Hillary has momentum

[Hometown]

For all practical purposes the party is split 50/50 with a great deal of passion on both sides.  The super delegates will ultimately decide the nominee.  This is what the primary is about.  

PMCalk thank you for saying you will support Clinton if she is nominated.  That's the spirit.  I would like to see more people in both camps realize that this is about the party and not about individuals.

[rwarn17588]

Famous last words:

-- "The insurgency is in its last throes."

-- "The Giants have no chance against the Patriots."

-- "The Americans are not there. They're not in Baghdad."

-- "This doesn't come with ammo?"

-- "Titanic is unsinkable."

-- "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

-- "Hillary has the momentum!"

[Hometown]

Okay, made another contribution. That felt good.

USRufnex, I'm at the legal limit.  You can't give more than I have unless you give to the party and that might be used for Ms. Clinton.

Dear Hometown [my edit],

Thank you for your generous contribution.  We are at a critical stage in the campaign, and our online supporters like you are making the difference.  The more people we reach, the more resources we will have to help Hillary win.  Send an email to your friends and family asking them to support our campaign by making a contribution at http://www.hillaryclinton.com/joinme

[RecycleMichael]

Since you guys have brought back the topic of his speech last week, I thought I would comment a little more. I watched it and thought it was a great speech. His tone and delivery are so polished and his words on race were truly inspirational. But the stuff in the speech about his pastor were not.

What do these phrases mean?

"I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother"

No. You don't get to pick your grandmother. You get to pick your pastor.

"...until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black..."

Unique and universal? Black and more than black?
What?

[Hometown]

Did you see ABC Nightly News on Friday and their interviews with working class White Democrats in Pennsylvania who had heard Rev. Wright but did not hear Obama's race speech?  Based on that report it looks like the issue of Rev. Wright is very much alive with Reagan Democrats.  

Regarding "Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, lack and more than lack."  

Obama means, the Black experience in the civil rights movement became the model for women and all minorities and led to organizations like Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.  

Other than that, the problem is that Obama appeals to and speaks to elites and he hasn't dispelled lingering questions in the minds of less sophisticated people.

I found the speech lacking because he didn't issue a call to action or a plan to address the complex racial problems he laid out.

And you also get the feeling with the Obama campaign that they see racism where there is none.  And that they believe they are the only ones qualified to address issues of race.

The speech was prosiac and never reached for poetry.  It was competent, not great, and didn't get the job done.

[FOTD]

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

Did you see ABC Nightly News on Friday and their interviews with working class White Democrats in Pennsylvania who had heard Rev. Wright but did not hear Obama's race speech?  Based on that report it looks like the issue of Rev. Wright is very much alive with Reagan Democrats.  

Regarding "Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, lack and more than lack."  

Obama means, the Black experience in the civil rights movement became the model for women and all minorities and led to organizations like Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.  

Other than that, the problem is that Obama appeals to and speaks to elites and he hasn't dispelled lingering questions in the minds of less sophisticated people.

I found the speech lacking because he didn't issue a call to action or a plan to address the complex racial problems he laid out.

And you also get the feeling with the Obama campaign that they see racism where there is none.  And that they believe they are the only ones qualified to address issues of race.

The speech was prosiac and never reached for poetry.  It was competent, not great, and didn't get the job done.

I'm still puzzled with the attention on Rev Wright when it should be on McCain after seeing his performance in the mid east this week. Are people just blind to old age? I am beggining to think the republicans are going to have a real problem on their hands come November. I am starting to think they better have a damn good back up plan.

[guido911]

The Washington Post points out the whopper told by Hillary re: 1996 Bosnia trip

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/21/AR2008032102989.html

[USRufnex]

Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan in the WSJ...

A Thinking Man's Speech
March 21, 2008; Page W16

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120604775960652829.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[pmcalk]

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

Did you see ABC Nightly News on Friday and their interviews with working class White Democrats in Pennsylvania who had heard Rev. Wright but did not hear Obama's race speech?  Based on that report it looks like the issue of Rev. Wright is very much alive with Reagan Democrats.  

Regarding "Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, lack and more than lack."  

Obama means, the Black experience in the civil rights movement became the model for women and all minorities and led to organizations like Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.  

Other than that, the problem is that Obama appeals to and speaks to elites and he hasn't dispelled lingering questions in the minds of less sophisticated people.

I found the speech lacking because he didn't issue a call to action or a plan to address the complex racial problems he laid out.

And you also get the feeling with the Obama campaign that they see racism where there is none.  And that they believe they are the only ones qualified to address issues of race.

