The writing’s on the wall for Hillary Clinton‘s presidential campaign. And Time magazine!
The editors don’t want to be presumptuous in naming Barack Obama the nominee, so they’ve included an asterisk, which you probably can’t notice in this particular image.
The small note reads “Really, we’re pretty sure this time…”
EdWoody
That’s editors, not editor’s.
And asterisk, not asterick.
Z.
sad for Hilary!
http://www.ilovezeren.com
Ryan Davis
What a great day for America! 😉
Woof
Ugh…LAME
Jason
Picked up my McCain Sticker yesterday. I have stated it before. I don’t know one of my Democratic friends that intend on voting for Obama. They are McCain bound as is the state of Florida. I doubt we will even see Obama in this state from the polls I have seen. Guess the right of corination will pass to some other state this time since we aren’t even in play.
George
Jason,
Are you a former Hillary supporter? If so, did you have any issues you were voting on? Or was it purely for a candidate with no issues to consider? I just don’t understand as much as you can love and are loyal to Hillary, how you could be voting for the opposite on all the issues she stands for purely out of spite.
Honestly i don’t understand.
George
Also Jason, just curious, would Hillary as Obama’s VP bring you back to the Democratic side?
James
“I have stated it before. I don’t know one of my Democratic friends that intend on voting for Obama.”
So Democrats would rather have McCain, a Republican, in the White House? Liberals are a strange breed.
MindOverMatter
People who lack committment to Democratic principles, like those who claim to be Democrat and say they will vote for McCain, are the reason we are in this f**king mess to begin with. This country has been hijacked by cowards.
Those of us who really want a new politics should let the cowards go and galvanize the undecideds, independents, and unregistered people into a new force for something different.
Gregoire
Hillary and Barack are virtually identical on 85%-90% of their issues. McCain and Clinton share virtually none (on the surface) outside of Iraq.
However it appears that the number one issue that Jason is voting on is sour grapes.
Almost every person I know will be voting for Obama in the fall. I dont know what sad world of bitter jilted people you live around, Jason, but I would recommend a world with a brighter outlook.
Charley
Looks like HRC bet money on the wrong candidate. Serves them right. tee hee
Bob
Too bad that’s the last time NObama is going to hear the words “and the winner is” cuz he’s getting trounced in November. I’m a Democrat whose never voted for a Republican, but will not be voting for NObama in November. I personally know at least 50 other folks who say the same. I’ve never seen such a large number of Democrats who literally loathe the party’s candidate, and that includes John Kerry!
Brandon
If so many people loathe him… how is he winning both in delegates and in the popular vote?
Gregoire
Fortunately Bob, your bitterness will be cancelled out by the thousands of new optimistic voters in other states that are coming out for Obama that have never voted Democrat.
marco
great picture of him! I’m glad this thing is finally coming to an end!
George
Bob – as I asked Jason, what are the issues you care about? At least be honest and admit that you are not voting on issues or ideology, but purely bitterness and spite. There’s no way you could have been supportive of Clinton on her issues and then throw them all away so quickly for McCain.
If you want to vote solely on personality or allegiance to your beaten candidate, fine I guess. It’s your right as an American to vote on whatever you wish. I hope you don’t live to regret it.
Steve
“If so many people loathe him… how is he winning both in delegates and in the popular vote?”
He is winning the popular vote of the democratic party(15+ million votes). In the past couple of general elections there were ~150 million registered voters…having a solid liberal democratic base is not going to be enough to get him elected.
afrolito
“He is winning the popular vote of the democratic party(15+ million votes). In the past couple of general elections there were ~150 million registered voters…having a solid liberal democratic base is not going to be enough to get him elected.”
President John McCain…get used to saying it.
Jesse
For those of you who will vote for McCain because you feel so passionately about Hillary or just not super excited about Obama… Well, I ask that you think of the young men and women who are dying every day in iraq. Your vote for McCain is like a death sentence to many. I also ask you to look at the supreme court justices that the next president may appoint. John McCain is pro-life and will appoint judges who will overturn R V Wade. Think of the women who will be getting back alley abortions with coat hangers. This man has said he is happy with 100 years of war in Iraq. He has said he has no understanding of the economy. Seriously. I understand being a hardcore hillary supporter and being upset that she will not get the nomination, but you would really vote for John McCain?
For the first time in my life I am excited about the political process. Can’t wait to defeat McCain in the fall 🙂 I will be campaigning. Give me a sandwich board and some pins. I’m there.
Infelix
GObama, Go! It’s like a dream coming true all over my face.
Adam
I love how all these haters don’t even bother to supply a reason they don’t like him. The platforms of Obama and Hillary are more similar to each other than either of them are to Kerry’s platform in ’04 or Gore’s platform in ’00. It’s almost scary.
At the end of the day, Hillary’s diehards are mostly just mad it’s not her. (Just like a lot of Obama’s diehards would just be mad it wasn’t him.) And they had better get over it, or we’ve got at least four more years of hell.
Grow up, people. You’re worse than the Naderites in 2000.
Steve
And just to clarify my position(as I have said many times), I will be working for the democratic nominee, even if it is not my girl Clinton.
However, people who will not vote for Obama are not going to necessarily be voting for McCain either. Many will go with the third party candidate instead…
afrolito
I can’t wait for the mass suicides of obamanuts, when he goes down in flames this november.
Carlos
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present,
President Barack Obama.
Get used to it…for 8 years!!!
Steve
One more comment, it is not going to just be the lack of Hillary supporters that will be problematic for Obama(the clinton supporters who won’t vote for Obama are about 5-6 million). Recent polls suggest that he can count on about 24-26 million votes, from the folks that voted in the democratic primary. He will need to muster up about another ~40 million votes to win the general election, and these are going to be in the form of the liberal conservatives/conservative liberals that he has a hard time getting support from.
George
Well what’s done is done. If Hillary were the nominee we would be writing something similar about her needing to woo the people who haven’t seemed to be voting for her.
The election is anyone’s game at this point and unlike some people here, I’m not planning on giving up until election day in November. So let’s quit whining and get to work.
afrolito
My work starts the day after President McCain’s innaugural address.
Hillary 2012!
Carlos
I suggest you look for real work or both you and Hillary will be unemployed.
George
Please, she will not get the nomination 4 years after an Obama loss. Half the party will be angry, feeling like her negativity in the primary cost Obama (whether that’s fair or not) and the other half will be so nervous about taking a risk on a “historic” and controversial candidate that they will gravitate to the safest most boring white-guy choice possible.
This was her chance. She could have easily won but she blew it by not having a plan after super-tuesday and not contesting caucus states.
afrolito
Hillary and the party will be fine, once the obamanuts fade into oblivion with their misguided messiah. Hillary will rise again, just like she always does.
The loser part of the party that constantly backs candidates who can’t possibly win (Dukakis,Gore,Kerry,Obama), will be finally put to rest.
Marco Channing
Hillary has been acting like Bush (calling Economists elitists, threatening to obliterate Iran). So, in my mind, the race between the Republican nominees is over. Clinton lost to McCain for the GOP nomination. Obama has been the only Democratic nominee for quite some time.
churchill-y
SAD FOR AMERICA.
Jason, I can attest to the same with my friends in Ohio, heck even I am considering it.
HUSSEIN OBAMA would make this nation go from a super power to a THIRD WORLD country.
Bob, love the new name I hope you don’t take bad me also using it from now on.
NObama!
For those who wan’t to be informed as to what the future will be like for Gay people with an Obama pesidency you can start with this link:
http://www.obamameeksrecord.wordpress.com/
courtesy of John Norris
NObama!!!!
Michael Duquette
I will not only vote for McCain I will campaign for him. Clinton was the only chance for the Democrats to win and now we’re going to have to deal with 4 more years of a Republican. The black vote and the youth vote will not translate into a general election. I will happily support McCain, his stance on the housing crisis is actually the best one and to be quite honest, I can’t stand Obama.
Hillary or McCain
M
Marco Channing
See–Clinton is a Republican. Her supporters are going to vote for McCain.
Tom K.
It’s not just sour grapes, guys.
In the end I’ll most likely vote for Obama, but I’ll hold my nose while I do it.
I don’t support Obama for several reasons:
He’s inexperienced; he lacks a command of the issues (kinda like Bush); he’s shown persistent poor judgment regarding his close business, personal, and political associates; a sizable minority of his followers are scarily fanatical (many of them hijacked caucuses around the country); his countless “present” votes; his embellished resume; his inability to push the right button (he claimed to have pushed the wrong button while voting in the Illinois Senate several times, so I don’t want him to have access to the red button in the Oval Office); the race baiting his campaign undertook (look the memo up on Google), including smearing the Clintons as racist, to win over black voters, who until that time had been in Clinton’s corner; and his disdain for the middle class voters who he needs to get elected.
I don’t know if I want a guy like this in the White House. To all those who are hyperventilating over the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade: I guess Obama and his buddies in the MSM (Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Arianna, Kos, et al) should have thought about those things before they started attacking Hillary and her supporters 24/7 for the last several months.
