RantDuJour

Well, it was a long time coming. Obama had it won after Super Tuesday. And, then, he ran off 11 straight caucus victories. And, still Clinton didn’t give up. Part of this is admirable, of course, The part that wasn’t were the personal attacks th at will go straiight to McCain’s fall ads.

Tonight was an achievement of historic proportions. Here was a first-term senator who beat Hillary Clinton. Clinton had this thing won. I was hoping that Edwards would take her out. And, perhaps, he might have. But, he was really too angry. He was hitting all the right notes, but he offered no hope. Obama didn’t hit the angry notes, but he hits the hope notes. The contrast between Obama and Clinton is dramatic. She just comes off as a normal politician. But, she had all the advantages. She had the connections. She had the money. She theoretically had the best people.

But, then, Mark Penn started running her campaign. What a moron. She probably would have lost anyway. But, I’m not sure. Obama is truly an exceptional candidate.  An unbelievably speaker. A man of incredible intelligence. A man that has the brains to run a perfect campaign. As far as the issues goes, he’s too far to the right for me. But, you can’t see that from what he says. It’s perfect. And, now, he is in perfect position to tack to the center and pick up an even larger number of independents and republicans.

Again, I don’t see McCain getting more than 100 EVs. He’s really a bad candidate. It doesn’t matter how good the people around him are, and they aren’t very good. It doesn’t matter how viscious the rightwing 527 groups are and they are viscious. McCain will make msitake after mistake after mistake. He has nothing to run on besides Bush 3.

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um, so what? I mean, really. So. The. F***. What? Surely, nobody would jump to the conclusion that the Clintons having been poor or, at most, lower middle class, most of their lives (Hillary having more money than Bill), would say that they are suddenly not empathetic to the working poor.
I just heard Milbank say exactly that, that they [the Clintons] cannot “connect with the working poor”. How silly is that?
I don’t even care that they have ‘cashed in’ on their celebrity. I mean, it’s not like Bill sought to be president for the financial windfall that he got after he left office. So, they made a bunch of money? So what?
The only thing that I would care about, and this might come out soon enough as people start digging through the documents, is if either Bill or Hillary received a bunch of money from odious foreign nations. I guess that if they got money from odious companies for some consulting work that’d be a bad thing as well.
However, making money from speeches and book seems fine to me.
I say, good for you guys.
Now, just drop out of the race for president and enjoy your wealth!

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I’ve been inundated with people who have been calling Obama a lightweight. And, while I hesitate to cast aspersions, I have a tendency to put them into the Geraldine Ferrarro category. That is, people who have their minds made up to support Clinton and don’t care to know anything about her, far superior, opponent. They like to play gotcha games by saying, ‘Name his accomplishments”. I hesitate to use a loaded term like racism. In fact, I don’t necessarily believe that they are racists. They just don’t want to believe that Hillary is being beat by a legitimate candidate. And, in fact, I believe now that Obama is really a remarkable candidate. A person who, while I don’t agree with all of his positions, has a very real possibilty of transforming a country. (And, on the selfish side, burying the Republicans for a generation or more.)

But, these people don’t see this Obama. The Obama that I see. And, I’m not really one who is in the tank for him. Look at my previous posts. I came to Obama more as someone who was completely turned off by the campaign that Clinton has been running. But, the more that I watch the man, the more that I see him under the extreme pressure of this campaign, the more that he is able to handle Clinton’s viscious, scurilous, slanderous, lame attacks, the more that he just goes about his business, handling everything with style and grace, the more that I have moved from choosing him for being the opponent of Clinton to being in favor of Obama.

There are plenty of ways to look up Obama’s accomplishments, if one really wanted to. The first summary that I saw was a pretty objective tv special on MSNBC. They went through Obama’s life and that’s what originally convinced me that he was sufficiently experienced to handle the job as president. One never really knows for sure. I mean even I who knew that bush was bad in 1999, never for a moment dreamed that he would be as completely pathetic as he has turned out to be. And, as a in-the-tank Clinton supporter in 1992, I never dreamed that he would such a lot of trouble his first couple of years. I knew that there was a learning curve, but Clinton really made it tough. And, he made such poor decisions.

However, Obama really seems to make the right decisions, time and time again. And, he makes them quickly. There’s not a lot of dithering going on. Agree or disagree with his decision to can Samantha Powers, but it was immediate. Of course, she was just a volunteer, but you look at Clinton’s decisions. They appear to take days to vet out. Ferrarro’s comments were inexusable in her first published interview. But, Clinton took 2-3 days to realize how toxic they were and to can her. And, then, we had to deal with Ferrarro’s tantrum across the airwaves for another day before, it appears, she just went away.

