USA Presidential Politics - 2008

[Jacko]

I had a few beers with StephenB tonight...he should post more on the political threads....
(welcome to page 500)

[sctx]

Originally Posted by Jacko

I had a few beers with StephenB...he should post more on the political threads....
(welcome to page 500)

StephenB starring as "The Token Conservative"

[roni]

Originally Posted by sctx

StephenB starring as "The Token Conservative"

I'm a conservative

[sctx]

Originally Posted by roni

I'm a conservative

you obviously need a drink

[Jacko]

Originally Posted by sctx

StephenB starring as "The Token Conservative"

moderate conservative.......like you!

[Jacko]

Originally Posted by sctx

you obviously need a drink

Not me...I'm already there...

[roni]

Originally Posted by sctx

you obviously need a drink

I do not believe in the Rybergian New Paradigm

Which reminds me of the feminist take a colleague of mine took on an old Depression era poem for a presentation she did. The line I liked was:

Sister, can you paradigm

[Jacko]

Originally Posted by roni

I do not believe in the Rybergian New Paradigm

Which reminds me of the feminist take a colleague of mine took on an old Depression era poem for a presentation she did. The line I liked was:

Sister, can you paradigm

\Which would be something less than two bits....

[ryberg]

That's a funny one, Roni.

I don't think you're a conservative any more than you're an Obamacan, btw.

Congrats on your there here reaching 500 pages. All our political issues have been worked out now, right?

Steve

[roni]

Originally Posted by ryberg

That's a funny one, Roni.

I don't think you're a conservative any more than you're an Obamacan, btw.

Congrats on your there hear reaching 500 pages. All our political issues have been worked out now, right?

Steve

At the convention Steve, if not before then - but not until there is a nominee. Then all is settled

[ryberg]

RCP is the real deal, I think. It gets more and more high-level references (on commentary but also on nuts-and-bolts stuff like delegate counts, actually), and check out this comment by Mort Kondracke on Fox:

There is this fellow Jay Cost(ph), who is a brilliant analyst for RealClearPolitics.com, who sorts out the demographics of all of this, and says that it's not over, that Clinton---that the primaries ahead are more tilted toward Clinton and her demographics, and they're more primaries, not caucuses, et cetera.

It is well worth reading. It is very complicated. It's based on regression analysis, and so on. [source]

(That's the series of articles I told you I thought you might like, Roni. Checked those out?)

That's something most definitely worth remembering, as these primaries approach.

On the other hand, I've heard numerous comments like this one (on The News Hour, for example), stressing that it's more of a dynamic relationship, the results of earlier primaries affecting those of later primaries because of the psychological factors involved:

BILL KRISTOL, EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": That would be true if things were static. But the Democratic primary electorate is moving.

Clinton was once beating Obama by 20 points in national polls. In Scott Rasmussen's poll, which is a daily tracking poll, Clinton was ahead by six points on Saturday. Now Obama is ahead by five points.

If that's happening in Ohio and Texas, the fire wall does not stand. And I suspect it is happening.

It could reverse. She has fought back from the brink a couple of times already in this primary season. But right now I think he's got the cards and he is playing them pretty well.

Then he goes on to bring up another point we've discussed in this regard:

You asked about endorsements--Bill Richardson could make a difference in Texas. Bill Richardson is the Hispanic Governor of New Mexico. If he would endorse Obama and come across the border and campaign for Obama in south Texas, that would be impressive.

It is pretty entertaining and intriguing stuff, all this, ain't it?

Steve

[jeffandbecky]

As Repbulican as I am, in the Texas primary, I am voting for Obama. The old rule back from the 60's and 70's was that Republicans voted in the Democratic primary to choose the lessor of evils. In the general elections, vote straight ticket Republican.

Obama may be tougher to run against in November, but it is time to put a stake in the Hildabeast's heart. A loss in Texas and Ohio may just do that.

[Just Lucky]

I can't remember whether I'm paranoid or crazy. Folks like Bill Kristol and other right wing pundits have much to gain by sowing disunity and antagonism within the Democratic party. Personally I'd take anything one of 'em says with the outlook they are looking for an angle.

Just a casual, friendly, paranoid post.

[ryberg]

Well I don't doubt you may well be right in general. In this case, however, I confess it is a bit difficult to figure out (even for a dedicated viewer of Lost!) how that would pan out here: he's saying that the situation is more dynamic and that successes in earlier primaries can effect the outcome of later primaries (which seems kinda reasonable to me, intuitively speaking), so you can't assume just from the level III diagnostic that this guy at RCP has performed that the demographics alone will be enough for her, all in order to... what, overplay to people Obama's success such that Clinton supporters will be more fired up to come out and vote for her and get her the nomination, which will in turn make it easier (to his mind) for the Republicans to triumph in November?

It is a little too twisty curvy for my thinking. It makes Coulter saying she'll be a Hillary girl to avoid a "co-opted" Republican President in McCain and set up 4 years of disaster in order to usher in decades of Republicans to the rescue look like a bit like a kindergarten strategy.

Steve

[ryberg]

Here's an angle on the Latino vote and Texas in particular that I hadn't heard anyone mention up to this point (perhaps due to my own self being a laggard or something):

In Texas, Mr. Penn said Mrs. Clinton would be helped by the Latino vote — which he said could ultimately be as much as 40 percent of the electorate.

But Mrs. Clinton faces another problem there in the form of that state’s unusual delegation allocation rules. Delegates are allocated to state senatorial districts based on Democratic voter turn-out in the last election. Bruce Buchanan, a professor of political science at the University of Texas at Austin, noted that in the last election, turnout was low in predominantly Hispanic districts and unusually high in urban African-American districts.

