All-Purpose NuILX thread for American Politics

here's a link to the proposals

do you see Obama having this same problem? this is an honest question, I'm not sure myself.

"And to the extent you believe that he was 'taken out', the people purportedly responsible for same are part of the coalition lining up behind Obama now."

Well right, which is one of the reasons why I don't think he faces the same intra-party threats as Dean.

absolutely not

Obama recently pulled a 17,000-person crowd outside a major metro in the freezing cold (admittedly in his backyard). Did Dean ever pull a crowd that size in a big city in good weather?

i'm stunned. but obama does come off as an egomaniac a lot of the time

re: edwards, he's never brought his son into it. i don't think that's all the motivation. the whole 'son of a mill worker' thing got to be a shtick after a while but there's something very relate-able about the story, that in this country anyone should be able to work hard, make a decent living, buy a house, send their kids to college, and even dream of them becoming president..

not as a theme, no. but some people, myself included, have long identified some hard-to-pin-down inauthenticity about johnny sunshine (I believe it was one of those Political Insider dudes who was complaining recently about the perceived put-on of his squinty-eye shtick), and I think it may be rooted in a protective shell built over an underlying familial sadness - to the extent that he (understandably) doesn't talk much about it, he's also in some sense not being totally on the surface. people don't want a guy wearing a mask.

no one stays hot forever

obviously, Little Obama would be satisfactory to me. but Big Obama is why I lean his way.

i don't think edwards is so much johnny sunshine any more and that's a good thing, it did seem like a mask because it's obvious, nobody gets elected to the Senate by really being mr nice guy.

One policy Hillary has ever "made," pls? The healthcare triumph?

[Dean's] support was limited to a sizable but insufficiently large minority without serious prospects of growing during the primary

Oh, bullshit. He was torpedoed by the DLC and MSM.

Worried about "authenticity" in prez candidate, yeah, LOL.

Limbaugh: Obama Should ‘Renounce’ His Race And Just ‘Become White’

rushblue.jpg Yesterday on his radio show, right-wing host Rush Limbaugh derided Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) — who is biracial — for saying, “If you look African-American in this society, you’re treated as an African-American.”

Limbaugh claimed that this statement meant Obama didn’t want to be black and should “renounce it”: “If it’s not something you want to be, if you didn’t decide it, renounce it, become white!” He added, “If you don’t like it, you can switch. Well, that’s the way I see it. He’s got 50-50 in there. Say, ‘No, I’m white.’”

The sweetest Valentine Republicans in the U.S. Senate could give to American women would be to announce that they will filibuster until Christmas if Senate Democrats try to ratify the offensive United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women...

Then, you have this one by Russ Limbaugh's brother, entitled "Barack Rodney King Obama"

Latest talking point about Obama is the word "platitudes."

If they want to turn this race into a referendum on my career as a comedian, I guess that’s their prerogative. But I think Minnesotans are smart people with a very low tolerance for b.s., and I’m going to keep talking about how we can make things better for working families. The attacks didn’t work in 2006, and they’re not going to work in 2008. They may work in 2010; it’s too early to say.

get me a gun

Unionbusting mayor of Minneapolis, sold out the Mississippi Freedom Democrats at '64 convention, no guts on Vietnam in '68... What a leader.

these guys are tracking the web use of the candidates, incl. flickr feeds and # of myspace adds. Obama & Clinton currently lead at 44K and 23K.

Sam Brownback has 184.

Altemeyer has now written an entire book about his work, called _The Authoritarians_, and is posting the entire thing, chapter by chapter, for free online. It's written for a mass-audience, but he actually takes the effort to add enough footnotes containing all the techie bits for those who want that. I like what i've read of it so far.

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On a related note, John Dean's book was reviewed in an ish of the American Conservative last July, where Austim Bramwell spent the majority of the piece going after Altemeyer's work w/o understanding or explaining much of what it entailed.

Interestingly, the AmCon editors gave Altemeyer a chance to respond in the very same issue, which is great mix of "WTF are you on about?" and "here's what the stuff actually said had you read it."