The Chesapeake Primary — Overnight Open-Thread

I’m curious if anyone thinks it’s a little strange that Hillary Clinton has stopped acknowledging Obama’s wins. I don’t see how it helps her. Certainly she doesn’t want to admit defeat but to say nothing? I would think that saying something about it would actually mean that she cares a little about how the democrats are doing overall. I actually enjoyed hearing from her after the initial round of primaries and caucuses but now I’ve just come to expect her saying thank you to who ever set up the rally she happens to be at when she loses. It just seems like a waste of her time on national media.

I hate to brag (actually, I don’t, I’m happy to brag :D), but I said right here on this blog just 3 days ago:

So now he’s peeled off her A-A support, he’s starting to get as strong a strangle-hold on 35-50 voters as he has on under-35 voters, he’s making big gains with women, big gains with working class white voters, big gains with non-college-educated whites, big gains with hispanics and asians (44% AZ, early polls in WA suggested he lead among Hispanics and Asians in the state)…he’s poaching away Hillary’s base. Which is what, in theory, a successful “insurgent” candidacy would do, what it would look like. We’ve never really seen it before, which is why people are having trouble making sense of it.
…
If there were some signs that Obama had hit a ceiling and couldn’t eat into her base anymore, I’d have more pause…but all signs point to his efforts getting more successful as the campaign unfolds. The results in Washington seem to make that point for me, no? And we’re past the “tipping point”, so to speak…I think Obama has actually taken a slight lead, in that his coalition is now, IMO, bigger than Clinton’s. However, his is still additive, whereas she is slowly draining support.

So I smiled when I saw this:

Exit polls: Obama stealing Clinton’s base

(CNN) — Barack Obama did well with Virginia Democrats across both race and gender lines, and seems to be eating away at Hillary Clinton’s backbone of support: women.

According to exit polls, Obama won nearly 60 percent of the female vote, a demographic that has carried Clinton to success in past primaries.

Clinton even fared worse among men in Virginia – more than two-thirds chose Obama.

Meanwhile, the Illinois senator scored his highest percentage of African-American support to date — winning close to 90 percent of that voting bloc. And the two evenly split the white vote as whole, even though in past primaries Clinton has held a slight edge among white voters.

Obama even beat Clinton among Latino voters, a group that his heavily favored Clinton in most past primaries. In Virginia, Latino’s went for Obama over Clinton by 6 points. Though they were only 5 percent of the electorate there.

The only demographic Clinton won in Virginia was among white women, who broke for her over Obama by 10 points. But that margin is significantly smaller than the national average on Super Tuesday. She beat Obama among white women by 25 points then, according to national exit polls.

Go me. More importantly though, go Obama!

Agreed, Marian. And he seems to be struggling some. He wants to “put tax cuts in the pockets of working people, like seniors.” Huh? He seems unusually uncertain and hesitant. And a lot of his taglines are seeming forced; the wheels-on-the-bus thing you noted and the yes-we-can thing both felt rote rather than passionate.

I did like the whole “honor McCain’s service; he is an American hero; he does not belong in the White House” bit, though. That was a nice rhetorical touch.

I, for one, love the new McCain slogan: “No, You Can’t.”

Brooks and TR… NICE! I agree whole heartedly. It really seems like McCain is unsure how to progress now that he is the nominee. Should he follow his instincts or try to contrast himself with Obama. That’s got to be tough. I look forward to the time that Obama says “it’s sad your party doesn’t know what torture is.”

Just came back from serving as officer of elections in our little precinct in VA. The polls closed at19:05 (we had a couple of people come in before we locked the doors and before we printed off the results tape, so we let them vote). And I really don’t know how other precincts were able to start reporting much before 8PM. We had a fairly steady but not overwhelming turnout, 10 people working and we still didn’t manage to get things finished much before 8:30 and it was 9PM before the CAP finished their counting.

Or precinct has 3200 registered voters. Of those, 1185 showed up and 47 sent in absentee votes (our CAP is in the same building as we are, so the results were announced shortly after ours). At my table — L to Z — we were equipped with two poll books (one for Dems and one for Repubs), two count sheets (ditto) and two stacks of numbrs. Green for the Dems (for hope and new growth and the green light set for “go”) and yellow for the Repbs (I guess for chickenshit and for “proceed with caution”).

