Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”
“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”
Biden’s response?
“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”
Why can’t more Democrats just say what’s on their minds?
It’s because he’s another race. I’m sorta scared of the other race because we have so much conflict with them.
In the same clip, Shelby Sugg tells us:
Not even in my mind, I don’t. I don’t like the Hussein thing. I’ve had ENOUGH of Hussein.
I find it amusing that in a state where the African American population makes up 3.2 percent, Wanda worries about “so much conflict with them.” I’m guessing that most African Americans who live in WV go WELL out of their way to avoid ANY kind of conflict with the likes of Wanda Gibson. Hell, I’m white and would try to avoid her with all my soul.
And Shelby, the name Hussein bothers you? Are you equally offended by people named Joe or Joseph? Afterall, those Joes share a name with Josef Stalin.
It’s sad. They live in an economically depressed state and they seem to be ruled by fear of people who are not like them. So the 2008 GOP strategy will probably to hit on the main themes of “God, gays, and guns,” but with “scary black people” added to their list of meaningless wedge issues. Oh, and anyone who has ever known a Muslim seems to be suspect in their minds.
Barack, please don’t campaign in WV, after you are nominated.
NEW YORK—After Sen. Barack Obama’s comments last week about what he typically eats for dinner were criticized by Sen. Hillary Clinton as being offensive to both herself and the American voters, the number of acceptable phrases presidential candidates can now say are officially down to four. “At the beginning of 2007 there were 38 things candidates could mention in public that wouldn’t be considered damaging to their campaigns, but now they are mostly limited to ‘Thank you all for coming,’ and ‘God bless America,’” ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos said on Sunday’s episode of This Week. “There would still be five phrases available to the candidates if the Obama camp hadn’t accused Clinton of saying ‘Glad to be here’ with a little tinge of sarcasm during a stump speech in North Carolina.” As of press time, the two additional phrases still considered appropriate for candidates are the often-quoted “These pancakes are great,” and “Death to the infidels.”
Now we better understand why Obama was blasted for requesting orange juice instead of coffee in PA. It wasn’t on the list of OK things to say!
Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.
“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.
Snip
None of the 22 Democrats interviewed by the Financial Times at the Clinton rally would commit themselves to voting for Mr Obama if he became the nominee, and half said they definitely would not. The depth of opposition is particularly striking considering that Mingo County is one of the most Democratic places in West Virginia, having cast about 85 per cent of its votes for the party in the 2006 midterm elections. If Mr Obama cannot win there in November, he has little chance of carrying the state.
Most people questioned said they mistrusted Mr Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and “values”, stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding “anti-American” sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim – an unfounded rumour that has circulated on the internet for months – despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr Wright’s church in Chicago. Others mentioned his refusal to wear a Stars and Stripes badge and controversial remarks by his wife, Michelle, who described America as “mean” and implied that she had never been proud of the US until her husband ran for president.
Fortunately, Obama’s performance in WV’s primary is irrelevant in deciding who the nominee will be. Even if Clinton were to win all of that states’ 39 delegates, Obama would still have a net gain in delegates since Indiana and North Carolina.
Of course, it makes sense for Clinton and her surrogates to campaign there as hard as they can in hope that a 40 point Clinton win in WV will change perception about Obama’s ability to win in November. After all, they tell us, since 1916, no president has won the White House without winning WV.
Whatever. Obama will lose WV in November, and probably by a wide margin. He can make up that ground in other states like CO that would be hard for Clinton to win.
What gets me about this article is the aggressive ignorance of the WV voters that were interviewed. They seem to be taking anonymous e-mails that bash Obama, based on clear misinformation quite seriously. Do they believe everything they get in their inboxes?
I’m wondering if WV residents communicate with Nigerians who want to put money in their bank accounts at a higher rate than people in the rest of the country do.
If a Democrat votes for Clinton over Barack, he’s not a racist any more than a Democrat who votes for Obama or Clinton is a sexist. Sure there are some who will vote against either candidate over gender or race issues, but I think those kinds of voters are the exception rather than the rule.
