It’s true that the politicians change but the messages often remain the same. We get the same kind of promises every two years, and neither party does a satisfactory job of delivering on their promises. I am as cynical as the next person. But Barack Obama has emphasized two main themes in this campaign that, more than anything, explain why he is winning and favored to be the next President of the United States. Here they are:
“I don’t want to just end the war, but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place.”- Barack Obama
“The votes hadn’t even been counted in November [2006] before we heard reports that corporations were already recruiting lobbyists with Democratic connections to carry their water in the next Congress. That’s why it’s not enough to just change the players. We have to change the game…The truth is, we cannot change the way Washington works unless we first change the way Congress works.”- Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, embodies the mindset that got us into the war and famously said that she takes money from registered lobbyists because they are ‘real’ Americans.
We have the Clintons’ long record of public service to judge them by. Obama, by contrast, can only be judged by his brief service in the Senate, and the campaign team that he has put together. We don’t know for certain that Obama will not fill his administration and the DNC with people no different from Terry McAuliffe, Lanny Davis, James Carville, Paul Begala, and Mark Penn. What we do know is that Clinton’s team thinks that our wing of the party (eggheads and African-Americans) is an embarrassment that can and should be taken for granted. When Paul Begala said that he doesn’t need “some asshole from Vermont” telling him how to run the Democratic Party, he was talking to more than Howard Dean…he was talking to eggheads everywhere.
When this campaign started, my heart was with Sen. Dodd because he was taking on the administration on a number of issues in a way that earned my support. But my brain was truly undecided between John Edwards and Barack Obama. All I wanted was someone that would take over the party from McAuliffe, Penn, From, Begala, and Carville. Whether it was Edwards or Obama was mostly immaterial to me. But only Obama offered a real chance to change the mindset that got us into the war in Iraq (Edwards co-sponsored the authorization).
But Obama has impressed me not only through his success, but through the type of people he has attracted to his campaign. The professional people make very few mistakes and often make brilliant moves that I would never thought of. And the volunteers are smart, thoughtful, and optimistic. It’s a sharp contrast to the hard-edged bitterness, tone of victimization, and racist overtones I see coming out of the Clinton camp.
For me, at least, the Obama campaign is much better and much more than I originally gave myself the right to hope for. And the last thing on earth they should do is turn the Naval Observatory over to the people surrounding the Clintons. That would not only undermine the spirit, but the accomplishment of the Obama movement. People went to work for Obama to change how Washington works and end the mindset that got us into the war in Iraq. You can’t accomplish those two goals by implanting them in the office of the vice-president.
Obama needs a running mate that reflects his values, and the values of his followers. So, please, enough with the Dream Ticket talk. That ticket would be a nightmare.
I don’t see Clinton on the ticket. Certainly Obama is aware that she and her team would spend time undercutting him. She is simply not VP material. We don’t need anymore ‘grasping’ people at VP.
That is another good lesson we have learned in the last 8 years. The center of power has to be obvious, if that means a return to the subservient years, so be it. No ‘partners’, please.
nalbar
Agree with your post 100%. I’ve always favored Obama, but was turned off a bit late last year with the gospel-tour fiasco. But like so many others, I was reawakened to the moment when Obama won Iowa and delivered that riveting acceptance speech. While watching I told my girlfriend I just couldn’t see this guy losing. It was epic.
There have been some rough times since then, but more than outweighed by the good times (like the February sweep!). I don’t think Obama’s perfect, I would nudge him left on some issues, maybe a bit right on the foreclosure thing, but overall I see him being an excellent candidate. I think McCain has no idea what’s coming for him, once Dems are united. I just don’t see how he has any chance.
You know how in generic ballots, the Republican gets hammered by 15%? Well once Hillary’s supporters migrate back to Obama, you’re gonna start seeing polls where Obama leads McCain by 15%. Believe it. The week after the DNC convention, after Obama’s (hopefully) great acceptance speech, with Bush speaking for McCain at the RNC convention, I think it will be Obama 55% McCain 40%. Call me crazy but that’s how I project it.
