loquitur

I've looked at his voting record and it's predictably big-city liberal. That's not a criticism, it just is.

I agree with you that part of his personality and who he is is the charisma and speaking ability, and to his credit he isn't a fire-breather who can't handle dissent. I like that, and I have to say I think he's a very impressive person. He appears to be personally (as distinct from politically) moderate, with a secure ego, which is very important for someone who will have that much power. All that said, for what purposes will these talents be harnessed? Basically the normal urban Democrat litany, maybe with a couple of twists in there. As I said, that's ok, he's not the first or the only, and as a New Yorker I can tell you most of my friends will love it. But again, let's not delude ourselves he's a great breakthrough.

What he will do, however, is give us a president who's not painful to listen to when he speaks. Since presidents are on the tube a lot, that's something. It's not the second coming of Jesus, but it's something.

roachboy

wouldn't the composition of congress determine more about what can and can't happen than how good a speaker obama is?

just saying...

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it make you sick.

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loquitur

to some degree, sure. But Jimmy Carter didn't get all that much done with a Dem Congress, and neither did Bill Clinton his first two years.

dc_dux

loquitor....I would suggest that the examples you gave of bi-partisanship have been the exception rather than the rule.

The "bi-partisan split", especially as initiated by the Republicans, goes far beyond the "hot-button, high visibility" issues.

Examples? How about the Hastert rule of the former Speaker of the House, which effectively prevented bi=partisanship.

Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year's intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if "the majority of the majority" supports them.

BTW, Pelosi has no such policy. If there was a "Pelosi rule" which requried support by the "majority of the majority" the House would not have passed many of the Iraq funding bills without some limitations or mandates on Bush.

Or the delaying tactics by the Republicans in the Senate to block even debate on proposed legislation.

This year Senate Republicans are threatening filibusters to block more legislation than ever before, a pattern that's rooted in — and could increase — the pettiness and dysfunction in Congress.

The Democrats used such tactics far less often when in the minority.

Not to completely exonerate the Democrats, but for the last 20+ years, they have been far more willing to compromise and seek workable bi-partisan majorities than the Republicans.

But then I am a partisan.

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ottopilot

FYI - take with a huge (premature) grain of salt, but McCain leads both Obama and Clinton in polls featured in today's LA Times.

here's the link if interested LA Times poll, Feb 27, 2008

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dc_dux

The polls, with a huge (premature) grain of salt, are all over the place.

But, the only ones where a candidate's lead is outside the margin of error (+ or - 3%), as well as having 50% or over, are the CBS/NY TImes and AP polls:

AP: Obama - 51, McCain - 41
CBS: Obama - 50, McCain - 38

http://pollingreport.com/wh08gen.htm

__________________
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loquitur

um, dc_dux? The House pretty much always was run as a one-party dictatorship. Under both parties.

The Senate was supposed to be different. It hasn't worked out that way recently for any number of reasons, with each party saying the other started it, or set it off, or what have you. Suffice it to say no one is covering himself in glory over there. However - when stuff has gotten done, it's gotten done by building issue by issue. Legislation is passing, you know. And remember - the majority changed in 11/06 and the new leadership wanted to be aggressive in pushing stuff, so of course there's some pushback. That should settle down over time, I'd imagine. Unless there's another change of control.

Also, I would argue that in the Senate, Harry Reid has been a lamentably poor manager of both the Senate and of his own party's Senators. Pelosi not anywhere near as bad over in the House; she's much more in tune with what is achievable. Or so it looks to me.

dc_dux

If you think the House under any recent Democratic Speaker had anything like the Hastert rule, where a "majority of the majority" had to be on board BEFORE even a bill could be brought to the floor for debate or before any amendments could be considered.... or the pervasiveness of flaunting disdain for House rules, I would suggest you recheck your Congressional history.

A NY Times editorial by Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann lay it out pretty well...describing the policies and practices of the Republican majority House:

...Over the past five years (2001-2006), the rules and norms that govern Congressional deliberation, debate and voting - what legislative aficionados call "the regular order" - have routinely been violated, especially in the House of Representatives, and in ways that mark a dramatic break from custom.

