It seems like the democratic party just doesn't get it, even after fielding two politicians from Massachusetts, in the last four presidential elections.... In the euphoria over Obama's progress in the primaries, is there a possibility that consideration about his overall electability in the general election has been assigned a smaller priority than it should have.
The more I see, the more I'm convinced that Obama has a smaller chance of beating McCain than Clinton does, because the assault on him will be ceaseless, and there is no shortage of mostly manufactured controversy. When that runs out, and along with the smearing, there is the liability of both his middle and last names.
Why would a political party, so intent on wresting the executive branch from an eight year period of republican control that has set the country back so far fiscally, militarily, and constitutionally compared to early 2001, want to put itself, and the state of the country on the line, by taking a chance now, with Obama as it's presidential candidate?
Is your determination more about proving something, or about winning? When the democrats have won the presidency, all the way back to the '64 election, who did they win with? The answer is they won with candidates from Texas, Georgia and Arkansas, and they lost with candidates from Minnesota, and twice from Massachusetts, and they managed what could be called a draw with a candidate from Tennessee.
How much of your strategy this time has to do with your perception that McCain and his party are too weak politically, to beat Obama?
This is what passes for "mainstream", in the US media, and probably for some of you here, too....why take a chance on this guy as your candidate? Out of principle, some other time, please!!! Beating McCain is the ONLY THING that should matter now. Consider that the opposition is telling you that Clinton has a better shot, and that it might be better to err on the side of caution?
Quote:
http://jewishworldreview.com/kathleen/parker051408.php3
Jewish World Review May 14, 2008 / 9 Iyar 5768
Getting Bubba
By Kathleen Parker
"A full-blooded American."
That's how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren't racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president."
Whether Fry was referring to McCain's military service or Obama's Kenyan father isn't clear, but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race.
Full-bloodedness is an old coin that's gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.
Who "gets" America? And who doesn't?
The answer has nothing to do with a flag lapel pin, which Obama donned for a campaign swing through West Virginia, or even military service, though that helps. It's also not about flagpoles in front yards or magnetic ribbons stuck on tailgates.
It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.
Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically — and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century — there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.
We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.
Meanwhile, immigration trends have shifted dramatically in the past 40 years, as growing percentages of Americans are foreign-born. In 1970, just 4.7 percent or 9.6 million people of the total population were foreign-born. By 2000, 11.1 percent or 31.1 million individuals were foreign-born, according to the Census.
Contributing to the growing unease among yesterday's Americans is the failure of the federal government to deal with the illegal-immigration fiasco. It isn't necessarily racist or nativist to worry about what these new demographics mean to the larger American story.
Yet, white Americans primarily — and Southerners, rural and small-town folks especially — have been put on the defensive for their throwback concerns with "guns, God and gays," as Howard Dean put it in 2003. And more recently, for clinging to "guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them," as Obama described white, working-class Pennsylvanians who preferred his opponent.
The "guns, God and gays" trope has haunted Democrats, and Republicans have enjoyed dusting it off when needed to rile the locals. It's an easy play.
But so-called "ordinary Americans" aren't so easily manipulated and they don't need interpreters. They can spot a poser a mile off and they have a hound's nose for snootiness. They've got no truck with people who condescend nor tolerance for that down-the-nose glance from people who don't know the things they know.
What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.
Republicans more than Democrats seem to get this, though Hillary Clinton has figured it out. And, the truth is, Clinton's own DNA is cobbled with many of the same values that rural and small-town Americans cling to. She understands viscerally what Obama has to study.
That G-d, for instance, isn't something that comes and goes out of fashion. That clinging to religion isn't a knee-jerk response to nativist paranoia, but is the hard work of constant faith.
Likewise, clinging to guns isn't some weird obsession so that Bubba can hang Bambi's head over the mantel. To many gun owners, it's a constitutional bulwark against government tyranny. As Condi Rice has noted, it wasn't long ago in this country that blacks needed guns to protect themselves when the police would not.
Some Americans do feel antipathy toward "people who aren't like them," but that antipathy isn't about racial or ethnic differences. It is not necessary to repair antipathy appropriately directed toward people who disregard the laws of the land and who dismiss the struggles that resulted in their creation.
Full-blooded Americans get this. Those who hope to lead the nation better get it soon.
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The racist and other white supremacy sentiments in the above article should have discouraged the Washinton Post from featuring it's author, but it didn't happen:
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
OPINIONS
Bush, Cheney & McCain
Tom Toles: What is the nominee's plan for the incumbents?
Watch Tom and his banana.
