Unbelievable.


h/t: Coyote Chronicles & Chez Coma

Barry is asking a question he wants and honest, and civil, answer to. Why did you specifically choose your candidate?

Not the best president, maybe not even the best choice of the three - I would just like to see what people think are the primary reasons or indications they’ve seen that the candidate they support has the qualifications, potential and vision to be the President of the United States.

One major rule. No rebuttals. You don’t get to argue against a previous commenter’s reasonings. I want to hear your personal opinions on why you feel your candidate will make a good president.

Go tell him what you think. 

The blogger formerly known as South Knox Bubba has been given the nod to go to Denver for the Democratic convention in August.

Congratulations!

From CNN:

Former Democratic presidential nominee John Edwards will endorse Sen. Barack Obama Wednesday at a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to Obama’s campaign.

I smell Obama/Edwards ‘08, although if you’ll remember, I predicted Edwards/Obama ‘08…I suppose I was just having a day of dyslexia…

So what do you think?  Will this solidify Obama’s support from the working class?

An MTSU sophomore, Danielle Ross, was quoted on MSNBC in an article on racism in the current political primary process. She too off from college to campaign for Barack Obama and was in Muncie, IN, working the people on street corners and at a Wal-Mart.

“The first person I encountered was like, ‘I’ll never vote for a black person,’ ” recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. “People just weren’t receptive.”

The article goes on to discuss other examples where name-calling was the most pleasant aspect.

Brendan Loy, however, doesn’t think that if West Virginia goes heavily for Clinton that racism is necessarily the reason for it. I agree with Brendan. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve wondered how reporters seem to find so many people to interview that sound so yokel and have more fingers than teeth.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that, if you’re a reporter, and you conduct enough man-on-the-street interviews, you can find some idiot to say “Obama’s a Muslim” — or even “Obama’s a n***er” — anywhere. You can find racists and xenophobes and conspiratorial crazies in California, New York, Texas, Illinois; you can find ‘em all over the damn country.

Can you find them more easily in West Virginia? Perhaps. But you’re also much more likely to publish their quotes in a story about West Virginia, because it fits the storyline perfectly. Indeed, such a quote is precisely what these reporters are looking forwhen they start conducting the interviews in West Virginia. Whereas in California or New York, they’d probably ignore the random racist quote, in West Virginia they go out, they turn on the yokel-detecting radar, they hold up a microphone to the redneckiest-lookin’ redneck they can find, and — voila! — journalistic magic happens.

But Chez Bez is weighing in with calm reason.

After the 2000 and 2004 losses, I heard many folks talk disgustedly about moving to Canada. Didn’t happen. There’s a lot of emotion in statements like these, but I don’t worry about a bunch of fellow Democrats getting all Canuck on me. Surely I can’t imagine, after some time has passed between the upcoming Democratic nomination and the general election, that most Democrats who currently support Hillary won’t be casting their vote for Obama. (Or Obama supporters voting for Hillary, for that matter.)

He calls himself the 3-minute pundit. But what a very good three minutes it is.

No, I didn’t spell that wrong. It represents Michigan and Florida, the two states where the primary process was thwarted. Now that the Democrats are down to the wire and there’s not a final decision, what about those two states?

On one side of the issue, the Democratic party leadership told each state government that if they moved their primary to such and such a date, the result would be that their votes wouldn’t count and the candidates would be told to not campaign there. They were warned ahead of time, and the result was exactly what they were told it would be. From this point of view, these two states should have gone by the rules. They’re whiny crybabies who got their hands (or votes) smacked by daddy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Aunt B. writes about a statement that Sen. Hillary Clinton made in an interview with USA Today. She breaks it down in a lengthy post and says this:

I don’t think the next President is going to be some miracle worker.  We sat by for eight years and let George Bush strip from us a whole lot of what it means to be an American.  And a lot of the power he consolidated for himself is going to be incredibly tempting for the next President to keep.  We have gone far off course and the next president is not going to be able to fix it all.  He or she may not even be inclined to fix it all.

