That Obama, no wonder he has everyone eating out of his hands. Why, look at this partial list of the things he has “transcended”:
1.) Political and Ideological Divisions– “Senator Obama has shown that he can transcend the ideological and partisan divisions that have paralyzed our politics for far too long and inspire people to believe again in the promise of America,” Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot said.
2.) Inhibitions– “Obama would bring to the White House a rich tradition of radical instincts, drawn from the dispossessed in the United States. That he spent his childhood outside the US and maintains contact with relations as far away as East Africa allows him to transcend the inhibitions of black Americans.”
3.) Racial Divides– He offers “African Americans an opportunity to get their first black President and whites the chance to transcend the tired racial divides of the past.”
4.) Racial Wounds– “By allowing voters to both vent their anger and overcome it, while embodying the transcendence of America’s racial wound, Barack Obama offers not just hope, but alchemy.”
5.) Certain Kinds of Politics: “Every time either Clinton or one of their surrogates attack Mr. Obama, they stand as reminders of the kind of politics that Mr. Obama has vowed to transcend.”
6.) Politics, power politics, and the politics of blue and red state: “Obama once transcended our politics, or so the fawning media narrative goes, allegedly transcending the politics of race, the old power politics, the politics of division between those red and blue states.”
7.) Class barriers: ‘His supporters point to his extraordinary intellect, his work as a civil rights lawyer and lecturer in constitutional law, his charismatic talent to inspire and his ability to transcend both racial and class barriers.”
8.) Categories: Steele notes Obama “seems to have little talent for anger.” That’s because Obama has opted out of the transaction Steele vigorously deplores. The political implications of this transcendence of confining categories are many, profound and encouraging.
9.) Baby Boomer Angst: “And this conservative believes Obama can help us transcend baby boomer angst.”
10.) Old Politics: “I don’t think that Obama’s rhetoric about transcending old politics tells us much about how he’ll actually govern.”
11.) Washington’s endemic partisanship– “Obama ran as a conciliator who would transcend Washington’s endemic partisanship by building new coalitions.”
12.) Political Parties, generations, and nations: “Obama’s appeal would transcend political parties, generations, and nations.”
13.)
Blackness and Whiteness: “There are lots of discussions about how Obama will “transcend race”…this is usually read as “transcending blackness”…but Obama must also (as Williams alludes to) “transcend” his whiteness and the increasing narrow expectations and contradiction of what makes a leader and “a black leader.”
14.) Polarization: “The polarization Obama wishes to transcend in this country has not emerged simply because of the combative style of Newt Gingrich or Karl Rove.”
15.) Tedious conflict between the opposing strands of the baby-boomer generation– “Other writers projected into the Iowa caucus victory nothing less than an end to the “culture wars” and now tedious conflict between the opposing strands of the baby-boomer generation: the Haight-Ashbury hippies and the Rush Limbaugh rednecks. One usually sober Britisher seemed to suggest that the responsibility for the hatreds that have divided Americans socially rested almost entirely with two families: the Bushes and the Clintons. Now, with the help of galvanised youth, Mr Obama could transcend all this.”
Personally, the closer I look at Obama and his unity pony, the less I like. However, even I have to agree he has ‘transcended’ a lot of things.
*** Update ***
Obama has apparently “transcended” child labor laws.
sujal
Man, you really don’t like this guy, do you?
Is it safe to say you’d vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary?
Sujal
Babies For Obama
I thought that you would be interested in knowing that BabiesForObama.com has just announced that it will be donating a portion of its profits to the Obama for America Campaign:
http://www.BabiesForObama.com/
Thanks!
– Babies for Obama
myiq2xu
If he can play politics like Karl Rove while maintaining his image of purity then he really is something special.
Horselover Fat
Humor is definitely the right category to classify this post into.
myiq2xu
The Obamanics haven’t responded yet?
Oh shit, they must be all writing doctoral thesis length responses.
You done did it now, Professor Cole!
John Cole
I really don’t dislike him. I hate the syrupy bullshit coming from his supporters.
I think you could do a lot worse than Obama as President, but Dodd was still my first choice. I am just hoping we don’t get Obama as President and don’t overturn all the BS from the past few years because we want to get along and we are “transcending” partisanship.
I am not ready to transcend partisanship. I left the GOP because they are hucksters, frauds, and in many cases, war criminals. What they have done to the Constitution can not go unpunished.
Justin
Meh. Your obsession with Obama is getting dull.
sujal
PS. John: It seems rather ridiculous to pin the stuff people are saying about him on Obama… I mean, take the Sully quote up there… clearly, Sullivan is projecting his own issues onto Obama’s words. That’s not Obama’s fault if you think Sullivan is wrong.
I’d like to see someone win who has the ability to inspire along with his policies. His speaking ability is a talent, and his ability to write speeches that give people room to see their perspective in his speeches is a talent of his campaign. I’m not sure why you object to it quite so much.
