Tag: 2008 (page 30)

Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson makes some interesting points on why Barack Obama's foreign policy positions show his relative ineptitide in this area.

He also uses a past exchange between Obama and John McCain to show Obama isn't a fighter and may be one who capitulates too easily.

But will Mr. Obama fight? His brief time on the national scene gives little comfort. Consider a February 2006 exchange of letters with Mr. McCain on the subject of ethics reform. The wrathful Mr. McCain accused Mr. Obama of being "disingenuous," to which Mr. Obama meekly replied, "The fact that you have now questioned my sincerity and my desire to put aside politics for the public interest is regrettable but does not in any way diminish my deep respect for you."

Mr. McCain was insultingly dismissive but successful in intimidating his inexperienced colleague. Thus, in his one known face-to-face encounter with Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama failed to stand his ground.

Of Obama's foreign policy pronouncements, Wilson says: [More...]

You might have missed that in today's Associated Press poll, Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama 46% to 41%. The reason: The headline to the articles about the poll all say "Obama Leading McCain." (Big Tent Democrat discusses other aspects of the poll here.)

In the fight for their party's nomination, Clinton has a 46 percent to 41 percent edge over Obama, the Illinois senator. That represents virtually no change from last month but a significant tightening since last year, when the New York senator led comfortably in most surveys.

...Democrat Barack Obama would narrowly defeat Republican John McCain if they were matched today in the presidential election, while McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton are running about even, according to new general-election sentiment since the Super Tuesday contests.

So the AP would rather talk about last year than last month, when the big news this month has been Obama's surge...yet it hasn't resulted in a lessening of her lead.

As to the McCain factor, Hillary and McCain are 45% to 46%, essentially a tie. Obama-McCain is 48 to 42%. Then there's this: [More...]

The San Francisco Chronicle has an article today by Bob Egelko comparing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on crime issues.

Shorter version: They are pretty similar and not particularly liberal (certainly not as much as I would like them to be.)

There are some things I take issue with. For more on Obama's record on crime and defendants' rights, see my earlier analysis here.

It's true, as the article says, that while both support the death penalty, Obama worked to revise it in Illinois to prevent wrongful convictions and Hillary was an early and consistent supporter in Congress of the Innocence Protection Act.

But neither one opposes the death penalty for the guilty. Obama, for example, supported legislation in Illinois to increase crimes eligible for the death penalty -- specifically for those convicted of brutal murders of the elderly and mentally disabled. (Chicago Tribune, May 2, 2001, available on Lexis.com) He also supports it for heinous crimes.

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I'm so glad to see I'm not the only one a bit turned off by the messianic fervor Barack Obama is generating. Jake Tapper at ABC News lists a few others.

Katherine Greier at TPM Cafe, an Obama supporter, writes:

"Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign. The language used here is the language of evangelical Christianity – the Obama volunteers speak of 'coming to Obama' in the same way born-again Christians talk about 'coming to Jesus.'...So I say, we should all get a grip, stop all this unseemly mooning over Barack, see him and the political landscape he is a part of in a cooler, clearer, and more realistic light, and get to work."

Joe Klein at Time Magazine points out the Obama gap between inspiration and substance:

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Update: John Amato of Crooks and Liars, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo and Arianna Huffington are on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann. Amato was impartial, Marshall said he gave it slightly to Obama.

Arianna mentioned the two lines I thought stood out the most that I mentioned in the live thread -- Hillary saying it took a Clinton to get the first Bush out of the White House and it will take another Clinton to get the second Bush out -- and Obama saying, in conceding Hillary would be ready to lead on Day one , that it's just as important to be right on day one as ready on day one.

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Original Post

Wow. What a change from last month. They hugged, laughed and congratulated each other.

Both did a great job. I think it was Obama's best debate yet. Hillary did well and was really up on the issues. What did you think?

Great answer by Hillary about Mitt Romney saying neither she nor Obama had ever been a CEO.

Live Blog below the fold, online now.

I'll be starting about 7:45 pm ET. You can comment same as always in the comment section and live blog there yourselves and/or you can send me live messages through the software.

I'll put up some polls to see how you think they are doing.

I'm really curious to see how Hillary and Obama treat each other. Their position on issues is similar.