But when zero of 22 Democrats unable to state that they will vote for Obama when he is the nominee, I have to think that racism is playing a large role in determining for whom to vote.
One of the justifications that Obama gives for not waiting a few years to run for president is that his candidacy makes sense now as this is a unique moment in American history during which we need a transformational leader.
I agree with his rationale, as the way we do things in Washington is simply not working. I think he can do a lot to make politics more about issues rather than the diversions to which we have grown accustomed. He’s a man of his times who seems to understand the US better than most politicians.
Given that view, I was glad to read this piece by Frank Rich in today’s Times:
This is not 1988, when a Democratic liberal from Massachusetts of modest political skills could be easily clobbered by racist ads and an incumbent vice president running for the Gipper’s third term. This is not the 1998 midterms, when the Teflon Clintons triumphed over impeachment. This is not 2004, when another Democrat from Massachusetts did for windsurfing what the previous model did for tanks.
Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year’s campaign into the square holes of past political wars. That’s why race keeps being portrayed as dooming Mr. Obama — surely Jeremiah Wright = Willie Horton! — no matter what the voters say to the contrary. It’s why the Beltway took on faith the Clinton machine’s strategic, organization and fund-raising invincibility. It’s why some prognosticators still imagine that John McCain can spin the Iraq fiasco to his political advantage as Richard Nixon miraculously did Vietnam.
We most certainly are at a unique time in our history. Though Clinton’s election would have been historic, she just wasn’t the right person for these times. Her support of the Iraq war, her role as a leader in the 90s, and her inability to understand that 2008 is not 1992 made her a DEEPLY flawed candidate among about half of the Democratic electorate.
Obama was in a better position to read and understand this country’s mood in 2008, and I think that is why he will earn the Democratic nomination and go on to be the first American president of the 21st century.
From the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan states:
Mrs. Clinton spent this week making it clear. In a jaw-dropping interview in USA Today on Thursday, she said, “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” As evidence she cited an Associated Press report that, she said, “found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
White Americans? Hard-working white Americans? “Even Richard Nixon didn’t say white,” an Obama supporter said, “even with the Southern strategy.”
If John McCain said, “I got the white vote, baby!” his candidacy would be over. And rising in highest indignation against him would be the old Democratic Party.
What I want to know is how Clinton thinks she can win without African-Americans and white liberals as parts of her coalition? It seems like she thinks she can only win among lower-income whites. It baffles me that she seems to be saying, “fuck the ‘eggheads’ and African Americans! If I get the nomination, where the hell will they go?”
As one of those horrible, well-educated white people, I’d vote McCain in a flash over Hillary if SCOTUS appointments weren’t hanging in the balance. But that issue it too vital to make me even consider voting against Hillary (if she were the nominee) out of spite.
Hillary, just do a Huckabee. Stay in the race for as long as you feel the need to, but don’t spend more time attacking our likely nominee than his opponent if you want to see a Democrat in the White House next year.
Or maybe you don’t, as you you’d LOVE to run for president again in 2012.
In 1992, I was living in Washington and found myself very involved in the Democratic primary there. I ran for delegate for Jerry Brown, and found that process to be an odd one. The Brown campaign called me and asked to run for delegate simply because I had shown up at a Jerry Brown event and put my name on a piece of paper.
I knew Brown reasonably well, as I grew up in California and I thought he was a great governor. Sure, his 1992 campaign was unconventional (it pre-dated mass use of the internet, but pundits made fun of his use of an 800 number to try to get contributions that he limited at $100 per donor). He had some guy name Joe Trippi running his campaign who was quite successful working for a guy who didn’t get the nomination, but made the race more difficult for Bill Clinton than it should have been.
Eventually, I joined the Clinton fold and tried to like him even to the point of attending his inauguration.
But I always had an uneasy feeling about him. I felt that he was willing to disregard political convictions in the name of political expediency.
The Monica thing bothered me most than most Democrats, as I thought that perhaps he should have resigned over the incredible stupidity and selfishness he demonstrated at the time.
