Barack Obama endorses the Sullivan Case for Obama, saying that he can deliver change in a way Hillary Clinton can't because she's stuck in the battles of the 1960s.
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Obama: Generational War!
07 Nov 2007 05:23 pm
Comments (70)
How did I guess that your comment would be about race, not generation, Steve Sailer? You're really a bit of a scumbag, aren't you?
Yeah, well that explains why he's lying to the 20-somethings by telling them that Social Security won't be there for them.
And Steve Sailor- we democrats don't need to a fucking thing that fucks like you tell us to do. Fuck off, you fuck.
I completely disagree.
Hillary Clinton is not stuck in the 1960s, she is happily lodged in the ongoing but 1990's-launched battle to remake the Democratic Party into a disciplined, hierarchical, controlled organization pursuing a pro-corporate, pro-investor, moderate alternative to the more extremist Republicans, a Democratic Party which simultaneously seeks to divorce itself from being "trapped" by its own base while genuinely being convinced that its own moderated conservatism is best for all.
This philosophy coincided with a roughly 20 year loss of Congress by the Democrats. If anything has saved the effort from dying off completely, it is (a) money, and (b) the shocking horridness of the Bush Jr / Reagan II Republicans.
Steve,
You may be right, you may be wrong, but regardless you have no credibility on these issues.
Hey, guys, ever hear of Willie Horton?
Well, the Republicans are going to make the Rev. Wright the new Willie Horton if Obama is on the ticket and hasn't publicly broken with him.
The generational thing is one of the foundational arguments of The Audacity of Hope, so Obama has been talking about this for a long time. Obviously, I agree with it.
The phrase "The Audacity of Hope," by the way, comes straight from the title of one of the Rev. Wright's sermons.
Here's what the Reverend had to say himself, from Jodi Kantor's article in the NYT last spring:
"When [Obama's] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli" to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, "with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell."
Why is Steve obsessed with Obama and his race/religion? Afterall, Obama has a high IQ and he belongs to a Christian church. What's not to like? (ok - he uses too many cliches)
Steve,
Can you provide any actual examples of political radicalism on the part of the Rev Jeremiah Wright? Has he engaged in political violence? Has he fostered an armed uprising by African-Americans against Whitey? Has he acted as an agent for terrorism directed by Gaddafi or toher enemies of the US? What exactly has he said or done that constitutes a threat to the legitimate political order of American society?
I suspect that Mr. Wright qualifies as a radical only if he is viewed through the extreme reactionary lens of someone like J. Edgar Hoover. If that is the reason why you consider the Rev Wright to be a dangerous political radical, then you have a lot of nerve saying that the Reverend Wright is stuck in the sixties. The inclination to view all political dissenters as being radical revolutionary Reds is also part of the 60s mindset.
Obama is not all that brilliant, is he?
He needs to serve in the Senate a few more years, learn the ropes, do something, as opposed to saying something.
In any sane country, Obama would would be the next president after Hillary's two terms...
Oh, hell, this is America.
Not Sweden.
With 9/11, Bush had a reset moment—a chance to reunite the country in a way that would marginalize the extreme haters on both sides and forge a national consensus. He chose not to do so. It wasn’t entirely his fault. On the left, the truest believers were unprepared to give the president the benefit of any doubt in the wake of the 2000 election
Yeah, those lefty true believers sure were horrible, not being willing to give Bush a blank check. If only they'd been more supine, I'm sure Bush would have forged a national consensus, right Sully?
Steve,
Has Mr. Wright committed a rape and murder while on a furlough granted by Barack Obama? If not, then what grounds would the GOP have for making the Reverend Wright into the next Willie Horton?
Are you implying that your fellow whites are so immature in their view of the African-American community, that they would uncritically accept an attempt by the GOP to conflate a African-American man of the cloth with an African-American rapist/murderer?
I know you held objectively racist views against blacks, Steve. I didn't realize your views of your fellow whites were also saturated with racist stereotyping.
Fucking hippies.
"Obama is not all that brilliant, is he?
He needs to serve in the Senate a few more years, learn the ropes, do something, as opposed to saying something."
Actually, running now was pretty smart of Obama. He wouldn't be able to run as a Washington outsider if he ran in '12 or '16, and his opposition to Operation Iraqi Freedom would never carry as much weight with the Dem base then as it does now.