What do you expect to see tonight? Will sparks fly, will either distort the record of the other or will they keep it cordial?

Nat Hentoff, writing in the Village Voice, has some constitutional questions for Barack Obama.

Once in a while, Obama makes a passing reference to our diminishing individual liberties, but hardly ever in his stump speeches. At an early-morning rally the day of the New Hampshire vote, he told some 300 students at the Dartmouth College gym: "My job this morning is to be so persuasive . . . that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack." One of the reasons to vote for him, he continued, was his pledge to end the Bush-Cheney era of "wiretaps without warrants."

He didn't add that Bush wants to make this spying on us permanent. And when he's not in front of a roomful of students with the television cameras on him, Obama hardly ever shows the urgent passion for restoring the Constitution that he exhibits on other issues. Hillary Clinton also invokes "change" as if it's a medicine to cure all ills, but she too largely ignores the incremental disappearance of the Bill of Rights—including the last rites for our guarantees of personal privacy.

Hentoff's questions for Obama:

So what are Obama's plans to restore the Constitution—especially regarding the activities of our domestic and international intelligence agencies? And in view of Bush's legacy with the Roberts-Alito Supreme Court, what would President Obama's criteria be for filling any vacancies during his time in office? It would help if he would tell us now which Supreme Court justices, past and present, he most respects, and why.

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Hillary Clinton is on her way to Salinas, California where she will receive the endorsement of the United Farm Workers, founded by Cesar Chavez.

Clinton is wheels up to California, where she’s set to pick up a major endorsement from the United Farm Workers of America — founded by legendary Latino organizer Cesar Chavez. The union backing only strengthens her already rock-solid support among Hispanics.

It is expected that 5,000 will attend the event.

The New York Times says Republicans are embracing an immigration policy known as "attrition." It's a policy of tightening the screws, in hopes the undocumented will just go away.

That amounts to relentlessly tightening the screws in workplaces and homes until illegal immigrants magically, voluntarily disappear.

Making it work would require far more government intrusion into daily lives, with exponential increases in workplace raids and deportations. It would mean constant ID checks for everyone — citizens, too — with immigration police at the federal, state and local levels. It would mean enlisting bureaucrats and snoops to keep an eye on landlords, renters, laborers, loiterers and everyone who uses government services or gets sick.

Worst of all, it’s weak on law and order. It is a free pass to the violent criminals we urgently need to hunt down and deport. Attrition means waiting until we stumble across bad people hiding in the vast illegal immigrant haystack. Comprehensive reform, by bringing the undocumented out of the shadows, shrinks the haystack.

Going through the list of Republican candidates, one is more reactionary than the next. As to the border fence, the Times calls it a "reject of history." [More...]

Karl Rove has a preview of attacks we can expect Republicans to make against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, once either gets the Democratic nomination for President. On Obama:

“He got elected three years ago, and he [has] spent almost the entire time running for president,” Rove said.

Rove added that Obama has only passed one piece of legislation during his time in the U.S. Senate, and during his time in Illinois state Senate, Obama had “an unusual habit” of voting “present” instead of yes or no.

On Hillary:

On Clinton, Rove said the senator talks about fiscal responsibility but has introduced “$800 billion in new spending and the campaign is less than half over.”

Rove said that “the woman” wants to repeal all of Bush’s tax cuts, and that she can be targeted for voting against “troop funding” in the form of her votes against the Iraq war supplementals.

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Courtesy of the Dutch, you can answer a quick 25 questions and find the top Democrat (or Republican) that most closely matches your positions on issues -- you can even rank the issues in terms of importance to you before they calculate the final results.

VoteMatch USA 2008 is a product of the Dutch Institute for Political Particpation, made for and in cooperation with current affairs programme OneToday.

VoteMatch USA 2008 comprises eight candidates who will take part in the preliminary US presidential elections, three Democrats and five Republicans. These eight candidates are deemed most likely to win by authoritative research institutes such as Pew Research and Brookings Institution...

After you get the results, which are broken down by issue and specify on which ones the three Democrats agree and disagree with you, you can click and read their statements on those issues.

My results (and again, these are based only on the candidates' positions on issues)came out: John Edwards, very closely followed by Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama was third. There was a larger gap between Hillary and Obama.

Take the test, it's very quick, and let us know the results in comments.