Let's All Take a Deep Breath

[emilyg]

Although there are fifteen state primaries to go, the air is thick with what feels a lot like an Obama victory. The string of consecutive contests he's won and the sometimes shocking margins (64-35% in Virginia? 68-31% in Washington??) by which he's defeated Hillary Clinton smell a lot like a tipping point. So it's worth stopping for a moment to consider what we're doing -- who we want our nominee to be, who we want our next president to be, and what we want him, or her, to accomplish.

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In 2004, on the eve of an expected Howard Dean landslide, John Kerry started to make the "electability" argument, viz. that he could defeat President Bush and Dean could not. Dean was too confrontational, he said, too angry. Never mind that this was exactly the line the Republicans had been cynically proffering -- Dean's anger as disqualification to lead -- Kerry went on to victory on the heels of a charm offensive. He was a nice guy. He had great teeth. He had friends on both sides of the aisle. (He even asked his "friend" John McCain to be his running mate!) Democratic primary voters bought it, and nominated a smile in a Brooks Brothers suit to run against the Republican meat grinder. I won't bore you with the rest of the recap.

My question is obvious: Are we about to do the same thing again?

This is not a pro-Hillary column. I spent much of 2007 bemoaning the seeming inevitability of Hillary's nomination. It didn't have much to do with her politics, or with so-called "Clinton Fatigue" (I can think of a hell of a lot of things I'm more tired of than the Clintons...), but with my fear that a Clinton nomination would subject us to another year, perhaps more, of vicious, slanderous, sexist, foaming-at-the-mouth Republican smear campaigns; and also with a sneaking suspicion that many people would blame the victim (as many people have done in Bill's case) for the poisonous, vicious, filthy, rabid, etc., political atmosphere; and that the combination of attacks and blaming the victim and general reluctance to elect a woman president made it unlikely she could win.

In other words, my fear of Hillary was actually fear of the Republicans. The good liberal in me hoped for a more rational, less bloodthirsty political environment and hoped a less polarizing nominee might appease the
more http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-foster-altschul/lets-all-take-a-deep-bre_b_87161.html

[bridgit]

1. k&r for the "fifteen state primaries to go"

:thumbsup:

[peacetheonlyway]

2. Howard Dean was arrogant and so was trippi

they failed to do backroom caucus deals with Edwards, gephart and others and
Kerry smart and shrewd won in iowa on a wing and a prayer and some good campaign strategy.

People loved dean, the citizens voted for dean 3 to 1 versus kerry who was broke going into iowa.

the truth is that dean lost his own election. he was not beaten by kerry but rigged by kerry at the caucus level
which we are finding is not true one vote one citizen as it should be.

until we fix our system to be representative of the people we will have this wonder in the back of our head, if someone just did something more strategic like buy off the super delegates, they would be the dem. candidate (and I won't be surprised when hillary wins the nomination over superdelegates versus the public outcry and now clear lead for obama).

Don't try to say kerry did anything right.

it was more like he fought dirty and won.

and the mainstream media killed dean weeks before iowa..

[MonkeyFunk]

3. Are you saying Kerry

didn't get more votes in Iowa than Dean?

[lligrd]

4. How Does That Make Him Arrogant?

I didn't find him arrogant. In fact, he was quite down to earth. Refusing to play dirty does not make one arrogant, it makes one moral.

[lligrd]

5. I Think It Is Much More Likely That We Will Be Doing It Again

if we kill the movement Obama has started. It wasn't Dean's anger, it was his lack of approval by the DLC.

[FrenchieCat]

6. I've thought about it......

and yes, I want Obama as the nominee!

And no, I don't want to go back to the 1990s, when Bill Clinton gave away the store!

Thanks.

[XemaSab]

7. Obama is running against the full force of the Clinton machine

and making his victories look easy.

Neither Gore nor Kerry had to fight a pitched primary battle, and I think Obama is stronger for having had this experience. There's no way the man's going to sit on a republican smear for weeks on end and not fight back, as I think he's shown in the last couple days.

I think Obama can do what Gore and Kerry could not, and really take it to the streets. :patriot:

[Voice for Peace]

11. what's peculiar to me

is that Hillary is claiming to be better suited to run a successful political
campaign in the GE, when her campaign so far is so unsuccessful.

[crispini]

8. Good read.

Worth considering:

What I see is the need to return this country to the principles on which it was founded. I see a need to restore the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments, which have been shredded by Bush and his Republican subordinates. I see a need to restore Habeas Corpus. I see a need for our country to stop torturing people, stop sending them to other countries to be tortured and killed, stop imprisoning them without charge, without counsel, without trial. I see a need to close down the obscenity that is Guantanamo. I see a need to finally do something about climate change. I see a need to address the drastic widening of wealth disparity in this country. I see a desperate need to reform the health insurance system, which is not only leaving 40 million people without health care but destroying American businesses.

Do you want these things, too? Well, I know for a fact that the Republicans don't agree with you on any of them. So who is it we're going to win over with the Power of Hope? When Senator Obama talks about compromise, what, exactly, does he mean? Are we willing to forget about, say, the 4th and 5th Amendments, if we can get some movement on the 1st and 8th? Are we willing to allow waterboarding on even-numbered days only? Won't we all feel better when there are only 20 million people in this preposterously wealthy country who can't afford to see a doctor?

The Republicans lost big in the 2006 elections -- and yet there are more soldiers in Iraq now than there were 18 months ago. How's that for compromise?

I'm not interested in a president who wants to sit down over coffee and talk compromise with people who are not going to compromise. I'm interested in someone who is going to fight like hell to move the country back in the right direction.

[avrdream]

9. Where is that from?

Sounds interesting.

[crispini]

10. Another snip from the link in the OP

:hi: