Barack Obama

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

our democratic nominee

First of all, I want to congratulate Senator Barack Obama for running an outstanding campaign (for the most part) and especially for defeating the Clinton machine.  Hillary is still standing, but my guess is that it won’t be for much longer.  He deserves credit for finding and exploiting the weaknesses in the Hillary candidacy, and for using his natural abilities to claim the second highest political title in the United States as one of the two candidates for president.   His achievement here is historic, and should be noted as such.

However, I fail to see why I should join in this collective group hug even though this milestone has been reached.  My intention is not to minimize what Barack has done.  I respect that achievement, but it would have the same distinction no matter which African-American became the first Democratic nominee for president.  We have our nominees — both imperfect representatives of their respective parties — and it is up to us to do our own homework and decide for ourselves which candidate can best represent our interests.  That would be easier to do if we could separate our personal feelings for Barack Obama with his ability to do the top job in the country.   It would also help if the media would do its job and keep both sides honest.  Guess that’s just too much to ask of them.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

no concessions

Silly Democrats. You thought that Hillary would just fade into the background after Barack clinched the nomination. Ok, so it was only a small percentage of your party who actually believed that, but still…the rest of you had to be surprised by the tone of her non-concession speech.

Thanks Hillary. Your speech distracted all of us from how totally uninspiring John McCain’s speech was.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

that’s a very big bus

Barack Obama’s bus would have to be quite large to absorb all of the people Barack has thrown under it.  The current endangered organism is his former church, Trinity United Church of Christ. It would almost be amusing to watch Barack Obama disown people who he intimately or barely knows, except that we do expect better judgment or discernment from a guy who wants to be our next president.   This stuff is no-win for Senator Obama.  If he says that he attended Trinity for 20 years, and had no clue that Jeremiah Wright was someone who would be damaging to his political career in the long run, then I’m not sure he’s got the great judgment that he is alleged to have. If he is acquainted with other Trinity pastors/ministers like Father Pfleger and yet he still lacks the ability to take their true measure, this is very troubling to me.  Either Barack used these Chicago-area ministers to build his street cred and didn’t really care much about (or intentionally ignored) their political views, or he completely bought what they were selling in addition to using them to further his local political career.  Either way, it doesn’t reflect favorably on the man.

I was ready to believe that this Jeremiah Wright stuff would be old news by November.  After all, he’s gotten this far with a very compliant and willing press supporting him no matter what he does.  If these quotes from Father Pfleger hadn’t come out, Trinity and Jeremiah Wright would have become less of a compelling story than they were when this controversy first started. In addition to that, Obama is not even making a clean break from Trinity.  Here’s part of what he said:

I am not denouncing the church. I am not interested in people who want me to denounce the church because it’s not a church worthy of denouncing. And so if they’ve seen caricatures of the church and accept those caricatures despite my insistence that’s not what the church is about, then there’s not much I can do about it.

This is absolute nonsense.  What we are seeing with Trinity United Church of Christ is not a caricature. It’s a troubling pattern of behavior and attitudes, starting first with Jeremiah Wright and continuing with the new pastor as well as Father Pfleger.  But of course none of the people I’ve mentioned represent what the church believes or what its parishioners believe.  It’s only our misconceptions of what the church is based on the views of a few of their pastors.  How stupid does Barack Obama think we are?  Even when he makes the right decision, there is still this level of “pass the buck” in it.  Like we aren’t sophisticated enough to understand the true nature of people like Jeremiah Wright or his fellow travelers at Trinity.  We get it. He doesn’t seem to get it.  Even now.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Iran, Liberals

reply hazy

Good to know that I’m not the only one who is still confused about Obama’s potential talks with Iran. Marc Ambinder has a few additional questions for the senator, like what the difference is between preparation and pre-conditions. He points out that Barack Obama’s own website clearly says that he “supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions” and that his own advisors don’t always follow the same script when discussing his position on Iran. Hunter at the Daily Kos assures us that no President would unconditionally meet with leaders like Ahmadinejad. It’s just a Republican talking point. Right.  Then those evil Rovian conspirators must have gotten to barackobama.com and changed some text around in that Iran section.

If Obama really believes that there should be strings attached to talks with Iran, he might want to change his website to reflect that and make sure that his advisors get that message out there.  There can’t be any confusion where he stands on this issue going into November against John McCain.  Right now, there is.

7 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

a challenge

John Bolton challenges Barack Obama’s non-cowboy diplomacy. Read it here.

At first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.

The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous.

Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.

Bolton also says that countries like Iran can use negotiating talks as a ploy to buy time while they continue to chart the same destructive course. To be fair to Senator Obama, we do need more specific details under what circumstances and conditions he would agree to meet with countries like Iran. It’s possible that his foreign policy vision has undergone some evolution from the beginning of his campaign until this particular challenge, so if Barack Obama really wants to fight this battle directly with McCain, I’m with John Bolton — bring it on.