If this doesn't work out, Obama's best move would be to run for governor of IL when there's an opening. Or he could just finish his Senate term and collect a few sinecures on the boards of directors of a few Fortune 100 companies itching for diversity in their directors. He could make $500k+ per year easy doing that while working a few weeks a year. He could spend the rest of the time writing books about healing the racial divide in America.
It would really help you all denouncing me if you'd read Obama's book "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." It's extremely well written and contains much of interest about a man who might be President.
If that's too much to ask, here's the short NYT article I quoted:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/us/politics/06obama.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
And here's a fine article entitled "The Radical Roots of Barack Obama" by Ben Wallace-Wells in Rolling Stone.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13390609/campaign_08_the_radical_roots_of_barack_obama/
The issue is not whether the Rev. Wright is a-ok with you guys, it's whether he'll strike a portion of the electorate as not an appropriate intimate adviser for a President or Vice President.
Off of Sailer's race war hijack for a second. Personally I find the generational war talk fairly tiresome. It doesn't really mean anything, unless he's going to ban faux hip retirement planning ads. His generation obsession is even more tiresome than the Baby Boomers themselves. Though it's not nearly as tiresome as Andrew Sullivan.
And, back to the hijack: Of course, it's no where near as tiresome as Steve Sailer weird race obsessions.
Julian,
Sully is still somewhat bitter that the so-called "Blame America first" crowd displayed better judgement about the Iraq war than he did, hence the gratuitious swipe that he makes against lefty true believers.
To be fair to Sully, he doesn't really argue that the Left made Dubya into a Nixonian opportunist who fanned the flames of polarization. (He points out the that Dubya, the leader of the war on religious-motivated terrorism, is distrusted most by secular agnostics, and lays the blame on Dubya's pandering to the worst instincts of American theocrats.) He just argues that Dubya and the Right aren't the only ones guilty of this sin.
Isn't this just Sullivan's political post-traumatic stress argument revisited? The one that Matt was talking up back in July?
Haven't Clinton's Health Care and Energy policies, when compared to Obama's, shown that argument to be empty, if not backwards? Sullivan's new argument, like his old one, is just rationalized cover for the more primal dislike he harbors for Mrs. Clinton.
Fred,
I'm sure Obama could make not $500k but at least $10 million per year as a public speaker if he retired from the Senate. Doesn't Bill Clinton make several times that amount annually from public appearances? Heck, Malcolm Gladwell makes something like $50k per speech! And Obama, when he's on, is a very good speaker.
The demand among Americans to bask in the physical presence of celebrities they've seen on TV is quite astounding. For example, Dan Rather is packing them in on the lecture circuit, with people paying to sit in an auditorium of 3000 people just so they can occupy the same physical space as this guy they've seen on TV for decades.
Yeah, I know, I've got a "weird race obsession," unlike, oh, say, Barack Obama, who merely subtitled his autobiography "A Story of Race and Inheritance" (and he sure wasn't kidding because there's almost nothing in its 400+ pages that's not about Obama's obsession with race and heredity).
I'm totally weird, unlike all the people who fell in love with Obama during his keynote address at the Democratic convention due solely to his stirring denunciation of the War in Iraq ... Oh, wait, sorry, he didn't actually denounce the War in Iraq during that speech. Instead, he talked at great length at the opening of his speech about his ... race and inheritance.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/convention2004/barackobama2004dnc.htm
Steve - Your concern over this odd seeming Rev. Wright seems a bit over the top - So Obama may find him useful, but somehow all the well educated liberals who know Obama personally do not seem concerned at all.
In fact, if you were more sincere with this concern, you would be warning Rev. Wright about all of Obama's liberal advisors and friends. Aren't you afraid all those upscale white liberals might send the wrong signal to a black reactionary cleric?
Why not focus on some of the white radical preachers the heathen Rudy has hanging around him whispering "Megido" in his ear?
Well, I'm glad to hear those battles of the 60s have all been won. I was afraid we might still be spending hundreds of billions on unneeded weapons, invading other countries, denying black people the vote, hassling women about their right to abortions and paying them less than men for the same job, denying poor people medical care, shortchanging students in black neighborhoods, causing fish kills by diverting water to rightwing farmers, and so forth.
So, I'm real glad to hear we don't have those problems any more.
Uh, which country is it that we don't have those problems in?
I think we'll find that a candidate of Obama's generation will not have the same vulnerabilities that plagued Dukakis and Kerry. Republicans and Democrats will not always face each other across the race-baiting hawk -- multi-culti dove axis, however much some people may wish that to remain the case.
