Category: Democratic News

So Now Everyone’s Supposed to Hate Barack

Posted on by TL

I don’t get it.

Hillary Clinton wins New Hampshire, and now the left is taking shots at Barack Obama.

I listened to Randy Rhodes this afternoon for a spell on Air America Radio. Always-provocative, fascinating and sensible Randy Rhodes was criticizing Barack Obama, and gloating that Hillary Clinton won — by 3 percentage points.

Hats off to Senator Clinton for a well-crafted victory in the New Hampshire Primary. Senator Obama did sound a bit over-confident, even presumptuous in the last few days, and his, “You’re likable enough,” comment to Clinton in the most recent debate was debasing and should have been beneath him.

But now we’re all supposed to hate Barack Obama? Because of New Hampshire?

Come on, Randy. Lighten up.

I don’t get it.

Thank You, Wil Wheaton

Posted on by TL

Wil Wheaton discusses just about anything on his blog, WWdN: In Exile. The one-and-only former Wesley Crusher is a Democrat, and a smart one at that.

I’ve shared before my dissatisfaction with the Democrats in Congress, their incredible failure to lead, and everyone’s dreams of living on Pennsylvania Ave. Too many of them are infatuated with the presidency, and the new Neverending Story is the campaign. Meanwhile, Congress simply cannot lead.

Hats off to Mr. Wheaton for his clarity. I couldn’t have said it better myself:

It is outrageous that Senators Clinton, Obama and Biden are asking for our votes, but are unwilling to provide leadership now. If they won’t stand up for the principles we all hold dear when they’re trying to earn our votes, how can we expect them to do it once they’re in the White House? Leadership is doing the right thing when it’s risky and when it’s unpopular. (And how depressing is it that upholding your oath of office is risky and unpopular? How doubly depressing is it that the only people who think that — and the only people being listened to — are Joe Klein, the DLC consultants, and the rest of the pundit class?)

Well, as a complete idiot once said: Fool me once, can’t get fooled again.

Amen.

Wheaton says he is inspired by John Edwards, and likes Chris Dodd. Even my Republican friends are saying we need a Democrat in ’08. But we need one who wants to work — not one who wants the White House. Showing leadership over the past several months would have been good, instead of having wet dreams about renting out the Lincoln Bedroom.

Did Oprah Ruin It For Obama?

Posted on by TL

Did Oprah ruin it for Obama?

I wondered that this evening after I heard a friend remark that Oprah had brought the wrong kind of attention to Obama’s campaign.  Too many people see Oprah as “Hollywood” or removed from the real world, and Obama should not have accepted her help on the campaign trail, according to my friend.  He was also concerned that Oprah turned Obama into “the Black candidate”, where before Barack had succeeded in defining himself simply as a candidate.  The concern is that far too many whites will recoil now from Barack because he’s identifying too closely with Oprah.

Election politics always turn my stomach.

Meanwhile, as of today’s writing, John Edwards leads in Iowa — without Oprah.

The First Amendment Tasered

Posted on by TL

I’ve been considering the Tasering of student Andrew Meyer during an appearance by Sen. John Kerry at the University of Florida since I first heard about it.  Some of the first accounts sought to discredit Meyer right away, asserting that based on videos he had posted previously on You Tube, this may have been a stunt.

Nevertheless, here was a man Tasered in the United States of America.  As a refresher, here’s the Amendment placed First in the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Now, freedom of speech does not mean that we get to say what we want to say where we want to say it all the time.   If I started shouting the the gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, as did this “Christian” person when a Hindu chaplain was invited to pray, I would be removed.  And, no, this is not a violation of my right to free speech.

But tasering someone asking a question?   This is troubling.

The weird right has sought to criticize Senator Kerry, and that’s just wrong.  He was completely innocent in this case.  This was a choice of the police.

Joe Conason comments on the tasering in Salon.com, making reference to the recently unearthed “how to stop free speech” manual from the White House:

As Matthews noted on Tuesday evening, the Bush White House standardized those methods for squelching speech in a manual for presidential advance teams. “By the way, 80 percent of the country disagrees with him,” Matthews quipped, “so you’ve got to have this manual handy.” Then he quoted a telling section: “If demonstrators appear likely to cause only a political disruption, it is the advance person’s responsibility to take appropriate action. Rally squads should be dispatched to surround and drown out demonstrators immediately.”

That October 2002 manual — obtained in heavily redacted form last June by the American Civil Liberties Union in the course of litigation against the Bush administration — includes copious instructions for ensuring that dissension need never be seen nor heard. Its repetitive themes include “the best method for preventing demonstrators,” “deterring potential protestors from attending events,” and “designat[ing] a protest area … preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route.” Potential protesters are to be ignored only “if it is determined that the media will not see or hear” them.

