Taz, doesn't lying mean that someone knows what they are saying is not true?
A young lady, a daughter of friends of ours, said that the average person eats eight spiders a year in their sleep. I checked out the Snopes Urban Legend site and they documented how that was not true, but that a lot of people believe it.
She said something that was not true. Was she lying?
Obvious maybe, but hopefully it helps to make the point.
Full Version: OBAMA SUPPORTERS THREAD
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50
QUOTE(Arneoker @ May 29 2008, 10:35 AM) 
Taz, doesn't lying mean that someone knows what they are saying is not true?
A young lady, a daughter of friends of ours, said that the average person eats eight spiders a year in their sleep. I checked out the Snopes Urban Legend site and they documented how that was not true, but that a lot of people believe it.
She said something that was not true. Was she lying?
Obvious maybe, but hopefully it helps to make the point.
A young lady, a daughter of friends of ours, said that the average person eats eight spiders a year in their sleep. I checked out the Snopes Urban Legend site and they documented how that was not true, but that a lot of people believe it.
She said something that was not true. Was she lying?
Obvious maybe, but hopefully it helps to make the point.
A person can be rational or irrational in their beliefs...
A belief that is unsupported is an irrational belief IMHO...
I believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God -- is that a rational or irrational belief -- there are arguments both ways...
Can I prove that Jesus Christ existed or exists now in heaven? No, I cannot.
But my point is that TROU should be able to verify/prove his belief -- given that the statements of Obama and his campaign are out in cyberspace...and guess what --- if he cannot prove them --- then there is a good chance that his hypothesis is wrong and mine is correct that it is the media that has been responsible for demonizing Clinton in the way that TROU suggests the Obama campaign has...
TROU has not been offering his statement as his belief, but rather he has been arguing that it is a fact that prevents the Democratic party from healing and a fact that demands that Obama apologize for his conduct none of which TROU can substantiate...
And there is reckless lying IMHO --- when you disregard or ignore evidence out there --- thus lying to yourself while lying to others...
Maybe he has no desire to know the truth...
But the fact remains that he has been offering this not as an opinion, but a fact demanding a response by the Obama campaign...which is just silly since he cannot even prove there is anything to apologize for...
It thought this was a great photo...and figured y'all would like it... so...
QUOTE(Indianhead @ May 29 2008, 01:41 PM)
It thought this was a great photo...and figured y'all would like it... so...
Great photo IH. Thanks.
QUOTE(Indianhead @ May 29 2008, 11:41 AM)
It thought this was a great photo...and figured y'all would like it... so...
Did you like the article I posted regarding Hillary staying in the race by Kathleen Parker in the Hillary supporters forum?
I thought it was a good article.
Passing the Torch: Kennedy's Touch on Obama's Words
Ted Sorensen, Legendary Speechwriter, Lends Support, Eloquence to Democratic Contender
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
Feb. 8, 2008—
It's no accident the Kennedy magic has infused itself into the campaign of Barack Obama.
Theodore "Ted" Sorensen, the adviser whom John F. Kennedy once called his "intellectual blood bank," is lending his unabashed support -- and eloquence -- to the Obama campaign.
The Kennedy Connection
Oprah, another gushing Obama supporter, may have star power, but Sorensen has brain power.
At the age of 24, he joined the staff of the newly elected Sen. John F. Kennedy and later helped him win the presidency, calling on Americans to pass the torch to a new generation.
The legendary speechwriter helped Kennedy craft the now-famous 1961 Inaugural address in which the new president proclaimed, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- when Sorensen was 34 -- he penned the letter to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that historians say saved the world from nuclear destruction.
Today, at 79 years old and blind, Sorensen has a new mission: to resurrect Camelot. And it seems the Obama campaign is listening.
"I've given them a phrase or suggestion or two," Sorensen admits.
As for all the comparisons that have been drawn between Obama and Kennedy, "I probably started it," he told ABCNEWS.com
Torch Passed to Obama's Speechwriters
Sorensen has not only given his support and advice to the Obama camp, he's grown close to the senator's young speechwriters as well.
The candidate's deputy writer -- Adam Frankel -- assisted Sorensen with his memoirs, which Harper Collins will publish in time for his 80th birthday in May.
"We've become close friends," Sorensen said of Frankel, 26, one of Obama's wordsmiths.
"He knows me and my style and JFK's style and his speeches. It's surprising the little touches that creep in to whatever he writes for Obama."
Even Obama's Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has acknowledged Obama's rhetorical skills.
"You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose," Clinton said in a bit of a backhanded compliment delivered before Super Tuesday.
Youth vs. Experience
Sorensen said he was impressed with Obama when he met the senator in 2006. But all he heard was Obama was too young and inexperienced.
"That's what they said about Kennedy," he said. "Everyone said Kennedy had no chance because he was baptized a Roman Catholic. They say it about Obama because he's black."
Clinton captured the endorsements of several of Robert F. Kennedy's kin, including Kennedy's son Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, and daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland.
But Obama is largely ahead in the Kennedy endorsement race, earning a seal of approval from Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Ethel Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy's widow, and Caroline Kennedy,
SLIDESHOW: KENNEDY VS. KENNEDY IN THE OBAMA-CLINTON RACE
"Kennedy, like Obama, was one of those extraordinary individuals who was completely authentic, at home with himself and in his skin," said Sorensen. "He knew who he was, unlike so many in politics who are putting on an act all the time."
Looking Back, Looking Forward
Seemingly frail, Sorensen suffered a stroke seven years ago that took his sight, but he still remains active and agreed to talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis -- a topic he re-examines in his new book -- to students at the Peddie School in New Jersey this week.
Sorensen confides he's never heard of IM or Facebook, and as he shuffled to the podium on a student's arm, it seemed unlikely he would connect with the teenagers, whose parents were being born as Kennedy arrived at the White House.
But that impression soon dissipated.
"I don't see much, but I have more vision than the president of the United States," Sorensen joked to loud applause.
He had plenty more to say about President Bush, including his "lack of judgment" and diplomacy in handling the threats after 9/11.
Speech writers wield untold power among voters, and Sorensen is considered one of the modern day best.
George Washington got help from Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Franklin Roosevelt often turned to playwright Robert Sherwood, and Dwight Eisenhower used journalist Emmet Hughes.
But Sorensen was more than a speechwriter, and his closeness and access to Kennedy was "unique" in U.S. history, say presidential scholars.
Graduating first in his class at University of Nebraska Law School, Sorensen -- at the advice of his college adviser -- took one year off his age to get a job as a legal aide in Kennedy's Senate office.
"The rest is history," he said.
He helped Kennedy draft the Pulitzer-Prize winning "Profiles in Courage," though he consistently denied charges that he had been its author.
After Kennedy's assassination, he wrote Lyndon B. Johnson's State of the Union, before publishing "Kennedy," the 1965 biography.
He stayed active in politics, campaigning for Robert F. Kennedy, then later joining the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where he still works today.
"I think the television era has been hard on eloquence," said Sorensen. "Most politicians think that talking like JFK sounds old-fashioned today. And we have a president who doesn't round out the "ings" at the end of his words."
Like Kennedy, Sorensen retains a keen wit.
Bill Clinton was a great communicator, he said, but the one sentence best remembered is, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
"His mind is as sharp as ever," said Russell Riley, presidential scholar at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. "I think it's an understatement to call him a mere speechwriter."
Indeed, Sorensen helped guide foreign policy.
He was part of the inner circle of advisers who for six days agonized over how to respond to the threat when U2 planes spotted Soviet missiles 90 miles off the Florida coast in Cuba.
Kennedy even entrusted Sorensen to deliver a "back door" message to Khrushchev, meeting a KGB courier on a Washington, D.C., street corner and exchanging a newspaper that contained an important message for the president.
But it is Sorensen's role as a writer -- reflected in the Kennedy speeches -- that still resonates.
"It's such a change from the current president who has only of late indicated that he has an interest in books," said Riley. "[Bush's] 2000 campaign practically made a virtue out of the fact he was uninterested in the written word."
As for Obama, "It's not just the words," said Riley, "but the person saying the words, with his youthful vigor and enthusiasm and his ability to impart that to the crowds."
Still, Riley struggles to understand how Obama has catapulted himself to the national stage.
In 2004, when Obama gave the convention speech, Riley was overseas and missed what he called the candidate's "coming out party."
"It's been difficult for me to grasp how he managed to do what he has done," said Riley. "But the power of his rhetoric has largely captured people's attentions -- that's not an uncommon occurrence in politics, going back to the Greeks."
At nearly 80, Sorensen managed to work his charismatic magic with a new generation. At a dinner before his speech, he fielded questions from students, such as 16-year-old Jackie Wang.
"I wasn't prepared to meet such an extraordinary man," said Wang. "Mr. Sorensen never had the opportunity to thank or part ways with former President Kennedy. The emotions I imagined he experienced when hearing about his death moved me to tears."
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote200...9093&page=1
Ted Sorensen, Legendary Speechwriter, Lends Support, Eloquence to Democratic Contender
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
Feb. 8, 2008—
It's no accident the Kennedy magic has infused itself into the campaign of Barack Obama.
Theodore "Ted" Sorensen, the adviser whom John F. Kennedy once called his "intellectual blood bank," is lending his unabashed support -- and eloquence -- to the Obama campaign.
The Kennedy Connection
Oprah, another gushing Obama supporter, may have star power, but Sorensen has brain power.
At the age of 24, he joined the staff of the newly elected Sen. John F. Kennedy and later helped him win the presidency, calling on Americans to pass the torch to a new generation.
The legendary speechwriter helped Kennedy craft the now-famous 1961 Inaugural address in which the new president proclaimed, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- when Sorensen was 34 -- he penned the letter to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that historians say saved the world from nuclear destruction.
Today, at 79 years old and blind, Sorensen has a new mission: to resurrect Camelot. And it seems the Obama campaign is listening.
"I've given them a phrase or suggestion or two," Sorensen admits.
As for all the comparisons that have been drawn between Obama and Kennedy, "I probably started it," he told ABCNEWS.com
Torch Passed to Obama's Speechwriters
Sorensen has not only given his support and advice to the Obama camp, he's grown close to the senator's young speechwriters as well.
The candidate's deputy writer -- Adam Frankel -- assisted Sorensen with his memoirs, which Harper Collins will publish in time for his 80th birthday in May.
"We've become close friends," Sorensen said of Frankel, 26, one of Obama's wordsmiths.
"He knows me and my style and JFK's style and his speeches. It's surprising the little touches that creep in to whatever he writes for Obama."
Even Obama's Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has acknowledged Obama's rhetorical skills.
"You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose," Clinton said in a bit of a backhanded compliment delivered before Super Tuesday.
Youth vs. Experience
Sorensen said he was impressed with Obama when he met the senator in 2006. But all he heard was Obama was too young and inexperienced.
"That's what they said about Kennedy," he said. "Everyone said Kennedy had no chance because he was baptized a Roman Catholic. They say it about Obama because he's black."
Clinton captured the endorsements of several of Robert F. Kennedy's kin, including Kennedy's son Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer, and daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland.
But Obama is largely ahead in the Kennedy endorsement race, earning a seal of approval from Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., Ethel Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy's widow, and Caroline Kennedy,
SLIDESHOW: KENNEDY VS. KENNEDY IN THE OBAMA-CLINTON RACE
"Kennedy, like Obama, was one of those extraordinary individuals who was completely authentic, at home with himself and in his skin," said Sorensen. "He knew who he was, unlike so many in politics who are putting on an act all the time."
Looking Back, Looking Forward
Seemingly frail, Sorensen suffered a stroke seven years ago that took his sight, but he still remains active and agreed to talk about the Cuban Missile Crisis -- a topic he re-examines in his new book -- to students at the Peddie School in New Jersey this week.
Sorensen confides he's never heard of IM or Facebook, and as he shuffled to the podium on a student's arm, it seemed unlikely he would connect with the teenagers, whose parents were being born as Kennedy arrived at the White House.
But that impression soon dissipated.
"I don't see much, but I have more vision than the president of the United States," Sorensen joked to loud applause.
He had plenty more to say about President Bush, including his "lack of judgment" and diplomacy in handling the threats after 9/11.
Speech writers wield untold power among voters, and Sorensen is considered one of the modern day best.
George Washington got help from Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Franklin Roosevelt often turned to playwright Robert Sherwood, and Dwight Eisenhower used journalist Emmet Hughes.
But Sorensen was more than a speechwriter, and his closeness and access to Kennedy was "unique" in U.S. history, say presidential scholars.
Graduating first in his class at University of Nebraska Law School, Sorensen -- at the advice of his college adviser -- took one year off his age to get a job as a legal aide in Kennedy's Senate office.
"The rest is history," he said.
He helped Kennedy draft the Pulitzer-Prize winning "Profiles in Courage," though he consistently denied charges that he had been its author.
After Kennedy's assassination, he wrote Lyndon B. Johnson's State of the Union, before publishing "Kennedy," the 1965 biography.
He stayed active in politics, campaigning for Robert F. Kennedy, then later joining the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, where he still works today.
"I think the television era has been hard on eloquence," said Sorensen. "Most politicians think that talking like JFK sounds old-fashioned today. And we have a president who doesn't round out the "ings" at the end of his words."
Like Kennedy, Sorensen retains a keen wit.
Bill Clinton was a great communicator, he said, but the one sentence best remembered is, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
"His mind is as sharp as ever," said Russell Riley, presidential scholar at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. "I think it's an understatement to call him a mere speechwriter."
Indeed, Sorensen helped guide foreign policy.
He was part of the inner circle of advisers who for six days agonized over how to respond to the threat when U2 planes spotted Soviet missiles 90 miles off the Florida coast in Cuba.
Kennedy even entrusted Sorensen to deliver a "back door" message to Khrushchev, meeting a KGB courier on a Washington, D.C., street corner and exchanging a newspaper that contained an important message for the president.
But it is Sorensen's role as a writer -- reflected in the Kennedy speeches -- that still resonates.
"It's such a change from the current president who has only of late indicated that he has an interest in books," said Riley. "[Bush's] 2000 campaign practically made a virtue out of the fact he was uninterested in the written word."
As for Obama, "It's not just the words," said Riley, "but the person saying the words, with his youthful vigor and enthusiasm and his ability to impart that to the crowds."
Still, Riley struggles to understand how Obama has catapulted himself to the national stage.
In 2004, when Obama gave the convention speech, Riley was overseas and missed what he called the candidate's "coming out party."
"It's been difficult for me to grasp how he managed to do what he has done," said Riley. "But the power of his rhetoric has largely captured people's attentions -- that's not an uncommon occurrence in politics, going back to the Greeks."
At nearly 80, Sorensen managed to work his charismatic magic with a new generation. At a dinner before his speech, he fielded questions from students, such as 16-year-old Jackie Wang.
"I wasn't prepared to meet such an extraordinary man," said Wang. "Mr. Sorensen never had the opportunity to thank or part ways with former President Kennedy. The emotions I imagined he experienced when hearing about his death moved me to tears."
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote200...9093&page=1
I invite you all to visit the link below which leads to a speech that JFK made to the students at the University of Washington in 1961 in which he set out his national security and foreign policy statement...