Incidentally - Obama (though less experienced and too given to cliche) is probably smarter than Rudy if you go by those tests that you seem to like so much. Steve, are you worried that Barack's high IQ will not be seen as mere anecdotal?
Gee imagine that, Barack Obama becomes the first ever Black editor of the Harvard Law Review and a publisher decided this might be worth a book and pays him to write about his experience of race in America growing up as a half Black half white man who eventually became the first ever Black editor of the Harvard Law Review and then that devious Obama delivered a book on that theme. Sheesh what was he supposed to deliver a book on his experience playing high school basketball? Most first time authors probably write the book that their publisher gave them an advance to write.
It's odd that Barack is attracting some hostility about his race (not from you Steve) - because he is quite low key about it - The book Steve refers to cannot help mention the topic because that's the topic of the book - about his life.
Barack is not a racial bull in the China shop (like Jesse or Al)
Rather, he is more like a Chinese man in a bull shop - careful and circumspect.
This pisses people off nonetheless.
President Rudy, advised by all the war-crazed neocons he's signed up as advisers, is a very scary thought. But if it's a Rudy vs. Barack race (or even Rudy vs. Barack as VP), Rudy will turn it into a race against Barack > Wright > Farrakhan > Gadaffi, and raise absolutely vast amounts of money and gets lots of good media coverage. As the Rev. Wright himself said: ""When [Obama's] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli ... with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell."
My vague impression is that Obama is no longer the same gifted but humorless and overly sensitive Joan Didion-type that he appeared in his 1995 memoir. He apparently did a lot of growing up after his humiliating defeat by Bobby Rush in 2000 -- this preppie from paradise seems to have started to get over the obsession of his first 39 years: to prove he is black enough. But if he wants to be President he will have to demonstrate to America that he's not same person he was when he fell under the spell of the Rev. Wright, and the clearest way is to do a Sister Souljah on his spiritual adviser.
No one but you cares, Steve.
[And that is pretty much all I response I think he deserves.]
Obama may be ready for the Presidency, but he's running a poor campaign. I want to support him because he was the one major candidate who got it right about Iraq back when it counted. I couldn't care less about his "audacity of hope" message. His latest remark about Hillary and the boomer disadvantage really turns me off. Who the hell is he going to deal with using his "new" politics? The Republicans his age are worse than the boomers. They grew up worshipping Reagan and Gingrich. I really do want Obama to be my candidate but every time he talks about generations, plays footsie with evangelicals, or fails to show leadership on the war he opposed from the beginning, I just start looking for another candidate.
Perhaps we can talk about the one interesting point Steve brings up--how Guiliani will attack Obama if it comes down to the two. On the one hand, the line of attack that he suggests Guiliani take sounds like a possible strategy. Hateful, bitter, and vindictive. On the other, doesn't Rudy have enough racial sensitivity to know that he'll just come off as hating black men and Africans?
I don't think Obama needs to worry about coming off as a scary race warrior -- or at least, he doesn't have to worry about it much. I think the biggest thing Obama needs to worry about is coming off as an empty suit who wants to be all things to all people. (I don't think he is an empty suit, by the way, but that's the perception that's most dangerous to him, IMHO.) "Sister Souljah"-ing Wright to make himself more "acceptable" would make him more vulnerable to the charge that Obama's appeals to cooperation and unity are really just euphemisms for compromising principles for the sake of political expediency.
Or so it seems to me, although I'm no political strategist.
How I wish MY would ban this vile racist threadjacking troll.
Sailor's not so subtle attempt at ridicule (Didion) fails. Indeed - he is also wrong to suggest a Souljah - That was an authentic Clinton belief being expressed. Barack is a different person than Clinton - Besides, if Barack runs against Rudy he will not lose appreciable support because of a spurious Farrakhan link - Bush should have had more trouble with his close ties to Saudis and other gulf leaders. This Khaddafy nonsense is a non starter - no one in their right mind would care too much about that - esp since Bush is the one who actually helped him/
Zephyrus asks: "doesn't Rudy have enough racial sensitivity to know that he'll just come off as hating black men and Africans?"
No, Rudy will spin it so he comes off as hating anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan and Arab terrorists like Col. Gadaffi ... and their associates, such as Obama's spiritual adviser, Jeremiah T. Wright.