I’m anxious to hear his grand plan on how to get dictators and other foreign heads of state who desire our destruction and Israel’s to stop their evil intentions. In truth, foreign policy is a difficult business. No president has ever handled it perfectly. We have no guarantees that Barack Obama or John McCain will make every right decision, but we should have this foreign policy debate before we decide who should be President.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

not so fast

You know that conventional wisdom that this overwhelming Democratic turnout in the primary will lead to certain electoral success in November? Not so fast. The Washington Times found some researchers who insist that’s there’s no coorelation there. Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics says that, at best, the connection is unproven, and that the financial advantage Obama currently enjoys would have more significant impact on John McCain’s chances in November than the Democrat primary turnout numbers. I agree.

It’s not that the enthusiasm shown by the Democrats for their two candidates (but mostly for Obama) shouldn’t be a cause for concern for Republicans going into the general election in November.  What we have seen so far is that nothing is guaranteed for the Democrats, unless John McCain succeeds in completely alienating the rest of the conservatives who were resigned to voting for him with his stupid climate change nonsense.  I’m not ruling out that possibility, by the way.  McCain is trying very hard to separate himself from George W. Bush, and he might just succeed.  I can see how this would be a strategy his internal polling might suggest, but he won’t win with just Democrats and independents.  He still needs conservatives and other Republicans, even though he would like to pretend we don’t exist.

Obama will lose a significant amount of his appeal if he selects Hillary as VP.   She represents what has become the old politics.  It’s not 1992 anymore.  Many Obama supporters weren’t even paying attention during the Clinton years (with a few notable exceptions). He doesn’t need her, and she makes him less electable than he is now.  You can’t talk about the new politics and embrace a Washington insider like Hillary.  I know the Democrats want to end this process, but this isn’t the way to do it.  He can withstand the attacks that the Clintons have thrown out there.  She hasn’t put a glove on him, even with all this bad publicity he has gotten lately.  Obama can wait for the nomination.  He knows that he will eventually win it.

More disturbing for the Republicans and John McCain is that all these side issues that are affecting Obama will be old news by the time the election rolls around.  We need a better game plan than the Clintons had, and a candidate willing to make the case against Obama.  Is McCain that guy?  Stay tuned.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

he’s not going away quietly

And after all John McCain’s complaints about the NCGOP and how mean and nasty they were to bring up Senator Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright, the man himself says that his relationship with his former pastor is a “legitimate political issue“. Then it should be ok for Republicans to bring it up in ads, right?

Here’s the exchange between Obama and Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE: I wasn’t sure whether I was even going to ask you about your former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, but he made it easy for me because he’s now begun this –

OBAMA: Right.

WALLACE: — public campaign to redeem his reputation. The other night he said to Bill Moyers that he has been the target of a smear campaign.

Question: Do you think that Reverend Wright is just the victim here?

OBAMA: No. I think that people were legitimately offended by some of the comments that he had made in the past. The fact that he is my former pastor I think makes it a legitimate political issue. So I understand that.

I think that it is also true that to run a snippet of 30-second sound bites, selecting out of a 30-year career, simplified and caricatured him, and caricatured the church. And I think that was done in a fairly deliberate way.

And that is unfortunate, because as I’ve said before, I have strongly denounced those comments that were the subject of so much attention. I wasn’t in church when he made them. But I also know that I go to church not to worship the pastor, to worship God. And that ministry, the church family that’s been built there, does outstanding work, has been I think applauded for its outreach to the poor.

He built that ministry. And I think that, you know, people need to take a look at the whole church and the whole man in making these assessments.

The good and bad news for Senator Obama is that we will get to hear more from Rev. Wright, and we can get the full context we need to make a judgment call on whether all this negative press Wright’s been getting is deserved. I say that it is. He isn’t taking back any of the inflammatory things he’s previously said, and he keeps adding more fuel to the fire as he attempts to defend his reputation and his church. Even though I disagree with Rev. Wright on 99% of the stuff he says, he did say one thing to Bill Moyers and in his speech to the National Press Club that I agree with — he said that Barack is just a politician and that he does what he does for political reasons. That’s the point that we have been trying to make — there’s nothing special about Barack other than his ability to wow people with his speeches. He believes the same nonsense on policy that Hillary does, and the left won’t see much difference in a President Obama as opposed to a President Hillary. No doubt Barack is a nice guy, but that’s not enough to make him President.