That means more delegates will be available in districts that, based on the results so far, could be expected to go heavily for Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton, Dr. Buchanan said, “has got her work cut out for her.” [source]

Newsweek has a whole feature here on Obama and the Latino vote in TX, as well (though I personally didn't see all that much new or surprising in it, myself).

Clive Crook's remarks on superdelegates here tend to echo what MWC and Jacko have been saying. If Clinton's showing in TX & OH is insufficient and she ends up needing the superdelegates to swing her with their support, he asks,

Would they be willing to do that, if she was behind both in the popular vote within the party and in the share of pledged delegates? If I were a superdelegate, and even if I were convinced that Hillary was the better choice, I would not be willing: it is just too blatantly undemocratic.

And what about the delegates from Michigan and Florida, which the party disqualified when the states defied the ruling over the timing of their primaries? Both voted for Hillary, but nobody campaigned in either place and in Michigan Obama wasn't even on the ballot. Asked on CNN whether the Clinton campaign would call for some kind of rerun of those elections, one of Hillary's helpers blandly said that there was no need: those results were in, and it was just a question of un-disenfranchising the voters. If Hillary did get the nomination thanks to the party's uber-voters and to some kind of legal stunt involving Michigan and Florida, I would expect to hear fewer complaints from Democrats in future about Bush-Gore 2000. But I cannot see the Democratic party electorate standing for this--and, in any case, what would such squalid manoeuvrings do for the candidate's chances in the general election?

His closing comments are on a possible Clinton bow-out, if indeed her showing in those states is insufficient, or on the possible lack of one, despite that. They are more vague but otherwise remarkably similar to the closing comments on that same situation from Michael Gerson here, which you'll have to go look up if you want to read them, as I ain't gonna be the one to print them here. However he also does summarize this same distinction between the two Dem candidates rather nicely in terms of Clinton's message trouble, I think:

Obama's appeal is straightforward: getting beyond "the ideological battles that have consumed us for the last 20 years" -- in which Clinton and her husband have been two of the main combatants.

Hillary Clinton's attempt to define a narrative of her own has been hobbled because her campaign is defined by the rejection of rhetoric. Obama's eloquence and idealism are dismissed as "abstract" and a "fairy tale" in contrast to Clinton's experience and policy substance. It is difficult for a campaign to inspire while using "inspiration" as an epithet.

This theory has other drawbacks. As a lawyer, first lady and senator, Clinton has had little actual experience running anything -- except for a White House health care policy process that was a spectacle of arrogance and ineffectiveness. And on a purely political level, this argument for experience comes at an odd time, when Americans are generally disillusioned with both Democrats and Republicans in Washington.

The message issue is also the focus here, with this memorable and possibly valid point:

You can tell a campaign has difficulty establishing a message when its slogans keep changing. In recent weeks, the Clinton campaign has featured one banner after another: "Big Challenges, Real Solutions," "Working for Change, Working for You," "Ready for Change, Ready to Lead" and "Solutions for America."

Obama has stuck confidently with the slogan "Change You Can Believe In." Clinton must either get voters to stop believing in the change Obama promises, or make them an alternative Big Offer that they can believe in more.

Cannon fodder for Clinton and/or McCain against Obama is offered up here, re the Louis Farrakhan "connection"...

That also appears as question #8, the only crappy question, imo (especially the weird way the issue is approach), on an otherwise nice list of 10 proposed questions for the next debate, 5 aimed at each candidate, and all pretty hard-hitting, put together by Larry Elder here.

Some concern here re Obamamania:

"Are Democrats coming surprisingly close to nominating a phenomena rather than a fully vetted candidate?" asked Steve Jarding, a long-time Democratic activist. "The answer to that appears to be a frightening, 'Yes.'

"Once again, we seem to be falling in love in February only to be headed to a bitter breakup in November when our true love turns out to be much less than expected."

Jarding, who said he considers Obama "unique and gifted," has mostly stayed out of presidential politics since a brief dalliance with John Edwards in 2004. But the co-author of "Foxes in the Henhouse: How the Republicans Stole the South and the Heartland and What the Democrats Must do To Run 'em Out," has long warned that Democrats should avoid the mistakes of past elections.

"Historically, while hope may well sell in the spring, it wears thin by fall when it is trumped by issues of security and experience," Jarding said.

(Though here I thought a central argument for Obama and against Clinton was precisely attempting to avoid the mistakes of past elections. )

Much harsher concern over Obamamania here, actually. Hard to quote from this one, as it's so evenly scary throughout, but just to give you something:

ABC's Jake Tapper notes the "Helter-Skelter cultish qualities" of "Obama worshipers," what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls "the Cult of Obama." Obama's Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience -- to such rhetorical nonsense as "We are the ones we've been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek."

That was too much for Time's Joe Klein. "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism ... ," he wrote. "The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."

You might dismiss The New York Times' Paul Krugman's complaint that "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality" as hyperbole. Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama's Potomac primary victory speech with "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg." When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama "comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."

And Farrakhan makes yet another appearance here, in another article that starts out seemingly lovey-dovey to Obama, noting

Despite being even more liberal on policy matters than rival Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama provokes remarkably little dread among Republicans. For conservatives tempted by Mr. Obama, his charm and empathy soothe conservative anxieties, especially when compared with the frightful Hillary Clinton.

but continuing on to question whether his religious faith is real and/or how his particular faith leanings may disturb religious conservatives, once they know more about him (all apart from the F-name, there).

Jack Kelly here repeatedly refers to limousine liberals and lunchpail Democrats, just to keep that list of references going...

Oh, yeah, and over in that other party, Romney endorsed McCain.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. I'm out.

Steve