As Jennifer has pointed out, since the polls show ObamaCare becoming less and less popular almost with every passing day (the RealClearPolitics average of several polls shows the public opposed 53-38 percent, and CNN’s poll has 61 percent against — well into landslide territory), the question inevitably arises as to why the Democrats seem bent on committing political suicide by insisting on passing it anyway.
Byron York of the Washington Examiner asked that question of a Democratic strategist who, not surprisingly, wanted to be anonymous. His answer coincides with Jennifer’s, but he adds an interesting extra point: the Democrats are like bank robbers in the midst of a heist gone wrong:
… he compared congressional Democrats with robbers who have passed the point of no return in deciding to hold up a bank. Whatever they do, they’re guilty of something. “They’re in the bank, they’ve got their guns out. They can run outside with no money, or they can stick it out, go through the gunfight, and get away with the money.”
And this, remember, is a Democratic strategist talking.
What I took away from BO’s latest explanation of the Ragin’ Rev is that perhaps he should have broken with him earlier, but IF he has a flaw it is not wanting to hurt the feelings of others. In keeping with NBC’s pro-Obama policy, Russert did not dirty the white gloves he put on for the occasion. BO maintained his trademark laid-back and passionless cool. His natural melieu is teaching an honors class for undergraduates at an expensive school. No wonder The Return of the Harpy is playing so well.
“What I took away from BO’s latest explanation of the Ragin’ Rev is that perhaps he should have broken with him earlier…”
That’s not good enough. Why did BO ever enter into the relationship in the first place? Nobody put a gun to his head and forced him to join the church. Rev. Wright’s views were well known.
Credit where it’s due: Hillary Clinton is looking presidential. Barack Obama is looking like the petulant elitist he always was, but had managed to hide until recently.
My wife and I are no fans of Hillary; we’re both strong for McCain (and have been for a long time). She and I saw Hillary on O’Reilly and came away very impressed. And this wasn’t a fluke. Hillary had shown toughness and character over the past month that had previously been seen as merely coming from a harsh harpy.
We’ll still vote for McCain, of course. But on the remote chance Hillary takes the Dem nomination, we both feel the nation would be in far better hands should she prevail in November. If Obama should win in November, we may be in for a very rough patch.
Relax John, Barack will not be our next President. He will probably get the nomination; after all, the uncommitted Dem Superdels have already proven that they are not Profiles in Courage.
However, inasmuch as Obama is and will continue to be the probable nominee, Bill and Hillary will continue to bloody him up as much as possible. Then, they will sabotage his compaign just like they did Kerry’s.
Then, you and your wife may get a chance to vote for Hillary in 2012 because if the above scenario plays out as planned, she will be running. Her campaign slogan?
“I told you so.”
No “McCain of course” for ME. McCain’s got the personal temperament of Pierce, and his meddlesome instincts and economic ignorance screams “Herbert Hoover”. At least when Clinton hikes taxes, amnesties illegal invaders and sponsors boondoggles, and blame the vast bigoted right-wing conspiracy when their policies fail, she’ll be in the opposing party.
Mind you if the Dems give us Obama then I’ll grant you the “of course”.
For that last clause read “blameS the VRWC when HER policies fail”. Clicked “submit” before done editing. D’oh.
Letalis: Did the Clintons really sabotage Kerry? I thought *Kerry* sabotaged Kerry, by being a not-quite-as-smart-as-Bush, Kennedy suck-up, serial heiress-chaser who betrayed his fellow soldiers before Congress in ’71. What were the Clintons supposed to do differently? “Back when Kerry was in Vietnam I despised the military, and then I screwed around with the military while I was commander-in-chief and cut its funding… uh… but Kerry is reporting for duty and I, like, support him and stuff”. Not sure that would have earned JFK more votes in Ohio.
Hillary’s threat of mass retaliation against Iran is irrespondible demagogy, just like her endorsement of the stupid gas tax holiday. One should think long and hard before threatening to obliterate a country of 70 million people.
