Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[Diomedes]

I'd still like to hear instances of this sort of thing happening in Canada, France or Sweden, by the way.

I'd like to hear two 16 year old sluts begging for me to come on their tits.

Why doesn't anyone care about what I want to hear?

[General_Failure]

Because you're not a 16 year old slut anymore.

[Diomedes]

Come on my tits, Big Brother

[General_Failure]

What part of

you're not a 16 year old slut anymore.

did you not understand?

[ATV]

Over seven minutes of total spew and not a single second devoted to examining the validity of the actual remarks...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRwsk56lN44

Is this pitiful demonstration of the mainstream media (and Fox) an indication of how far it's fallen, or is it instead a sad reflection of their viewership? One way or the other, "greatest nation on earth" my ass.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

It never happened.

[Cerevant]

She has to at least try if she really wants a shot at VP.  I think she would have to answer too many questions about her campaign if he did pick her - there is no way it can work.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

It worked for Reagan and GHW Bush in 1980.  Sure, "Voodoo Economics" lives on, but they lasted two terms and even got Bush elected in 1988 somewhat easily.

The media and the American people have a short memory for politicking.  McCain's camp and the RNC could try to use the primary fights as ammo, but it's not going to mean much for Obama's poll numbers.


The real reason he won't pick Hillary is because he's going to kick McCain's ass anyway.  Since he doesn't NEED her, why the hell would he subject himself to that?

[ATV]

This must be what fair and balanced means....

http://mediamatters.org/items/200807020002?f=h_latest

[General_Failure]

Wow, the guys at FOX really suck at photoshop.

[Father Demon]

Does Obama's move to the middle bother anyone here?

Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers

Last Friday afternoon, the guests taking part in Sunday's roundtable discussion on This Week had a pre-show call with George Stephanopoulos. One of the topics he raised was Obama's perceived move to the center, and what it means. Thus began my weekend obsession. If you were within shouting distance of me, odds are we talked about it. I talked about it over lunch with HuffPost's DC team, over dinner with friends, with the doorman at the hotel, and the driver on the way to the airport.

As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don't let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December.

Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didn't work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn't work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn't work when Mark Penn (obsessed with his "microtrends" and missing the megatrend) convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008.

Fixating on -- and pandering to -- this fickle crowd is all about messaging tailored to avoid offending rather than to inspire and galvanize. And isn't galvanizing the electorate to demand fundamental change the raison d'etre of the Obama campaign in the first place? This is how David Axelrod put it at the end of February, contrasting the tired Washington model of "I'll do these things for you" with Obama's "Let's do these things together":

    "This has been the premise of Barack's politics all his life, going back to his days as a community organizer," Axelrod told me. "He has really lived and breathed it, which is why it comes across so authentically. Of course, the time also has to be right for the man and the moment to come together. And, after all the country has been through over the last seven years, the times are definitely right for the message that the only way to get real change is to activate the American people to demand it."

Watering down that brand is the political equivalent of New Coke. Call it Obama Zero.

In 2004, the Kerry campaign's obsession with undecided voters -- voters so easily swayed that 46 percent of them found credible the Swift Boaters' charges that Kerry might have faked his war wounds to earn a Purple Heart -- allowed the race to devolve from a referendum on the future of the country into a petty squabble over whether Kerry had bled enough to warrant his medals.

Throughout the primary, Obama referred to himself as an "unlikely candidate." Which he certainly was -- and still is. And one of the things that turned him from "unlikely" upstart to presidential frontrunner is his ability to expand the electorate by convincing unlikely voters -- some of the 83 million eligible voters who didn't turn out in 2004 -- to engage in the system.

So why start playing to the political fence sitters -- staking out newly nuanced positions on FISA, gun control laws, expansion of the death penalty, and NAFTA?

In an interview with Nina Easton in Fortune Magazine, Obama was asked about having called NAFTA "a big mistake" and "devastating." Obama's reply: "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."

Overheated? So when he was campaigning in the Midwest, many parts of which have been, yes, devastated by economic changes since the passage of NAFTA, and he pledged to make use of a six-month opt-out clause in the trade agreement, that was "overheated?" Or was that one "amplified?"

Because if that's the case, it would be helpful going forward if Obama would let us know which of his powerful rhetoric is "overheated" and/or "amplified," so voters will know not to get their hopes too high.