So, before giving a summary and some links for Obama’s accomplishments, I wanted to identify a few that are immediately apparent after watching him since he announced for the presidency. These are not trivial. Aside from the obvious decisiveness, his ability to put together a $150M+ national campaign from scratch is nothing to be sneezed at. Clinton had one already existing and she has run it poorly. Others cannot get one up and running without serious problems. And, everyone else is running a campaign, more local than national, with far less money and thus far less ability to do things. Obama has reached out across this country, put together teams in every single state and has everyone on the same page. And, he did this with no help from the national Democrats, no help from previous campaigns (or administrations), no help from anyone except his own ability to organize. This accomplishment is nothing to sneeze at. It is unbelievably impressive. I would point to the very heavily competed in Iowa as an example of how he beat out such great teams as Clintons and Edwards who had been running in Iowa for at least 4 years as an example of how great Obama is. But, to me, the real example is Super Tuesday. He won more states than Hillary Clinton. Granted he couldn’t beat her in the big states, but those states take time to move people, as Obama shows when he gets the time to campaign in a state. But, Obama took his money and he organized winning teams in 11 or 12 states out of 20 Super Tuesday states. Clinton, with the knowledge and money and power and years of preparation, got her butt handed to her. If she were a guy, I’d say that she got spanked.

Anyway, for a list of his legislative accomplishments, I’ll point to Andrew Sullivan, of all people; http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/02/dear-chris-matt.html. Sullivan lists the following;

1. Ethics Reform:
2. The Lugar-Obama initiative
3. Hurricane Katrina response bills
4. A compromise immigration bill
5. independent Congressional Ethics Enforcement Commission effort
6. A bill to criminalize various deceptive election tactics

From another blog, there are these;

that created a searchable database of recipients of federal contracts and grants, proposing legislation on avian flu back when most people hadn’t even heard of it, working to make sure that soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were screened for traumatic brain injury and to prevent homelessness among veterans, successfully fighting a proposal by the VA to reexamine all PTSD cases in which full benefits had been awarded, working to ban no-bid contracts in Katrina reconstruction, and introducing legislation to criminalize deceptive political tactics and voter intimidation. And there he was again, introducing a tech plan …

His signature accomplishment in the state legislature was this one;

“Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced — by beating the daylights out of the accused.

Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped.”

He had to work hard with Republicans to get this bill through the legislature and signed. And, he did.

There are a lot more. But, frankly, this is far more than Clinton has. It’s far more than bush had. It’s far more that Bill Clinton had. It’s far more than Ronald Reagan had (which involved destroying California’s educational system for generations.)

Next time someone wants to tag Obama as a empty suit, they should actually take the time to do some research on him first. Otherwise, they look dumb.

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Hillary is toast. She is irrelevant. It’s time for Obama to start paying attention to his GE opponent, John McCain. Hillary can be safely ignored. She is losing. She has almost lost. The only thing that needs to be protected is that Obama needs to come in close in Pennsylvania and the remaining states and keeping ahold of the supers. That can be done while he’s attacking McCain.

And, McCain definitely needs to be attacked. He’s got more positives than he deserves. He is anathema to over 70% of the population. His constant missteps are ripe for attacks. If he gets away with them, the media sure isn’t going to address these issues, then he coasts into the fall with a decent negative rating. Meanwhile, Clinton and her disgusting surrogates will be bring Obama’s negatives up.

Obama has no choice. He can’t really go toe to toe with Clinton. What can he gain? She’s gone. He has to go for McCain’s jugular. And, in doing so, he’ll convince the super delegates that he is really ready for the general election.

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I did see that the polls started trending back towards Clinton thru the weekend and into Tuesday. I was resigned to her winning Ohio by the time that Tuesday rolled around. (I should have updated my predictions!) But, I still was sure that Obama would win Texas. That was a shock and a big disappointment. I really wanted to close the door on Hillary yesterday.

I believe that these races changed because of two things; Hillary’s stoking of the non-existent Obama advisor talking to the Canadians about Nafta flap. This was a lie generated by the rightwing head of the Canadian government. Hillary didn’t care. She doesn’t care what she destroys as long as she wins. So, she won Ohio going away, by 10 points.

Texas apparently was won by the 3am phone call ad. That, at least, was legitimate. I don’t agree with the conclusions (really, Hillary over Obama? Really?) but, at least the ad didn’t take the low road. It just was very debatable and ultimately it helps McCain would could take that ad verbatim and run it for himself in the general.

So, I’m disappointed. And, I’m depressed about the Democrats chances in November. I still dont’ see how McCain pulls it out against either Hillary or Obama, but this gives him more of a chance, I think. And, it does because Clinton keeps hitting Obama low. So, rather than have a high-minded debate, which she will lose, she plays dirty. Obama, however, has to learn to deal with this type of disgusting attacks. It’s just too bad that Hillary didn’t show her slimy side long before now. As long as Obama learns how to deal with low-blows and hard hits, he should be fine. He has to attack her back.

