the Trial lawyer lobbiests for one as well as others. So is Obama's campaigned financed and depends on his party loyalty to for him remain a power player... (look up how much $$ BOTH Obama and Clinton got from Trial Lawyers. Huge sums. 15 million each, approximately)

Same for Kerry's and Kennedy's $$. All of them have to stick by the party if they want their coffers to keep getting filled.

But...The citizens of the United States don't though have to play the loyalty game. We aren't beholden to the money bribers.

We are free to vote our conscience. ..something ..most politicians surrendered at the door when they entered politics.Including your dream man, Obama.

Lunesta:

Laurie Ann but when it's coming from a candidate who is running, purely & primarily, on politics NOT AS USUAL, it is dismaying, to say the least.

I know. It is. But I have decided to just let it be, inside of myself. But, I know the deep disappointment you feel.

I do,too.

I know MaryAnne and Dave, jegal do too. That's the the few right here that do.

There are millions as we see coming out in droves to vote for her despite what the media has said. That tells you there is a great many who feel likewise, Lunesta.

Just let it be after a point so you can fight another day when there comes another opportunity. Just look at far she did get!

Remember what Mrs. Lennon once said?
Oh! Was she ever right, eh?

Don't work too hard. Write when you get time.

;-)

LaurieAnn:

I have no problem with people voting their conscience. I have a problem with people consistently claiming to be victimized, and thus the only reason for their loss. Clinton is the one that started launching the personal attacks, she's the one playing overly dirty politics, and the press calls her on it. That's not bias.

I cannot stand Clinton, but I would've voted for her had she received the nomination.

no one is playing the victim.

Hillary is still fighting so she's not playing a victim.

I don't know hwere you get that.

We know she's done a great job and for me I feel proud of her for that.

We also know Obama's got the numbers that the DNC wants in order to give it to him. Done.

Of course some feel disappointed that our choice didn't win. That's natural. But life goes on.

You run the best race you can. That's it.

It's fine you would vote for HRC even though he's your 1st choice.

AND interestingly that's another testament to the fact to her electibilty that the media ignores.

Because so many more BO fans said they would vote for her than HRC fans say they would vote for him.

BUT the DNC ignores those stats.

Why, I don't know.

But we can't change that.

It's nice you would vote for her..but you won't get the chance..you got what you want, your first choice.

I can't vote for him because I think he is dangerously inexperianced. That's my honest view.

There's posts I wrote good stuff about Obama early on, before the Wright thing came out.

That's what changed me on him.

It's for me a non vote for him out of my own conscience whether you agree with my view of him or not.

Sorry to be brusque, in any way..but gotta get some things done here at home.

Thx for your replies! I'll be back later.

Lunesta,

"Dare we guess: Are you male?"

Yes.

"I shudder to imagine what you might think of the new campaign , organized by a successful pro-HRC woman voter in Columbus, OH, to pull together all the pro-Hillary supporters to work AGAINST Obama in the general?"

I think it is profoundly stupid, misguided and lacks a sensible and rational view of the BIGGER PICTURE.

"You guys had better wake up & realize the damage that BO's elitist arrogance & sexism have done, are doing, and will do, to our party."

I am an independent. I prefer Obama but if Hillary is the nominee I will vote for her without hesitation.

You are angry and it's clouding your judgment. Why so much anger towards Obama? I don't understand how you could so randomly and wantonly disparage your possible candidate. It's childish. I guess you know it all and well over 16 million people are stupid and gullible. You have some nerve. YOU and this woman in Ohio and "white uneducated working class" voters who won't vote for a black guy are the ones who are damaging YOUR party.

"Elitist?" Please. HRC has over $100 million dollars and pretends to be folksy and down to earth when it serves her (like GWB does). On the other hand, Obama...

"In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."

This is how he talks about people who refuse to vote for him because of the color of his father's skin. How does Hillary talk about people who don't vote for her? She doesn't. Because they won't get her where she thinks she belongs, where you think she belongs.