Jon H
For me, the fact that he overcame bipartisan and law enforcement opposition, right after the prior governor halted executions, to force Illinois police to have to videotape questioning counts for a great deal.
The Chicago police are the people who tried very hard to pin the rape and murder of a young girl in the projects on two small black boys who were even younger (8?) than the victim, and too young to have the anatomical wherewithal to do the deed. They even got the tykes to confess.
Naturally, it eventually turned out to have been an adult.
John Cole
Whatever you do, do not insert the following phrases in my search feature:
Cindy Sheehan
Terri Schiavo
Elvis Elvisberg
I took this post to be criticism of the media more than it was of Obama.
I don’t mind Obama’s unity rhetoric. I don’t think most rank and file Republicans like to think of themselves as deluded extremists, so why refer to them that way?
His use of right-wing talking points on specific issues– ie, health care, John Edwards mockery– bugs me a lot more.
sujal
Sorry, didn’t see your reply before I posted my follow on.
I hear you on the Dodd choice. He was my first choice, too. Given the realities of who’s left, though, Obama and Edwards have been the most vocal about the same issues as Dodd. Clinton has been closer to the Bush line (relatively speaking… she’s quite far from it in absolute terms).
I am not fond of Edwards for a variety of reasons, so my natural instinct is to go to Obama.
On what issues do you think Dodd and Obama are wildly different? or is your reaction basically a reaction to the speeches (i.e. you’re having a similar reaction to people who like Obama because of the speeches, just in the opposite direction… it’s hitting you at an emotional level?)
Sujal
myiq2xu
Because John refuses to ride the Unity Pony?
Jon H
More about the case I mention can be found here.
in canaduh
Obama/Shiavo now that would ve been a great bipartisan ticket
myiq2xu
The GOP could try Thompson/Schiavo – “Dead and Deader”
Dan the Man
Obama doesn’t have a unity pony because he has transcended the unity pony also.
Rick Taylor
I think he knows how to play hardball, and the rhetoric really is mostly rhetoric. I’m more concerned if he’s experienced enough, plus his propensity to attack from the right bothers me.
Brachiator
I agree with you big time that much in the Constitutional fabric needs to be repaired. This is why it frustrates me that none of the presidential candidates in either party have been grilled about their positions on the US Attorney’s office, presidential signing statements, their vision of the Supreme Court, etc.
However, I think that you seriously misread the public mood if you think that anyone other than the most intense ideologues want to see Congress bogged down with endless hearings and investigations into Republican skullduggery. The best revenge is to oust these goons from office. And if you’ve been downsized, outsourced, capital gained, mortgage refinance gamed, left without health care or firm prospects for a stable future, “getting even” with bad Republicans isn’t even on your alternate to-do list.
Neither Clinton nor Obama will ever get anywhere by appealing to the childish revenge-driven wing of the Democratic Party. One of the under-appreciated errors of the Bush Administration is how they foolishly believed that as custodians of the only remaining superpower, they could devote their energies to undoing every “liberal” program that had existed since the era of FDR. They arrogantly assumed that America had neither enemies nor serious problems. The “not ready to transcend partisanship” crowd may make the same mistake.
By the way, I also wonder whether in a democracy, it is permissible to prosecute government officials for war crimes without also somehow, in some way, punishing those who voted for them? For example, should be examine the voter rolls and rescind the citizenship of those who voted for Bush, or who still support torture and other civil liberties violations?
Rick Taylor
And look on the bright side; if you were still in the Republican party, you’d be making up your mind between candidates like McCain, Romney, and Thompson.
myiq2xu
Yeah, and those people who lost their life savings in the Enron collapse probably didn’t care about the former execs getting prosecuted either.
grumpy realist
John, obviously what we need to do is take up a collection to purchase a bunch of thesauri for everyone.
Either that, or club them to death with copies of Emerson.
(Oh, and in the curmudgeonly writer vein, I highly recommend getting hold of a copy of “The Mauve Decade” by Thomas Beer and reading his first essay: “The Titaness.” His analysis of the rhetorical excesses of that period is masterly. )
“…the politicians of that period invoked Christ with the freedom of medieval kings in a brawl over the border.”
TheFountainHead
You’re backing the wrong horse. Obama’s the one with the power to engage in “Smile while I stab and twist.” Hillary’s daggers are blunt and dull, and the criminals you speak of know where are all the skeletons are buried with her, so they have all the get-out-of-jail-free cards they need with her. I’m for Obama for a lot of reasons, but one of the big ones is because I don’t want to see eight years of a Democratic president completely hog-tied by a Republican congress elected into office by virtue of the fact that no Democrat could win in the highly contested congressional districts with Hillary at the top of the ticket.
myiq2xu
So your theory is that Hillary could get elected to the White House and yet somehow give the GOP back the Congress at the same time?
