Tag: primary

This is a diary I posted on dkos yesterday.  I am pleased enough with it that I want to make it my first post here on docudharma.  Looking around the site and seeing who is posting here, I recognize a lot of names as people I respect from dkos and have seen a lot less of recently.  So I expect to be here more as a haven from the relentless Obama diaries.  Although this is technically an Obama essay concerning an absurd media “issue,” the point of this diary is to take a look at race, and to make explicit the racism behind the Rev. Wright controversy.  

(But one thing first:  because I can, I want to say right off the top that you have to be an idiot to blithely assume there is no chance that 9/11 was a conspiracy.  Ahhhh!  The smell of freedom.)  

Oh yeah, and thanks to pfiore8 for inviting me here.

So here goes nothing.  Please be kind.

sort of cross posting from the GOS ..

Barack’s statement today about the anger of the people who are not even in his base of support, and more importantly his response to the fawning McCain and Clinton campaigns as they spun to the PA electorate convinced me.

Obama’s ready to stand and fight for what he believes in.

I might not always agree with exactly what it is, that which Barack Obama believes in, but I am sick to death of leaders who will not stand up for what they believe, especially Democrats. What I saw today shows me without a doubt this man has the self determination and pride to stand for what he thinks is right.

I’ve seen enough of the guy to realize he does offer a set of viewpoints that are closer to mine than John McCain’s, easily and he has eclipsed Hillary Clinton because he has cut through the BS, and has let truth speak.

I may not always agree with his viewpoints, it would be too much to ask. But as time has progressed, I have seen the candidate take on challenges and do so directly, and honestly. That’s a mark of a leader, a person who can be trusted to stay true to himself. There’s some sort of personal integrity aspect to Barack Obama I am beginning to like, more and more.

As I told our fellow rabble rousers over in Orangeville, that doesn’t mean I’m hopping on the Bash Hillary and Bill bus.  

Over at Talk Left, BTD is arguing that if, as his supporters and surrogates say, Obama has locked this thing up, he should attempt to unify the party–that it is not Hillary who should do this (as Kos and Meteor Blades argue).  http://www.talkleft.com/story/…

I argue the opposite.  I believe if Obama gets the nomination, not only does he not try to gain the consent of Hillary supporters, and not only does he not request Hillary to help in his campaign (much less ask her to be his v-p), he throws Hillary under the bus.  

My prediction is that Hillary will become the token of what is characterized as “old school” politics, divisiveness, and the belt way.  I think Obama determines that Hillary supporters, in the end, will not vote for McSame no matter what he does and that he will run to the right (to the extent he cannot simply run on hope, change and unity) in the general election.

What do you think?

Gore expects the situation to “resolve itself” by the time the convention comes around.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2…

MURFREESBORO – Former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday that he expects the Democratic nomination fight will “resolve itself” before the party’s convention in late August.

Gore told The Associated Press that he sees no urgency in endorsing a presidential candidate.

“What have we got, five months left?” he said in a brief interview after a speech at Middle Tennessee State University.

When pressed that several prominent Democrats, including Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, have expressed hope for an earlier decision on the nomination, Gore said: “I think it’s going to resolve itself. But we’ll see.”

Sort of disappointed to see Howard Dean doing something a little different ..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03…

“If we have an ugly, divided convention, we will lose. John McCain is not a strong candidate for president. The only way we lose is if we are divided.”

I think Gore’s got the right frame here, the correct vision to adopt. Dean should be backing away from even giving the appearance that Democrats will be anything but united, come August.  

I just returned from voting in Ohio’s primary.  I cast my ballot for Dennis Kucinich, as my choice for both the presidency and the 10th Congressional District’s representative.  And thus my conscience is clean.

I know, I know.  “You just wasted your vote,” many of you shall say.  To that I give you this simple response:  Horse shit.  The only votes wasted, dear readers, are those not cast and those cast for a candidate who doesn’t represent you.  Anyone who tells you differently is either lying to you, or doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

These are not things I write lightly.  I know quite well that what I’ve just typed shall piss off a number of people.  The truth, however, was never designed to make people happy.

Primaries are precisely the time when we as voters are supposed to stand up and vote our beliefs.  Why in God’s name would anyone vote for someone who doesn’t represent him?  “Pragmatism”?  That’s a bullshit excuse, one designed to justify keeping the status quo intact.  And for far too long, far too many Democrats have succumbed to that argument.  We voted “pragmatically” in 2004, cast our ballots for a candidate who wasn’t worth the toilet bowl he shat into, and what did it get us?  Nothing, except four more years of crap raining down upon our country.  Four more years of craven capitulation — two of them under a Democratic Congress — to a boy tyrant who in a sane world would have been removed from office and convicted of treason during the first year of his reign.

Neither Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama have earned so much as a single Democratic vote.  But for the desperation of Americans to elect anyone other than a Republican, the adulation and scorn of the corporate media, and the humongous egos of the two prima donnas themselves, they are the candidates we have been saddled with in this primary season.

There is an admonition against allowing the “perfect” to be the enemy of the “good”.  But really, how many people do you know who ask for or expect perfect?  I and everyone I know is fully aware that nothing and no one is perfect.  All we want are good policy and good representatives.  Yet each and every election cycle, we’re forced to accept the mediocre and the downright bad.

It doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have to be that way.  However you intend to vote in the general election, is this or is it not the time to vote your beliefs — to cast your ballot for the presidential candidate who represents you?  Not Big Business, not the DLC, but you.  Mr. and Ms. Average American.  To hand your ballot to someone who doesn’t represent you is to surrender it to the status quo, to send a message that, no matter how much you may complain about the way things are, you’re perfectly content to leave it as is.

That isn’t democracy, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s a monarchical system, one in which the will of the public is subjected to the greed and ambition of a political minority whose interests are to keep you beaten down and in service to the economic elite.  And I don’t know about you ladies and gentlemen, but I refuse to give in to that bullshit.  Politicians are supposed to work for us, to be our voices in the halls of power.  We are not supposed to subject our interests and political beliefs to those we employ.

Maybe your state’s primary or caucus has already been held.  Maybe it’s today, or has yet to be held.  For those of you who fall into the latter categories,ask yourselves if it isn’t worth it to challenge this fucked up system by voting for the candidate who represents you, just to see what would happen.