Just bitter words...

[tim huntzinger]

Like anyone cares, I wanna give a big amen to Borack on the bitter score, and will own it entirely.  I am bitter, angry, frustrated, hacked off, voter whatever he wants to call it.  I will vote my emotions every time, sure nuff.  Right now I am more angry at the GOP than scared of the Dems.  If the Dems would ease up on their gun-grabbing, baby-killing, Iraq-defeat-at-any-cost, education-as-brainwashing ways they would deprive the GOP of material for extorting votes from Joe Six-Pack.  Hearing that down-his-nose-at-you crap from another smarmy Harvard-educated loy-yah politician almost makes me want to vote GOP.

[pmcalk]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

quote:Originally posted by pmcalk

quote:Originally posted by RecycleMichael

Obama hasn't attacked Hillary? What kind of selective hearing do you have?

"Hillary Clinton. She knows better. Shame on her."

"She's packing a six-shooter. Come on... I want to see that picture of her out there in the duck blind."

Unlike Hillary, Obama never took out an ad exploiting her "mistatements" regarding Bosnia.  That would have been an easy, republican way to slam her.  She, on the other hand, now is running an ad claiming that Obama is out of touch.  Obama did nothing more than point out the truth--why republicans are able to get votes in rural America.  It's the same thing that her husband said so many years ago.  I never thought I would see one democrat attacking another on such a thing.

She should be very careful--this is very likely to backfire against her.  Already, she has been booedat the Alliance for American Manufacturing.  And people may become more angry at her for her Rovian attacks than they are about the comment.

So the evil republicans are the only ones who engage in smear politics?  Did you miss the General Betrayus ads?

Not that I care too much what you think, my point was more the basis upon what Hillary is attacking Obama (i.e., elitist, out-of-touch, etc....).  That is something that comes straight from a republican handbook.

It would be like a Democrat attacking Hillary for her statement that she didn't choose "to stay home and bake cookies."

[FOTD]

Exposing Barack to the light of day? You goof. He's ahead because everyone sees he's honest.

How come IPLaw never ever exposes the Busheviks for who they are? Neocons are blood sucking vampires who love to turn discussions inside out for diversion. They love darkness...

Looks to me like his SF statement helped him more than hurt him because people are bitter. Just look in the mirror.

The truth will win in the end.

[RecycleMichael]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2008/04/what_does_bitter_reveal.html

What Does "Bitter" Reveal?

The commentary on the few sentences Barack Obama uttered in San Francisco has clustered around two extremes. Roughly half see them as the revelation of his previously secret disregard for the beliefs of the mass public. The rest see them as self-evidently true, even if the words were poorly chosen.

My feeling is that we don't know what he meant. All of this analysis is based on brief, off-the-cuff remarks made behind "closed" doors. It is difficult to tease out a man's inner philosophy from such a slender data set. At best, we can only hope to have a vague sense of the thoughts that inspired the words. So, the quotation has been a bit of a Rorschach test. Commentators have seen what they are inclined to see.

This is one reason why, politically, it was a stupid thing to say. Candidates should not say vague things unless there is an identifiable benefit, like evading a journalist's direct question. Otherwise, clear and concise is the way to go. Vagueness implies interpretation. Interpretation implies discussion. Discussion eats up precious news cycles a week before the Pennsylvania primary.

And, of course, vagueness invites opponents to interpret, and therefore define. This is what we've seen. Clinton smartly chose to put her interpretation in the mouths of ordinary Pennsylvanians - and Obama was forced to respond by using the "boo's" at the Alliance for American Manufacturing meeting as the alternative interpretation. In one sense, this has already been a victory for Clinton. What is Obama spending money and airtime on? His comments in San Francisco! The Obama campaign seems to have learned one lesson from the Kerry/Edwards debacle. It doesn't let accusations go unanswered. However, it has not yet learned the other one. It needs to be more proactive in managing the definition of its candidate.