ThymeZone
Can anyone explain to me how the media’s love for a buzzword translates into this:
WTF? Are we in kindergarten now?
Give us a fucking break, John. Really. This is a goddam Michael D level post, it’s not really up to your standard.
Aren’t you the guy who voted for Values, Defense of Marriage, the War on Terra, Faith Based Intitiatives, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Keep the Tax Cuts Permanent, Social Security Trustfund — what Trustfund? For the “guy you’d like to have a beer with?”
Why should anyone give a flying fig about whatever irritates you on a football Sunday when you are probably drinking a bunch of god-knows-what and decided to pinch of a post? And what does this horseshit have to do with the campaign, the election, and the state of the country, and how voters choose candidates? Or (see your record above) are you going to lecture us on that now?
Joshua
It’s increasingly clear that the word “transcendent” no longer means anything, except possibly when applied to sex.
TheFountainHead
Precisely. In Swing States and Red states with Democratic districts there are a number of congressional contests that would be possible for Democrats to win (or hold) if republican turnout were low, as it would be expected to be this election EXCEPT if Hillary were at the top of the Democratic ticket. The mothers of dead Republicans will come out of their graves to vote against her, and while doing that, vote against the Democrats running in their districts.
Harley
Unity Pony, my ass. You’ll do better to actually support the snarky condescending craptacular descriptive you coin next time around with something other than thinwitted drivel. Assessing someone’s value based on what other folks say about him is a weird and unproductive game. I don’t play it, which is why, btw, I don’t think you’re a traitor to all things conservative who lost his mind during the Bush years and must be ignored at all costs.
Heh. Which I shall rethink at my leisure.
Cain
Just issue arrest warrants town by town, state by state such that if they go anywhere they’d be arrested and also put them on the no-fly list. Petty? Oh yah. But satisfying…
cain
Randolph Fritz
This is a lot like Reagan’s rhetoric. Looks like the old snake oil still works. But let’s remember that Reagan pretty much started the R’s (and the whole USA) on the current path to disaster. Obama…I don’t think is that bad. But when you get right down to it, compromising with the radical right is going to give us a right-wing government. I suspect, actually, that that is what you want, John. And in foreign policy, a persuasive head of state would be a blessing; we desperately need someone to smooth over the conflicts that W. is leaving us with. But…I don’t think Obama conservatism is going to cope effectively with our environmental problems, our civil rights problems, our financial problems, … With, in fact, any issue that requires executive leadership as opposed to compromise. So I don’t think Obama’s going to be what we need, though he is very much what we want.
myiq2xu
Spend a little time with the Great Orange Satan – He’s been doing a very wonky analysis of the upcoming congressional elections and it will be a miracle if the GOP doesn’r lose more seats than they did last time.
No offense, but you make the scond worst argument in favor of Obama, with the worst being the magical unity pony.
KC
I’m tired of Obama and Hillary right now and can’t wait for the primaries to be over. As things stand, I’m just happy the Chargers had such a good game against the Colts. I still don’t think they stand a chance against the Patriots though.
lambert strether
I’m gonna get a pony!
I’m gonna name my pony Trancendance!
That nice Mr. Kristol says he’s gonna come by tomorrow show me how to put the “post” in post-partisan LOL!!!!
I’m so happy!!!!!!!!
Tsulagi
Barak Obama, beyond mere mortal man. He is…The Transcender.
Wow, for easier clean up, I hope they’re all using water-based lube.
Ted
It will. Get used to it. None of the malfeasance will ever be punished.
ThymeZone
Their conservative values (you know, San Diego and all) will carry the day.
Of course, we don’t like to use hackneyed political jargon around here.
Oh wait, the Patriots. Sorry, SD will lose.
Napoleon
Here, here!
myiq2xu
Why would anybody name their team after shoppers using credit cards anyway?
Jon H
“What they have done to the Constitution can not go unpunished.”
2004 showed that there are too few like-minded people in the US to get a person elected.
As far as *repairing* the damage, I have more faith in Obama, a Constitutional Law lecturer at U of C, than in Hillary Clinton.
Jon H
“He’s been doing a very wonky analysis of the upcoming congressional elections and it will be a miracle if the GOP doesn’r lose more seats than they did last time”
That’s one miracle Hillary can make happen.
myiq2xu
Tune in for the “CDS” vs. “Unity Pony” Deathmatch!
Available only on Colevision(c)
LiberalTarian
Arg. I cannot wait until the primaries are over.
The canard that Obama can transcend racism is going to tiresome beyond belief if he is the Democratic candidate. He obviously cannot transcend racism, or his “surrogates” would not be pounding the Clintons-as-racists drum so loudly. Until just recently, didn’t we used to hear Bill Clinton was the first black president??
And, the more the blue dogs come out for Obama, the more evidence there is that “Obama for change” is another canard. It is like telling a playground full of kids that you will make it a fun and safe place for everyone to play while the bullies are smirking behind you. That bucket doesn’t hold water.
douglasfactors
When did this site get bought up by hillaryis44.com?