Of the 1185 who showed up, 844 voted in the Democratic primary and 341 in the Republican one. But it was evident that many Repubs voted in the Dem primaries, for whatever reason (nefarious or not). Of the 844 votes in the Dem primary, 574 voted for Obama, 261 for Clinton, 4 for Edwards and 4 for Kucinich . In the CAP, 23 voted for Obama, 10 for Clinton.

In the Repub primary, of the 341, 229 votes were for McCAin, 82 for Huckabee, 12 for Ron Paul and 10 for Romney. There were some votes for Giuliani and for Thompson as well, but I didn’t write them down. And I didn’t write down the CAP votes for Repubs at all.

We had to ask each voter which primary they wanted to vote in, and most people didn’t like to tell us (in VA, you don’t register your party affiliation). “Can’t I vote in both?” was the most common reply. I was sitting at the Repub pollbook (because we didn’t have not enough Repubs) and one reluctant woman said: “but will you still be as nice to me if I tell you I want to vote Republican?”. Which made both me and the woman tending the Dem pollbook burst out laughing.

But the absolutely crowning point of the afternoon/evening came when a young man (mid-twenties, at a guess) said he didn’t want to vote in either Republican or Democratic primary. “I want to vote for Ron Paul”, he said, and was really upset when we told him that meant he’d have to take a Republican ticket. Some people are saying that prO-bamas are cultists… But, jeez… at least, Obamaniacs know which party he’s representing. This youngster seemed to think that Ron Paul operates in a vacuum.

Also… A surprising number of really young people came out and most of them were alone, not with their parents. High school students, who aren’t even 18 yet, but will be in November, so have the right to vote in the primaries. Most chose the Dem ticket, but quite a few voted Repub as well.

w00t! w00t! w00t!
Just wanted to say that I am VERY relieved and happy about this.
(He gave a kick-ass speech in Wisconsin tonight, too. Loved that almost as much as I loved the results of all three elections.)
And peep the demographics of the exit polls!!

I, for one, love the new McCain slogan: “No, You Can’t.”

It’s only beat out by Romney’s call-and-response with “No, they didn’t.”

“If I hear his “the wheels have fallen off the straight-talk express” too many more times, I”m going to stop listening to him…”

Day one. Day one. Day one. Day one. Day one. Day one. Day one. Day one. Day one. Day one.

Puke.

The Republicans do too know what torture is. It’s having no choices other than Romney, Huckabee, McCain, Paul, Hunter, Thompson, & Guiliani, and knowing that complete control of all branches of government and the indulgence of their every whim had as its grand consequence the Bush-Cheney debacle and the rise to power of people like DeLay, Stevens, Foley, Cunningham, Vitter, Craig, Santorum, and assorted other cretins, fools, knaves, crooks, and incompetents.

OK, it’s nowhere near the real torture that Bush and his various fascist-leaning (excuse me, unitary-executivist) advisers have turned into official US policy, but for now it will have to do.

In the meantime, Obama got 63% of the vote in VA (with 94% of the vote reporting), and 76% in DC (48% reporting), and Maryland looking comparable, albeit with only 8% of the vote in). It makes me feel quite sad for Hillary. Not enough to actually vote for her over Obama, but she’s earned a lot of Democratic goodwill, and it’s got to be rough for her.

When you don’t want to queer the deal by talking yourself up as the victor before the battle is over, there’s only so many things you can say before you run out of material. Consider also that the candidates are tired from nearly non-stop campaigning. Finally, keep in mind that many people are hearing the speech for the first time.

As someone pointed out earlier, Hillary has simply stopped acknowledging Obama’s wins, It’s not too hard to avoid saying the same thing twice when you don’t say anything. In her speeches Hillary – and all the rest, for that matter – has her own hackneyed talking points that she repeats over and over.

There are always a couple of tag phrases that people rely on for as long as they’re getting a reaction. Remember George Bush’s “smoke ’em out” and “bring them to justice”? He carried on using those favourites long after it was clear he would do neither.

I’d just as soon not see Obama stop winning, so that he’d have to come up with a new speech.