LaurieAnn --

With regard to your grand-daughter, who I am sure is as sweet as the day is long, her statement about this election being "Hillary's turn" is not so much sweet as disturbing. I have been bothered by this tact of the Clinton (the arguments that HRC was the "inevitable nominee" and that it was "her turn") campaign from the beginning. Kings and Queens take turns; Presidents are elected. HRC ran her early campaign as if it were a celebration leading to a coronation; and then she lost Iowa and fell further behind on Super-Tuesday, and she was caught as flat-footed as a showhorse in the Belmont.

I also remember that John Kerry ran on the idea that it was "his turn" -- and I bought into that idea at the time, to my lasting chagrin. My wife, an Edwards supporter, was right then -- and she is still right, even though I have come to agree with her.

I also am bothered by the idea that we should select our President based on who their pastor is. However, if that were the measure, we don't have a good candidate left. Obama has Wright -- but McCain has Hagee and Clinton has her membership in "The Family". I call this a wash, and thank God that we are not electing any of these candidates' pastors.

I am also bothered by the idea of voting based on the candidate's spouse. I know that HRC had to raise that point, because her spouse is such a huge figure. In fact, HRC did as well as she did in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida in large part due to the Friends of Bill vote. In these states, it was as if Bill was also running -- and Hillary Clinton received all his votes (where Obama had to rely only on those people voting for him).

However, now that we know the general election match-up, I don't understand why anyone would think that Michelle Obama does not compare favorably to Cindy McCain. Michelle Obama is a brilliant woman from hardscrabble, working class roots on the tough side of Chicago who, through her own ability and efforts, has pulled herself up and into a position of prominence in one of the prestige learned professions. She is like Hillary Clinton in this regard -- or would be if Hillary Clinton had ever been working class. Cindy McCain, on the other hand, is a spoiled heiress who had an affair with a married man (which resulted in his leaving his longsuffering wife) who showed her appreciation by financing her husband's run for Congress and then became addicted to prescription painkillers, feeding her addiction by stealing drugs from a charity she was involved with.

I know that many folks don't like Michelle Obama because they perceive her as lacking patriotism because she dares to give voice to the old and righteous frustration of groups that have been long disenfrachised in America. However, to such people I say, thank God that we are not electing a candidate's wife any more than we are electing a candidate's pastor.

Beathan

Beautifully stated, Beathan.

We're on the verge of changing our trajectory and disposing of an administration whose ideology has dragged us down into a very ugly time in our history.

We should be excited.

I'm sorry that the hopes of so many have had to be dashed
in this process but we have to stay focused on changing the leadership of this country. If it isn't your candidate in body it is essentially your candidate in mind, spirit and purpose.

I do not base my vote on who the Pastor is,or who the MSM talking Heads tell me to vote for.

I read,study, listen and make my decision. I want an experienced person in the Whitehouse. We have had our fill of empty suits you want to have a beer with, or one who thiks he is a rock star,because all the kids come out for him..

We badly need an experienced person to clean up the mess Bush and his gang have left us.

MaryAnne:

I'm sorry but the inexperience line doesn't wash. He has as much legislative experience as her. Before that, he spent years working with poor working class people in Chicago. He is clearly intelligent (too intelligent for some judging by the elitism charges).

Remember ALL of the experience candidates lost in Iowa. Many people never bought Hillary's experience credentials. If you would like me to explain why, I'll be happy to (I'm not doing so right away since I expect that would be seen as Hillary bashing which is not my goal.

I find it odd that you are trying to compare Obama to Bush, when the big knock on Bush is that he has no intellectual curiosity or self reflection, and so much anti-Obama criticism is that he is too cerebral.

There was a moment in your post when you alluded to one of the article's most cogent insights, and I thought you were going to make a connection at last. Alas, it was not to be. I am referring to

"The conversation Mrs. Clinton spurred among women, however, seemed newer and more surprising. Her candidacy split Democratic women, not to mention prominent feminists. (Last week, the abortion-rights group Naral Pro-Choice America endorsed Mr. Obama, setting off protest from other women’s groups.) The cleft was largely along generational lines, with older women who had waged their own battles showing more solidarity and younger ones arguing that voting for a male candidate over a female one was itself a sign of progress and confidence."