John Cole
LOL.
Again, I really don’t dislike Obama. I think he is a decent man, and I love his wife. I am just in awe at the hero worship I am seeing. The kind of fawning nonsense Atalas Jugs exudes when talking about Netanyahu and John Bolton is just as silly coming from liberals talking about Obama.
DVDA
You don’t get it because you don’t see what’s actually happening in this country politically. You fail to recognize why we are where we are.
You were very slow to recognize Bush/Cheney for what it was, and you are just as slow to realize that the Clinton’s are part of the problem, not the solution.
You’ll just have to keep learning the hard way
ThymeZone
Uh huh. Just one thing to say about that:
Jerome Bettis.
Gushing nonsense is fine sometimes, eh?
Jay
Actually, we’re trying to figure out why WVU is handing out unearned MBA’s. Well, we know why, but not why they think they can get away with it.
How about Heather Bresch?
srv
Well said.
lambert strether
Oh, and speaking of “snarky condescending craptacular descriptives,” I think my feelings can be summed up by the following:
UOr – Up = 0
Where
UOr is Obama’s Unity Rhetoric
Up is the Unity Pony.
Jake
You can’t really blame John C for being wary of people who spark the sort of starry-eyed response Obama is getting. I imagine if I voted for the Deciderator (and later recovered from the madness) I’d be pretty jumpy when people started gushing about a candidate’s charisma.
myiq2xu
That might be true of JC but not me, I saw B/C for what it was when it was just Dubya the doofus son running for President.
I don’t believe in the Magic Unity Pony, and never will.
crw
Interestingly, Obama voted against confirming Judge Roberts to SCOTUS. Dodd voted for confirming him to the bench. Source.
Seriously, look at Obama’s voting record. He’s very solidly to the left. He doesn’t look to me like someone who’s about to roll over and play dead for the Rethuglicans. I take his unity message to be more about respectful disagreement and pulling moderates in by demonstrating how progressive reforms address their (legitimate) moderately conservative concerns than the false consensus Broderist bullshit. YMMV, though, and I can certainly see how discomfiting his rhetoric can be given recent history.
ThymeZone
Well, due respect and all, it’s a simple and straightforward political appeal.
It’s about taking the appeal to the middle based on “values” and “defense of marriage”, aimed at prying away Independent and moderate voters, and pitching a new appeal, namely, let’s sign up for something that pulls people together, instead of something that pulls them apart.
It’s not magic, and it’s not a pony. It’s a coded meta message, and it is well timed and widely well received.
It’s the THE message, and it’s not the Perfect Message, it’s just a message. This horseshit thing that Cole is doing is trying to talk as if the message is the candidate. It’s not. and quite honestly, for somebody who professes — quite literally — to have expertise in this area, I think it’s rather absurd for our host to be talking this way. His schtick apparently is: “Emotions have no place in politics because I am squeamish around them … unless they are mine, in which case, stand back while I emote all over you.”
Uh, yeah. Fuck that.
ThymeZone
correction made necessary by shitty uneditable posts:
It’s not THE message ….
Pb
So there are kool-aid drinkers in Obama’s camp–shock! Have you checked out Daily Kos lately? It’s not like everyone’s gushing over Obama (even in his camp), and there are tons of Edwards supporters out there, and even some Hillary backers too.
John Cole
You might be trying to be sarcastic, but in the chance you are not, thanks for getting it.
lambert strether
The problem here is that the Oborg Unity Theorists are always saying that what they want to be doing is appealing, over the heads of the crazed and sociopathic Republican leadership, to the ordinary, decent, and above all principled Republicans who would vote for a Democrat if only they could find the right one.
So, in John Cole we have an example of exactly this sort of Republican, so it’s sort of a test case.
And what happens? The Unity Pony kicks him in the teeth. See, John Cole wants Republican criminals prosecuted, but that would be divisive, don’t you see.
I guess it turns out that the Unity Theorists didn’t want principled Republicans after all.
Just low information voters. Tell me again how this strategery is different from the usual Beltway Consultant-driven strategery of appealing to enough voters in the swing states to win by a narrow margin?
Cuzco
That will come automatically if a Democrat is elected. Something more has to be done. I think the simplest solution would be for the new president to just issue an executive order making all presidential papers (except for those directly related to active national security issues) public domain at the end of a president’s term.
Such an order would eliminate the need for Congress to engage in endless hearings. Their true actions would be pored over by legions of journalists, bloggers, historians etc and the court of public opinion would render a swift verdict.
The transformation from center of the word to pariahs would be the best possible punishment we can hope to give them.
TheFountainHead
Some of that might have something to do with loving under the Bush Administration for seven years. Eating gruel for seven years makes Macaroni and cheese look like Filet Mignon, no?
ThymeZone
Oh Jesus, not my yard man.