When Obama kneecaps his own rhetoric and dilutes his positioning as a different kind of politician, he is also giving his opponent a huge opening to reassert the McCain as Maverick brand. We know that McCain has completely abandoned any legitimate claim on his maverick image, but the echoes of that reputation are still very much with us -- especially among many in the media who would love nothing more than to be able to once again portray McCain as the real leader they fell in love with in 2000. And the new Straight Talk Express plane has been modeled on its namesake bus, decked out to better recreate the seduction.

The transition between the primaries and the general election -- and from insurgent to frontrunner -- is tricky. Even a confident campaign can be knocked off course. So this is when Obama most needs to remember what got him to this point -- and stick with it.

In a Los Angeles Times article detailing Obama's attempts at "shifting toward the center," Matt Bennett of the centrist think tank Third Way says that Obama is a "good politician. He's doing all he can to make sure people know he would govern as a post-partisan moderate."
But isn't being a "good politician" as it's meant here exactly what Obama defined himself as being against? Instead of Third Way think tankers, Obama should listen to this guy:

    "What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.... The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page."

That was Barack Obama in February of 2007, announcing his run for the White House. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington," he said that day, "but I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."

Was that just "overheated and amplified" rhetoric?

The Obama brand has always been about inspiration, a new kind of politics, the audacity of hope, and "change we can believe in." I like that brand. More importantly, voters -- especially unlikely voters -- like that brand.

Pulling it off the shelf and replacing it with a political product geared to pleasing America's vacillating swing voters -- the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun -- would be a fatal blunder.

Realpolitik is one thing. Realstupidpolitik is quite another.

Is this a case of 'do whatever necessary to win'? 

[Diomedes]

Just go ahead and vote for McCain as you've intended to do all along, and no, this so called selling out doesn't bother me at all.  Dude's got my vote, as he has had all along, or at least ever since Kucinich was out.

[ice grillin you]

Just go ahead and vote for McCain as you've intended to do all along

EXACTLY

mccain could be the biggest sellout in the history of politics yet these out of control obama haters are reaching so hard to try and talk anyone they can to not vote for him...its just pathetic...is barrack perfect...of course he isnt...i myself a huge barry supporter pointed out during the primary that he isnt god and i got crucified for it by stepfords like cervent and pg...and even ff who laughably supported obama (even tho hes just as soon have him lynched as win the presidency) just because they hated hillary so much...


but the bottom line is that barry is a light at  the end of the tunnel that is the darkness of this current administration....and a light that we havent seen in a long time in politics...will this brightness shine upon all of us?...who the hell knows...but we should all take our chances on that versus the darkness that is john mccain and his carrying on of the bush legacy

[ATV]

I've earned this. So have many of you. After experiencing these past eight years and those two disastorous elections it all seems so anticlimactic. Because this is over. I should really be taking it more easy, just emotionally sitting back and appreciating how hard these Right Wingers are working, pulling their strings, trying to convince people to be afraid of Democrats and Barack Obama. What many of them don't realize and what obviously some of them refuse to accept is that there's no way in hell U.S. citizens are going to risk going through another fours years of this crap. Not a chance.  In 2004 when the criminals would do things like raise terror alert levels to coincide with and obscure big news days (see below), or doing the kind of junk I noted earlier today where they modified those columnists faces, I found it infuriating, disgusting. Now their tactics still seem shameful but increasingly merely pathetic and embarassing.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8ZyDFGHxI0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8x-54tKrc

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

The good news is that having Wesley Clark and Jim Webb question the validity of McCain's military service and leadership is all classy, all the time.

Asshats that try to make politics a one way street are only kidding themselves.  And while this board is certainly mostly bitchy about the right, there are plenty of conservatives that bitch incessantly about the tactics of the left.

How about you fargers all shut the hell up and realize that this is a dirty game played by dirty people.  Obama could be the squeakiest cleanest guy, and he still needs a bunch of snakes running his campaign even to get this far.  The holier than thou, above the fray, "change the way they do things in Washington" shtein only works on suckers.  Clearly, there are plenty of suckers.

Look, you don't have to want to marry the guy to vote for him.  If he represents more of what you represent than anyone else, he's your candidate.  Obama realizes, just as McCain has and basically every other Presidential candidate in the recent past has, that he can keep his base of solid Democrats but gain a few new voters by moving to the center during the election.

Big farging deal.