ThePoliticGolfer

Why Sarah Palin?

2008-09-06T07:39:00.001-04:00

I've thought and thought about why McCain picked Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin, a charismatic woman who has not demonstrated any thinking on the big foreign policy or economic issues of our time, is for teaching creationism in the schools, opposes abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, who wanted to ban books... Sarah Palin does not appeal to the broad middle; her appeal is almost solely to the far right of the Republican Party. Her acceptance speech threw red meat to the base and did not even try to reach out to the middle. Why would the campaign reach out almost exclusively to the far right when conventional wisdom is that the only way for McCain to win this race is to appeal to independents and Reagan Democrats? Could it be that the McCain campaign believes it needs to appeal only to the base on the theory that the base when added to the number of voters that will never vote for a Obama, no matter what the McCain campaign stands for, throws McCain over the top? If he were to win with that strategy - appealing to 25-30% of the voters, how would he govern?

Electability?

2008-05-10T06:38:00.002-04:00

What is Hillary thinking? She believes racism is her path to the nomination? Is there nothing she won't do or say? She is playing the race card in the name of electability? This from the person who began this campaign with polls finding that 48% of the electorate despised her so much they'd never vote for her. Since then, in her attempt to win the nomination, she's lied and she's proved she has no principles. I'd bet that there are fewer racist voters in this Country than there are voters who despise her.

She claims that she is more electable. Should we assume she can run a general election campaign? Why? Quite clearly she could not figure out how to run a Democratic Presidential nomination campaign. Caucuses - they don't matter; primaries scheduled after Super Tuesday - they don't matter. Quite simply, we should appoint her the nominee because! That certainly would have cost less.

She lost. She may well have been able to win the nomination but she blew it. Now, she's jumping into the manure. We can only hope that she's also destroyed her ability to win reelection to the Senate.

I am still wondering if she manages to destroy the Democratic Party if a third party, a moderate party, might arise from the ashes. The Democratic Congress is totally ineffectual. The last time the party elected a president was Jimmy Carter - Bill Clinton went around the party using the DLC as a springboard. Perhaps this is the silver lining to the malignant freak show Hillary is performing.

She won in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania but She Blew It

2008-04-23T06:21:00.005-04:00

What is Hillary thinking? What are the professional political operatives around Hillary thinking?

She may have been able to dispatch Obama. But, she and her crack team ASSUMED (ass of u and me) the race would be over on February 5. Accordingly, she spent almost all of her money on the races up to and including super Tuesday and never organized for any race thereafter. Sometime during Obama's 12 primary run after super Tuesday, the top brass of Hillary's campaign must have had a meeting to discuss that --- - He's built up so much of a lead that she CANNOT catch him in pledged delegates, popular vote, or states won. Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania can't change anything. What to do? First choice - change the rules (Florida and Michigan). Second choice (or maybe co-first choice), destroy Obama. On this point, Obama has provided a helping hand (Rev. Wright, bittercling, no short, cogent, coherent answers to either, and a very poor debate performance).

Hillary's crack campaign KNOWS it will not go into the convention leading in (what everyone thought was) the only relevant metric- pledged delegates. How can Hillary claim she's ready from day one when she cannot run a primary campaign without losing to the newest of newcomers? Will the political operatives that are creating and carrying out this brilliant strategy put this campaign on their resumes to prove their great skill?

Amazingly, the Democrats are putting on a demonstration of how even when the sun, the moon, and the stars are aligned they still can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The issue is not that Obama should not be challenged; of course he should. Maybe he's not ready. But, effectively, Hillary now can win only by having the super delegates overturn the primary results or by having the DNC change the rules after the fact. Quite simply, she blew it and she has no one to blame for that but herself! I'll be supporting Hillary's opponent when she runs for reelection to the Senate in 4 years.

The White House Principals and 24

2008-04-12T10:06:00.007-04:00

From Andrew Sullivan (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/04/ap-confirms-abc.html)

AP Confirms ABC News
Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned. The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

They knew what they were doing. The law was "fixed" to back up what was already decided.