Roll call votes on the House floor, which are supposed to take 15 minutes, are frequently stretched to one, two or three hours. Rules forbidding any amendments to bills on the floor have proliferated, stifling dissent and quashing legitimate debate. Omnibus bills, sometimes thousands of pages long, are brought to the floor with no notice, let alone the 72 hours the rules require. Conference committees exclude minority members and cut deals in private, sometimes even adding major provisions after the conference has closed. Majority leaders still pressure members who object to the chicanery to vote yea in the legislation's one up-or-down vote....

...Some of the abuses are straightforward breaches of the rules. The majority Republicans bypass normal procedures and ignore objections that parliamentary rules have been violated. They then reframe substantive issues as procedural matters that demand party discipline. Other abuses do not violate the rules, but they do transgress longstanding practice...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/19/op...9ornstein.html

As to the Senate and your observation:
The reason is clear and the record is indisputable:

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

This purely Republican delaying tactic is unprecedented by any measure.

On this we agree.

Reid has been a terrible majority leader and Pelosi has been effective as both the party leader in the House and more importantly, as the third most powerful elected official in the country, in presiding over a (small "d") democratic House.

__________________
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robot_parade

With regards to the partisanship issue...I think the big problem with the way things are done these days is that the attitude is one of 'party over everything' - that the *most* important thing is to get, and then keep your party in power, regardless of what a given legislator believes. This is especially true of the republican side, but the democrats have the same problem. Political parties are fine as a broad coalition of like-minded individuals...but the system we've got now tends towards the idea that political party is the most important thing. Get more power for The Party. Trash the other party, get more of your party elected. Always look towards the next election. We must fix this to get a functioning government again...I just don't know how to do it.

More parties might help...but splitting into a three party system is unlikely - a third party would almost certainly take more from one party than the other, and that would leave the 'intact' party with more power. On the other hand, the republican party seems to be tearing itself apart, so we'll see.

loquitur

Lest you think Obama isn't just another politician, get a load of this.

roachboy

methinks you're whacking away at a strawman, loquitor.

seriously--who do you imagine you are arguing against?

if you actually talk to anybody in particular--which you're doing here--you find that nobody believes anything remotely like what you impute to them about obama.

the position you argue against seems only to make sense as a generality--like "obamania" does--a tv-meme.

i take it that this is a curious expression of your being-skeptical.
well lots of people are skeptical.
geez.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

The last big city liberal to run for president (and stand a chance) was... um... Kennedy, actually. Go figure.

MuadDib

Loquitor is not that far off base here, if at all. I know many people that look at Barak the way Loq is talking about. The first stage of recovery is admitting there's a problem, and Obamania does exist outside of media fantasy. Many people (present company excluded, I'm sure) need to admit they are absolutely in love with Obama far out of rational proportion, then they need to reassess their emotional connection to the man to bring in line with his political reality, then decide rather to support or not support him. Whatever way they come out is perfectly fine, I'm not arguing against Barak here just Obamania. It's a disease, but there is a cure.

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roachboy

muadlib:

i suppose one could say the same thing about conservatives who found cowboy george to be appealing because he was such a shitty speaker and so was "one of us" like they said in that fine 1930s film "freaks."

i suppose you could say it about anyone, really.

like i posted above somewhere, to the extent that politics are understood in this fine fine "democracy" as a type of consumer choice, what you complain of (or project? it's hard to know, isn't it?) about obama followers seems a symptom of a structural problem.

how detailed an understanding of the mode of being particular to peanut butter does one need to prefer skippy to jiff? do you really need to reduce peanut butter to a set of predicates that distinguish it absolutely from the riot of non-peanut butters in the world to make a consumer choice?

if it is a structural problem--something endemic to the way the american political system operates--that voters often make choices for superficial reasons (THE SHOCK OF THAT IDEA IS ENORMOUS) then what's specific about obama's constituency?

general question:

how can a thread like this possibly get beyond dueling anecdotes?

i know a set of people who do not fit the description the good comrade i.p. outlined in the op, and you know a set of people that fits it.
it is entirely possible that both of us know a larger set made up of some who do and some who dont.
it's likely even.

so there's nowhere to go with this, is there?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

pr0f3n

Yes that's quite shoc... oh, wait, it's bollocks

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loquitur

well, someone isn't levelling.
And there'll be some other thing tomorrow anyway. This is politics, there always is.
Look, he's a good guy to all appearances, but please, don't pretend he's something special.

debaser

He's a politician for Christs-sake. You might as well get excited over your local used car salesman.