This is all just Campaign Tactics 101 stuff, and Obama supporters need to anticipate it.
"Barack Obama endorses the Sullivan Case for Obama, saying that he can deliver change in a way Hillary Clinton can't because she's stuck in the battles of the 1960s."
Isn't that also that kewl mayor type's argument for himself and his party?
Steve - Obama is not gonna take advice from people who wish him ill. Rudy's support with African Americans was well below the margin of error. This was unusual for a liberal Republican - But blacks considered him hostile - While Rudy would equal Bush or do a tiny bit better with Jewish voters as a whole, he will still receive less than a quarter of the total. So Barack can rest easy re that bogus Farakhan link.
Rudy's big problem going against Obama will be the discomfort that moderate women voters feel about someone who is so despised by black voters that he can't even get 5 percent in the polls. They could swing to Barack.
Another small vulnerability for Rudy is the hatred and loathing some members of the Bush entourage attributed to Bush Sr. during the 2000 convention in Phili. Rudy was at his low point then - screaming at his wife on TV, galavandering around town with mistresses etc. But who knows?
Rudy can make good use of the Weyrich endorsement of Romney - He can confront Romney at the next debate and demand Romney repudiate the endorsement - then he can hold up the large paper trail that exists that shows Weyrich pushing the John McCain is a VC agent smears. This would also hurt McCain because he would look small as Rudy stood there on stage defending his honor.
Dear Comment:
Rudy running against Wright-Farrakhan-Gadaffi isn't about the black vote (which will go 90% Democratic no matter what) or the Jewish vote (which is only about 3% of the total), it's about whipping right-wing Jewish money and media power to a fever pitch.
Rudy is already naming N-Pod, the Frumster, Pipes Jr., Rubin, and all the other Likudnik crazies as his advisers because that's what brings in money and press.
The Obama-Wright link will just be red meat to this crew. So why not defuse it first?
Unless, that is, the radical Afrocentrist Wright really does represent the inner Obama, and not just an earlier, more puerile stage in Obama's life? If that's true, well, Obama is unelectable.
Come on Steve - You can't believe half of that. None of those concerns you express have much meaning. The "Wright-link" No one gives a s***, except you. And you are just being a provocateur. You're not gonna support Obama. He may be unelectable - but only because he needs seasoning. He must hate himself for mouthing cliche after cliche. As you note, he is good writer. So why all the bad speeches?
OBama can win Michigan, Kentucky, Tennesee, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia - If he runs against Rudy and a third part pro lifer siphons offa percent or two.
But lets not kid ourselves - Hillary will win. Hillary is now scandal free - No one remembers Whitewater and no one (except the weird Matthews) cares if her husband strays.
Steve - If (a huge if) Obama wins and runs against Rudy, he may get 99 percent of the black vote. Rudy just picked needless fights with all the African American leaders in the city. The contempt was returned.
A Rudy presidency will be filled with an amusing series of fights, feuds, and controversy. Had he been President instead of Bush when 9-11 happened - we'd probably have troops in Mecca and Medina by now and he may have bombed Islamabad and Karachi - before attacking population centers in Tehran and Baghdad. Hipster caroonist would be surveiled and jailed.
"Rudy just picked needless fights with all the African American leaders in the city."
What pissed off the self-anointed black leaders like Al Sharpton was that Rudy refused to meet with them when the first blacks v. NYPD incident happened in his first term (a scuffle between black Muslims and cops at a mosque). Refusing to kiss the ring of a rabble rouser isn't the same thing as picking fights with the black community.
"The issue is not whether the Rev. Wright is a-ok with you guys, it's whether he'll strike a portion of the electorate as not an appropriate intimate adviser for a President or Vice President."
Steve,
What portion of the electorate is that? It is the same portion of the electorate that has deluded itself in thinking that the Big-Business friendly Clintons are a bunch of radical socialists? It is the same portion of the electorate that can be fooled into thinking that a Black preacher like the Rev Wright is the same as a Black rapist/murderer like Willie Horton? In other words, are you talking about the hardcore Republican portion of the electorate, the 30% that continues to support Dubya and his war in Iraq, and which would never vote for a Democrat? If that is the case, then your Sister Soulijah prescription would reap no benefits for Obama.