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This White House acts as if it believes that Fox's TV series 24 is real. But, when the Principals' hero, Jack Bauer, takes matters into his own hands, he knows and accepts if he is called to task for his actions, he will go down. The cowards in the White House aspire to emulate Jack Bauer but, unlike their hero, they hide behind the skirts of dubious legal opinions drafted after they've made their decisions to protect their backsides.

ABC and AP report that the CIA came to the Principals for approval of interrogation techniques. It seems the CIA wanted cover from the White House for what it believed to be illegal. Astonishingly, the CIA got what it asked for from the Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense of the United States, the Secretary of State of the United States, the Attorney General of the United States, and the National Security Advisor of the United States, all with the approval of the President of the United States. What a sad time for the United States.

September 11 shook the Bushies to their core. They came into office knowing, yes knowing, that because the United States was the biggest and strongest in the world, no one was stupid enough to really try to hurt us. The Bushies came into office knowing that the United States needed no allies. So, they told the rest of the world, we're us, we don't care what you think or want, we are so important, so strong, so us, you must endure whatever we want to do and do whatever we want you to do. September 11 proved the Bushies wrong and they were terrified. Their reaction to their fear will take generations to overcome and may well haunt the United States forever.

Why Florida and Michigan are like the Subprime Mess

2008-04-02T23:07:00.001-04:00

The Florida and Michigan train wreck created by the DNC is like the subprime mortgage mess. Lets compare. In the subprime mess, purportedly smart people on Wall Street made foolish assumptions that simply are not true. They assumed that home values would increase at an unsustainable rate forever. The result of this is assumption is that millions of people, many of whom knew they could not afford to repay their debts, will lose their homes and investment banks, investors, insurance companies, etc will lose more than a half a trillion dollars. Plus there is an incalculable cost to the economy of the credit market sclerosis.

In the Florida and Michigan mess, the DNC assumed that the primary race would be decided easily without Michigan and Florida. The result of this assumption is that Democrats are left with a Hobson's choice: alter the rules that all agreed to abide by mid stream to the potential benefit of Hillary or refuse to count the votes of 2.3 million voters. The consequence of this is likely a loss in November and, for those of us who care, a generation of a very very conservative dominated Supreme Court.

The Clinton campaign has figured out how to back the Obama campaign into a corner by exploiting the unfairness. It is trying to force the Obama campaign to argue implicitly that being fair to Obama is more important than being fair to 2.3 million voters.

What happens if the Clinton campaign succeeds? Florida's delegates are allocated to Clinton based on the results in the Florida primary. And Michigan - who knows, presumably Clinton believes she should get all of Michigan's delegates (this would be best for her and that is all that matters). Then, maybe she will have more pledged delegates than Obama. But, she still will not have enough delegates to win the nomination. I suppose then her campaign immediately will reverse course and argue that the Super Delegates should vote for the delegate leader. Cool huh?

But....then what? Half the primary voters are outraged. Already we see polls that 48% of the voters in this country hate Clinton so much they never would vote for her. How many Democratic votes can she, one of the most polarizing figures in American politics, afford to lose? It seems to me that the answer is close to none. So, in her efforts to win by ignoring the rules, what does she win? The right to run for President and lose.

What if after fighting to the wire and making disenfranchising Florida and Michigan Democrats her central argument, she loses the nomination because Obama has more pledged delegates? It seems likely the Democrats will lose Florida and Michigan in the general election. Can a Democratic candidate win the Presidency in 2008 without those two states? Its a long shot.

So like the subprime homeowner who loses his or her home because its value did not increase forever and the subprime mortgage company that goes out of business because it has no access to capital, the Democrats lose the Presidency and the Supreme Court for a generation because the DNC could not imagine a close primary race. Can we find a way to regulate the DNC so this never happens again. Or perhaps, like Bear Stearns, the DNC and the Democratic Party should go away by being absorbed into a new party.