__________________

loquitur

Yeah. My point precisely. And it's not even clear that the story in fact is not true.

robot_parade

Um, what the hell?

So:

o This CTV outfit quotes 'a Canadian source', saying that Obama (*and* Clinton) called The Canadian Government to let them know their rhetoric on NAFTA is just rhetoric.
o The Obama (*and* Clinton) campaigns deny it.
o The Canadian Government agency that the clinton and obama campaigns supposedly 'warned' deny it.
o Some chick calls the CTV news program, who stand by their story.

So, these CTV guys have no source they'll quote. They have nothing but a baseless allegation of a fairly minor case of politicians talking out of both sides of their mouths, with no proof at all.

Sure, if it were true, I'd be disappointed in both candidates. But until or unless it's proven true, who the fuck cares at all?

Charlatan

Canadians

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ASU2003

If they called up the Mexican ambassator and said that, it might be a bigger issue for me. Canada is much closer or exceeds the US in environmental, wages, and government services. So, I'm not worried if some jobs move up to Canada.

pr0f3n

Citing Taylor Marsh about Obama is as useless as citing the Discovery Institute about evolution.

I don't think anyone in this thread has tried to say Obama is better than he is, though there's certainly a few folks determined to prove to themselves that he's less than he is. That's the point of discourse, of course, but try and stay away from shit sources please.

Anyway, what's the bad thing about promising to renegotiate a trade deal to improve labor and environmental standards?

__________________
In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Charlatan

The bad thing would be how the loss of NAFTA could result in a net loss for the US. The US has a sweetheart deal with Canada with regards to Canada's oil. Make no mistake that if NAFTA were to be open for re-negotiation that oil would be on the table... and as Canada is the US's biggest supplier of oil I would be a huge loss to the US (and a potentially huge gain to Canada... at least in that sector).

And this is just one part of many that are a net benefit to the US.

__________________
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- Old Man Luedecke

loquitur

See, my read on the stuff about Canada was that of course Obama didn't mean he was just going to pull us out of NAFTA, and of course Obama was just posturing for political purposes, and wanted to reassure the Canadians of that. He's way too smart to actually think that NAFTA has been bad for the country, and he's way too smart to think that as a result of NAFTA jobs have moved to China (!), and he's also way too smart to actually think that it's acceptable to sign a treaty and then just walk away from it and then think people will actually still do business with you later.

That he is supposed to have told the Canadians "I don't really mean it" is to my mind a plus, though it does show he's just another politician - and that's not necessarily a negative, because every officeholder is. He's just not the messiah.

But I did chuckle when I saw this online:<br><IMG SRC="http://bp1.blogger.com/_pNJFZtinpKY/R8cAgA0YR1I/AAAAAAAAC-8/qvuqI5-Iab8/s1600/Obamessiah.jpg">

ratbastid

Not to retread roachboy's tires or anything, loquitor, but I invite you to consider that the messianic view of Obama you're decrying is as much your creation as the decrying of it.

Nobody has said he's the second coming. That picture is whatever version of reductio ad absurdum involves exaggerating others' statements beyond the ridiculous. Augmento ad absurdum? I don't know. My point is, the reaction against "Obamania" is a reaction against a myth. You may as well be reacting against unicorns and leprechauns. That's what roachboy meant by "straw man".

Of course he's a politician. In my view he's the politician with the best chance of transforming America--his language is transformative, and all transformation is created first in language. But "Obamania" is a myth. He has loyal supporters, as do Clinton, McCain, Huckabee, and Paul.

Jinn

In fairness, I did.. earlier in the thread. But it was in jest.

I think Obama is awesome for his:
Charisma
Education and Experience
Technology
Economy
Health Care
Foreign Policy
Bipartisanship
Religion

I don't like his position on gun control, but that's because im a crazy gun-toting ultra-liberal. I don't think he's the Messiah literally, but I do think he's the best politician I've seen in 15 years.

