Daily Kos: Dodd and Obama, two approaches (by kos)

[Catchawave]

Dodd and Obama, two approaches
by kos
Thu Sep 13, 2007 at 02:29:05 PM EDT

There's the Dodd approach:

What was clear to me before, and what should be abundantly clear to my colleagues after today, is that this President is not going to change course unless we force him to. There is only one way to do that - we must set a clear, hard and fast deadline for redeployment and, in order to enforce it, that deadline must be tied to funding.
And then there's the Obama approach:

Despite the unpopularity of the Iraq war, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama predicted Thursday that Congress won't directly challenge President Bush's plans and will focus instead on putting a ceiling on the number of troops deployed to that country.
Which senator is showing leadership, and which one is preemptively capitulating?

Is there anything Obama will fight for? Because at this point, I don't even get the sense he's fighting for the nomination.

Update: Obama, the first time around back on April 2:

If President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to because no lawmaker "wants to play chicken with our troops," Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday.
Anyone can predict Senate Democrats will cave. A true leader, however, will fight to try and make sure it doesn't happen. He's a high-profile member in the Senate. He's got a media soapbox. Yet instead of fighting for change, he just shrugs his shoulders and says, "oh well!"

Not good enough.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/13/142527/170

[killbotfactory]

1. Hmm...

A direct quote versus a third party paraphrase. One is advocating for a certain approach, the other is a prediction.

Not exactly an honest comparison.

[Catchawave]

5. I don't understand ?

:shrug:

[killbotfactory]

9. Kos directly quotes Dodd, and relies on a paraphrase of what Obama said

The direct quote from Dodd is what Dodd wants to do. The paraphrase Obama's statement is a prediction of what will happen in the Senate. They are two different things. Both want to end the war in Iraq now, and neither will vote for funding the war without timetables.

[ripple]

2. Kos loves to trash Obama

If he's truly interested in a principled leader, he should be criticizing the people who voted for the IWR to begin with, rather than omitting that particular fact from his analysis.

[Catchawave]

3. Good for Kos, Obama's moving more towards the right....

...and playing it safe. It's politics, Kos knows that :D

[killbotfactory]

7. It's nonsense

It was only yesterday that Obama called for an end to the war, and to pull all our combat troops out by 2008. Kos is bashing him for making a predicition of what the Senate will do, because it's not what Kos wants them to do.

[ripple]

18. Check out Obama's plan for Iraq

http://www.barackobama.com/2007/09/12/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_23.php

That's certainly far more telling than an old quote that Kos has twisted and distorted to fit his latest effort to trash Obama.

[BeyondGeography]

4. Which pro-IWR Senator is preening for the crowd and which original opponent of the war

is being truthful and realistic?

Kos is such a schmuck.

[Catchawave]

6. Obama was against the war when it was safe for him to be....

...many articles quote him as saying he's not sure how he would have voted "if he were in the Senate". Geesh.

[BeyondGeography]

8. He said that once in a question that was designed to make his older colleagues look bad

The question was: What did you know that they didn't know?

He didn't bite, played good soldier, and now backstabbers like you jump all over him for it.

Whatever.

[Catchawave]

10. LOL....don't shoot the messenger

I'm just an idiot *intellectual midget* DUer/snark.

Take it up with Kos, I provided the link to his diary. Then let me know when Chris Matthews books you on his show :evilgrin:

What is Obama's counter-terrorism plan ?

[BeyondGeography]

11. You're not a messenger, just somebody else who uses an out-of-context quote

to undermine the fact of Obama's consistent and unconditional opposition to the war.

[Catchawave]

12. Can you prove me wrong....afterall

Dana Milbank agrees with me. Nothing wrong with supporting Obama, but please know what issues your supporting. He couldn't even ask Gen.Petraeus a question, that wasn't asked before? Oh please.

