The Democratic Tea Party that brought Obama to Earth
Submitted by Nick Kelly on April 19, 2008 - 10:46am.
Barack Obama | David Brooks | Hillary Clinton | Superdelegates | T.J. Rooney | Democratic politics
Senator Obama and some of his supporters came to the Democratic tea party; boasted without justification; wrongfully criticized, unconscionably misrepresented, and berated other guests over and over; were politely asked some tough questions; and arrogantly decided they were better than the rest of us.
David Brooks says:
It was inevitable that the period of “Yes We Can!” deification would come to an end. It was not inevitable that Obama would now look so vulnerable. He’ll win the nomination....
However, I think there are many reasons to predict that the American people will prove Brooks wrong on the last part. No doubt, Hillary's several new superdelegates also think Brooks is wrong about that.
At the same time, I must say that Brooks is correct in other ways in his analysis of How Obama Fell to Earth.
...the aura around Obama has changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal.
He sprinkled his debate performance Wednesday night with the sorts of fibs, evasions and hypocrisies that are the stuff of conventional politics. He claimed falsely that his handwriting wasn’t on a questionnaire about gun control. He claimed that he had never attacked Clinton for her exaggerations about the Tuzla airport, though his campaign was all over it. Obama piously condemned the practice of lifting other candidates’ words out of context, but he has been doing exactly the same thing to John McCain, especially over his 100 years in Iraq comment.
Obama also made a pair of grand and cynical promises that are the sign of someone who is thinking more about campaigning than governing.
Once the Democratic tea party is over and the Democratic nominee is selected, that's where the real mudslinging will begin. As T.J. Rooney says in the "tea party" article:
...the criticism hasn't been nearly what it will be in the fall campaign. So, with respect to Reverend Wright, with respect to the comments that Senator Obama made in San Francisco about Pennsylvanians in small towns being bitter, I think the real damage from those remarks can really come in the fall.
Which is precisely why Senator Obama must not be the nominee of the Democratic Party, imho.
But many, many of O's supporters are incredibly resistant to connecting any dots that lead to what has become pretty obvious to most everyone else. That is that O's not yet fully qualified nor fully vetted; he gives politically charged criticism much better than he takes it; he hasn't shown much ability to stand the heat even at a relatively tame tea party; and he could lose to John McCain. Rather than face potential cognitive dissonance, most of the ones I know retract inside their conflict avoiding hopeful shells.
Give me a fighter over a conflict-avoider every time. Conflict is inevitable in life and in politics, and avoiding it usually invites losing by default.
So, I continue to fight for Hillary, in part by writing diaries which attempt to connect all those dots so that more and more open minded persons can see them as plain as day.
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
I like these two comments ("connect the dots" and "my kind of gal") because they hit a bunch of nails on the head.
taking a swing at:
It's long been a challenge for many of us guys to connect all the right dots whenever there's a woman involved.
But, thank Goddess, more and more of us are slowly coming around....
Nick Kelly
Wes Clark could still secure America as a national security candidate.
many men, here and abroad, are finding it hard to find the road to redemption. These men (some women, too?) will not find the road so long as there are available excuses. She is a Clinton, we don't owe the gal as much as the guy, the wrong hairdo, the wrong husband, next election, too much experience, the wrong experience, not charismatic as him, blah, blah and blah. My wife has been waiting for this like forever. In her lifetime, we'll probably not see (not know) how a woman will fare at the job. After Hillary, the horizon is quite empty. We'll end up outsourcing... However, there's a sliver of a chance. Fate will speak her mind this Tuesday.
must know O! won't win the GE, doncha think? Over at No Quarter, Susan linked to various conservative posts discussing Obama and the debate the other night. It is a little glimpse of what they're going to hit him with if he's the nom. I honestly don't think the guy is prepared, and Corpress is partially responsible for that by the kid glove treatment he's received up to this point. If he and his supporters think pointing out that these types of questions are unfair, and it's the issues that matter, I have to say again -- where have they been for the last 2 presidential elections? Do they honestly think O! is going to skate into the WH without all his dirt uncovered?