Three years here. We get it John, it’s not really that deep.
Trust me.
Horselover Fat
6:06
“it’s not magic, and it’s not a pony. It’s a coded meta message,”
Is that anything like a “dog whistle?”
myiq2xu
If nothing is done to punish the people who tried to subvert the Constitution, lied us into a war, and tried to turn the federal government into an arm of the GOP, what’s the disincentive that would stop them from trying again?
If the only punishment for stealing was you had to give the stolen loot back, that’s not much of a deterrent. Especially if you only had to give back whatever you hadn’t already spent.
Additionally, exposing the lawbreakers will help prevent them from returning in a future GOP administration, and will help enable reforms to prevent it from happening again.
Glenn Greenwald has disproven the “unity” concept that people don’t want investigations into the Bush Crime Family.
ThymeZone
I’d say no. It’s direct and rather obvious.
Complaining about Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” remark …. that’s dog whistle.
But “let’s pull together” doesn’t strike me as a stealthy message. It appears to mean “let’s pull together.” Decoded, it means, “We’re better than the divisive Republicans.” In any case, the appeal is pretty straightforward, the way I see it.
myiq2xu
As I said in the earlier post:
I don’t mind pretty rhetoric, as long as it’s backed up by something more than words.
Otherwise it’s what Fritz Mondale called “All sizzle, no steak.”
crw
Y’know, I want to current criminals to get some PMITA prison time as much as anyone. But I’m less worried about Obama not being up to the job and more worried about Bush preemptively pardoning all his cronies at midnight on January 20th, 2009. I mean, if the GOP is going down in flames next year (very likely), he wont have much incentive not to. But I guess we’ll see.
ThymeZone
Well, I don’t get the objection. If he makes speeches about Unity, then … that’s all there is to him?
Over on the Hillary side, they were saying, she talks about policy all the time. Doesn’t she have a human side?
All of this is spectator chatter, totally useless.
This is how the process works: You make speeches and appearances, and you see how the polls move, and you adjust if necessary. It’s theater.
I think your view is fine, the problem I have is, what Cole is doing, not what you are doing. Cole is just taking a cheap shot at basically nothing, just because he can. I’d love to see him run for fucking office and crater.
At the national level, when you are up against moneyed and powerful interests, you do what you need to do to get early support and gain traction. Obama is basically a newcomer who is now tied with the power structure’s candidate.
I’d say he is doing fine. At least he hasn’t had to add a gay Republican to his public staff to attract attention, eh?
myiq2xu
First of all, if he pardoned hundreds of cronies, that would be great, because it would not only discredit every member of his administration, but since acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt, it could be used as evidence against each of them in the future.
Additionally, if they were pardoned then there would be no Fifth Amendment reason for them to refuse to testify in court or before Congress.
Last of all, impeachment includes a lifetime bar from holding office, and the power to pardon doesn’t stop impeachment, nor does resignation.
BTW – Many of Nixon’s abuses of power were not fully exposed until after he resigned.
A Different JC
While I’m still a pining Edwards supporter, there’s one thing that I appreciate about Obama’s crazy supporters – that whenever the Democrats win when they run charismatic candidates. Our natural tendency is to run the drab policy intellectual (cf. Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerrey); and that’s why we lose a lot. Note, the GOP can run drab, and win (cf. Nixon, Bush Sr. over Dukakis) but not drab vs. charisma (cf. Bush Sr. vs. Clinton).
That’s why, as a partisan Democrat, I want the charismatic candidate. I wanted Hart in ’84, Hart in ’88 (even with the Monkey Business, why not?) Clinton in ’92 & ’96, Edwards in ’04 and now either Edwards or Obama.
So, John Cole (the JC), I’m with you on the Obamaniacs. I just don’t want Hillary because she is drab and wonky. I don’t want 84-88-00-04. I want 92-96. And even though she knows Bill Clinton, and has worked with Bill Clinton, she’s no Bill Clinton. Obama and Edwards are.
cpl
With all that transcending going on, who’s gonna wash the dishes?
From what I’ve seen and heard what makes Obama refreshing is that he’s got John Stewart’s sense of the absurdity of all the smoke being blown up his a**. Stewart was being touted as the most trusted news source in America when he pointed out that he follows a show that featured puppets making crank calls. Obama seems to have the same connection with the ground…the gushing of the starry-eyed notwithstanding.
The Raven
Obama, I’m sure, gives him no help in this at all.
Caw!
srv
The PACKAGE is the medium.
That’s there’s no there there, isn’t important. CitiCorp will figure out those details. You just need to vote for the Transcendinator.
ThymeZone
Nevermore?
myiq2xu
It goes back to the thread the other day, where the primary argument from the Obamaniacs was we should vote for Obama because he alone had the ability to get things done with his magical unifying powers.
IOW- Obama is a “uniter” not a “divider”
You can understand why some of us were leery of that approach.