How is Donna Edwards’ challenge to Democratic imcumbent Al Wynn, MD 4th Congressional District, doing? Is there any website to go to for updated results?

It is a sad commentary on the state of Democratic voters that any criticism of Obama is seen as an assertion that Hillary is somehow “better”, even if she’s not mentioned at all.

Hillary has her own faults, absolutely. And, when she falters in a debate I will be the first to say that she’s failing in an area that’s usually her strength. However, it is Obama who is known for deeply passionate, moving speeches. And tonight’s, to me, felt less authentic and more canned than his previous efforts that I’ve heard. Acknowledging that fact is just being honest, not anti-Obama partisan.

Of course, many people are only interested in information that confirms their already-held beliefs. If that’s you, please feel free to read this post as wildly pro-Obama, pro-Hillary, anti-Obama, or anti-Hillary as you prefer.

‘Cause he’s got high hopes
He’s got high hopes
Nineteen Sixty 2008’s the year for his high hopes.
Come on and vote for Kennedy Obama
Vote for Kennedy Obama
Keep America strong.
Kennedy Obama, he just keeps rollin’ – a –
Kennedy Obama, he just keeps rollin’ – a –
Kennedy Obama, he just keeps rollin’ along.

Amazing streak Obama has going. If he keeps up these margins of victory, there could be a chance that Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania start to flip his way. Maybe it won’t be true victories there (we are just too far out to know for sure), but if he can eat up enough delegates in those 3 stats, she’s absolutely history.

Demographics are not destiny, but I don’t think it’s “momentum” so much as Obama fine-tuning his pitch to appeal to new groups, and doing so effectively. And so the question becomes, are working class whites and women and older voters and hispancis in Ohio and Texas going to be as receptive to Obama’s new messages as they were in Washington, Virginia, and Maryland?

Oh, and yeah, for us, that stuff is repetitive, but c’mon, the McCain talking points from Obama are about 10 days old, which means people in Texas and Ohio probably still haven’t heard them, the Potomac Primary was a 30 second after-thought on the local news here in Houston, and people in Wisconsin and Hawaii are just hearing them now for the first time.

So let me get this straight: Hillary can’t out-campaign Barack Obama in a Democratic primary, but she’s gonna do better than him in a general election. It’s becoming increasingly clear that she’s simply inferior at appealing to people inclined to vote Democrat in the Fall, so the only way that makes sense is if you think she’ll do a better job of appealing to Independents or Republicans, which seems, well, absurd.

I mean, it’s all out there already: Rezko, drugs, his kindergarten essays whatever else. Nobody seems to care, b/c its all B-league stuff. I mean, really weak stuff. Hillary tried to go real negative on him, and he effectively both counter-punched and made her pay a political price for it. As hilzoy noted over at Obsidian Wings, if the Russians have chemical weapons, that doesn’t mean we need chemical weapons; it means we need gas masks, resistant suits, deterrents to using chemical weapons (and our own wouldn’t be very good deterrents, since they tend to waft around and kill everyone indedescriminately). Good analogy. Hillary being a good attack dog won’t deter the GOP from going after her, and being a good attack dog isn’t what you need to counter-act negative politics. You need someone who can neutralize those attacks, effectively counter-punch w/o looking negative, and make the opponent pay a political price for his/her attacks. Obama has shown a pretty good ability to do that; Hillary, conversely, has not.

And the suggestion that Hillary has been vetted is laughable. If there are no more skeletons in her closet, why isn’t she releasing her tax returns? The whole Bill-is-in-bed-with-corrupt-dictator-and-corrupt-precious-metals-tycoon story never took off, but it’s a reminder that we’ve had 8 years now for the two of them to get into all sorts of stuff behind closed doors that’s been missed.

What’s more, with the release of Hillary’s WH docs, we’re already seeing some odious stuff, like (I’ll see if I can find a link, just saw this today) the memo extolling the virtues for Hillary’s Senate run of Bill pardoning a bunch of hispanic terrorists. Yuck.

HRC is battle tested..