For all his flaws, Obama is a cooler head. Too much of a socialistoid and not a princpled antiinterventionist, but at least not a full-throated proponent of “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” And yes, Obama comes from a milieu where “No enemies to the left” is a mantra. (So did HIllary, for that matter). That doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in terms of Presidential politics.
A very telling comparison, re: Sen. Obama (D-Buyer’s Remorse) being compared to the 1972 edition of George McGovern.
Why can’t Dems see this? Oh, that’s right, they’re Dems. Sorry.
Perhaps we’re seeing a difference of fighting character.
When things get tough, Obama retreats but Hillary toughens up.
“Why did BO ever enter into the relationship in the first place?”
It’s simple, he chose to join that church because it fit his worldview. Read his books; his first mentor in Hawaii was Frank Marshall Davis, a card-carrying member of the US Communist Party. From guess where….Chicago.
Obama then writes that in college he “sought out Marxist professors”. Then he followed Davis’ advice, and went to Chicago, joining up with Weatherman Ayers. Where he headed the Annenberg Challenge project that Ayers and his father set up. He met Michelle at the Sidley law firm, where both Michelle and Bernadette Dohrn worked, and was mentored by “America is a mean place” Michelle.
So when it was suggested to him that having the backing of a Christian church would be good for his image, especially with a middle name of Hussein, he choose Trinity. Once again his book tells us that he was warned before he first went there that Trinity was “radical”. But for him, that wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. He then writes that on his first meeting with Wright, the Rev told him “some people don’t like us, they think we’re too radical”. He knew what he was getting into from the very beginning.
Far from merely living in the same neighborhood as Ayers, in 1997 when Michelle set up a panel on Juvenile Justice at the University of Chicago, where she was the Director of the University Community Service Center, she picked Obama and Ayers as speakers. They had an identical agenda on this; Ayers having written “A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court”. And according to the University of Chicago Chronicle “Ayers will be joined by Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the Law School, who is working to combat legislation that would put more juvenile offenders into the adult system”. Google “Close-up on juvenile justice”.
At Trinity, Obama was welcomed as a Black, instead of a halfrican; giving him his street cred as a Brother, a base of support in the rough and tumble Chicago politics, and an ideological home that fit his lifelong leftist beliefs. His mistake was in thinking that Wright would never come up as a problem in national politics. Reasonable enough, since Kerry’s treasonous meetings with the North Vietnamese Delegation in Paris while still an officer never came up. Hillary’s volunteer work on behalf of the Black Panther defense team still hasn’t come up. Without that DVD being sold by Trinity, making the nature of Trinity and Wright so impactful, this issue never would have seen the MSM light of day.
What did Obama know about Trinity, and when did he know it? Right from the first sermon, the Audacity of Hope, when Wright ranted about “White Greed creating a World in Need”, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Sharpville, etc. In other words, the basic Wright rant that we heard in “snippets”; Obama heard it all the first day. His reponse was not only to join the church, but to write a book using that sermon as the title. No mystery here, Trinity is Obama’s ideological home.
Now of course, Obama knows he can’t run for national office on this platform. Fortunately for him, Chicago political consultant David Axelrod has already helped elect Chicago’s first Black mayor, and then run a “hopey, changey” campaign in Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s successful 2006 race. It was a simple matter to give Obama the Deval platform, write some vague but emotionally inspiring speeches, organize some powerful mass rallies, and voila, America’s next President.
Without those Wright sermons on DVD, we’d have had America’s first left-wing ideologue President. A President whose policies could not be challenged, for to do so would be “Racist”. Talk about a close call……
Letalis Maximus, Esq. Says: “Barack will not be our next President”
I’ve heard that many times before. He has rebounded in polls after every silver bullet that hit him.
Right now – after the worst 2 or 3 weeks in his campaign – the
traders at Intrade _still_ give Obama better odds than McCain to become president.
And according to Rasmussen, “McCain and Obama are each viewed favorably by 55% of unaffiliated voters”.