All politicians make extravagant claims and posit themselves as THE solution for the ails of a country. But it is their PERSONALITY and how you "feel" about them that ultimately determines if you BELIEVE what they're saying. I think Hillary believes what she's saying, but I don't like her as a person, so it's hard to BELIEVE her. Obama has a good slogan; "Change I can BELIEVE in."

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loquitur

yep, he's a politician. His people did in fact tell the Canadians that Obama didn't mean it when he said he wants to reopen NAFTA - the Canadians named names, and now the Obama campaign has gone silent.

Yup, just another politician. And please, people are passing out at his rallies. It's almost like the fundies dancing with snakes. I dind't make this up. There are plenty of people out there who really do think they'll get some form of redemptino through the politics of Barack. To my mind that's both sad and delusional, and those people are settign themselves up for a big disappointment when he turns out to be just another flawed human being - no matter how talented he is (and he is very talented).

And by the way, I think he's likely to be the next president, so even though I do wish him well, I still think the people who make him out to be the next coming of whoever are in for a big letdown.

robot_parade

loquitor:

Dude, I'm sorry, I really don't get it.

From the article you linked to:

So, the canadian government still denies it. The obama camp denies it, and the 'source' is still anonymous. The anonymous source also says it '.it was perhaps a miscommunication'.

So, what the hell? If this is absolutely true, it is a fairly minor issue, and there's still no proof. We have on anonymous guy's word for it. Ignore.

Tully Mars

I read it twice this morning and kept thinking I must be missing something.

I agree "where's the beef?"

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Lasereth

Obama is a genuinely likable public speaker. Public speaking is huge. Public speakers that can't get argued into a corner and can stand up for themselves without umming 20 times in 5 minutes stand out. Obama is black. I Hate Niggers is still a common lifestyle where I'm from and he represents a nation that is changing for the better, if on no point other than accepting a black man as a leader.

Is it true that most Obama supporters don't know his policies? I'd believe it. But when you see a confident, educated, american dream black man rising to the top and gaining respect from an entire country you can't help but want him to succeed even further.

This is irresponsible of me, but I want him to win because my youngest childhood memories are of President Bush senior on TV and ever since there's been 2 families controlling the whole country. I'm sick of it. Im also sick of the country's current spending and reputation around the world and I don't think a Republican president can change any of that.

loquitur

The source was Austan Goolsbee. He was named. Who in the embassy denied it, and why has the Obama campaign gone silent?

Look, I honestly think Obama is NOT going to upend NAFTA. Anyone with any sense who knows how these things work understands it is good for the country. Obama pandered - just like any other politician panders - because voters don't want NAFTA explained, they want their pain assuaged. Goolsbee is a highly respected economist and he knows damn well that Obama isn't going to upend NAFTA - it's Goolsbee's area of expertise. When Goolsbee comes forward and says he didn't have the conversation that he is said to have had, I'll believe the denials from the politicians (and yes, the Canadian embassy is politicians).

robot_parade

fwiw, here's a pretty good summary of the whole Obama/Goolsbee/NAFTA business played out, now that we have more facts:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/20...842/300/469572

Jinn

Holy shit, I'm surprised!

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

robot_parade

Surprised? Why? I don't get it. Or are you being ironical?

Jinn

Ironical indeed.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

Sun Tzu

Has anyone heard anything about who Obama may be having as Vice-President, or the rest of his cabinet for that matter?

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Tully Mars

If I had to bet? The name Clinton won't be on any short lists for anything.

I still think the Dems will figure out a way to lose this thing.

Clinton's more seasoned at dealing with the GOP slime machine while Obama has a Teflon coating of sorts. But at the rate they're going any advantage will be long gone by mid summer.

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SecretMethod70

Agreed.I hope not.I think Obama is perfectly capable of dealing with the Republicans, but you're right that at the rate the Democratic election is going they'll likely lose their advantage over time at this rate.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/...e3916817.shtml

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ratbastid

Great article.

I'll be very happy if Obama wins and we don't hear the name Clinton again for many years. What she's doing is bad for Democrats and bad for America.

flstf

The thinking in Hillary's campaign is probably something like, if they can't win the primary then damage Obama so much that he can't win the general. That way they can take another run at it in 4 years rather than waiting for 8 years.