Eight reasons why Obama Might Lose

[BackInTex]

It will be difficult to find enough people dumb enough to vote for her,yet smart enough to find their way to the polls.

Really? What do you think Obama is going to do with all those people who vote for him this year, that they can't be found in four years?

[BigDrawMan]

It will be difficult to find enough people dumb enough to vote for her,yet smart enough to find their way to the polls.

Really? What do you think Obama is going to do with all those people who vote for him this year, that they can't be found in four years?

you are the authority on voting for stupid people

[SportsFan68]

The Republican Shipwreck - Part 1

The Republican shipwreck
The mighty right-wing Titanic is sinking, and McCain is desperately blaming Bush. But the problem isn't the captain -- it's the ship.

By Gary Kamiya

Oct. 28, 2008 | The modern conservative movement is dying in front of our eyes, and its death throes aren't pretty. As John McCain heads for likely defeat, the GOP is eating itself. Right-wing politicians and pundits who never criticized Bush in eight years are suddenly jumping ship like rats, while bitter-end loyalists angrily accuse them of being "pathetically opportunistic." After months of veering from one tactic to the next, McCain has finally settled on one message for his campaign, but it's absurd: claiming that the party whose signature is tax cuts for the rich is really on the side of Joe the Plumber.

Meanwhile, 3.1 million real Joe the Plumbers across America are sending Barack Obama hundreds of millions of dollars, a torrent of cash that is helping to flush the GOP down the national toilet.

Right-wing hacks like Palin and Minn. Rep. Michele Bachman respond by doing the only thing they know how to do -- attack, demonize and divide. They wave the flag like a cutlass, dividing the country up into "pro-America areas" and "anti-America" ones. But this old pseudo-patriotic trick that has served the GOP so well for so long doesn't work anymore. In a development that showed just how much the political landscape has changed, the attack dogs have been forced to apologize -- something neither Bush nor his party nor conservative pundits ever did while they were trashing the country during the last eight years.

McCain's choice of the insultingly unqualified Palin to be his running mate was right out of the GOP's old culture-wars playbook, but it has backfired disastrously. The changing demographics of the country are working against the right wing. The party is lost, and it doesn't have a clue what to do next.

There's something surreal about how fast the GOP has gone from arrogant triumphalism to its death throes. Just yesterday, the GOP's mighty Titanic was cruising along, its opulent decks lined with fat-cat financiers and neoconservative warmongers, all smoking cigars, drinking champagne and extolling the deathless virtues of their fearless captain. The compliant media issued glowing dispatches. Karl Rove cackled with glee as he plotted out a permanent Republican majority.

Then the luxury liner hit an iceberg known as reality. The biggest damage was done by the Wall Street crisis, which happened just in time to tilt a close race toward Obama. But the economic meltdown was only one of the disasters for which the GOP is largely responsible. The war that was going to establish American hegemony forever turned out to be one of the worst foreign-policy blunders in our nation's history. The GOP's free-market idolatry led to the gravest financial crisis since the Depression. Its ideological insistence on cutting taxes for the richest Americans ran up a record deficit. Its embrace of torture and denial of due process assaulted the Constitution and eroded America's moral standing. Its doctrine of the "unitary executive" concentrated unprecedented power in the hands of the executive branch. Its anti-scientific denial of global warming endangered the entire planet.

It's a historic shipwreck, and the American people are diving off the foundering GOP hulk in droves.

In desperation, McCain has tried to blame everything on the ship's captain. Last week, he launched a bitter attack on Bush. In an interview with the Washington Times, he accused Bush of running up a ruinous debt, failing to fund his vast Medicare expansion, abusing his executive powers, failing to regulate the financial sector, ignoring global warming and mismanaging the war in Iraq. "We just let things get completely out of hand," he lamented.

