to find that change around us and to put it to work. Because not looking will not do. Giving up on finding our lost change will not do.

If you believe, like I believe, that change can help us then let’s get to work.

Because in the last several months, the fears of the waitress I met in one of the towns in one of the states I went to are now such that she does not know how she is going to pay the bills. The guy in the other place in the other town of that other state I also went to – he’s worried about his healthcare. No CHANGE. The homeless Vietnam Vet who simply held a sign: SPARE ME SOME CHANGE?  All they want is some change – lots of change, preferably in large denominated bills _ but they don’t know where to look.

But thanks to our superior ground organization we helped them find that change they thought they would never find. In the cupboard of one caucus goer in Nevada there was a an old jar with four dollars worth of pennies. Four dollars! Pennies! Now that’s what I call change.

You know my opponents will say I don’t know enough about how to find change. I’m too inexperienced. But I ask you this: would you trust Mitt Romney to help you find the change around you? His terms would be 10 per cent finders’ fee plus an annual administration cost that escalates the more change he finds. That’s some change agent!

See he’s talking about change. Everyone is. I’m happy to report this change thing has started catching on. But change talk is cheap. Hillary Clinton didn’t even leave a tip at the restaurant she went to. Why? Because she had no change; didn’t know where to find it, wouldn’t know what to do with it if she did. John McCain? He’s planning on sending in the national guard to find your change and put it in a bank account and tell you can only buy what you want when you have enough change in the bank to pay for it. Look, I respect his demand for fiscal discipline but mandates like that just won’t do. My plan puts your change straight back in your pocket.

And that’s why I have pledged a change starter pack. From the day of the inauguration agents of change will spread out across the land and hand to every man woman and child a $2 coin roll-up. It will be the start of some real change in the hands of all Americans.

Change that for some is desperately needed but for whom change can never be too late.

This is our time America. Our time to start finding change. Let’s get to work. Let’s go find some CHANGE.”

Unfortunately there are bigger world issue hanging about I do not see anything really being addressed. America is going to have to take a new approach to Pakistan, Iraq id unfinished, Afghanistan is still in a mess, now there may be a small hiccup with Kosovo/Serbia not to mention Bosnia. But I gather there is Obama Change on its way not to mention silence from other quarters..

Are these candidates really doing their own thinking or is it a case of waiting to see who gets to the Big Seat of Power and then the backroom supporters, (the money) will come out with their real agendas?

 

[tomahawk6]

This may help you to understand the players. Hillary and Bill will do anything to regain power so even if Obama has more delegates the Clinton's may well have many of the 700 some odd super delegates in their pocket which would surely antagonize the Obama supporters. Hillary is a leftist but Obama is even more extreme he is either a socialist or a closet marxist. McCain is what I call center left, my friends joke that he is the manchurian candidate. He is strong on national defense and the war on terror, whereas Hillary or Obama would pretty much abandon the effort or limit the scope of our operations. On the domestic front McCain would be fiscally responsible unlike Bush and would be a piker compared to Hillary or Obama. Taxes would go up with either democrat. Illegal immigration would be condoned by any of the candidates this is why conservatives arent supporting McCain fully. McCain is a believer in the global warming red herring another issue he is at odds with the conservative base. Obama on the other hand has a bill in the Senate that if enacted would require the US taxpayer to fund a global program to reduce world poverty - foreign aid isnt popular in the best of times this proposal would see tax going up big time.

What might get interesting is if the Clinton's are seen to "steal" the nomination from Obama he may join as an independent with NY Mayor Bloomberg to form a 3d party.If this happens the democrat party would well fail.

 

[Old Sweat]

And if the Clintons steal the nomination by the use of super delegates, there wold probably be a huge backlash from the flood of voters who are flocking to Senator Obama. He is a charismatic, attractive personality with little experience and what seems to me some loopy ideas. He can grip an audience while saying absolutely nothing of consequence. It reminds me a bit of Trudeaumania in 1968, but without Trudeau's experience ( limited as it was) as Minister of Justice in Pearson's cabinet.