If Obama can keep muddling through as he has, no better – and should McCain stumble at a critical moment in a way that seems attributable to his age – then Obama will be president. There are other plausible scenarios of his winning, too. It may be unthinkable – in the sense of unacceptable – but it is quite possible.
McCain would have to get caught on video flashing two little girls in Central Park, but I guess you’re right, anything can happen.
One of the reasons that Rev. Wright is so damaging to Obama is that, on one hand, he says all these things that are totally offensive to 90% of Americans. On the other hand, he comes across as though it’s all an act. He’s not like Farrakhan, who has a very menacing presence. Rev. Wright is a bigger buffoon than Al Sharpton. He looks like he should be on Hollywood Sqaures or the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast.
So when people see clips of Rev. Wright, they think “how can anyone say such awful things”. At the same time, they’re also thinking “this guy is kinda funny, is he serious, or is it a joke?”
This not only makes Obama look like a closet radical, it makes him look like a lightweight and a fool.
The humorous aspect of Rev. Wright’s personality also means that people want to see more of him. So while all the left wingers are yelling “stop spreading the poison, stop playing the race card”, ordinary Americans are saying “this guy’s a scream, he cracks me up”.
Saying Hillary is not exactly Scoop Jackson is a very big understatement. I for one do not buy any of her tough talk; for me it’s simply atmospherics to appeal to her emerging demographic and beyond into the Fall campaign (which she could get if she continues to do well in the upcoming primaries, despite the SuperDels not being a profile in courage). Her foreign policy will be similar to, and possibly even more isolationist, than her husband’s.
I expect her to begin withdrawing some troops from Iraq right away, and you can bet there will be discussions at high levels with Iran, Syria, and Hamas. Hugo Chavez will be a frequent guest, much like Arafat was in the ’90s, in the Lincoln Bedroom. In short, Hillary’s foreign policy will turn out very much like Obama’s would. Buyer beware.
The Fop writes, “This not only makes Obama look like a closet radical, it makes him look like a lightweight and a fool. ” Agree; that sums it up nicely.
But do not make the mistake of taking Jeremiah Wright for a joker, some kind of black Borscht Belt comedian. Obama tried that tack, with his “batty old uncle” attempt to minimize the damage.
Take radical haters like Wright seriously. They are not joking. And know that anyone who sits in Trinity UCC for 20 years has made one of the following choices:
1) Obama knew exactly what was going on at Trinity and approved;
2) Obama knew exactly what was going on at Trinity and disapproved but since it furthered his political ambitions, did not let it bother him;
3) Obama did not have a clue to what was going on.
Which choice should a possible president of the United States have made? None of them is acceptable. Any or all should be disqualifying.
“Obama did not have a clue to what was going on.”
I just can’t understand why people keep listing this as a possibility. Obama wrote in his book that he was warned about how radical the church was before he went there, was warned by Wright himself that “people don’t like us because we are so radical”, and then quoted the whole “white greed runs a world in need” sermon on the Audacity of Hope in a book of the same name.
He was warned twice, he experienced it in the first sermon he heard, he wrote a book about it, and yet maybe he didn’t know about it?
Equally so the “disapproved but since it furthered his political ambitions, did not let it bother him” idea. NO, NO, NO…. How could he “disapprove”, but take careful notes, and use it for the theme and title of his book? Unless one wants to say Obama disapproves of his own book. Or perhaps Obama disapproves of himself? If there is any logic here, it totally escapes me.
Not to mention that Trinity fits his whole life story, from early Communist mentor, thru “marxist professors”, to Weatherman friends and work as a Saul Alinsky community activist. Which matches MIchelle’s beliefs, from her thesis at Princeton about disavowing taking on “white values”, to her comments of “first time I’ve been proud of this country” and “America is a mean country”.
Based on his own writings, “Obama knew exactly what was going on at Trinity and approved” is the only logical possibility of the three. IMHO….