I’m not trying to elect a perfect savior.

Read the rest here.

Yawn. About the most exciting part of the whole thing was the primary where everything is decided, the Republicans. It seems that Republicans are doing a Hillary and refusing to give up, even though their candidates have. As Southern Beale put it:

Last night was also the Republican primary in Indiana and North Carolina. John McCain won of course, but Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney still collected a large percent of votes –large considering two out of those three aren’t even running anymore.

In Indiana, Huckabee collected 10%, Paul 8% and Romney 5%. In North Carolina Huckabee received 12%, Paul 8% and “No Preference” 4%.

What this tells me is that 25% of Republican voters are dissatisfied with John McCain as their candidate and wanted to “make a statement” with their primary vote.

As Newscoma reported last night, Sharon Cobb thinks it’s the beginning of the end and seems to feel that her squeaker victory in Indiana was courtesy of Rush Linbaugh. Meanwhile, in important news, “it’s the economy, stupid” doesn’t seem to be percolating through the political discussions the way our wallets wish it was.

Barack Obama won North Carolina by 14 points, Hillary took Indiana by two. Here’s what Tennessee bloggers said as we slept.

Overnight, Sharon Cobb wrote:

Today she’ll be meeting with her closest advisers planning her exit strategy. She will most likely stay in the race through May 20 or June 3, but will start winding down and start uniting the party.

Goldnl compares the emails from the candidates after last night’s primary and breaks what she believes is said between the lines.

The Irish Trojan pontificates while Left Wing Cracker and he both have a video of Tim Russert calling Obama the new nominee.

Of course, Kleinheider was on it last night.

Nuns denied the opportunity to vote? 
Also from Liberadio

I hear a bit of South Knox Bubba in R. Neal’s two word post on the race. Some of his commenters don’t buy that it’s over.

Also:

Tennessee Free

William Howard Hobbs 

Vibinc live blogged last night, with cookies.

I’m skeptical that would happen but there is some talk about it.

What if the presidential primary worked more like a lottery with all the states having a chance at the ultimate prize of being first to vote in the nominating schedule, ending the coveted tradition of New Hampshire and Iowa leading the pack?

According to Stateline.org that’s a simplified version of one of several ideas being considered by top party and state officials, who aim to prevent a repeat of states’ helter-skelter scramble for early presidential primary dates in 2008.

While voters in Indiana and North Carolina go to the polls today (May 6) to help Democrats pick Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as their nominee and Republicans rally behind John McCain, party insiders and state election officials are in informal talks to improve the presidential nominating contests for 2012 and beyond.

I guess the question is what would be the best way to improve the primary process?

Sharon Cobb has a post that reminds me of a girlfriend-to-girlfriend “talking to” that you can hear on college campuses on Monday mornings across the country: “America, If You Let Barack Obama Slide Through Your Hands Because Of Some Bumps , Then You Don’t Deserve Him As Your President.” I doubt that Sharon’s post was directed at me (I’m a Republican, plus I’m already spoken for in the “messiah” department–just kidding, just kidding), but I guess I just “don’t deserve” Obama.

From a somewhat different perspective but in the same vein, Brendan Loy makes his rather earnest case for Obama and directs it toward Conservatives. As I explain here, I’m skeptical. (hat tip: Post Politics).

Vol Abroad is posting on the subject as well. She writes:

Barack Obama has denounced Rev. Wright’s words. He found them offensive. Well, good - I guess. But it struck me that what Obama really found offensive was that Wright wasn’t following the party line anymore, wasn’t giving Obama his due. After all, he’d heard 20 years of Wright’s challenging sermons - but only a few minutes of Wright’s criticisms of one Barack Obama.