Greg – You keep saying that, but I have no idea what you mean. How is she battle tested? Could you please tell us what major political victories she won? And I don’t mean Bill, I mean Hillary. As noted earlier, she hasn’t had a real political opponent. She hasn’t fought for anything in the Senate. Obama’s even been in elected office longer than her. And admittedly, we haven’t seen many political battles from Obama either, with the exception of this well-fought campaign with Hillary. But you call him untested while she’s battle tested? While I do respect what Hillary has gone through, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Again, if Hillary’s battle testing is so good, why does she keep losing battles with Obama? For me, fighting off attacks is about the ability to get your message across, and between these two candidates, Obama seems to have done a much better job of that.

I’m pleased to see my home state (VA) carry the day for Obama.

(Sidenote: the last time I voted there in person was ’92, when I was an election officer at the ripe old age of 22. Turnout for Bill was pretty good that time around in my precinct.)

Re: speeches: I think some people are a little too in-the-loop, and therefore too critical. Politicians necessarily recycle phrases and clauses from speech to speech, because it’s efficient, because their campaign might like the sentiments contained therein, and because relatively few people actually hear more than one or two speeches. If you do hear more than one or two full speeches at this stage in the game, you’re likely A.) a political operative, B.) a political junkie, C.) a bored representative of the media, or D.) a lonely person with too much time on their hands.

So, yeah, you might hear a few stock phrases or applause lines. Politics and religion are built on them. Obama is still a mighty fine orator in my estimation (Edwards isn’t so bad, either).

When conservative hack Jamie Kirchick can make an actually persuasive case against you based on newly-found allegations of misdeeds, you haven’t been “fully vetted”

The Open and Shut Case Against Hillary Clinton

A key component of Hillary Clinton’s campaign message is that she would be tougher on foreign policy than Barack Obama. She has spent a lifetime constructing this hawkish image (see Mike’s excellent piece from last year on the formation of Hillary’s views on the exercise of American power), in full knowledge that she would have to neutralize fears of her being a radical peacenik if she ever wished to make a serious run for president. Remember last August (how can you forget?) when she chided Barack Obama as “irresponsible and naive” for saying he would meet with America’s enemies?

If there is only one article that you read today — or this week — make it Debra Burlingame’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. It concerns the pardon that President Clinton handed out to 16 members of FALN, a Puerto Rican terrorist group that was resonsible for a string of armed robberies as well as 146 bombings that killed 9 people and injured hundreds in its quixotic fight for independence from the United States. Some 25 years before another, far more devastating terrorist attack on Lower Manhattan, FALN planted a bomb in the Fraunces Tavern restaurant which detonated during lunch-hour, killing 4 and injuring 60, it’s most infamous and deadly attack.

This was truly the sleaziest of Clinton’s pardons (which is saying something). But it lacked the glitz and intrigue of the Marc Rich pardon, and perhaps for that reason, it is among the less notorious. But the FALN pardon was indisputably the worst. Rich, after all, was just another example of money corrupting politics. The FALN pardon was far worse; it represented nothing less than the surrender of American honor and prestige to terrorists for political gain. Its effect — in the midst of the African embassy bombings, the attack on the USS Cole, Khobar Towers et. al. — was to confirm Osama bin Laden’s declaration two years later that the United States was a “weak horse.” The U.S. Sentencing Commission, the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Attorney all opposed the pardon. Even the terrorists themselves — who, after all, did not recognize the legal jurisdiction of the United States (the reason why they waged war against it) — did not request the pardon.

How does Hillary fit into all of this? Well, she is the reason — the only reason — that the pardon was ever granted. She had a senate race to win, after all, in a state with over 1 million Spanish-speaking voters. Characteristic of White House thinking at the time was an email sent by an adviser concluding that the pardons would be “fairly easy to accomplish and will have a positive impact among strategic communities in the U.S. (read, voters).” One can already imagine the attack ads that the McCain campaign and the RNC are devising right now, if they haven’t produced them already. God forbid Hillary wins the nomination, they will be a welcome addition to the public discussion about who Hillary Clinton is and what ultimately drives her, lest anyone genuinely believe she’s in this because “It’s about our country. It’s about our kids’ future. It’s about all of us together.” I should admit at this point that I’ve been largely ambivalent about the Democratic primary, and have never understood the Hillary-hatred that drives the right. But, after reading Burlingame’s piece, how can anyone trust the Clintons in power? To use one of Hillary’s rhetorical flourishes when she questioned the honesty of General David Petraeus last year, that this woman would claim to be tougher than Barack Obama in dealing with America’s Islamist enemies when she and her husband sold out the country and its honor to a bunch of two-bit, Hispanic terrorists “requires the willing suspension of disblief.”

yuck

It is a sad commentary on the state of Democratic voters that any criticism of Obama is seen as an assertion that Hillary is somehow “better”, even if she’s not mentioned at all.