(continued next post)

[SportsFan68]

The Republican Shipwreck, Part 2

But the problem isn't Bush, it's American conservatism itself -- or at least the debased, intellectually bankrupt and utterly failed thing that American conservatism has become. For McCain to truly renounce Bush, he'd have to renounce the tax-cut ideologues who have bankrupted the country. He'd have to renounce the neoconservatives who led us into a catastrophic war. He'd have to renounce the culture-war attack dogs like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin who have coarsened conservatism's soul.

In short, he'd have to renounce the Republican Party -- and himself.

Yes, there's some part of McCain that stands apart from the disaster that his party has become. In the past, he has courageously taken principled stands on issues ranging from taxes to immigration to torture. He has some laudable independent instincts. His barely concealed rage and frustration, as he watches himself being pulled under by the enormous suction of the sinking GOP ship, bears witness to this. But his occasional maverick stands cannot change the fact that on the key issues, McCain is a faithful supporter of George W. Bush's policies. As Obama ads incessantly remind voters, McCain himself boasted that he voted with Bush 90 percent of the time. It's too late for him now to suddenly pretend that he represents anything other than more of the same.

Some conservatives have tried to argue that Bush betrayed true conservatism by running up a ruinous deficit and expanding entitlement programs like Medicare. They compare him unfavorably to Ronald Reagan, modern conservatism's patron saint. But this revisionism gets the historical record wrong. The truth is that Saint Reagan expanded entitlements, grew the federal government -- including a $165 billion bailout of Social Security -- and raised taxes. The right-wing myth of Reagan as an anti-government, anti-tax purist is just that: a myth. The same is true for his anti-Communism. Reagan talked a tough game, calling the USSR an "evil empire" and rattling his saber, but usually behaved pragmatically. When his ill-considered intervention in Lebanon failed, he wisely pulled U.S. troops out. In short, Reagan's ideology and his practice were often at odds.

The dirty little secret of modern conservativism is that Bush is more like "Reagan" -- the mythical Reagan, that is -- than Reagan himself ever was. Bush actually did what Reagan just said he was going to: He cut taxes for the wealthy, handed over the keys to the economy to corporate interests and deregulated everything in sight. His most glaring and destructive imitation of the mythical Reagan was his catastrophic decision to invade Iraq. Fatally, Bush really believed his own Churchillian rhetoric. He decided the fight against Islamist terrorism was an epochal showdown of good vs. evil -- and unlike Reagan, he proceeded to act militarily on this grandiose belief. (Yes, Reagan illegally tried to overthrow the Nicaraguan regime, but the Iran/Contra scandal that tainted his legacy wouldn't even make the Top Ten list of Bush's misdeeds.)

This is why, to this day, the Republican Party and the mainstream right wing has never repudiated Bush. (To their credit, "Paleoconservatives" like Pat Buchanan and right-libertarians like Ron Paul and Antiwar's Justin Raimondo broke with Bush on Iraq, but they are marginal figures on the right.) How can conservatives repudiate someone who put into practice all of their most cherished ideas? To criticize Bush on substantive grounds, they'd have to explain not only why his policies violated conservative orthodoxy, but why they never once made that argument for the last eight years. They can't do either, which is why they are forced to take the evasive, intellectually dishonest line of blaming Bush's failures on his arrogance and incompetence. Of course Bush was arrogant and incompetent, but those shortcomings don't explain his failed presidency. He failed because he acted on the extreme right-wing ideas that Reagan only paid lip service to.

The right wing is running as far away as it can get from Bush, but it still shares his beliefs. That's why it cannot and will not muster any real arguments against his policies.

(concluded next post)

[SportsFan68]

The Republican Shipwreck, Part 3

This explains both McCain's impotent campaign and the failure of the right-wing brain trust to understand the disaster that has befallen the GOP. With very few exceptions -- most notably David Brooks, who on Sunday called for the GOP to reinvent itself as a "progressive conservative" party in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton and Teddy Roosevelt -- the right-wing intelligentsia is still reciting its worn-out ideological mantras, claiming that an Obama victory would mean the death of "freedom," the triumph of socialistic "big government" and abject surrender to our enemies.