His point of view is that adopted by Barack Obama...
It is incredible how many of his ideas are within Obama's philosophy...
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...mp;#entry844430
His point of view is that adopted by Barack Obama...
It is incredible how many of his ideas are within Obama's philosophy...
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...mp;#entry844430
Well, well... I never thought I'd be so "popular". Or is the word "infamous"? At least in Taz's mind. Listen Taz, there was going to be the race issue brought up as soon as Obama became a serious contenter. I watched carefully along with everyone else who was going to pull the "race card" out first. I posted the evidence of Michelle's statements about Bill's "fairy tale " comment and Obama's statements regarding Hillary's MLK/Johnson statements. Both reactions were race baiting IMO. By Michelle with her "hint" that an African American running for president, and in fact all black people, are being held back by such as Bill's characterization of Obama's run, was what had been done to blacks for a long time. Nice speech but no where near accurate about his statement. In fact it was race baiting about a comment that had nothing to do with that. And she knew it, unless you believe she is a moron?
Likewise with Obama's comment that Hillary making a historically accurate statement about the passing of the Civil Rights Laws took both MLK and LBJ to get done as; "Unfortunate", and "Ill advised"? Why? Because they were true?
You choose to ignore this and deny it as evidence that the Obama campaign was hinting that both Hillary and Bill were "trying to once again hold the black man down". Maybe you don't know it but that is a favorite "meme" among black people who want to find an excuse to give up against the real oppression that has been foisted upon them for centuries, and for the century following Abolition.
You have suggested that I am spreading lies and that I should apologize for it, if as you put it I am "man" enough.
Well let me tell you what I will apologize for. I will apologize for believing you had a brain bigger than a walnut.
Likewise with Obama's comment that Hillary making a historically accurate statement about the passing of the Civil Rights Laws took both MLK and LBJ to get done as; "Unfortunate", and "Ill advised"? Why? Because they were true?
You choose to ignore this and deny it as evidence that the Obama campaign was hinting that both Hillary and Bill were "trying to once again hold the black man down". Maybe you don't know it but that is a favorite "meme" among black people who want to find an excuse to give up against the real oppression that has been foisted upon them for centuries, and for the century following Abolition.
You have suggested that I am spreading lies and that I should apologize for it, if as you put it I am "man" enough.
Well let me tell you what I will apologize for. I will apologize for believing you had a brain bigger than a walnut.
QUOTE(Indianhead @ May 29 2008, 01:41 PM)
It thought this was a great photo...and figured y'all would like it... so...
Wow....that's a really moving photo. It speaks "hope". Thanks for sharing, IH!
Latest Rasmussen musings-
Election 2008: New York Presidential Election
50% of New York Democrats Say Clinton Should Drop Out of White House Race
Thursday, May 29, 2008 Email to a Friend
Fifty percent (50%) of New York Democrats say it’s time for Senator Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race for the White House. Just 43% believe she should keep going.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey also found that most New York Republicans—52%--want Clinton to keep striving for the nomination. Overall, among all Empire State voters, 45% believe she should drop out while 43% disagree.
Just 16% of New York Democrats think Obama should drop out of the race.
Forty-seven percent (47%) of New York voters believe Obama is the stronger general election candidate. Forty-three percent (43%) believe Clinton would be better.
The survey also found that Obama is now viewed more favorably than Clinton in New York. Sixty-two percent (62%) of New York voters have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama while 55% give Hillary Clinton such positive reviews.
For Obama, those ratings are up four points from a month ago while Clinton’s are down three points. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is viewed positively by 44%. His ratings are down six points from the previous survey.
Election 2008: New York Presidential Election
50% of New York Democrats Say Clinton Should Drop Out of White House Race
Thursday, May 29, 2008 Email to a Friend
Fifty percent (50%) of New York Democrats say it’s time for Senator Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race for the White House. Just 43% believe she should keep going.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey also found that most New York Republicans—52%--want Clinton to keep striving for the nomination. Overall, among all Empire State voters, 45% believe she should drop out while 43% disagree.
Just 16% of New York Democrats think Obama should drop out of the race.
Forty-seven percent (47%) of New York voters believe Obama is the stronger general election candidate. Forty-three percent (43%) believe Clinton would be better.
The survey also found that Obama is now viewed more favorably than Clinton in New York. Sixty-two percent (62%) of New York voters have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama while 55% give Hillary Clinton such positive reviews.
For Obama, those ratings are up four points from a month ago while Clinton’s are down three points. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is viewed positively by 44%. His ratings are down six points from the previous survey.
here's a funny video I saw by actor Jerry O'Connell (who has a cameo in the end of it)
People on both sides should like this
Truth be told, We all should find this so truthful.
Young Hillary Clitnon
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/dc0b0f5ffc
People on both sides should like this
Truth be told, We all should find this so truthful.
Young Hillary Clitnon
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/dc0b0f5ffc
Texas Democratic Chairman, Wife Endorse Obama
Source: Dallas Morning News
Texas Democratic chairman, wife endorse Obama
05/30/2008
By KELLEY SHANNON / Associated Press
Texas Democratic Party chairman Boyd Richie endorsed Barack Obama for president Thursday as the final primaries and Texas' state party convention approach. Richie's wife, Democratic National Committee member Betty Richie, also endorsed Obama. They are two of Texas' 32 superdelegates and were among the few remaining who had not committed to either Obama or Hillary Clinton.
Until recently, Boyd Richie had said he had no plans to make an endorsement before the state convention June 6-7, where Clinton and Obama delegates are expected to battle again over pledged caucus delegates.
"I believe Senator Obama is the candidate who can best provide the leadership and change Texans desire," Richie said in a statement issued by the party. "Senator Obama has the skill and ability to unite Americans from all walks of life and put our country back on the right track."
Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stori...
QUOTE(TheRestofUs @ May 29 2008, 09:12 PM)
Well, well... I never thought I'd be so "popular". Or is the word "infamous"? At least in Taz's mind. Listen Taz, there was going to be the race issue brought up as soon as Obama became a serious contenter. I watched carefully along with everyone else who was going to pull the "race card" out first. I posted the evidence of Michelle's statements about Bill's "fairy tale " comment and Obama's statements regarding Hillary's MLK/Johnson statements. Both reactions were race baiting IMO. By Michelle with her "hint" that an African American running for president, and in fact all black people, are being held back by such as Bill's characterization of Obama's run, was what had been done to blacks for a long time. Nice speech but no where near accurate about his statement. In fact it was race baiting about a comment that had nothing to do with that. And she knew it, unless you believe she is a moron?
Likewise with Obama's comment that Hillary making a historically accurate statement about the passing of the Civil Rights Laws took both MLK and LBJ to get done as; "Unfortunate", and "Ill advised"? Why? Because they were true?
You choose to ignore this and deny it as evidence that the Obama campaign was hinting that both Hillary and Bill were "trying to once again hold the black man down". Maybe you don't know it but that is a favorite "meme" among black people who want to find an excuse to give up against the real oppression that has been foisted upon them for centuries, and for the century following Abolition.
You have suggested that I am spreading lies and that I should apologize for it, if as you put it I am "man" enough.
Well let me tell you what I will apologize for. I will apologize for believing you had a brain bigger than a walnut.
Likewise with Obama's comment that Hillary making a historically accurate statement about the passing of the Civil Rights Laws took both MLK and LBJ to get done as; "Unfortunate", and "Ill advised"? Why? Because they were true?
You choose to ignore this and deny it as evidence that the Obama campaign was hinting that both Hillary and Bill were "trying to once again hold the black man down". Maybe you don't know it but that is a favorite "meme" among black people who want to find an excuse to give up against the real oppression that has been foisted upon them for centuries, and for the century following Abolition.
You have suggested that I am spreading lies and that I should apologize for it, if as you put it I am "man" enough.
Well let me tell you what I will apologize for. I will apologize for believing you had a brain bigger than a walnut.
Nothing about Michelle's comment on the "fairy tale" issue implies the Clinton's are racist -- tell me where you get that stretch...
Where did she make these inferences you suggest....
"Sometimes we feel it's better not to try at all than to try and fail. These are complicated emotions, left in our heads and hearts from years of struggle, emotions we must face if we're going to overcome as a community if we want to lift ourselves up. We must do it in the face of those who will attempt to play on those emotions for our own purposes, to discourage us from believing what is possible...to dismiss this moment as an illusion, as a fairytale."
She is not race baiting here...first of all you have to realize Obama has requested that people not watch cable television in his campaign.
So, first of all anything that Michelle is commenting on comes to her second or third hand...
Second of all, she never references Bill Clinton or his comment...she may not have even known that she was responding to a comment made by hiim...
Third of all, there is nothing in the comment that suggests anything race related...
In my mind, she is commenting on the campaign -- their struggle ---that it is better to try as much as this is a long shot as anything...
And her comments could just as easily be addressing specifically the Iraq issue...
How hard it is for someone in Barack's position to take a stand on Iraq --- as merely a State Senator -- to buck the powers that be in Washington -- to buck the popular sentiment of the American people who supported the war --- and to stand alone just about -- or at least in the vast majority and take the position on Iraq...
No matter what --- there was no suggestion of race at all in this statement...
Show me where she made the inferences you made...
Obama did not deny the accuracy of the statement --- what he stated was unfortunate is the way she framed it --- Obama was not the only one to make that comment...and it was unfortunate the way she stated it -- she diminished the role that Martin Luther King, Jr. played....it was a clumsy statement on Hillary's part ---
TROU ---
Look at this headline from the media --- in response to Hillary's statement...
People universally agree it was a mistake -- a gaffe -- all Barack said was that it was "ill-advised" not unfortunate -- show me how his comments have anything to do with race...
John Edwards disagreed with her statement as well -- was he "hinting" that the Clintons were racist?
January 12, 2008
Hillary Clinton gaffe over Martin Luther King may cost votes in South Carolina
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle3173652.ece
Clinton, Obama spar over her comments on civil rights battle
Duel comes at key time in campaigns
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | January 14, 2008
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washingt..._battle?mode=PF
WASHINGTON - Senator Hillary Clinton, battling to win the crucial support of African-Americans in the upcoming South Carolina primary, yesterday sought to explain her widely publicized remarks about civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. that have offended some black leaders.
In a high-stakes national television interview, Clinton said the campaign of Democratic opponent Senator Barack Obama was "deliberately distorting" her comments.
Clinton had said in an interview last week that it "took a president" to accomplish King's dream of passing civil rights legislation. Some black leaders have said they were offended because it seemed to diminish King's role and give more credit to former president Lyndon Johnson.
The New York senator has been hammering Obama as more of a talker than a problem solver. "One of the significant contrasts in this campaign is between talking and doing, between rhetoric and reality," she said yesterday.
The duel between the two leading Democratic candidates for president came at what could be a crucial moment in their campaigns, with Obama having won the Iowa caucuses and Clinton having snared a comeback victory in the New Hampshire primary.
Obama responded immediately to the Clinton interview, saying she had offended people who believed she had diminished King's role. The Illinois senator criticized her for spending an hour on television "talking about me and about my record in a way that was flat-out wrong." He denied distorting her remarks.
"What we saw this morning is why the American people are tired of Washington politicians and the games they play," Obama said after Clinton made her appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"But Senator Clinton made an unfortunate remark, an ill-advised remark, about King and Lyndon Johnson," Obama said. "I didn't make the statement. I haven't remarked on it, and she, I think, offended some folks who felt that somehow diminished King's role in bringing about the Civil Rights Act. She is free to explain that, but the notion that somehow this is our doing is ludicrous."
Clinton also was pressed repeatedly in the NBC interview to explain a comment her husband, Bill, made about Obama last Monday. Obama's assertion that he consistently opposed the Iraq war was a "fairy tale," the former president had said.
The senator stood by the assertion. She said Obama had made his 2002 opposition to the Iraq war the "story line" and rationale for his candidacy, but she contended he was inconsistent because he supported funding for the war and did not always express opposition to it. Obama's campaign put out a detailed rebuttal of Clinton's remarks, saying it showed the Illinois senator consistently opposed the war.
Obama and Clinton, along with former senator John Edwards of North Carolina, are slated to participate in a Las Vegas debate tomorrow night. A Nevada caucus vote will be held Saturday and the primary in South Carolina a week later, on Jan. 26.
With blacks making up about 50 percent of South Carolina's Democratic Party voters, the fight for their support is intense.
Obama, who has written a book about the African ancestry of his father, faces Clinton, whose husband twice won the presidency with strong support from black voters. South Carolina's largest newspaper, The State, said in the lead story of its Saturday edition that many blacks found Clinton's attacks "painful" and were "offended by criticism of Obama [and] remarks about King."
Using that article as a springboard to question Clinton, "Meet the Press" moderator Tim Russert asked her to explain what she meant when she said a week ago on the Fox News Channel that the credit for passing civil rights legislation went beyond King's work.
In her remarks on Fox News, Clinton said: "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do; presidents before had not even tried. But it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said 'We're going to do it' and actually got it accomplished."
Yesterday, Clinton sought to explain the comment by saying that her point was that "Dr. King didn't just give speeches. He marched, he organized, he protested, he was gassed, he was beaten, he was jailed. He understood that he had to move the political process and bring in those who were in political power, and he campaigned for political leaders including Lyndon Johnson, because he wanted somebody in the White House who would act on what he had devoted his life to achieving."
The Obama campaign also denied having anything to do with a statement by Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina. Clyburn, who has said he was neutral in the contest, stated that Clinton's statement on King "bothered me a great deal."
Merle Black, professor of politics at Emory University in Atlanta, said yesterday that Clinton's effort to defend her remarks could signal trouble for her campaign.
"Anytime she has to explain a remark about Martin Luther King is not good for her," Black said. "It puts her on the defensive and gives a resource to the Obama campaign . . . if you have to explain what you said, you didn't say it the right way."
Edwards, who was born in South Carolina and won the state's primary in 2004, yesterday added to the criticism of Clinton. "I must say I was troubled recently to see a suggestion that real change that came not through the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King but through a Washington politician. I fundamentally disagree with that," Edwards said at a predominantly black Baptist church.
Clinton used her TV appearance yesterday to continue trying to define Obama as an orator without major accomplishments. She began by saying that she has "the greatest regard for rhetoric and particularly the ability that Senator Obama has to, you know, lift our sights and our hearts with his oratory." But she added: "I think it is fair to point out that he has not had a record of actually producing positive change."
Clinton spent much of her appearance explaining what her husband meant when he said that Obama's opposition to the war has been a "fairy tale." She said the comment referred only to Obama's record on the Iraq war, which she said was the appropriate subject of questioning.
She said that Obama deserves "credit" for opposing the war in 2002, but she that he went on to back Bush's strategy and supported funding for the war. In one example, she said that "by 2004 he was saying that he didn't really disagree with the way George Bush was conducting the war."
Obama said Clinton's assertions were false. Pointing out that Clinton voted to authorize Bush to use military force in Iraq, Obama said "She suggested that I didn't clearly and unambiguously oppose the war in Iraq when it is absolutely clear and anyone who has followed this knows that I did. I stood up against the war when she was voting for it, at a time when she didn't read the intelligence reports or give diplomacy a chance."