Jesse
Tom, that last bit. I think you’ve got it turned around. People who have supported Hillary Clinton from the beginning switched sides because of how negative and underhanded her campaign turned. Unfortunately she just wasn’t prepared for a real challenge to the nomination. She thought this would be over on super tuesday as did a lot of people. She got desperate and got some dirt on herself in the process. One of her top supporters has been feeding fox news and the republican media with misinformation and rumors about obama. It is blatantly obvious that when she realized she would lose the nomination she chose to do everything in her power to see that Obama will lose the general election and pave the way for her to run again in 2012.
William
Tom K – Think your concerns about experience and judgment are totally legit. These are valid issues that you’ll have to weigh with the potential damage of a McCain presidency to the country.
I don’t think either candidate was a saint in all this. Both played politics and threw mud, but neither were particularly outrageous. To decide that this by Hillary was ok, but this by Obama was unforgivable and vice versa just gets into a silly back and forth.
And to be fair, you must admit there is a minority of scarily fanatical Hillary supporters, as well.
For me, the best way of showing what kind of president she’d be is looking at her campaign. The fact that Hillary as a candidate was close to flawless (from the debates, to the stump, maybe the Bosnia thing being the only real personal mistake) but as a leader and manager of her campaign, she seems to have made every mistake possible. She surrounded herself with loyalists instead of competent experts. While as a person she’s brilliant, her management style is too much like Bush in my opinion.
Its not Obama’s fault he ran for president (as it is every American’s right to do), played by the rules and won.
Marco Channing
“Its not Obama’s fault he ran for president (as it is every American’s right to do), played by the rules and won.”
Exactly.
Kablamo
I tend to consider myself fairly moderate. I support Obama and Clinton on the issues, but think that Clinton’s leadership style and arrogant lust for power were likely to continue the executive overreaching started by Bush. I think that’s dangerous to the constitution and was why I was not sure if I could vote for her in the general even though she’s closer to my stance on progressive/liberal issues. Now, I feel like we’re safer. Its a choice between the honest guys in the election. The Republicans chose their best candidate and now so have the Democrats… this race will be good for America.
David
I won’t vote for a man who allowed his campaingn to race bait half of the Democratic party and then found it more important that Independants and repukes to vote for him to sway this partys nomination and to allow Known Homphobes (McClurkin) a platform at his rallys to spew there disgusting hate and have Black Ministers who hate Gay people more than the KKK to be his spiritual advisers (Meeks)so no I won’t vote for him because Gay people here in tampa have had to endure the Likes of Minister Thomas Scott who is a Black Minister that calls himself a Democrat and has helped pass some of the most insidious things against gay people and he Keeps getting Reelected time and time again and always sides with the most antigay bigots in this county so i will no longer vote based on what there party affiliations and will take into account there race and if that makes me racist than so be it its nothing more than what has happened in this primary and as a Floridian Barak just is’nt my choice for beauty Queen! and in our beauty Contest I voted for Edwards but would vote for Hillary. P.S the reason for me are based on having been on the receiving end of so called Black Christians neighbours hatred the likes i’ve never seen in my life before and I’ve seen so hateful homphobes in my 50yrs so no I don’t trust these people and certainly donot want them in power.
Steve
Jesse you are misunderstanding what Tom said in his last part. Obama, if he gets the nomination, needs Clinton and Clinton supporters on his side. Much as Clinton would need Obama and Obama supporters on her side. However, because of the fairly vitriolic attitude toward Clinton and her supporters from the media and Obama supporters that will not be as easy. And this is the reason people are saying she is dividing the party(IMO). Because the people who stood by her and believe in her are now going to have to stand by the side of the group that painted her as the Anti Christ. I think it comical that people in the Obama camp are claiming it will be her that brings the defeat in the general election when it is the supporters of Obama who are alienating the supporters of Clinton whom they desperately need now.
Granted if she doesn’t get the nomination we(Clinton supporters) get a “get out of jail free card” because we don’t need the support of the Obama camp any longer. Ahhhh, the refreshingly twisted world of politics.
Whipped Petunia
Okay, okay, okay . . . I’ll give in to your emotional blackmale!! I’ll change my vote and go for Clinton later this month!! It’s really important that you guys like me cuz you scare me with your intelligent anger.
Steve
Wow David…yeah that does kinda make you a racist.
There has been race baiting on both sides I will give you that.
But….yeah….wow.
jesse
David,
Obama was not raised in the “african american community.” He was mostly raised in Hawaii by his white grandparents. Though this really shouldn’t even matter. I think he comes from an interesting perspective. He has chosen to be involved in the community, but that is not an identity with which he was raised. It allows for a very unique perspective on race.
BillieXX
David,
How does it feel to be a little racist? Your rant would make David Duke beam with pride.
kisses
Tom K.
Steve,
It’s like the Obama supporters and the Obamamedia think that after months of them ruthlessly attacking Hillary with totally b.s. Republican talking points and blasting her supporters as half-wit racists that we’re going to just turn around and shake hands, make nice, and then link arms and sing Kumbaya at the Lord Obama’s feet.
Bill Perdue
In an interview this morning with USA Today Hillary Clinton said “I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article that according to Clinton “found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said. Yes, there is, and we call it racism. Hillary Clinton’s comment about “hard-working Americans, white Americans†is a less cautious reiteration of the blatant racism that Bill Clinton began injecting into her campaign months ago. It’s not that she forgets that working people come in all skin colors and from many ethnicities, but that she intends to appeal to the racism of some Euro Americans. The Clintons are down and dirty political thugs in the tradition of Boss Tweed, LBJ, the KC Machine and Richard Daley. They’re about as democratic as the NAM, the Wal-Mart Board of Directors, the Pinkertons or the CIA.
I’ve been criticized before for saying that the United States is a cesspool of bigotry, but the unfolding election campaign continuously reinforces my opinion. We watched in amazement and anger as powerful anti-GLBT groups in both parties ripped the real ENDA to shreds because it extended the numbers of people who can sue for redress and would have been used by GLBT folks, women and minorities extensively. Then they dropped it and the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill to prevent them being used as ‘wedge issues’.
Obama, as expected, caved into that bigotry when we repeatedly denounced Jeremiah Wright for his ‘anti-Americanism’ and for Wrights entirely correct linkage of the barbaric 9-11 attacks to Bush’s abandonment of the Palestinians to the ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies of the zionists. Obama likewise caved into gaybashing bigots when featured vermin like the Rev. Donnie and Mary Mary in his campaign. (Wright is likely wrong about the origins of AIDS, but not about the depraved barbarity of the Tuskegee experiment.)
The problem is that the Republican are dead set on following up on the Clintons now open racism with some sort of ‘Willie Horton’ gambit. They’ve already done preliminary polling to see what they can get away with and used it in North Carolina. I could give a rat’s ass whether or not the Democrats lose. They’ve demonstrated time and again that they’re our enemy just as much as their Republican cousins.
Honey Child Moose Moss
Hey, Sean Hannity just called Hillary Clinton a racist for her “white working class” comments on his Fox show.
afrolito
Barack hasn’t cjosen to be a part of the black community, he is a part of the black community. Being raised in Hawaii by his white racist grandmother does give him a unique insight though.
jules
Afrolito – If Barack wins the nomination, would you vote for him in the general election?
Afroguapo
+10, smart homos heart Bill Perdue and I long for the day when it’s not this binary system. As I’ve said previously, my parents haven’t voted for a winning candidate in 20 years as they’ve always gone for the third party (my dad saying, “the Democrats need to realize I am not a cheap date.”) I’ve waffled back and forth between the 2. I don’t get the gays who will go for McCain over BHO — some major self-destructive immolation at play — work that ‘ish out in therapy girls. Being the ever cynic and pragmatist, we need a lesser of 2 evils and BHO is a better option on many fronts vis a vis McCain. Kucinich 2012! we can dream.
afrolito
I would definetely vote for Barack in the general election….wasted as it would be.
jules
But when you say these votes are “wasted” and you say that Hillary is the only candidate, you promote McCain. Considering their voting records and their stance on virtually everything is the same, why do you think that Obama cannot win?
Tom K.
Bill Perdue, you run the risk of becoming the Boy Who Cried Racist. So you’re saying that Clinton is a racist for mentioning a current demographic trend reported by the AP (these trends are reported by all the major and minor news sources ad nauseam) and making a distinction to clarify the point of the original article, that Obama’s current levels of support among white working class voters was eroding? Whatever. Racism trolls are tiresome and dangerous. Our society is indeed riddled with racism; but this isn’t it. Empty accusations of racism make it more likely that real issues will be ignored. With all due respect, I deem this careless thinking and irresponsible behavior on your part.
Bill Perdue
Hello Afroguapo. I don’t think makes much difference which one wins. The voters don’t decide, corporations decide.
We haven’t actually called the shots since Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. Then the voters codified the gains of the Second American Revolution and gave the Army the go ahead to slit the Confederacy’s throat. All that was betrayed within years and Jim Crow was instituted.