The Kennedy boys were good a speechifying too, but they also knew how to work the smoke-filled backrooms and twist arms in order to get things done.
srv
cough-BULLSHIT-cough
Obama is a package constructed by the moneyed-interests that pragmatically accept Hillary’s toxicity.
You may be old, but you’re still incredibely niave.
ThymeZone
I don’t know, bird. You tell me.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Perhaps Obama is just aiming at the Being-Of-Pure-Energy vote?
ThymeZone
He’s a newcomer to national politics. That’s pretty obvious. He’s a first term Senator, very lightweight on that stage.
WTF are you talking about?
magisterludi
All the democratic candidates are basically centrist. Not one is promoting single-payer healthcare systems. Not one has promoted cutting our defense budget, astronomically bloated as it is. Not one has made climate change a major issue. Not one has campaigned on a detailed energy plan. Not one has pointed out that rampant de-regulation has led us into the abyss.
America has been so brainwashed to the right we don’t even know where left is.
LiberalTarian
It’d be pretty easy for Obama to get my vote: no get out of jail free cards for anybody. Not that hard. Let me know when you hear it.
ThymeZone
Um, no. Their campaigns are constructed to look centrist.
Most national campaigns are. Without the Broder votes, nobody can win. A campaign aimed at party core voters would be a disaster, whether R or D.
tek
This is my new news site. All the other blogs rip people’s heads off if they DARE to not support His Most High Eminent Uniter Savior of America Barack Obama.
I think he’s a vacuous opportunist. Oh, and about the health care issue, His Eminence says Americans should BUY their own insurance. If they don’t have a job, he’ll make it affordable for them: IF THEY DON’T HAVE A JOB he’ll give them a discount on their health insurance. What a guy!
ThymeZone
Sorry, just got suck a kick out of that, wanted to repost it.
srv
A lightweight that announced back in February with an all-star policy team from the likes of Citigroup already set up. I’m sure that came cheap. You make it sound like he’s some struggling fly-weight, battling against the Horde of Hitlery with some ramshackle band of late-night crusaders.
If he were white, he’d have gotten less media coverage than Dodd.
myiq2xu
I have a few more things on my wish list:
1) An impenetrable wall between politics and the administration of justice. No more political operatives running things at the DOJ.
2) A unequivocal pledge to end torture, close Guantanamo, comply with the Geneva Conventions, give all detainees substantive due process of law (including the right of habeas corpus and fair & speedy trials) and to restore the moral authority of the United States.
3) End “extraordinary rendition” and close all secret prisons.
4) De-politicize the CIA, FEMA, NASA, EPA, and other government agencies.
5) Enforce the Hatch Act.
6) An unequivocal promise to stop illegal wiretapping and domestic spying.
None of that should be hard, I’m only asking Obama (or whoever) to promise that they will obey the law.
myiq2xu
I’ve seen TZ called a lot of things, but that’s a first!
ThymeZone
I see. So your contention is that he’s tied with Clinton because he’s black?
That’s what I call elevating the thread, sir. And, I mean that.
ThymeZone
Watch it, or I’ll turn my niaveness on you.
gypsy howell
Apparently you missed the whole Iran Contra thingy. Here’s a clue– they all got away with it.
myiq2xu
None of the pardonees returned did they?
After Reagan left office we were told to forgive, forget and move-on. No need for partisan witch-hunts.
srv
You see nothing, except your own inbred bigotries.
I’m sure his HUMONGOUS CORPORATE BACKING (which you completly ignore for cheap points) AND his color have nothing at all to do with the media mania. Why, he’s got all these great plans and detailed programs…
Well, no, not so much. Next you’ll be telling us how articulate he is.
Sorry, just got suck a kick out of that, wanted to repost it.
srv
Nope, the likes of John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams were never heard from again.
ThymeZone
Uh huh. You are just incredibly bad at this.
The thread is about Obama, not his backers. It’s about his message, not his backers’ message.
His message has created a media love affair with a new word, which Cole incorrectly says is about his message. It is not.
What you are talking about, I have no fucking idea, and honestly, don’t care much about at this point.
No, next I will be telling you that you are making no sense whatsoever, and really should step back from the computer for a while.
But, whatever. Do as you like.
myiq2xu
Poindexter was never pardoned and Abrams was pardoned for conviction on two misdemeanors.
Misdemeanors are not proof of “moral turpitude,” although both suffer from it.
BTW – Their appointments were approved by a GOP controlled Senate
srv
You can’t even read. John posted a dozen plus MEDIA posts regurgitating the talking points (as they are mostly paid to do). None it has to do with reality of a Obama presidency. It’s like saying the media fell in love with “flip flop”.
Clue.
John has a degree in this stuff. Since you obviously can’t understand anything the media does not regurgitate to you, here’s something more to your level:
– A Face in the Crowd
– The Candidate
– Network
Or you could read a little. Items like Manufacturing Consent.
