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Barack Obama Wins Democratic Nomination
An anonymous reader was one of many who noted that Barack Obama has claimed the Democratic nomination having secured enough delegates and super-delegates to claim victory. Of course, technically this assumes that the supers all vote as they say they will and they are free to change their minds. So no doubt we'll continue to hear debate on this subject until either the convention or Hillary steps down.
I'm a republican and I will vote for Obama.
As a conservative (current republicans != conservative), part of me is glad that it's Obama, and part of me is ticked that we couldn't put up something more than a fat old white guy again. Congrats to the dems for finally promoting values you've claimed to hold since the '60s...and which Republicans, until now, have usually beaten you on in appointments to higher office.
You make a valid point.
However, the counterpoint is that attitudes such as yours result in stagnation. There can be no change if those who would support change abandon their causes.
Even if Obama loses, the attention his campaign has been getting (and will get) will make it that much easier for the next candidate to break through the bigotry.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I work in politics, mostly around a bunch of Republicans. I hear many a reputable rumor that McCain is looking at Bobby Jindhal for VP.
He's only 37, is Indian but converted from Hindu to catholic a while back, has run many businesses, was a Congressman and then won a special election to be Governor of Louisiana.
He's younger than Obama, equally not white, and has actually done a thing or two that are worth while.
Frankly, I'd be totally OK with him as President -- then again, I am still trying to figure out if I hate McCain or Obama more.
Unfortunately, the choices for Republicans ended up being between:
McCain: no change
Romney: no change
Huckabee: Had the best 'Obama-like' way of speaking (refreshing after 8 years of Bushisms), but unfortunately was the christian-religion candidate.
Paul: In general, most people can agree with him, but the man couldn't debate his way out of a paper bag. You can have the best ideas in the world, but if you can't convince anyone, then even if elected you won't change a thing.
To be honest, I don't know if Obama will change anything internal to the United States. He IS a Democrat afterall, and we have no reason to expect him to be anything other than a Democrat just as we have no reason to expect McCain to be anything but a Republican.
He will, however, be our best chance to repair our international reputation. That, at least, is something that I can be thankful for even if I disagree with most of his policy.
I just wish that I could vote for him.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
More directly, policitical stories always generate a lot of page hits. They also afford an opportunity to study the site's demographics on the sly.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
McCain and Clinton think torture is OK. Obama does not.
I believe the USA should be a beacon of hope and civilization, not a crowd of barbarians that so much of the world as been for so long.
That issue alone is enough to decide who I vote for.
I can't agree. The LAST thing Obama wants is Hillary as his VP. It sends the message of "same old same old", it brings Bill (and the problem of trying to control him) along as part of the baggage, and it would galvanize the Republicans, who hate her rabidly. Obama would be much better off with a Wesley Clark, somebody who would shore up his support in the saber-rattling credentials department. After he's elected, he can make Hillary Secretary of State.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
McCain is in a rough spot. I think he would be the answer if he didn't have to answer criticisms of not being "conservative enough". Regardless of what I think of his positions, I think he is as honorable a politician as you can find today. But you're exactly right about the party digging their own grave. Even though I respect McCain and I think he would be a huge step up from Bush, I will not be voting for him. But it's more a vote against the party than it is against him personally for my part.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
Full disclosure - I donated $10 to the Ron Paul campaign and voted for him in my state's primary. Having said that, I thought Paul did well in the debates. He refrained from attacking others and continuously emphasized his platform (i.e. what he would do if elected.) A lot of the other contenders were like Jack Johnson and John Jackson; was there any difference in their views at all? With Paul, you knew what he stood for.
You have a short memory if you don't think a candidate's religion can be a political issue in the UK: press and pundits made a huge fuss over Tony Blair's sending his children to Catholic school, and tracked every mass he went to up to his conversion to Catholicism last year.
The supermarket down the street doesn't give a damn how hungry I am, they just want to make money. But the way they've chosen to make money(by selling food), happens to align nicely with one of my priorities in life, which is obtaining food. I honestly could not care less if the manager of that supermarket gets paid well or is happy or whatever. We don't care about each other, but our interests align enough that I choose to go to that supermarket and spend my money.
The point is that it sucks that the government that we've got isn't as concerned with the citizens as it should be, but unless you've got some brilliant way to change it, we just need to work with what we've got, and make the best of it. Whatever the motivations of the democrats or the republicans are, they do tend to do some things differently, and there's certain areas where the goals of each party might align with my personal goals. What a senator in DC gets out of that whole deal might be completely different from what I get out of it, but that doesn't mean that the end result doesn't affect me and that I can't have an opinion on it.
