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The American Presidency: The Candidates at Home
Elki
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
get busyModerator, ClubPA Mod Emeritus
Words you are unlikely to see me post in the next pages of this thread: "X is off-topic," because I'm just going to warn you here. This thread is a bitch to keep up with and mod when it's on-topic, and impossible when people use it as a dumping ground for any political news story. If it's not directly related to Obama v. McCain don't post it.
Think it's really important, and still want to post it?
If you quote a youtube video, throwing a spoiler around it would be appreciated.
AND NO BLUE DOTTING!
OK? Glad we got that cleared up.
The Economist wrote:“BARACK OBAMA, born of the corrupt Chicago political machineâ€, begins a sinister voice in a McCain advertisement. Among the Democrat’s “friends from Chicagoâ€, Sarah Palin tells crowds, is a former violent radical, William Ayers. Mrs Palin also says that Republicans should highlight another Chicagoan, Mr Obama’s divisive former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Chicago, for better or worse, is a principal part of the McCain campaign’s effort to bring Mr Obama down.
Chicago itself remains the centre of efforts to lift him up. This is not just because nomadic campaign staffers have claimed every sofa in the city. Most Chicagoans love Mr Obama. Linda Randle, one of his biggest fans, met him in 1986 when she was living in public housing and he was a young organiser. Today she owns more than 20 Obama T-shirts and has campaign signs taped to her windows. “I always thought he was going to be the greatest civil-rights lawyer,†she says, “but I don’t have a problem with him being president.â€
Other Illinoisans, it is safe to say, do not have a problem with him being president either. In the primary Mr Obama beat Hillary Clinton, an Illinois native, by 32 points. Polls show him leading John McCain by at least 16 points. The McCain campaign is trying to use Mr Obama’s past against him. But most Illinoisans support Mr Obama, while being well aware that his local record does not quite square with his national image.
Mr Obama’s list of local feats is respectable but not Herculean. Jerry Kellman, who hired Mr Obama in 1985, said his main impact was to empower locals. He managed modest but valuable achievements, such as helping to open a job bank and remove asbestos from public housing. In the state Senate from 1996, Mr Obama proved to be an effective politician. He helped to pass ethics and campaign-finance reforms in a state loth to do so. Terry Link, his Senate colleague and poker buddy, says that his “main skill as a political person and as an individual is to be able to listen to people.†Though one Republican quipped that the young state senator was “to the left of Maoâ€, Mr Obama was adept at reaching across the aisle. He worked not only with unions, but also with the Illinois Venture Capital Association.
All this fits with Mr Obama’s current persona. But as locals know well, parts of his record diverge from it. First, Mr Obama was aggressively ambitious. In his race for the state Senate he used technicalities to force the withdrawal of Alice Palmer, the incumbent. It was a common but tough local tactic. In 2000 he tried to topple Bobby Rush, a black congressman, alienating parts of the black community and losing the election by 30 points. Bill Brandt, a Chicagoan and fund-raiser for the Clintons, contends that “bare-knuckle politics is something we all understand†but that Mr Obama was not above the fray.
Second, Mr Obama did not challenge Illinois’s hierarchy. John Kass, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, has blasted Mr Obama for his support of Emil Jones, the machine-style Senate president, Richard M. Daley, Chicago’s mayor (who, though respected, failed to stem corruption beneath him), and Todd Stroger, whom Mr Obama endorsed to succeed Mr Stroger’s scandal-dogged father as president of Cook County’s board. Most infamously, Mr Obama received donations from Tony Rezko, a developer convicted of corruption in June.
Mr Obama did nothing wrong. He returned Mr Rezko’s donations long ago. None of the other men has been charged with a crime. Defying Mr Jones or Mr Daley would have been the political equivalent of diving off the Sears Tower. But though Jay Stewart of the Better Government Association, a local watchdog, commends Mr Obama for his work on ethics reform, he adds of his post-partisan rhetoric: “That vision the senator talks about is inspiring. All I can tell you is he is not describing Illinois and Chicago politics.â€
It may have been impossible for Mr Obama to rise from the muck of Illinois without a smudge on his navy suit. As president, he might clean the state; last month he urged Mr Jones to pass an ethics bill, and his mentor obeyed. Nationally, his supporters see him as a visionary. His local record presents him as pragmatic and aggressive when the need arises. Most Illinoisans, at least, seem to find this an appealing package.
The Economist wrote:IN A Paradise Valley shopping mall, Martin Dunleavy takes a break from the scorching Arizona sun. He is wearing a cap emblazoned with an eagle and an American flag, and describes himself as somewhat conservative. He adores Sarah Palin, whom he describes as “every man’s womanâ€. How about John McCain, Arizona ’s senior senator and the state’s first plausible presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater in 1964? Mr Dunleavy shakes his head: “You just can’t trust McCain.â€
Nobody besides a few excitable Democrats believes John McCain will lose Arizona. Presidential candidates nearly always carry their home states. But Mr McCain is less popular at home than one might expect. On February 5th he won less than half of the vote in Arizona’s Republican primary. A state poll conducted two weeks ago put him seven points ahead of Barack Obama. It is hardly an overwhelming lead in a state that has voted for a Democratic president only once since 1948.