Ann Telnaes: Bush's 'Sacrifice'
* Kathleen Parker: Two Democratic Pretty Boys
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=opinionsbox1
The Democrats Hug It Out
By Kathleen Parker
Saturday, May 17, 2008; A17
Well, at least they didn't kiss.
I was bracing myself for the lip lock Wednesday when John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama.
Don't look at me. David "Mudcat" Saunders, Edwards's former rural adviser, came up with the idea, saying Obama should kiss Edwards on the lips "to kill this 41-point loss," referring to Hillary Clinton's landslide victory in the West Virginia primary.
Instead, the two men exchanged a manly air-hug to commemorate the moment when Edwards threw Clinton under the upholstered sofa on his grandmama's front porch.
As Edwards gave what amounted to a stump speech highlighting his favorite subject -- John Edwards -- Americans were reminded of why the North Carolina son-of-a-millworker won't be their presidential nominee.
Enraptured by his own message, Edwards seemed reluctant to hand over the microphone. He finally relinquished the stage, after describing, yet again, the "wall" that he says divides Americans: "There is one man who knows in his heart that it is time to create one America, not two. And that man is Barack Obama."
The "wall" refers to the one Edwards erected in the hearts and minds of Americans who hadn't yet realized they were miserable, disenfranchised and seething with rage -- not the wall that used to run through Berlin.
Obama and Edwards make an attractive picture -- Ultra Brite cover boys of youth and glamour united against old men (and women) who worship the status quo. Obama -- the man who makes Chris Matthews feel a thrill up his leg -- wants to "do the Lord's work," lately pictured in front of a cross illuminated with vanity lights on a flier aimed at Kentucky voters, while Edwards wants to roll out the catapults and nuke the Coliseum.
But their message of unity gets lost in a din of cognitive dissonance. To succeed, they must first create a divide of resentment the size of Montana among the have-not-enoughs toward those perceived as having too much. No one has tried this more brazenly than Edwards with his "two Americas" campaign, which failed twice, by the way.
The question -- should this duo have its way -- isn't "When will the poor be wealthy enough?" but "When will the wealthy be poor enough?"
While we're waiting to find out, Edwards's tortured Southern shtick is supposed to help Obama with the demographic of white, rural, working-class (non-college) Americans he's been having trouble with. Green room translation: poor, ignorant racists.
Presumably, Edwards knows how to relate to these folks, given his heritage and his years as a trial lawyer representing the little people against corporate America. Notwithstanding his 28,000-square-foot house and $400 haircuts. And ignoring the fact that one reason health insurance rates are so high -- and that so many poor rural folks lack high-quality medical care -- is the success Edwards and other trial lawyers have in convincing jurors that doctors owe the world always-perfect results.
His medical malpractice specialty often focused on OB-GYNs, and his multimillion-dollar awards resulted more from emotion than science. Edwards's underappreciated acting skills, including an uncanny ability to channel the voice of a dead child, helped raise malpractice premiums so high that many OB-GYNs have fled the profession.
Whether Edwards helps Obama seems questionable. A few of Edwards's 18 pledged delegates may slide over, though they don't have to. At best, he helped momentarily by stealing Clinton's thunder after her West Virginia win. The timing of the endorsement provided Obama live coverage followed by a full evening of commentary.
Clinton, who got a little face time as reporters took her temperature, was (as always) smooth and cool.
Which puts new thoughts in motion as voters project down the road. Obama and Edwards look and talk pretty, but Clinton, unflinching and steely, exudes pure brawn. When the time comes to sit across from the likes of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a chill in the heart may beat a thrill up the leg.
Kathleen Parker is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address iskparker@kparker.com.
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I want the republicans OUT, next January, and I could care less about proving anything related to the high mindedness of the American electorate. I am not enthusiatic about either democratic candidate. I just don't think Obama is as strong a national candidate, against McCain, as Clinton would be.
Don't effing blow this election because you have some other agenda than ousting the republicans....I see you setting up to do that, and I don't understand why you would take that chance....not this time.
So, why are you willing to? Do you not see where you live, how too many of your fellow countrymen think and act? You put your faith in them, when you support Obama. I think of the ones influenced by the two columns above, as being like the majortiy of Tennessee voters in the 2000 election, voting against their own son, Al Gore, because George Bush represented their "values". George Bush ignored Tennessee, after he got what he wanted, and the voters cost Al Gore the presidency, and themselves the added tourism, a presidential library, and the prestige of sending their son to the white house.
I don't trust an electorate that voted twice in such great numbers, for Bush, where a majority thinks Reagan was a great president.
Why do you? What are you trying to prove?