Primaries

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While I am inclined to cede authority to you on the topic, and to a large point agree with your conclusion, I think your argument is logically flawed.. Just because something is a major factor doesn't mean it's a necessary factor, much less the only one.

 

I see this as being a big problem for the Democrats in November. As top Democratic strategist and Clinton supporter Paul Begala said on CNN, "We cannot win with eggheads and African-Americans. OK. That's the Dukakis coalition, which carried 10 states and gave us four years of the first George Bush."

 

I always thought Dukakis lost because he furloughed a man serving a life sentence for murder with disastrous results...

 

actually both the democrats & republicans have a fairly signifigent segment that are unhappy with their partys chosen leader. I don't think that there has ever been a more favorable year for a third party candidate. bob barr just announced a few days ago for the libertarian party. a lot of conservatives like him & he is very popular with what the dems like to call blue collar workers so he could hurt both parties.

 

Actually, Martaug, most democrats are positively ebullient over the candidates we have to choose from this time around (independents are admittedly another story, but they like Obama quite a bit) and, frankly, this country will never take a libertarian seriously enough to actually elect one. They may very well take a libertarian seriously enough to destroy the republican party's chances, but a libertarian on the ticket would only help the chances of a democratic candidate. With Obama as the democratic candidate, not even Nader can screw this up for us, so this time around it's the democrats' election to lose. Of course, we democrats are pretty good at doing just that...

 

I wondered if Barr could do a Nader for the Republicans. It's possible, but I thought many of their voters are quite disciplined.

 

When they have incumbency, low crime, and prosperity on their side, or during a war, republicans are very strong and their voters are very disciplined. At this time, however, they have neither incumbency nor prosperity, crime is on the rise, and the war has become an occupation. This puts them in a weak enough position for a third party candidate to actually fracture the party. So fresh after Nader's cock-block of Al Gore, however, the democrats are going to be especially leery of (and unlikely to vote for) any third party candidate.

 

i actually don't believe that. most of the dems i know are iguess you would call them moderates & dislike both obama & hillary. they did like edwards & were upset when he dropped out. i think obamas best choice would be to choose edwards as his vp but a LOT of people dislike him, especially here in nc. he didn't even bother to run for office again because he knew he had absolutely no chance of winning after his abyssmal first term.

 

Actually, if your friends preferred Edwards over Clinton or Obama, they either weren't moderate, were pre-disposed to vote for him because he's from North Carolina, or were simply ill informed. Next to Kucinich or Gravel, Edwards was the most liberal candidate seeking the nomination. He billed himself as a centrist in '04, but he was most assuredly anything but this time around. He was the first mainstream candidate to present a comprehensive health care plan (fully 6 months before the eerily similar Clinton plan was unveiled) and he single handedly turned eradicating poverty into an election issue. For better or worse, if the democrats take a sharp turn to the left this election, you can probably thank John Edwards for it.

Uh... Edwards didn't re-run for his Senate seat in 2004 because he was kind of busy running for VP at the time.

 

he also knew he couldn't win & obama is by far the most liberal democrat there is. he makes ted kennedy look like a conservative.

 

I think that Martaug is right regarding a third party gaining some ground, with both conservatives and liberals. If you look at the three candidates who are still in the race, they are all very strong with a lot of respective voters. Yet, as Martaug points out there are still deep divisions within the electorate that none of them are able to quite reach. A third party candidate on either side might be able to draw quite a few votes.

Sometimes people really do want to cast their votes for a candidate whom they really like, rather than a "lesser of two evils," or a vote cast against someone whom they just can't stomach.

 

John Edwards chose to be John Kerry's running mate for the 2004 presidential race because he knew he wouldn't be able to re-take his Senate seat? Sure. Regarding Obama's alleged uber-liberalism, no one is denying Obama is a liberal, but Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, Gavin Newsom, Russ Feingold, John Edwards and something in the area of a quarter of the house of representatives are easily more liberal than he is. Obama's healthcare plan? More conservative than Hilary Clinton's and far to the right of HR 676, a universal health care plan which was co-sponsored in the house by nearly 50 democrats. His view on gay marriage? To the right of centrist Al Gore. His war policy? To the right of the legion of democrats who argue for an immediate pullout. He continues unfailingly to vote for funding the war. He voted to re-new the patriot act. There are lots of democrats more liberal than Barack Obama.

 

Why do people feel the need to defend themselves or their candidate if someone calls them liberals? If someone said that McCain was really really conservative well I would see it as something negative but I think I am one of the few. It seems that all it takes to get left leaning Americans on the defensive is to call them or their candidate liberal

My impression of Obama has also been that he is mainstream democratic on the left/right scale

 

I have no problem with people calling Barack Obama a liberal. If he were not, I wouldn't support him. In fact, I wish he was more liberal (but then he probably wouldn't get elected). The issue comes in when a ridiculous assertion like "there's no democrat more liberal than Obama" because I could easily list more than a hundred who are at least that liberal or more from the US house and Senate alone. If I could include state representatives, governors, and mayors, the list of democrats more liberal than Obama would be exhaustive.

 

thats funny as according to the national journal as shown here:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/sen/lib.htm#results
he IS the most liberal based on his voting record. any more liberal & he would be a full fledged marxist.

so, no you can't name any more liberal democrats.