Brooks @ 26 – What are you talking about? Did I miss something? Looking over the thread, I don’t see anyone accusing you of anything; at least not before that comment. And two people seem to have agreed with you, while TR simply explained why this isn’t that important. And I agree with what he wrote. Believe it or not, before tonight, I’ve never seen an Obama speech, and so everything was fresh to me. I knew he gave good speech and counted that as one of his key assets, but had only bought into Obama based solely what I saw on paper. His assets outweigh his liabilities, and as an accountant, that’s what I like to see.

Secondly, this is just something you’re going to have to get used to until this mess is over (which hopefully will be sooner than later). I’ve found that if I don’t write something nice in a comment about Hillary, it’s assumed I’m a Hillary-basher. And that’s silly. I’ve defended Hillary Clinton ever since I stopped being a Republican thirteen years ago, and I might have to do so in the future. But in this war, the partisans take no prisoners. So I always try to sprinkle a nice thing about Hillary in my comments, which isn’t hard because it’s the truth. I’d rather not have to do that, but I do.

So if any non-partisans don’t want to be accused of being partisan, you’ve just got to add some sort of disclaimer showing that you don’t dislike the person you’re criticizing. Especially as there are partisans who are certainly pretending to be non-partisan. Generally, they’re Hillary supporters who don’t want to admit that they like Hillary and that their criticism comes from an outside party…who happens to only criticize Obama and never Hillary. Or they just don’t like Obama and they like to mask their dislike in high-minded criticism. And so if you don’t want to be considered one of them, it’s just necessary to remind people in every comment that you’re not a hater. I know it might be annoying, but in warfare, there are few truly neutral countries. And as I said, hopefully, this won’t be an issue for much longer.

I want to be clear: I’m not agreeing with Kirchick’s conclusions, because I’m not educated enough on the issue. But, the case he makes is, IMO, persuasive, and if I was the type of voter who would never look into the issue further, I could see myself being very persuaded by this. For one, whatever type of spin is put on this, it _is_ founded on factual events, and dovetails beautifully with pre-held reservations about Hillary from even some of her supporters, let alone swing voters, and the very qualities said to drive “Clinton Derangement Syndrome”. That is to say, even if this is little more than agitprop (which it very well could be), it’s devastating agitprop.

So no, she’s not “fully vetted”, as this is the first time we’ve heard about this, to my knowledge

My mistake Brooks; I misunderstood. I didn’t see the speech (I’ve stopped watching precisely because they come off as repetitive, lol), so that could very well be true. They’re raving about it over at Matt Yglesias place, so the thought didn’t really occur to me that was the source of your complaint. My bad. I also hope I didn’t come off as “viciously” defensive, at least towards you. I should’ve made it clear that my post at 34 was aimed towards the post at 27, and were meant to be forceful but not vicious.

Ah…I’m on a punch of opiates right now, so that might explain my repeated blunders, lol

Damn I’m slow tonight.

I think it was a great night. Anyone who finds Obama’s speech tedious doesn’t know what stump speeches are all about. For each audience, it’s a thrill. If you’ve seen it three times it’s tedious, but it isn’t meant to be seen/heard three times. I’m amazed that he can make something he’s said thirty times or more exciting for the crowd he’s addressing (and me, too). We are witnessing something which comes along once in a long generation if we’re lucky. Enjoy it while it’s here.