If you are however talking about people like my small business owner brother-in-law, the 20% of the electorate that leans Republican, but who are willlng to vote for a Democrat like Obama if the Republicans nominate a batshit-crazy theocrat in the Alan Keyes mold, then a Sister Soulijah moment would work, provided that the Rev Wright is actually viewed in the same light as a rapper who spouts offensive lyrics. However, a Christian clergyman who decries racism without apology is not going to be viewed in the negative light that an offensive rapper would be. I got news for you Steve; you and the hardcore 30% might not be able to differeniate between the Rev Wright, Sister Soulijah, and Willie Horton, but people like my brother-in-law and the rest of the moderate Republican 20% can.
"Refusing to kiss the ring of a rabble rouser isn't the same thing as picking fights with the black community."
Juan,
Defending the killing of innocent black men by your police department amounts to picking a fight with the black community. Big city police departments in general have problems with policeman who kill innocent black men; even my hometown of Chicago has experienced those problems. Yet Mayor Daley has never generated the level of outright hatred that the NYC black community feels toward Giuliani to this day, even though he hasn't been Mayor for 6 years.
Why is that the case? Unlike Giuliani, Mayor Daley apologizes when his police department messes up, pledges to investigate the incident properly, and promises to punish police officers if their behavior leading up to a shooting warrants it. Giuliani would dig in his heels, proclaim his police department did nothing wrong, and would go so far as to use a shooting victim's juvenile crime record as justification for his killing, even though that juvenille record had nothing to do with that shooting.
After being treated with such blatant disrespect by an asshole like Giuliani, I don't blame Black residents of NYC for regarding Giuliani as nothing more than a despicable racist.
Obama himself knows he has a big problem on his hands because Wright is:
A. His mentor, the most important influence on his adult life other than, maybe, his wife.
B. Radioactive
Garance Franke-Ruta wrote in Tapped:
"BOY, SOMEBODY'S MAD. Speaking of tricky, The New York Times's Jodi Kantor reports this morning that Barack Obama disinvited his pastor and spiritual mentor from speaking at his Feb. 10 announcement in Springfield on the recommendation of campaign consultants concerned that the pastor would be perceived as too radical. The pastor, for his part, seems a little ticked off. Either that or naive about how to speak to the press:
[From the NY Times:]
"The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., senior pastor of the popular Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and spiritual mentor to Senator Barack Obama, thought he knew what he would be doing on Feb. 10, the day of Senator Obama�s presidential announcement.
After all, back in January, Mr. Obama had asked Mr. Wright if he would begin the event by delivering a public invocation.
But Mr. Wright said Mr. Obama called him the night before the Feb. 10 announcement and rescinded the invitation to give the invocation.
�Fifteen minutes before Shabbos I get a call from Barack,� Mr. Wright said in an interview on Monday, recalling that he was at an interfaith conference at the time. �One of his members had talked him into uninviting me,� Mr. Wright said, referring to Mr. Obama�s campaign advisers....
In Monday�s interview, Mr. Wright expressed disappointment but no surprise that Mr. Obama might try to play down their connection.
�When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli� to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, �with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.� Mr. Wright added that his trip implied no endorsement of either Louis Farrakhan�s views or Qaddafi�s.
Mr. Wright said that in the phone conversation in which Mr. Obama disinvited him from a role in the announcement, Mr. Obama cited an article in Rolling Stone, �The Radical Roots of Barack Obama.�
According to the pastor, Mr. Obama then told him, �You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we�ve decided is that it�s best for you not to be out there in public.�
Have you ever noticed in these debates how I always have all the facts on my side?
Steve, it's doubtful, but you may be right about Hillary having a problem with Huma Abedin being a deep cover agent in place. Highly doubtfull - She's too conspicuous - Barack may have a Wright problem - but probably not. No one cares. But Rudy has them all beat and there is no doubt that half of his advisors do not even like our present form of government - nor do they care for many citizens. Has Pipes writtten about Abedin yet?
Big city police departments in general have problems with policeman who kill innocent black men; even my hometown of Chicago has experienced those problems.
"Even" Chicago has problems with its police? That phrasing made me giggle.
Although given that my experience being handcuffed to a pipe in a southside Chicago basement for an hour in handcuffs tight enough to bruise my wrists on the grounds of utterly spurious shoplifting suspicions was probably much improved by my white skin compared to the alternatives, it's probably bad of me to giggle about such things. I couldn't help but be amused by the "even... Chicago" bit, though.
So if all candidates need to confront their controversial associates, what should Rudy do about Bernie Kerik or the [accused] child molester? Or is Obama the only candidate subject to this rule?
