Obama or Clinton? - Page 112

vegyrex · #**556** 02-17-2008, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThePrude

I do think that's valid experience, but I don't think there have been many first ladies who are made of the same stuff as Hillary. And it wasn't possible for her to forge her own political career until 2000, and since then she has worked her ass off. (She was also able to convert large tracts of long-time republican voters in upstate NY to her side).

I don't think she's been working her ass off like she did when she ran for the senate. It seems like she was expecting this campaign to be much easier than it turned out. Like she was planning ahead to the general elections. Bad move. She terribly underestimated Obama.

dollpartz · #**557** 02-17-2008, 10:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JFL

There is no candidate that deserves to be our next President more than Hillary.

Why does she deserve it?

vegyrex · #**558** 02-17-2008, 10:46 AM

Here's some good reasons why Hillary might just win this yet.

Quote:

In the quick fire succession of recent primaries from Maine to Washington State and back to the Potomac, the voters have spoken. Republicans, although with indigestion and heartburn, have said "McCain's the one." With almost double the number of voters, most Democrats have said "yes we can" for Obama, almost half have said "ready on day one" for Hillary, and ALL have said "who the hell are these super delegates."

Republicans, who like to reward the most successful by giving them everything, have set up a "winner take all" primary system that appears certain to coronate John McCain very shortly and give him the time he needs to heal wounds and soothe fears about him within the Party, and thus enable him to focus his attention on honing his argument against the Democrats for the fall campaign.

Democrats, being more true to the Jeffersonian principles of Democracy and representation of all the people, have created a primary structure that, this year, seems certain to maintain tension and passionate competitive battling within the Party that likely will alienate at least one or more major Democratic Party constituencies regardless of who wins the nomination.

And when it's over, the battlers may have to give way to the established insiders and party elites (super delegates) to make the decision in a political blood bath on the floor of the convention. Jefferson would have been proud.

Ironically, all the current condemnation of super delegates is too little too late -- they were created exactly for the kind of situation we are shaping up to have with Hillary Clinton vs Barack Obama. And when that system was set up, no one complained, not vested core constituencies, not liberal commentators and radio talk show hosts, not elected democratic officials, not Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, not Paul Begala and James Carville, and not Michael Moore and Katrina VanDen Heuvel. And not the New York Times or Washington Post, not Al Gore and Bill Clinton, and not Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich. And for that matter, not Walter Cronkite. NO ONE.

And now, all of the most serious criticism of the system comes from those who support Barack Obama (with the notable exception of Donna Brazille -- an honest broker who philosophically opposes the super delegate structure). And their reason is simple. They fear that the vote will be too close to call by the delegate count and that somehow, Hillary Clinton and Bill would then broker and negotiate their way to the majority of the super delegates -- that's why they are calling for pledges that all super delegates vote the way the voters vote in the primaries.

And if Hillary were leading right now in the delegate count and total vote (Obama is by slight margins in both), then it would be the Clinton supporters who would be screaming about the inequities and unfairness of the superdelegate system.

But be careful what you wish for. First of all, I am not convinced that the ultimate battle among super delegates would go Hillary's way. I think an equally persuasive argument could be made that Obama would ultimately sway more of the super delegates his way.

Second, the argument of most of the Obama supporters who want the super delegate structure strapped or at least some sort of "binding" pledge that they will support who the voters support is based on the assumption that Barack Obama will wind up with the most votes and delegates going in to Denver, even if he is short of the total needed for a first ballot victory. Not so fast.

Barack Obama won a most impressive string of victories from Maine to Nebraska to Louisiana to Washington State, all within a short period of just a few days. And he continues to pocket endorsements from well respected elected Democratic officials, from Senator Leahy in Vermont to Tom Daschle in South Dakota to Gov Christine Gregoire in Washington State. And he continues to stun the political world with the prowess and success of his fund raising. And I believe he will win the upcoming Wisconsin primary, another important component of his "I've won the most states with the most diverse electorate" argument. And I do believe that argument will in fact sway a lot of super delegates.

But Hillary was just announced as the winner in New Mexico, and her winning there is less important to her than the fact that she did not LOSE there. Winning there nets her 2 delegates more than Obama. But if she had lost, it would have cemented the Obama run with no interruptions, AND, it would have cast major doubt on the viability of the Hillary-Latino alliance as an argument for her candidacy for the general election in the fall. And a loss there would likely stall her closing of the gap with Obama in Wisconsin. As things stand now, Hillary is 4-5 points behind Obama in Wisconsin and could close the gap further although I expect Obama to win the state.

But here's where it gets interesting. All the pundits say Hillary not only has to win Ohio and Texas and then Pennsylvania, but she has to win big. And right now, I see Hillary winning all three of those states and winning them by 8 to 12 point margins. In those states, that's big. More significantly, it would likely put her back on top of the total vote count and with the delegate count as well.