The speech was prosiac and never reached for poetry.  It was competent, not great, and didn't get the job done.

Hometown, you must be the only democrat who I have heard say anything like this.  My friends--Clinton and Obama fans both--recognize this speech as truly a historic one.  To me, it was reminiscent of Robert F. Kennedy.  To say that it was not great either means you did not hear it, or did not understand it.

You can support Clinton and still recognize a truly transforming moment in our history.  One in which a politician spoke to as as though we were adults, and capable of handling difficult issues.  No 8 second sound bite.  No applause line.  Surely you haven't become so jaded by the MSM as to believe that we all must be spoken as though we are stupid in order to be understood.  It was clearly the best explanation of our current race relationship that I have ever heard from anyone, let alone a politician.

We are both good democrats here, and despite my criticism of her, I have no doubt that Clinton will do well if she were to become president.  But as a democrat, to diminish this speech is to diminish everything that we democrats stand for.  If you are more concerned about the endless reels of youtube videos than about moving our country past the injustices of racism and sexism, of healing the wounds that occurred only a generation ago, of recognizing the true complexity of the problem, then you might as well turn on Fox news and tune the democrats out.

[Conan71]

PM- Some people were simply under-whelmed by his speech.  Could be due to personal bias, could be someone has heard better speeches, could be the listener thinks the speaker is disingenuous.  None of those things necessarily apply to me and I'm not putting words in HT's mouth- that's up to him.  Just because you were over-whelmed by it doesn't mean everyone else was.  

I'm of the day-late dollar-short mind-set on his speech.  He had a long time to explain his relationship with Wright.  He didn't take it serious until his chief Democrat nemesis made issue of it and now he's left people wondering if he's honest.  He ignored it when GOP flacks were trying to make hay of it on their talk shows and totally blew it when he finally did respond to it.

No doubt Obama is a very very well-coached and practiced orator and he's got some great speech writers working for him.  I'm sure he's got great input into his speeches, but it's all crafted to get the most impact with help from advisors.  Same as the other two candidates in this campaign.

He's shown he knows how to play the game that much is clear and true to me.  I truly do want to know more about this guy.

[USRufnex]

Outfoxed: Fox News technique: "some people say"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYA9ufivbDw

underwhelmed?  Sorry there weren't enough sound bites for ya.... And YES, I know I'm quoting Daily Kos....

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/18/17135/6770/569/465227

"From Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic comes the reporting that Obama wrote his speech on race and America himself.  Reports Ambinder:

'This wasn't a speech by committee... Obama wrote the speech himself, working on it for two days and nights.... and showed it to only a few of his top advisers.'

------------------------------------------------

I spent the last five hours in my woodshop with a lathe and sandpaper and an awl, carving this beautiful oak chair that I now present to you.  

I did it because you will need something to sit down on when the full measure of what Ambinder wrote crashes upon you like all the heavens and the stars above

Let me repeat it.  

Because it bears repeating.

That speech today?  The one that has pundits--from the liberal David Corn at The Nation ("This is as sophisticated a discussion of race as any American politician has sought to present to the public") to the conservative Charles Murray, of National Review Online ("it is just plain flat out brilliant—rhetorically, but also in capturing a lot of nuance about race in America. It is so far above the standard we're used to from our pols."), and those inbetween--noting the brilliance, sophistication, sincerity and candor of the words spoken by Obama?  That speech?

He wrote it himself.

Once more, with feeling:

He wrote it.  Himself.

Barack Obama did.  He wrote it.  

Now, if you are like me, and I pray for your soul you are not, you had the normal reaction to finding out this piece of information.  You rushed right to the Library of Congress to determine exactly the last time that a President or a presidential candidate wrote a major speech alone, by himself or herself.  

And, of course, what you discover is that other than the speeches Obama has written for himself, the last time a major speech was written without the aid of a speechwriter by a president or presidential candidate was Nixon's "Great Silent Majority" speech delivered on October 13, 1969.  

Now that was a good speech.  Evil, no doubt, to its very core, and designed to proliferate the feelings that allowed the great Southern Strategy success, but a good speech nevertheless.  

In other words, not in my lifetime.  And I am oldish.  I have kids and wear dark socks with slippers and complain about the quality of my lawn and get hungover way too easily.  But in the last 37 years there hasn't been a speech like this written by the man himself.  Not like this.  