AP reporting on huge Dem turnout in VA: “With 92% reporting in Virginia, Obama is now 102,000 votes ahead of all Republicans combined.” — Will, @31

Please remember that, in VA, we have open primaries. That is, we do not register as Dems, Repubs and Indies, and we re allowed to vote in whichever primary we wish, as long as it’s only the one. So, today, Repubs could vote in the Dem primary if they so wished. And many of them did. That does not, necessarily, mean that they’ll vote for the Dems in the general. In fact, I’d bet that most of them won’t; they’ll vote for the anointed Repub, as they always had.

I think, given the Repub rule of “winner take all” in regard to delegates, McCain is pretty much a forgone conclusion as the nominee. So, from now on, all the open primaries need not only to be watched but allowed a bit less weight than they might have had otherwise, vis the future (ie the general). With McCain more-or-less crowned, many Repubs will freer about meddling in ours. Not because they’re for Obama, but because they’d like to have an influence on what we end up with.

I’ll take every delegate Obama can get towards the Dem nomination, even from such flawed primaries, but it behooves us to remember that some of those primaries *are* likely to be tainted by “outside influence”. And that some of those votes will not materialize, come November. Yeah, I hear a lot of noise, from the more moderate Repubs of my acquaintance, about Obama’s acceptability. But. They also think McCain is equally moderate and acceptable and they’re used to voting Republican, when push comes to shove.

The democrat party needs to move on.

RollingFloorLiberal @43 – Was that just a typo or perhaps an accidental slip-up by a GOP plant? Around here, we’re the Democratic Party. It’s only in Bushland that there’s something called the Democrat Party. Not a big deal, but let’s try to keep our party name straight. Thanks.

To follow-up on what libra @52 said, Texas also has an open primary. Or at least, anyone can vote in it as long as they didn’t vote in another primary or attend the Republican convention. And so some of this cross-over vote could come into play here too. But honestly, if these people were smart, they’d have supported Hillary. If nothing else, they want this to go all the way to our national convention, with us duking it out the whole way; while McCain rides easy street. So if they were smart, they’d have voted for Hillary. But if they were dumb and just hated Hillary, they’d vote against her. But a vote for Hillary is a vote to get to keep beating her up, so maybe they’d have thought it all the way through that. But whatever it is, if people are crossing over to pick Obama, that’s going to hurt Hillary here too.

Beyond that, I really do think Obama has the cross-over appeal. Everyone hates Bush. Everyone. Even the people who won’t admit it to themselves. They’d be just as happy if the last seven years never happened and everyone forgot about the war. And while old habits never die, I strongly suspect that a lot of people who voted for Bush are going to want to turn the page and forget that any of that crap ever happened. And the best way to get that is through Obama.

Now, I don’t expect to see 50% or even 15% of these people to cross-over, but it doesn’t take much. Virgina’s already going blue, and a 5-10% pick-up by Obama could make all the difference. Even in the worst of times, the Bushies could barely steal the election. I don’t think this one’s even going to be close. Anyone can naysay me if you want, but pessism doesn’t sell candidates. I remember people naysaying that we’d ever win Congress back too. But I didn’t doubt it at all.

How is that “polarizing”? If you want to see what deliberately divisive and polarizing really looks like, go pull DeLay or Santorum or Gingrich or Rove or Limbaugh, etc., etc. out of the cesspool for closer inspection.

Bill and Hillary have played that same game for years, right beside those you complain about. Look at the difference in temperment. Hillary says “It took a Clinton to clean up after the first Bush, and it may take a Clinton to clean up after this one.” Obama says “John McCain is an American hero… but his policies don’t address the real problems of the American people” Is it really so hard to see the difference there?

Now, there are legitimate reasons for supporting Hillary and opposing Obama. Heck, Obama’s Mr. Nice Guy approach might get his ass kicked in the general. But if you want to bring “polarizing” into it, you have to do some serious mental gymnastics to somehow exempt Hillary from the culture of demonization and tit-for-tat that’s been going on for too long, and which she has (often gleefully) participated in.

It comes down to a few words.

Without vision the people perish.

The Republican vision has been revealed to a great number of the ‘electorate’ (shorthand in political circle for ‘people’) for what it is – a vision that has not stood the tests of the past 7 years.

Both Hillary and Obama have vision. Obama seems to have benefited from focusing on vision: Big (as in go ‘big’ or go home) vs. Hillary (fix our problems and fight bad people with correct policy).