Clinton, meanwhile, stood by her long-held position that her vote was intended to put pressure on Iraq and that it was "not a vote for preemptive war."
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report. Kranish can be reached at kranish@globe.com
QUOTE(TheRestofUs @ May 29 2008, 09:12 PM)
You choose to ignore this and deny it as evidence that the Obama campaign was hinting that both Hillary and Bill were "trying to once again hold the black man down". Maybe you don't know it but that is a favorite "meme" among black people who want to find an excuse to give up against the real oppression that has been foisted upon them for centuries, and for the century following Abolition.
You have suggested that I am spreading lies and that I should apologize for it, if as you put it I am "man" enough.
Well let me tell you what I will apologize for. I will apologize for believing you had a brain bigger than a walnut.
You have suggested that I am spreading lies and that I should apologize for it, if as you put it I am "man" enough.
Well let me tell you what I will apologize for. I will apologize for believing you had a brain bigger than a walnut.
Demonstrate how anything Michelle or Obama or his campaign said mentioned anything regarding race --- Obama repeatedly said that he was not commenting specifically on her statement - only that it was ill-advised since it had offended people like John Edwards and Representative Clyburn and others...
You can't.
And finally, you conclude with an ad hominem attack...how mature...you must feel much better about yourself.
I guess you have less courage than I thought you did.
Well, I do not have to resort to name calling.
You are promoting a lie. Nothing they said hinted at the Clinton's being racist. I think you answered your own comment when you stated that you were watching closely to see who played the race card first. You were waiting for the slightest sign to accuse the Obama campaign with something...and when it never came you tried to stretch the facts to make it fit your negative opinion of Obama.
You try and stretch the facts when any objective review by political analysts or others shows that the remark by Clinton was as Obama stated -- ill-advised. It was a gaffe. It demonstrated poor judgment on Hillary's part.
You have no evidence that the campaign, the Obamas or anyone associated with them have injected race into the contest -- that they "hinted" that the Clinton's were racist.
And you deny the reality that for Obama to inject race into the contest would damage his campaign not help it...
He tried to avoid race as long as he could because of the toll he knew it could take on his efforts.
And you ignore how the Clinton's have played the race card to their advantage...whether its the King statement, the Jesse Jackson statement, her Wright statements or the playing up to white voters...and saying Obama cannot win them...
This is the reality that Hillary Clinton has made for herself TROU...
The reality that you are in denial about...
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na...0,2206514.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Trouble brewing in N.Y. for Clinton
Black leaders say that if Hillary Rodham Clinton returns as senator, she'll need to heal racial wounds her campaign has inflicted.
By Peter Nicholas
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 25, 2008
Even as she continues her longshot presidential bid, Hillary Rodham Clinton faces a political rift in New York, where black leaders say her standing has dropped due to racially charged comments by her and her husband during the campaign.
African American elected officials and clerics based in New York City say Clinton will need to defuse resentment over the campaign's racial overtones if she returns to New York as U.S. senator.
State Sen. Bill Perkins, who represents Harlem, said constituents recently phoned him because they wanted to demonstrate outside Bill Clinton's Harlem office against comments by the former president.
Michael Benjamin, a state assemblyman who represents parts of the Bronx, said his wife removed a photograph of Bill Clinton from her office wall -- an expression of the misgivings that some black New Yorkers feel.
Assemblyman Karim Camara of Brooklyn contributed $500 to Hillary Clinton's Senate reelection campaign in 2006 and described Bill Clinton as a political hero. He said: "Once the campaign is over there has to be a lot of work to heal the wounds. She needs to go back to the black churches she visited in the course of her campaign and have a frank conversation about who she is and how much the support of the black community means. There would not have been a first Clinton presidency in 1992 if not for the African American community."
Many of the officials back the presidential bid of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton's rival for the Democratic nomination, though they say they have long supported the Clintons, defending him in the past and supporting her Senate run.
Their sentiments reflect the peculiar arc of the 2008 campaign. Black voters were once central to the Clinton family's political identity and base of support. But that relationship has been strained by the emergence of a charismatic African American candidate who has been propelled by black voters.
"The Clintons have their die-hard fans who would never abandon them," said Eric Adams, a state senator who represents Brooklyn. "But there are those New Yorkers who feel there was a lot of insult, slight and disrespect toward an African American candidate, and it translated as a slight to the African American community."
Clinton's campaign declined to comment. In New York, she still enjoys the support of some high-profile black leaders. U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel has endorsed Clinton, as has the state's first black governor, David Paterson. But both men have been critical of her recently.
Rangel told reporters this month that her claim she has the support of white voters was "the dumbest thing she could ever have said." Clinton later agreed with that.
Paterson recently told a radio show he saw "desperation" in Clinton's effort to count in her favor disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida. Clinton's dwindling chance of winning the nomination includes snagging as many Florida and Michigan delegates as possible.
As the campaign unfolded, both Clintons made comments that some black leaders deemed dismissive of Obama. There was Bill Clinton's suggestion that Obama's victory in South Carolina carried no more weight than Jesse Jackson's success there in the 1980s. Other sore points were Hillary Clinton's claim that she enjoys the support of "hard-working Americans, white Americans" and the credit she gave to President Lyndon Johnson -- rather than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- on civil rights legislation.
"There has been a consistent pattern of comments made by both Sen. Clinton and President Clinton from January until this moment that are deeply troubling to the African American community," said Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, whose district is in Brooklyn. "That will require meaningful reconciliation and discussion when Sen. Clinton returns to New York."
The Rev. Clinton Miller of Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn said that any hurt feelings left by the campaign could be easily overcome.
"There are wounds, but I don't think they necessarily have to be that deep," Miller said. "They're deep wounds for people who never liked Hillary in the first place."
He encouraged her to be more of a presence in the city's neighborhoods.
"For her to heal those wounds, she would be well served either in public office or just in her private life by being herself and working toward those ideals that she's always espoused as a person."
African American leaders said she could repair frayed ties by visiting black churches, backing legislation that shows she is sensitive to conditions in black neighborhoods, and apologizing for comments she and her husband made that seemed to polarize voters and marginalize Obama.
"She has a problem," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a New York-based civil rights activist. "If she doesn't aggressively deal with the problem -- rather than sit in denial -- it will haunt her at home in her Senate race."
Clinton's Senate term ends in January 2013.
Some Democrats have mentioned that she could run for governor of New York if she isn't nominated for president.
That prospect unnerves some black leaders. They said they didn't want to see her challenge Paterson, who plans to run in 2010. With Paterson in the job, some black leaders want a definitive statement from Clinton that she would not subject him to a primary challenge -- and say they haven't gotten it yet.
Benjamin said: "I was pretty much appalled when supporters said one of her options was to run for governor. We have a governor. He's a black Democrat. It's not wise for them to challenge a black Democrat for governor.
"She should have come out and said a flat no, that folks were wrong, but I did not see that or hear that coming from her."
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
The reality that you are in denial about...
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na...0,2206514.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Trouble brewing in N.Y. for Clinton
Black leaders say that if Hillary Rodham Clinton returns as senator, she'll need to heal racial wounds her campaign has inflicted.
By Peter Nicholas
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 25, 2008
Even as she continues her longshot presidential bid, Hillary Rodham Clinton faces a political rift in New York, where black leaders say her standing has dropped due to racially charged comments by her and her husband during the campaign.
African American elected officials and clerics based in New York City say Clinton will need to defuse resentment over the campaign's racial overtones if she returns to New York as U.S. senator.
State Sen. Bill Perkins, who represents Harlem, said constituents recently phoned him because they wanted to demonstrate outside Bill Clinton's Harlem office against comments by the former president.
Michael Benjamin, a state assemblyman who represents parts of the Bronx, said his wife removed a photograph of Bill Clinton from her office wall -- an expression of the misgivings that some black New Yorkers feel.
Assemblyman Karim Camara of Brooklyn contributed $500 to Hillary Clinton's Senate reelection campaign in 2006 and described Bill Clinton as a political hero. He said: "Once the campaign is over there has to be a lot of work to heal the wounds. She needs to go back to the black churches she visited in the course of her campaign and have a frank conversation about who she is and how much the support of the black community means. There would not have been a first Clinton presidency in 1992 if not for the African American community."
Many of the officials back the presidential bid of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Clinton's rival for the Democratic nomination, though they say they have long supported the Clintons, defending him in the past and supporting her Senate run.
Their sentiments reflect the peculiar arc of the 2008 campaign. Black voters were once central to the Clinton family's political identity and base of support. But that relationship has been strained by the emergence of a charismatic African American candidate who has been propelled by black voters.
"The Clintons have their die-hard fans who would never abandon them," said Eric Adams, a state senator who represents Brooklyn. "But there are those New Yorkers who feel there was a lot of insult, slight and disrespect toward an African American candidate, and it translated as a slight to the African American community."
Clinton's campaign declined to comment. In New York, she still enjoys the support of some high-profile black leaders. U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel has endorsed Clinton, as has the state's first black governor, David Paterson. But both men have been critical of her recently.
Rangel told reporters this month that her claim she has the support of white voters was "the dumbest thing she could ever have said." Clinton later agreed with that.
Paterson recently told a radio show he saw "desperation" in Clinton's effort to count in her favor disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida. Clinton's dwindling chance of winning the nomination includes snagging as many Florida and Michigan delegates as possible.
As the campaign unfolded, both Clintons made comments that some black leaders deemed dismissive of Obama. There was Bill Clinton's suggestion that Obama's victory in South Carolina carried no more weight than Jesse Jackson's success there in the 1980s. Other sore points were Hillary Clinton's claim that she enjoys the support of "hard-working Americans, white Americans" and the credit she gave to President Lyndon Johnson -- rather than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- on civil rights legislation.
"There has been a consistent pattern of comments made by both Sen. Clinton and President Clinton from January until this moment that are deeply troubling to the African American community," said Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, whose district is in Brooklyn. "That will require meaningful reconciliation and discussion when Sen. Clinton returns to New York."
The Rev. Clinton Miller of Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn said that any hurt feelings left by the campaign could be easily overcome.
"There are wounds, but I don't think they necessarily have to be that deep," Miller said. "They're deep wounds for people who never liked Hillary in the first place."
He encouraged her to be more of a presence in the city's neighborhoods.
"For her to heal those wounds, she would be well served either in public office or just in her private life by being herself and working toward those ideals that she's always espoused as a person."
African American leaders said she could repair frayed ties by visiting black churches, backing legislation that shows she is sensitive to conditions in black neighborhoods, and apologizing for comments she and her husband made that seemed to polarize voters and marginalize Obama.
"She has a problem," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a New York-based civil rights activist. "If she doesn't aggressively deal with the problem -- rather than sit in denial -- it will haunt her at home in her Senate race."
Clinton's Senate term ends in January 2013.
Some Democrats have mentioned that she could run for governor of New York if she isn't nominated for president.
That prospect unnerves some black leaders. They said they didn't want to see her challenge Paterson, who plans to run in 2010. With Paterson in the job, some black leaders want a definitive statement from Clinton that she would not subject him to a primary challenge -- and say they haven't gotten it yet.
Benjamin said: "I was pretty much appalled when supporters said one of her options was to run for governor. We have a governor. He's a black Democrat. It's not wise for them to challenge a black Democrat for governor.
"She should have come out and said a flat no, that folks were wrong, but I did not see that or hear that coming from her."
peter.nicholas@latimes.com
QUOTE(tazvil04 @ May 30 2008, 06:50 AM)
I guess you have less courage than I thought you did.
Well, I do not have to resort to name calling.
Well, I do not have to resort to name calling.
Then why did you right after you said you didn't have to?
Regarding the rest of it consider the fact that I agree with your points but find your relentless aggression offensive to the point of being intolerable. In real life nobody would put up with it unless they work for you and then your best employees would be gone in short order. Please stop being abusive online.
January 9, 2008
Editorial
Unite, Not Divide, Really This Time
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/...agewanted=print
The New Hampshire primary has done Americans a service by leaving both parties’ nominating contests open and giving a truly broad range of voters a chance to participate in these vitally important choices. The coming contests will be colored in large part by how the contenders and their backers answer a basic question: Just how far are they willing to go to win?
If the Republican fringe plays to type and decides to savage John McCain, the party’s winner in New Hampshire, once again, and if the Clinton camp continues to allow its baser instincts to rule, they will do more harm than good to themselves, to their parties and to the political process. The danger signs are there on both sides, but are glaringly evident among the Democrats.
Senator Barack Obama did not refrain from dropping cutting comments about Senator Hillary Clinton into his speeches. “I’m not running because I think it’s my turn, that it’s somehow owed to me,” he would say. But he generally pitched his speeches on notes of inspiration and hope.
Mrs. Clinton ran an angry campaign in New Hampshire, and polls showed that voters noticed. She won narrowly, but came perilously close to injecting racial tension into what should have been — and still should be — an uplifting contest between the first major woman candidate and the first major African-American candidate.
In the days before the voting, Mrs. Clinton and her team were so intent on talking about how big a change a woman president would be — and it surely would — that some of her surrogates even suggested that it would be a more valuable change than an African-American president. Mrs. Clinton managed to energize the women’s vote in New Hampshire to win the contest, but the Democratic Party should be celebrating its full diversity, a refreshing and notable difference from the field of Republican contenders.
In Mrs. Clinton’s zeal to make the case that experience (hers) is more important than inspirational leadership (Mr. Obama’s), she made some peculiar comments about the relative importance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson to the civil rights cause. She complimented Dr. King’s soaring rhetoric, but said: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ... It took a president to get it done. ”
Why Mrs. Clinton would compare herself to Mr. Johnson, who escalated the war in Vietnam into a generational disaster, was baffling enough. It was hard to escape the distasteful implication that a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change. She pulled herself back from the brink by later talking about the mistreatment and danger Dr. King faced. Former President Bill Clinton, who seems to forget he is not the one running, hurled himself over the edge on Monday with a bizarre and rambling attack on Mr. Obama.
Mr. Clinton has generally been a statesman as ex-president, and keeping up this sort of behavior will undermine his credibility and ability to do more good.
We understand, and usually admire, Mrs. Clinton’s determination. Allowing her team’s wearyingly familiar strong-arm instincts to take over would be damaging for the Democrats in the fall, no matter who gets the nomination. Polls in Iowa and New Hampshire show that Democratic voters liked all of their candidates — they simply chose one. It would be a mistake for a politician whose unfavorable ratings across the nation have long been stuck in the 40 percent range to erase that good feeling about her party.
In 2000, after Mr. McCain beat George W. Bush in New Hampshire, the Republican Party’s right wing savaged the Arizona senator and his family during the South Carolina primary. It was the nation’s first taste of the politics of division practiced by Mr. Bush and Karl Rove that became the guiding principle of Mr. Bush’s presidency: winning justifies denying any role to the losers — even dissenting Republicans.
This year the Republicans have joined the Democrats in the chorus of change, and American voters have a right to expect it. The Republicans have not held back from criticizing each other, but not with the ferocity or the small-mindedness perfected by Mr. Rove. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, ran a negative campaign, and he lost in his neighboring state.