 

Martaug, he is being compared to fellow senators. The senate, being a deliberative body and, due to the ever-present threat of filibuster, any bill that does not have the support of 3/5 of the senate necessarily fails (since a 3/5 majority is usually required to invoke cloture). It is thus the more moderate of the two houses by simple necessity. Much of what is passed in the house, where a simple majority is all that is ever required to pass a bill, is necessarily toned down in the senate so it can actually, you know, pass without a filibuster. If all you are going by is voting records and bills sponsored, the most liberal and the most conservative legislators aren't found in the senate, but in the house.

All that aside, in the arbitrary system that your little comparison uses, more weight is given to bills a politician sponsors or co-sponsors than to bills for which he votes. This, frankly, is silly. Obama is somehow more liberal than other senators because he sponsored the ethics reform bill instead of merely voting to pass it into law? Aside from the fact that such legislation hardly strikes me as being inherently conservative or liberal in nature, how exactly is sponsoring it any more liberal than voting for it? Give me a break.

 

Seeing as American could really really use a leader that is to the left of Franco and seeing as the American "centre" is deep deep into the rights territory it would actually be refreshing if Obama is as liberal as martaug claims.

I would yet again protest against the American usage of liberal though, what most Americans mean when they use liberal in the negative sense is socialist. More taxes, more government control, more welfare, universal healthcare and all that jazz is socialist things. Liberal is basically the live and let live attitude, in the US they have inventended the term libertarian for what in hte rest of the world is considered liberal but the terms get all mixed together. Liberal financial policy is usually what is ascribed to conservatives, liberal means free. If you are a liberal you believe in the free market that each person shoujld govern themselves as much as possible. We usually talk about two different scales in politicis, or two bundles of issues: financial and social. When it comes to finance the different poles are socialism and liberalism and when it comes to social issues the two poles are liberalism and conservatism. Is it the American dread of the word socialism that have changed the meaning of the word liberal in the US and then even that word has gotten negative commie connotations? The terminology is just so confused! Everything would be so much easier if America dared to introduce the term socialism in their political discourse as it in reality already exists. Many of the democratic financial ideas are born in socialism just as most of the republican financial ideas are classic liberalism.

Long rant, probably pointless but yeah well couldnt stop myself.

 

And this is the reason we lovingly refer to you as a "confused jerk" You are correct. Here in the US a liberal is what you would call a "liberal socialist" while a conservative is what you would call a "conservative liberal". That is way to confusing for us. As to our fear/hatred of socialism all you have to do is look at history to see why we don't like it. Socialism is one of those things that sounds great in theory, but in practice doesn't work.

 

AND

I will concede that just because something is a major factor does not mean it is the only factor. I will further concede that AMaster's interpretation that at least part of the 20% was because of Reverend Wright.

However, as someone who lives in a state that borders West Virginia, and who has visited West Virginia many times, it is my opinion that a sizeable chunk of that 20% (plus those that refused to admit that race was a factor, despite that it was) refused to vote for Barack because he was black. And the people I know in West Virginia aren't what you'd call hillbillies. These are relatively intelligent people who weren't sure they could trust a black man with the presidency. I can only imagine that those who are less informed would take a more unfavorable view towards Obama. Obviously, I cannot prove this point - this is simply my educated opinion based on what I know about the people living in West Virginia.

I would like to futher clarify a couple of other points. I am not saying that all (or even most of) the people of West Virginia are hillbillies, nor am I implying that all (or even most of) the people of West Virginia are racists. Indeed, West Virginia exists as a state because they broke away from Virginia during the Civil War and sided with the union. If anything, you'd think that race would be less of an issue there than in other parts of the country.

Finally, although I don't think I gave this impression, I don't think that anyone who votes for Hillary is racist. Voting for Hillary isn't racist unless the reason you voted for her is because Barack is black. Similarly, voting for Barack isn't sexist unless the the reason you voted for him was because Hillary is a woman.

It doesn't work when the entire ecomony is geared towards socialism, but I can't get over how so many people living in the U.S. don't see that there are social programs at work in the nation that are actually not that bad. The most obvious are Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Most people like these programs.

But the list is far more extensive. Education is socialized. The government provides public education, makes education obligatory for those between the ages of 6-16, and funds public schools through taxes. That is socialism. You are required to pay taxes into the school system, even if you went to a private school, and even if your kids go to a private school (or even if you don't have kids).

We hail firefighters and policmen/women as heroic figures worthy of praise. Most people don't stop to think that fire and police forces are socialist institutions. Just like the school systems, they are funded through public taxes, and paying into them is obligatory, even if you never use the services they provide. (In fact, most people hope they never need the services they provide.)

The U.S. Mail is federally subsidized and therefore, at least partly socialist. (The reason I can send a birthday card to me neice living across the country in Seattle for $0.42 isn't because it only costs $0.42 to ship a birthday card across the country. It's because of federal subsidies received from the federal government (through federal taxes obviously) that allows the postal service to charge a low rate.

If Americans would just pause for a moment and see that there is already a LOT of socialist aspects in our society now, and that most of them are viewed as good things, maybe people wouldn't be so anti-socialism.

 

I thought the USPS was required to operate on a profit (albeit very slight). They recorded a loss this past year, but had the funds from previous years to compensate for the loss.