(hat tip: No Silence Here) After apparently first believing that the Rev. Dr. Wright had diverged from past policy and theological positions in his most recent media marathon (read her whole post) it appears Vol Abroad is skeptical, too, even if through Hillary-tinted glasses.

Glen Dean has a mini (he didn’t include my post) round up of Tennessee discussions about Obama’s pre-presidential-campaign Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It may become known as Sen. Obama’s Brother Wright moment . . . or maybe his Reverend Wright Moment (ref. Sister Souljah) Time will tell.

But what I enjoyed most was this line about criticism a President McCain will face from within the GOP:

We’ll then see how much President McCain likes Republican “mavericks”. My guess is not so much. In fact, he’ll probably break something.

The video in this link is an interesting look at a political campaign where a minority candidate battles a conservative maverick to win the White House. If this sounds like something you hope for later in the year (or dread), rest assured, it’s from the West Wing - but the parallels are, um, there in heaps. Since I suck at embedding video, here’s the link.

As you probably know by now, unless you never lsten to the news, Senator Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary last night by a 10% margin. In the delegate count, Senator Obama still has a lead and he still leads in the popular vote. Senator Clinton has won more large states (and CNN exit polls are showing that half of the people people willing to vote for her aren’t willing to vote for Senator Obama, according to Egalia). The other faction of the Demcratic party points to how little this matters because of the popular vote, delegate count, etc., are still owned by Senator Obama.

From my perspective, George W. Bush, the current President, has now got the highest disapproval rating ever since Gallup started polling. It’s even higher than Harry Truman in the middle of the Korean War. That is significantly phenominal. That disagreement with the direction the nation is going is not reflected in any of the current crop of candidates running to replace the President. None of the polling shows any of these three clowns as a runaway leader to turn the country around. Whether it’s a clueless inability to be able to distinguish one warring faction from another, a huge disapproval rating and mudslinging, or fallout from spoken words, it seems to me that all of them are damaged goods to too much of a degree. I think there ought to be somebody better in the race. Any ideas who or are we truly stuck with this hand?

Sharon Cobb posted Michael Moore’s statement in which he endorses Sen. Barack Obama…

There are those who say Obama isn’t ready, or he’s voted wrong on this or that. But that’s looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what’s going on is bigger than him at this point, and that’s a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

I couldn’t agree more, and this is coming from somebody who refuses to tow the party line.  I voted for Bush last go-around.  It will be for Obama this time.

Regardless of who wins, I really hope that this country will find a way to unite once again, as we did in those days after 9/11.

I just hope it doesn’t take a catastrophe to make it happen.

Newscoma has a plaintive (legitimately) post about the character of the “political conversation” going on in America right now. She writes,

I’ve talked quite a bit about how I wish we were having a more “adult” presidential campaign right now. It makes me cranky listening to all the political rhetoric when there are more important issues to discuss.I realize that it’s just not “sexy” to have conversations these days about politics when you aren’t looking somebody in the eye. That’s part of what is missing, I think.

I appreciate her appeal for real conversations by real people about real issues, and I agree that any person who is willing to take on the challenge of being president is a different breed of person (frankly, I think the current challenges are no greater than those from most any other time in the last 40 years, save the beginning of Clinton’s or HW’s presidencies). But there is a difference between “conversation” and “making a decision” and that’s the rub. The reality is that the Democrats have two people who want the opportunity to lead our country and settling on one of the two requires focusing on some pretty fine distinctions. I guess the brass knuckles come out when moving beyond what we all know is just conversation to actually deciding which plan is going to be implemented or, in this case, which person gets to lead the charge.

In relation to the real conversations that Newscoma relates, I’d say that this too-long campaign has had two impacts, both to increase the amount of handwringing. First, the length of a campaign to change the party in power is plainly proportional to the mood of the electorate–without regard to political party. Second, the length of a primary campaign certainly raises concerns about how bloodied the eventual nominee will be. In that respect, we can all lament the length of this cycle’s presidential race. As a result of the extended Hillary/Obama contest, Democratic Party leaders have a reason to lament with the rest of us.