Mr. McCain, despite some pandering, is still not the choice of social conservatives or religious conservatives. As with the Democrats, however, Republicans have done well with voters by talking about leading all Americans.
That is not to say theirs has been an uplifting campaign. The Republicans happily accuse the Democrats of advocating socialized medicine, which anyone who has listened to them knows is nonsense. Rudolph Giuliani has built his entire bid for the White House feeding fears of terrorism. But Mr. McCain, Mike Huckabee and even Mr. Romney talk about how disillusioned Americans are with Washington and about their intent to unite the country.
Americans have had seven painful and disillusioning years. The last thing they want is for either party to drag out the old playbooks of division and anger. We doubt now whether Mr. Bush ever intended to deliver on his 2000 pledge to unite, not divide. Americans still want, and deserve, a leader who will fulfill that promise.
Editorial
Unite, Not Divide, Really This Time
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/...agewanted=print
The New Hampshire primary has done Americans a service by leaving both parties’ nominating contests open and giving a truly broad range of voters a chance to participate in these vitally important choices. The coming contests will be colored in large part by how the contenders and their backers answer a basic question: Just how far are they willing to go to win?
If the Republican fringe plays to type and decides to savage John McCain, the party’s winner in New Hampshire, once again, and if the Clinton camp continues to allow its baser instincts to rule, they will do more harm than good to themselves, to their parties and to the political process. The danger signs are there on both sides, but are glaringly evident among the Democrats.
Senator Barack Obama did not refrain from dropping cutting comments about Senator Hillary Clinton into his speeches. “I’m not running because I think it’s my turn, that it’s somehow owed to me,” he would say. But he generally pitched his speeches on notes of inspiration and hope.
Mrs. Clinton ran an angry campaign in New Hampshire, and polls showed that voters noticed. She won narrowly, but came perilously close to injecting racial tension into what should have been — and still should be — an uplifting contest between the first major woman candidate and the first major African-American candidate.
In the days before the voting, Mrs. Clinton and her team were so intent on talking about how big a change a woman president would be — and it surely would — that some of her surrogates even suggested that it would be a more valuable change than an African-American president. Mrs. Clinton managed to energize the women’s vote in New Hampshire to win the contest, but the Democratic Party should be celebrating its full diversity, a refreshing and notable difference from the field of Republican contenders.
In Mrs. Clinton’s zeal to make the case that experience (hers) is more important than inspirational leadership (Mr. Obama’s), she made some peculiar comments about the relative importance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson to the civil rights cause. She complimented Dr. King’s soaring rhetoric, but said: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ... It took a president to get it done. ”
Why Mrs. Clinton would compare herself to Mr. Johnson, who escalated the war in Vietnam into a generational disaster, was baffling enough. It was hard to escape the distasteful implication that a black man needed the help of a white man to effect change. She pulled herself back from the brink by later talking about the mistreatment and danger Dr. King faced. Former President Bill Clinton, who seems to forget he is not the one running, hurled himself over the edge on Monday with a bizarre and rambling attack on Mr. Obama.
Mr. Clinton has generally been a statesman as ex-president, and keeping up this sort of behavior will undermine his credibility and ability to do more good.
We understand, and usually admire, Mrs. Clinton’s determination. Allowing her team’s wearyingly familiar strong-arm instincts to take over would be damaging for the Democrats in the fall, no matter who gets the nomination. Polls in Iowa and New Hampshire show that Democratic voters liked all of their candidates — they simply chose one. It would be a mistake for a politician whose unfavorable ratings across the nation have long been stuck in the 40 percent range to erase that good feeling about her party.
In 2000, after Mr. McCain beat George W. Bush in New Hampshire, the Republican Party’s right wing savaged the Arizona senator and his family during the South Carolina primary. It was the nation’s first taste of the politics of division practiced by Mr. Bush and Karl Rove that became the guiding principle of Mr. Bush’s presidency: winning justifies denying any role to the losers — even dissenting Republicans.
This year the Republicans have joined the Democrats in the chorus of change, and American voters have a right to expect it. The Republicans have not held back from criticizing each other, but not with the ferocity or the small-mindedness perfected by Mr. Rove. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, ran a negative campaign, and he lost in his neighboring state.
Mr. McCain, despite some pandering, is still not the choice of social conservatives or religious conservatives. As with the Democrats, however, Republicans have done well with voters by talking about leading all Americans.
That is not to say theirs has been an uplifting campaign. The Republicans happily accuse the Democrats of advocating socialized medicine, which anyone who has listened to them knows is nonsense. Rudolph Giuliani has built his entire bid for the White House feeding fears of terrorism. But Mr. McCain, Mike Huckabee and even Mr. Romney talk about how disillusioned Americans are with Washington and about their intent to unite the country.
Americans have had seven painful and disillusioning years. The last thing they want is for either party to drag out the old playbooks of division and anger. We doubt now whether Mr. Bush ever intended to deliver on his 2000 pledge to unite, not divide. Americans still want, and deserve, a leader who will fulfill that promise.
QUOTE(tomhye @ May 30 2008, 07:57 AM)
Then why did you right after you said you didn't have to?
Regarding the rest of it consider the fact that I agree with your points but find your relentless aggression offensive to the point of being intolerable. In real life nobody would put up with it unless they work for you and then your best employees would be gone in short order. Please stop being abusive online.
Regarding the rest of it consider the fact that I agree with your points but find your relentless aggression offensive to the point of being intolerable. In real life nobody would put up with it unless they work for you and then your best employees would be gone in short order. Please stop being abusive online.
I am sorry if you find my efforts in the latest regard obnoxious, offensive and overbearing regarding TROU.
I am frustrated at the insinuation that TROU continues to make regarding Obama race baiting.
I have gone out of my way to defend his candidate when people on this site have issued what I thought were unfair or unjustified attacks on her, her campaign, or her family.
I was hoping for mutual respect from him in that regard which will obviosuly not be forthcoming.
I will take your kind advice and cease and desist on this matter.
QUOTE(graham4anything @ May 30 2008, 02:12 AM)
here's a funny video I saw by actor Jerry O'Connell (who has a cameo in the end of it)
People on both sides should like this
Truth be told, We all should find this so truthful.
Young Hillary Clitnon
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/dc0b0f5ffc
People on both sides should like this
Truth be told, We all should find this so truthful.
Young Hillary Clitnon
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/dc0b0f5ffc
The girl actress was great...
QUOTE(graham4anything @ May 30 2008, 02:02 AM)
Latest Rasmussen musings-
Election 2008: New York Presidential Election
50% of New York Democrats Say Clinton Should Drop Out of White House Race
Thursday, May 29, 2008 Email to a Friend
Fifty percent (50%) of New York Democrats say it’s time for Senator Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race for the White House. Just 43% believe she should keep going.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey also found that most New York Republicans—52%--want Clinton to keep striving for the nomination. Overall, among all Empire State voters, 45% believe she should drop out while 43% disagree.
Just 16% of New York Democrats think Obama should drop out of the race.
Forty-seven percent (47%) of New York voters believe Obama is the stronger general election candidate. Forty-three percent (43%) believe Clinton would be better.
The survey also found that Obama is now viewed more favorably than Clinton in New York. Sixty-two percent (62%) of New York voters have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama while 55% give Hillary Clinton such positive reviews.
For Obama, those ratings are up four points from a month ago while Clinton’s are down three points. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is viewed positively by 44%. His ratings are down six points from the previous survey.
Election 2008: New York Presidential Election
50% of New York Democrats Say Clinton Should Drop Out of White House Race
Thursday, May 29, 2008 Email to a Friend
Fifty percent (50%) of New York Democrats say it’s time for Senator Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race for the White House. Just 43% believe she should keep going.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey also found that most New York Republicans—52%--want Clinton to keep striving for the nomination. Overall, among all Empire State voters, 45% believe she should drop out while 43% disagree.
Just 16% of New York Democrats think Obama should drop out of the race.
Forty-seven percent (47%) of New York voters believe Obama is the stronger general election candidate. Forty-three percent (43%) believe Clinton would be better.
The survey also found that Obama is now viewed more favorably than Clinton in New York. Sixty-two percent (62%) of New York voters have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama while 55% give Hillary Clinton such positive reviews.
For Obama, those ratings are up four points from a month ago while Clinton’s are down three points. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is viewed positively by 44%. His ratings are down six points from the previous survey.
See the LA Times article I posted above...
Time is right for his unifying vision: Yes, Obama can
By The Editorial Board | Saturday, February 2, 2008, 07:30 PM
Look closely at the two Democratic front-runners for president and you will see similarities in how they address challenging problems confronting the country.
Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois both talk about strengthening the middle class, expanding economic growth and lifting sagging wages. Both offer solutions for the crisis in our health care system and global warming and support ending the war in Iraq. So the key differences between the candidates are in their leadership styles and visions for the country.
Obama presents a view of governing that is inclusive and relies on Americans to work with their government to solve sobering problems at home and abroad. Obama’s familiar refrain on the campaign trail is, “Yes, we can.”
By contrast, Clinton promotes a self-centered governing style that drives home what she would do as president. She asks little of Americans and discourages opposing views. Clinton has moved from her position as first lady that it “takes a village” to solve problems to it takes only Hillary (and maybe Bill).
Those contrasts offer a clear choice: Barack Obama. His optimism, unifying vision and ability to inspire are the kind of healing balm the country needs at this moment in history.
In two days, on “Super Tuesday,” 22 states will hold Democratic primaries and caucuses. The outcome of those contests might determine a winner. If not, the battle moves to Texas on March 4. Obama is the best pick Democrats could make.
Resolving the big issues confronting the nation requires a leader who can attract support from independents and Republicans. Of the two front runners, only Obama has shown the ability to bring divergent interests together. He did that as a state senator in Illinois and as a U.S. senator in Washington. And he has staked his presidential campaign on doing that in the White House.
In endorsing Obama, the Chicago Tribune recently wrote this about his tenure in the Illinois Legislature: “In the minority party for all but his final two years in the Statehouse, he tempered a progressive agenda with a cold dash of realism, often forging consensus with conservative Republicans when other liberals wanted to crusade.”
Obama brought that style of leadership to Washington. He worked with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to sponsor and pass legislation that would assist taxpayers in tracking government spending - including earmarks and federal grants - with a Google-like search engine.
Obama showed courage in opposing the Iraq war in 2002 as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, years before that was the popular position. He backs aggressive diplomacy in dealing with America’s adversaries, including talking to our enemies.
But he isn’t against the use of military might and continues to support the war in Afghanistan. We also believe that Obama is more electable than Clinton, who would no doubt energize dispirited Republican voters. That makes Obama a stronger nominee for the Democrats going into November.
In another election, we might look for the kind of experience Clinton brings from her role as a U.S. senator and tenure as first lady. But these are different times. Abroad, the country is at war. The terrorism threat remains alarming. America’s moral standing has been diminished by Guantánamo and the Iraqi occupation.
At home, we’re divided into red and blue camps. Democrats and Republicans have stoked divisions to advance their party’s interests. Meanwhile, Washington is stumbling along with its red leg moving right and blue one lurching left.
Along the way, elected officials - and the public - have forgotten that those legs are part of the same body. It’s not surprising, therefore, that we’ve danced in place, failing to make progress on the big challenges that confront our country. Young people, disillusioned and disheartened with their government, have tuned out.
No other candidate except Obama offers a way out of that rut. He has articulated a vision that would allow the legs of government to again move fluidly in a natural motion that takes the country forward.
Young people hungry for purpose have flocked to Obama rallies in rock concert numbers. They’re not just cheering but volunteering. Older people, especially African Americans, send small donations and passages from Scripture as they look to him to fulfill America’s promise.
Like a veteran slugger on deck, Hillary Clinton has campaigned principally on the logic that it is her turn at bat. Democrats must resist the instinct to select the next in line and grab instead the best hitter on the bench. That is Barack Obama.
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/sha...s_unifying.html
By The Editorial Board | Saturday, February 2, 2008, 07:30 PM
Look closely at the two Democratic front-runners for president and you will see similarities in how they address challenging problems confronting the country.
Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois both talk about strengthening the middle class, expanding economic growth and lifting sagging wages. Both offer solutions for the crisis in our health care system and global warming and support ending the war in Iraq. So the key differences between the candidates are in their leadership styles and visions for the country.
Obama presents a view of governing that is inclusive and relies on Americans to work with their government to solve sobering problems at home and abroad. Obama’s familiar refrain on the campaign trail is, “Yes, we can.”
By contrast, Clinton promotes a self-centered governing style that drives home what she would do as president. She asks little of Americans and discourages opposing views. Clinton has moved from her position as first lady that it “takes a village” to solve problems to it takes only Hillary (and maybe Bill).
Those contrasts offer a clear choice: Barack Obama. His optimism, unifying vision and ability to inspire are the kind of healing balm the country needs at this moment in history.
In two days, on “Super Tuesday,” 22 states will hold Democratic primaries and caucuses. The outcome of those contests might determine a winner. If not, the battle moves to Texas on March 4. Obama is the best pick Democrats could make.
Resolving the big issues confronting the nation requires a leader who can attract support from independents and Republicans. Of the two front runners, only Obama has shown the ability to bring divergent interests together. He did that as a state senator in Illinois and as a U.S. senator in Washington. And he has staked his presidential campaign on doing that in the White House.
In endorsing Obama, the Chicago Tribune recently wrote this about his tenure in the Illinois Legislature: “In the minority party for all but his final two years in the Statehouse, he tempered a progressive agenda with a cold dash of realism, often forging consensus with conservative Republicans when other liberals wanted to crusade.”
Obama brought that style of leadership to Washington. He worked with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to sponsor and pass legislation that would assist taxpayers in tracking government spending - including earmarks and federal grants - with a Google-like search engine.
Obama showed courage in opposing the Iraq war in 2002 as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, years before that was the popular position. He backs aggressive diplomacy in dealing with America’s adversaries, including talking to our enemies.
But he isn’t against the use of military might and continues to support the war in Afghanistan. We also believe that Obama is more electable than Clinton, who would no doubt energize dispirited Republican voters. That makes Obama a stronger nominee for the Democrats going into November.
In another election, we might look for the kind of experience Clinton brings from her role as a U.S. senator and tenure as first lady. But these are different times. Abroad, the country is at war. The terrorism threat remains alarming. America’s moral standing has been diminished by Guantánamo and the Iraqi occupation.
At home, we’re divided into red and blue camps. Democrats and Republicans have stoked divisions to advance their party’s interests. Meanwhile, Washington is stumbling along with its red leg moving right and blue one lurching left.
Along the way, elected officials - and the public - have forgotten that those legs are part of the same body. It’s not surprising, therefore, that we’ve danced in place, failing to make progress on the big challenges that confront our country. Young people, disillusioned and disheartened with their government, have tuned out.
No other candidate except Obama offers a way out of that rut. He has articulated a vision that would allow the legs of government to again move fluidly in a natural motion that takes the country forward.
Young people hungry for purpose have flocked to Obama rallies in rock concert numbers. They’re not just cheering but volunteering. Older people, especially African Americans, send small donations and passages from Scripture as they look to him to fulfill America’s promise.
Like a veteran slugger on deck, Hillary Clinton has campaigned principally on the logic that it is her turn at bat. Democrats must resist the instinct to select the next in line and grab instead the best hitter on the bench. That is Barack Obama.
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/sha...s_unifying.html
QUOTE(TheRestofUs @ May 29 2008, 11:12 PM)
Well, well... I never thought I'd be so "popular". Or is the word "infamous"? At least in Taz's mind. Listen Taz, there was going to be the race issue brought up as soon as Obama became a serious contenter.
So far I'm with you.
QUOTE
I watched carefully along with everyone else who was going to pull the "race card" out first.
Seems to me that you had already decided who would be that person, just by the different standards you set for Hillary and Obama.
QUOTE
I posted the evidence of Michelle's statements about Bill's "fairy tale " comment and Obama's statements regarding Hillary's MLK/Johnson statements. Both reactions were race baiting IMO. By Michelle with her "hint" that an African American running for president, and in fact all black people, are being held back by such as Bill's characterization of Obama's run, was what had been done to blacks for a long time. Nice speech but no where near accurate about his statement. In fact it was race baiting about a comment that had nothing to do with that.
I think that Michelle probably had it wrong, like a lot of people did. Like a lot of people, including high paid columnists, had it wrong about what Louis Farrakhan said. (He never said that Jews had a "gutter religion", although he did actually say something almost as bad.) And if she had it wrong one can understand her reaction. You never were angry based on nothing more than a misunderstanding?
QUOTE
And she knew it, unless you believe she is a moron?
So you think that she is not a moron, but that her audience consisted of morons?
QUOTE
Likewise with Obama's comment that Hillary making a historically accurate statement about the passing of the Civil Rights Laws took both MLK and LBJ to get done as; "Unfortunate", and "Ill advised"? Why? Because they were true?
This from someone who has teased the most hateful meaning from words coming from the Obama side! Neither of the Obamas have ever accused the Clintons of being racists, but you see that accusation all over their statements. Look, Hillary was not giving a sixth grade level history lesson. That was not her point. She was trying to minimize Obama by saying that he was an inspiring movement leader but not a credible candidate for President, comparing him to King, who never pretended to be a candidate for any office, while Obama had been a serious politician for years. That comparison was invalid and demeaned both King and Obama, IMO. I don't think that there is necessarily a racial meaning there, although one could see it. But you are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand it is simply shocking that anyone would see a racial intent in Hillary's statement, it is so unwarranted. On the other hand the racial intent in Obama's response is so obvious. Simply because Obama criticizes a statement of Hillary does not mean he is accusing her of "playing the race card". There are other classes of low blows.
QUOTE
You choose to ignore this and deny it as evidence that the Obama campaign was hinting that both Hillary and Bill were "trying to once again hold the black man down". Maybe you don't know it but that is a favorite "meme" among black people who want to find an excuse to give up against the real oppression that has been foisted upon them for centuries, and for the century following Abolition.
So the Obamas are responsible for this kind of excuse mining in the Black community? Look, I am not so naive to deny that this kind of thing is something real with a lot of Black people, if far short of the majority. I certainly don't think we should simply just assume that a Black politician is resorting to exploiting this kind of thing unless we can prove that he or she is innocent.
QUOTE
You have suggested that I am spreading lies and that I should apologize for it, if as you put it I am "man" enough.
I don't think that you are spreading lies. I do think you have drawn conclusions that are extremely far from being at all warranted.
QUOTE
Again, I can't prove that it was a deliberate strategy, though I strongly suspect it. However, they had plenty to gain. Remember, polls pre-NH had Hillary ahead of Obama among black voters. Without overwhelming black support, frankly, Obama would not be the apparent nominee today. And I think that is a fair statement as, at the least, he would have won few, if any, Southern states.
I posted the avove comment from the Clinton thread....
It seems that many Hillary supporters believe that a: Obama played the race card, and b: it gave him the win.
Never mind that the reality is that the black vote was already supporting Obama before SC... it's just that most of the pre-SC states have low black populations. Never mind that after winning Iowa, the black vote had already moved to Obama by an tremendous majority.
With regard to the race card strategy, there is nothing to gain when you are already winning the overwhelming majority of votes in the category you could gain an advantage with... while costing yourself support with the far more competitive group of voters.
Their pretzel logic is just that... twisted logic. I guess when you need to rationalize the outcome you will resort to creating a reality that fits... in your mind.
QUOTE(NiteOwl @ May 30 2008, 08:52 AM)
I have ungraciously bowed out of that conversation...
Barack Obama's Leadership Lessons (Part 1)
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?arti...281474976823779
by Donna Carpenter
October 25, 2006 02:05 PM EDT (Updated: November 01, 2006 09:08 AM EST) views: 611 | rating: 8.9/10 (8 votes) | comments: 16
This year's graduating seniors at Northwestern University heard three great leadership lessons from their commencement speaker, Illinois Senator Barack Obama. The lessons came from his own extraordinary life, and if the graduates are wise, they will model their own lives on what Obama told them.
Barack Obama is the son of a white American mother and a Kenyan father who left the family when the boy was just two years old. He was raised largely by his mother's parents in a modest home in Hawaii, where Obama managed to get into a top-ranked prep school and then went to New York's Columbia University. It was in his freshman year there, he told the Northwestern graduates, that he learned his first great leadership lesson: "The world doesn't just revolve around you" -- you have to learn to see things through other people's eyes.
He was partying too much and studying just enough to get by, he said, and one night he and his friends spilled a lot of beer, broke a lot of bottles, and trashed the dorm so thoroughly that a cleaning woman, viewing the wreckage next morning, broke into tears. To his credit, that shook Obama, and so did his girlfriend when she told him, "That woman could've been my grandmother, Barack. She spent her days cleaning up after somebody else's mess." What he had, he concluded, was an "empathy deficit." And so does our country, he told the graduates: "We lack the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us -- the child who's hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room."
Mike Abrashoff learned that lesson as captain of USS Benfold, a dysfunctional guided missile destroyer that he was determined to make into the best damn ship in the Navy. He realized that to do that, he would need the active help of the crew, and he set about getting it by talking with every last one of them, 310 men and women, one by one until he really got to know them. They were a mixed lot, many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds and with very little education. A hotshot young officer might be tempted to think of them as losers. But when he got to understand them -- their home lives, their backgrounds, what they took pride in, the dreams they all had -- he saw that they could be winners, and their strong points could make up for their weaknesses. And together, they succeeded; in less than a year, Benfold won the coveted Spokane Trophy as the best ship in the Pacific Fleet.
Barack Obama warned the Northwestern graduates that they live in a culture that discourages empathy, where those in power tell us that the poor and homeless are lazy or weak, that inner-city children can't and won't learn, that innocent people being killed in distant lands are someone else's problem. Don't believe it, he said -- "because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential -- and become full-grown."
Barack Obama's Leadership Lessons (Part 2)
by Donna Carpenter
October 30, 2006 10:07 AM EST (Updated: November 01, 2006 09:10 AM EST) views: 159 | rating: 8.2/10 (5 votes) | comments: 11
When Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983, he could have done anything he wanted. His mother and grandparents advised him to go to law school. His friends were landing jobs on Wall Street and planning to get rich. But Obama had a determined goal -- "a crazy notion," he says now -- to be a community organizer working in low-income neighborhoods. Everyone scoffed; a man he knew told him he'd be wasting his time. "You can't change the world, and people won't appreciate you trying," he said. "You look like a nice clean-cut young man, and you've got a nice voice. What you should do is go into television broadcasting."
But Obama didn't listen -- and the course he followed has made him just the third black U.S. Senator since Reconstruction, on a path that might one day take him to the White House. That underscored the second great leadership lesson he spelled out for the graduating seniors of Northwestern University: "Challenge yourself. Take some risks in your life."
Obama was inspired, he said, by the teenagers and college students of the civil rights era, watching on television as police dogs and fire hoses assaulted marchers, seeing people beaten and hearing of murders and the bombing of churches. "They knew that it was safer and smarter to stay at home, to watch the movement from afar," Obama said. "But they also understood that these people in Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi were their brothers and sisters; that what was happening was wrong; and that they had an obligation to make it right. When the buses pulled up for a Freedom Ride down South, they got on. They took a risk. And they changed the world."
So he wrote letters to every community organization he knew of, and finally a group of churches on the south side of Chicago offered him $12,000 a year, plus $1,000 to buy a car, to work in neighborhoods that had been shattered by the closing of Chicago's steel plants. He stayed there for three years before he finally took his mother's advice and went to the Harvard Law School, where he was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review.
As Obama told the Northwestern graduates, "You can now punch your own ticket. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and go chasing after the big house and the large salary and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. But I hope you don't. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled. . . . Don't let people talk you into doing the safe thing. Listen to what's inside of you and decide what it is that you care about so much that you're willing to risk it all."
That's a lesson Mike Abrashoff was lucky enough to learn, too. When he was made a captain in the U.S. Navy, he could easily have finished out his career in safe, undemanding fashion, just by following orders and not making waves. Instead, he decided to go all-out to make the USS Benfold the best damn ship in the Navy. That involved a lot of hard work and a great many risks, not all of them prudent; he had to know when and how to ignore orders, how to get what he needed from his bosses by being totally dependable, and how to deal with the envy and jealousy of the captains he was showing up along the way. But thanks mainly to his crew, he succeeded, winning the Spokane trophy as the best ship in the Pacific fleet.
And when his tour of duty on Benfold was over, the safe course would have been to stay in the Navy, ride up the chain of command, and retire loaded with honors and gold braid. Instead, after nineteen years in the service, he challenged himself again, leaving the Navy to write a book about his experiences. The book became a New York Times and Business Week best seller, and that led to a successful speaking career. He says he'll never regret taking that risk.
Barack Obama's Leadership Lessons (Part 3)
by Donna Carpenter
November 01, 2006 01:50 PM EST (Updated: November 01, 2006 01:52 PM EST) views: 330 | rating: 8/10 (5 votes) | comments: 2
When Barack Obama challenged himself by becoming a community organizer in the Chicago slums rather than go to law school, he very nearly lost the challenge. In the end, he won through, and his risky path led him to become a U.S. Senator from Illinois. But as he told the graduating class of Northwestern University not long ago, the venture came close to defeat before he learned his third great leadership lesson in a dingy office on the south side of Chicago.
It was to have been his first community meeting, and the topic was gang violence. Obama and his volunteer helpers spent weeks planning the meeting, passing out flyers, visiting churches, inviting police speakers, telephoning reminders, and lining up row after row of chairs to handle the crowd. But it was a fiasco; when a tiny group of older people finally wandered in, it turned out they were looking for a bingo game. The police never came. In all, thirteen people showed up.
In the wake, Obama's volunteers told him they were quitting. They had been trying this for two years, they said, and had nothing to show for it. Staring out the window, facing failure, Obama saw a group of boys in a vacant lot, idly throwing stones at the boarded-up windows of abandoned buildings.
"Before you quit, I want you to answer one question," he said. "What's gonna happen to those boys? Who will fight for them if not us? Who will give them a fair shot if we leave?" One by one, the volunteers decided not to quit. They kept at the job, learning to know the people, absorbing the lessons of community politics they had ignored, and comforting themselves with small victories. Over time, says Obama, "A community changed. And so had we."
His third great lesson of leadership is deceptively simple: Persevere. Making a mark on the world is hard, Obama told the Northwestern graduates; it takes patience and commitment, and failure is part of the job description. But you have to keep plugging at it.
That's a lesson Mike Abrashoff learned over and over as captain of the guided missile destroyer USS Benfold. And it was never clearer than in the case of a seemingly incompetent officer on probation.
The junior officer had been fired by one of Benfold's sister ships, and his commodore had asked Abrashoff to try to salvage the sailor. The man's name was Elliott, and Abrashoff soon discovered that he was a very gifted naval officer. Elliott could recite whole manuals and explain complex procedures, such as how to find enemy submarines. He was only 23 and barely out of the Naval Academy, yet he knew more than some of Abrashoff's department heads. Elliott had only one problem, but it was crucial: He had no self-confidence, and, as a result, attracted bullies like flies to honey. His previous shipmates had smelled blood and piled on, ridiculing him routinely. And as often happens, in response to being abused, Elliott began to abuse people below him. Finally the commander fired him.
Abrashoff was very blunt with Elliott, telling him that Benfold's crew members lived and worked by the Golden Rule. They trusted that everyone would be treated with dignity and respect, and they expected no less for and from him. No one would belittle him, and, of course, he must never ridicule others. It took time and nurturing to help him recognize his own strengths, but Elliott turned out to be one of Abrashoff's best officers. When it came to spotting and fighting submarines, for example, no one could match him. He eventually qualified as an officer of the deck, which retrieved his career. He also let Abrashoff send a crucial signal to the rest of the crew: "You may screw up, but we believe in comebacks. We won't give up on you. We'll help."
As Barack Obama put it to the Northwestern graduates, failure doesn't equal defeat. "The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't," he said. "It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere."
Obama's three great lessons of leadership -- learning empathy, challenging yourself, and persevering through adversity -- should be engraved in stone wherever leaders learn and function. They are lessons for us all.
Donna Carpenter is an award-winning writer and editor and founder and chief executive officer of Wordworks, Inc.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?arti...281474976823779
by Donna Carpenter
October 25, 2006 02:05 PM EDT (Updated: November 01, 2006 09:08 AM EST) views: 611 | rating: 8.9/10 (8 votes) | comments: 16
This year's graduating seniors at Northwestern University heard three great leadership lessons from their commencement speaker, Illinois Senator Barack Obama. The lessons came from his own extraordinary life, and if the graduates are wise, they will model their own lives on what Obama told them.
Barack Obama is the son of a white American mother and a Kenyan father who left the family when the boy was just two years old. He was raised largely by his mother's parents in a modest home in Hawaii, where Obama managed to get into a top-ranked prep school and then went to New York's Columbia University. It was in his freshman year there, he told the Northwestern graduates, that he learned his first great leadership lesson: "The world doesn't just revolve around you" -- you have to learn to see things through other people's eyes.
He was partying too much and studying just enough to get by, he said, and one night he and his friends spilled a lot of beer, broke a lot of bottles, and trashed the dorm so thoroughly that a cleaning woman, viewing the wreckage next morning, broke into tears. To his credit, that shook Obama, and so did his girlfriend when she told him, "That woman could've been my grandmother, Barack. She spent her days cleaning up after somebody else's mess." What he had, he concluded, was an "empathy deficit." And so does our country, he told the graduates: "We lack the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us -- the child who's hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room."
Mike Abrashoff learned that lesson as captain of USS Benfold, a dysfunctional guided missile destroyer that he was determined to make into the best damn ship in the Navy. He realized that to do that, he would need the active help of the crew, and he set about getting it by talking with every last one of them, 310 men and women, one by one until he really got to know them. They were a mixed lot, many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds and with very little education. A hotshot young officer might be tempted to think of them as losers. But when he got to understand them -- their home lives, their backgrounds, what they took pride in, the dreams they all had -- he saw that they could be winners, and their strong points could make up for their weaknesses. And together, they succeeded; in less than a year, Benfold won the coveted Spokane Trophy as the best ship in the Pacific Fleet.
Barack Obama warned the Northwestern graduates that they live in a culture that discourages empathy, where those in power tell us that the poor and homeless are lazy or weak, that inner-city children can't and won't learn, that innocent people being killed in distant lands are someone else's problem. Don't believe it, he said -- "because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. And because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential -- and become full-grown."
Barack Obama's Leadership Lessons (Part 2)
by Donna Carpenter
October 30, 2006 10:07 AM EST (Updated: November 01, 2006 09:10 AM EST) views: 159 | rating: 8.2/10 (5 votes) | comments: 11
When Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983, he could have done anything he wanted. His mother and grandparents advised him to go to law school. His friends were landing jobs on Wall Street and planning to get rich. But Obama had a determined goal -- "a crazy notion," he says now -- to be a community organizer working in low-income neighborhoods. Everyone scoffed; a man he knew told him he'd be wasting his time. "You can't change the world, and people won't appreciate you trying," he said. "You look like a nice clean-cut young man, and you've got a nice voice. What you should do is go into television broadcasting."
But Obama didn't listen -- and the course he followed has made him just the third black U.S. Senator since Reconstruction, on a path that might one day take him to the White House. That underscored the second great leadership lesson he spelled out for the graduating seniors of Northwestern University: "Challenge yourself. Take some risks in your life."
Obama was inspired, he said, by the teenagers and college students of the civil rights era, watching on television as police dogs and fire hoses assaulted marchers, seeing people beaten and hearing of murders and the bombing of churches. "They knew that it was safer and smarter to stay at home, to watch the movement from afar," Obama said. "But they also understood that these people in Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi were their brothers and sisters; that what was happening was wrong; and that they had an obligation to make it right. When the buses pulled up for a Freedom Ride down South, they got on. They took a risk. And they changed the world."
So he wrote letters to every community organization he knew of, and finally a group of churches on the south side of Chicago offered him $12,000 a year, plus $1,000 to buy a car, to work in neighborhoods that had been shattered by the closing of Chicago's steel plants. He stayed there for three years before he finally took his mother's advice and went to the Harvard Law School, where he was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review.
As Obama told the Northwestern graduates, "You can now punch your own ticket. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and go chasing after the big house and the large salary and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. But I hope you don't. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled. . . . Don't let people talk you into doing the safe thing. Listen to what's inside of you and decide what it is that you care about so much that you're willing to risk it all."
That's a lesson Mike Abrashoff was lucky enough to learn, too. When he was made a captain in the U.S. Navy, he could easily have finished out his career in safe, undemanding fashion, just by following orders and not making waves. Instead, he decided to go all-out to make the USS Benfold the best damn ship in the Navy. That involved a lot of hard work and a great many risks, not all of them prudent; he had to know when and how to ignore orders, how to get what he needed from his bosses by being totally dependable, and how to deal with the envy and jealousy of the captains he was showing up along the way. But thanks mainly to his crew, he succeeded, winning the Spokane trophy as the best ship in the Pacific fleet.
And when his tour of duty on Benfold was over, the safe course would have been to stay in the Navy, ride up the chain of command, and retire loaded with honors and gold braid. Instead, after nineteen years in the service, he challenged himself again, leaving the Navy to write a book about his experiences. The book became a New York Times and Business Week best seller, and that led to a successful speaking career. He says he'll never regret taking that risk.
Barack Obama's Leadership Lessons (Part 3)
by Donna Carpenter
November 01, 2006 01:50 PM EST (Updated: November 01, 2006 01:52 PM EST) views: 330 | rating: 8/10 (5 votes) | comments: 2
When Barack Obama challenged himself by becoming a community organizer in the Chicago slums rather than go to law school, he very nearly lost the challenge. In the end, he won through, and his risky path led him to become a U.S. Senator from Illinois. But as he told the graduating class of Northwestern University not long ago, the venture came close to defeat before he learned his third great leadership lesson in a dingy office on the south side of Chicago.
It was to have been his first community meeting, and the topic was gang violence. Obama and his volunteer helpers spent weeks planning the meeting, passing out flyers, visiting churches, inviting police speakers, telephoning reminders, and lining up row after row of chairs to handle the crowd. But it was a fiasco; when a tiny group of older people finally wandered in, it turned out they were looking for a bingo game. The police never came. In all, thirteen people showed up.
In the wake, Obama's volunteers told him they were quitting. They had been trying this for two years, they said, and had nothing to show for it. Staring out the window, facing failure, Obama saw a group of boys in a vacant lot, idly throwing stones at the boarded-up windows of abandoned buildings.
"Before you quit, I want you to answer one question," he said. "What's gonna happen to those boys? Who will fight for them if not us? Who will give them a fair shot if we leave?" One by one, the volunteers decided not to quit. They kept at the job, learning to know the people, absorbing the lessons of community politics they had ignored, and comforting themselves with small victories. Over time, says Obama, "A community changed. And so had we."
His third great lesson of leadership is deceptively simple: Persevere. Making a mark on the world is hard, Obama told the Northwestern graduates; it takes patience and commitment, and failure is part of the job description. But you have to keep plugging at it.
That's a lesson Mike Abrashoff learned over and over as captain of the guided missile destroyer USS Benfold. And it was never clearer than in the case of a seemingly incompetent officer on probation.
The junior officer had been fired by one of Benfold's sister ships, and his commodore had asked Abrashoff to try to salvage the sailor. The man's name was Elliott, and Abrashoff soon discovered that he was a very gifted naval officer. Elliott could recite whole manuals and explain complex procedures, such as how to find enemy submarines. He was only 23 and barely out of the Naval Academy, yet he knew more than some of Abrashoff's department heads. Elliott had only one problem, but it was crucial: He had no self-confidence, and, as a result, attracted bullies like flies to honey. His previous shipmates had smelled blood and piled on, ridiculing him routinely. And as often happens, in response to being abused, Elliott began to abuse people below him. Finally the commander fired him.
Abrashoff was very blunt with Elliott, telling him that Benfold's crew members lived and worked by the Golden Rule. They trusted that everyone would be treated with dignity and respect, and they expected no less for and from him. No one would belittle him, and, of course, he must never ridicule others. It took time and nurturing to help him recognize his own strengths, but Elliott turned out to be one of Abrashoff's best officers. When it came to spotting and fighting submarines, for example, no one could match him. He eventually qualified as an officer of the deck, which retrieved his career. He also let Abrashoff send a crucial signal to the rest of the crew: "You may screw up, but we believe in comebacks. We won't give up on you. We'll help."
As Barack Obama put it to the Northwestern graduates, failure doesn't equal defeat. "The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't," he said. "It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere."
Obama's three great lessons of leadership -- learning empathy, challenging yourself, and persevering through adversity -- should be engraved in stone wherever leaders learn and function. They are lessons for us all.
Donna Carpenter is an award-winning writer and editor and founder and chief executive officer of Wordworks, Inc.
QUOTE(tazvil04 @ May 30 2008, 11:35 AM)
I have ungraciously bowed out of that conversation...
Dan Balz's Take
A Leadership Opportunity for Obama
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2...nity_for_o.html
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) addresses people during a Town Hall meeting at B'nai Torah Congregation May 22, 2008 in Boca Raton, Fla. (Getty Images)
By Dan Balz
The upcoming meeting of the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee over what to do about Michigan and Florida offers Barack Obama a unique opportunity. The question is whether he will seize it.
Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist steeped in the history of past nominating battles, described the May 31 meeting this way. "The committee meeting will be the first test of whether the party can come together," he said. "If these two campaigns can talk together, they should be able to reach agreement with one another."
Obama and Hillary Clinton agree that both the Michigan and Florida delegations, currently barred from attending the convention because they moved up their primaries in violation of party rules, should be seated. But they are far apart in their initial negotiating positions about how many votes the states should have and how those delegates are allocated.
Devine believes the onus is on Obama to help produce the solution. "As the putative nominee, it's incumbent on him to take the lead and try to put it together," he said. Later, he added this: "If Obama stood up and brokered this, he would demonstrate the kind of skills he's talked about asserting as president. ... He needs to step up, he needs to solve this, and when it's solved he will be the beneficiary of it. [Obama advisers] need to believe that."
At this point, according to officials in both campaigns, there are no direct talks over Michigan and Florida. Both campaigns are talking to DNC officials and the co-chairs of the Rules and Bylaws Committee -- Alexis Herman and James Roosevelt Jr. -- are surveying committee members to gauge whether there is any consensus emerging.
The Clinton campaign has staked out a tough position, what's described as the "100 percent, 100 percent" solution. Clinton wants the full delegations from both states seated, with full voting rights, and the pledged delegates allocated on the basis of last winter's primary results.
That means in Michigan awarding no delegates to Obama because he took his name off the ballot. The non-Clinton delegates would officially be considered uncommitted. Clinton's campaign has calculated that, if that solution prevails, she will net 111 delegates, although most of the uncommitted delegates likely would end up supporting Obama.
Clinton appears to have miscalculated this week. Since the Oregon and Kentucky primaries, she has ratcheted up her rhetoric, linking Michigan and Florida to the disputed election in Zimbabwe, slavery and the Constitution. Knowledgeable Democrats say such talk has played badly with the very people Clinton needs most right now, superdelegates and members of the rules committee.
The Clinton campaign's proposal has almost no prospect of prevailing. Having sanctioned Florida and Michigan earlier, the committee members appear unwilling to approve a solution that could be seen as now letting the states off without some punishment.
Roosevelt said one of the principles of any likely resolution is that "the rules have to be honored, not only because they have the force of law, but also because if they are not honored we will have primaries in 2011 and total chaos in 2012."
Don Fowler, a former DNC chairman and a current member of the rules committee, offered a similar assessment. "As much as I disagree with what the Rules and Bylaws Committee did -- at least the harshness and timing -- even I would assert that there has to be some kind of retribution, some kind of sanction," he said.
Fowler's views hold weight not just because of his past role as party chairman but also because he has endorsed Clinton for president and is sympathetic to her position. As he put it, "I would be inclined to support what the campaign wanted, but there are limitations."
Obama campaign officials have said they are willing to compromise. Chief strategist David Axelrod told National Public Radio the Obama campaign is "willing to go more than halfway" and give up more delegates than the rules might otherwise dictate. "The question is, is Senator Clinton's campaign willing to do the same?"
But so far the most the campaign has done is embrace a proposal from Michigan Democratic leaders that is more generous to Clinton that the Obama campaign's initial proposal to award each candidate half the delegates, but less generous that would be the case of the primary results dictated the allocation.
Throughout the long dispute over Michigan and Florida, Obama and his advisers have demonstrated their willingness to play hardball politics. When there was growing pressure to conduct a new election in Michigan, the Obama campaign held firm in its resistance. Eventually legislation for a makeover primary collapsed, dealing another blow to Clinton's hopes of winning the nomination.
Now the Obama campaign is just as resistant to a compromise in Michigan that would not directly award him any delegates. And because his team believes Clinton's standing is rapidly being eroded by her rhetoric, they seem to have less incentive to move in her direction.
But this is more than a test of wills in the final hours of the long nomination fight. Obama already is looking to the general election. A smooth convention and relatively harmonious relations with the Clintons and their campaign are clearly in his interest.
Obama's core message is the politics of change and the politics of unity, not a continuation of the hard-line tactics that Republicans and Democrats have embraced in Washington. Practical politics dictate that he help find a solution that also does nothing to diminish the Democrats' chances of carrying either of the two states.
For Obama, all that points in the direction of being in the forefront of finding a solution, not being a bystander who, in the end, simply accepts what the committee decides. Although he is not yet the Democratic nominee, he could enhance his position as the putative leader of the party by starting to act like it in this fight.
A Leadership Opportunity for Obama
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2...nity_for_o.html
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) addresses people during a Town Hall meeting at B'nai Torah Congregation May 22, 2008 in Boca Raton, Fla. (Getty Images)
By Dan Balz
The upcoming meeting of the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee over what to do about Michigan and Florida offers Barack Obama a unique opportunity. The question is whether he will seize it.
Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist steeped in the history of past nominating battles, described the May 31 meeting this way. "The committee meeting will be the first test of whether the party can come together," he said. "If these two campaigns can talk together, they should be able to reach agreement with one another."
Obama and Hillary Clinton agree that both the Michigan and Florida delegations, currently barred from attending the convention because they moved up their primaries in violation of party rules, should be seated. But they are far apart in their initial negotiating positions about how many votes the states should have and how those delegates are allocated.
Devine believes the onus is on Obama to help produce the solution. "As the putative nominee, it's incumbent on him to take the lead and try to put it together," he said. Later, he added this: "If Obama stood up and brokered this, he would demonstrate the kind of skills he's talked about asserting as president. ... He needs to step up, he needs to solve this, and when it's solved he will be the beneficiary of it. [Obama advisers] need to believe that."
At this point, according to officials in both campaigns, there are no direct talks over Michigan and Florida. Both campaigns are talking to DNC officials and the co-chairs of the Rules and Bylaws Committee -- Alexis Herman and James Roosevelt Jr. -- are surveying committee members to gauge whether there is any consensus emerging.
The Clinton campaign has staked out a tough position, what's described as the "100 percent, 100 percent" solution. Clinton wants the full delegations from both states seated, with full voting rights, and the pledged delegates allocated on the basis of last winter's primary results.
That means in Michigan awarding no delegates to Obama because he took his name off the ballot. The non-Clinton delegates would officially be considered uncommitted. Clinton's campaign has calculated that, if that solution prevails, she will net 111 delegates, although most of the uncommitted delegates likely would end up supporting Obama.
Clinton appears to have miscalculated this week. Since the Oregon and Kentucky primaries, she has ratcheted up her rhetoric, linking Michigan and Florida to the disputed election in Zimbabwe, slavery and the Constitution. Knowledgeable Democrats say such talk has played badly with the very people Clinton needs most right now, superdelegates and members of the rules committee.
The Clinton campaign's proposal has almost no prospect of prevailing. Having sanctioned Florida and Michigan earlier, the committee members appear unwilling to approve a solution that could be seen as now letting the states off without some punishment.
Roosevelt said one of the principles of any likely resolution is that "the rules have to be honored, not only because they have the force of law, but also because if they are not honored we will have primaries in 2011 and total chaos in 2012."
Don Fowler, a former DNC chairman and a current member of the rules committee, offered a similar assessment. "As much as I disagree with what the Rules and Bylaws Committee did -- at least the harshness and timing -- even I would assert that there has to be some kind of retribution, some kind of sanction," he said.
Fowler's views hold weight not just because of his past role as party chairman but also because he has endorsed Clinton for president and is sympathetic to her position. As he put it, "I would be inclined to support what the campaign wanted, but there are limitations."
Obama campaign officials have said they are willing to compromise. Chief strategist David Axelrod told National Public Radio the Obama campaign is "willing to go more than halfway" and give up more delegates than the rules might otherwise dictate. "The question is, is Senator Clinton's campaign willing to do the same?"
