I probably just shouldn’t go here, but the truth is that as soon as I read this:
Senator Obama would go a long way towards healing these wounds if he were to specifically praise the accomplishments of the Clinton presidency in a line or two during his speech on Thursday. That should be painless — he isn’t running against the Clinton legacy anymore, and it would probably be a good idea to remind voters that the last time Democrats were in charge of the White House, we had peace and prosperity. Similarly, he could thank President Clinton for all of the work he did throughout his life to bridge the divides in our country. This is a cause near and dear to the president’s heart.
what I was immediately reminded of was this:
In his memoir of his year in Baghdad as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer recalled that President Bush once told him that the leader of a new Iraqi government had to be “someone who’s willing to stand up and thank the American people for their sacrifice in liberating Iraq.”
Bremer noted that Bush made this point three times in the course of a single conversation and further insisted that the president of Iraq’s first interim government should be Ghazi al-Yawar, an obscure Sunni Arab businessman, because Bush “had been favorably impressed with his open thanks to the Coalition.”
Then again, my Mom always gives me a hard time for not being very good about sending thank-you notes. So it’s possible that serving as President simply equips one with a finely honed sense of the importance of expressions of gratitude, which my so-far non-Presidential life has deprived me of.
So do you think he should or should not include a line or two in his convention speech??
If he does it will be a slap in the face since he spent the entire campaign criticizing Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. He tried to portray them as racists and criticized them on welfare and NAFTA ONLY TO agree with them AFTER he “won” the nomination. He also NEVER ONCE gave Bill credit for the economic success during his administration but only criticized him and so did his entire campaign. Paul Krugman of the NYT op-ed wrote a lot about this.
It would be a slap in the face like sending the text message at 3am to announce his VP. It would be a slap in the face like deciding to seat all the FL and MI delegates at the convention after stalling for as long as possible and simultaneously opposing it during the campaign.
It is too late to play nice. The damage is done.
kurt,
Very little of what you just said has any connection to reality. Of course Obama didn’t spend much time talking about the Clinton years, because he was running against a Clinton, but to claim that Obama “spent the entire campaign criticizing” them, and trying “to portray them as racists” is utterly ridiculous.
But this 3am text message meme really annoys me. I got my text message at 4am, not 3am. It was scheduled for 7am, but was moved up when the press scooped them. Did anyone (outside of the central time zone) receive their text message at 3am? Does this gripe have any basis, at all, in fact?
I agree with Kurt’s agreement with Paul Krugman. Krugman quoted Obama’s statement that there was higher job creation during the 1990s than the current decade. He did this without mentioning Bill Clinton by name. If he could bring himself to mention the Clinton administration, it would help convince people to vote for him by reminding of the better economy that we experienced under a Democratic president.
Obama’s job at this point should be to convince the country that we’d be better off under a Democratic president than a Republican one. That shoudn’t be too difficult given the state of the economy, the unpopular war in Iraq and Bush’s low approval rating. It must be more than two months now since he defeated Hillary. He should have already made peace with her, her husband, and most of her supporters so that all Democrats can work together to defeat McCain.
The crucial thing that should be kept in mind when discussing the whole issue of Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton is that there were always very few policy differences between them. The two of them are located right next to each other on the ideological spectrum. When faced with the choice between those two candidates, I don’t understand why a primary voter would have a strong preference of one over the other. The policy differences between the two of them are very small. I voted for Hillary, not very enthusiastically, in the primary because her health plan was a little bit better than Obama’s. I will gladly vote for Obama because he is clearly preferable to McCain.
Just as I agree with Krugman about the rhethorical distance that Obama is maintaining from the Clinton administration, I worry about the whole emailling and texting of the VP choice. What exactly is the point? What did Obama and his advisors think would be accomplished by announcing the news about Biden in that way? I have a bad feeling that they could lose this thing and give us four more years of right wing nonsense.
How is it that a man who has spent 11 years at U chicago -teaching law – never published – 156 days in the senate – who is adorable – with a colgate smile – is favored to be president of these United States. WHY ?
The answer is the sane of those amongst us do not — the vast majority of Hillary supporters have already grieved her loss and move on to supporting Obama.
You only need to spend about 10 seconds on a PUMA blog or forum to know that they are deadenders who absolutely detested everything about Obama to the point of insanity. Their comments in response to Michelle Obama’s gracious speech was disgusting and bordering on racist and they *still* believe that Clinton will be in the White House come January. (They even got excited over a rumor that McCain was going to pick Hillary as his running mate — they are that divorced from reality).
Obama can do nothing to earn the support of these vengeful idiots — and he shouldn’t anyway. All Clinton and Obama need to do is remind the rest of the holdouts that McCain diametrically opposes every issue that Clinton holds dear, and has an absolutely terrible record when it comes to voting on women’s issues. If that unified message is delivered effectively then Obama should have little problem winning over the even more than he has already. (He already has a good lead over McCain with women voters.)
Want to ask about McCain’s record? Apart from the obvious courage he showed while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, John McCain’s pre-Senate record is consistently undistinguished and one which only through a privileged background and his heiress (second) wife’s fortune funding him was he able to overcome and have a successful political career.
