Al Gore’s been putting the proceeds from “An Inconvenient Truth” and Nobel prize to use with a new global ad campaign aimed at mobilizing public support for taking steps to slow global warming.
View full post to see the ad, or go to WeCanSolveIt.org for this and more.
I admit it. I’m one of them. One of those supporters of Obama who would likely vote for McCain if Obama was not the Democratic candidate. And not because of any of the recent fracas. This was true a long time ago. It’s because I just like and respect McCain and his capabilities more than I do Clinton. Hillary Clinton is an intelligent person and she’d probably be OK as president, but McCain would do a better job. And Obama better still.
I was looking for reasons to dislike McCain. This was mainly to argue against my wife’s statement that she would vote for him over Clinton (trying to be contrary). There certainly are some and I disagree with several of his stances on major issues. Probably more than I disagree with Clinton ideas. But I can like someone’s ideas and still not respect them. And vice versa. Hillary Clinton (and her husband who I also refused to vote for) just embodies the kind of win-at-all-cost politics that really nauseates me. Everything she says and does is calculated to move her closer to her goal. Nothing extemporaneous ever comes out of her mouth. Nothing.
Of course, any of these three possibilities would be a massive step up from what we have now, no doubt about it.
Worth a look is McCain’s recent foreign policy speech. Some standard issue stuff no one could disagree with (at least no normal person, I can’t see Cheney making this kind of speech), but a couple of well thought out concepts as well. This in particular:
“One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies. We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact — a League of Democracies — that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests.
At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust. Recall the words of our founders in the Declaration of Independence, that we pay “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed. We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies. When we believe international action is necessary, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, we will try to persuade our friends that we are right. But we, in return, must be willing to be persuaded by them.”
Denouncing and Renouncing is a good opinion piece from Stanley Fish in his NY Times blog on the cycle of media stoked “conversations” we’re being subjected to:
“This denouncing and renouncing game is simply not serious. It is a media-staged theater, produced not in response to genuine concerns – no one thinks that Obama is unpatriotic or that Clinton is a racist or that McCain is a right-wing bigot – but in response to the needs of a news cycle. First you do the outrage (did you see what X said?), then you put the question to the candidate (do you hereby denounce and renounce?), then you have a debate on the answer (Did he go far enough? Has she shut her husband up?), and then you do endless polls that quickly become the basis of a new round.
Meanwhile, the things the candidates themselves are saying about really important matters – war, the economy, health care, the environment – are put on the back-burner until the side show is over, though the odds are that a new one will start up immediately.”
From Richard Cohen’s
Imagined Snipers, Real Challenges in the NY Times:
“On issues that cross borders – terrorism, financial market volatility, global warming – and on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq – three things are essential: a new moral authority in the White House, the capacity for original strategic thought, and a 21st-century understanding of the border-jumping networks that have knit humanity into new relationships.
Obama, in his speech on race, did important things. He confronted reality, thought big, probed division, sketched convergence. He took Americans and many people beyond U.S. shores to a different mental place. Imagine that capacity applied to GWOT, Iran, Russia, China and Israel-Palestine.
If you don’t like the sound of that, there’s always seasoned swagger of the sort that runs from imaginary snipers.”
More from Roger Cohen can be found at his International Herald Tribune blog.
From Reuters: Clinton backers warn Pelosi on superdelegate rifts. Twenty prominent (and wealthy) Clinton supporters wrote a letter to threaten Pelosi because she’s said the superdelegates should support who wins the most pledged delegates and not try to overturn the voter’s choice in the primaries and caucuses.
“Among the signees of the letter were prominent Democrats and Clinton supporters like Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television; Bernard Schwartz, former chairman of Loral Space and Communications; and venture capitalist Steven Rattner.
The signees reminded the House leader from California of their support for the party’s House campaign committee and said “therefore” she should “reflect in your comments a more open view” about superdelegates.”
Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen have written an analysis of Clinton’s exaggerated take that she actually has a chance to win the Democratic nomination in the Story behind the story: The Clinton myth at Politico.com. As they put it:
“Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.
People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.”
VandeHei and Allen’s piece is one of a recent string of essays making the case that Clinton’s candidacy is essentially over, or even more arguing that her continuing efforts do more harm to the Democrats chances in the November general election than they help her. Conservative commentator David Brooks’ opinion piece in the NY Times (free subscription may be required to view) is getting much exposure in the national media, including a Today show appearance this morning where he gets to repeat his favorite line from it, that Clinton “possesses the audacity of hopelessness”.
Maureen Dowd also has a piece up today touching on the same theme:
“Even some Clinton loyalists are wondering aloud if the win-at-all-costs strategy of Hillary and Bill — which continued Tuesday when Hillary tried to drag Rev. Wright back into the spotlight — is designed to rough up Obama so badly and leave the party so riven that Obama will lose in November to John McCain.”
The problem is that Clinton isn’t likely to bow out gracefully. It doesn’t appear to be in her nature to do so. As Peggy Noonan wrote in the WSJ back in February: “she does grace the way George W. Bush does nuance”. It would take a tremendous blow to get her to accept defeat and until then she’s going to keep going, taking continuous and damaging swipes at Obama and the Democrat’s chances of regaining the White House.
But this is a win-win for her. Clinton’s goal is not for the Democrats to win in November, her goal is that she win the presidency. And that can happen either this time around or the next. If she doesn’t do it this time, and her blows over the next several months weaken Obama so badly in the eyes of the voters that McCain wins, she can better make the case in 2012 that the voters made a mistake and she is the only electable choice. If Obama wins, she’s most likely unable to make another run at the top post until 2016 (when she’ll be close to 70). If she can’t win, she needs the Republicans to win.
The numerous talking heads have tried to coin a variety of terms to characterize her ongoing struggle, calling her the Terminator or describing her current strategy as the Nuclear option or better still the Tonya Harding option (realizing she can’t win she kneecaps her opponent). But these obscure the long-term strategic view Hillary Clinton always takes. She’s not just thinking of what she can do to harm Obama now in the short-term (although clearly this interests her). She’s not thinking about whether what she does now damages her political party or the country in general. She’s thinking about what Hillary can do for Hillary now or 4 years from now.
Again, a very thoughtful piece by Reagan’s former speechwriter Peggy Noonan in her WSJ column Declarations this week. Talking about the much talked about Obama speech on race in America, she notes that the speech wasn’t the standard politician speech of news-ready sound-bites and valence issues.
“Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn’t have applause lines. He didn’t give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn’t summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn’t hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he’d said.
If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they’d get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don’t write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.
They should try it.”
From The Wall Street Journal: March 21, 2008
I don’t always (or even frequently) agree with Noonan, but I am beginning to look forward to reading what she has to say every week. She also publishes her columns on her own site as well. They are definitely worth a look, regardless of your politics.
See Maureen Dowd’s column in the NY Times on this morning after Texas, Ohio, RI and Vermont:
“…Hillary — carried on the padded shoulders of the older women in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island who loved her “I Will Survive” rallying cry that “I am a little older and I have earned every wrinkle on my face” — has been saved to fight another day.”
I truly think the Dems are doomed if they nominate her, and I think it has little to do with her positions or gender. She’s carrying 16 years of baggage with a large proportion of the population who will mobilize against her… I can only think that the old school Dems and ardent Fems who vote for her on the basis of one or the other of those aspects don’t work and live around real-world Republicans. They have no idea what a polarizing force she really is… Any hope that the conservative Republican base won’t find McCain inspiring and will stay home is lost if she is his opposition.
Again, I want to believe… “We are the Ones“. Even if he doesn’t win, his supporters do nice videos…
Pretty fucking funny:
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early