While the Obama campaign and its surrogates have been trumpeting the fact that it is bringing in “new voters”, it seems to have forgotten a key component of the “old Democratic coalition” that it disparages.
“Old” voters. Literally.
The Clinton campaign consistently includes Hillary Clinton’s appeal to seniors when it discusses why she is the better choice to face off against John McCain – but the media seldom mentions older voters, choosing instead to concentrate on Clinton’s appeal to “white working class” voters to hype the race angle in the campaign.
The Obama campaign’s use of talking points involving “new voters” and a “new coalition” is sending a message to older voters – that “old” is worth a lot less to them than “new”, that young voters are more important than older voters, and that the “new coalition” means that the concerns of the “old coalition” members are no longer critical to the Party.
And all this is going on when the Republican Party will have a 71 year old as its nominee. Read more
Like you probably do, I get a lot of emails from folks who don’t, um, really understand what I think about politics but know I have an interest and want to share what they find funny. I suppose these guys are “famous;” they seem to have a lot of YouTubes and it looks semi-professional and/or backed with Republican welfare money. Anyway, I thought this was actually very interesting.
Crude as it is, I have only one thing to add: I’ve spoken with ~15 people this month on their choice of Dem candidates: my plumber, a couple of my neighbors, some folks at the grocery store. I’m chatty and curious like that, and I’m also struck by the theme I have heard from 14 of that group (yes, I have been counting). Read more
Not just that, but it’s high on my list. We need to fix a broken system.
Some required fixes:
1. End the caucuses. Secret ballot primaries only.
2. Regional primaries. Five of them, in rotation, beginning in February and ending in June. Iowa and New Hampshire can get in line with everyone else.
3. Closed primaries. Democrats should select our nominee.
4. Select the nominee by popular vote. Delegates should be used for other intra-party buisness at the convention, but let the voters select the nominee.
5. Campaign finance reform. The winner should not be selected based on who can raise the most obscene amount of money. Read more
Someone is taking the Village pundits seriously. Politico:
Obama plans to declare victory May 20
Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
And, until at least May 31 and perhaps longer, Hillary Clinton’s campaign plans to dispute it.
It’s a train wreck waiting to happen, with one candidate claiming to be the nominee while the other vigorously denies it, all predicated on an argument over what exactly constitutes the finish line of the primary race. Read more
…what do Obama and his supporters need to do today to get you into this car?
One answer is pretty simple: don’t be jerks about it. That and more progressive policy positions.
The worst possible downside to the thousands of hours we have all spent paying attention to this campaign is that democratic voters who supported the losing nominee will be so pissed off that they won’t show up to vote in November.
All it takes is a few percentage points in a few battleground states to lose this thing. Half of Americans don’t vote and a lot of them just because they’re too pissed off about something or other.
Another question:
why are you doing this?
Lambert and Vastleft can defend themselves. My impression of their reasons follows.
I have to apologize. To You, Gentle Reader. To my Blogmates, past and present. To America, lost and wounded. I am so sorry. as a sop, I’ll offer some pics of the gardens very soon, honest to Chuy I’ve been in them 12-15hrs/day for the last month and just too fucking tired to blog.
I love you. I really do. Love is easy for me; it’s why I have such a hard time in life, people who love to love are often those who do poorly in “business” or with money or things that “matter” in our society. But I’m not sorry; if I were religious, I’d consider it a ’gift from gawd.’ The ability to feel love for people is one that I wish more people could nuture; indeed I believe they can, and so I write this now.
Bottom line: the candidates, all of them, have little more than contempt, derision, and mockery for you, Little Person. If you’re not writing a 000000$ check, believe me, they aren’t thinking about you, let alone worrying about what you say, for whom you pull a lever, etc. This isn’t a “democracy” anymore, you’ve noticed that I’m sure. “Superdelagates” will decide who is to be our Next Leader; Iraq will slog on; none of us will enjoy universal health care or cheap gas any time soon/ever. No Bush Administration crony will go to jail for a long, deserved time, and the rich are going to get richer, at least until the Revolution comes. I hope you all know how I have used that term ironically and with black humor. Life for the Progressive is always hard, and we always fail to acheive our objectives…until the day we don’t.
But that day won’t come by fighting each other. Go ahead, mock me for being Missy Kumbaya. I can hack it. I will still love you, fellow progressive. And I will still love you one year from now, when these arguments are forgotten and President Gore/Obama/Hillary/McCentury is in charge, and our economy is still tanking, and the environment is still dying, and global warming is even more pressing…do you understand my point?
