Dana wrote:

The economy recovered, and it would have recovered even if the elder President Bush had been re-elected; the federal government doesn’t control the economy.

Are you seriously sugesting that the policies of George W. Bush have NOTHING to do with the horrific state of affairs of the American economy in 2008?

If that’s true, John McCain is probably letting out a big sigh of relief right now. I guess the fact that he knows “little about the economy” isn’t going to be a liability for him after all.

I stand by my contention… for all of Bill Clinton’s shortcomings, a second term of George H.W. Bush would have been far worse for America.

And while HW did give us Souter, you’re crazy if you think we would have scored a Ginsburg in a second Bush 41 term.

Riiiiiiight. In the same sense a parent doesn’t control how a child turns out, perhaps. I believe Republicans are still worried about quality of parenting though.

How well did deregulation work out for the derivitive market, anyhow? How’s that trillion dollar war of yours getting financed?

But can you imagine how much WORSE off this country would be today if we had to endure another 4 years of George HW instead of Clinton?

Gas would be around $20 a gallon today and we would effectively be functioning slightly better than a third world country…

The economy was quickly going into the toilet, and 4 more years of Bush the elder would have given SCOTUS handily to the conservatives (unless you believe Bush 41 was also a fan of Ruth Bader Ginsburg).

For all of Bill’s shortcomings in his ability to make America more progressive, he was light years better than anything his Republican counterparts would have done. And for that reason, he’s the best POTUS we’ve had in my lifetime (I was born in the mid 1970s)…

The economy recovered, and it would have recovered even if the elder President Bush had been re-elected; the federal government doesn’t control the economy.

Judicial appointments would have been better under a second term for President Bush, but, even there, his record includes David Souter, so you can’t say he’d have filled the courts with clones of Justice Scalia. There’s a good possibility that the Congress would have stayed under Democratic control. DoMA would probably have passed anyway, but the Welfare Reform Act would never have gotten done.

Disregard the money, disregard all that popularity created due speech or unpopularity created due to some insignificant and trivial matters said this way or that way into the campaign, but give only the importance to the facts of economy, to what is ahead and the most serious tasks in our country’s challenges and pick the one who is better per your choice.

Hope the better one of them comes out in the end.

Blue Jean wrote:

Hey, Hillary said “Please don’t vote for John McCain.” She never said we had to vote. Many Hillary voters are saying that they’d rather stay home than vote for Obama, because his supporters have been so free with the “racist, low class, old, etc” insults dished out to them.

While I would be disappointed by any en masse protest by HRC supporters to not show up on November 5th - possibly endangering the WH to a de facto third Bush term and jeopardizing women’s rights with the future of SCOTUS in the hands of McAncient - I would consider a mass defection of HRC supporters to vote for John McCain as downright treason to the party. There are polls indicating that a large number of HRC supporters are considering doing just that - VOTING for John McCain.

The insanity of such a notion absolutely confounds me.

I don’t know how to convince HRC supporters of the strength of Obama’s platform… the two candidates are nearly identical on policy vision, and the principle difference between HRC and Barack Obama is that he doesn’t carry the baggage that Hillary has been, fairly or unfairly, saddled with by being married to Bill Clinton.

Is it fair, is it just, is it right?

I don’t know. Probably not.

This much I do know… barring some totally unforeseen implosion in the Obama Campaign (and it needs to be bigger than the Rev. Wright “controversy”), he’s going to be the Democratic Nominee.

Not “he’s probably going to be the nominee”; not “it looks like he’s going to be the nominee”; not “odds are that he is going to be the nominee”. Barack Obama WILL BE the 2008 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States.

Now we can gripe about that fact, or we can accept that fact. We can be unhappy about it, wring our hands about it, express our frustrations about it. But if you choose to stay home or worse, vote for the crazy old grandpa that the enemy is going to be running, you have ABSOLUTELY NO FLIPPING RIGHT, NONE WHATSOEVER to complain if McSame becomes the next POTUS and you watch more of your rights go down the toilet. I don’t want to hear it.

As to why Obama and not Clinton?

Because Barack Obama represents a progressive policy that I agree with, because he has ALWAYS been a vocal critic of the Iraq War, and because he won’t carry all of the baggage into the White House that Clinton would… the type of baggage that enabled Newt Gingrich to lead to a “Republican Revolution” into control of Congress and the statehouses during the last Clinton Administration.

I’m a 50 state Democrat, not a 50% + 1 Democrat. That is why I support Barack Obama.

