Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Suicide of the Democrats
The defence is in ruins, the 'keeper has died and, miraculously, the striker is on side and facing an open goal. That, roughly, was the position of the Democratic Party at the start of the American election campaign. Bush was less popular than cancer, Cheney was out-sinistering The Joker and the economy had gone weird. But then, in the great tradition of the Donkey party, the Democrats proceeded to shoot themselves in both feet prior to stepping on a rake. Denver is a debacle with hordes of mad, Hillary-briefed women stealing the coverage while McCain creeps ahead in the polls. Hillary said as little as she could get away with and God knows what Bill will say - he'll probably take credit for motherhood, the McFlurry and Michael Phelps. Post-primary Obama is over-cautious. Standing before that open goal, he's lining up his shot like Tiger planning a putt. He is, I would guess, within a few days of losing the election.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
But Tiger's an exceptionally good putter. I'm reaching the conclusion that maybe 'liberals' or 'progressives' are generally rather looney and that's why they rarely get elected. You only have to read the Guardian's comment pages to understand what I mean.
ReplyDeleteNow you are getting my feather-spitting annoyance with the whole thing. All they had to do was present one person who was reasonably of the middle and without too much baggage. They had four years to get it correct. But no, bloody factions took over. They forgot why so many went over in '80.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing loony about Obama. On the contrary, he possesses that rare combination of qualities: perspicacity, oratorical brilliance, charisma, timing and self-belief, which together make a great leader.
ReplyDeleteThe American people need to choose wisely this time. And they will. They know a good deal when they see it.
I found this to be an interesting ad, something to help the self-destruction along:
ReplyDeleteBiden on McCain
But, the great disappointment of the Democrats is that they put no one forward. We all hoped greatly that they would, but they gave us a hope candidate that, one-by-one, we are losing hope in.
I'm still shaking my head at the Obama people spamming me, that they never considered they may receive e-mails with questions to answer. This would show leadership, to have a campaign that would be geared toward the internet.
Instead, they were thinking that inundating someone's mailbox with shallow propaganda would cause some Obamamania--which turns out to be based on his egomania--to snowball. His responses show that, given the opportunity, he couldn't build a meaningful campaign. By the way, the junk mail never stopped after I mentioned that they had, they only took a day off--but I did not want to take up any more bandwidth with such a tangent.
Yours,
Rus
I didn't say Obama's a looney. But those Clintonistas outside the convention with the McCain placards were. Leftish politicos usually find it harder to be pragmatic - wherever they see a golden goose they want to pluck it's feathers off.
ReplyDeleteI cannot bear self-congratulatory rallies like the Dem convention, but my guys (hub & son) watched it, so I got the news at 11. Hub said Hillary made the best speech he'd ever seen her deliver, and it will deliver her constituents to Obama. Son Mark said, "Bill Clinton always looks like he's thinking of a dirty joke he's just dying to tell his friends." Then he did a great imitation of Bill's grinning face and weird demeanor.
ReplyDeleteI think Obama will be fine.
The key factor, Bryan, if you look at the data from the primaries, is that Obama routinely polls between 5 and 8 percent better than he does on election day. New Hampshire, for example, was declared too close to call, but Hillary won it in a walk. The states she won by large margins - Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. - are states a Democrat must win in the general election. The states Obama won big in - Louisiana, Mississippi - are states neither Obama nor Hillary had any chance of winning in November. I suspect that Obama is actually behind McCain, not neck-and-neck. McCain has also been involved in presidential campaigns before this - and the experience (oh, that again) is showing. The commentariat never seem to realize that this is politics, not American Idol. Obama was always a weak general election candidate. Take away the Teleprompter and the eloquence dissolves. They don't call him the Wizard of Uhs for nothing.
ReplyDeleteFrom the promotional material on the web and other sources, I'm getting the feeling that the Democratic Party is beefing up its Suicide Division for the general election. Kami Kaze pilots worked pretty well during WWII, so maybe they will on November 4th.
