“OBAMA SUPPORTERS” DAILY NEWS Sunday June 08, 2008

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WELCOME TO “OBAMA SUPPORTERS” DAILY NEWS

Sunday June 08, 2008


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1. Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Be Vice-President

Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Be Vice-President

June 5th, 2008 Posted at The Strange Death of Liberal America

The Clinton campaign deserves an award for focusing media attention on the issue that Barack Obama cannot win the Presidency in a race against John McCain. Strangely, the media has done little to investigate the other possibility, but there is as serious a question about whether Hillary Clinton can win the White House as there is about Barack Obama.

Clinton has been so successful in sowing those doubts, that people are saying Obama cannot win the Presidency unless she is on the ticket. Some are calling it the “Dream Ticket” and Hillary Clinton is leaving little doubt that she harbors that dream. But a “dream ticket” would be a nightmare for the Democratic Party for the same reason a Clinton nomination would have been a nightmare.

...But now there is the issue of Clinton as VP. For many Obama voters, particularly people of color, the notion of placing Clinton on the ticket is deeply offensive. There is a feeling that it would reward Clinton for bad behavior. Rep. Lacy Clay (Mo.), a pro-Obama Democrat, told The Hill after the West Virginia primary:

I’m not sure the Obama supporters will fall in line and support her. It’s evident that she and her husband started down this racial path shortly after the South Carolina primary and they continue to hearken back to racial divides in this country.

The Angry Black Woman blogged:

Personally I’d prefer he choose someone that isn’t so likely to try to undermine him at every turn.

The Chaos Theory

There has been much attention focused on Clinton’s recent string of victories, but little attention paid to the whys of them. When you look at the data you see a rather disturbing pattern: Clinton has been piling up big margins because of votes from McCain supporters. An astounding 32% of those voting in the DEMOCRATIC Kentucky primary said they would vote for John McCain in November. Then there were the 19% of Indiana Primary voters who said they would vote for McCain.

The exit polls were not asking this question earlier in the campaign so we do not have data for these earlier primaries. This was before Rush Limbaugh began his much-hyped Operation Chaos, an attempt to get Republicans to deny Barack Obama the nomination and boost the then-sagging campaign of Hillary Clinton. Here is what Limbaugh said:

And I would also say that McCain would have never have done this and Republican National Committee, Republican Party would have never done this, which is why we did it. We needed Obama bloodied up politically. We knew that Hillary would do it.

....more at the link

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. Obama First in More Ways Than Any U.S. Presidential Candidate

Obama, who will officially be nominated at the Democratic convention on the 100th birthday of Lyndon B. Johnson and will deliver his acceptance speech 45 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr.'s ``I have a Dream Speech,'' has become the first black candidate to lead a major U.S. party.

Obama First in More Ways Than Any U.S. Presidential Candidate

Julianna Goldman Sat Jun 7, 12:01 AM ET

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama's political career boasts a long list of firsts. He is the first presumptive presidential nominee to be a native of Hawaii and the president of the Harvard Law Review. He's also the first candidate with more than 1 million contributors.

Obama, an Illinois senator, is the first presumptive presidential nominee in modern times to have a father who wasn't a U.S. citizen, the first to earn an undergraduate degree from Columbia University in New York and the first to have attended Occidental College in Los Angeles.

``Obama's nomination would be historic in almost every respect that you can think of,'' said presidential historian Michael Beschloss.

Obama has also chalked up many near-firsts in the race for the White House. He is the fourth Illinois elected official to clinch a party presidential nomination; if elected he would be the first since Abraham Lincoln. Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois and was governor of California. Obama is the only first-term senator to lead a major party since Warren Harding in 1920.

No presidential nominee since Republican Wendell Willkie was so unknown to the American public and political establishment just a few years before he ran for president. Republicans recruited Willkie, a low-profile utilities executive, to run against two-term incumbent Franklin Roosevelt in 1940.

The first Democratic convention Obama ever attended was Los Angeles in 2000 and his credit card bounced at the rental-car station. He also wasn't able to secure a floor pass and watched most of the speeches on television screens.