But so far the most the campaign has done is embrace a proposal from Michigan Democratic leaders that is more generous to Clinton that the Obama campaign's initial proposal to award each candidate half the delegates, but less generous that would be the case of the primary results dictated the allocation.
Throughout the long dispute over Michigan and Florida, Obama and his advisers have demonstrated their willingness to play hardball politics. When there was growing pressure to conduct a new election in Michigan, the Obama campaign held firm in its resistance. Eventually legislation for a makeover primary collapsed, dealing another blow to Clinton's hopes of winning the nomination.
Now the Obama campaign is just as resistant to a compromise in Michigan that would not directly award him any delegates. And because his team believes Clinton's standing is rapidly being eroded by her rhetoric, they seem to have less incentive to move in her direction.
But this is more than a test of wills in the final hours of the long nomination fight. Obama already is looking to the general election. A smooth convention and relatively harmonious relations with the Clintons and their campaign are clearly in his interest.
Obama's core message is the politics of change and the politics of unity, not a continuation of the hard-line tactics that Republicans and Democrats have embraced in Washington. Practical politics dictate that he help find a solution that also does nothing to diminish the Democrats' chances of carrying either of the two states.
For Obama, all that points in the direction of being in the forefront of finding a solution, not being a bystander who, in the end, simply accepts what the committee decides. Although he is not yet the Democratic nominee, he could enhance his position as the putative leader of the party by starting to act like it in this fight.
QUOTE(NiteOwl @ May 30 2008, 11:28 AM)
I posted the avove comment from the Clinton thread....
It seems that many Hillary supporters believe that a: Obama played the race card, and b: it gave him the win.
Never mind that the reality is that the black vote was already supporting Obama before SC... it's just that most of the pre-SC states have low black populations. Never mind that after winning Iowa, the black vote had already moved to Obama by an tremendous majority.
With regard to the race card strategy, there is nothing to gain when you are already winning the overwhelming majority of votes in the category you could gain an advantage with... while costing yourself support with the far more competitive group of voters.
Their pretzel logic is just that... twisted logic. I guess when you need to rationalize the outcome you will resort to creating a reality that fits... in your mind.
It seems that many Hillary supporters believe that a: Obama played the race card, and b: it gave him the win.
Never mind that the reality is that the black vote was already supporting Obama before SC... it's just that most of the pre-SC states have low black populations. Never mind that after winning Iowa, the black vote had already moved to Obama by an tremendous majority.
With regard to the race card strategy, there is nothing to gain when you are already winning the overwhelming majority of votes in the category you could gain an advantage with... while costing yourself support with the far more competitive group of voters.
Their pretzel logic is just that... twisted logic. I guess when you need to rationalize the outcome you will resort to creating a reality that fits... in your mind.
I think that some people have a hard time believing that there can be anything positive in how Black people have supported Obama. While I support Obama, I can appreciate how many women have been excited about voting for Hillary as the first female major contender for President. I certainly think people need to look at positions and qualifications, but once they have done that to sort out which candidates are acceptable I see nothing wrong in group pride as one factor in how you vote. Even if that hurts my side, you just have to deal with it.
What if Obama supporters had been knocking Hillary for stirring up resentment by women against Obama? With the possible exception of one comment she has made very recently, I see no basis for such a contention and think that such supporters would have been pilloried here by the Hillary side, and quite rightly.
QUOTE(NiteOwl @ May 30 2008, 09:44 AM)
Humility has rarely been a strong point of mine...
Obama campaign used party rules to foil Clinton
May 30, 6:28 AM (ET)
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
WASHINGTON (AP) - Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul. Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama's staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose.
Obama's campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage - money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president.
"Without a doubt, their understanding of the nominating process was one of the keys to their success," said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not aligned with either candidate. "They understood the nuances of it and approached it at a strategic level that the Clinton campaign did not."
Careful planning is one reason why Obama is emerging as the nominee as the Democratic Party prepares for its final three primaries, Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Attributing his success only to soaring speeches and prodigious fundraising ignores a critical part of contest.
Obama used the Democrats' system of awarding delegates to limit his losses in states won by Clinton while maximizing gains in states he carried. Clinton, meanwhile, conserved her resources by essentially conceding states that favored Obama, including many states that held caucuses instead of primaries.
In a stark example, Obama's victory in Kansas wiped out the gains made by Clinton for winning New Jersey, even though New Jersey had three times as many delegates at stake. Obama did it by winning big in Kansas while keeping the vote relatively close in New Jersey.
The research effort was headed by Jeffrey Berman, Obama's press-shy national director of delegate operations. Berman, who also tracked delegates in former Rep. Dick Gephardt's presidential bids, spent the better part of 2007 analyzing delegate opportunities for Obama.
Obama won a majority of the 23 Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5 and then spent the following two weeks racking up 11 straight victories, building an insurmountable lead among delegates won in primaries and caucuses.
What made it especially hard for Clinton to catch up was that Obama understood and took advantage of a nominating system that emerged from the 1970s and '80s, when the party struggled to find a balance between party insiders and its rank-and-file voters.
Until the 1970s, the nominating process was controlled by party leaders, with ordinary citizens having little say. There were primaries and caucuses, but the delegates were often chosen behind closed doors, sometimes a full year before the national convention. That culminated in a 1968 national convention that didn't reflect the diversity of the party - racially or ideologically.
The fiasco of the 1968 convention in Chicago, where police battled anti-war protesters in the streets, led to calls for a more inclusive process.
One big change was awarding delegates proportionally, meaning you can finish second or third in a primary and still win delegates to the party's national convention. As long candidates get at least 15 percent of the vote, they are eligible for delegates.
The system enables strong second-place candidates to stay competitive and extend the race - as long as they don't run out of campaign money.
"For people who want a campaign to end quickly, proportional allocation is a bad system," Devine said. "For people who want a system that is fair and reflective of the voters, it's a much better system."
Another big change was the introduction of superdelegates, the party and elected officials who automatically attend the convention and can vote for whomever they choose regardless of what happens in the primaries and caucuses.
Much has been made of the superdelegates this year because neither Obama nor Clinton can reach the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination without their support.
A more subtle change was the distribution of delegates within each state. As part of the proportional system, Democrats award delegates based on statewide vote totals as well as results in individual congressional districts. The delegates, however, are not distributed evenly within a state, like they are in the Republican system.
Under Democratic rules, congressional districts with a history of strong support for Democratic candidates are rewarded with more delegates than districts that are more Republican. Some districts packed with Democratic voters can have as many as eight or nine delegates up for grabs, while more Republican districts in the same state have three or four.
The system is designed to benefit candidates who do well among loyal Democratic constituencies, and none is more loyal than black voters. Obama, who would be the first black candidate nominated by a major political party, has been winning 80 percent to 90 percent of the black vote in most primaries, according to exit polls.
"Black districts always have a large number of delegates because they are the highest performers for the Democratic Party," said Elaine Kamarck, a Harvard University professor who is writing a book about the Democratic nominating process.
"Once you had a black candidate you knew that he would be winning large numbers of delegates because of this phenomenon," said Kamarck, who is also a superdelegate supporting Clinton.
In states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton won the statewide vote but Obama won enough delegates to limit her gains. In states Obama carried, like Georgia and Virginia, he maximized the number of delegates he won.
"The Obama campaign was very good at targeting districts in areas where they could do well," said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, a Clinton superdelegate from South Carolina. "They were very conscious and aware of these nuances."
But, Fowler noted, the best strategy in the world would have been useless without the right candidate.
"If that same strategy and that same effort had been used with a different candidate, a less charismatic candidate, a less attractive candidate, it wouldn't have worked," Fowler said. "The reason they look so good is because Obama was so good."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080530/D90VTEV00.html
May I point out that the same mindset and forethought would be a decided advantage in governance ?
May 30, 6:28 AM (ET)
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
WASHINGTON (AP) - Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul. Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama's staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose.
Obama's campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage - money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president.
"Without a doubt, their understanding of the nominating process was one of the keys to their success," said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not aligned with either candidate. "They understood the nuances of it and approached it at a strategic level that the Clinton campaign did not."
Careful planning is one reason why Obama is emerging as the nominee as the Democratic Party prepares for its final three primaries, Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Attributing his success only to soaring speeches and prodigious fundraising ignores a critical part of contest.
Obama used the Democrats' system of awarding delegates to limit his losses in states won by Clinton while maximizing gains in states he carried. Clinton, meanwhile, conserved her resources by essentially conceding states that favored Obama, including many states that held caucuses instead of primaries.
In a stark example, Obama's victory in Kansas wiped out the gains made by Clinton for winning New Jersey, even though New Jersey had three times as many delegates at stake. Obama did it by winning big in Kansas while keeping the vote relatively close in New Jersey.
The research effort was headed by Jeffrey Berman, Obama's press-shy national director of delegate operations. Berman, who also tracked delegates in former Rep. Dick Gephardt's presidential bids, spent the better part of 2007 analyzing delegate opportunities for Obama.
Obama won a majority of the 23 Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5 and then spent the following two weeks racking up 11 straight victories, building an insurmountable lead among delegates won in primaries and caucuses.
What made it especially hard for Clinton to catch up was that Obama understood and took advantage of a nominating system that emerged from the 1970s and '80s, when the party struggled to find a balance between party insiders and its rank-and-file voters.
Until the 1970s, the nominating process was controlled by party leaders, with ordinary citizens having little say. There were primaries and caucuses, but the delegates were often chosen behind closed doors, sometimes a full year before the national convention. That culminated in a 1968 national convention that didn't reflect the diversity of the party - racially or ideologically.
The fiasco of the 1968 convention in Chicago, where police battled anti-war protesters in the streets, led to calls for a more inclusive process.
One big change was awarding delegates proportionally, meaning you can finish second or third in a primary and still win delegates to the party's national convention. As long candidates get at least 15 percent of the vote, they are eligible for delegates.
The system enables strong second-place candidates to stay competitive and extend the race - as long as they don't run out of campaign money.
"For people who want a campaign to end quickly, proportional allocation is a bad system," Devine said. "For people who want a system that is fair and reflective of the voters, it's a much better system."
Another big change was the introduction of superdelegates, the party and elected officials who automatically attend the convention and can vote for whomever they choose regardless of what happens in the primaries and caucuses.
Much has been made of the superdelegates this year because neither Obama nor Clinton can reach the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination without their support.
A more subtle change was the distribution of delegates within each state. As part of the proportional system, Democrats award delegates based on statewide vote totals as well as results in individual congressional districts. The delegates, however, are not distributed evenly within a state, like they are in the Republican system.
Under Democratic rules, congressional districts with a history of strong support for Democratic candidates are rewarded with more delegates than districts that are more Republican. Some districts packed with Democratic voters can have as many as eight or nine delegates up for grabs, while more Republican districts in the same state have three or four.
The system is designed to benefit candidates who do well among loyal Democratic constituencies, and none is more loyal than black voters. Obama, who would be the first black candidate nominated by a major political party, has been winning 80 percent to 90 percent of the black vote in most primaries, according to exit polls.
"Black districts always have a large number of delegates because they are the highest performers for the Democratic Party," said Elaine Kamarck, a Harvard University professor who is writing a book about the Democratic nominating process.
"Once you had a black candidate you knew that he would be winning large numbers of delegates because of this phenomenon," said Kamarck, who is also a superdelegate supporting Clinton.
In states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton won the statewide vote but Obama won enough delegates to limit her gains. In states Obama carried, like Georgia and Virginia, he maximized the number of delegates he won.
"The Obama campaign was very good at targeting districts in areas where they could do well," said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, a Clinton superdelegate from South Carolina. "They were very conscious and aware of these nuances."
But, Fowler noted, the best strategy in the world would have been useless without the right candidate.
"If that same strategy and that same effort had been used with a different candidate, a less charismatic candidate, a less attractive candidate, it wouldn't have worked," Fowler said. "The reason they look so good is because Obama was so good."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080530/D90VTEV00.html
May I point out that the same mindset and forethought would be a decided advantage in governance ?
QUOTE(NiteOwl @ May 30 2008, 10:28 AM)
I posted the avove comment from the Clinton thread....
It seems that many Hillary supporters believe that a: Obama played the race card, and b: it gave him the win.
Never mind that the reality is that the black vote was already supporting Obama before SC... it's just that most of the pre-SC states have low black populations. Never mind that after winning Iowa, the black vote had already moved to Obama by an tremendous majority.
With regard to the race card strategy, there is nothing to gain when you are already winning the overwhelming majority of votes in the category you could gain an advantage with... while costing yourself support with the far more competitive group of voters.
Their pretzel logic is just that... twisted logic. I guess when you need to rationalize the outcome you will resort to creating a reality that fits... in your mind.
It seems that many Hillary supporters believe that a: Obama played the race card, and b: it gave him the win.
Never mind that the reality is that the black vote was already supporting Obama before SC... it's just that most of the pre-SC states have low black populations. Never mind that after winning Iowa, the black vote had already moved to Obama by an tremendous majority.
With regard to the race card strategy, there is nothing to gain when you are already winning the overwhelming majority of votes in the category you could gain an advantage with... while costing yourself support with the far more competitive group of voters.
Their pretzel logic is just that... twisted logic. I guess when you need to rationalize the outcome you will resort to creating a reality that fits... in your mind.
I didn't say they necessarily *needed* to do it. But I think they did, especially in the case of Bill's "fairy tale" comment in NH. If you watch the video of that comment, and read the context, it is VERY clear that he is talking about Obama's position on Iraq, not that it was a fairy tale for a black man to run for president. Yet, immediately, Al Sharpton and other Obama surrogates jumped all over it and twisted it into a racial statement when it clearly wasn't. I don't think they're that stupid. I think it's pretty clear they did it deliberately.
QUOTE(tazvil04 @ May 30 2008, 12:05 PM)
Humility has rarely been a strong point of mine...
That's OK Taz... sometimes it's hard to recognize when the horse is dead.
But... I'd rather have you on my side when making an argument.
Even when you don't convince 'em... you flat wear 'em out.
QUOTE(dggfwtx @ May 30 2008, 12:30 PM)
I didn't say they necessarily *needed* to do it. But I think they did, especially in the case of Bill's "fairy tale" comment in NH. If you watch the video of that comment, and read the context, it is VERY clear that he is talking about Obama's position on Iraq, not that it was a fairy tale for a black man to run for president. Yet, immediately, Al Sharpton and other Obama surrogates jumped all over it and twisted it into a racial statement when it clearly wasn't. I don't think they're that stupid. I think it's pretty clear they did it deliberately.
I didn't hear so much about the "fairy tale" comment as being racist... either in the MSM or even here. The first time I heard comments bringing race into the equation were after Bill's "Jesse Jackson" comment after the SC primary. That, to me, seemed to be the point where race really became an issue. Just from what I saw / heard.
BTW - To reiterate what I've said before... and hear others echo... I don't believe the Clintons are racist.
QUOTE(NiteOwl @ May 30 2008, 11:34 AM)
I didn't hear so much about the "fairy tale" comment as being racist... either in the MSM or even here. The first time I heard comments bringing race into the equation were after Bill's "Jesse Jackson" comment after the SC primary. That, to me, seemed to be the point where race really became an issue. Just from what I saw / heard.