If you’re for Obama, let’s hear why, not a gazillioth post on “Why the Clintons are Monsters”. We’ve already got the whole right wing blogosphere for that.

I am very pro-Obama, but I think you’re points about Clinton bashing hold some validity… particularly the snarky attitudes directed at many of her supporters by Obama supporters on blogs and message boards. To be honest, I’ve probably been guilty of it myself at times, but I’m trying to restrain myself.

The jury is out on whether or not the media is clearly pro-Hillary or anti-Hillary. I definitely pick up on the negative tone towards her and her campaign by some of the pro-Obama faction (Keith Olbermann comes to mind - I’m a huge KO fan, but he’s getting a bit over the top lately).

At the same time, you cannot possibly convince me that if Hillary Clinton were ANY OTHER CANDIDATE that she would even be considered a viable contender at this point. If the roles were reversed between her and Obama, Barack would have been written off by the mainstream media long ago. If it were Bill Richardson or Joe Biden or Chris Dodd in Hillary’s position with Obama maintaining the same lead, he would already be considered the presumptive nominee.

As cantankerous as the MSM often is towards HRC, it is that very media which is allowing her campaign to even continue. They are the only ones discussing her nomination as being remotely feasible at this point… it just isn’t.

The math simply isn’t there at this point. I accept that Barack Obama will not be “officially” recognized as the Democratic Nominee for a little while longer, perhaps another few months. At the same time, barring some catastrophic misstep by the Obama Campaign, I see no possible scenario in which HRC will become the Democratic Nominee. She will not win the pledged delegate race, and it is extremely unlikely that she will win the popular vote. Her financial resources are starting to tap out, and party elites are quietly hinting their acknowledgement that Obama will be the nominee in the end.

The Superdelegates are not going to vote against the will of the electorate, even if they theoretically are empowered to do so. The power to overturn the primaries by the superdelegates is a power that was intended in its spirit to prevent the party from nominating a catastrophically BAD nominee, ie George Wallace.

There is no reasonable argument to suggest that Barack Obama rises to the level of a “catastrophically bad” nominee such that the SDs would be justified in reversing the decision of the electorate.

I get what it feels like when the candidate that you support doesn’t get the nod… I watched in digust in 2004 as state after state voted for the extremely milquetoast John Kerry when I would have MUCH preferred Howard Dean, a far more progressive and passionate candidate. And in November 2004, I still put aside my personal distaste for Skull and Bones Kerry and voted for him, because I knew he would be much better than the alternative.

My hope is that anyone who considers themselves a liberal or a progressive will cast their vote for Barack Obama this November. At a very minimum, do NOT cast a vote for John McCain and expect people to still view you as a progressive. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Michael wrote:

Yes, there was a volatile meeting between President Clinton and a group of California super-delegates; and yes Clinton was most likely upset and offended that a friend - yes a friend - went back on a piomise. However, most reports coming from that meeting don’t quite take the extreme tone that this decscription does.

Pam’s using the EXACT quote from the San Francisco Chronicle article, which was picked up by the AP and in newspapers all over the country… that is a verbatim citation of how the encounter was characterized in the press.

I’ve worked around retail/marketing for a long time, and one of the first things I learned is if you have a customer who has a poor experience and does NOT complain, the odds are they won’t come back. If they do complain, it means they care enough and want to come back. I have stopped reading some sites, I just don’t want to stop reading this one, hence the complaint. Bill does not equal Hillary.

I get people prefer Obama, and if he’s the nominee of course I’ll vote for him, but can’t there be just a bit of shelter from the storms?

Dana wrote:

And one that got things done that were good for Democrats.

The 1992 election that put Bill Clinton in the White House also elected a Congress with 259 Democrats in the House and 57 in the Senate; in just two years, the Democrats lost control of the Congress.

Under President Clinton, we got the Defense of Marriage Act, the Helms-Burton Act (which toughened the embargo against Cuba), and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. We didn’t get what we would have liked on judicial appointments, but, overall, he was a decent Republican president.

Fair enough…

But can you imagine how much WORSE off this country would be today if we had to endure another 4 years of George HW instead of Clinton?

Gas would be around $20 a gallon today and we would effectively be functioning slightly better than a third world country…

The economy was quickly going into the toilet, and 4 more years of Bush the elder would have given SCOTUS handily to the conservatives (unless you believe Bush 41 was also a fan of Ruth Bader Ginsburg).

For all of Bill’s shortcomings in his ability to make America more progressive, he was light years better than anything his Republican counterparts would have done. And for that reason, he’s the best POTUS we’ve had in my lifetime (I was born in the mid 1970s)…