The other big problem with his comment is that Obama presumed to explain the behavior of the voters he is courting. We might not know for sure exactly how he was explaining them, but we know that he was trying to. This is something that is best left to political scientists, not candidates. They should never speak of voters in any but the most flattering terms. Otherwise, there is a risk of alienating them. When you analyze people, you are signaling that you are separate from them. You are an "other." What is more, nobody likes to feel that they are being analyzed. The analyst can come across as haughty. "Who the hell does he think he is to explain me?"

This is not the first time Obama has done this. His Wright speech sought to explain the behavior of the voters - black and white - he was courting. He really needs to knock this off. It is not the job of the candidate to analyze the voters. His job is to court them, to form a bond with them. He must have them believe that he understands them on their terms, not on some set of abstract principles derived from a book they've never heard of.

This is one reason "Bubba" and "Dubya" have won the last four presidential elections. Nobody ever tied those two to Theodore Adorno.

Of course, Obama did not analyze just any group of voters. He analyzed the ones Democrats need: whites who don't make a lot of money. In 1992, Bill Clinton and Herbert Walker essentially split the white vote. Clinton got 39%, Herbert Walker got 40%. This is all Democrats need. They don't need to win white voters outright. They just need to split them. Flash forward to 2004. Bush beat Kerry among white voters, 58% to 41%, and won a solid victory.

You can tell the same story again and again. When Democrats break even with white voters, they win, as in '60, '64, '76, '92, and '96. When Republicans win them decisively, Democrats lose. This happened in '52, '56, '80, '84, '88, '00, and '04.

So, what Obama really did last week was analyze the group that will swing this election.

I'm beginning to wonder if analysis is a problem for candidate Obama. All candidates have quirky "ticks" that impede them from being perfect campaigners. George W. Bush has a habit of mangling words. John Kerry has a habit of going off script. Al Gore has a slightly condescending tone to his voice. These are all basically knee jerk responses that candidates do without thinking. They don't mean anything by them; they're just "ticks." But they still distract people. Obama might have a knee jerk inclination to analyze. Maybe I'm wrong, but we have seen this happen enough to make me wonder. After all, he did publish an autobiography when he was just 34. Maybe he is an analyst by nature.

In a lot of other contexts, this is a highly desirable trait. But not in this one. He needs to stop this. So does his wife, who should never again tell us that we have a "hole in our souls." If this kind of stuff continues, Clinton and the Republicans might just get that "elite" label to stick.

There is some good news for Obama in all of this. The Pennsylvanians whom Obama was analyzing were mostly going to vote for Clinton, anyway. So, it's unlikely that the comment will damage him on Tuesday. It might cost him a point or two, but that's probably it. Of course, the reason this nomination battle is continuing through Pennsylvania is Obama has failed to woo lower income whites, the same voters he'll need in the fall.

Posted by Jay Cost

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by pmcalk

Not that I care too much what you think, my point was more the basis upon what Hillary is attacking Obama (i.e., elitist, out-of-touch, etc....).  That is something that comes straight from a republican handbook.

It would be like a Democrat attacking Hillary for her statement that she didn't choose "to stay home and bake cookies."

I'm still trying to find out what play from the "republican handbook" is that she's calling?  I suppose that class warfare and race baiting are old and tired for the democrats now and they're moving on to greener pastures.

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by FOTD

Exposing Barack to the light of day? You goof. He's ahead because everyone sees he's honest.

Are you talking about PA, because she's polling outside the margin of error in virtually every poll now?

quote:
How come IPLaw never ever exposes the Busheviks for who they are? Neocons are blood sucking vampires who love to turn discussions inside out for diversion. They love darkness...

You mean expose them as the puffed up paper tiger that you're irrationally foaming at the mouth about?

quote:
Looks to me like his SF statement helped him more than hurt him because people are bitter. Just look in the mirror.

Exactly what am I bitter about, other than the fact that you're allowed to use up valuable Internets around here?

[rwarn17588]

It's become apparent from polling in the last few days that the so-called "bitter" controversy did absolutely nothing.

It keeps tightening in PA: leads of 1, 3, 5, and 6 points for Hillary. Nationwide poll stays steady or slightly widening for Obama.

Maybe voters have, ahem, more pressing issues in mind.