Nobody expects much of McCain or of Clinton. If either of them wins anger about their promoting war, bigotry, union busting and etcetera will begin early. But people do expect a lot from Obama. In typical election year passion they’ve made the error of projecting their hopes and ideas on a party hack who doesn’t share them in the least. Dissatisfaction will build more slowly in an Obama administration but when it surfaces it’ll be more like white hot fury than anger. In either case the left will want to act decisively to build mass movements against the war and bigotry and do all we can to help union organizing drives. See ‘ya then.
(I like your dad’s attitude.)
Jose G.
People keep asking for reasons and issues on why him or why her… Here’s one reason I dislike Obama:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/05/BAM5US1B5.DTL
It may have been taken out of context – whatever – I just don’t like it because it seems like its so plausible that he would do that… that most politicians do.
Now, as far as gay rights are concerned. He may be trying to talk the talk and “court” our vote, but Hillary has always been there. Not just talking, but doing – being surrounded by gays – as has her family – Chelsea campaigns in gay bars, clubs, parties. It shows a lot to me.
Seeing the president march in a gay pride parade someday is something that may not happen anytime soon. With Hillary though, I thought it would have more of a chance (7 or 8th year of her presidency of course). Obama doesn’t seem like he would put us in his priority list.
That’s just my opinion though.
I’ve heard people say – Obama is now a movement… It’s kinda scary because people don’t want to go against a movement. Obama represents change and if you go against Obama is because you don’t want change. He ran his campaign well to get it to work like that – but people that don’t support him now feel more isolated than in any other campaign I’ve ever seen.
To me, action inspires change – not words. But again, that’s just me.
Bill Perdue
“With all due respect, I deem this careless thinking and irresponsible behavior on your part.†Deem away, Tom. Its blatant racism and most of us can see it easily enough. Those who can’t are Clinton shills or worse.
You should be equally upset that I point out that she’s a bitter enemy of GLBT rights because Barney Frank, her campaign manager gutted ENDA on her behalf and because she’s a pigheaded opponent of same sex marriage.
It ought to make you even angrier that I describe her as a rich union busting lout because she sat on the Board of Wal-Mart for years, votes for NAFTA, favors tax breaks for the rich, welfare cuts for the rest of us and opposes socialized medicine.
And what about my pointing out that she’s an ardent supporter of the genocide in Iraq and that she wants to use nukes on Iran and approves of the zionists program of apartheid and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. She’s the Senator from Chevron-Texaco and that’s a fact.
And did I mention the fact that she’s bosom buds with vermin like Rupert Murdoch, Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback and that she’s adopted the irrational christian lifestyle of superstition without reservation.
Now you have lots to deem about. Enjoy.
Tom K.
Bill, I think I’m just going to back away slowly, making sure not to make any sudden movements, and leave the crazy person alone.
Steve
Amen Tom.
Bill it is not blatant racism, and to cry it at every drop of a hat is race baiting. Fact is, the largest demographic up for grabs is the working middle class white vote. Fact is those people do work hard and get very little. The majority of my family live in rural areas with little to no idustry and work at minimum wage(1-2 jobs each) and are barely making it by. And it really irks me that if a candidate(Clinton) wants to give them a voice it is seen as racist.
You can talk about white america without referencing black america and not be racist.
Charley
It’s Ok for news pundits and bloggers to say “white working class”, “black urban” ect., but a Presidential Candidate should know better. Presidents should be about healing divisions, not making the divisions stronger. That’s why I am strongly for Obama. I never hear him refer to any of those vulgar descriptions used by news pundits.
Jason
With regards to the above claim that I am voting for McCain b/c I am a bitter Hillary voter is 100% wrong. I wasn’t going to vote for her either. I have been voting Democrat for 20 years on one issue; my sexuality. I have grown past that. My main concern is MY wallet, neither Karl “Marx” Obama or Hillary is speaking for me. The largest issues I see are:
1) Economy: I want to see Bush’s tax cuts remain. I want to see us start drilling for oil whereever it exists in our country. Begin loosening the restriction of Coal fired and Nuclear powered electrical power Plants. Reduce spending to get the dollar back up. I certainly don’t subscribe to Obama’s stand on Social Security. He wants to take one of my last tax breaks away by increasing the income level that SS is taxed on.
2) Gay Rights: In the last 20 years the general attitude has changed 1000% since Clinton brought to the forefront. Gay Marriage; don’t care about it but believe Civil Unions are imperative. The rest will take care of itself.
3) National Security: I want a president that is willing to go to war with Iran should they make inroads toward acquisition of a nuclear weapon. I want a president that makes if very clear that any nation that has any involvement with any WMD in the U.S. will cease to exist. Put the responsibility on the Arab nations to manage their own crazies or we will destroy every man, woman and child in your nation. MADD worked for close to 50 years; use it again. Do not leave Iraq until the job is done.
4. Health Care: Make sure every child in this country has some level of basic health insurance. Do something to make health insurance more affordable but certainly not a Nationally administered system; costs too much.
5. Immigration: McCain, Clinton and Obama suck regarding this. Do not allow amnesty. Start enforcing our current laws and make it impossible to get a job in this country if you are here illegally and they will go home on their own.
6. Trade: Start requiring all nations that want favored status to implement the same labor laws and regulations that our companies here face. Level the playing field.
That’s if for now; so yes on the issues I guess I really never belonged in the Democratic Party. At best I am a southern Yellow Dog Democrat; I think now they are called a Blue Dog Democrats. Not one area on my list do either Clinton or Obama agree with me and to reiterate what someone above said, Obama is way too inexperienced and scares the hell out of me. I am hoping that Hillary has dirt on him that destroys him in the days leading up to the convention; that is the Clinton style.
Jesse
apparently my comments have been censored by queerty. Awesome.
William
Jason – yup if thats your stance on the issues McCain is your man.
I don’t really think you’re a Democrat though. But you can identify yourself whatever you like and vote however you want.
Though not sure he’ll do anything requiring healthcare for minors or requiring nations we trade with to adopt our labor laws and regulations. Other than that you two seem to be on the same page.
M Shane
At this point, for Clinton to be devisiveness, when it is only destructive, and, at any point to be separating people along racial lines (with a clear intent of corrupting peoples minds is
despicable and banal.
I guess that Clinton backers can see what they’ve had. Would you say that she’s working for the Republicans. Anybody who is stupid enough to vote republican now is doing it for the most ignorant and abominable of reasons. If you have a good reason, say it.
Afroguapo
Jesse, I hate when that happens.
Bill, I wholeheartedly agree with you that people do expect a lot from BHO and that they will be disappointed that he can’t be as progressive or liberal as they would like him to be because he has the same corporate funders (pharmaceutical companies, nuclear/energy exploration companies, etc.) as HRC and will have to do their bidding as quid pro quo for their support. Hence, the reason my parents have always gone for the green candidate because it’s more transparent and the candidate is only beholden/accountable to the American people. I also fear that if BHO were to win that (i) many people would start making the prepestorous claim that racism was a relic of the past and in the imaginations of black people — one poster has already said that and (ii) if his performance was lackluster or any mistakes made, that the “fury” you mention will come out strong and serve as justification for no more black presidents (I see that in corporate America already and one poster’s reference to E. Stanley O’Neal) under the premise that “we gave him a chance and see what happened” whereas an abysmal performance by Bush is not imputed to the performance of future white male candidates for President. I do think that BHO would be vastly different from McCain however (on international security, healthcare, the economy, domestic and social issues, appointment of judges, etc.) in part because I do feel he’s less tainted (NOW) and much like what HRC was when she first started out at Children’s Defense Fund, idealistic, and because of his background (raised by single mom and married to a woman who grew up very poor, almost in an urban shack) has more empathy/sensitivity whereas McCain is just a rich clueless guy (“the economy was never my strong suit”) like Bush.
Steve,
I understand your perspective that your relatives in rural parts of America are trying to eke out an existence — it’s proven that the yawning gap between rich and poor has been exacerbated in the last 25 years to mammoth proportions. I am going to send you an article later, please take a look at it, about the American economy turning into Brazil. Nonetheless, I do feel in this case that HRC is speaking in code and sending subliminal messages and that it’s not sincere and transparent as you believe it is. I would believe her to be genuine but not for her past actions. HRC is giving the fiction that despite her living on her estate in Chappaqua and she and Bill making $108 million in 2007, that she is of this ilk and identifies with them because at the core she is one of them whereas BHO is not. She stands on flatbed trucks and effects a folsky demeanor, swigging whiskey talking about shooting with her pa and her grandad working in the lace mill but at the same time, has profitted immensely from the corporate interests that she has served over the years at the expense of the “hard working whites” she purportedly champions. It’s reminscent of the divide and conquer strategy of the antebellum south where the rich whites wanted to inculcate the common and poor whites with the fiction that they were one in the same rather than having them identify more with downtrodden blacks. Running on the “a black guy will never be President” platform is about as smart as running on the “a woman will never be president” platform which HRC is not. She is desperate and is pulling out all the stops and stooping low rather than taking the high road and unifying the party. Disparate groups such as gays, blacks, working class whites, women, immigrants — oppressed in different ways and their continued oppression manifested in different ways — should stick together but it’s hard when each wants just their needs met.