And what kind of disavowal will satisfy the right wing? When Obama complies, does anyone really think they'll leave it alone?
Juan - "self-annoited" means Leadership - If you were correct and these black leaders had no real constituency (Bhutto is self annoited too) then Rudy would have polled much higher with black voters.
Rudy's Mayorlty was riddled with Keriks - Not just the Original Kerik (OK) - Chris Matthews is gonna grill him about it.
"Even" Chicago has problems with its police?
Not only that, but Even The New Republic supported the Iraq war!
"Defending the killing of innocent black men by your police department amounts to picking a fight with the black community"
Eltoro,
No one was killed in the mosque incident I mentioned, but that's when Sharpton & Co. started to hate Giuliani, because he refused to treat him as if he were an elected leader.
"Juan - "self-anointed" means Leadership - If you were correct and these black leaders had no real constituency (Bhutto is self annoited too) then Rudy would have polled much higher with black voters."
Comment,
"Self-anointed" means just that. Bhutto won an election; Sharpton never did. He is a rabble-rouser with a cadre of paid protesters; he had a history of inciting violence and promoting false claims of white-on-black crimes. Look up the Tawana Brawley case and Freddy's Clothing Store for starters.
Hillary Clinton is not stuck in the 1960s, she is happily lodged in the ongoing but 1990's-launched battle to remake the Democratic Party into a disciplined, hierarchical, controlled organization pursuing a pro-corporate, pro-investor, moderate alternative to the more extremist Republicans....
Oh, Hillary-shilling crap! As long as you stick it in the 90s, where the woman made liberal blunder after blunder trying to push her 60s agenda of HillaryCare!, affirmative action, fed funding of abortion, "assault weapons ban (guns she and Feinstein thought looked scary), fight to preserve welfare For the Children! The Children!, gays shoved into the military, insistance that Bill appoint a Jewish female AG. All the Safety Nazi stuff of more regulations on people's recreational activities, surrounded by a Praetorian Staff of lesbian feminists, Open Borders.
To her credit, she moved more towards the Center when she realized she and Bill had to repackage her from 60s-era policy wonk to 21st Century Senator in a State that is half-dying Rustbelt(Upstate), run by ethnics and unions, where the politicians and their decisions are vetted and funded by the Big Bucks Jews on the Left and the Right.
To her credit, though no one really knows how much is truly her beliefs, vs. duplicitous finger in the wind triangulation strategy to be discarded at the White House gates.....she has been far more Center than Left as a Senator...and far harder working and receptive to the military and non-elite NY'rs than anyone suspected. And praised for her intelligence - which isn't up there with Bubba and Romneys - but is still remarkable.
Obama has a point that the 60s should be left behind, but he lost it in his droning platitudes and cliche's about a new era - that wasn't backed by Obama substance. His odd insistance that his lack of experience, lack of executive experience, meaningless symbolic vote against Iraq that Lefty activist Congresswoman Jan Schadowsky who was the Democrat Machine power in Cook County on Congressional matters- was insisting Illinois State Senators make - all proved he was the "fresh perspective" needed to run the world's most consequential Executive organization, run military affairs.
As Sailer justly noted, Obama ignored Iraq for most of his election and made his bread and butter about a "new era, new race relations" and only hyped up his "crucial vote" that Chicago newspapers didn't even cover - when he began thinking yes, Obambi the loquacious, articulate, and cute could be President. That was in 2005, after his Convention Speech attracted the big bucks Hollywood Jews.
Bottom line though - a Senator with no experience, who has missed 80% of votes since 2006, the highest of any Senator, needs to be put on spot for accountability to major votes and seasoned over a period of time - but not too long or he becomes another pompous bloviating highly compromised by money - Dodd, Biden, McCain, Karry in the Senate. If he is smart, he shows he can stick around the Senate and do a day's work, like Hillary did...then go for executive test of his ability by taking a Cabinet Post or running for Governor.
Or Obama could bail completely and either whore out like Sailer suggested....or, more interestingly....accept a spot on the SCOTUS as a reliable hard-Left vote for the next 30-35 years....curiously...to write in stone and make permanent all the gains the Left got in the 60s and 70s using activist judges to bypass Democracy.
Obama could end up not moving past the 60s, but ironically become the one who makes the 60s permanently institutionalized as the willing agent of old Lefty baby boomers.