For example, in a Weekly Standard column titled "McCain versus the juggernaut," neoconservative pundit William Kristol warned that an "Obama-Biden administration -- working with a Democratic Congress -- would mean a more debilitating nanny state at home and a weaker nation facing our enemies abroad." It takes a deep obliviousness to reality for an ardent Bush supporter to be sounding the alarm about the "nanny state" at the same time that his beloved president and party are solicitously spoon-feeding their wailing Wall Street brat out of a $700 billion jar of Gerber's. As for Kristol's claim that Obama would be "weaker" in facing our enemies abroad, if the great "strength" shown by Bush is the alternative, "weakness" looks good. Bush's "strength" led him to wage an unnecessary and disastrous war that has empowered Islamist terrorists and made America much less safe. That's why al-Qaida supports McCain: A continuation of Bush's policies is its best recruiting tool.

Then there's Peggy Noonan, who writes herself into a typical cloud of lyrical nonsense in a Wall Street Journal column. Striving to hit a Whitmanesque note in praise of the 52 million Americans who say they support McCain, she writes, "They are the beating heart of conservatism, and to watch most television is to forget they exist, for they are not shown much, except at rallies. But they are there, and this is a center-right nation, and many of them have been pushing hard against the age for 40 years now, and more. For some time they have sensed that something large and stable is being swept away, maybe has been swept away, and yet you still have to fight for it. They will not give up without a fight, and they will make their way to the polls."

The "age" that our allegedly "center-right nation" has been "pushing hard against" is relativist, secular, progressive, scientific. And the "something large and stable" that's being swept away is tradition, patriotism, morality, family values, community, God. Noonan believes that conservative Americans have been waging a heroic battle for these Republican-associated virtues for decades. But she never quite reconciles the fact that the last 40-plus years have been dominated by Republican presidents and policies. Apparently "the age," like a Spenglerian villain, works its evil, values-corroding magic independently of whatever party is actually in power. For Noonan, of course, it has to -- because if it didn't, then Republicans would be just as much or more to blame for the corrosion of tradition and morality as Democrats.

And Kristol and Noonan are the restrained face of the conservative reaction. More typical of the Limbaugh-inflected (or infected) movement as a whole is the apocalyptic attitude of right-wing columnist Mark Steyn, who thundered that an Obama victory "would be a 'point of no return,' the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America."

The ludicrous hyperbole of such Jeremiads is self-refuting. Americans are desperate to fix their economy, end a ruinous, endless war and restore a sense of common purpose to civic life. As they face these challenging real-world goals, the abstract buzzwords trotted out by the right ring hollow.

The emptiness of these arguments reveals that American conservatism no longer has any purpose except perpetuating its own power and concentrating as much wealth as possible in the hands of the already wealthy. Its internal contradictions can no longer be glossed over. It poses as the guardian of tradition and morality, but its obeisance to an amoral free-market ideology is far more destructive of tradition than the regulated capitalism championed by liberals. It preaches small government, but insists that abortion rights, recreational drug use and gay marriage fall within the purview of the state.

This is not a "movement" that means anything that anyone can explain. As Christopher Buckley, the son of the late William F. Buckley, intellectual father of modern American conservativism, put it in a much-discussed piece in the Daily Beast announcing his support for Obama, "I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of 'conservative' government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case."

The GOP stands at a crossroads. Republicans can pretend that nothing has really changed, that this is still a "center-right" nation, and that only an ill-timed economic meltdown cost them the White House. This means leaving their party in the hands of the "movement conservatives" who have dominated the GOP for decades: the demagogues of reaction and resentment, the Christian rightists, the "values" voters, the anti-tax, anti-government zealots, the nativists, anti-rationalists and anti-secularists. The culmination of this approach would be to nominate Sarah Palin as their presidential candidate in 2016. Or they can move to the center, accept that progressive taxation is not just necessary to run a country but that it is a legitimate part of the social contract, accept that markets need some regulation, and try to reach out to all Americans, not just their base.