JohnRobertsLovesyou
Go Obama go!
Madonna's Boy
This thread BOGGLES my mind, saddens my heart and worries me about the future of this country. I understand why Hillary supporters are so blindsided in their support for her. I was there too…until she lost me after Super Tuesday. She turned very anti-Democratic in her campaigning and left me to look at Obama as the choice for me and for the future of the country. The fact of the matter is, GAYS should back Obama. Yes, he is a straight black man and not a white woman, but he is more on OUR side than Clinton. If you look at his voting record, he is the more PROGRESSIVE candidate on issues than HRC. Which means, we should be backing OBAMA. McSlain, who was a key part of the S&L scandal of the 1980’s, and who has pandered to the LUNATIC right-wing fringe of the GOP should be viewed as the enemy he now is. McSlain only cares about being elected…he wants power for the sake of power. He couldn’t even beat GW Bush in 2000. And he barely squeezed through the idiots that were the GOP wannabe noms! Look at all his recent activity and you will see he is pandering and courting the support and votes of those who want to silence and destroy us…the far right fringe. McSlain wants more Iraq War for Oil, people to fend for themselves in the housing slump, no universal healthcare, more tax cuts for the richest Americans (which he originally voted AGAINST for twice)and wants the Religious Right on his side. Obama wants all of us treated equally, ending the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq, no lobbyist interest affecting his policies, fighting for the weakest among us and working to restore America’s standing in the world! To me the choice, especially for gays, should be quite clear. MCCAIN IS THE ENEMY…OBAMA IS OUR GUY!!!!
Steve
Afro,
I believe you may be searching for code and cloudiness in what Clinton says. I don’t understand why you choose to make the leap that by her saying she is pulling in blue collar white voters she is saying “a black guy will never be president.” You may feel as though there is some layer of bigotry in her statements, but I believe that also speaks to the biases you may have within yourself.
I have met Clinton(but of course can’t claim to know her). I have read her story, and Bill’s story, and reading about where they have come from, and how they have worked to get where they are, and I don’t believe they are these evil divisive bigots that some are quick to paint them as. Also, please lets clarify that they did not make 108 million in 2007. That is the sum of 8 years of an ex president giving speeches, each writing books, and 2 lofty salaries. Lets not forget that before he took office their combined income was ~275,000(while Obama’s is 1.5 times that(if you take out the money from his book)) They are definitely priviledged now, however, they are both from modest family backgrounds, with families who worked incredibly hard toward acheiving the american dream and helping ease the racial divide. Sorry, but I don’t believe 8 years of priviledge can erase that history.
Bill Perdue
TOM K, it would be pointless for you to deny that the Clintons are anti-union, prowar and anti-GLBT. Maybe it’s best if you do back away from politics, now that you’re through deeming critics of the Clintons “irresponsible” and “careless thinkers’. I don’t want to be harsh TOM but your politics are as bankrupt as Billarys’.
STEVE, what “voice†will Hillary Clinton provide for these folks. A pro-union voice? No, and they need unions, both workers unions and farmers unions. An antiwar voice? No because poverty forces poor folks, urban and rural, into the military where they get killed and mauled for oil companies. Will Clinton provide a voice that says that GLBT rights are important? No, and they need to hear that because many rural locals are infested with bigoted cults like the Southern baptists, catholics and mormons. An environmentally friendly voice? No, and corporate agribusiness’ are continuing to destroy our environment at a frightening pace. A voice that favors socialized medicine? No, and we all need that.
I don’t understand where you’re going with this STEVE. Rural folks catch just as much hell from fat cat Republicans and Democrats as urban folks. So what’s unique about them? What ‘special’ voice do rural Euro-Americans need?
Bill Perdue
MADONNA’S BOY – all you say about McCain is true and we probably only know half of the dirt. After all he’s a Republican politician and the only thing worse than that are backstabbing Democratic (sic) politicians.
When you say that “Obama wants all of us treated equally, ending the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq, no lobbyist interest affecting his policies …†you’re just fantasizing.
If Obama wanted equality he would have objected when Democrat Barney Frank killed ENDA and the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes bill. But like Clinton he’d prefer that they not be used as ‘wedge issues’ and didn’t raise a peep when they were tossed in the garbage. If he wants equality he’d never have gone near gay bashing scum like the Rev. Donnie McClurkin or Mary Mary.
To say that Obama or Clinton differs from McCain on war policy is simply a lie. All three will prosecute that war, refuse to embrace total and immediate withdrawal and say so repeatedly. To think otherwise is a delusion. You need to do a little research before you say ridiculous things like that, MADONNA’S BOY.
When you say that he for the ‘weakest’ among us you’re not telling the truth. At lest not according to the fasted growing union in the AFL-CIO, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, who say this about Obama’s pro-business health care scam “Barack Obama has released his healthcare plan—and it is a bitter disappointment… There are two basic options for healthcare reform: increase the role of health insurance companies or replace them. Obama has chosen to give more customers and more public funds to the for-profit insurance corporations. It’s an expensive gift and one that allows them to continue meddling in medical decision-making while raking in obscene blood-money profits.†www dot guaranteedhealthcare dot org
The Obama campaign is financed by big business and indebted to them just like Clinton and McCain. They’re all candidates of the rich, not working people. Check it out at www dot opensecrets dot org.
Marcus
Bill – you sound like you’re upset that Obama isn’t Kucinich. But we’ve heard these arguments before, and I doubt that you can still find someone who honestly believes that there would have been no difference between Gore and Bush as president(which was the Nader-left’s argument).
Yes, I usually think Kucinich is right, but the center of the Democratic party is still a hell of a lot better than the center of the Republican party.
Afroguapo
Steve,
I met HRC too when she was running for Senate in NYC and I don’t profess to know her either. I am not searching for code but I see subtext. I am not implying that by HRC and Bill using race as a means to curry favor with and pander to fellow whites is tantamount to either of them being “evil bigots” [i.e., I don’t think they despise black people] as you state but IMO, it is an invidious tactic and a means of being clanish/cliquish (no pun intended). She could tell these overworked hard-working whites (like the one who inquired as to why BHO didn’t wear the flag in PA debates) that BHO will be a better choice for her than McCain. Moreover, HRC’s husband has had his own episodes of resorting to the same tactics. And I don’t think my feeling this way is indicative of any biases I may have within myself, especially as it relates to whites. Some people on here think that I hate whites if I merely point out other possible explanations.
Afroguapo
Steve
This is the article http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12699486/paul_krugman_on_the_great_wealth_transfer
Afroguapo
And this is ostensibly why people like Bill, my parents, and others are sort of jaded and disappointed with the Democratic Party. It would be great if there was some mass well coordinated exercise/movement to galvanize gays, working class whites, blacks, women, and latinos to vote for the green party in order to have true transformation and progressive politics rather than basically maintaining the status quo. I vote Democratic in large measure because I don’t want the Republican option to win based on what Marcus said above.
Published on Monday, March 24, 2008 by TruthDig.com
A Conscientious Objection
by Chris Hedges
Those of us who oppose the war, who believe that all U.S. troops should be withdrawn and the network of permanent bases in Iraq dismantled, have only two options in the coming presidential elections-Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney. A vote for any of the Republican and Democratic candidates is a vote to perpetuate the occupation of Iraq and a lengthy and futile war of attrition with the Iraqi insurgency. You can sign on for the suicidal hundred-year war with John McCain or for the nebulous open-ended war-lite with Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, or back those who reject the war. If you vote Democrat or Republican in the coming election be honest with yourself-you have voted to allow the U.S. government to continue, in some form, the campaign that needlessly kills ever more Americans and Iraqis in a conflict that has become the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history and a crime under international law.
“When will the American people actually vote to give to the world more than bombs and missiles, sweatshops, dubious science, frankenfood, poverty and misery?†Cynthia McKinney, the presidential candidate in the Green Party primaries, told me. “Not only do we need an immediate, orderly withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, we need an end to the militarism that has placed U.S. troops on the soil of over 100 countries. A true peace agenda means a complete redefinition of security. I remain convinced that if people in Haiti, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua can vote a peace and justice agenda into power, then so too can we.â€
Examine the proposals on Iraq offered by Clinton and Obama. They talk about withdrawing some troops, but they also talk about leaving behind forces to protect U.S. bases in Iraq, assigning troops to train the Iraqi army and continuing the fight against “terrorism.†Clinton and Obama do not throw out numbers, but a rough estimate would be 40,000 or 50,000 troops permanently stationed in Iraq. Obama, his advisers say, will also not rule out continuing to use private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The war would not end under a Democratic administration. It would drag on until the mission collapsed and the U.S. retreated in humiliation. And when pressed, the Democratic candidates have admitted as much. Tim Russert in the New Hampshire debate asked the Democratic candidates to guarantee that all U.S. troops in Iraq would be home by 2013. No one, including John Edwards, was prepared to make such a commitment. Dennis Kucinich, the only Democratic candidate who opposed a continuation of the war, had been excluded from the debate. When the question was asked he was standing outside the hall in the snow with supporters to protest his exclusion.