Jon H
myiq2xu: “The Kennedy boys were good a speechifying too, but they also knew how to work the smoke-filled backrooms and twist arms in order to get things done.”
See above about the Illinois police videotaping law. Unless you think the Chicago cops are political pushovers?
myiq2xu
Read CAREFULLY and you will see I am not criticizing Obama anywhere in this post.
The Other Steve
Democrats should have their own dog whistle coded language too.
When Obama talks about unity, transcending partisanship and so on. What he’s talking about is having 70% of the country telling the other 30% to shut the fuck up.
The difference is he uses sugary language so that the remaining 30% don’t get all offended. Or if they do, they look like whiners.
In that sense, I suppose it’s a bit like Bush’s 2000 campaign. The difference is, I trust the Obama folks.
ThymeZone
Quite so. So why did he post all this shit, after the last few days of taking more than one opportunity to crap on the Obama parade? Well, we have this amazingly cogent analysis:
You like this thread, don’t you srv? This is just your ticket.
Why don’t you treat us to a nice long dissertation on the merits of this thread? It’s finer and subtler points. In particular, what the combings of the media for the use of the T-word have to do with the Obama campaign, its message, its merits, or its future?
Really, I am so interested in what you think about this. Write something, try to make whole sentences.
myiq2xu
Transsexual? Toe-jam? Trinitrotoluene?
Oh, I know! Tits!
empty
I don’t. Here is an interview with his senior advisor on foreign policy. Generic bs all the way. Sounds very much like GW in 2000.
ThymeZone
Sigh, we comment to the thread we have, not to the thread we wish we had!
srv
If we wrote it out in legos, you still wouldn’t get it.
That’s all there is. It’s all vapor. There’s absolutely NO reality to your candidate. It’s hard to imagine someone who’s faker than Hillary – but at least she has to go out every day and mouth words that mean things.
tBone
Didn’t we all learn something from the Sheehan imbroglio here? You’re not going to talk John out of his Obama fixation, so don’t even try. In the immortal words of Cousin Eddie:
Also, I’m enjoying hearing about how much srv likes pie.
sujal
Hardly. When Barack Obama gave his speech at the 2004 DNC, that’s when his star was made. It wasn’t, to me at least, about his race or ethnicity but about the speech itself. In an election year with Kerry as the candidate and the Republicans reduced to uttering 9/11 every 10 minutes, his speech stood out as the one that defined a vision and (yes, I can’t help it) a hope for what this country is supposed to be about.
I didn’t know him from a hole in the wall, and I didn’t really consider the race aspect of the idea, but he was marked then as a future presidential candidate in my mind. I downloaded that speech from iTunes the next day and listened to it several times.
He described the country I grew up loving. Call me whatever names you want, but that’s honestly how I feel. We’re beyond policy positions where the country is at. Instead, we need a President who can get on TV and convince a majority of the American people that he’s making good policy decisions in the face of Fox News, Rush, etc. and in the face of their own fears, in some cases.
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt are the rhetorical weapons of the Republican party. “You’ll die if the Democrats enforce FISA”, “Teh Gay will get you and your family!”, etc. I just feel a lot better about him in front of the American people. The
Cuzco
For me it’s the exact opposite. I think the next president needs to have clear, realistic, concrete plans for cleaning up Bush’s mess. We don’t need inspiration, we need to roll up our sleeves, grab a shovel and start cleaning out the Augean stables worth of shit the Bush administration has created.
To use a (perhaps lame) analogy, when your house is on fire, the last thing you should be doing is planning a neighborhood picnic or talking with an architect about a new addition. That stuff comes after the fire is out.
Obama might very well be the architect we go to in the future once we get the emergencies under control but, for me, he doesn’t seem like the right person for the cleanup job.
sujal
Cuzco,
Oh, of course I agree about the need for a concrete plan. Obviously, I believe he has one, as do all of the Democratic front runners. I believe he will put out the fire, to use your analogy, and will have help from a Democratic Congress.
My particular preferences lean toward building or strengthening the institutions that are supposed to help prevent the Bush kind of abuse again. Obama’s positions focus on those institutions, bringing transparency and light to the dark corners of policy making.
Many of these things don’t require legislation, and those that do require appropriations or legislation should be easy to pass.
Sujal
sujal
or, let me put it another way. The bulk of the policies between Clinton, Obama, and Edwards are very similar. They each emphasize a different area, of course, but the core policies are nearly identical. In other words, they’re all going to do the “roll up the sleeves” work necessary. Do you disagree?
Xanthippas
I really don’t dislike him. I hate the syrupy bullshit coming from his supporters.
This is pretty fair I think, and I’m an Obama supporter. I’m a firm believer that he’s the best candidate for President, but you have to be some kind of flippin’ moron to think that he’s going to go up to D.C. and transcend partisanship, race, etc., etc. Politics is politics. I like Obama because I like his positions, and although I know a great many of Obama’s fervent supporters like that kind of language, they might do well not to annoy serious voters as well, who prefer substance to image. Obama’s supporters who keep writing/saying stuff like this just come off as sounding silly and naive.
lambert strether
Sujal writes:
Sujal, what planet do you come from?