[BeyondGeography]

13. THE Dana Milbank?! The MSM wind sock Hall of Fame member himself

Always good to get a "lesson" in political thinking from a dedicated television watcher like yourself.

Any more kernels of wisdom to share?

[ripple]

14. It wasn't 'safe' to be against the war back then. Quite the opposite, in fact.

People who opposed Bush's 'war on terra', whatever he construed it to mean, were pretty much labeled terrorist sympathizers and weak-kneed liberals. That's precisely why Edwards, Dodd, Clinton, and the rest voted 'yes' on the IWR. They didn't want to be portrayed as being weak on national security. They knew full well where their vote would lead us, but instead of doing the right thing and showing leadership(as Kos claims he wants), they made the decision that they felt would do the least amount of damage to their political aspirations.

It's also worth mentioning that Obama was still an elected official when he spoke out against the war, so there was definitely a political risk involved, especially given the venom the Bushies and the rethugs in Congress were spewing at their political enemies.

[Cameron27]

16. Yep, you're right about that,

it took political courage to oppose the war back then, and Obama had the brains and guts to do what was right.

[BeyondGeography]

17. Yes, and had he been unequivocally wrong, he would have had no future at the federal level

but now let's kill him because he refuses to make fantastical statements about bills that the pandering pro-IWR crowd know have no chance to become law. :crazy:

[rinsd]

19. Huh? Obama's anti-war views don't count pre-Senate but Edwards anti-war views post-Senate do?

[Adelante]

22. Now you got it, my sweet

;)

[redqueen]

23. There's that stunning Kos intellect, shining through.

:rofl:

[Connie_Corleone]

15. Kos is anti-Obama. That site isn't worth my time.

[killbotfactory]

20. What Obama really said (response from Kos)

The Obama campaign has sent me the full remarks:

I tell you what. I think that we want to get everybody on board to bring this war to a close...I want to be honest with you about where we are in Congress right now. We are gonna' have a series of debates about funding the next phase of this war. And there are gonna' be a couple of options.

One option is to just give the president a blank check, and to say 'whatever you say Mr. President here, you keep on doing what you're doing.' I don't think that is an acceptable option. Right now the question -- one way of ending the war would be to impose a timetable where we would have all our combat troops out. And I had a bill that provided that timetable of March 30 th. We passed it with a majority voting for that in the Senate and in the House but the problem was the president vetoed that bill and to overcome a veto in the senate you gotta' have 67 votes so were about 15 votes short. We were hoping to persuade enough Republican senators and Republican representatives to change their positions in order to override the President's veto. And ill be honest with you right now, it doesn't look like were going to get that many votes, but I think it's important for everybody here to put pressure on Republican congressmen and Senators who have not recognized that were on a failed course so that we can at least see more votes on that bill.

The other thing that were also gonna' try to do – I don't know if everybody's aware of this but those people who have been sent to Iraq have been on the kinds of rotations without rest and without proper training that the army itself says is unacceptable. We have people who are spending more time in Iraq than they are back home retraining and getting the rest that they need. And so what we're going to try to introduce is legislation that says you have to at least give people a one year break for every year served in Iraq. And if were able to get that passed, and get sixty votes for that, then at least that would put a ceiling on how many troops could be sent there at any given time. So those are some of the approaches that were gonna' try to take even before George Bush leaves office, but all that is going to require some pressure from all of you on our senators and your congressman, you know, who are really important.

The Obama campaign has a real case that the AP lede isn't quite accurate. Obama did predict that the Senate doesn't have the votes, but also urged people to contact their congresspersons to try and change things. So it wasn't so much "resignation", as it was "help us change this."

In any case, I think the ultimate strategy isn't a choice between caving and avoiding the president's veto. I think it's between sending enough tough bills to Bush that eventually 1) he either tires of vetoing and accepts a real compromise, or 2) his Republican allies in Congress abandon him.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/13/162828/735

[redqueen]

21. Kos is an idiot. n/t