But the lust for militarism by Clinton and Obama does not end with Iraq. The two remaining Democratic candidates back the occupation of Afghanistan. They defend Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon, which killed hundreds of Lebanese, destroyed huge parts of Lebanon’s infrastructure and left U.S.-manufactured cluster bombs littered over southern Lebanon. Clinton and Obama praise the right-wing government in Jerusalem and callously blame the Palestinian victims for the suffering inflicted on them by Israel. They support, in open defiance of international law, the 40-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the draconian siege of Gaza, dismissing the grim humanitarian crisis it has unleashed on the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the world’s largest open-air prison.
The Democrats, who took control of the Congress in midterm elections largely because of public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, have continued to fund the war, ignoring anti-war voters. The party, as a result, has sunk even lower in public opinion polls than the president, to a 19 percent approval rating, according to a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Clinton and Obama dutifully lined up with most other Democratic legislators to cast ballots in favor of squandering more than $300 billion in taxpayer money on a war that should never have been fought. And, if either is elected, he or she will spend billions more on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will skip the rest of the mediocre voting records of Obama and Clinton, which include pandering to corporate interests, failing to back a universal single-payer health care system, refusing to call for the slashing of the bloated military budget, not urging repeal of NAFTA and the Taft-Hartley Act, which cripples the ability of unions to organize, and not seeking an end to nuclear power as an energy resource. Let’s stick with the war. It is depressing enough.
The anti-war movement bears much of the blame. It sold us out to the Democratic Party. The decision by anti-war activists to accept a moratorium on demonstrations in 2004 in order to support John Kerry ended our chance to build a widespread, grass-roots movement against the war. Kerry, in return for this support, ridiculed and humiliated those of us who opposed the war. He called for more troops in Iraq. He mouthed thought-terminating patriotic slogans to out-Bush Bush. He promised victory in Iraq. He assured voters that he, unlike George W. Bush, would never have pulled out of Fallujah. Anti-war voters stood passively behind him as they were humiliated and abused. And the anti-war movement has never recovered. The groundswell of popular revulsion that led hundreds of thousands to take to the streets before 2006 collapsed. The five-year anniversary of the war was marked with tepid protests that were sparsely attended. Why not? If the anti-war movement gutlessly backs pro-war candidates, what credibility does it have? If it fails to support those candidates on the margins of the political spectrum who stand with it against the war, what is the movement worth? Why not be cynical and go home?
“It is a virus,†Nader said in a phone interview. “It is self-defeating. What are they doing this for if they can’t push it into the political arena? Is it all theater?â€
“The strategy of the Democratic Party is to beat the Republicans by becoming more like them,†Nader said. “How can they get away with that? If they become more like the Republic Party they start eating into the Republican vote. This usually would inflict a price on them. They would lose the left’s vote, but since the left signaled to the Democrats that their vote can be taken for granted because the Republicans are too horrible to contemplate, they get both. As a result, when you put this cocktail together, becoming more Republican to get Republican votes and hanging on to the left because they have nowhere to go, you set up a tug in the direction of the corporations. There is no discernable end to this strategy by the left. When you ask the left they say not this year, sometime later. But when? If it is not now, if it is sometime in the future, when? What is their breaking point? If you do not have a breaking point you are a slave.â€
The energy and idealism are out there. Nader, in a March 13-14 Zogby poll, took 5 to 6 percent in a race between McCain and either Clinton or Obama. Nader, among voters under 30 and among independents, polled 12 to 15 percent. If the anti-war movement gets behind him and McKinney, if it stands behind its principles, it could begin to shake the foundations of the Democratic Party. It could re-energize itself. It might even force Democrats to offer voters a concrete plan to withdraw from Iraq.
War is not an abstraction to me. I know its evil. It is time, if we care about the state of the nation, to take an unequivocal stand against the war. If Clinton and Obama do not want to join us, so be it. I support those candidates and organizations that fight back. We should, in solidarity, strike with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union on May 1 against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should support Code Pink’s refusal to pay the portion of our taxes that go to funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But most of all, we should refuse to be suckered by Democratic candidates who use fuzzy language and will not commit to a total withdrawal from Iraq. We owe it to the hundreds of thousands of dead and injured. We owe to those Iraqis and Americans who will die in the coming days, weeks and months. We owe it to ourselves so, at the very least, we can salvage our integrity.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.“
Steve
Afro,
She has told these voters that Obama would be a better choice than McCain. I think that what may drive some people to the notion that you have an issue with whites is that it appears that often your belief is always about the code and subtext you see and not with what is said. Pointing out other possible explanations is one thing, but if they always point to the same thing I might question the motives behind it.
And Bill, my point had little to do with giving a voice to these folks. My point was in reference to your comment: “Its blatant racism and most of us can see it easily enough. Those who can’t are Clinton shills or worse.” My point had everything to do with the race baiting tactics that are being used to portray HRC as some demon for addressing the fact that there is this subgroup of voters that are up for grabs, that Obama has not demostrated that he can win over and will be a large component of the votes the democratic party will need in November, are BS.
“Rural folks catch just as much hell from fat cat Republicans and Democrats as urban folks. So what’s unique about them?” Seriously? The government’s ability to reach them because of geographic isolation causing them to feel like the government doesn’t care and can’t help them. That is what is unique.
Madonna's Boy
So, are you voting for McCain, Bill Perdue? Will you be one of those people who in 2000 and 2004 voted AGAINST their own self-interest? What will McCain do for you?
I doubt much of anything…except continue to label you, as a gay man, a second-class citizen.
Madonna's Boy
BTW- Obama’s average contribution is around $96. Which only shows that he is receiving the bulk of his funding from small contributors. That’s where his loyalty stands!
Afroguapo
Steve,
The reason why I refer to code/subtext is because I am quite familiar with the practice. I was raised in an entirely white neighborhood (my family being the first blacks to integrate a Jewish, Italian and Irish neighborhood in 1974) and my sister and I being the only blacks in the elementary school at the time. Yes, that experience informed me just as my experiences did in college, in dating white guys and in the professional work sphere. I am not saying that I am right and that you are wrong. But I do feel that my being black gives me a different perspective that you may not be able to appreciate, much in the same way that a straight man wouldn’t be equipped to fathom what it is like for you being gay. As I said before, I don’t think HRC is a racist but I don’t think her motives were sincere. This sort of sums up some of my sentiments.
White dog whistles no more
by: pam
Thu May 08, 2008 at 07:02:10 AM EDT
Last night in another thread, I commented again about how poorly Hillary Clinton has been served by her hired campaign guns. Of course, the senator has stuck her foot in her mouth on her own as well, but nothing compares to this. From a new USA Today interview, she manages to top any dog-whistle race-baiting that her husband put out on the campaign trail with this naked appeal.
“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.
Wow. Just. Wow. That didn’t blow by without comment, even in the article.
Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.”
Is that another variation on “misspoke”?
You see the problem and beauty of Senator Clinton’s statement is that it boldly embraces the undiscussed fear in this Reagan Democrat demographic, the people who do consider race a major factor — concern that white privilege is being threatened, that somehow Barack Obama as president would exact retribution against “hard working white Americans” for past or present institutionalized racism. You know, like this candid Kentucky voter:
I’ve talked to people-a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.
Why not?
“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”
What about race?
“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion.”
The frame is specific — that’s why Clinton referred to hard working white Americans. What happened to “blue collar Americans?” Oh wait, there are a lot of hard working black and brown blue collar/working class Americans, and many of them they voted for Obama, so she had to slice that demo down to the bottom line. Dog whistles no more.
I want to believe that it wasn’t a purposeful slip of the tongue because it’s too painful to contemplate that the black vote is now perceived as a “problem” because it skews to Obama, and because there are more white voters who have a problem with him based on his race, we have to nail that demo. Remember, the black vote has been the most reliable Democratic vote, not the Reagan Democrats. Black voters don’t turn out for Obama solely because he is black. I’ve blogged before about this bizarre train of thought — if the affinity vote is so powerful we would have seen a bum rush for Alan Keyes. What Clinton is saying is not inaccurate (polls slice and dice this way), but its use here is inappropriate and inflammatory. It’s because the last core demo left for her to appeal to is resistant to Obama for reasons that have little to do with policy differences, or 3 AM readiness. She’s brought the microtarget out into the light and it’s one many of us don’t want to face talking about, with a different name — scared white people.
She is naming her remaining trump card, and considering our country’s pitiful history of not frankly dealing with or discussing race — aside from painful, fumbling defensive fits and starts — we’re left to deal with the fallout of a “poorly worded” statement, lacking a sufficiently stocked toolbox to deal with the ramifications of courting a vote with implicit and explicit biases.