I am weeping, true and bitter tears, to learn and understand that the people I love and respect most in this world still succumb to the media game that is designed to keep us all down. Fight for your candidate! Yes! Be Nasty, be dirty, say untrue things, even…this is the age of the Bush Republican. I believe in “The Chicago Way;” if your enemy kicks you in the balls, you knife him in the back, send his to the morgue, etc. But not within the family. Goddess no. No, it’s just not worth it. Kerry/Dean/Clarke, anyone? Doesn’t anyone remember what that was like, or how little that all matters now? Please, try.
Like it or not, progressives like us, and I mean *you,* we’re all Family. If you were all Black or Brown people from poor circumstance, you’d know exactly what I’m trying to say here. Sticks and Stones… Blood is Thicker…A Rolling Stone… Or let me end on a brutal note:
While we all tear each other apart, millions are dying, millions more are going to die, for no good reason. As an American, like it or not, you have an incredible responsibility to do what you can to make sure your power isn’t used for evil, oppressive reasons. Turn off the TV, goddammit. Stop reading the Wanker of the Day’s latest bullshit. Reach out your hand to those who are on the side of Good. Learn to say, “I’m sorry. Let’s get down to business.”
Or, not. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you do the work of the Evil for them, you have no one but yourself to blame. Read more
I finally realized why I was having such a hard time saying that I’d vote for Obama if he is the nominee.
I’ve been voting straight ticket Democratic just about my entire adult life, and one of the big reaons is that I find the GOP’s use of its Southern Strategy abhorrent.
Obama’s use of race baiting in an effort to create huge margins and massive turnout in the AA community is his own “Southern Strategy.” Every time I think about what they’ve done to Bill and Hillary Clinton in the name of securing the nomination, I feel ill.
So I’m sitting November out if Obama is the nominee. I’m not going to vote for a “Democrat” who employs the tactics I find most abhorrent in Republicans.
Lambert, I hope you don’t mind me sticking my nose in this, but I just read Sadly, No!’s bashing of your Rameny good post, and I wanted to say a few things in response. Read more
Or Why Obama Supporters Want Super-Delegates To Think That One Person In Anchorage Is Worth More Than 36 In Akron
As far as Obama’s supporters are concerned, a voter in Ohio is worth only 1/23 of a voter in Alaska. In Alaska, 8,877 voters chose the state’s 13 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention, or 683 voters per delegate. In Ohio, 2,194,851 voters chose that state’s 141 pledged delegate. That’s 15,566 voters per delegate. Read more
And surely, what is helping to make this primary season so hellish are all the attempts to close it down.
In case you haven’t heard, and assuming I get this up before anyone else posts on it, a superdelegate Bill Clinton once chose to head the DNC and was up-to-now a declared Hillary-supporter, has just announced today that he is switching his support to Obama, and urging all Hoosier voters to do likewise in order to end the primary process in its tracks after next Tuesday. As part of this strategy, he is also urging his fellow superdelegates to wait no longer to declare their preferences, so we can all unite behind Barack and begin to do battle with McSame.
Via Talk Left, Obama has filed a complaint with the FEC over a 527 ad airing in Indiana. Here’s the ad:
Now it might be a bit unfair, but illegal? C’mon. All it accuses him of is not having specifics in his economic plans. That’s hardly some sort of swiftboating. I’ve seen harder ads than this for insurance commissioner. And does this mean he thinks McCain was right to complain to the FEC about the DNC ad? Read more
Mighty Corrente Building Manager Lambert brought something up in the comments to this post by bringiton that I thought deserved its own, entirely new thread. Maybe; it’s part of the “What To Do With The OFB” issue that I think is a fairly important matter.
It’s become a political cliché in this election season that Obama and his campaign have been largely about process issues (“politics, not policy”) and that there is a large segment of the Democratic Party that is surprisingly passionate about process issues and see in Obama a way to bring process issues to the fore. This attitude towards process issues stretches back to the Dean campaign. Whether this attitude is justified is another matter, but it’s becoming clear that it’s not an issue that is likely to win a general election, and that the Obama campaign’s focus on meta issues has been at the expense of issues that matter to another important voting bloc, and this might even cost him a nomination that for a time seemed to be practically his. Read more
Between late February and mid-April, voters in nine states that should/could be “Democratic” in the 2008 Presidential Election were exposed to a considerable amount of negative informative concerning both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The negative information had little impact on how Hillary Clinton was regarded when compared to John McCain. But it has had a major impact on their perception of Barack Obama, and on the perception of the relative merits of Obama and McCain.
Overall, the worst that can be said about Clinton is the negative press attention has resulted in more previously undecided voters in certain demographic categories expressing a preference for McCain rather than for Clinton. But Obama is not merely losing “undecided” voters in most demographic categories because of negative media coverage, a significant percentage of voters who had supported Obama over McCain have switched their preferences. Read more
[Hello. I’m new here. Been reading the legacy. Something I’ve posted elsewhere still in an emacs buffer — so, I’ll just jump in.]
I, a progressive voter since 1963, am incensed with Dean, Pelosi, Reid, et al., and find them to be contemptible a55h0l35.
Nancy Pelosi’s most notable achievement was to take impeachment off the table. Two years later, and Bush has been allowed to continue virtually unobstructed. The Bushit clock will have run out soon, and we can start marking Democratic Friedman units (at least, 180 coalition and 10 thousand Iraqi deaths per F-unit). Read more
Partially in response to Bringiton’s earlier post about, as I interpret it, the complacency of comfort. Perhaps it’s not merely laziness. Perhaps, after 2000 and 2004 we had come to expect a reliable, pro-democracy media critique from the Boiz on the blogs. Perhaps the missing media critique by the Boiz has contributed to large swaths of the democratic base not really knowing what’s going on in Florida and Michigan. Perhaps the Boiz, as a group, have been more responsible than the republicans, the media, and the competing candidates themselves at dividing us.
We all know the media isn’t going to do democracy any favors. That’s what the glorious media critique was supposed to accomplish, right? Read more
The Democratic voters of Michigan and Florida are unhappy, or so we read. They, or if you will, their representatives, moved up their primary dates and drew a punishment from the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee. Since then, what have the voters of Michigan and Florida actually done to try and reverse or repair their problem? Nothing but complain. Read more
AKA OBAMA’S SOUR ’APPLES TO APPLES’, PART THREE: INDEPENDENTS AND MODERATES
In the last six weeks, Barack Obama has been losing support in virtually every key demographic category when matched against John McCain, while Hillary Clinton has gained support. Perhaps most disturbing is Obama’s decline among Independent voters: Between late February and mid-April, in 9 key states for Democrats
· Obama lost an average 4.2% of his support among Independents
· While Obama was losing support among Independents to McCain, McCain was also picking up new support from previously undecided Independent voters, resulting in major decreases in Obama’s margins against McCain among Independents.
· In February, Obama led McCain among Independents in 5 of the 9 states, By mid-April, Obama was leading in only one state – by only 2%. Read more
Must read: DU poster McCamy Taylor’s massive takedown of the Obama campaign’s abuse of the race card.
Update: Meanwhile, WaPoharvests what Obama has sown:
The protracted and increasingly acrimonious fight for the Democratic presidential nomination is unnerving core constituencies — African Americans and wealthy liberals — who are becoming convinced that the party could suffer irreversible harm if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains her sharp line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama.
Now, someone remind me, which of the Democratic candidates is constantly accused of being Rovian?
Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left points out teh stupid:
Elizabeth Drew writing in Politico confirms what we have been seeing for months - the House Dem leadership is populated by fools. Consider this unforgivable ignorance: Read more
Alice Palmer and Obama’s first campaign, when he knocked out the politician who recruited and introduced him to fundraisers and others who could help him (like Ayers, etc) —
So everything seemed set. Palmer would move to Congress and Obama would take her place in the Illinois Senate.
But then Palmer lost the special congressional election. Suddenly, this well-liked community leader faced being out of office after four years in the state Legislature.
…
Palmer finally asked Obama to halt his legislative campaign so she could run for re-election.
In the last six weeks, Barack Obama has been losing support in virtually every key demographic category when matched against John McCain, while Hillary Clinton has gained support. Obama has lost support among men, women, White voters, “Independents”, and “Moderates”, while Clinton has gained support in all those categories.
Obama’s margins against McCain have fallen significantly in all of these categories, while Clinton is “holding her own” in these key categories as previously undecided voters make up their minds. Read more