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She’s done.

Tuesday, March 4 predictions;

Texas: Obama blowout. 58-41

Ohio: Obama win, 53-48

Vermont: Obama blowout

RI: Clinton win (god knows why, but the last poll that I saw had Clinton up by 20. I dont’ see how Obama erases that. I wonder if RI is filled with white women over 35 who make less than $40k/year.)

The sound that you hear from the campaign is her thrashing around looking for a non-existent way out. It’s sad, really. And, I do feel badly for her. But, the campaign stunk to high heaven. And, Clinton, I hate to say, really got shrill. It’s such a dammed stereotypical, but I can’t think of a better word. Nothing encapsulates my depth of feeling for Hillary more than her press conference 2 days after the Texas debate where she had her tantrun, saying, “Shame on you, Barack Obama”. The fact that the what she was complaining about was typical campaign literature that didn’t really push the envelope and the fact that her campaign has done worse (picture of Obama in Somali garb to Drudge? Really?), is irrelevant. It was a very painful tantrum to watch. And, it caused me to go over completely to Obama’s camp (if I wasn’t there already.) It wasn’t presidential. It wasn’t the right reaction. It wasn’t even what an adult would do.

Time for Hillary to go.

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A long time ago, say Super Tuesday (Feb 5), I was a John Edwards supporter. John, however, didn’t get the support that he needed to compete. So, he dropped out. That left me without a candidate. I had to choose between Clinton and Obama. Since I hadn’t really been paying that close of attention to either, after having made my choice, I gave it some time to choose. At that point, I was leaning Clinton. In fact, I was very surprised that she hadn’t already put the election away. She was leading by such large margins all the way through the summer and into the fall.

So, I watched. I paid attention. I think that I was inclined on Feb 5, to support Clinton for the following reasons;

1. She has more experience. I didn’t grant her as many years as she gives herself. I don’t believe that her 8 years as 1st lady counts for that much. But, it does count for something. She’s been there. She’s been around the big decisions. Etc.

2. She has fought the gop for years. This is a plus. She has been absolutely vetted. She has a war room response team of her own. She knows how the gop will come at her.

3. I really felt that the country was more ready for a female president than a black president. It was a dumb reason. And, I wasn’t completely sold on it. But, it seemed reasonable at the time.

I felt that there was no real difference between her positions and Obama’s positions. So, there was no win there. I didn’t like Obama lauding Reagan and dissing Bill.  However, OTOH, I really didn’t like Clinton’s support of the war. And, I didn’t like defense of that vote.

However, after a couple of more debates and after watching a few more rallies and watching Clinton’s campaign go about its business for a few more weeks, I started leaning Obama. I didn’t like the way that Clinton is thrashing about. I liked what Obama is saying. I was impressed by his team’s organizational ability and his wins in all these states. It shows that Obama is really ready to run in all 50 states. Clinton is not. I was impressed by Obama’s fundraising. It shows that he can go on through the election without worrying about money. Clinton had to loan herself money and she took in 1/3 of what Obama took in in January.  I was impressed by the Republicans and Independents who have said that they will vote for Obama. It was the exact opposite for Clinton. She will have a hard time holding onto her own party in a general election matching. She’ll lose Independents by droves.

And, then, came the coup de grace. Her campaign started attacking Obama for the most petty of charges. Plagerism? Really?

So, I went over completely to Obama. I just donated money and signed up on his webpage. In the end, I really don’t like Clinton anymore.  I have grown to be disgusted by her and her campaign. I find her flailing about to be pathetic.

OTOH, I have grown to really like Obama. I like the way that he is handling Clinton. I like the way that his political machine continues to roll.  I like the way that he handles McCain. I like his chances against the 70+ YO McCain. I don’t have the same optimism for Clinton.

Furthermore, Obama has won 11+ elections. He won more elections on Super Tuesday. The ones that he didn’t win are the ones that he just couldn’t spend the time necessary to change people’s minds from their earlier conviction that Clinton was the one.

Obama has done well and deserves the nomination. Clinton hasn’t done well and hasn’t presented herself well. She doesn’t deserve the nomination.

She can stick around until she loses on March 4. But, she’d better do the right thing and ’suspend’ her campaign on March 5.

Yes. We. Can.

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As a former Edwards supporter, I’ve taken my time to decide on an alternative. And, to be frank. the rabidness of the Obama supporters has turned me off. However, at this point, it appears pretty obvious that Obama is the superior choice.  I come to this conclusion with several reasons.