The "fairy tale" comment started the "Clintons playing the race card" ball rolling, and it just escalated from there. I think that Bill's ill-considered Jackson comment was really the first incident in which some blame could fairly be laid on the Clintons, but it had already been several times before. Clearly it was in the interests of some of Obama's supporters, if not always the Obama campaign itself, to turn this into a black-and-white race.
QUOTE(dggfwtx @ May 30 2008, 12:30 PM)
I didn't say they necessarily *needed* to do it. But I think they did, especially in the case of Bill's "fairy tale" comment in NH. If you watch the video of that comment, and read the context, it is VERY clear that he is talking about Obama's position on Iraq, not that it was a fairy tale for a black man to run for president. Yet, immediately, Al Sharpton and other Obama surrogates jumped all over it and twisted it into a racial statement when it clearly wasn't. I don't think they're that stupid. I think it's pretty clear they did it deliberately.
Since when has Sharpton been a "surrogate" for Obama? Is he part of the campaign? Has he been appearing with Obama?
Also, during campaigns misinterpretations of statements happen all of the time. And other times too. People don't always watch videos carefully.
The ironic thing is that Clinton's original "fairy tale" comment was a distortion itself, and it is hard not to see that one as deliberate.
Top party officials want her to bow out soon, and campaign insiders are losing faith in her strategy.
By Peter Nicholas and Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
May 30, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton is coming under growing pressure from Democratic Party leaders and elected officials to quit the race, while some of her own supporters seem reluctant to rally behind her strategy for salvaging her presidential ambitions.
Intervening in the primary fight, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are sending public and private messages to superdelegates urging them to make a choice once primary voting ends Tuesday.
The push, which began this week, is damaging to Clinton, whose fading candidacy would be best-served by prolonging the contest.
Clinton could use the time to press her case to superdelegates -- the elected officials and other insiders whose votes will decide the nominee -- that she is more electable than her front-running rival, Barack Obama. A delay also would improve the odds of a game-changing stumble by Obama.
The party's leadership seems more intent on bringing the protracted nomination fight to an end, so that Democrats can pivot to the general election matchup with John McCain, who has been the presumed Republican nominee for months.
"We're going to urge folks to make a decision quickly -- next week," Reid said in an interview with a radio program in his state of Nevada. "We agree there won't be a fight at the convention."
Pelosi told the San Francisco Chronicle that if the nomination fight was not settled by the end of June, she would step in to resolve it.
The two top elected Democrats have been conferring with the party's chief, Howard Dean, about how to close out the five-month nomination fight.
Clinton trails Obama by about 200 delegates, with just three primaries left: Puerto Rico on Sunday, South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday.
With her options running out, Clinton is hoping to revive her candidacy Saturday, when the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee meets to resolve a dispute over whether to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan. But even some of her supporters seem dubious about the position she has staked out.
Clinton won both states' contests in January. But because the states violated party rules by holding the elections too early in the campaign season, the results were nullified.
The New York senator wants the elections to count. Her position is that she should be awarded all of the delegates she would have gotten under ordinary circumstances.
Were that to happen, she would pick up as many as 111 more delegates in those states than Obama.
That would not overcome his lead, but it might narrow the gap enough that she could tell superdelegates the race was close enough to hand her the nomination.
Some in her campaign circle are not sold on the argument.
Given that Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan, a compromise needs to be worked out that would assure the Illinois senator a certain number of delegates, these people said.
Under Clinton's plan, she would pick up 73 elected delegates in Michigan, and 55 would be assigned to "uncommitted." Her campaign has given no hint that it is willing to bend.
Richard Schiffrin, a national finance co-chairman in the Clinton campaign, said a fair compromise might be splitting Michigan's 128 elected delegates between the two candidates.
"I would support a compromise that is within a range of reasonableness," Schiffrin said.
Alan Patricof, also a national finance chairman for Clinton, said that Obama couldn't be the only one to sacrifice when Michigan and Florida delegates were meted out.
"Some accommodation has to be made to reflect what took place and so that both parties can walk away and feel justice prevailed," Patricof said.
William Galston, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution and a former member of Bill Clinton's White House staff, said: "There's only one kind of outcome that really makes sense here. The rules have to be adhered to or else the whole thing turns into a farce. There must be some punishment. The minimum punishment is the reduction of weight of their delegations by 50%."
Garry Shay, a member of the Rules and Bylaws Committee and a Clinton supporter, said it was important to impose a sanction so states wouldn't leapfrog one another in the next presidential campaign. With no penalty, he said, "you'll have absolute, total chaos in 2012."
More bad news for Clinton came down from Democratic National Committee lawyers.
The party circulated a memo this week that said the rules call for Florida and Michigan's voice at the nominating convention be cut at least in half. If the committee were to go along, Clinton's potential gain in Florida, for example, might drop from 38 delegates to 19.
Within Clinton's camp, aides are divided over how to proceed. Some want the fight to go on; others are ready for it to end.
A Clinton media spokesman, Phil Singer, said Thursday that after the final primaries next week, Clinton would remain a candidate, competing in what he called "the superdelegate primary."
But others believe the end will come sooner.
One person with ties to the Clinton campaign said the senator might drop out as soon as Wednesday because it would become fruitless to lobby superdelegates.
"I'm not sure that having a cranky Pelosi and Dean saying, 'Get out, get out,' is an atmosphere conducive to making the argument" to superdelegates, said the person, who was not authorized to speak for the campaign.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...0189,full.story
QUOTE(dggfwtx @ May 30 2008, 12:37 PM)
The "fairy tale" comment started the "Clintons playing the race card" ball rolling, and it just escalated from there. I think that Bill's ill-considered Jackson comment was really the first incident in which some blame could fairly be laid on the Clintons, but it had already been several times before. Clearly it was in the interests of some of Obama's supporters, if not always the Obama campaign itself, to turn this into a black-and-white race.
I can't see the logic of that when blacks comprise roughly 30%, give or take, of the Democratic Party... and the non-blacks about 70%.
Why risk losing support from the biggest block of voters for the relative small gain to be realized with the much smaller group ? He stood to lose far more than he could ever hope to gain... some of which the results shows in states like WV & KY where race was, admittedly (by voters), an issue... and one which the Clinton campaign was subtly (or not so subtly) was playing for gain in those states.
QUOTE(NiteOwl @ May 30 2008, 11:44 AM)
I can't see the logic of that when blacks comprise roughly 30%, give or take, of the Democratic Party... and the non-blacks about 70%.
Why risk losing support from the biggest block of voters for the relative small gain to be realized with the much smaller group ? He stood to lose far more than he could ever hope to gain... some of which the results shows in states like WV & KY where race was, admittedly (by voters), an issue... and one which the Clinton campaign was subtly (or not so subtly) was playing for gain in those states.
Why risk losing support from the biggest block of voters for the relative small gain to be realized with the much smaller group ? He stood to lose far more than he could ever hope to gain... some of which the results shows in states like WV & KY where race was, admittedly (by voters), an issue... and one which the Clinton campaign was subtly (or not so subtly) was playing for gain in those states.
Read post No. 1181 by CO, and you will see that there was a very substantial benefit. Some analysts actually attribute most of Obama's delegate lead to his performance in black majority districts.
As for Sharpton, he is an "unofficial" surrogate. He confers regularly with Obama and is clearly an avid Obama supporter, yet he is for political reasons, with the agreement of both sides, kept at arm's length in public.
QUOTE(dggfwtx @ May 30 2008, 12:50 PM)
As for Sharpton, he is an "unofficial" surrogate. He confers regularly with Obama and is clearly an avid Obama supporter, yet he is for political reasons, with the agreement of both sides, kept at arm's length in public.
He could be the most avid Obama supporter on the planet, and that would not make Obama the least bit responsible for him. I don't know how often he consults with Obama, or what they talk about. For all I know it is mostly Obama telling him, "Now Al, it would be nice if you didn't go off and say something boneheaded this time."
As far as Obama getting the Black vote, since when should it be assumed that the only way he could have done that was to tear down the reputation of the Clintons? There was no way he could get their support through a positive appeal?
QUOTE(dggfwtx @ May 30 2008, 12:50 PM)
Read post No. 1181 by CO, and you will see that there was a very substantial benefit. Some analysts actually attribute most of Obama's delegate lead to his performance in black majority districts.
As for Sharpton, he is an "unofficial" surrogate. He confers regularly with Obama and is clearly an avid Obama supporter, yet he is for political reasons, with the agreement of both sides, kept at arm's length in public.
As for Sharpton, he is an "unofficial" surrogate. He confers regularly with Obama and is clearly an avid Obama supporter, yet he is for political reasons, with the agreement of both sides, kept at arm's length in public.
That article addresses strategy... but not cause and effect for black voter turnout and support.
I recall where some Clinton supporters here argued that his support with black voters strengthened and solidified immediately after the Iowa caucus as he became viewed as electable.... and not as a result of "the race card". I believe you may have argued this point in other posts...
Now it seems there is this new argument that "the race card" actually benefited Obama.
I still don't believe, given the risks and the demographics at play, that it would have been a risk that would have been worth taking... and I don't believe that they did.
QUOTE(Arneoker @ May 30 2008, 12:01 PM)
As far as Obama getting the Black vote, since when should it be assumed that the only way he could have done that was to tear down the reputation of the Clintons? There was no way he could get their support through a positive appeal?
Didn't say he couldn't have/didn't. But it was done both ways.
It was awhile back now, but Sharpton was quoted as saying he talks to Obama once a week.
QUOTE(dggfwtx @ May 30 2008, 01:05 PM)
Didn't say he couldn't have/didn't. But it was done both ways.
I suppose I could agree with that, I just don't think that anyone from the Obama campaign put a gun to Bill Clinton's head to force him to make snarky comparisons between Obama and Jesse Jackson. While the story is not simple and the Obama people are not perfectly spotless, I think that most negative feelings about the Clintons in the Black community were brought on by the Clintons themselves. And in terms of whispering, in my experience people tend to do that pretty well spontaneously, without having been led into it. There is certainly a lot of whispering about Obama's lack of patriotism and being a closet Muslim. That certainly does not hurt Hilllary in her campaign against him. Proof that she is behind it?
QUOTE
It was awhile back now, but Sharpton was quoted as saying he talks to Obama once a week.
Well if Al says that it must be true! No way a person with his integrity could be simply puffing himself up!
QUOTE(dggfwtx @ May 30 2008, 01:05 PM)
Didn't say he couldn't have/didn't. But it was done both ways.
It was awhile back now, but Sharpton was quoted as saying he talks to Obama once a week.
It was awhile back now, but Sharpton was quoted as saying he talks to Obama once a week.
And of course , everything Al Sharpton says can be taken right to the bank .
Come on Dgg!! First and foremost Al Sharpton wants Al Sharpton to look important . I like the man but I'm not deaf, dumb or blind. And you certainly are not either.
QUOTE(NiteOwl @ May 30 2008, 12:03 PM)
That article addresses strategy... but not cause and effect for black voter turnout and support.
Did you get down to the part about the way Democrats' delegate allocation works? The story describes the "bonus" delegates in many African-American districts, but it doesn't point out another advantage. If Obama is winning 80 percent of the vote in a heavily black district, it means he is getting ALL of the delegates from that district. Conversely, it has been pointed out many times Hillary's advantage with white female voters. However, there are no districts in which white females make up that kind of percentage. In a district with an even number of delegates, for example, a candidate has to win 60% of the vote just to avoid a 50-50 delegate split. BIG advantage for Obama.
So, even though Obama lost pretty badly in states like OH and PA, his strength in black-majority districts was able to hold Hillary's delegate gain to minimal numbers.
Anyway, I don't want this to come off as "racist" bad blood. But I am trying to point out that the black vote was a BIG advantage for Obama and is *one* of the key reasons he is the apparent nominee. There was more than ample reason for his campaign to ardently court the black vote in reality, if not in rhetoric. The importance of the black vote is also why Hillary continued to court it even as late as March 4, despite the fact that it was already lost.
QUOTE(Arneoker @ May 30 2008, 12:11 PM)
Well if Al says that it must be true! No way a person with his integrity could be simply puffing himself up!
Al was quite likely exaggerating, however, there is no reason to think it was a total lie. The Obama camp, to my knowledge, never denied it.
QUOTE(dggfwtx @ May 30 2008, 01:15 PM)
Al was quite likely exaggerating, however, there is no reason to think it was a total lie. The Obama camp, to my knowledge, never denied it.
I would not be surprised if he has talked to Obama more than once or twice. Anyway, I would not expect that the Obama camp would be obsessive-compulsive to the extent of correcting every incorrect statement ever made concerning themselves. Considering how many people would be talking about him they would have little time to do much other than correct such statements.
Bottom line, I don't see how Sharpton should be considered one of Obama's key supporters to the extent that Obama is responsible for what Sharpton does.
QUOTE(dggfwtx @ May 30 2008, 01:14 PM)
Did you get down to the part about the way Democrats' delegate allocation works? The story describes the "bonus" delegates in many African-American districts, but it doesn't point out another advantage. If Obama is winning 80 percent of the vote in a heavily black district, it means he is getting ALL of the delegates from that district. Conversely, it has been pointed out many times Hillary's advantage with white female voters. However, there are no districts in which white females make up that kind of percentage. In a district with an even number of delegates, for example, a candidate has to win 60% of the vote just to avoid a 50-50 delegate split. BIG advantage for Obama.
So, even though Obama lost pretty badly in states like OH and PA, his strength in black-majority districts was able to hold Hillary's delegate gain to minimal numbers.
Anyway, I don't want this to come off as "racist" bad blood. But I am trying to point out that the black vote was a BIG advantage for Obama and is *one* of the key reasons he is the apparent nominee. There was more than ample reason for his campaign to ardently court the black vote in reality, if not in rhetoric. The importance of the black vote is also why Hillary continued to court it even as late as March 4, despite the fact that it was already lost.
So, even though Obama lost pretty badly in states like OH and PA, his strength in black-majority districts was able to hold Hillary's delegate gain to minimal numbers.
Anyway, I don't want this to come off as "racist" bad blood. But I am trying to point out that the black vote was a BIG advantage for Obama and is *one* of the key reasons he is the apparent nominee. There was more than ample reason for his campaign to ardently court the black vote in reality, if not in rhetoric. The importance of the black vote is also why Hillary continued to court it even as late as March 4, despite the fact that it was already lost.
I don't disagree that the black voting block was not an advantageous group for him, or that his strategy was not wise, but I would also point out that Hillary's constituency showed an inordinate level of support from white female voters. Maybe they couldn't give her wins in certain districts with more delegates, but it surely was a major component of her victories in countless counties across the nation. If Hillary were a man, or Obama were white, I don't believe that she would have fared nearly as well. Female voters make up roughly half of the voting pool... and black voters (male and female) are about half of that... so she had the advantage in having support from a far bigger group.
Anyway... this is not really the issue we started with regarding the "race card" and a "whisper campaign"... but, truth is we'll never know what the effect of a different set of circumstances would have created.
Seems to me that the Obama campaign tried to distance Obama from Sharpton...
I know I would...
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