It might be as simple as drawing up a list of the pros and cons of some of the basic direction that each party can be expected to go in when you see how it might affect you. Because it will affect you. Even if you believe that everyone at the top is motivated purely by greed, their selfishness leads them in different directions from each other, and one of those directions is bound to be more useful to you than the others.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Did any of you see the speech yesterday by McCain? Who does a speech in New Orleans and not have a single black person show up? The differences between McCain and Obama are so stark that people have very little choice in the matter. 3/4s of this country want the war to end. A vote for McCain is a vote to continue the war. He has made that painfully obvious. A vote for McCain is a vote for continuation of the same policies that have made Bush the most unpopular president in the history of the country. On top of all of that the turnout for this election is going to be massive. Election boards nationwide have reported that turnout for just the primaries this year have exceeded turnout for general elections past. What is energizing people to come out like that? Probably the same feelings that makes Bush unpopular. Independent voters are breaking hard to the left for Obama. And in reality, if you want the best indicator that people are going to vote a Democrat president in, look at the Republican house and senate seats that have been lost already to Democrats this year. Across the country seats held for decades by Republicans are being won by Democrats or are being polled as likely Democrat pickups already. There is one house race I know of in the south that voted 70% for Bush in 2004, it is that Republican of a district. Yet today, it is polling 65% in favor of the Democrat candidate. The turnarounds nationwide are, in some cases, that big. There is no way this country is about to continue the policies of George W Bush with a vote for McCain.
Perhaps I am just too liberal, but I don't really think that race will keep Obama from winning.
I wish that I could agree with you here, but I can't. Of the people I come into contact with who usually vote Democrat and are white (generally labor union types, government union employees and folks on the dole), most are willing to totally ignore the fact that they have the most to gain from Obama winning and yet will vote against him because they're convinced that he will do things like legalize black men raping white women
I realize that the above was something of an overstatement but I guess that I am reacting to the frustration of dealing with how to respond to the sheer hostility towards minorities that I deal with constantly. Example within the past month include:
-A neighbor who refers to the Starlings that live in his eaves as "nigger birds."
-Another neighbor who regaled me with stories of a weekend camping trip with his cop friends that including a fellow camper shouting "white power" as my neighbor arrived.
-A co-worker who said that she voted in the primary for the first time (age 50) so "that we could keep America from being overrun by niggers."
I sincerely wish that I were exaggerating, but, sadly, I'm not. And considering that my conscience and lack of good sense causes me to almost always rebuke people for this sort of thing, I can only wonder what these people say to each other in private.
But maybe it's because I live in the Midwest and people are supposedly more racist here, but my many conversations with people in other parts of the country have done nothing to disabuse me of the notion that this is very widespread.
Great, now I've gone and depressed myself...
You should campaign for reform of the electoral system.
:-D.
The UK has the same problem -- you can only vote for one party (though there are three main choices, not two). This encourages tactical voting, and minority parties (socialists, nationalists, etc) get ignored. It also means the main parties lose their ideals and converge, so as to appeal to as many people as they can.
A slightly better system, used in the UK for some things (e.g. Scottish/Welsh/Northern Irish/London Assemblies) is to give two choices. Then people can vote first for their ideal candidate and second for a more mainstream party -- if their first choice doesn't get many votes their second choice counts. But the first choice getting some votes scares the mainstream parties
Even better is having many more choices, I think Australia does this.
He has a 125-delegate lead in pledged delegates and 113 in superdelegates, so the lead including supers is 238. Even if Hillary was somehow able to get all outstanding superdelegates to support her, she would still need around 60 Obama delegates to switch to her. That would be incredibly unlikely unless Obama is caught with a dead girl or live boy.
We'll see, of course.
Yeah just wait until the bill on that Iraq invasion comes due.
And how much were you paying for gas 8 years ago?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/washington/08tax.html The point is not that you payed less, it's that your bosses who make SOOOO much more payed SOOOO much less. That money could have been used to pay off the debts we are getting in to that I as a 23 year old have to worry about or it could have been used to keep watch over the banks so they would have not broken the broken laws and fucked over the economy with the housing market. Tax cuts and small govt are a good thing, but what Bush did was irresponsible and stupid. I expect that Obama will cut your taxes even more but raise the PERSONAL taxes of your bosses far higher then what they were.
I couldn't agree more... though I always though it would be interesting if say 50% of my tax dollars I was able to distribute to charities as I see fit. let the government continue to control the other half to fill in the gaps. Make the charity selection process part of the tax filing process.
I think we'd see a lot of special interest programs drop of the map because they'd would have to convince the citizens that it's a worthy program as opposed to lobbying government officials. Not to mention I think it would make a lot of people feel like their taxes where actually doing something/going to a good cause as opposed to simply being "taken" by the government for whatever.
Collector's Edition
Also you should be aware that Obama's campaign was not financed in the same way that most other campaigns are. He drew the majority of his money from small donations much like the Dean campaign did. He's so far avoided huge donations from political lobby groups, and thus owes relatively few favors to the typical moochers in Washington.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Correction: McCain WAS the most anti-torture candidate. Until he had the oppertunity to vote against allowing the CIA to use "harsh interrogation techniques" that meet the UN's definition of torture. At which point he toed the party line, and voted to allow the CIA to waterboard and use other combinations of intense questioning methods.