Here is a chair.  Regardless of who you support, or what you think of Obama, I want you to sit here, right here on this chair and consider something wonderful.  To wit:

It is possible that we will have a President who not only will speak in full, complete sentences, but who will do so in a manner that is eloquent, and who will also be articulate and eloquent in delivering words he is intelligent enough to know, understand, and use in a speech he is capable of writing himself.

This chair, it is oak.  

Sit and think about that.

After seven years of the worst crumble-bumblings of the nattering nabob from Crawford, think about that.  

He wrote that speech.  He wrote it.  He, himself."


http://www.observer.com/2008/obama-versus-gotcha-narrative

quote:Yesterday morning, about 48 hours after his speech, Obama appeared on a sports radio talk show in Philadelphia. In the course of the conversation, host Angelo Cataldi brought up Obama's Tuesday speech, homing in on a section of it in which Obama discussed the white grandmother who raised him and the contradictions that she herself embodied on the subject of race.

"The point I was making," Obama told Cataldi, "was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know (pause), there's a reaction in her that doesn't go away and it comes out in the wrong way."

Almost immediately, the online press seized upon this comment, and specifically Obama's use of the term "typical white person." So did some in the blogosphere. This is in keeping with the same simplistic, artificial and worthless parameters of the fake conversation in which this country has been engaged for years: Home in on some imprecisely phrased characterization and extrapolate it to its worst possible implications; create, in effect, a straw man for cynical politicians and media members to attack, until finally the person who uttered the offending comment is forced to apologize or clarify.

[FOTD]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

PM- Some people were simply under-whelmed by his speech.  Could be due to personal bias, could be someone has heard better speeches, could be the listener thinks the speaker is disingenuous.  None of those things necessarily apply to me and I'm not putting words in HT's mouth- that's up to him.  Just because you were over-whelmed by it doesn't mean everyone else was.  

I'm of the day-late dollar-short mind-set on his speech.  He had a long time to explain his relationship with Wright.  He didn't take it serious until his chief Democrat nemesis made issue of it and now he's left people wondering if he's honest.  He ignored it when GOP flacks were trying to make hay of it on their talk shows and totally blew it when he finally did respond to it.

No doubt Obama is a very very well-coached and practiced orator and he's got some great speech writers working for him.  I'm sure he's got great input into his speeches, but it's all crafted to get the most impact with help from advisors.  Same as the other two candidates in this campaign.

He's shown he knows how to play the game that much is clear and true to me.  I truly do want to know more about this guy.

Do you want to know more about John McCain's condition?

[TulsaFan-inTexas]

quote:Originally posted by pmcalk

It's true that more people will begin to learn about Obama in the months ahead, just as they learn more about Clinton, at least when she finally releases their tax records.  It will be interesting to see how they amassed as much as 50 million dollars since they left the White house.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=4421457&page=2

I think people are just now starting to see the role she played on Walmart's board, something that hasn't really been scrutinized before.  And now that we finally see records of her role in the White House, I hope she is prepared for the onslaught of accusation that will come with that.  And I don't think the suspicion around the Clinton Library donations will go away any time soon.  
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/14/AR2007121402124_pf.html  
And that's even before we start to look back at some of the previous issues that the republicans won't let go.

The truth is, whomever is the the candidate the republicans are going to throw dirt at them.  I really see no reason to believe that Clinton will do any better at diffusing the attacks then Obama.  Tuesday's speech was an excellent example of that.  Obama has accusations thrown at him, and he takes it as an opportunity to educate people, and unify the country.  When has Clinton come even close to doing something like that?  Quite frankly, I don't think she ever did a very good job at diffusing attacks.

I'm a registered Republican and I would vote for Obama over Hillary Clinton in a heartbeat. Maybe even over McCain. I'm not on board with all of his politics but the man does tend to speak honestly and not dodge questions; something all of the other candidates seem to have done since the beginning of time.

[Hometown]

quote:Originally posted by pmcalk

quote:Originally posted by Hometown

Did you see ABC Nightly News on Friday and their interviews with working class White Democrats in Pennsylvania who had heard Rev. Wright but did not hear Obama's race speech?  Based on that report it looks like the issue of Rev. Wright is very much alive with Reagan Democrats.  

Regarding "Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, lack and more than lack."  

Obama means, the Black experience in the civil rights movement became the model for women and all minorities and led to organizations like Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition.  

Other than that, the problem is that Obama appeals to and speaks to elites and he hasn't dispelled lingering questions in the minds of less sophisticated people.

I found the speech lacking because he didn't issue a call to action or a plan to address the complex racial problems he laid out.