It seems that John McCain is superstitious. Yep, he’s got a lucky feather, a lucky compass and one each of the lucky penny, nickle, and quarter varieties. (Since dimes have FDR on them, I guess he doesn’t want to spook the election spirits with it.) And if a staffer mentions “winning in November,” as many others as possible apparently knock on wood. (Source.) He also won’t throw a hat on a bed and, during the 2000 campaign he grew a beard, refusing to shave it off until it was over.

So were Reagan and Roosevelt, apparently. McCain doesn’t appear to have taken a position on zombies, though.

What in heavens name is wrong with these people?

“What will they call it? Farfallegate? The Rosemary Chicken Dome Scandal? Perhaps something with the ubiquitous Rachael Ray in it.

It seems that Cindy McCain, John McCain’s perfect, blonde beer-baroness wife is about to find herself painted as the latest example of plagiarism on the campaign trail...”

Les Jones has a couple of great posts (here and a roundup post here) about Obama’s candid (initially, at least) statements about why people turn to religion or gun rights or anti-illegal immigrationism or other unfortunate weaknesses.

Les’ “Word of the Day” is “WORM”: What Obama Really Meant.

Incidentally, I haven’t followed this debate in light of my travel and work schedule over the past week and a half, but having been accused of parroting what others are saying about the Obama comments, I thought I would follow some of the links at Instapundit and HotAir; good stuff, and most of it is dead on. I’d say y’all are drawing the wrong conclusion from the fact that a lot of people (a VRWC perhaps?) have had the same reaction to Obama’s comments.

Yep, it seems the election still isn’t over yet, despite our hopes. But, with over 80% of the American people dissatisfied with the direction the country’s heading, wouldn’t it seem reasonable that polling would show a wider gap between McCain and either of the Democratic candidates? I keep hearing that no matter who the Democrats decide upon, that person and McCain are neck and neck at this point. (Yeah, November is a long time away. So? I can’t tell the future - I can barely tell time. We’re doing now.) Do you feel disenfranchised or do you think we’ve just boiled it down to the wrong three people by this point?

Write your own caption…come on, you know you want to…

Sean Braisted opines on Bill Kristol’s op/ed linking Barack Obama’s statements about religion that seem to reflect the Marxist view of religion as the opiate of the masses.

Sean pooh-pooh’s Kristol’s ability to relate to or know what motivates the common man by pointing out that Kristol’s parents were once Communists and that Kristol was a child of privilege. Fair enough, but certainly those are credentials that qualify Kristol to identify Marxist ideas. And if Sean thinks Kristol doesn’t know what the “little guy” is thinking/feeling, I guess he is asserting that Obama’s assessment is accurate?

Newscoma has some good questions for politicians.

• Would you take 10 percent of your campaign coffers and donate it to charity which would help feed some of the 80,000 people who just lost their jobs?
• Are you listening to pundits or people?
• Have you ever had 20 cents in your pocket one week before payday and how would you deal with having a full-time job and not knowing how you are going to get to work or eat?

Sharon Cobb is wondering why Hillary Clinton has just now come out on boycotting the Olympics.

Southern Beale is wondering why Congress gave Michael Chertoff the authority to waive laws willy-nilly.

Sean Braisted is wondering how long the Metro Schools can continue to spend reserves like they were recurring income.

Hearing Sharon Cobb refer to Bill Clinton as “Bubba Clinton” (in an intriguing post about (”Judas-like”) Bill Richardson warmed my Conservative heart the other day–even though I try to avoid such techniques. But it reminded me (not in degree . . . Sharon is notably civil in her communications) of another post I came across this evening, opining about the Randi Rhodes controversy. As Mark Steyn writes,

There’s something rather heartening about this for those of us on the right who’ve been on the receiving end of the left’s vehemence: Apparently there really is nothing personal about it.