2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

still alive

Hillary Clinton got her needed Pennsylvania win over Barack Obama, and the final margin will probably be around 8 points. It does give her enough of an argument to keep going in the race, and many Republicans hope she will prolong this contest a few more months, even though we know that Barack will prevail in the end. It is surprising that even with all Barack’s strengths as a campaigner and his overall charisma, his lead is not expanding by a much wider margin over Hillary Clinton. Hillary is right when she says that Barack can’t seem to close the deal with Democrats. It should be a no-brainer for them, with all the negatives Hillary’s carrying around. She has stayed in this race long enough to expose some of Barack’s weaknesses, and that’s another reason why Hillary isn’t giving up yet. She’s holding out hope that he will make a more serious mistake than the minor gaffes we have seen from him so far. It could happen. However, it’s a hard case to make to the superdelegates that she will be the strongest candidate against McCain in November if she loses the popular vote and the delegate count to Barack Obama.

Update: The final numbers are closer to 10 points.  It still may not make much difference to the final outcome, but Hillary’s still in and not going away any time soon.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

untouchable

Sensei Kreese has issued the marching orders.  No one touches the prima donna until the tournament.  Is that clear?  No hard punches.  No hard questions.  Let the man skate.  Keep the kid gloves on, because we don’t want to hurt the guy’s chances of becoming President.  This may sound harsh to some of my friends on the left (and one person in particular), but the free ride Barack Obama has been getting for the majority of his run for the White House is flat-out ridiculous and it’s about time someone started asking him questions that he can’t answer from the Democrat talking-point quote book.  It doesn’t do him any good to complain about the press coverage.  If he can’t handle the few hard questions he’s getting now, he’s got some work to do before he is ready to handle White House press conferences.

Tony Resko shouldn’t matter.  The Rev. Wright and his controversial comments shouldn’t matter.  Louis Farrakan shouldn’t matter.  Barack Obama doesn’t have official endorsements from these folks, so it’s perfectly clear that Barack Obama doesn’t agree with Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakan and some of the outrageous things they have said in the past.  At least that is the answer Obama’s supporters have when we dare to bring this stuff up. Then there’s the question of William Ayers.  Maybe most of this was part of breaking into Chicago politics, for Obama to temporarily associate himself with some shady characters in order to get elected.  That’s a possibility.  But it’s fair to ask questions about these things.

Here’s why.  All along Barack Obama has been telling us that he is the candidate with the best judgment, because he was opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning.  Should this be the only factor we use to determine how good Barack’s judgment would be as President?  Do we know exactly what he will do as President?  Of course not.  We have to look at what he has said, and we have to look at what he’s done in the past.  Obama is still undefined to some degree, so we still have to try to fill in the blanks. Are we now saying that you can’t really judge a person by the company he keeps? It’s no reflection on Barack himself that all these no-good creeps like him.  Got it.   Sometimes a President can get the good guys and bad guys mixed up.  Former Presidents like Jimmy Carter find this distinction rather difficult.  (And yes, Chris, even Bush does it. There.  Happy now? 🙂 )  My concern about Obama is that he hasn’t shown much aptitude for determining that in his own life, and what would he do when confronted with foreign heads of state who have every incentive to try to fool him?

Then there’s the perfectly legitimate question of why Hamas thinks Barack Obama would be supportive of their interests. We aren’t calling Barack Obama a terrorist. We don’t think he’s a terrorist. We do think that he will misread the intentions of groups like Hamas, people like Ahmadinejad, and terrorist-supporting countries like Iran and Syria. That’s the concern, and it’s a legitimate concern. Foreign policy is a tricky business and we just don’t think he’s ready for that challenge. I just hope that if he becomes President, he will appoint some folks to his foreign policy team that can help him with this.

Don’t misinterpret this as a shredding of the future Democratic nominee. We are actually doing you a favor by talking about Rev. Wright and flag pins, because the more time we spend on the stuff Democrats consider trivial, less time will be spent finding out how much he doesn’t know or understand about foreign policy and the economy. Besides, isn’t it better that Obama gets these questions out of the way now, rather than waiting until closer to the election? It’s not entirely unreasonable to believe that all this will be old news when the election rolls around, and we will get back to healthcare and the economy soon enough. Maybe the media has finally decided to start asking Obama questions that he can’t answer in a soundbite. There’s nothing wrong with that.

7 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

are you impressed yet?

Ladies and gentlemen of the Democrat party,  here are your candidates for President — Senator Clinton, the Washington insider and Senator Obama, the photogenic rookie.  I guess you have to fight an election with the candidates you have, not the candidates you wish you had.  One important thing I took away from the debate tonight is that Barack is beatable.  Even this election year.  Even with an unpopular (at least according to polls) incumbent President.  What we have been seeing recently is the humanization of Barack Obama.  He has fallen off his high perch from self-inflicted wounds and harmful associations with America-haters like Reverend Wright.  We saw more of this in the Hillary v. Obama debate this evening.  He actually looked like he was unsure of himself and his answers to the questions reflected that.   John McCain can beat this Barack Obama.  He couldn’t beat the one we saw 6 months ago.