...more at the link

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. Obama the Winner

"An Obama presidency represents everything that America has told the world about itself in the past century – and what the rest of the world wanted to expect out of America. The idea that you talk before acting, the idea that you make friends, not enemies, and the idea that anything is possible.”

Barack Obama: The winner

June 8, 2008 Andrew Sullivan Times UK Online
Barack Obama will sweep aside John McCain and make history by becoming the first black US president, saysAndrew Sullivan



I wonder if Americans have yet fully absorbed what they have just done. This past week - 41 years after the Supreme Court struck down the last bans on interracial marriage and only 40 years after black America exploded in riots after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated - a black man became the favourite to be the next president of the United States.

His convention acceptance speech, a date scheduled long before Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee, will occur by exquisite timing 45 years to the day after King’s “I have a dream” speech. The states that were critical to his nomination were Illinois, Lincoln’s home state, and the four southern states most associated with slavery: South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina.

But you have to have a heart of stone not to see what this has already done to race relations in America.

...And it has; but it came after a long, tortuous and extremely unlikely struggle and as a confluence of utterly unpredictable factors. It is just a moment in what remains a fluid general election campaign. But Obama is not a fluke and is not doomed to failure. The odds make him the favourite to be the next president of the United States and to revolution-ise its politics in ways more drastic than any figure since Ronald Reagan.

...But what Obama has is what Kennedy had and Diana famously didn’t: a cool and measured interior. What makes the phenomenon sustainable is this odd mix of hot and cool, of intense emotional energy around this man, centred on a very calm and collected, even aloof, individual. THIS has been an emotionally cathartic and draining primary season and yet through much of it, as Clinton went up and down on an emotional rollercoaster, as the media swooned and gasped and groaned, as pundits offered every conceivable gambit and interpretation, Obama’s team kept steady, made few errors, took few massive risks and never succumbed to the kind of slash-and-burn politics they were running against.

...more at the link

[FrenchieCat]

7. Wow! What a long and indepth article that one is!

super interesting!

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

4. Why No Nightmare Ticket? Let's Count The Reasons

Why No Nightmare Ticket? Let's Count The Reasons

Saturday, June 7, 2008 The Personal IS the Political

Now that the primary is finally over, the focus has turned to who Obama will pick to be his vice president. And, despite all logic to the contrary, people, mostly pundits and Hillary's surrogates, keep raising the prospect of an Obama-Hillary ticket, ad nauseam. And I have to ask, are you people complete idiots?? The pundits no doubt raise the question to get ratings, because they don't want the primary to end, because it makes them money. Do they know better? Yes, I think most of them do. And I think most in the Democratic Party know that it is a horrible idea, yet Hillary's surrogates are pushing it anyway.

...But first, why people say the nightmare ticket should be. There are generally two broad reasons why people say Obama should choose Hillary as a running mate. First, because Obama supposedly needs Hillary to bring in Hillary’s supporters, who might otherwise be bitter and sit out. Second, that Hillary has some sort of entitlement to the VP spot. Let’s dispense with the first right now: Obama most certainly does NOT need Hillary to bring in any votes. I heard that hack Pat Buchanan (why is he still allowed on TV?) say that Obama will need Hillary to get her 17 million voters. NO, her supporters are still Democrats, and the vast vast vast majority of them are NOT controlled by her. She does not speak for them. As Hillary supporter Hilary Rosen declared after watching Hillary’s non-concession speech,

She is waiting to figure out how she would "use" her 18 million voters.

But not my vote. I will enthusiastically support Barack Obama's campaign. Because I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat.

...Reasons That Automatically Disqualify Hillary as VP. Each of these reasons by itself is reason enough to disqualify Hillary from being VP. You only need one, but there are a lot more than one

1.1: The Lieberman Threshold ...

1.2: The Authorization of the Iraq War ...

1.3: Change Vs Status Quo ...

.4: Over His Dead Body ...