If Republicans choose the first option, the GOP will be taking the first steps toward becoming a marginal party, one that will eventually end up an object of curiosity in the historical display case along with such extinct specimens as the Know-Nothing Party. If they choose the second, they will not only save their party, they could help heal the grievous wounds their divisive politics have inflicted on the country.

If conservatives' track record over the last 40 years is any guide, they will choose the first. And I won't be putting any flowers on their grave.

[Flybrick]

Or they can move to the center, accept that progressive taxation is not just necessary to run a country but that it is a legitimate part of the social contract, accept that markets need some regulation, and try to reach out to all Americans, not just their base.

To paraphrase the late Charlton Heston: "From my cold dead hands will I accept this alternative."

Interesting that the article put "value" voters and anti-secularists in the list of things that are bad.

Funny, I thought 'values' were important, regardless of what ones held. Same as the right of "freedom of religion."

Must have missed the change to the Constitution.

I never realized the level of self-loathing that many Americans have.

Sad.

[Beebs52]

It will be difficult to find enough people dumb enough to vote for her,yet smart enough to find their way to the polls.

Really? What do you think Obama is going to do with all those people who vote for him this year, that they can't be found in four years?

you are the authority on voting for stupid people

I really don't understand where your venom has been coming from. Each time you say this sort of neener neener neener stuff, I become more and more confused. I have made stupid ass remarks in the past, but I've usually either apologized to an individual if I knew I made it in haste or just general pissed offedness. But, you've carried this bullshit throughout your remarks, with certain people, to an almost artistic level of stankosity. Don't get it.

You do realize that preceding presidents of both parties have contributed to whatever economic, political, war-related shitstorm has cascaded down to their successors. Dotcom bubble. Financial stuff I don't think you're probably the expert on in the grand scheme of things. Believe it or not, Bush isn't the architect of all that has turned our world into the lovely compost pile it is right now. He's done. Get the fuck over it. Check out your peeps that you love. I'm sure you'll find some poor decisions and affiliations that might astound you.

[q]Unfortunately, she is the darling of the po white trash wing.You cant fund a campaign with old
Copenhagen lids.She is W without the name or money.

And there is bdms razor to contend with:

It will be difficult to find enough people dumb enough to vote for her,yet smart enough to find their way to the polls[/q]

I guess some other candidates are the former stoner loners wannabes of their college years, hanging with the "intellectuals", probably because their lay possibilities were nil.

What the F* is your deal with calling people stupid all the time?

[ToLiveIsToFly]

Wow. I've had this comment window open for like six hours. I can't wait until I'm not working around the clock anymore.

Did it ever occur to anybody that Joe the Plumber wouldn't have been "trashed" by the media if 1) he was actually a licensed plumber, 2) he made more than $40,000/year, 3) he could actually afford to buy a business that makes over $250,000/year, 4) he wasn't a registered Republican parroting talking points while parading himself as an undecided voter, 5) he wasn't related to Charles Keating, 6) he wasn't a tax evader, and 7) his real name was Joe and not Samuel.

No.

In the final analysis, he asked a question.

I agree. I don't see anything wrong with him asking the question and the trashing he received is crazy.

Opening a can of worms I probably shouldn't, what's the big deal about his first name being Samuel? I can't be bothered to read the "real story" of who Joe is because it doesn't fucking matter to me who Joe is. He asked a question in good faith, and he's reaping a big pile of shit for it. I assume this means either (1) his real name is Joseph Samuel or something like that (2) people call him Joe for some other reason. I bet every single person who reads this board knows someone who goes by his or her middle name.

Obama's unscripted and unrehearsed answer was and is the story.