And you also get the feeling with the Obama campaign that they see racism where there is none.  And that they believe they are the only ones qualified to address issues of race.

The speech was prosiac and never reached for poetry.  It was competent, not great, and didn't get the job done.

Hometown, you must be the only democrat who I have heard say anything like this.  My friends--Clinton and Obama fans both--recognize this speech as truly a historic one.  To me, it was reminiscent of Robert F. Kennedy.  To say that it was not great either means you did not hear it, or did not understand it.

You can support Clinton and still recognize a truly transforming moment in our history.  One in which a politician spoke to as as though we were adults, and capable of handling difficult issues.  No 8 second sound bite.  No applause line.  Surely you haven't become so jaded by the MSM as to believe that we all must be spoken as though we are stupid in order to be understood.  It was clearly the best explanation of our current race relationship that I have ever heard from anyone, let alone a politician.

We are both good democrats here, and despite my criticism of her, I have no doubt that Clinton will do well if she were to become president.  But as a democrat, to diminish this speech is to diminish everything that we democrats stand for.  If you are more concerned about the endless reels of youtube videos than about moving our country past the injustices of racism and sexism, of healing the wounds that occurred only a generation ago, of recognizing the true complexity of the problem, then you might as well turn on Fox news and tune the democrats out.

There is nothing wrong with meeting people where they live and communicating with people in terms they can understand.  Short and snappy one liners communicate on the symbolic level and I would argue that a great leader has to reach out to all of his or her constituents and communicate on the symbolic level.  Not to do so is elitist.

I have said before, I think the speech was competent and I've also called it good.  I've been specific and analyzed elements of the speech to back up my points.  I've said the speech is an exposition of race relations as we find them without offering a plan of action to address problems.

For example, Obama tacitly criticized affirmative action by talking about resentment among poor Whites without offering a plan to address that resentment.  Does he intend to do away with affirmative action or does intend to amend it?  

He has pointed out problems with the status quo without lifting up a light to lead to us to something better.

On another point, Obama hangs his hat on his judgment and to illustrate this he points again and again to his vote against the war in Iraq – period.  Now, this plays well with the left wing of our party but I believe that in the general election Ms. Clinton's more hawkish vote to give Bush war powers will be better received.  You may recall the vast majority of our leaders supported the move towards war; the same media that has fallen in love with Obama did nothing to question the impending war.

I believe Obama's Rev. Wright episode creates questions about his judgment and on another issue I for one was disappointed when I learned he had voted for the Bush/Cheney energy bill.

We have also never seen Obama throw a punch.  What is he going to do the next time we learn about something troubling from his past?  Make another speech.  That would only reinforce the notion that his one talent is making speeches.

I am not surprised that many Blacks have flocked to Obama's camp despite the fact that the Clintons have a longer and more potent history of working for the Black vote.  But when the Obama campaign parses words to the point of absurdity and accuses Clinton of racism where there is none I don't believe the fight against real racism is well served.

Finally, PMCalk, have you reflected on the fact that you are working against what may be the biggest break through for women in your lifetime?

[Chicken Little]

We have a bumper crop of big problems.  We need someone who can help us understand our duty as Americans and help us understand the challenges before us.  When the going gets tough, Americans have an unparalelled ability to transcend our individual fears, weaknesses, and predjudices and forge new solutions as countrymen.  It is a great gift.

After two election cycles of pee-yer-pants fear mongering, disinformation and distraction, and unhealthy selfishness and divisiveness, Americans are longing for someone to remind us that we have hard work to do and that we are, inextricably, on the same team.

Obama's doing a great job of this.  He didn't condemn Bill after Bill said dumb stuff in SC.  Smart people sometimes say dumb things.  That is what we in the business of living call, life.  Redemption and reinvention are a part of our culture, and perhaps our greatest strength.  Bill gets that.  Bill is that.

Obama and his team are doing a pretty darn good job of challenging politicians and pundits to rise above "slice and dice" politics.  He's not going to send Wright, or anybody else, to the gulag.  Instead, he's going to challenge us all to use our brains as well as our mouths; from time to time we all say things that are beyond the pale.  We have to change, and we have to be big-hearted about it if we are going to build strong coalitions.  What kind of Union are we left with when we turn our backs on everybody who makes a stupid remark?

Oh, and for those of you who think that speeches are unimportant, here ya go:

quote: We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

-A.Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, Monday, March 4, 1861

Where do you think we'd be today if we didn't have this man, and words like that, to sustain us through the Civil War?