This is the thing that has been coming back over and over again, but you don't seem to see it: it's not a gender issue, so much as a generational issue. My wife is a pediatric oncologist, about as strong-minded a woman as you will ever meet, and she supports Obama. My sister-in-law, VP of a large national corporation at 30 years old, does as well - and volunteered extensively for his campaign in Texas. While both of them agree that some of the coverage on Clinton has been out of bounds (the pantsuit thing especially is about as stupid a topic of discussion as I've heard), neither feels that she has been a target due to her gender any more than Obama has for his race.

Ultimately, it is the earlier generation of women, the ones who more often had to fight the more overt battles of feminism, who see Clinton as being under attack, and I suspect that this is simply a reflection of a mental paradigm already long-established. My wife and sister-in-law support Obama, not because his policies are that different from Clinton's (they obviously are not), but because he offers a different paradigm and different worldview of politics and its possibilities. Clinton talks in the language of combat and struggle, the natural language of someone whose life experience was centered around large quantities of both. Her worldview re: feminism is not that different from that of Jeremiah Wright with regard to racism - he grew up as part of a generation that confronted a much more severe and much more pervasive phenomenon of racism, so he sees it hiding under every rock and in every shadow. Obama, like my wife and sister-in-law, has the advantage of having grown up with wider possibilities and less sense of restriction, and this allows him to speak in terms of consensus and conciliation. And like it or not, this is language that an awful lot of people are thirsting for after sixteen years of acrimony under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

This exchange later in this thread sums it up well:

His choice of a wife is pretty indicative of how stupid he thinks women are.

------------Damn, jegal..That last line is amazing revealing food for thought about him for real! Great call!

The idea that you can somehow try to take his choice of an intelligent, successful, opinionated woman for a wife, and turn that choice into an indication that he thinks women are "stupid"? This is where combativeness goes over the edge into surreality, and the speaker of words like these loses all credibility with people like my wife and sister-in-law (not to mention me). And this kind of thinking and language has been all too common from Clinton supporters as they saw her early lead evaporating.

Interestingly, while my wife and sister-in-law gravitated to Obama because of his language of bipartisanship and cooperation, my mother (the only woman in her law school graduating class in the late 60's) drifted away from Hillary because, if anything, she was too Republican - she felt that Clinton was too occupied with triangulating herself into position for a presidential run, and not strong enough in standing up to Bush over the war (among other issues). And that is really where the "media conspiracy" against Clinton breaks down - the major outlets were in her corner initially (as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread), and only backed away after her poorly-run campaign began to come apart at the seams. To try and cite the NYT as a "shill" for Obama is a particularly ripe load of nonsense, considering they endorsed her early and reconsidered only after her tone became increasingly antagonistic as she fell behind in the race.

The other aspect of the media "conspiracy" that Clinton supporters tend to ignore is the fact that she is paying the price for not heeding the basic laws of political nature. The media loves McCain because he gives them access and he gives them good quotes - he essentially makes their job easier. They like Obama for similar reasons. But from day one, Hillary ran her campaign with a high level of distrust and distaste for the media; not terribly surprising considering how she witnessed them treating her husband's presidency, but something she should have known she had to get past. If there was media bias in Obama's favor (and in some outlets there certainly was, although I would argue that others like CNN and the NYT were slanted in favor of Clinton), it was not as pervasive as you folks like to claim, and it was largely because she refused to play the game as she fully knew it was played.

was a simple matter of political timing. Clinton had won a big victory, and the media would have obsessed about it for the following week. Obama probably had secured Edwards' endorsement in private earlier, but pulled it out at that moment to blunt the appearance of momentum for Clinton. There was nothing dirty, nothing dishonest, nothing disrespectful about it - just a straightforward strategy to "win the news cycle." Clinton would have done the exact same thing had their positions been reversed.