I disagree. I think there really is no story here. Obama's answer to the original question is a pretty simple explanation of how he wants to change the tax code. One of Joe's follow-up questions was whether Obama would support a flat tax, and Obama explained why he thinks a progressive tax is fairer. in the context in which he said the words "spread the wealth", he clearly was talking about those who make more paying a higher tax rate. Which has been the law of the land for decades.

The F&M poll is usually among the most accurate for PA and Madonna is a nationally respected pollster. So, I tend to take its results as pretty reflective.

I had to reread your post twice before I understood what you were saying. The first several times I read it I thought "Madonna is a nationally respected pollster" was your way of negating the first part of the sentence. Like "that guy's shirt matches his pants, and Wade Miller's a great coach" or "It's really warm outside and 'Survivor' is worth watching'. Then I finally noticed the guy's NAME was Madonna and you weren't referring to the singer.

With the exception of the Couric interview (and to a lesser extent the Gibson interview), Palin has handled herself quite well in talking to the press in recent weeks. However, the media refuses to give her much airtime on network news so what most people hear about is that one occurrence as somehow being "proof" she's not ready.

With the exception of the past 100 years, the Cubs are one of the most dominant teams in baseball history.

If given the choice of two people with equal conservative values, most true conservatives would choose a 'minority' candidate, (black, female, red, green blue whatever).

Are you talking about this guy?

I wonder if Palin is guilty of what Clinton was accused of, if perhaps she's hoping for an Obama victory so she'll be better positioned for 2012.

I don't think she would be better positioned for 2012 if Obama wins. The reason Hillary would be better off is it's harder to get the nomination if the President is from your own party and running again. If catastrophe befalls the nation, it's unlikely McCain will run for a second term. Plus of course there's the small-but-significant chance that if McCain wins the election Palin would be running for re-election in 2012

The modern conservative movement is dying in front of our eyes, and its death throes aren't pretty.

Yeah, sure. And it was dying in 1992 when Clinton was elected, too.

Interesting that the article put "value" voters and anti-secularists in the list of things that are bad.

Funny, I thought 'values' were important, regardless of what ones held. Same as the right of "freedom of religion."

Values ARE important. When you get right down to it, everyone's a values voter. A lot of people who refer to themselves as "values voters" are looking to impose those values on everyone else, whether they agree with them or not.

sec⋅u⋅lar⋅ism  /ˈsɛkyələˌrɪzəm/
1. secular spirit or tendency, esp. a system of political or social philosophy that rejects all forms of religious faith and worship.
2. the view that public education and other matters of civil policy should be conducted without the introduction of a religious element.

I think the people the article is referring to as "anti-secularist" are in opposition to definition-number-two secularism. (Well, probably they're against definition number one, but that's not why the article is saying it like it's a bad thing)

[JBillyGirl]

Or they can move to the center, accept that progressive taxation is not just necessary to run a country but that it is a legitimate part of the social contract, accept that markets need some regulation, and try to reach out to all Americans, not just their base.

To paraphrase the late Charlton Heston: "From my cold dead hands will I accept this alternative."

It is just this kind of attitude that is sinking the GOP.

[Jeemie]

I never saw an article that got more wrong than the one Sprots just posted.

Bush's invasion of Iraq and his view of the War on terror are a foreign policy informed by LIBERAL Wilsonian interventionist views.

They are as FAR from Goldwater/Reagan conservatism as you can POSSIBLY get.

There's a reason that the people that espoused this view on the WoT are called "neo"-conservatives- because they were former liberals who married their "We're more enlightened than you savages" worldview with the conservative notion of a strong defense and ruined American foreign policy for decades.

And the financial crisis has its roots in many policies espoused by both Democrats AND Republicans- from Clinton to Bush.

To place the "blame" on unregulated capitalism enabled by the GOP only lets me know that once the Democrats control the two branches, they are going to attempt to enact "solutions" that only make the problems we face worse (but don't worry- McCain would have cooperated with the Dems in Congress to do pretty much the same thing, so things are pretty much headed for the toilet anyway).

