Think the Dems have the 2008 election locked up?

The BBQ Pit
181

W’s family & business connections got him re-elected Guv. Anyway, he wasn’t exactly derelict in his duties, but there’s really no comparison. Texas governors don’t actually have to be The Guy In Charge, or handle foreign policy. Other statewide offices are separately elected, & once you’ve been elected once, it doesn’t take a whole lot of work to get re-nominated. People aren’t expecting all that much.

But the POTUS has to appoint a Cabinet, & be, well, the Decider. I mean, I don’t legitimately have any huge issues with the records of John Ashcroft, Mel Carnahan, Jack Danforth, or Matt Blunt as governors in my home state. That doesn’t mean I want any of them to be President. There are 50 sitting governors at any time, & they aren’t all ready to be POTUS.

Those who’ve pointed out that the Dems are leaning toward the same kind of mistake as the GOP did in picking Bush… have a point, if not the one they think they have. There’s a tendency to choose image over competence. But that doesn’t mean they’ll lose. It just means when they win, we get another crappy President.

(They’re all crappy. Well, Coolidge seems to have been harmless enough, & I guess FDR was more good than bad in effect, but they’ve pretty much all done something to be labelled dogs [or occasionally, since FDR raised people’s expectations, the AntiChrist]. Yes, even Eisenhower screwed up, because he didn’t stop the CIA from acting as a tool of British imperialism in Iran.)

It’s half context, Lib. Shodan threw it in as part of a sentence mocking Obama’s record, & it could have come off as a slur even if it were “Halfrican-American”. The “H” at the front of the second part gives us the other half. It’s just there to make it sound silly. Not a sympathetic thing to call someone when you put it together.

FWIW, Obama seems to be running for President a bit early in his national political career. I think he’d make a good POTUS–in ten years. But that’s part of building a national reputation. Plenty of white guys have run at a younger age, lost the nomination or the general, & then come back (Gore, Nixon, Reagan, Biden, etc.). And I think Barack’s still got more political experience than the present top white male in the polls, John Edwards.

And can we all just admit that “Halfrican-Hamerican” is, to at least some of the audience, a reference to Obama being the product of “miscegenation”? To a few people, he’s not just a Negro, he’s a weird half-foreign mutt. (Heh. I wonder how they’d look at some of my missionary kid friends.) I’ve heard enough Rush to have a good idea how he said it, & that boy could make “human being” into an insult.

Then again, I wonder how many people who praise Clarence Thomas for being “right-thinking” realize that he left his first wife & mother of his child, & is now married to a white woman. Or is abandoning your family for a vanilla girl right-thinking now?

So, when do we get that jaw-drop smiley? You do realize that Iran has been under the mullahs longer than it was under the Shah, right? And while we gained an ally in the Shah, we lost an ally in the long term, whereas if it had gone pinko commie OMG!!!11one!!11 in the 1950’s, it could be our ally now. In any case, if you think the state of Iran is evidence of our accomplishing good in the world, I have to ask: Are you one of the Robert E. Howard types who sees everything decaying into chaos, so we only hold back the dark as long as we can, or what? 'Cos right now, it’s a mess.

A, they’re not southern; & 2, they chose to drop out, don’t blame me.

182

I understand the common wisdom on this, but I don’t accept it. I will cast my vote with the party that is most likely to advance my ideals and hopes for society.

For example, I vote on social progressive issues. I can care less about economic issue because, either way (welfare state vs. aggressive capitalism), it’s not affecting my way of life. The Republicans oppose me on most social issues. Why would I ever want to vote for them? The Democrats and Libertarians are generally in line with me point for point on social issues. I don’t care if the Republican candidate is the most stand-up guy in the world, but if his party supports social positions that I consider morally offensive, I cannot in good conscience vote for his party. I would only consider voting Republican on very local elections, and only if the Republican is socially progressive.

183

Why not just call him a half-breed and be done with it, Rush?

The rest of you don’t get it though. Throwaway things like this are what Shodan and other do in order to just to get you all riled up, because they enjoy watching it, not for any other reason.

184

No, not really. I’m with you with the face - it didn’t occur to me that the Usual Suspects would get their panties into such a twist over something as silly as this. My bad - I forgot what a bunch of thin-skinned wusses you are.

Regards,
Shodan

185

:frowning:

186

I think Mhendo and Foolsguinea did a good job explaining that it’s a matter of context. Even though he’s taken seriously by some people, Rush is just a radio yacker who rips apart Democrats for a living. And so I think the proper context is that he was fanning the not-black-enough controversy (which, incidentally, goes back at least three years — it’s nothing new) by highlighting the contrast between Obama’s self-identity as an African-American and the fact that his mother’s side is about as lily white as you can get. In fact, his great-great-great grandfather might have owned slaves. In other words, I don’t think it was about Obama’s half-breedness, but about what Rush might perceive as Obama’s appropriation of “African-American” for little more than political purposes. It was aimed at one person, not a whole group of people. For the sake of proportion, contrast it with Jesse Jackson’s unfortunate “Himey Town” reference.

187

Well, Lieberman’s to the left of some Democrats (Lieberman’s probably the most hawkish of the…errr, non-Republicans, but when it comes to economic and social issues, he’s pretty centrist/center-left), but if you look at the liberal/conservative ratings from the last Congress (obviously, it’s too early to figure it out for this one), Ben Nelson of Nebraska was pretty constantly ranked to the right of Lincoln Chaffee and both Republicans from Maine.

Here’s a chart showing that, btw.

188

But lots of self-identified black people are “Halfrican” in the same sense. When the biracial guy holds up the liquor store, do you think the newscasters call him a “Halfrican”, or do they say that it was a black dude shot up the joint? People only play the name game when it’s with someone they like (like Halle Berry or Tiger Woods).

Why isn’t Colin Powell treated the same way as Obama, by the way? He looks more “Halfrican” than Obama, and he’s also not “African American” in the same sense that, say, Jesse Jackson is. He’s appropriated “African American” just as much as Obama has. Yet I have a real hard time imagining Rush or Shodan giving Colin Powell any weird treatment about his race. Don’t conservatives hold Colin up as a virtous role model for us lowly black folk to emulate? Why do they give Colin his “negro” card but quibble semantics when it comes to Obama?

Obama has never made a race a big deal. He self-identifies as black for the same reason that the rest of us with his complexion do: because we haven’t been given a choice historically. It would be more politically advantegous for the guy to self-identify as white, seeing as how this country is still dominated by European Americans. But he can’t pass as white. No one would let him pass as white, including white folks. The wacko conservatives are trying to make him play a game he can’t win. If he plays up his race, they can say he’s playing up an identity he has no real claim to. But if he stays silent about it, then they can accuse him of not being black enough for black voters…who you know only vote for people darker than a paper bag.

I find “Halfrican American” as stupid as “Uncle Tom” and “Oreo”. Not racist but definitely not cute.

189

Well, if that’s a criterion that we need to think about when determining “blackness,” then we can probably disqualify a whole lot of African Americans.

Very few black Americans whose families have been here since the era of slavery are completely African in their lineage. And the frequent rape of female slaves by white owners and overseers, often resulting in children, means that there are probably plenty of African Americans who have slaveowners in the family tree. Hell, Frederick Douglass suspected that his master might also have been his father, and was certain that his father was a white man.

190

Frederick Douglass? He was a Black Republican! What did he know about the African Experience? Race-traitor!

(tongue so far firmly in cheek it is coming out my ear)

191

It’s a nice chart, but I have no idea what the numbers mean. What were the votes that went into those numbers?

A few things I’ve noticed about such rankings: usually they include a whole bunch of votes that they count equally, with no weighting with respect to importance. So you could wind up with a vote on a free-trade agreement with Qatar cancelling out a vote on the Military Commissions Act.

Another thing is that these rankings very often include votes that have no visible connection to the espoused cause.

Finally, the rankings have a bad tendency to leave out cloture votes, which in many cases are the ‘real’ vote on an issue. For instance, a Senator who voted against Alito’s confirmation, but voted for cloture on the Alito confirmation debate, was worse than useless from a liberal POV.

I’d actually come up with my own list of votes in each house that I considered significant in the last Congress, but unfortunately I can’t put my hands on my notes.

192

The problem with Democrats is that they still think every election is theirs to lose.

Giuliani was a pretty good mayor, sure he condoned police brutality but you could ride the subway at night. 9/11 made him a star (and rightly so). Then he planted his lips on Bush’s ass and lost all credibility.

193

OK, direct me to the other ones then.

Yeah, I would! Elected office isn’t supposed to be some kind of farm system, with promising state legislators graduating to the Congress, then the Senate, then PotUS, and a mayor-governor-president fast track.

So you have a set of qualifications that you can’t quantify? That’s fine with me, just don’t expect anybody to accept your, or anyone else’s decision about who is or isn’t qualified.

My problem with “qualifications” beyond what’s in the Constitution is that they’re not qualifications, they’re just ways to attack candidates that people don’t like.
Who’s more qualified, a one term Democratic Senator or a one term Republican Governor?
Point me to the people who support candidates that they think aren’t qualified to serve in that office.

CMC fnord!

194

That is one of the flaws in the party system. People DO think of it as some sort of farm system.

I disagree. I don’t think the qulification argument is merely used to attack candidates. I think that the “qualifications” for President change over time as the needs of the nation and the sentiment of the nation evolve. Every 4 years we reexamine what the “qualifications” are to be President.

195

Though those who really are damn conservative don’t seem to think so. My dad is the guy you’re thinking about when you imagine that someone is ultra-conservative. He’s disappointed that Vynce and I grew up to be moderates. He doesn’t believe in global warming at all. It’s taken until just the past five years or so that he’s decided that gays aren’t all degenerates who are going to hell. (note “all.” Many still are in his opinion.) He spends a lot of his time listening to conservative talkingheads etc.

Today he was het up about politics and told us that McCain winning would be “almost as bad as a democrat winning” because “He’s a liberal in Republican clothing.” It wouldn’t surprise me if those talkingheads espoused the same view. another disappointment for him is neither of us find political talkshows worth listening to

McCain is right of center, but he’s not really conservative, as conservatives go. If he wasn’t prolife, I doubt anyone would consider him especially conservative. Many people do think prolife=ultra-conservative , though, I’ve learned through personal experience.

196

You’d have to check each organization and get a hand on their vote chart guide. Just from a quick look, here’s the ADA’s voting guide (which gave him 80%):

http://www.adaction.org/2006vr.htm

Obviously, voting guides like that have their limitations, but you need some sort of metric. And you’re wrong on the Alito thing, btw, but that’s a different debate.