Last I checked, the Republicans set the world record for filibusters in a single session in the 110th, and that’s after Harry and Nancy implemented the only coherent definition of bipartisanship there is, and rolled over on everything except FISA, where they gave Bush more power than the Republicans did.
What will induce the Republicans to change their behavior? Magical unity ponies?
crw
One thing I keep hearing is people complaining Obama is “conservative” or at least too far right for a Dem.
Um, guys. He has a lifetime rating of 8.0 from the American Conservative Union (As of 2006 legislative session). By comparison, Hillary has a lifetime rating of 9.0, Dodd has a lifetime rating of 8.3 and Biden has a lifetime rating of 13.4 (source). As of 2004, John Edwards lifetime rating was 10 (source).
This may change when they tabulate the 2007 record, but so far it looks like Obama scores right with the mainstream of Senate Democrats by at least one prominent conservative organization. So amongst the top 3, I don’t really think you need to worry who’s the furthest right or left.
All 3 candidates are very nearly equally liberal. This is the most solid Democratic field I can remember in a long time, with the clearest agenda for the country I can remember in a long time. So it really comes down to subjective judgment on issues of leadership style, character, and rampant speculation on who will stick it the Bushies the best. You should be so lucky. The GOP is truly screwed this year.
myiq2xu
Transsexuals? Toe-jam? Trinitrotoluene?
Oh, I know! Tits!
Some answers are reusable
empty
I never heard of Armando Ianucci before but I will certainly be on the lookout for him from now on. On Barack Obama:
and continues with this beauty:
srv
Um, lambert clearly demonstrates that that word doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Cuzco
After reading several of the detailed PDF plans for both Obama and Hillary, Hillary’s just sound more realistic.
For example: Comparing Obama’s plan for government reform with Hillary’s you notice right away that Obama’s are little more than vague bullet points while Hillary’s address targeted issues along with estimated savings.
Of the detailed plans I read, Obama’s and Hillary’s energy plans are quite similar but where Obama plan tends to addresses precentage goals for savings in various areas, different biofuel strategies etc, Hillary’s plan has all that as well as how these goals will be financed.
Obama’s energy plan sounds like a good one but the added specificity and funding strategies In Hillary’s make her plans more credible in my mind.
Anne Laurie
WRONG. Dick Cheney’s first serious political job was in Richard Nixon’s White House. After Tricky’s Dick got caught in the wringer he’d been saving for Katie Graham, Accidental President Gerry “Played Football Too Long Without A Helmet” Ford decided that America needed to “put Watergate behind us”.
Which meant that we never did — and possibly never will — get to examine all the lies, tricks, thievery, corruption, and general doubleplusungoodness that the CREEPsters had been up to. Ever since that day, Cheney and his fellows (Bush I, Wolfwitz, Perle, Abramowitz, Bush the Lesser) have worked tirelessly to (a) get revenge on the GooGoo Democrats who turned over their rock in the first place; and (b) prove that the cesspit of corruption shorthanded ‘Watergate’ was nothing more than a prank, a sort of fraternity hazing, at least in comparison to the criminality of ensuing Rethug administrations. The sanitizing of the Iran-contra fiasco only added to their conviction that they could get away with anything if they could only find a convincing enough puppet to charm the Conventional Wisdom Pundits. And with Commander Codpiece, it looked like they’d found their puppet — except he turned out to be even shallower, and reality even more unforgiving, than the PNAC forward planners ever gamed.
We need the American equivalents of South Africa’s Reconciliation Committee. We need to elect a Democrat who will send a de-cronified Department of Justice out to follow the slime trail of every fourth-rate scam and fifth-rep legislative hack, political assistant, lobbyist-cum-secretary, and press-massager for the past seven years (at least) and put into the public records every bit of chicanery, dishonesty, graft, and corruption, complete with names, photographs, and how-it-was-done powerpoints. Even if we can’t send these maggots to jail for the rest of their unnatural lives, because they’ve destroyed too much evidence or buggered off to their Paraguyan compounds, we need to expose them for the criminals they are. Unless you want your kids to suffer more clusterfvck wars and domestic disasters under President Pierce Bush and VP Mary Cheney.
myiq2xu
Otherwise these pieces of shit will go on wingnut welfare in “think-tanks,” the Right-Wing Noise Machine or back inside the crony corporations they oozed out of until the next GOP administration.
Oh, and let’s not forget the GOP “moles” burrowing into “non-partisan” positions in the federal bureaucracy.
ImJohnGalt
I want an American “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”. I think it can be done without keeping Congress from getting their jobs done. Revelations from the TaRC may even complement some of the legislation they’d advance.