The question never explored is why are these people scared more about a black president (regardless of political viewpoint) than the prospect of a McCain presidency and four more years of failed economic policies that have left this very demographic high and dry? What do we want to do about this as Americans? Apparently nothing, that’s a third rail topic and there’s an election to win.
Naming it means acknowledging problems we haven’t dealt with, and exploding the myth of a post-racial America. Barack Obama may be the first post-racial candidate because of his personal heritage, but the United States of America is nowhere near “post-racial” when it comes to politics.
Bill Perdue
MADONNA’S BOY – “So, are you voting for McCain, Bill Perdue?” That should be obvious. He’s as bad as Obama and Clinton. I’ll vote for a socialist, communist or Labor Party candidate. If none are on the ballot I’ll join the tens of millions who boycott elections. Or maybe I’ll vote for “none of the above’ and save my energy to help mobilize people against the prowar, union busting backstabbing anti-LGBT policies of the winner, whether it’s Obama, McCain or Clinton.
That’s useful. In the meantime people like you who are prowar, for union-busting and like candidates who hop in and out of bed with bigots can vote for Clinton, McCain or Obama. Just don’t ask the rest of us to join you in political suicide.
MARCUS – I’m not comparing Obama to Kucinich. My problem is that they’re both Democrats. The Democrats are one of the two parties of war. Clinton lied about Iraqi WMD’s, bombed Iraq and starved children. Bush only differs from Gore, Kerry, Billary and Obama in that he was able to use the fury over 9-11 to peruse the bipartisan oil war. The Democrats, not the Republicans, trashed ENDA and the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill to appease bigots in their own party and the business owner bigots who pay for their ‘services’. Those same businesses pay them to bust unions, give tax breaks to the rich and cut welfare.
I have zero respect for people like Kucinich who knowingly join a party like that and even less for most Democratic (sic) politicians. Like their Republican cousins they’re members of the world’s second oldest profession.
STEVE – “The government’s ability to reach them because of geographic isolation causing them to feel like the government doesn’t care and can’t help them. That is what is unique.” It’s not particularly unique if you’re living in Mobile or New Orleans and Katrina is coming your way. It‘s certainly not a unique experience for people on the res. And in any case the same thing applies to imported workers in the Central Valley of California and to sharecroppers in the unreconstructed South. Both parties have a cynical and uncaring approach to the needs of ALL workers and farmers and they abandon us regardless of skin color, creed, national origin, gender or sexual orientation.
So again, what’s your point about the unique, special plight of rural Euro-Americans? Why do they need a distinct voice? Wouldn’t it be better if they joined with Latino, Native American, African American and GLBT workers and farmers and to fight for what we need?
Afroguapo
Bill,
I have to read up more on Kucinich (background, history, etc.) in light of what you said. I found him to be the most progressive and seemingly sincere — anti-war, trying to revitalize the impeachment effort of Bush, pro-gay marriage, etc. and thought he was trying to change the party from within although that is a sisyphean task.
Steve
Afro, Firstly, I think there are reasons aside from race as to why rural white voters would be drawn more to Clinton than Obama.
However, this article also brings up a very good point. Should we think at all about the racism in America in determining the presidential candidate? Do we ignore the fact that many people like Bill believe, “rural locals are infested with bigoted cults like the Southern baptists, catholics and mormons.”
I talk with black friends, read other blogs and a common thread is that racism is alive and well. That we are not living in a post racial society. That whites by and large are white supremecists. If these beliefs are true, does no one think that the argument made in the article you posted could have some validity? Maybe we should be asking the question is America too racist to vote for a black president? I would like to think that the answer is no. However, if the situation is as doom and gloom as many black americans believe it to be do we have a chance?
I also don’t believe that by simply asking the question that you are making it a reality.
Marcus
Aah – Bill – I see. It’s not just Obama – it’s the entire Democratic party that’s too corporate and too far right for you.
I disagree, but that’s fair, I suppose.
But they, why should you care which candidate a party (which you don’t agree with anyway) chooses to nominate?
But wait – it seems that you do expect more of Democrats…
“I have zero respect for people like Kucinich who knowingly join a party like that and even less for most Democratic (sic) politicians. Like their Republican cousins they’re members of the world’s second oldest profession.”
You think even less of Democratic politicians that join the Democratic party? That just doesn’t make any sense.
And if you really think exactly the same of both Bush and Kucinich, why bother to participate in our political process at all?
Nothing changes overnight. But we’re a hell of a lot further along as a nation than we were when I came out (when Bush’s Daddy was president) and progress in this country is two steps forward, one step back. Even with the economy – it took Bush to finally teach most people the lesson that ‘trickle-down’ economics don’t actually trickle-down.
So there is a choice this election – one step forward or another step backwards. And while no candidate can get us across the finish line towards a perfect society, I’d prefer to choose the one that’s going to be pushing in the right direction.
And I’d prefer not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Steve
Bill sure it would be better if all the people in groups that feel oppressed joined hands. It would be great if we all sat around a camp fire and sang cumbayah and could get along overnight, but it isn’t going to happen, we have a long way to go before that happens.
We are all not living in the same America. People have very different experiences depending on where they live. Peole in rural communities have many distinct disadvantages…20% of americans live in rural communities. 9% of physicians work in rural communities. The highest mortality rates for children and young adults is in rural communities. People who live in rural communities are less likely to receive medical care than those living in urban and suburban areas, and are more likely to have chronic disease and illness. Unemployment is much worse in rural communities as there are just not the same number of opportunities as in urban areas and many of these jobs are seasonal and pay much lower than urban areas. Also child poverty and obtaining food is much harder in rural communities than in urban communities.
What is so special about these Euro-American voters? They are the ones who are up for grabs in this election and the ones that need to be wooed by the democratic party if we don’t want McCain. They are the ones who receive the least amount of help from the government already. Yes the government may though everyone under the bus, but the rural folks are first in line and take the brunt of the impact from the rest of us.
Marcus
Steve – I don’t believe that America is too racist to elect a black president. Not anymore. Just as I don’t believe that we’re too sexist to elect a woman to be commander-in-chief. Sure, there are (small, and somewhat overlapping) constituencies that will never vote that way, but most seem to have been voting for the Republican party since the 60s anyway.
Democrats don’t need racist or sexist voters to win. And pretending that we do, and pandering to them just offends the rest of us even more. We’re all better than that.
Bill Perdue
AFROGUAPO my problem with Kucinich is not what he supports or opposes, but that he’s a Democrat. You say that reforming the Democrats is a Sisyphean task but that’s the understatement of the year. Both parties are owned lock, stock and barrel by the ruling rich. Activists have absolutely no say in determining policy after elections. These are not people who relinquish power and the system is rigged in their favor. Realistically Kucinich is a left centrist much like Nader, but unlike Nader he chooses to remain in right centrist party.
In the post election period the polarization and radicalization of American politics will begin the process of further splintering and weakening the twin parties. If the Labor Party, the nationalist leadership of CBTU or some one like Sharpton emerges as a candidate willing to build a left alternative party we can support them even if we don’t agree with everything they say.
I could be wrong but it seems to me that Kucinich, given his history, will stick with the Democrats. Nevertheless I think he should be a feature speaker at anti-war and anti-NAFTA rallies. And I hope he continues to speak out for us in the House. With Barney Frank as our self-appointed ‘leader’ we need all the help we can get.
Afroguapo
Steve:
I don’t think it’s that dire as Marcus stated and I don’t think most blacks feel most whites are supremacists, perhaps naive to the fact that race still matters and that blacks are NOT out for revenge to get them (why whites are mortified by Wright’s style whereas I wasn’t). I also think racism and homophobia are diminishing as older generations die off and new generations being born and raised in a different society from our parents. BHO has support from disparate groups: educated affluent whites, blacks, young people, liberals, etc. Also, his varied background and upbringing is a testament to the fact he can relate to different people domestically and abroad. If HRC being cognizant of his lead and being the likely nominee, eventually acquiesces and really wants this race to be about the American people and NOT her career/legacy, she should exhort her base (uneducated blue collar whites) that they are not “HRH’s subjects” and must support him as he is not their enemy (e.g., which she tried to do in mentioning Farrakhan to them as Michael Moore pointed out). There’s credibility/value in another white person telling another white person the error of their ways rather than a black person and she knows this.
Steve
Afro, I have little doubt that when she is no longer running to be the nominee that she will back Obama and will be encouraging supporters in her camp to vote for him…but while she is in this race she is going to consistantly paint herself as the better candidate, it is a competition she wants to win. If she is not the nominee and she does not work to get Obama elected then my opinion of her would change as well, but again, I don’t believe that is the person she is.
I believe Obama can win and would be a great president, and I will be working my ass off for him if/when the time comes, but as long as she is in the race I will be supporting her as in my opinion she would be a better president.