Obama-very smart guy, a guy with good ideas. A man of principle. I see all of that. What I don't see is how he can stand up to Rudy, who we all know is a vicious...you fill in the last word.
This campaign will be nasty-much nastier than the last one. I really think that Obama is too nice-or too inexperienced, maybe-to engage in the kind of viciousness that is going to happen when Rudy gets the Republican mantle.
I would vote for Satan to prevent that man from becoming president. He's dangerous. I don't believe that Obama is ready for that.
By the way, Rudy's relationship with Kerik is more of a permanent stain than Obama's with Wright. Obama can simply say that he has learned a lot since he fell under Wright's spell as a lonely young man and he has since changed his mind. (Of course, he hasn't said that yet, and may never say it.)
But what can Rudy say about raising up to power a man like Kerik?
re Sharpton or all of his incidents. Just pointing out that he has authentic following among African Americans. Incidentally, he has become popular with the cable hosts too (in part as a foil for their audience).
But Sharpton's not alone with his demagoguery - Rudy demagogued in the different direction - Besides - Sharpton is only one person. There were dozens and dozens of black leaders - some conservative - that Rudy picked needless fights with.
Mayor Bloomberg shows you can be better fighting crime and fixing schools and inproving the business climate - without all those fights. Bloomberg has defused a number of incidents that would have been big deal with Rudy.
President Rudy will be out of control - Especially at the UN. All for little.
Steve,
You don't have the facts on your side; you are simply adept at selectively presenting facts, in order to give the impression that your assertions might have some validity.
You conveniently ignore the simple facts that I have presented in my questions to you. Simple facts such as that the Reverend Wright is not the equivalent of a rapist/murderer like Willie Horton, or even a rapper with offensive lyrics like Sister Soulijah. He is a man of the cloth who decries racism in the harshest terms, and makes no apologies for it. The type of person who would conflate the Reverend Wright with Willie Horton or even Sister Soulijah belongs to the portion of the electorate that wouldn't vote for Barack Obama under any circumstances. They would vote for theocratic nutjob like Alan Keyes rather than Barack Obama. Therefore, your assertion that the Reverend Wright requires a Sister Soulijah treatment is based on a fallacious premise. (Sadly, this fallacious premise is also accepted uncritically by the so-called professional campaign consultants advising the Obama campaign.)
Isn't it amazing that in our conversations back and forth, I always have both facts AND logic on my side.
Susan makes a good point. Obama may not be tough enough. He's unseasoned and may not be good at attack - Bush is good at attacking with third parties (527s) because his pious denials of malice are so transparently phony that they serve as strange red meat for his followers.
Consider how Bush is able to maintain the dichotomy between "we do not torture" statement and all the openly enthusiams for torture that his many of his followers express. His own followers know without asking that Bush is just making a transactional falsehood.
Obama does not have the ability to carry on that kind of dog whiste. He is too cautious - too circomspect -
OBama is too much like a Chinese man in a bull shop and not enough like a bull in a China shop.
Eltoro - You may be right when you point to Sailor having a false premise, but your argument also contains a false premise - No one outside a tiny segment of the blog world cares about Rev. Wright's relationship with a Obama. Everyone knows that Obama is a nice guy (maybe too nice).
"No one was killed in the mosque incident I mentioned, but that's when Sharpton & Co. started to hate Giuliani, because he refused to treat him as if he were an elected leader. "
Fred,
You may be limiting your discussion to the mosque incident, and to the egocentric follies of Al Sharpton and his ilk. When assessing Giuliani, however, you must also address why the NYC Black community AS A WHOLE despises Giuliani to his very core. The simple answer is that Giuliani's handling of the killing of innocent Black men in NYC by his own police department showed complete and utter contempt for the NYC Black community. They have returned the favor, and hate him to his very core years after he left office.
For those of you who snarked about my phrasing "even Chicago", you still didn't address my point about how Mayor Daley handled similiar incidents of his police department killing innocent black people. As contempible as the actions of the Chicago PD have been in those incidents, Mayor Daley is not hated by Chicago's Black community like Giuliani is hated by NYC's Black community. The reason for this is that Mayor Daley at least pretends to care when an innocent black person is killed by his cops, while Giuliani would go out of his way to villify everyone else but his cops, even when his cops were clearly in the wrong.
What does this tell us about the depths of Giuliani's degeneracy when Richard M Daley looks like a saint in comparison?