The difference is Obama seems to be resonating with ‘people’ because his ‘vision’ seems large enough to deal with the problems we face at the appropriate scale.

This approach has come under scathing criticism from many in the Democratic Party.

The brilliance of ‘democracy’ – small ‘d’ – is that a greater wisdom does emerge, despite the fact that educated elites feel they know better than ‘the mob’. The difference boils down to knowledge versus wisdom.

I suspect that most Independents who support Obama feel there he embodies wisdom and Hillary is the embodiment of knowledge. It’s a subtle distinction, but then again, so are most tipping points.

Just in case you didn’t hear the most inspiring speech of the past 40 years:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrERVKkFSQ4

When he spoke about the people I knew who gave their lives 40 years ago down south, the first time any candidate has spoken that way about those heroes, I was blown away and burst into tears at the memory of old comrades.

Just watch it. This is JFK, MLK, RFK, all come back. I’ve never heard anything more inspiring, and I heard all three of those guys in person.

Good morning!

Unlike some of you keyboard addicts (yep—I’m looking at the both of you, Tom and Doc), a few of us still require this little tidbit of a thing called sleep. I’ve been up for a bit, running through the news and watching the news, and the one thing that keeps coming back to me is from Obama’s speech in Wisconsin:

“This is the new American majority. This is what change looks like when it happens from the bottom up.”

I listen to those words—and I toss them around in my mind, and the name that keeps coming up is Howard Dean. Remember “The Scream?” Remember that guttural “barbaric yawp” he emitted—and then his campaign dried up and blew away like a tumbleweed?

Well, it’s back—with a vengeance. But this time, it’s not from the candidate; rather, it is from the people that this primordial howl is heard. It is the grass-roots, and it is eerily reminiscent of Whitman:

“I too am not a bit tamed,
I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.”
(Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass.”)

These words do not merely apply to a particular candidate this time around; they apply, instead, to each individual who dares to stand up and vote for that candidate. Each becomes not just a small piece of the all—they each become that all. Every single voter becomes Thoreau’s “Majority of One”—and in doing so, becomes part of a mechanism that, given time, patience, and a little nurturing, has the potential to restore not only the tattered remnants of America’s credibility in the eyes of the world, but also in the eyes of America itself.

Such a restoration need not be exclusionary’ that’s what “building bridges” is all about. Each individual becomes that “Majority of One,” and stands up against the status quo. Another quote (from Whitman’s “Song of Myself”) fits aptly here:

“I celebrate myself,
and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

That is what Obama is all about—and it goes much, much deeper than JFK, MLK, and RFK. It goes directly to the heart of what the Founders were grasping at when they first chose to reject the rule of a distant King.

It goes to the “ideal” of what America once was, and again can become….

Honestly, I don’t see where Obama really will lead a ticket to a win. A mushy, useless health care policy, great positions with no real effort to impart them, a great voice but a willingness to work with and compromise on core ideals.

Bush and Cheney won the last two, I think your standards for what it takes to lead a winning ticket are way too high. As for Obama, I’m really not sure he will be any different from Clinton in practice either. I was undecided for a long time, until probably right before Iowa. The difference for me is that I am pretty sure of what we will get from Clinton, and the Mark Penn school of triangulating government doesn’t appeal to me at all. Obama preaches some of the same junk and flirts with rightwing messages too often for my tastes, but I don’t think he is going to be any worse than Clinton and there is at least a chance that he could be much better.

On a personal note, I’ve been voting since 1972 (PA, MD) and I can’t remember voting in a primary that hadn’t been effectively decided by the time my turn rolled around. What a treat.

On a personal note, I’ve been voting since 1972 (PA, MD) and I can’t remember voting in a primary that hadn’t been effectively decided by the time my turn rolled around. What a treat.

Tell me about it. I’m in Texas and can’t remember if I’ve ever bothered voting in a primary, and certainly never thought my election day vote was worth anything but the symbolic value of showing the Repub win by one fewer vote. And that goes for Senate elections too. I see a day when Texas eventually becomes blue again, but until then, I’ll just relish this upcoming primary as a time when my presidential vote actually helped choose the next president. I think I’ll try to caucus too. I’ve heard such great things about them.