Major Reasons Hillary Shouldn’t Be VP

2.1: The Kitchen Sink ...

2.2: The Michigan-Florida Fiasco ...

2.3: Race-Baiting ...

2.4: Backseat Sabotage ...

2.5: Kyl-Lieberman & Iran ...

2.6: The Electoral Typhoid Mary ...

2.7: Let The Vetting Begin ...

Minor Reasons Hillary Shouldn’t Be VP

3.1: Excess Baggage...

3.2: Brings Nothing To The Table ...

3.3: Poor Management ...

3.4: Forced Ticket ...

...more at the link

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

5. From Secret Agent Flowbee’s Fortress of Fucknuttery:

Funny on so many different levels

Posted by Kevin K. at Rump Roast on 06/07/08

From Secret Agent Flowbee’s Fortress of Fucknuttery (no linky for the stinky):

SusanUnPC’s foreword: I asked you to send in rants. I am publishing them now. If you don’t see your rant published, please yank my chain at susanunpc at gmail dot com (it probably got overlooked in my 968+ entries in my Inbox). I want to publish all of your rants.

Yeah, because lord knows there’s been a shortage of rants at No Quarter lately. Seriously, when was the last time they didn’t publish something you could classify as a rant? It’s just been one, long horrible Ralph Steadman illustration over there for months now.

OH WHAT THE HELL: I was just looking through some old posts that never got published and figured this line was too good (and, admittedly, tasteless) to keep hidden away…

If Secret Agent Flowbee is considered to be one of the best and brightest counterterrorism experts in the country, it’s pretty fucking amazing Al Qaeda wasn’t able to crash the USS Cole into the World Trade Center.

Thanks, you’ve been a great audience.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

6. They're Scared

They're Scared
by Robert in WV
Sat Jun 07, 2008 at 03:40:28 PM PDT

It kind of hit me at work the other day.

I think that republicans are afraid this time around. I have worked at the same place for a little over 10 years now, lived in the same community for more than 14 years, and gone to the same church for a little over 13 years. I am a bit settled in my ways.

I am also known as the local "crazy" liberal.

Robert in WV's diary :: ::
Funny, I never have thought of myself as crazy. I think I'm middle of the road, actually. But I guess we all think we're the middle.

Anyway...

During the 2000 and 2004 elections, the republicans in my workplace, church and community never bothered to really engage me in debate. Usually the conversations were more of a gloating on their part. I was ridiculed for backing Gore and Kerry. Both ran questionable campaigns, to be certain, but both were also obviously patriots and dedicated public servants.

But something is different this year. My republican and right-wing friends are actually trying to engage me in debate on issues. Not sure why, actually, but I have noticed that they always leave the debate at one point when they get stumped.

One friend said that he will vote for McCain simply because he feels that McCain will best protect his (my friend's) wallet. It's all about maximizing his own cash flow; the rest of the country be damned. I guess that this type of voter has always been around, but I've never really encountered one (or at least one who is so bold about his feelings). I think that he is afraid not only of an Obama presidency, but also of larger majorities in each house of congress.

I also have several pro-war friends. Again, none of these friends bothered me much in 2004. They knew I was against the war and simply ignored me for it. This time around, they're scared. They engage me in debate over the war and usually (and I'm being serious here, no hyperbole) they end up red-faced or with bulging veins in their foreheads as the debate progresses. I usually entertain their debates in a good natured manner. However, when I get tired of the same old talking points (Good Lord above, I still hear about WMD and that evil Saddam Hussein), I lean forward in my chair, look deeply into their eyes and ask simply what we're supposed to be "winning" over there. My pro-war friends are so afraid of "cut and run" or "losing" but have absolutely no idea of what they want to win. I mean there's not one of them that can vocalize a specific concrete goal that would mean that we've won. They just want to win. I once asked this friend if winning would mean wiping all Muslims out in Iraq and he verbally agreed before he thought about what he was saying. I think that deep down inside he really feels that way, and it saddens me.

...more at the link

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/7/184028/3392/256/517391

[JimGinPA]

8. K&R