The media seem to be actively promoting him, perhaps for the sense of drama that fills the blank spaces between the ads, perhaps because he is progressive, or perhaps they are just caught up in the excitement.

 

[tomahawk6]

The Obama mania must be like Hitler's effect on the German public. We see people voting for a Senator with 3 years of legislative experience and no executive experience at all.

 

[observor 69]

The Obama mania must be like Hitler's effect on the German public. We see people voting for a Senator with 3 years of legislative experience and no executive experience at all.

This is the probable next President of the United States you are comparing to Hitler.

Also while Obama has no executive experience he still sounds qualified to me:

"OBAMA, Barack, a Senator from Illinois; born in Honolulu, Hawaii, August 4, 1961; obtained early education in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Hawaii; continued education at Occidental College, Los Angeles, Calif.; received a B.A. in 1983 from Columbia University, New York City; worked as a community organizer in Chicago, Ill.; studied law at Harvard University, where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, and received J.D. in 1991; lecturer on constitutional law, University of Chicago; member, Illinois State senate 1997-2004; elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2004 for term beginning January 3, 2005.

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=O000167

 

[Edward Campbell]

What I'm hearing down here (US Southwest) from neighbours and acquaintances (Democrats, Independents and Republicans, alike) is:

• In a Clinton vs. McCain contest McCain is the better choice and will, likely, win; but

• In a McCain vs. Obama contest there is no consensus on who is better but Obama is the more attractive candidate and will probably win.

Those opinions seem to be fairly consistent across the ideological board. McCain has few enemies, except I guess amongst the "hard right" paleo-conservatives (a group not at all well represented in our particular circle of neighbours and acquaintances), and Clinton has (surprisingly) few friends. (But, in fairness, our circle is light on the working poor, etc, who appear to be the mainstays of her 'base.') Obama is much liked, even admired, but for what he says and who he might be rather than for what he has done.

People are unsure about what an Obama administration might do but they seem clearer on the nature and likely actions of a Clinton or McCain administration and, on that basis, they prefer McCain to Clinton. It is more difficult to ascertain why they seem to prefer Obama to McCain.

By the way, our neighbours/acquaintances' preference seem to mirror the national view which, according to Real Clear Politics, says McCain beats Clinton by 2.4% but loses to Obama by 4.1%.

 

[CougarKing]

The Obama mania must be like Hitler's effect on the German public. We see people voting for a Senator with 3 years of legislative experience and no executive experience at all.

As said earlier in the thread, comparing Obama to Hitler may be a bit over the top. And as for experience, even the current President George W. Bush was a relative unknown in the late 1990s before the 2000 election. Yes, he was the governor of Texas back then, but if you want to count and compare both men's experience before they went to DC, Obama was also a State Senator for Illinois before he was a Senator on Capitol Hill, so he has more legislative experience than you give him credit for.

 

[Flip]

It is more difficult to ascertain why they seem to prefer Obama to McCain.

I disagree. Obama provides a novelty factor. Someone new instead of someone old.
It's easier to invoke the spirit of JFK and return to the mythilogical 60s than to
peddle a "steady as she goes" choice.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I disagree. Obama provides a novelty factor. Someone new instead of someone old.
It's easier to invoke the spirit of JFK and return to the mythilogical 60s than to
peddle a "steady as she goes" choice.

I daresay you're right, but that's not what people say when the topic comes up. When I ask, "Why would you vote for Obama rather than McCain?" I get wishwashy answers, like "Time for change from the 'Old Washington Establishment'" or "Time to give us hope instead of old 'solutions' that don't work." No one, at least no one in our little circle is willing to admit to the 'novelty' factor.

Now, I've heard more than one person quote Bill Clinton, who said something like: "I've been waiting my whole life to vote for a woman or an African-American for president." That may be the 'novelty' factor at play.

 

[Infanteer]

Hillary is a leftist but Obama is even more extreme he is either a socialist or a closet marxist. McCain is what I call center left, my friends joke that he is the manchurian candidate.

Oh puullease.  Come to Canada and view our field before you start using that rhetoric.  Obama would probably be trounced out of the NDP for being a "neocon"....