Bill Perdue
MARCUS, no you don’t see. I have no respect for the Democratic party politicians you idolize because they’re paid political prostitutes. Now that we’ve cleared that up would you like to try you hand at a political discussion. M Maybe you’d like to try to challenge, with facts, my statement that you support a party that’s pro-war, against unions and working people. Would you like to try disproving the idea that your party stabbed GLBT folk in the back when they gutted ENDA and then shit canned it and the Matthew Sheppard Hate Crimes bill even though both are desperately needed? Again, try to do it with facts.
I bother to participate in the political process through the medium of mass actions to correct the problems caused by unthinking voters like yourself who vote for war, union busting and bigotry. We have to clean up the mess you make when you put these bozos in office.
Marcus
Ok, I’ll bite.
How do you propose to overturn the entire system?
Yes, I agree those things suck. Gutting ENDA really disappointed me.
What is this great “medium of mass actions” you propose?
Afroguapo
Yes, this is certainly the best platform as it’s not beholden to the special interests that the other candidates have to satisfy. It also appeals to my ideals and my concerns for a better society. As Marcus says, how can we get it to gain traction/momentum when the media is complicit in peddling things to us of what we can and cannot see (e.g., wasn’t Kucinch prohibited from participating in one of the debates?)
http://www.gp.org/tenkey.shtml
I sometimes feel like we’re brainwashed in that we just get fed from the MSM and get wrapped up in nonsense over who is wearing flagpins, rather than substantive issues that effect our lives (e.g. ABC’s PA debate was horrific IMO)
Madonna's Boy
Ah…so Bill’s true colors come out. Please, for all our sake, just boycott this election. Do us all a favor and keep out. You are obviously more the anti-gay GOP than any clear-thinking gay man should be, so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE boycott the election. Stay home and watch Faux News instead!
Rainy
Don’t believe anybody when they say they know all these people not voting for Obama. It’s a lie and they only say it to breed doubt. It’s ridiculous. I laugh every time I read it.
Bill Perdue
MARCUS – the Continental Army, the radical blue coat army that pushed the faces of the Confederate slavers into the dirt, Sitting Bulls alliance of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho at Little Big Horn, the suffragist movement, the rise of the CIO, the GI demobilization movement at the end of WWII, the civilian/GI movement that ignominiously tossed two goons out of the White House and ended the war on our terms.
As soon as the election is over and the betrayals begin we’ll see the growth of new movments to take care of the messes made by naive supporters of the Democratic (sic) and Republican parties – war, bigotry and economic chaos. Chief among those, in my opinion, is the rapidly growing GLSEN/GSA movement that’s spread to literally thousands of high school campuses. They deserves our complete attention and full support becasue they’re the key to victory and because they’re just awesome.
Those kind of mass action movements trump fake elections and toadying judges and politicians any day. They produce real change. Elections and judges sometimes ratify the advances made by the pressure and weight of mass actions out of fear of the consequences, but they don’t produce change.
MADONNA’S BOY – I notice you didn’t try to disprove my statement that “In the meantime people like you who are prowar, for union-busting and like candidates who hop in and out of bed with bigots can vote for Clinton, McCain or Obama. Just don’t ask the rest of us to join you in political suicide.†Why is that?
Why do you Democrats always resort to innuendo and sniping? Can’t you do better than just blindly following the lead of anti-GLBT backstabbers like Barney Frank, mean spirited gay bashers like DNC Chief of Staff and pentecostal cult leader Leah Daughtry, racist Dixiecrats like Billery and Bush supporters like Feinstein and Lieberman? What a sad collection of idols you worship.
Tom K.
Bill’s steady stream of hyperbolic statements, his wildly careening assumptions about people he doesn’t know, and his angry, accusatory “you people” finger-pointing, along with his inability to deal with situations as they exist in the real world, dooms his arguments and his political efforts to Quixotic failure and futility. “The world sucks and it’s your fault, and your fault, and your fault.”
I agree that, for the most part, Dems and Repubs both suck. I always say that the people who are most drawn toward political office are those who have no business in that kind of work. They tend to be a vain, self-interested lot. But that’s reality, and we have to work with it. These fantasies of a rainbow coalition rising up and taking over will never come to pass.
We all have our personal visions of utopia; most of us, however, recognize that they won’t ever be realized and that we need to do our best to work with what we’ve got. Bill, on the other hand, throws tantrums and attacks people who aren’t committed to living in his personal fantasy world.
And for what it’s worth, I don’t deem all critics of the Clintons irresponsible and careless thinkers, just those who scream racism at every perceived slight. If I were a psychotherapist, I might even diagnose such a person with a cluster B personality disorder, either Narcissistic or Antisocial. It’s all about the attention and the aggression.
Bill Perdue
TOM K – it seems to be the end of the road for the bankrupt politics of Billary. Nothing works for her. She tried wrapping herself in the Stars and Stripes and called for nuclear strikes on Iran. People began think of her as war loving loony. Then she and Bill wrapped themselves in the Stars and Bars and played a whole deck of race cards. But even that tried and true Dixiecrat maneuver failed, She got shot down for her efforts.
All the hissy fits in the world won’t change that. Nor will whining, bitterness and trying to shift the blame to everything and everyone except your own reactionary, cynical politics and the bankrupt candidates you fawn over.
You have to quite repeating your mantra that “It’s like the Obama supporters and the Obamamedia think that after months of them ruthlessly attacking Hillary with totally b.s. Republican talking points and blasting her supporters as half-wit racists that we’re going to just turn around and shake hands, make nice, and then link arms and sing Kumbaya at the Lord Obama’s feet.†It paranoid, not reality based and you piss off all the Obama supporters.
Is it any wonder that all those Obama supporters think you’re a ‘half-wit racist’ Don’t you think your time would be better spent examining why they think that. But if you just can’t bring yourself to face the music and if it makes you feel better then just go ahead and have another hissy fit. We’ll understand. It’s been rough on all you hacks and shills for Billary. You had to watch slack jawed as your favorite rightwing bigoted candidate was pushed to the ground, KO’d, and swept into history’s garbage pit. But not to worry, there are still two clones of Billary left standing and in November you’ll get to pick one of them. Small consolation, but you’ll have to live with it.
Afroguapo
Op-Ed Columnist
Seeds of Destruction
By BOB HERBERT
The Clintons have never understood how to exit the stage gracefully.
Their repertoire has always been deficient in grace and class. So there was Hillary Clinton cold-bloodedly asserting to USA Today that she was the candidate favored by “hard-working Americans, white Americans,†and that her opponent, Barack Obama, the black candidate, just can’t cut it with that crowd.
“There’s a pattern emerging here,†said Mrs. Clinton.
There is, indeed. There was a name for it when the Republicans were using that kind of lousy rhetoric to good effect: it was called the Southern strategy, although it was hardly limited to the South. Now the Clintons, in their desperation to find some way — any way — back to the White House, have leapt aboard that sorry train.
He can’t win! Don’t you understand? He’s black! He’s black!
The Clintons have been trying to embed that gruesomely destructive message in the brains of white voters and superdelegates for the longest time. It’s a grotesque insult to African-Americans, who have given so much support to both Bill and Hillary over the years.
(Representative Charles Rangel of New York, who is black and has been an absolutely unwavering supporter of Senator Clinton’s White House quest, told The Daily News: “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.â€)
But it’s an insult to white voters as well, including white working-class voters. It’s true that there are some whites who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance. But the United States is in a much better place now than it was when people like Richard Nixon, George Wallace and many others could make political hay by appealing to the very worst in people, using the kind of poisonous rhetoric that Senator Clinton is using now.
I don’t know if Senator Obama can win the White House. No one knows. But to deliberately convey the idea that most white people — or most working-class white people — are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election is a slur against whites.
The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the Clintons would be on their best behavior.
Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.
Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.
Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.
Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.
Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.â€
It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.
So class is not a Clinton forte.
But it’s one thing to lack class and a sense of grace, quite another to deliberately try and wreck the presidential prospects of your party’s likely nominee — and to do it in a way that has the potential to undermine the substantial racial progress that has been made in this country over many years.
The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame.
Bill Perdue
ABC News reported that three recipients of the last minute pardons of “President Bill Clinton in January 2001 have donated thousands of dollars to the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton. ‘It’s not illegal,’ Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told ABC News. ‘But, of course, it’s inappropriate and she should return the money. It does raise the appearance that this is payback.’†You can read the full story at ABC News, where its story ID is 3866786.
Clinton was never prosecuted for these criminal pardons and commutations which include a the long list of cocaine dealers and even some uberrich criminals like Marc Rich, whose ex-wife Denise ‘donated’ millions in contributions to the Democratic National Committee, Hillary’s campaign, Bill’s Presidential Library and the Clintons’ furniture buying spree. There’s not a chance in hell he’ll ever be prosecuted because the fix is on: all the documents related to them have been conveniently sealed.
The only crime Clinton was prosecuted for was getting a blowjob. Bush’s Attorneys’ General never went after him for his many crimes, just as Clinton’s AG Janet Reno never prosecuted Bush’s father for his crimes. Bush seniors is guilty of war crimes such as the invasion of Panama which saw the USAF engaging in deliberate terrorist bombing of working class neighborhoods to panic the resistance.