I agree with almost everything you say here Sawbones. I would say in all fairness though that Obama did not really give the same level of media access that McCain did. I remember that being reported on pretty early on. Of course, there was a while that all McCain had was the press, so he had to let them in.

LaurieAnnM

A few points:

We also know Obama's got the numbers that the DNC wants in order to give it to him.

The DNC isn’t “giving it to him”, he won it fair and square. All the candidates knew (or should have known) what it would take to win. Hillary didn't manage her candidacy well, it bit her in the end.

AND interestingly that's another testament to the fact to her electabilty that the media ignores. Because so many more BO fans said they would vote for her than HRC fans say they would vote for him. BUT the DNC ignores those stats. Why, I don't know...........It's for me a non vote for him out of my own conscience whether you agree with my view of him or not.

You know, this isn’t brain surgery.

1) Obama is winning, so why shouldn’t his supporters be gracious. Makes them at least appear to be rational, mature adults, not sniveling, whiney, I'll take my ball and go home, types.

2) Obama supporters are now looking to the general election and realize we need most (if not all) the Democrats to be on board to pull this off. Now we have to smooth the ruffled feathers of "all" the other candidates supporters.

3) Most rational people would conclude that is you don't want a repeat of the Bush administration you need to get the Democratic candidate in office. This won't happen if the Hillary camp bolts to McCain in some kind of big F-you moment. That's childish and serves no ones best interest.

Obama 08

Hi again, MaryAnne.

Exactly. The top post was really just a simple declaration of the fact that what HRC achieved was a step forward for women.Simple as that.

And also to express some of my feelings surrounding it.

Thank you so much for being a breath of fresh air on this thread. I am resolved and happy with how well she did and how far she came.

I expect she will come out and support Obama throughly as she should as a loyal party power player.

I myself just like you do not believe he has the experiance he needs for the job, among the other factors that concern me.

I don't know why the Obama supporters continue to try and argue the issue.

People have rights to differing views, that's all.

Sure there are women who don't feel these issues for a number of reasons. Some do. Differnent strokes.Differing views...etc ad infintum,eh?

I am at peace with my choice and decision regarding how I will vote.

My suggestion for Obama supporters would be to work on getting out the youth vote and registering as a many new people as they can.

The news about Ted Kennedy today and his brain tumor is diverting all the focus away from the primary results in the news..no real matter, we all know what the eventual outcome is going to be regardless anyway.

Later girl,I'm out, for now.

;-)

MaryAnne --

I don't buy the experience argument for several reasons.

First, none of the candidates has the real relevant experience. None of them have been President. None of the last three even has executive experience -- either as governor, lower executive office, or even in the private sector.

Thus, these candidate's respective campaign organization are the largest organizations they have ever run -- and Obama's campaign organization is a wonderful operation. It has room for dissent and discussion without acrimony. It is focused and effective where it needs to be. It is one of the best organizations ever developed -- and he built it from scratch in very little time. McCain's organization is plodding in comparison. Clinton's is steeped in infighting and bitterness -- even though she inherited one of the best organizations in existence from her husband. I sleep much better at night knowing that Hillary Clinton will not do to our country what she did to the Clinton Political Organization.

Second, many of our best Presidents have not had long resumes -- and many of our worst had. If I recall correctly, one of our most "experienced" Presidents was Warren Harding, and our least experienced President was Abraham Lincoln. In terms of governmental experience, even giving Hillary Clinton credit for her years as First Lady, HRC and Obama are roughly equally qualified. McCain has more "experience" if you count his time in Congress and the Senate -- however, the role of a Legislator is very, very different than that of the President. Legislative experience is far, far less important than the ability to lead and inspire, with coolness under pressure, and with basic good judgment -- traits that Obama has, unlike either of the other remaining candidates.

Finally, I don't think that "experience," which translates as "time inside the Washington beltway", is really what we need to fix the mess Bush and his predecessors (including Bill Clinton) have left us. Washington D.C. is like a brain parasite -- I would rather have a President who has had limited exposure to the outbreak rather than one who has bathed in the mess for years.

Beathan