Senator Obama and Rev. Wright

2008-03-16T00:28:00.006-04:00

Immediately after September 11th, Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson posited that we brought the September 11th attacks on ourselves with our decadence. Many comments posted on the web justify Senator Obama's failure to publicly disavow Rev. Wright's views and to distance Rev. Wright from his Presidential campaign by pointing to the Republican politicians who pander to Pat Roberston and his ilk and accept their endorsements while failing to publicly comment on their inflammatory political views.

I thoroughly believe that Senator Obama does not share the inflammatory views expressed by Rev. Wright. Senator Obama's statements about Rev. White lead me to surmise that Rev. Wright is far more than a man who holds inflammatory views.

Senator Obama believes and speaks of the need to rise above our divided past and present. There are children in the pews of Rev. Wright's church, including Senator Obama's children. How can we as a society rise above our divisions if community leaders do not stand up to other community leaders and publicly disavow wrongheaded political views? What distinguishes a leader from a follower is the internal courage and fortitude to stand up to others even at personal risk and even if the others are those he or she cares for. Senator Obama should explain how he rises to this challenge and explain those times when he believes he's failed to do so.

The Democratic Nomination Battle

2008-03-15T15:30:00.001-04:00

As a Democrat, I am dismayed at the train wreck that the primaries are becoming. I started out not disliking Senator Clinton. I believed that of the candidates running, Senator Clinton probably would be the best President. However, I believed then and believe more strongly now, that so many people dislike her, she is not electable. My belief that she is not electable has been strengthened as I join the ranks of those who dislike Senator Clinton. Why?

1. Senator Clinton realizes that if the Democratic Party's primary rules she agreed to are ignored, she will narrow the gap between Senator Obama and herself. For this spectacular reason, she argues that those rules should be ignored. Perhaps, instead of deciding to disregard the rules, her campaign should have planned for the primaries after Super Tuesday. When did the candidate who "is ready from day one" realize (1) if Senator Obama won 11 primaries in a row, she could never catch up in the only relevant number (delegates) and (2) her only strategy would be to argue that the number of delegates won is irrelevant? How much comfort should her supporters take from this brilliant strategy? With a straight face, she explains why cheating is OK. I doubt this is the lesson she taught Chelsea when Chelsea was a little girl.

2. Senator Clinton has not released her pre 2007 tax returns. She claims she is too busy. Those returns have been sitting in a file since sometime between last April and October. What is in those returns that she does not want anyone to see? If there is nothing there, why hasn't she released them? How can anyone vote for her without knowing if there is a disaster lurking in them?

3. Former President Clinton will not release the list of donors to his foundation(s) and the amounts those donors contributed. Again why? What disasters lurk? If there is nothing to hide, why not just release all of the information? Mr. Clinton announced that he would release the information if and when Senator Clinton is elected President. That is too late - these are facts voters need now.

For these reasons, I began leaning toward Senator Obama - my state primary has not yet occurred. However, his recent performance has made me doubt whether he should be President. Why?

1. He and his campaign knew the problems Rev. Wright's inflammatory speeches would present. The campaign should have been prepared to deal with the inevitable explosion of attention Rev. Wright would attract. Instead, Senator Obama himself unbelievably stated that he had never been present for any of Rev. Wright's offensive remarks. This undercuts the entire reason for Senator Obama's campaign - that he is not the same old politician we all know and don't like. Someone preparing to be President of the United States of America does not appoint a person to a campaign committee who publicly (and on video!!!) says God Damn America. Senator Obama cannot credibly deny that he knows that Rev. Wright said this.

I do not believe that Senator Obama shares Rev. Wrights prejudices or views. My problem with Senator Obama is with the mindset that allowed this problem to fester. Our President must be far more facile than this.

2. Until now, Senator Obama has run a brilliant campaign blurring any distinctions between himself and Senator Clinton essentially asking voters whether they want a candidate they like or one they don't like. That George W. Bush is President is incontrovertible evidence that the answer to that question is that voters want the likable person. By embracing Rev. Wright, for many voters, Senator Obama loses that advantage.

Where does this leave many Democrats? Choosing between the lesser of two evils for the nomination and then again in the general election. I fear that the end result will not favor the Democrats.