Not exactly stellar credentials for being leader of the free world either. (But then, what are?).
But the real answer is Obama is a more than just his academic record. You can’t argue the fact that he built a talented and disciplined organization for the primary season and went on to defeat probably the most prohibitive (non-incumbent) favorite in recent history — that is no mean achievement. He is obviously intelligent, and intellectually curious (something we haven’t seen in the past 8 years — and shall we ask McCain about the Internets again?) and is blessed with many of the characteristics that people like to see in a leader – charismatic, motivational speaker, and has a steely side too.
Will he make a fine president? I don’t know. But given all that’s happened in the last eight years and McCain’s continuing (and renewed) support of those same policies that got us into this mess in the first place, then Obama is by far the safer bet for the next four years.
Above all else, I do not want an “originalist-except-when-it-suits-them” right-wing Supreme Court for the next two decades. The days of backstreet abortions, death sentences for minors, and arrests for participating in gay sex cannot be allowed to return.
Tacitus can call us racists, vengeful, sore losers etc etc. (go unity!!?)
we have thick skin.
He says that PUMA believes that Hillary will be in the white house in ’09 etc etc
but that is not true at all. I don’t know where he gets this from.
What’s wrong with having HOPE that she is in the white house in 2009 but we know she will not.
Obama’s campaign is about one thing-OBAMA.
Issues are completely periphery and irrelevant to the reasons most people voted for him or like him.
Sure Obama built a cult of personality like BUSH in 2000 around him. Why? because Obama is calculated and smart- he knew he could not beat her on the issues so the only way to beat a seasoned qualified person like Hillary was to become a rock star celebrity, become famous and drag her name through the mid.
throw in a little fraud at caucus’, bully people, pay off some superdelegates and you got yourself a nomination.
Watch for the movie later called “the audacity of democracy” later this fall on caucus fraud and the superdelegate fraud committed by Obama campaign. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8t4PKGc2Fw
The Obamabots love him so much that they will do anything to have him win.
I admit I have seen a few cases where Hillary supporters lose it. But it is much much more rampant among Obama people.
But do not for a second think that you tacitus and many other Obama supporters are ANY BETTER and usually they are much much worse. That is my whole point.
as another example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KnQDXpQq9U
is this what you do when you need hillary supporters? that really changes my mind.
In the end obama will lose.
and he will only have person to blame- himself.
Dear Jeebus, get over it.
Clinton lost because she run a disorganized campaign that wasn’t prepared for an actual competition. Nothing was stolen from her, there was no buying off of delegates and there was no fraud. Also, enough about FL and MI, two states that Hilary didn’t care about until after she realized she’ll need those delegates, at which point she tried to change the rules in the middle of the contest (after previously agreeing and voting for those rules).
Fact is that the policy differences between Obama and Clinton are marginal, and if you’d rather vote for McCain now that Hilary is out then you clearly didn’t care about any of the issues supported by Clinton to begin with.
There is a profound difference between the two excerpts quoted by Sean. The first is about a self-centered, narcissistic former president whose love of the spotlight is dividing the Democratic party at this time. The second is about our current president who would expect thanks and recognition not for himself, but for those thousands of exceptional men and women in the US military who have served in Iraq.
Relax everybody, it was a close primary campaign, and who knows, if the Edwards scandal had broken prior to Iowa, Hillary might be the nominee now. Anyway, it didn’t happen (at least not in this universe) 🙂
Obama needs to be gracious because he needs as many Clinton supporters as possible – it’s that simple. Perhaps some will ultimately vote against their self-interest or not-at-all, but the more people he can convince to support him, the better.
I think Sean’s analogy between the Bush statement and Wolfson’s statement misses the mark, reflects a little immature leftism — though not a lot Sean :)– that has plagued the Obama campaign from the start and is part (though not all) of the reason why the race is closer than it should be. I also think that part of the (unspoken) objections to Obama have to do with this race and this is unfortunate. And then, of course, there are many people who just disagree with his policies.
I was a Hillary supporter and will support Obama wholeheartedly. I would urge everyone to do the same. There is a lot at stake beside bruised feelings and I can’t imagine that most of us who supported Hillary believe that McCain would be better for the country than Obama.
kurt: Here’s a few things they were saying about Michelle Obama’s speech last night (From the PUMA PAC website)
Nice. And when she reaches out to Clinton in her speech:
And you think anything the Obamas do will win these nutjobs over?
And here, from Real Clear Politics, is how deluded these poor souls are:
Sure, a huge dose of sanity there.
I have to laugh at “caucus fraud”. I live in Texas and although I can’t vote (I’m a Brit) many of my friends went to the caucuses (supporters on both sides) and all they saw was a lot of confusion because of the overwhelming numbers for both sides. It was chaotic, but there was no organized attempts at fraud. I don’t doubt there were some individuals who attempted to cheat, but how many Obama supporters did PUMA interview about what Clinton supporters did? There were certainly plenty of stories about Clinton supporter cheats stealing or hording packets and other shenanigans floating around on caucus night too.