And that is McCain's weak spot. He spent the late 90's and early 2000's building up a GREAT maveric image, heck, John Kerry talked to him about a VP seat in the 2004 election! But since then, McCain has flip flopped on almost every stance he took out of line with the Republican party. Campaign finance reform, Gay marrage, Torture, even the war he has been pretty fishie on.
John McCain from 1999 would have been a great option instead of Bush. John McCain from 2003 would have been a great option instead of Bush. But at this point, he is so manipulated and has gone back on so many of his 'maveric' stances, that he's losing the independant voters and me along with them.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Michigan and Ohio are bleeding jobs like crazy. They have the highest state-level corporate taxes and the most restrictions on employers with respect to hiring and firing. Michigan is one of 2 states that actually *lost* population from one census to the next. People are actively fleeing there. There just aren't any jobs, at any level.
Missouri and Kansas, where I live, are growing, due to a lower tax structure and fewer restrictions on employers.
Ireland has the lowest corporate taxes in the EU, and also has one of the fastest growth rates.
You're right that corporate taxes are a reality of doing business. And they're a reality of doing business...somewhere else too.
> And why do you think that Obama will be any different?
First I didn't say that Obama will be different. What I said is Obama won because he projected himself as something different. And, his past actions do support this to a great extend. Again , Iraq is the best example. From day one he was against it while Hillary and most of the other leaders were supporting it. So there is reason to believe that he would be different.
http://www.nasirudheen.blogspot/
I don't have any mod points left, but welcome to my friends list pal. You've just echoed the feelings that made me become an independent.
I think the final straw for me was when Team of Rivals came out, and all of the neocon pundits essentially ran a smear campaign... against Lincoln!! The Republicans of today are in name only.
Now, personally, my opinion is that the whole primary system is inherently flawed. The fact that a few states can so heavily influence who can run is absurd. Hold it all on one day so the media gets less control of the damn process. Or look at the way the Liberal party of Canada does it. Not saying it's perfect, but it's a thought. What they do is they have the local Liberal riding groups vote for their preferred candidate. They then send delegates to the convention, and those delegates are required to make their first vote towards the candidate their riding told them to vote for. If one of the candidates gets a majority of the delegate votes, they're the leader of the Liberal party. Otherwise, the delegates are now free to vote for whomever they want until a candidate wins the majority. All of these runoff votes are held in one sitting until someone wins. Period. Get rid of this staggered voting for the candidates.
Cynical Idealist
Well if that's the case, then maybe the powers that be should've considered that maybe destroying a country and then trying to rebuild it isn't such a good idea if you're going to be utterly reliant on a single profit-driven corporation to actually have any hope of getting the work done.
If Iraq is as important as the government claims it is, then shouldn't they be quite concerned that our national security is basically in the hands of this one company, because without them it's hopeless?
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Actually the Democrats were the ones to pass a balanced budget under Clinton. With the Republicans in control they got us into a very expensive war we can't possibly pay for. What do you think is going to happen with all that debt? You don't think that's going to force someone, probably a democrat to raise taxes to get us back to some form of fiscal responsibility? Let us also not forget that under Bush the whole department of homeland security was created making government even bigger and costing us even more money so I fail to see how your statement has any modern relevance from that last 20 years.
Prior to Reagan you would have had a point.
$608 billion (+4.5%) - Social Security
$386 billion (+5.2%) - Medicare
$209 billion (+5.6%) - Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
$324 billion (+1.8%) - Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending
$69.3 billion (+0.3%) - Health and Human Services
These add up to nearly $1.6 TRILLION DOLLARS!!! The current Population Clock puts the US population at 304,249,871, and the 2000 Census figures report 105,480,101 households. Doing the math, that's $15,168 dollars per year per household. The 2007 poverty level statistics show that $15,168/yr would exceed the poverty level for many family situations WITHOUT ANYONE IN THE HOUSEHOLD HAVING TO WORK A SINGLE HOUR. It also happens to exceed working all 2080 work hours per week at minimum wage BY $3000/year! ($5.85 * 2080 = $12,168).
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
So we can't assume someone is a racist if they pass out racist material? I'm sure those folks handing out the KKK flyers aren't racist either, they just really believe the KKK has a solid point. That is bullshit. This isn't some anti-racism crusade, this is someone posting a link to a drivel spewing bigot as evidence of Obama corruption. The credibility of the claims goes to fucking absolute zero once you start reading "Magic Negro" and the lines about the Negro labido and psyche. People who propogate racist shit like that are racists themselves or unbelievably and undeniably stupid, which is nearly the same thing.
By all means...provide evidence of political corruption, but when it is just another right wingnut blathering on with racist nonsenes and hate of them socialist Democrats it just highlights your own stupidity. Nevermind that the current Republican party is more like the Soviets they try to equate the Dems to.
To be fair that white guilt crap that says I am supposed to feel bad for racism and slavery that I had absolute nothing to do with is total bullshit too.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.