And as we well know, it doesn't even have to be the truth they slam him with. Anything they want to toss out, they will. The guy has no clue how to fight them and he'll go down in flames, taking the Dem party down with him.
Once in a while you get shown the light, In the strangest of places if you look at it right.
If they allow his nomination, it will simply be, in my opinion, because of political correctness gone amok. I know people who are surprised when I insist he can't win because they hear the MSM going on and on about how Wright, Ayers, etc. haven't hurt him and pulling forth polls claiming he's 10 points ahead of Hillary nationally.
I just did some (undercover) work listening (spying) at a friend's wedding party here today - a house around 15,000 sq feet and a group of very wealthy republicans were talking politics -- RIGHT NEXT TO ME! Oh, if they only knew... I kept craning my ear to hear them. I heard one say in a kind of worried tone that Hillary would take all the "big states" but then another one added that they felt it would be O! (the Dem nominee) and the other guy relaxed and laughed. They all concluded however that they think McCain will win the Presidency. :(
This has been my fear for the longest time. This exact scenario. They also discussed the Supreme Court and expressed how they wished it were stackeed 7-2, conservative leaning....and saying positive things about Judge Roberts. At that point my husband grabbed me to move away! LOL!
Maybe the Supers need to go talk to a bunch of wealthy blue blood republicans before they make their pick.
He's demanding the SuperDs choose NOW, and certainly by June 3rd. Why? Because nothing will change after the last primary. Really? Maybe, maybe not. Rezko trial still going on, and who knows what else may crop up in the interim.
this situation is a mess from the get go. Putting in place those unworkable restrictions on Florida and Michigan is a reflection of what went wrong with his own run. It was just like saying to your child I am going to kill you if you go out and she/he did. Now you have to kill your child in front of everybody because you put out the stupid rule in the first place. He was hoping Hillary's going to get wiped out and she didn't. Now he wants the SuperDs to solve the problem he created. He might want to run in '12, after all.
The DNC rules say the state loses 1/2 of their
delegates, plus the fact that Iowa, NH, SC all moved
their dates up too, but got no penalty. He needs to
resign, NOW!
Welcome to the club. :)
Does anyone really think that Howard Dean has the ability to pull this party together after the nomination?
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
HA! He has lost his mind if he thinks we can ignore
Florida and Michigan and still win in Nov.
If they think all the "mature" Dem ladies out there
are just going to fall in line, they may have another
thing coming. And you know who makes up the vast
majority of day-to-day volunteers...the ladies.
And to think how we complained about McAwful.
I do remember McAwful. I can't help wondering if one reason Clinton's camgaign hasn't soared to victory is campaign chairman Terry McAuliff.
Barry
Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?©
was and is pretty awful. And Hillary's campaign might have run a whole lot more smoothly if she'd jettisoned some of the baggage before takeoff.
He has effed this one up so badly in a year that it would be hard for a good Democrat to lose - and to elect John McCain for goodness sake! He knows his name is mud if McCain wins this one. My apologies to the Deaniacs, however, they were always a bit on the edge and didn't think things through when they backed Howard, so how can we expect that he would be rational regarding the zeal to nominate the Obama pony? His followers were always against the Clintons and what they represented, so he thought he'd go along. Now, he's got a big, stinking stew to stir.
I was sitting there thinking yesterday at my caucus....as I watched these stary eyed O! supporters pretend nothing can touch or hurt their Messiah.....in their own little fairy dust bubble....about how POed the "establishment" Dems who jumped on the Hope Boat are going to be if/when O! loses to McCain. I was thinking they are gonna be so steamed at him. They'll have he and Howie scraping pigeon poo off the dome of the Capitol building. Ha!
by the people who allowed him to be chair in order to shut up his wing of the party to begin with. He's got some good ideas, but he's always been in over his head.
won and is doing a fantastic job only the Clinton supporters think otherwise;
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5joC4LlcZVm5kR-hSO7HEOm4ns-1wD9054R400
Excerpt
Dean: McCain has no effective plan to turn economy around
WASHINGTON (AP) — John McCain doesn't have an effective plan to turn around the faltering U.S. economy, Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean said Saturday.