1st. Hillary has run a very poor campaign. As an observer who had his candidate (Edwards) I was able to watch, without bias, the 2 leaders run their campaigns. It was clear to me that between the two; Obama and Clinton, Obama had the far superior campaign. He had better organization, better crowds, better arguments, better positions, better history, and better counter-punching. In short, it was a no brainer, in the end, who was my second choice.

2nd, Obama is really bringing in a larger majority. It’s obvious that Democrats need to expand their majority. It’s obvious that they (we) have a majority. But, it’s equally obvious that there are a ton of Independents there for the taking. Bush has alienated all but an extreme minority of people. If the Democratic candidate can win over these Independents, Democrats will have the clear majority for years, perhaps decades. Bush has opened the door for this with his complete incompetence and arrogance. We need a candidate who will take advantage of this. Obama can and does. Clinton does not.

3rd, Obama has convinced the majority of Democrats that he is the right guy to carry the  Democratic banner. Clinton’s lone victorties, California, New York, and some other miscellaneous victories, are a result of a day in which 22 contests appeared on the same day. That’s hard for an unknown to deal with. Obama won more states and lost the other states by not that much. And, then, he went on to win the next 10 contests. It’s hard to see how Clinton can defend a Democratic nomination based on a couple of large state victories on Super Tuesday. I don’t see how she even wins Texas and Ohio despite having huge leads not that long ago. So, she’s won nothing and will win nothing and expects, what, the superdelegates to bail her out? I dont’ think so.

Anyway, it’s obvious that Clinton cannot win. It’s obvious that the Democratic electorate has moved beyond her. As much as I used to like her, I don’t see the Hillary in the campaign that I used to like. And, to put the cherry on this picture, I really don’t like the way that she’s been spending her campaign’s money. Obama, OTOH, has really chosen his spending wisely. It’s time for him to take over the nomination.

Hillary cannot win over moderate Republicans. She cannot win over Independents. These people are ripe for the taking. Democrats need these people. Obama is the guy to do this.  

It’s time for Hillary to go.

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Plagerism? Really? That’s what you’re going to go with, “Hillary”?

You had a less whiny approach when you had all your surrogates go out with the ’solutions’ whine. It was lame, but at least it didn’t stink of pure desperation.

I hope that the voters are seeing through these attacks. It’s a shame that “Hillary” has come to this. Before she started campaining, I was definitely a fan. But, as this primary season has gone on, I’ve gone more and more into the Obama camp. I’m inclined at this point to start sending him money when before I was really agnostic.

The plagerism attack really hit new lows, in my book. It’s like Obama is being attacked by Republicans. You know that Republicans can’t win an election legitimately. So, they resort to these incredible lies, that, amazingly, enough people believe. Can you imagine that there were people out there who not only didn’t believe that John Kerry was a multi-decorated war hero, but that he was a traitor? I can’t be disgusted enough by the Republicans, but I really never expected a Democrat, a Democrat that I used to respect, to sink down to their depths.

It doesn’t help that Hillary is giving the GOP attack machine lines that they can steal for the general election.  I’m sure that they can come up with their own, but the fact that she has done the groundwork for them is really bad. She can only trumpet her desperate attacks so loudly, but the GOP machine, with its minions in the mainstream media and all the lines leading up to them, can really make the noise deafening.

It’s time for Hillary to go. Their whole schtick is too tired, too 90s, too old school. She is too annoying.

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I’ve been pretty objective, or have tried to be, on the subject of Obama and Hillary. I don’t really care for either of them. I like bits of both of them, but neither of them do much for me. I was a huge John Edwards fan. Neither of these guys hit my buttons, any of them really, like he did. Actually, the person who came close was Michelle Obama. But, she’s not running.

And, since I voted for Edwards, my talking about Hillary and Obama is more a parlour game than anything else. I’m not that wed to the result. I will be voting for whomever wins.  So, I can watch without passion.

However, that having been said, I have to say that as Hillary’s campaign has gone on, I have grown to like her less. Her voice, her mannerisms, the points that she brings out in her speeches all have really turned me off.  And, I haven’t even touched on her supporters actions. I don’t like a lot of things about Obama. But, I am definitely at the point where, even aside from the fact that I think that Obama would do better in the General Election and do better governing than Hillary, I don’t want her to win.

So, even though there really isn’t any significant difference between the two candidates, I really prefer Obama. I don’t know whether the country is really ready to elect an African-American for president. But, I do know that my preference is to try.

I really thought that the country would be more ready to elect a woman than an African-American. However, not this woman. She is wrong on so many levels. And, I really never thought that I’d go that way. I had so much respect for her before she started her campaign. Now, I can’t wait for her to just go away.

It’s so sad.

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