But in 2000, after a brief flirtation with Bradley, I was firmly in the Gore camp. Beyond the Florida fiasco, Gore should have won that election and would have done so easily if not for the Clinton fatigue that plagued the nation.
Think of where our country would be right now if Gore had won. 9/11 may have happened, but Gore would have committed the resources to the effort in Afghanistan to definitively defeat the Taliban and to kill or capture Bin Laden.
Instead, Bush was in power and he diverted resources from the fight in Afghanistan to attack Iraq: a country with a horrible dictator who posed absolutely no threat to the US.
In the lead-up to the Iraq war, I was in the street protesting such idiocy, but people like me were called traitors and worse simply for not being deceived by Bush and his cronies.
I worked my ass off for Dean in 2004, but alas, it was not to be. I was glad to support Kerry, who, like Clinton, voted to authorize force against Iraq, but then later admitted that was a mistake. Good people learn from mistakes.
So in 2007, Hillary Clinton announced that she was going to run for president. She refused to admit that her war vote was a mistake. Apparently, Clintons don’t make mistakes. She was defiant to anti-Iraq war Democrats in that defense.
At that moment, she became an unacceptable candidate for me for 2008.
I began to believe that Clintonian excuses for lacking a backbone on important issues was no longer acceptable. She never deserved my vote.
But if I loathed the Clintons, I really came to disdain the O’Reillys, Hannitys, Malkins, and Coulters even more. Those people were beneath my contempt for their dishonesty.
For that reason, it was quite strange to read Coulter’s column from today:
In a Time magazine poll taken earlier this year, more than twice as many voters said Bill Clinton’s involvement in Hillary’s campaign made them less likely to vote for her as said they were more likely to vote for her. (Some even said that “having Bill Clinton around makes me less likely to vote for What’s-Her-Name.” One-third of the respondents were upset Bill didn’t call the next day, like he promised.)
So before remembering that we are now left with two dangerous choices for president — a young liberal who is friendly with terrorists or an old liberal who is friendly with Teddy Kennedy — take a moment to revel in the fact that our long national nightmare is over. It turns out getting rid of the Clintons was the change we’ve been waiting for.
Of course, Coulter’s hyperbole about Obama and McCain are silly, but getting the Clintons out of the White House IS part of the change I’ve been waiting for.
The Clintons, the DLC, Terry McAullife, and that whole triangulation mindset are some things that need to be gone from the Democratic party if we hope to build the Democratic party and elect strong leaders in our future.
“You know, there was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again and how the whites in both states (Indiana and North Carolina) who had not completed college were supporting me and in independents, I was running even with him and doing even better with Democratic-leaning independents. I have a much broader base to build a winning coaltion on.”
I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Both Clinton and Obama are tired, so sometimes they say things they don’t mean.
But this time she violated the rhetorical rules, no doubt by mistake. It was her offhand reference to “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans” that raises the specter of old Dixie demagogues like Wallace and Lester Maddox. Was she dog-whistling to the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia?
While I still cannot believe she actually intended any such nefarious meaning, she seemed to be equating “hard-working Americans” with “white Americans.” Which is precisely what Wallace and his cohort used to do with their drawling refrain about welfare and affirmative action. This is the grating sound of Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy, even though Tricky Dick would never quite stoop to saying such things in public.
Hard-working, white Americans. Geez. Hillary, are you trying use a Nixonian Southern strategy to increase the bigot vote in WV and KY to give you an even larger win in those primaries? Was that some kind a dog whistle being blown at Appalachian lower-income people to indicate that it’s better to vote for a white woman who supports hard-working white Americans rather than the lazy Black people and people who were fortunate enough to make the effort to get through college?
Oh, and Hillary, you won Indiana by one point in an election day that came on the heels of the Rev. Wright scandal. Limbaugh told his minions to vote for you, and it seems that might have had an effect, since 17 percent of GOPers who voted for Clinton in the Hoosier primary said that they would vote for McCain if Clinton is the Democratic nominee.
Hillary, it’s just sad that if you win the nomination, it’s unlikely that African Americans or those horrible well-educated liberals will support you in great numbers.