ReplyDeleteMcCain has also been involved in presidential campaigns before this - and the experience is showing....
ReplyDelete...indeed, if the rugged and plain-speaking shape of John McCain is seen as a welcome boost to sagging Cold-War morale, then nothing like raising the temperature in Russia will be as effective in putting Obama out of the race!
Great ploy!
Oh sure, and how about that falling-gas-prices ploy the Republicans are pulling.
ReplyDeletewith all due respect what on earth is the point of saying he might lose the election or win the election based upon whatever one might say ?
ReplyDeleteHe either will or he won't win and one can never know why he'd manifest either result.
Priceless stuff.
Oh, for goodness sakes, keep your diaper on. BTW, your metaphors as as lame as your thinking. I only likned to this site because curiously Sullivan posted your peeing in your diaper. Man up dude!
ReplyDeleteHillary with Obama as VP would have been unstoppable. A cautious, debate-shy intellectual is not the way for the democrats to win the white house.
ReplyDelete"...motherhood, the McFlurry and Michael Phelps"
ReplyDeleteThat was hysterical!
Obama was too liberal and too inexperinced to win in the first place. And then he's black on top of all that. The democrats lost when they nominated the wrong candidate. And Im not saying Hillary was perfect either. But the Clintons know how to win. They know how to position themselves in the center, and thats what she did. The problem is that a centrist cant get through the loony left democratic Primaries. It happens every four years.
ReplyDeleteAnd within those states that Hillary "won big" Obama still typically won the traditionally Democratic areas. It was no coincidence that as soon as the Republican nomination was settled Clinton began drawing larger amounts of Republican support than Obama. The opposite was the case up to that point. And who exactly calls him the Wizard of Uhs? I've never heard that. Witty though.
ReplyDeleteThe states Obama won big in - Louisiana, Mississippi - are states neither Obama nor Hillary had any chance of winning in November.
ReplyDeleteObama played the primaries by the rules, and he won. The general has a different set of rules, so he's already playing a different strategy.
The fact that Obama actually put an effort to win Louisiana and Mississippi while Clinton ignored them show you who knows how to win. Hillary's entire strategy was to look inevitable, win big, win early. When that failed, down the tubes she went. Her floundering along well past the point where she had any numerical chance of winning was pathetic.
I don't believe we've seen much of Obama's real general election strategy in play yet.
McCain would have mopped the floor with Hillary - sexism is at LEAST as potent as racism among the great american middle. Plus she's no ordinary woman - she's one that half of Americans have already decided they don't like. STOP YOUR WHINING, grow a pair, and quit it with your self-fulfilling prophesying.
ReplyDeleteBryan, that's too simple.
ReplyDeleteI've been watching the polls, and McCain has been gaining for a few weeks now. But, guess what? He can't "close the deal", Obama keeps gaining that few points, keeping just out of reach.. www.fivethirtyeight.com has been following the state polls (Nate Silver is the hottest baseball predictor in the US, and he has just moved to predicting elections). Silver finds the state polls staying favourable for Obama and is predicting a comfortable 285-253 electoral college victory.
Don't forget the live debates to come, and all that money Obama is spending on bringing in new voters. And this time the Dems do seem to have their act together to prevent electoral fraud.
I do fault the Obama campaign for pulling its punches on the smelly & sleazy Republican administration, the most disastrous national security administration in history. What happened to "Bush is McCain lite"?
I think we have to wait until Friday week to see what "bounce" the Republicans get from their convention. They may even surpass Obama's figure, but that should will jolt his campaign out of the strange torpor that seems to have settled on it in the last month.
Frank Wilson, you have that backwards. Aside from the notable NH primary Obama over-performed aggregate polling in the vast majority of states. In some states, such as SC and Alabama, he outperformed by high double digits. The night Hillary's fate was sealed he outperformed in IN and NC by almost 10pts each. If you're cherry picking weird Zogby polls such as those in CA and NJ then you watch too much cable news. Don't underestimate Obama's ground game.
ReplyDeleteBill Maher oft says that if you hate Hillary Clinton, that's about you, not her.
ReplyDeleteHe shouldn't have been so specific.
The self-hatred in your column is so thick, I don't know where to start.
Save to say, get outside, have a Colorado beer, maybe go for a hike, and don't get so down on yourself.
Nice. The guy hasn't even been formally nominated yet, and he's already lost the election. All everyone can do is bitch online about how the campaign has lost its momentum and then wonder how in the world the campaign has lost its momentum.
ReplyDeleteYOU'RE FEEDING THE NEGATIVITY RIGHT BACK INTO THE SYSTEM. The general election has barely started. Did Obama's performance in the primary not earn him just a little credit? Can you keep your chin up for, oh, even a couple more weeks?
Of course not. It's much easier to throw in the towel and whine. Strangely, even though the GOP mouthpieces detested McCain in January, you don't see them constantly second-guessing him. Weird how they win so many elections.
This year was going to be the perfect storm for a Democratic run of the tables, and they have once again managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The Republicans will nominate a 72 year old man that inspires few, and the Democrats have figured out a way to lose to him.
ReplyDeleteThe best VP pick for Obama would have been Edwards, even with the affair. The affair brings Hillary up to be a close second best. The problem with Obama-Clinton would be experience, thus Biden. No one knows what Obama would do away from a podium and scripts.
ReplyDeleteThe future simply is not scripted--thus the effectiveness of McCain's campaign, even though there is no pizazz to it. He simply looks better the more Obama is revealed as a dud.
In fact, Edwards, of all who entered, would have been the best candidate for president, the one who could most easily beat McCain, dazzling the campaign with issues and food for thought. It would have been interesting to see if the affair would have brought to the fore the curse of Gary Hart, or if he would have been "understood" as Clinton was. This will be settled in the future if he decides to run again. However, as applied to this year, the Democratic self-destruction is seen at the VP level.
Yours,
Rus
Uhm, you began a post on U.S. politics with a soccer analogy. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteRus,
ReplyDeleteDon't worry about Biden; he'll be a huge asset for Obama. He's fiercely intelligent and articulate, and becomes even more so in the heat of political battle. His energy is amazing for a man in his sixties -- just this past spring, he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination, and taught constitutional law at a local university. How many commenters could do even one of those things well? For over thirty years, he has commuted four hours daily from Delaware to DC, becoming the Senate's acknowledged expert on crime and foreign relations, while remaining an attentive middle-class husband and father. I've gotten to know him casually over the years, at church and community events and as a sometime Delaware-DC train commuter, and am more impressed each time I see him. There's not a fake bone in his body -- the public and private man are identical.
Jeff, as someone who lives in Phila. and has thus seen a bit o' Biden too, I agree with you completely. But when you said all that about his commute, I thought your next clause would be "becoming the Senate's acknowledged expert on transportation issues."
ReplyDeleteHis willingness to talk tough to McCain, et al, is exactly what Obama needs. It was a good choice, even if Obama was "biden his time" in telling us.
Anonymous: Alabama and SC are also states Obama will not come close to winning in the general election.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, Biden can almost certainly be counted on to put his foot deeply down his own throat before this thing is over.
Yes, Frank, Biden will put his foot down his throat occasionally, but he'll put his foot down McCain's throat far more often. Remember that Giuliani was leading the Republican primaries until Biden casually (and accurately) described Rudy's debating style as "Noun...verb...9-11." The comment was not solely responsible for Giuliani's decline, but it was certainly a tipping point in that it punctured the bubble of sainthood that had surrounded him since 2001.
ReplyDeleteIn last evening's speech, after praising McCain's Senate and military experience, Biden suggested that what the US needs now is "... not a good soldier, but a wise leader." You may wonder (as I do) whether Obama can be that wise leader, but I think Biden's phrase was an effective bit of rhetorical tightrope-walking. Expect more of the same (as well as some gaffes). At the very least, he'll make entertaining a usually dull two months.