A big reason is that Mr McCain is a moderate among hotheads. “Arizona has always had a vocal hard-right element,†says John Shadegg, a congressman who supports the senator. In 1986 it elected a governor aligned with the ultra-conservative John Birch Society. The state Republican Party is dominated by hard cases who object to Mr McCain’s temperate record on immigration and taxes. In a January straw poll of activists in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and Paradise Valley, Mr McCain was voted the “most unacceptable†of five candidates for president.
Still, Arizona’s ultra-conservatives know they have nowhere else to go. Party leaders in Maricopa County have even provided a gritted-teeth endorsement of Mr McCain on their website: “Many of us have strong differences with some of John McCain’s past positions and policies. Some of us even dislike him personally. But we love America more.â€
Mr McCain’s second problem is that, thanks in large part to the hard-right element that so dislikes him, Hispanic voters are slipping away. In the past few years Arizona’s legislature has passed a slew of laws designed to make life miserable for illegal immigrants. Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County’s publicity-hungry sheriff, has conducted sweeps of Hispanic districts in search of them. This has offended Latino voters and turned them against the Republican Party. Elias Bermudez of Immigrants Without Borders campaigned for George Bush in 2000 and 2004, and is currently trying to win Hispanic votes for Mr McCain. He describes his latest challenge as “100 times harderâ€.
Yet Mr McCain’s biggest problem seems to be that many Arizonans do not feel he speaks for them. He rarely talks about Arizona on the stump, and did not mention the state once in his acceptance speech. By contrast, Mr Obama repeatedly evokes the streets of Chicago, while Mrs Palin often sings Alaska’s praises.
Several people buttonholed in and around Phoenix were unable to provide a single example of something Mr McCain had done for Arizona. Admirers saw him as an American hero rather than a local hero. Although the presidency is a national office, this is a bad sign. Even at his best, Mr McCain can occasionally seem to be guided by a kind of internal moral compass rather than by the views of people who put him in office. It may be that Arizona’s voters have simply noticed this more quickly than the rest of America.
Elki on
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I like how at the end it says that it does not support any particular candidate. Also, what a scummy ad.
You may want to include this or something like it in the OP boilerplate, Elks.
But good lord, I kind of feel bad for McCain at this point, sitting at the helm of a corrupt and evil ship, and getting booed whenever he tries to turn back the spin created by his own organization.
That said, I fucking hate how dangerous this republican candidacy's spin has made the political environment here. Parades of people chanting bomb obama, or "he's a muslim. He's a terrorist?" I understand that politics is all about perspective, and people from the left demonize the right and the same goes the other way.
How does anyone who is a sensible, good human being support the current state of the republican candidacy?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Aside from, you know, the report that says the exact document. But hey, who reads in this day and age?
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I think right now the strategy is to depress Obama's base into suicide before they get to vote. But the joke is on them, if I'm going down I'm going down voting.
The abuse of power was her giving her husband state resources and access to harass people to get rid of Wooten
My corpse will be a regular at the voting booth given that I'm an Illinoisan.
Ba dum pssh.
There's a lot more to it than that, but I'll cut it short by saying there's a reason I don't discuss politics with my parents, and tonight brought that reason to the forefront. I have a feeling our friend won't be welcome back here for a while, and we've known him for over 20 years.
My Backloggery
What is this video? I searched YouTube just now but didn't see it.
Yeah, it rarely feels like time well spent.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Makes me RAAAAAGE
I don't discuss politics beyond simply policy because there's really no guarantee that the other person in the argument is going to debate in good faith or is even knowledgeable about the topic being discussed.
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My assumption was that all the sensible, good human beings are voting Obama.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I'm curious too.
Also: The old guy calling the Obama voters "commie faggots". What the fuck?
Keep up the good work, all!
We are slow. Damn weekends and their lack of news.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E3Vhnfhk-c
Whoops
I mean, everyone over 40 anyway, you know how bigoted THOSE people are.
I was in my International Relations class and I was discussing with a fellow Student Council person about voter reg drives etc and we asked this girl sitting next to us who appeared bright and involved in the class if she would want to help register voters (We were wearing obama gear but we didn't specify)
she simply says "Stay out of my political business please, that is none of your business"
International Relations
Happy on the one hand... on the other hand, the higher those numbers get, the more scared I get that people are going to think it's in the bag and not bother to vote.
It's awfully sad that when we were out canvasing yesterday, talking to people about early voting, the most compelling argument we could make was that they could call the SoE a day or two later to be 100% sure their vote counted, and have time to do something about it if it didn't.
They were.
I'm really glad I stayed out of that little dispute because most of my responses would have been along the lines of "what the HELL sort of PROBLEMS you got" and "have you ever known a single thing".
Also it seems that anyone who brings up the kool-aid line tends to get run out on a rail pretty quickly.
Who's that one from? It is much less sucky than previous stabs at his Ayers association.
I don't agree with the idea presented but attacking it as a matter of political expediency rather than secret muslim terrorist sympathies is such a better angle.
Man you guys are paranoid. "It looks like Obama can't win the state, people might not bother voting AAAHHH!" "It looks like Obama's guaranteed to win, people might not bother to vote AAAHHH!"
The longer version is better.
It's self awarely self effacing.
I wanted to call up my sister, have her meet me at my job (where I was watching), and have my sister jump through the TV and punch the bitch in her face.
?
It doesn't really come off as being ironic... rather the intended audience would just hear, "don't vote, they won't listen" and think, yeah ok.
Why the hell does McCain still have over 40% of the popular vote?