We also have another piece of evidence why having Clinton on the ticket would not work.In one word, Lieberman.
Liberman’s injection as the trojan horse in the Al Gore campaign sunk that campaign.Something like that will happen if Hillary Clinton is accepted by Obama.She does not share Obama’s values.She believes,like the Straussians, that some people are more equal than others.
She voted for the IWR becuase she believes in George Bush’s policy of annihilating the Untermenschen.
She wants to “obliterate ” the Iranian people.She will find a pretext for doing so.
In short,her presence on the ticket will make it impossible for Barack to implement his own policies.
There’s an interesting article in Counterpunch today which argues that Fallon would be a good choice for VP for Obama.
Makes sense to me.
It makes absolutely NO sense to me.
The military leadership has to be CRUSHED in this country. Virtually all the leadership has to be fired/retired. The colonels and majors have to be moved up. It will take generations to do this. Fallon is part of the problem. He is part of the military industrial complex that Obama was talking about when he said we have to change our mindset.
Putting Fallon on the ticket would be as good as saying a military dictatorship would be OK-fine.
nalbar
Virtually all the leadership has to be fired/retired.
Bush fired/retired Fallon. That means nothing to you?
A president can’t even begin to confront the military industrial complex without having some (former) members of it on board.
I thought I read that Obama declared (some time ago) that the military was off limits for the vp.
Huh? He’ll confront it by appointing a Secretary of Defense, a Joint Chief, and Chiefs of Staff. To say that he must choose a retired admiral for VP is absurd. The last candidate to do that was Ross Perot.
All right then. So how about Fallon for Secretary of Defence?
I really don’t know. His approach and philosophy would have to mesh with Obama’s. I do admire him for his outspokenness re Iran.
re SecDef: I will not begrudge Obama one (1) top-tier Republican Cabinet member, and if that happens I hope it will be Hagel heading the Defense Dept. Perfect mesh on short and medium-term philosophy: end Iraq war, win Afghanistan, refocus on Al Qaeda. As for long-term deployments and reform, I actually don’t know what either of them favor.
He has to be retired from the military for something like 10 years before he can accept a civilian leadership position with authority over the military (like Secretary of Defense.)
Admiral Fallon, before he was fired, probably did more to stop the United States attack on Iran than anyone. That’s why he was fired.
My deep thought of the day-
Imagine that Hillary Clinton is President and she leads an administration as poorly-run as her campaign has been…
I agree. I’ve been saying for a while now that the country can’t afford that level of mismanagement now.
Of course, if she fails, it would be all our fault, no doubt.
Gawd, I’ll be happy when she’s finally off the stage for GOOD.
But Obama has impressed me not only through his success, but through the type of people he has attracted to his campaign.
such as Tom Daschle? Remember when the Daschle Democrats was a curse?
It is true that Obama was against the war in 2002, but Dennis Ross is one of his advisers and his voting record in the Senate is not much different than Clinton, other than she supported Kyl Lieberman and he ran like a rabbit.
Yeah, like Tom Daschle. He’d make an excellent chief of staff, by the way.
Is Daschle connected in any way to Obama’s campaign, other than endorsing him for President?
I believe Daschle is informally one of the surrogates charged with talking to superdelegates.
As Booman noted above, he’d be an excellent CoS.
Really well said, Booman.
Originally I wanted Feingold to run and he didn’t. Then I was conflicted between Dodd, Edwards and Obama. Never trusted Clinton – the Bush/Clinton dynasty has made a real mess of everything and has to be ended. As Dodd and Edwards dropped out, I was left with Obama so the decision was easy. But I liked his words and speeches the best all along. It was similar to Bill Clinton’s ’92 message of Hope and Change but I believed Obama this time around. Bill Clinton always seemed phony with the same message.
More and more, my dream ticket would be Obama/Richardson though.
Yeah, I don’t know about anybody else, but I think 28 years of someone named Bush or Clinton in the White House is enough.
I agree 100%. I was an Edwards supporter till he dropped out. I had to do some thinking and some soul searching of my own before I could endorse another candidate, but Obama has won my support 100% and more.