Eltoro, you are correct about the difference btw Daley and Rudy. This was out original point - sorry for an unrelated snark - With Rudy, people like to point to Sharpton or own or two others, but Rudy was a nasty to the entire minority community and he always tried to shove it in their face.That's why they all hate him. But he also was bad to most cops too, when it came to raising their paychecks to reasonable levels. He also fired his original police commissioner (Bratton) because he did not like the restaurant (Elaine's) he ate at.
Chris Ford,
Jan Schakowsky is a Chicago Lakefront Liberal. Lakefront Liberals do not belong to the Chicago Democratic Machine, and by tradition have opposed it. On the other hand, Rahm Emmanuel and Bill Lipinski definitely fit the bill of Machine politicians.
Also, Barack Obama did talk about the Iraq war during his campaign for the Senate in 2004, both during the primary and the general election. He used as a point of differniation from his primary opponents in fact. Moreover, Obama talked very little about race, other than in the most general and celebratory terms.
The crucial thing that Obama did in the primary was invoke the memory and legacy of the late Senator Paul Simon by securing the endorsement of his daughter Jeanie Simon. (Jeanie Simon in her endorsement drew a parallel between Obama and her father, whose reputation for honesty and decency gained him widespread political support throughout Illinois, even from Republicans who disagreed with his liberal stands.)
Obama should be less explicit with the so-called cliche generational appeal. Implicit in Obama's appeal is a desire to move beyond the HRC war etc. If Obama were the nominee it would be hard to attack him along traditional lines - That's why the right has chosen to conduct a whisper smear suggesting he's a some sort of secret Muslim agent (they are doing this with one of HRCs aides too). But that at kind of thing appeals to the same percentage of the electorate that also supports torture - about 25 to 30 percent.
But let's not kid ourselves - HRC will probably win the whole shebang.
Clinton stuck in the battles of the 1960s? We should be so blessed. I have a vague recollection that those battles were for civil rights, social and economic justice, and a redefinition of America's role in the world from imperial superpower to something more benevolent and less hegemonic. Those are all battles not yet won, and if she wants to fight them instead of declaring exhaustion and moving on, as Obama does, then she has my vote.
No Obama is the symbol of what Rich is talking about fighting for - Hillary has lots of 90s post cold war controversy about her. Obama speaks in cliche, but he is not declaring exhaustion - quite the opposite - He wants a reinvigorated progressive movement.
Rich,
Obama and Sullivan's criticism is not of the Baby Boomer generation as a whole, but rather of the political leadership in this country that belongs to the Baby Boomer generation. The whole "you're either with us or against us" mentality that we see in in our national political discourse emanates primarily from the Baby Boomer generation segment of our political class (the Clintons, Newt Gingrich, Dubya).
The problem with that mentality is that the actual political views of the populace do not fall along neat and compact lines. People who cannot find common ground on social issues can find common ground on economic issues, and vice versa. People who agree on what constitutes national security threats can still disagree on how best to address those threats, and people who disagree on what the greatest foreign threats to American security can still agree that unchecked wartime powers in the office of the Presidency are a grave threat to the very soul of America. However, the all or nothing mentality pushed by the Boomer political class creates polarization over all issues, even when agreements can be found between both sides of the aisle. As a result, politics becomes dysfunctional, and problems cannot even begin to be solved.
Obama's half-right. Hillary is stuck in the past, but not the 1960s. Rather, she's stuck in the '90s, specifically in her husband's second term. This is not wholly a bad thing -- she has a very visceral sense that the right is out to politically and personally destroy her from a standpoint of inherent bad faith. I personally worry if Obama has truly internalized the true viciousness of the modern right. The downside of Hillary's 90s-nostalgia is that her response seems to mirror her husband's post-96 political strategy -- triangulating, taking ambiguous hawkish center-left political positions and generally opposing any far-reaching political change in the pursuit of short-term political gain.
Comments closed November 21, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
And Obama's spiritual adviser for the last 20 years, the radical Afrocentrist minister Jeremiah Wright, who accompanied Louis Farrakhan on his visit to Col. Gaddafi, isn't stuck in the Sixties?
You Democrats need to explain to Obama that the Rev. Wright would be a millstone around the necks of any Democratic ticket with Obama on it in the general election, so that if he wants to be on the ticket, he needs to do a Sister Souljah on Wright and do it soon.
Posted by Steve Sailer | November 7, 2007 5:31 PM