"As I listened to Senator John McCain's remarks about the economy this week, I heard more of the same Republican policies that George Bush has brought us for the last eight years," Dean said in the Democrats' weekly radio address.
Among those policies, Dean said, are "privatizing Social Security, denying our children health care, adding $8 trillion in new deficits, no plan to turn our economy around or help people keep their homes."
Despite the nation's current economic woes, including rising unemployment, lower wages and record gas prices, "Senator McCain believes we are better off," Dean said.
Partial: from this board's list of despised progressives
Moveon.org
Countdown
Rachel Maddow
DailyKos
Democracy For America
John Edwards
Howard Dean
Air America
Nova M
Randi Rhodes
Young Turks
Thom Hartmann
BigEd
small states Obama won
delegate for Obama
red states Obama won
Texas Obama won
east coast states Obama won
and everything inbetween
DNC 50 state strategy
superdelegates Obama
Bill Richardson
Robert Reich
Sam Nunn
purple states Obama won
Patrick Kennedy
Ted Kennedy
Teresa Heinz Kerry
John Kerry
Lee Hamilton
Carter's family supporting Obama
Tom Dashchle
Gov Bob Casey
so on so forth
the PA newspapers endorsing O
so on so forth
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama
aren't all that tuned in to Air America, the blogosphere, and movement progressives, they're too busy trying to raise their families and make ends meet. And they vote based on those concerns.
HHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!
Bob Casey? Daschle? Sam Nunn? Oh that is rich.
What about the true progressives that BO supporters
have thrown under the bus?
RKFjr, Wes Clark, Krugman, Joe Wilson, Larry Johnson, etc.
everybody the full spectrum.... traditional to progressives OK supporting Obama
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama
But the message to which I replied was NOT English.
It wasn't even communication, since no thought or idea was imparted to the readers.
Oh don't you mean the DNC 48 state strategy? We don't have anything against John Edwards either. And I just ready that today one of Hillarys stanchest critics endorsed her today.
The Pittsburgh Tribune. They said that after all the negatives things they have had to say about her that she was still willing to sit down and have a chat with them.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080420/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_endorsement;_ylt=AryQ901iso79j0lb3YtG9lZh24cA
I despise John Edwards. But it has nothing to do with Obama.
But Edwards is no progressive. He just plays one on TV.
I meant to say that not everyone here hates Edwards. I'm not really a big fan myself. But I think he's better then Obama.
I never thought I'd see a candidate who makes Edwards look good.
Stan Davis
Lakewood, CO
Wes Clark -- Make America All It Can Be!
I am proud Obama progressive and he'll have to deal with the progressives one on one
because he invited everybody to the table and progressives have grown in strength identity and organization and money;
so I am happy to be part of the political pressure group called progressives for Obama
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama
"progressive" than Ronald Reagan, one of his heroes.
We're electing the President of the United States, not some g.d. prom king.
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama
"...This is not the first time you have seen Hillary Clinton seemingly at her wit's end. But she is always risen, always risen... Don't forget, she has, much to the dismay of her adversaries and to the delight of her friends, risen." (4/18/08 Winston Salem, NC; ABCNews.com (Politics) A loyal and dear friend indeed. I could imagine the pressure from her own daughter who supports BO.
to pay in the GE if donkeys lock in with BO. If Obamans don't want to connect the plate-size dots, the elephants are raring to do it for them. What is there that could not be seen? If the super "Ds" proved to be spineless and get intimidated into anointing the messiah who could do no wrong, then historically, they will be remembered as having poured the concrete enshrining them forever second to the elephants. The donkeys will always be remembered as a bunch of gutless second placers. And I will not blame the elephs if we end up with another war while stuck with Iraq. Some people may not like the Clintons for a variety of reasons, but no one has ever said that they are not scrappy fighters. I will go to the end with the bludgeoned, no-surrender, find-a-way scrappy fighter. My kind of guy!