I agree with much of its characterization of the religious right, as well as the idiotic "pseudo-patriotism" of folks like Bachman and Palin, but this is also as far from conservatism as Goldwater and Reagan envisioned it, too (although it is a lapse into McCarthyism which is a conservative "sin").

What a trashy hit piece, Sprots. I'm surprised you would have leant your "name" to such a piece on these boards.

[Jeemie]

Or they can move to the center, accept that progressive taxation is not just necessary to run a country but that it is a legitimate part of the social contract, accept that markets need some regulation, and try to reach out to all Americans, not just their base.

To paraphrase the late Charlton Heston: "From my cold dead hands will I accept this alternative."

It is just this kind of attitude that is sinking the GOP.

A progressive tax code is just fine. Wealthier individuals benefit more from government services should pay more- this is simply good cost accounting.

However, any tax code changes for the purpose of "social redistributive justice" makes me VERY leery.

Taxation should not be to effect social change...it should be to pay for essential government services...and we need a good debate as to what is essential, because our fiscal situation is such that we will not be able to bear burdens such as "guaranteeing that all have a 'right' to health insurance", etc.

[earendel]

I never saw an article that got more wrong than the one Sprots just posted.

I think you missed the point. The author was speaking of the "modern conservative movement" which, regrettably, was hijacked by the neocons as you point out. If the election goes as most people expect, the likelihood is that there will be a civil war among the Republicans.

[Jeemie]

I never saw an article that got more wrong than the one Sprots just posted.

I think you missed the point. The author was speaking of the "modern conservative movement" which, regrettably, was hijacked by the neocons as you point out. If the election goes as most people expect, the likelihood is that there will be a civil war among the Republicans.

But the author goes on and tries to say that the worst elements of "modern conservatism" are true conservative ideology (with statements such as Bush did the things that Reagan only dreamed of [paraphrase]) when nothing could be further from the truth.

[SportsFan68]

What a trashy hit piece, Sprots. I'm surprised you would have leant your "name" to such a piece on these boards.

It's not trashy, Jeemie. I didn't lend my name to it. I posted it because much of it struck a chord with me. It partly answered something that's been troubling me for a while -- why is Reagan so respected among people who say they're conservatives, and when the conversation turns to Bush, people stammer and change the subject? I rendered one person speechless, until he could figure out a way to change the subject, when I said I agreed with Bush on his Second Amendment stance. (He supported the assault weapons ban but didn't have the stuff to stand up to the NRA. Neither did Congress.)

I posted the piece to gauge the reactions here, where people tend to be both outspoken and well-spoken, from people who say they're conservatives. I was not disappointed. Thanks to all who replied.

I wasn't even disappointed in you, Jeemie, saying a couple things and then ending with an insult.

[Jeemie]

It's not trashy, Jeemie. I didn't lend my name to it. I posted it because much of it struck a chord with me. It partly answered something that's been troubling me for a while -- why is Reagan so respected among people who say they're conservatives, and when the conversation turns to Bush, people stammer and change the subject?

Why does this trouble you?

Bush isn't Reagan- he isn't even close to Reagan.

This is my problem with the piece...because it posits that Bush truly acted on the ideology of conservatism of Reagan, Goldwater, etc....when this is as far from the truth as can possibly be.

So the answer is simple as to why people respect Reagan, but hesitate when talking about Bush.

[SportsFan68]

It's not trashy, Jeemie. I didn't lend my name to it. I posted it because much of it struck a chord with me. It partly answered something that's been troubling me for a while -- why is Reagan so respected among people who say they're conservatives, and when the conversation turns to Bush, people stammer and change the subject?

Why does this trouble you?

Bush isn't Reagan- he isn't even close to Reagan.

So you say. It wasn't clear to me.