Unfortunately for the White House, such strategies are patently unconstitutional and violate several provisions of the Bill of Rights. It is unlawful to bar individuals from public events because they have the wrong bumper stickers on their cars, or wear the wrong T-shirts, or belong to the wrong organizations, or have written the wrong letters to the editor of their local newspaper, as the president’s advance agents have repeatedly done over the past six years.

This will be a country in recover for some time after these Bush Republicans are gone from the White House.  They’ve done more damage than trash the economy, the dollar, and raise the national debt to an obscene $9 Trillion and counting.

Amen Salon.com: Rally the Dems!

Posted on by TL

Alex Koppelman writing for Salon.com throws a shot at the Democrats: Run against Bush — and toughen up — or lose in ’08.

Koppelman interviews psychologist Drew Westen, who “says Democrats could lose yet again if they don’t learn how to stand up for themselves and connect with voters emotionally.”

His emphasis? The Democrats should run against Bush:

I think the most important thing they could do is to make sure that they tie every Republican incumbent and whoever becomes the Republican nominee for president in with George Bush, because the reality is the Republicans are all going to run from George Bush as best they can in this next election. Elections are won and lost on associations, and right now, unless there’s another terrorist attack on our soil in the next 18 months, the connection to George Bush is going to be a tremendous liability for any candidate …

If the Democrats run against anyone other than Bush and the Republican Party, Bush and the Republican Congress, Bush and the Republican presidential nominee, I think they’ll probably lose, because I think the Republicans are adept enough at getting out of those associations unless the Democrats start making them now.

I would find every picture these guys ever took down at Crawford with “W” and put them on billboards, in major newspapers, on YouTube.

And don’t forget Giuliani in drag:

The “Responsible Democrat”

Posted on by TL

Once Upon A Time has a very good take on what it means to the right when the left capitulates and folds:

If you believe the United States has the “right” to take “offensive military action against Iran” — that is, against a nation that does not threaten us now and will not threaten us for years to come, if ever — and if you believe, in the event we do launch an unprovoked, non-defensive attack on Iran, which is to say, if we commit another monstrous war crime, that it would be nice, but hardly necessary, “if the rest of the world saw it as a position of last resort”; and

If you think the United States should still have troops in Iraq at the end of your second term as president, which is to say, at least through the end of 2016 — which is, of course, the view of the entrenched foreign policy establishment that believes in a foreign policy of aggressive, neverending global interventionism maintained by an empire of military bases around the world, all to guarantee American hegemony….

Reminds me of Jeff Foxworthy, “You could be a redneck.”

Hillary right now tops the Democratic charts, and apparently has some appeal to the right.  But at what cost?

Obama v. Clinton: The Case of “He Said, She Said”

Posted on by TL

Oh, no. It was bound to happen. Here we are just taking ourselves a bit too seriously. Yes, it’s an election, but Hillary and Barack are having at it, tearing each other apart. Barack isn’t yet the seasoned campaigner Hillary Clinton is. He’s tremenous, don’t get me wrong, but he his competition caved in more ways than one on his way to the U.S. Senate.

This week was just all about poor manners, and an over-hyped exchange between the two Democratic powerhouses that left both sides looking weak. From the Washington Post:

A debate moment that might have quickly come and gone has erupted into the sharpest battle of the Democratic nominating contest, with Sen. Barack Obama yesterday comparing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s position on meeting with the leaders of hostile states to the adamant refusal of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

“You’ll have to ask Senator Clinton what differentiates her position from theirs,” Obama challenged reporters on a conference call, stoking a fire ignited four days earlier when both were asked how they would approach countries such as North Korea and Iran if elected president.

Clinton waited a few hours, then shot back. “Whatever happened to the politics of hope?” she said in an interview with CNN, sarcastically referring to the Obama campaign theme.

Yes, Obama pledged to “run a different kind of campaign.” And he did, up to now.

During his run for the Senate against Republican Jack Ryan, the word among campaign insiders is that Barack knew full well of the dirty laundry shared between Jack and former wife Jeri Ryan. To his credit, Barack did not use that information during his campaign. Yes, dirty laundry like this:

The court filings by Jeri Ryan revealed that she claimed that her husband had taken her to sex clubs in New Orleans, New York City, and Paris, where he had begged her to perform sex acts with him in front of other attendees of the clubs. Jeri Ryan described one as “a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling.

Barack stayed away from that, and really did “run a different kind of campaign,” much to his credit. This time, everybody’s getting dirty. We really don’t want to see that happen again. I hope these two grow up and start acting like adults. We have too many spoiled children running around the White House right now. The Democrats need to step away from all that foolishness.