The co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Texas was just on local radio this morning, and was obviously an ardent supporter of hers. She said she was sorry she had lost, but it was time to move on, unite, and get Obama elected. No talk of conspiracies, cheating, unfair tactics at all and she was in the thick of things on primary night.
As for “dragging Clinton’s name through the mud”? Yeah right. Obama really hammered her on Whitewater, Filegate, Bill’s affairs, Monica Lewinsky, Chinagate (fundraising), Vince Foster….. er…. except that neither Obama nor his campaign mentioned any of that once, at all. Do you think the Republicans would have been as easy going on her?? Obama pounced on a few gaffes she made during the campaign and attacked her vote on the war, that’s about it. It’s well documented (by her own campaign) as to why she lost. They didn’t take a caucuses seriously enough until it was too late and there was too much infighting which seriously distracted them and confused their message.
Your whole post epitomizes what PUMA is all about. Sour grapes. But didn’t you watch Hillary Clinton’s press conference yesterday. Did you see sour grapes there? No. She’s a big girl and a fighter, it hurts to lose, sure, but she’s over it now and she’s now fighting to see that there is Democrat in the White House come January. How much of her life-long political agenda do you think will a President John McCain allow to get passed. I’ll tell you. Zero percent. It’s telling that the PUMAs will be going directly against their beloved leader’s wishes and prefer to see this country suffer under four more years of anti-women’s issues, Republican rule than see the Democratic primary winner elected.
I have a lot of time and respect for Hillary Clinton, especially in the past few days as she has rallied behind her ex-opponent. But for the hold-out deadenders who spew this kind of irrational hatred towards the Obamas and keep trying to cook up a vast Obama conspiracy out of thin air…. not so much.
“Also, enough about FL and MI, two states that Hilary didn’t care about until after she realized she’ll need those delegates,”
Yep Obama disenfranchising the voters of MI and FL since the beginning!
What if it had been South Carolina, Louisiana, or Virginia? Trust me. The Obama crowd and the entire MSM would be up in arms declaring war demanding a revote or seat as is.
Again, there is might be relatively few policy difference. Healthcare and energy policy are major policy differences between hillary clinton and barack obama. But other than that you might be right. It is NOT JUST policy difference. It is about who do you think has the knowledge,experience with the issues and to get it done? anyone can pander.
I read all those beautifully written and typeset pdf files on the Obama site. The ones that declared how much he believed in public financing, against welfare reform, wanting to talk to leaders of the axis of evil, anti-nafta, funding education by cutting contellation x project, “refining” iraq policies after using them as a wedge to divide party and many many more examples I could give.
but he CHANGED his views like I always knew he would.
Obama went from community organizer->state senator-> u.s senator-> running for president with out having done much in between
Obama will get tired of being president after 100 days or so and decide to run for president of the world. he could win that.
Does anyone really believe that Kurt (who is no ordinary person) was really a Clinton supporter?
There are any number of half-crazy Republican zealots trolling the web trying to stir up divisions and sow confusion among Democrats.
Not saying that’s you Kurt, but . . . . . 😉
Yep Obama disenfranchising the voters of MI and FL since the beginning!
It wasn’t Obama’s decision to take away the delegates from those states, it was the party as a whole, and both Obama and Clinton did agree with that decision and voted for it. So stop trying to make it out as some sort of plan hatched by Obama.
Clinton’s eventual insistance that the delages be seated had nothing to do with her worrying about disenfranchised voters, she needed those votes and she was willing to cause a rift in the party if that’s what it took.
As for health care and energy, even if you think Clintons plans are better than Obamas regarding those issues, McCain is the polar opposite of both of them. And with Obama in office Clinton has a much better shot at getting anything done from the senate anyway.
Again, if you were at all concerned about the issues that Clinton supported, voting for McCain wouldn’t even be an option.
LOL. Jealous much?
Give up Kurt. Nobody is drinking your kool-aid around here.
Kurt was hired by McCain to do this 🙁
I am Hillary supporter. No republican here. I don’t think I’d ever vote McCain. But let’s put it this way- when Gore and Kerry lost I was pissed for a very very long time.
When McCain wins I will not angry.
As someone said McCain shouldn’t win Obama can’t win.
I’m reminded of that very famous – and prescient – article on The Onion: “Our long national nihtmare of peace and prosperity is finally over”.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784
“I am Hillary supporter”
“When McCain wins I will not angry”
did McCain hire third graders to be internet trolls?
The PUMA sites are operated by and for right-wing operatives. There’s nothing to see there, not even the names, which will be abandoned.
@Paul Murray
Thanks for the Onion link very prescient indeed.
Bill Clinton did a good job with the economy, with two major exceptions.
First, his economic policies allowed the stock markets to hit a ridiculous bubble, causing a huge inefficiency in the markets and unfairly created and distributed wealth.
Second, his easy money policies made housing prices go way, way, up, making them LESS affordable and making loans available that people could not pay back.
These were bad mistakes. Furthermore, his personal misconduct as president made the democratic party weak, giving a horrible republican candidate the chance to win the election in 2000.
Overall i’d say Clinton was a good president, not great, and definitely not something Obama wants to talk about as part of his platform.