More about Obama’s experience, or rather lack of experience:
Obama’s allure differs from the infatuations of past election cycles because it can’t be traced to what he has done or will do. In his legislative career, Obama has produced few concrete policy changes, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a rank-and-file fan who can cite one. Not since 1896 — when another rousing speechmaker, William Jennings Bryan, sought the White House — has the zeal for a candidate corresponded so little to a record of hard accomplishment.
Can any Obama supporter out there tell me what he did accomplish while he was in the state legislature or since he has been in the Senate. I have heard that he opposed casinos in Illinois, which I think is a good thing, but I really would like to know if there is anything else.
More on the reason for Hillary Clinton’s win in NH:
(It’s possible that the so-called Bradley effect — the inclination of some voters to support a black candidate in talking to pollsters or in public caucuses but not in private voting booths — artificially boosted his pre-primary New Hampshire poll numbers. But as the pollster Lee Miringoff notes, those surveys actually predicted Obama’s final numbers correctly while underestimating Clinton’s, suggesting that late deciders gave her the win.)
Hillary Clinton’s win was the result of her, and her campaign’s, hard work in NH during the four days before the primary to persuade undecided voters that she was the better choice, and it was the result of a better GOTV effort. All this garbage about the effect of the “teary moment” is just that, garbage. The talking heads, by the way, think GOTV is a cheer for them, not a way to win a campaign.
And finally, on leadership:
Obama’s boosters are not fired up about finally confronting those intricate and intractable problems, for which the answers lie not in identity but in politics and policy. Inspiring and exhilarating as it is, Obamamania allows us to sidestep the hardest challenges, at least for now.
Leadership is about getting people to confront the problems and issues facing us and meeting the challenges of solving those problems. I want someone as president who can do that, and not allow “us to sidestep the hardest challenges.”
As Katrina raised the spotlight on the still painful but almost forgotten reality of the two Americas of have and have nots, Obamamania and the campaign commentary ancillary to that has raised (at least mine) awareness of how much it is still okay to denigrate women without incurring the wrath of society. And yet if even a misconstrued appearance of racism appears in the Tear gate/fairytale, or the out of context LBJ/MLK comment, the charge of racism comes quickly to the surface. While I am glad to see intolerance for racism (though saddened at the way it is used as a weapon against the Clintons whose record speaks to a life dedicated to civil rights) I am equally appalled at the tolerance of what Hillary is going through. Case in point in today’s Globe Northwest edition
<
p>http://www.boston.com/news/loc…
<
p>an article about the rise of Prostitution on the internet along the 128 belt reveals that the Johns are let go without arrest or public humiliation if they help testify against the Women.
<
p>Even respected journalist like Mark Shields on the PBS News Hour used the term Ice Queen without hesitation to define her “Transformation” to Human.
<
p>Sadly it is not a double standard with regard to women just business as usual.
would alienate the DC Villagers whom Obama has courted.