Don’t Know Who Will Win, But These Dems Sound Like Fun

Posted on by TL

I don’t know who will win the next presidential election. Don’t waste my time with such trivia. Prefer to work my ass off up to and including election day, and then kick back with some friends, count the votes, and hope like Hell.

But these Democrats sound like fun.

What Republican presidential candidate would open his white-male-conservative-Christian self up to a wide-open debate as the Dems did tonight. From the Associated Press via Yahoo News:

“Wassup?” came the first question, from a voter named Zach, after another, named Chris, opened the CNN-YouTube debate with a barb aimed at the entire eight-candidate field: “Can you as politicians … actually answer questions rather than beat around the bush?”

The answer was a qualified yes. The candidates faced a slew of blunt questions — from earnest to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, responded in kind.

To Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois: Are you black enough? “You know, when I’m catching a cab in Manhattan … in the past, I think I’ve given my credentials,” he replied.

To Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York: Are you feminine enough? “I couldn’t run as anything other than a woman,” she said.

Her answer drew a challenge from former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who said he was the best advocate for women among the contenders. “I have the strongest, boldest ideas,” he said.

Posing a question that few, if any, of the candidates had fielded before, one voter asked whether young women should register with the Selective Service, as do young men in case the draft is reinstated. Clinton, Obama and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut said yes.

The debate featured questions submitted to the online video community YouTube and screened by the all-news cable TV network. A talking snowman, two rednecks and a woman speaking from her bathroom were among the odd, Internet-age twists to the oldest forum in politics — a debate.

A Clio, Mich., man named Jered asked about gun control while brandishing an automatic weapon.

“He needs help,” Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware snapped.

When was the last time a presidential candidate was forced to promise to work at minimum wage? That is effectively what happened when a voter asked whether the candidates would serve four years at $5.85 an hour rather than the president’s annual $400,000 salary.

“Sure,” replied Clinton.

Sounds like a blast. One of these guys or gals deserves to win just agreeing to this format. Contrast that with “W” and his staged town hall meetings and noticeable lack of press conferences.

Can’t wait ’till you’re gone, George. George? Sorry. Think I’ll call you, “Prezzy.” Can’t wait ’till you’re gone, Prezzy. This country is long overdue for a President.

Looking Twice at John Edwards

Posted on by TL

I admit I didn’t really consider John Edwards much when he ran for President the first time.  I thought he was making his move too soon.  As John Kerry’s running mate, however, he impressed me far more than did Kerry.  Edwards may be well off, but he didn’t flaunt it during the campaign.  He actually appeared, and appears now, to be down to earth.

Enter Elizabeth Edwards.

Again, first time around, I didn’t notice her that much at all.  I was too preoccupied defending Kerry from the absurdly weird Swift Boat people.  But Elizabeth is someone I want to get to know more.

From our friends at Salon.com:

At the end of June she won the nation’s attention — and the gratitude of many — for confronting right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter live on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” after Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot” at a conservative conference in March, and joked in June about wishing he’d be assassinated. Since then she has been in San Francisco twice campaigning for gay rights, keynoting before the annual gay pride march in June and addressing the Human Rights Campaign’s awards dinner on July 14. And where her husband, like the other leading Democrats in the presidential race, supports civil unions but balks at gay marriage, Elizabeth Edwards has come out behind full marriage rights.

Wow.  And she understands her husband for only making it up to civil unions:

Well, I think it’s a struggle for him, having grown up in a Southern Baptist church where it was pounded into him. I was raised a Methodist in military churches. Poverty was talked about; I don’t remember homosexuality ever being mentioned. And I don’t think that Christians who aren’t engaged in a political campaign ever talk about it. They talk about poverty and other issues talked about in the Bible. But in churches, in political season, there’s plenty of ginning up this issue.

The rest of the interview is equally spectacular.  Asked if she expected criticism for working on John’s campaign in spite of her health, her answer is brilliant:

I had no idea I’d get that kind of criticism. But you know, people who’ve been in this situation haven’t criticized me. And the people who haven’t — I just hope they never go through it. And it got worse after [the] Coulter [incident]. Well, we were talking about home-schooling the kids anyway, before I got sick. John’s gone all the time, I’m gone a lot, and it was going to be the only way for us to be together as a family.

But you know, after all I’ve been through, I realize: You don’t know exactly what life lessons you taught your kids until much later. You don’t. And maybe the most important life lesson for them is for me to say, When bad things happen, you don’t let them take you down. If I hadn’t continued to campaign, I’d be sending the opposite message: When bad things happen, go hide. Do I know with absolute certainty we’re doing the right thing? I don’t. Having been through what I’ve been through, I hope people trust I wouldn’t risk my relationship with my children. I think this is the right choice.

Mrs. Edwards, if you come across this, my hat is off to you.  I’ll be paying more attention to John now.  Much more.