And if nothing changes after that significantly (we all wait for Puerto Rico), it would then be the Obama supporters who would then argue that the super delegates should vote for who they think is the best candidate and can win in November etc, and that they should not be bound just by who won the most votes -- the argument they are making now.

And there's one other potential surprise that could have a major impact on this race. I believe it is likely that John Edwards may endorse Hillary Clinton for the nomination over Barack Obama. And if Edwards does so, I believe it would be for three reasons.

First, I think Edwards may conclude that Clinton is the tougher candidate to both fight in the fall campaign and to fight back against the insurance and oil companies once she were in the White House. Second, I think Edwards may conclude that Hillary's healthcare plan will come closer to accomplishing his goal of true universal health care that he feels so committed to and passionately about. And third (and this one will not be so openly discussed), Edwards was born in South Carolina and represented North Carolina. I believe he may conclude that there is a hidden issue of race in this campaign and a planned "southern and mid-states strategy" that Republicans and Swift Boat type groups will utilize in the fall campaign that will make it tougher for Obama to actually win versus Hillary's chances to actually win.

Finally, I believe that if Edwards is going to do this it will be soon as he knows he has, outside of Iowa, his strongest populist-middle class support in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to a lesser degree. Consequently, he will want to have his endorsement really make a difference -- and with those primaries looming, if he does make this endorsement it would likely be sooner rather than later.

With the points I made earlier that suggest that not only is Hillary not out of this, but in fact, she may wind up ahead by June in both vote count and delegates, and then you combine that with the possible impact of a John Edwards endorsement were it to occur, then both sides will be switching their positions on how terrible the super delegate structure is. And if in a competitive battle both sides hate it, there may very well be a strong argument for leaving things just the way they are!

Carl Jeffers: The Road to Denver -- A Firewall for Hillary, A Firetrap for Obama - Politics on The Huffington Post

ThePrude · #**559** 02-17-2008, 02:20 PM

A Rotten Way to Pick a President - washingtonpost.com

Quote:

A Rotten Way to Pick a President

Something is seriously wrong with the way we pick our presidential candidates. But experts and pundits, caught up in the horse races, have been slow to point out the obvious -- or have come to accept our badly flawed system as immutable fact.
We were brought to our current mess by the best of intentions. Primaries and caucuses had been around for much of the 20th century, but until 1972, party bosses, not voters, ultimately had the most say in picking the nominees. In 1952, for instance, the Democratic barons selected Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson at the convention instead of the popular Sen. Estes Kefauver, who had won most of that year's primaries -- even beating President Harry S. Truman in New Hampshire. Kefauver, who had made his name by holding dramatic televised hearings into organized crime, was too outspoken to get the nod from a smoke-filled room.
The disastrous 1968 Democratic National Convention shattered confidence in this efficient but undemocratic system. Instead of a dove such as Sen. Eugene McCarthy, party leaders from large, non-primary states tapped Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who had cravenly supported President Lyndon B. Johnson on the war in Vietnam and had sent surrogates to run in his place in the primaries. Outside the convention, young demonstrators howled in protest and were beaten by the police. Next time around, reformers led by Sen. George McGovern deliberately weakened the role of the conventions, making primaries the determining force in picking presidential candidates. The Republican Party, feeling some of the same frustration, soon followed suit.
The first people to test this new system were Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. The GOP's reforms gave a stronger voice to the Republican right, letting the upstart Reagan nearly upset President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 by winning the North Carolina and Texas primaries. On the Democratic side, Carter used his surprise victory in that year's Iowa caucuses to transform himself from an unknown peanut farmer and obscure governor ("Jimmy who?") into the front-runner -- without ever courting the party leaders. After Carter's defeat four years later, the Democrats worried that they had produced a process too favorable to weak "outsider" candidates. They then tried to restore some power to the party's operatives by establishing unpledged "superdelegates," including governors, members of Congress and former presidents -- a modest check that did little to gut the reforms.
The old ways were unfair and autocratic, of course. But the new ones have grave problems, too.
For one thing, caucuses can be highly undemocratic. They eliminate the secret ballot, forcing voters to declare their loyalties publicly, and are thus vulnerable to intimidation and manipulation. They also shut out many citizens who have to work during caucus times. If you can't show up at a specific hour, you can't vote -- a particular problem for people with fixed shifts, including many of the working poor. (The supposedly democratic caucuses can also discriminate, as happened to Sabbath-observant Jews who couldn't get to Nevada's Saturday caucuses.) And there are usually no absentee ballots, of course.
The magnified importance of the early showdowns also opens the door to abuse. This year, Democrats in Michigan and Florida moved up their contests, thereby drawing the ire of the national party, which vowed not to seat the delegates. Unless something changes, voters in these states will be unfairly removed from the decision-making process, and neither candidate will benefit from their support.
"Open" primaries and caucuses (in which anyone can vote, not just registered party members) let voters from the other party cause all sorts of mischief. A Republican convinced that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is too divisive to win in the fall could vote for her in some Democratic contests in the spring, hoping to saddle the Democrats with a losing nominee. Or, as Sen. Barack Obama's campaign did in Nevada, a candidate can openly appeal for votes from people outside his or her party in order to stop a rival. The winners are outsiders hoping to game the system; the losers are rank-and-file party members whose choices count less.
Another basic irony: Primaries tend to favor highly committed voters from the extremes of both parties, who are much more likely to turn up than moderates. So candidates have strong incentives to pander to their extremist flanks, throwing red meat that they may well regret in November or in the White House. For example, Reagan tacked far to the right during the 1980 primaries on abortion and other issues dear to religious conservatives, only to leave policies in these areas generally untouched after he won. Bill Clinton roused the Democratic base with populist themes during the 1992 primaries -- only to govern as a moderate centrist as the realities of the federal deficit left from the Reagan and Bush years sank in. Over time, the necessity of flattering the base during the primary season -- and of ignoring all that thunder in the fall -- only intensifies the sense of outrage, alienation and cynicism that has dogged American politics for decades.
Finally, while the primary system took power away from the party barons, it gave much of that clout to the news media -- now driven by national outlets that prefer sensationalism, scandal and sound bites to substance, nuance and balance. While retail politics survives in states such as New Hampshire, the real kingmakers today are the national media, which determine how most voters see the candidates. The seriousness of the candidates' debates, in both the primaries and the general election, has nose-dived since the famous 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates -- let alone the Lincoln-Douglas debates of exactly 150 years ago, when no journalists were onstage.
Why the decline? Blame the bloated role of celebrity reporters and overpaid, often highly biased pundits, which the primary reforms unwittingly helped feed. The power shift away from the parties and toward the media has encouraged candidates to engage in "gotcha" politics, often about relatively trivial matters. In a recent debate, for instance, Clinton and Obama traded fierce barbs about who had fewer principles -- all based on who said what and when about allowing illegal immigrants to have drivers' licenses. Standing in the Reagan Presidential Library at the Jan. 30 CNN debate, Mitt Romney and John McCain spent much of their time battling over how to parse a past Romney statement about Iraq. These kinds of fights may be fun for political junkies to watch, but they have little to do with real policy or government performance. They also fuel the need for vast pools of funds to pay for TV spots, including negative advertising.
In general, Democrats have had much more trouble than Republicans kicking good results out of the new primary system. The old bosses turned out to be strikingly skilled at nominating strong candidates, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman, John F. Kennedy and LBJ. Democrats haven't chosen nearly as well for themselves; more recent primary cycles have produced Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John F. Kerry and the one-term Carter. Bill Clinton stands as the exception rather than the norm. (Then again, this year, those much-maligned superdelegates may finally play a decisive role in selecting the candidate, finally redressing some of the excesses of the 1970s reforms.)

Until recently, Republicans did much better at opening up their nominating process without producing surefire losers. Why? Perhaps because the GOP establishment survived the 1960s far more handily than did the Democratic establishment, despite the reforms. When Reagan came to power in 1980, he merged the Republican right with the old party establishment -- defeating the establishment candidate, George H.W. Bush, then putting him on the ticket. Despite some turbulence along the way (such as televangelist Pat Robertson's startling second-place finish in the 1988 Iowa caucuses, or Mike Huckabee's victory there this cycle), the GOP's establishment candidate has tended to prevail: The elder Bush had his turn in 1988, followed by Robert Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2000. Indeed, from 1952 to 2004, the lone exception to this rule took place in 1964, when Barry Goldwater seized the nomination despite the qualms of the party establishment. With that sole exception -- which produced a crushing defeat -- either a Nixon, a Dole or a Bush has always been on the national ticket, and the Republicans have won nine out of 14 presidential elections.
But the times may be changing for Republicans. This year's primaries have shown that the old Reagan coalition has disintegrated. The seemingly inevitable nominee, Sen. John McCain, was the closest thing to a favorite of the old GOP establishment, but he raises hackles on the right with his pro-immigration, anti-torture views. Party stalwarts such as Rush Limbaugh and evangelical leader James Dobson have bellowed that McCain's nomination would mean the death of the GOP. On Super Tuesday, McCain lost in Southern states where the Republican base is strongest and thrived in ones that Democrats are likely to carry in November.
The unintended consequences of the well-intended reforms of the 1970s are now glaringly clear. Perhaps now, both parties will agree to reform the nominating system once again: abolishing caucuses, regularizing a rigorous system of national debates, closing open primaries, grabbing power back from the media and so on. We could still get it right in 2012.

CuntCake · #**560** 02-17-2008, 02:35 PM

85% Mike Gravel
81% Barack Obama
81% John Edwards
78% Hillary Clinton
51% Ron Paul
50% Huckabee
42% McCain

I vote Hillary though...