alternative hippopotamus

Talking Points Watch

3 Responses to “Talking Points Watch”

1. eRobin Says:
   April 24th, 2008 at 1:04 pm

   Turkana is saying that an argument Clinton can make to the SD’s is that she won the popular count. Of course, given the system, there’s no way to get that number exactly but she only needs to make the case to enough SD’s that she is more electable than Obama so she doesn’t need exact numbers.

   Let’s say for a second that there was a clear way to obtain the popular vote. Would the Clinton campaign say “Well, you’ve got us there. We really have lost this one.” Or, would they move on to some other criteria?

   Absolutely and so would Obama, as we should expect.

   The reason that these kind of smears haven’t been used by the Obama campaign is that this is precisely the kind of behavior that has turned off so many of us to politics.

   I think you give the Obama campaign too much credit. They don’t use those arguments b/c they don’t advance his cause. They’ve used plenty of dirty campaign tactics and right wing smears. It’s strange to me that the idea that he’s a saint has taken such deep root.

   What concerns me most about both of these candidates is not that they are fighting hard now but that they will not fight remotely as hard against the GOP and the corporate establishment once they’re elected. That and that in my heart, I don’t believe that either one is electable, but I work to repress those feelings along with what I know about electronic voting machines in order to get through another day.

2. AltHippo Says:
   April 24th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

   Turkana appears to me to be making the argument that the popular vote should be the deciding factor since neither candidate will reach a majority. I’m saying that the argument doesn’t make sense because using the popular vote is after the fact, and something you’d have to estimate. And that estimate is open for debate.

   If the situation were reversed, I’d expect Obama to conceed. I would be vocally requesting that he do so. A second alternative would be to play out the rest of the primaries as Huckabee did, without attacking the front-runner.

   I don’t think Obama’s a saint. I do think that his base would be turned off if he went negative. Obama, after all, can run for Prez again, but not if he loses his base.

   I don’t really have enough information to say whether either candidate would be fighting the corporate establishment in the way we need them to. The problem is that while the electorate is fighting about who wears a flag pin, or what posture they use when saying the pledge of allegience, real issues of executive power and constitutional abuse go unheeded.

   What we need is an educated electorate. One that would refuse to listen to arguments taken out of context, or fear mongering, or purely bogus statistics. An electorate that takes as much time reviewing the articles in their daily paper as they do researching which flat panel TV they should buy.

3. eRobin Says:
   April 25th, 2008 at 12:07 am

   I do think that his base would be turned off if he went negative.

   But he has gone negative - plenty of times. eRiposte has catalogued a long list of other examples.

   Turkana appears to me to be making the argument that the popular vote should be the deciding factor since neither candidate will reach a majority. I’m saying that the argument doesn’t make sense because using the popular vote is after the fact, and something you’d have to estimate. And that estimate is open for debate.

   I still read it to say that the popular vote could be an argument HRC uses to sway the SDs - exact numbers aren’t needed for that. It all goes into the big electability question, which, as far as I’ve heard, is what most of the SDs think about when deciding.

   The problem is that while the electorate is fighting about who wears a flag pin, or what posture they use when saying the pledge of allegience, real issues of executive power and constitutional abuse go unheeded.

   I don’t know any real person who is fighting about that. Everyone I talk to is thinking about electability. The peace activists I know were upset by HRC’s “obliterate Iran” talk, but concede that it probably got her votes. People who voted for her like her b/c she talks about solving problems and discusses solutions. A few people have told me that they like that she’s a fighter. People who voted for Barack couldn’t tell me what policies of his they liked but thought he’d be an effective change agent. They also think he’ll bring out the youth and build the party.

   Three times someone who saw my Hillary button and asked me about the election told me that Obama is a Muslim and that they couldn’t vote for someone who goes to a church that hates America. Those were depressing conversations.

   What we need is an educated electorate.

   Now don’t go getting all elitist. While I am definitely pro-education, even an educated American electorate would be easy to lead to war. An educated electorate is no guarantee that they’d come down against stuff like the FISA fixes and in favor of preserving the Constitution. Most of the people who consistently vote for lower taxes and kill-the-poor econ policies are plenty educated. We need a less fearful and more compassionate electorate.

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