Bush Sr. and Clinton also engaged in a ruthless blockade of food and medicines that led to the deaths of large numbers of Iraqi children and other defenseless people. To justify their actions they committed another crime. Bush Sr. and Clinton blatantly and repeatedly lied about Iraqi WMD’s, which didn’t exist or were destroyed and about Iraqi connections to Al Qaida, who were in fact the deadly enemies of Hussein’s secular Baathist regime.
Similarly Bush Jr., Powell, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Gates will never be prosecuted for crimes against humanity like the murder of over a million Iraqis or for justifying it with a campaign of lies that would have made Goebbels and Ribbentrop proud. Leading Democrats like Pelosi and Reid have prohibited moves to impeach them and won’t permit convening an International War Crimes Tribunal.
The incoming Obama or McCain administrations won’t lift a finger against Bush and his partners in crime because they both plan on continuing the war and have said so repeatedly. That means, among other things, that the US will continue arming the religious jihadist death squads who routinely hunt down and murder hundreds of Iraqi gays and lesbians. We’ll have to add a new category to the reasons we oppose the twin parties of bigotry, union busting and war – criminality.
An excellent overview of the question of criminality by the last few presidents can be found at the always useful Alternet site, story ID 64345.
Most people don’t want to know about the US armed jihadist death squads because it starkly removes all illusions about the nature of the genocide there. Exceptions include prowar Democrats and Republicans and islamophobes like Hells Kitchen Guy, who encourages the murder of Arabs because they threaten the ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies of the zionists in Palestine. The real story can be found at the Iraqi GLBT site at iraqilgbtuk dot blogspot dot com. You can also make a contribution to reopen some of the desperately needed safe houses they had to close. The safe houses are a small step on the road to providing safety for the young gays and lesbians preyed upon by the US armed jihadists. The only real solution is the total and immediate withdrawal of US forces back to the US and cutting the purse stings that pay for the zionists inhuman and illegal treatment of Palestinians.
M Shane
Bill: There are several points on which I respectfully disagree. One is simple, the other intrenched in compexity.
First of all, I’m not sure that you have any basis whatsoever for believing in the idea that Obama would continue the War, when he has been one of the few outspoken adversaries and is literally riding on a serious anti-war platform. A great deal of his support rests on this conviction and I doubt that he would abandon it.
The other more conmplex issue is that while . as you know I’m as much a supporter of the labor or indeed socialist sensability, there are certain facts about the nature of the U.S economy which you overlook.
The U.S ecomomy is almost entirely invested in imperialism, in making war and manufacturing armaments and munitions.
Due to a variety of factors, like all empires, the U.S makes almost nothing itself, we take everything from all of the countries we dominate. We have military bases in 150 countries which exist to protect our corporate ventures thier. We have engaged in 30 major conflicts and around 200 engagements since WW2, with the plane of protecting our “interests”(which means stealing from other people). We spend approxametly 1trillion dollars /year to keep this venture going.
My question for you is where are we getting this fantastical labor force to form any meaningful coalition, when most of our labor is done overseas. This is of course a situation “the military-industrial complex” which we have been warned about since Geo. Washington, but which we are stuck in, mainly because the process has occured seemlessly since WW2 as England and the European powers gave up thier Empires in the realization that they had been treating people prety much as Hitler wanted to treat them.
When the american people don’nt even know,
the situation we are in, that to change things we have to radically reduce this empire and start to become self sufficient, we are better off
relying on someone in which there is some hope (all be it vague) of pulling our tentacles in.
The situation of the U.S. is hazardous, and far from what i think is even survivable, but you seem to want to fight an elephant with a mouse. What makes you think that you are asking more than another Nader spill off of votes, which I think we can hardly stand to lose. I’m not sure of what your constructive object is. If Obama really wants, and wanted to end the Iraq war, it means to me that he has
more plans in the direction of undoing U.S.imperialism , and undoing m8ch of the damage we have done inthe world and to ourselves.
Bill Perdue
Mark, get real. Neither McCain nor Obama will engage in more than token withdrawals and then they’ll proceed with the war. Obama is for ‘phased withdrawal, not total and immediate withdrawal and that makes all the difference in the world.
In the run-up to the 1968 Presidential election liberal warhawks like LBJ and Hubert Humphrey were for ‘phased withdrawal’, and so was conservative warhawk Nixon. They said “The wars a mess and maybe we responsible for part of it, but now we have to stay the course for the sake of democracy.†When Nixon won the election there were 200,000 US troops in Nam. He began a ‘phased withdrawal’ of 90,000 troops and then quickly built up strength to 500,000 and expanded the war to Laos and Cambodia. The war dragged on until and hundreds of thousands more Vietnamese and tens of thousands more GI’s were murdered by Democratic and Republican politicians and added to the death toll.
The US was defeated by the Vietnamese resistance and the US GI and civilian anti-war movements.
The US is in Iraq for the oil. Goldman Sachs’ economic analysts just projected that the cost of a gallon of gas could easily reach $7.00 in 2009 based on a cost of about $200.00 a barrel of oil. The US investment of billions in permanent US military bases and over $750 million dollars in a colonial embassy complex is a clear signal that the war is not going to end soon.
As in Vietnam all the ingredients are there for another defeat US efforts are world hegemony. The GI antiwar movement is growing. In an Oct 24, 2007 article IPS news service reported that “Iraq war veterans now stationed at a base here say that morale among U.S. soldiers in the country is so poor, many are simply parking their Humvees and pretending to be on patrol, a practice dubbed ‘search and avoid’ missions. Phil Aliff is an active duty soldier with the 10th Mountain Division. ‘Morale was incredibly low.’ According to Aliff, their mission was to help the Iraqi Army ‘stand up’in the Abu Ghraib area of western Baghdad, but in fact his platoon was doing all the fighting without support from the Iraqis they were supposedly preparing to take control of the security situation. ‘I never heard of an Iraqi unit that was able to operate on their own,’ said Aliff, who is now a member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). ‘The only reason we were replaced by an Iraqi Army unit was for publicity.’â€
Of particular importance is the growth of the labor sector of the antiwar movement. On May Day this year the ILWU closed down all twenty plus US west coast ports to protest against the war. The AFL-CIO is on record supporting any of the efforts of US labor Against the War. And as for your question “Where have all the workers gone†all I can say is that in spite of the best efforts of union busters like Obama, McCain and the Clintons we’re still here. In fact unions are growing more rapidly that at any time since the depression and its immediate aftermath. You’re just going to have to read the papers, Mark, its all there. Try out the website of Alternet. It carries a lot of help news summaries.
The objective of the antiwar movement, the struggle for GLBT equality and union building efforts is to clean up the mess created by Democratic and Republican voters no matter which is in power.
Bill Perdue
I screwed up. “It sould read “Nixon won the election there were almost 500,000 (not 200,000) US troops in Nam.”
David
Honestly, I’m so shocked by some of what I’m reading here. Anyone who says they supported Hillary but then, due to her losing the primary, will not only vote for McCain but will also campaign for him, has no political ideology. You are clearly voting for perceived personality, or political entitlement, or some other meaningless gesture. If you look SOLELY at the issues, Obama and Hillary are nearly identical. Anyone who believes McCain will be better for gays then Obama is dangerously uninformed.
And again, to use Obama’s full name as if it were a weapon is bigoted and a pathetic play on ignorant American fears. I, and all my friends, will proudly be voting for Obama.
L.
Congratulations President John Mcain!
The democrats did this to themselves.
No experience equals no votes!
sign me a former democrat!
Marcus
So, instead you’ll vote for John McCain, the candidate with three decade of experience in making the wrong decisions?
L.
Yes, Marcus, I will vote for John McCain. I see him as the lesser of two evils. We don’t know enough about obama to have any idea how he would handle any situation.
McCain has been a centrist republican for the most part.
Experience is what counts; we can’t afford to train a president.
Obama scares the hell out of me! And the democrats can take back the white house in 2012! Unless they do something stupid like nominate obama again or someone else with no experience.
NickC
I started this campaign backing Hilary, on grounds of her experience and competence. Then I watched what a mess her campaign became–torn by infighting, lack of direction from Hilary herself, and bad expense management. So much for experience! If she can’t run an effective campaign operation, what makes you think she’ll be a good president?
But beyond that:
At the end of the day, the amount of hands-on experience a president has is less important than who he/she appoints to run the actual administration. The Bush administration isn’t just George W’s failure–the disasters have been due to the incompetent Republican hacks he appointed in positions from cabinet secretaries down.
The Republican party has shown that it cannot run the government. If Obama becomes president, he’ll be selecting from the Democratic stable and appointing many of the same people Hilary would likely appoint to office. If McCain becomes president, you’re going to get the same incompetents who have made these last eight years a disaster for America.
tpagy
Yeah got it in the mail and threw it in the trash!