I will admit am not a Hillary fan as their is too much baggage she will not accept- not from the scandals surrounding Bill and her, but from some of the things the Clinton Administration did when they were in power. If she wants to claim the experience of being First Lady and an adviser, she has to claim the mistakes also.
The DLC scares me more than the DNC and Hillary is wedded to it. Her playing the race card has made her a Dixiecrat in my book and I think the party and the nation are better off without them.
Hillary as VP??? NO!!!! It would be destroy the party even more than her campaign is now.
Boo, what you write is what I’ve been saying. Clinton is just a Republican Lite. She’s a fifth column in the Democratic Party. She’s got more allegiance to money and corporations than she does to her poor, befuddled followers.
Let her keep the D after her name if she wants, but don’t trust her with any power. If Reid gets replaced, don’t replace him with Clinton.
Amen! Couldn’t have said it better myself.
You write:
On the national stage perhaps, but we can get a glimpse of what sort of public servant he is by looking at his first elected office:
go view the video of his early years 1992 here at end of post
Now, I’m a multi-generation feminist woman who opposed Clinton’s reelection for Senate, sigh, and followed Omir’s path of Feingold-nope-Edwards-etc.
My mom is 120% behind Obama, but she thinks that the VP slot should be a HRC supporter.
What about Joe Sestak?
Was dreaming about Marion Wright Edelman but I doubt that would fly.
Edelman note was not part of the known-HRC-supporter thought, sorry, bad formatting, no segue.
Did no one else participate in today’s big “Vote for Change” voter registration effort? I thought I’d read of others’ participation!
I was out, thanks to the Obama campaign, most of they day registering voters. I had a blast. Teamed up with a stranger who became a friend over the course of the day. Ran into another Obama guy who had run for delegate while we were out at Union Station for National Train Day. Walked across the street and registered a few more voters at Olivera Street – a little slice of Tijuana in Los Angeles, tourist trappings and all.
One security guard approached and one point, and I thought she was going to ask us to leave. Instead, she asked us to register her to vote. She had just become a citizen this year. That was the most fun of all – registering first-time voters. One man was retired, but was registering to vote for the first time in his life. Amazing.
I think a tsunami is coming. And for once, it won’t be aimed at us!
In the video clip I saw yesterday, Obama answered the question from the press about a possible Clinton VP pick, with what appeared to be either feigned or genuine interest in the idea.
Made me start to think about how I would feel if Obama, for whatever reason, picked Clinton. Now Hillary is, deservedly, anathema to many Democrats because of her “the party be damned, I’ll do anything to win” campaign philosophy, to say nothing of her neoliberal foreign policy views. But Obama may decide that having her on the ticket would be the surest way to unite the party, and that uniting the party was essential to winning in November. I would be unhappy with that calculation, but I could understand it.
I’m sure I would spend the next eight years praying for Obama’s health and safety, and I’m an agnostic. I hope he would insist she take a clear back seat to the President in policy matters, but I can’t see Hillary taking a seat at the back of the bus, regardless. She just spent the past several months trying to throw Obama under its wheels.
I hope he passes on the idea of this “dream ticket.” It could very easily turn into a nightmare.
And remember, it’s not just Hillary. It’s Billary and their whole machine. No, no, a thousand times no. Not even a HRC supporter.
With many candidates, a unity ticket would make sense. But the Clintons are so divisive — and if you didn’t think so before, look at the campaign they just ran — that “uniting” the party with them is a sure way to keep it disunited. Not only disunited, but perpetually vulnerable to the whole DLC/Republican manipulation game we’ve seen for the last how many years (I’ve stopped counting). No, sometimes you just have to throw the bastards out.
Absolutely right on the money. It’s a deal with the damn devil, and he’d regret it every day. Not even close to worth it. He doesn’t need her, BUT Hillary’s supporters will most definitely be needing him. There’s also this talk of Obama helping to settle her campaign debts — I’d think he’d be much more of a mind to go this route regarding a ‘unity’ move, not that I’d want my $ going to Mark Penn!
After Cheney, the VP position needs to return to what it was…powerless.