[Bledsoe]

quote:Originally posted by pmcalk

I actually don't know if Reich has officially endorsed Obama, but his comments (along with others) seem to indicate that he supports Obama.  I find it interesting that those who have worked so closely with the Clintons (Richardson, Reich) actually support Obama.

It is official, Reich to endorse Obama today:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/04/heilemann_robert_reich_to_endo.html
Heilemann: Robert Reich to Endorse Obama -- Daily Intel -- New York News Blog -- New York Magazine

As for the reasons?   Reich states:

"I saw the ads" — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama's bitter/cling comments a week ago — "and I was appalled, frankly. I thought it represented the nadir of mean-spirited, negative politics. And also of the politics of distraction, of gotcha politics. It's the worst of all worlds.
. . .

And I've come to the point, after seeing those ads, where I can't in good conscience not say out loud what I believe about who should be president. Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. They're lending legitimacy to a Republican message that's wrong to begin with, and they harken back to the past 20 years of demagoguery on guns and religion. It's old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It's just so deeply cynical."

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by Bledsoe
Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. They're lending legitimacy to a Republican message that's wrong to begin with, and they harken back to the past 20 years of demagoguery on guns and religion. It's old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It's just so deeply cynical."

My favorite part of these threads has been the complete, eyes wide shut, avoidance of the fact that the left cranks out some of the most hateful and divisive campaign material that we've ever seen.  There are no organizations on the right that produce hateful material that even begins to match the garbage coming from liberal blogs and websites which run ads and commercials for democrats during election cycles.

[Conan71]

So was the McCorkle camp exposing Kathy Taylor's property tax and voting records an example of "Republicanism" Bledsoe?

[RecycleMichael]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw
There are no organizations on the right that produce hateful material that even begins to match the garbage coming from liberal blogs and websites which run ads and commercials for democrats during election cycles.

Really?

The swift boat liars...the McCain has a black baby? the Willie Horton ads?

If I listened to you Iplaw, I would think republican campaigns are all about puppies and rainbows.

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by RecycleMichael

quote:Originally posted by iplaw
There are no organizations on the right that produce hateful material that even begins to match the garbage coming from liberal blogs and websites which run ads and commercials for democrats during election cycles.

Really?

The swift boat liars...the McCain has a black baby? the Willie Horton ads?

If I listened to you Iplaw, I would think republican campaigns are all about puppies and rainbows.

Congratulations, you've dug up 2 semi relevant ads from the last 30 years.  

Swift boat liars...I don't recall their accusations being refuted or proven as false.

Lastly, visit your friendly leftist hate sites today, dailykos, moveon, huffingtonpost, etc., and look at how even YOUR candidate is being treated.

[FOTD]

quote:Originally posted by iplaw

quote:Originally posted by RecycleMichael

quote:Originally posted by iplaw
There are no organizations on the right that produce hateful material that even begins to match the garbage coming from liberal blogs and websites which run ads and commercials for democrats during election cycles.

Really?

The swift boat liars...the McCain has a black baby? the Willie Horton ads?

If I listened to you Iplaw, I would think republican campaigns are all about puppies and rainbows.

Congratulations, you've dug up 2 semi relevant ads from the last 30 years.  

Swift boat liars...I don't recall their accusations being refuted or proven as false.

Lastly, visit your friendly leftist hate sites today, dailykos, moveon, huffingtonpost, etc., and look at how even YOUR candidate is being treated.

Those are truth sites not hate sites....you want hate turn your dial to KRMG radio.....

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/politicalcartoons/ig/Political-Cartoons/Are-You-Bitter-Off-Now-.htm

[iplaw]

quote:Originally posted by FOTD

Those are truth sites not hate sites....you want hate turn your dial to KRMG radio.....

I guess if you truly believe that whites have never been oppressed your definition of "truth" can encompass just about anything.

[cannon_fodder]

Ok, AOX... you win.  I'll bite.

What has KRMG done to you lately that has caused you to suddenly post something spiteful in their regard daily.   Prior to this week I do not recall you even mentioning them.  Did they run a piece on someone in your family or what?  I listen to their programing for about 30 minutes each morning and have not caught anything that has changed... why the sudden constant banter?