Election Reader

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

• Wilting Over Waffles | New York Times | Maureen Dowd:

  "...Before they devour themselves once more, perhaps the Democrats will take a cue from Dr. Seuss’s 'Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!' (The writer once mischievously redid it for his friend Art Buchwald as 'Richard M. Nixon Will You Please Go Now!') They could sing:
  
  'The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Just go. ... I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Hillary R. Clinton, will you please go now! You can go on skates. You can go on skis. ... You can go in an old blue shoe.
  
  Just go, go, GO!'”

• Obama's Sweeping Foreign Policy Critique | AlterNet:

  "Democrats should not have to act like Republicans to pass some test on national security. It's time to end the politics of fear...."

• The Real McCain on Race and Immigration | AlterNet:

  "It's not a pretty picture...."

• Let's Party Like It’s 1932 | Election 2008 | AlterNet:

  "Obama has the potential to become as great a president as FDR, while activists have the potential to prompt change comparable to the New Deal...."

• Robert Creamer | The Huffington Post:

  "Last Night Clinton Won the Pennsylvania Primary, but Lost the War for the Nomination..."

• Hillary's New Inevitability | The Huffington Post | Dylan Loewe:

  "Hillary Clinton scored a decisive victory against Barack Obama in Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary. But underlying the numbers, there is a new kind of inevitability on the horizon. Certainly her campaign will use the night's victory to propel the race forward into Indiana and North Carolina, hoping against hope that few noticed what actually transpired. But with her luck running as perilously low as her campaign war chest, it would seem improbable that the media would provide her cover yet again.
  
  After tonight, despite an apparent ten point victory in Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton is no longer electable in a general election...."

• Hillary Turns Up Heat, Threatens to "Obliterate" Iran | AlterNet:

  "Is the campaign trail the best place to ratchet up the rhetoric against Iran? Clinton thinks so.
  
  How proud the Clintonistas must be. They have learned how to rival what Hillary once termed the "vast right-wing conspiracy" in the effort to destroy a viable Democratic leader who dares to stand in the way of their ambitions. The tactics used to kneecap Barack Obama are the same as had been turned on Bill Clinton in earlier times, from radical-baiting associates to challenging his resolve in protecting the nation from foreign enemies. Sen. Clinton's eminently sensible and centrist -- to a fault -- opponent is now viewed as weak and even vaguely unpatriotic because he is thoughtful. Neither Karl Rove nor Dick Morris could have done a better job.
  
  On primary election day in Pennsylvania, even with polls showing her well ahead in that state, Hillary went lower in her grab for votes. Seizing upon a question as to how she would respond to a nuclear attack by Iran, which doesn't have nuclear weapons, on Israel, which does, Hillary mocked reasoned discourse by promising to "totally obliterate them," in an apparent reference to the population of Iran. That is not a word gaffe; it is an assertion of the right of our nation to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale...."

• Clueless in America | New York Times | Bob Herbert:

  "We don’t hear a great deal about education in the presidential campaign. It’s much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball...."

• CQ Politics | Reid to Press Democratic Superdelegates to Endorse:

  "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he plans to turn up the heat on undecided Democratic superdelegates if the party’s presidential nominating contest is not resolved after the last primaries June 3...."

• Racism In The Ranks | AlterNet:

  "The results of the Pennsylvania primary show that racism is a problem that still plagues the Democrats...."

• Obama, Clinton and the War | Truthdig | Robert Scheer:

  "It should mean a great deal to progressives that in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination Sen. Ted Kennedy favors Sen. Barack Obama over two other colleagues he has worked with in the Senate. No one in the history of that institution has been a more consistent and effective fighter than Kennedy for an enlightened agenda, be it civil rights and liberty, gender equality, labor and immigrant justice, environmental protection, educational opportunity or opposing military adventures...."

• Election Madness | The Progressive:

  "Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens...."

• What Can He Change? | Agence Global | Immanuel Wallerstein:

  "...So, now that Obama seems so near to becoming president, there has begun to be considerable discussion in the press, on the internet, and in public debate about what kinds of changes Obama actually intends to undertake. This seems to me the wrong question. The real question is what kind of changes Obama can make, a quite different question....
  
  [...]
  
  Change is indeed possible, and potentially a very positive change. It all depends far less on Obama than on the rest of us. But Obama might, only might, give us the space in which the "we" of "yes, we can" can push him and the United States."

• Obama's Go-To Guy | Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality | Sam Pizzigati:

  "A self-described 'centrist' is minding Barack Obama's economic policy store. Will this centrist prove a pitchman for plutocrats? Or should the wealthy start to worry? We sift the evidence...."

• Hope in the Time of NAFTA | Truthdig | David Sirota:

  "Reading articles about Hillary Clinton attacking NAFTA can lead you to believe The Onion has taken over America’s news bureaus.
  
  Clinton spent the last 10 years repeatedly praising the trade deal in speeches, most recently calling the job-killing accord 'good for New York and America.' Yet, journalists barely mention that record as they transcribe her assertions that 'I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning....'"

• McCain Says, Retracts 'Could Lose Over Iraq' Comment:

  " John McCain said Monday that to win the White House he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq is succeeding. If he can't, "then I lose. I lose," the Republican said.
  
  He quickly backed off that remark...."

• List of McCain Fund-Raisers Includes Prominent Lobbyists | New York Times:

  Michael Luo and Sarah Wheaton report, "Senator John McCain has campaigned on curbing the influence of money in politics. But an examination by The New York Times of a list of 106 elite fund-raisers who have brought in more than $100,000 each for Mr. McCain found that about a sixth of them were lobbyists...."

• Hillary's Terrorist Ties | Newsmax.com | Dick Morris & Eileen McGann :

  "In this week's debate, Hillary Clinton said all of her 'baggage' has been 'rummaged through' for years. But important features of her close relationship with known terrorist sympathizers and Hamas supporters are still opaque to the public view...."

• Steve Weissman | Truthout | Baiting Obama:

  "... using 'bittergate,' Wright and Ayres to drag down Barack Obama has nothing to do with fair-minded debate and discussion. Nor is all this a needed vetting of Obama, as Hillary persists in saying. The current noise is nothing less than the predictable rebirth of an American political tradition. Call it redbaiting, witch-hunting or McCarthyism, the old slime is back and the reasons go far beyond the demands of Gotcha journalism and electoral combat."

• Anti-McCain Ad Surfaces in Battlegrounds | Truthdig:

  "Something called the Campaign to Defend America has purchased a reported $1 million worth of air time in Ohio and Pennsylvania to run this ad, which connects John McCain to George W. Bush.
  
  Update: Check out this investigation to learn who is behind the ad...."
  
  

• Truth Vs. 'Trash Journalism': McCain's Weak Rebuttal to Damaging Allegations | AlterNet:

  "John McCain is not a very nice man. I have made that abundantly clear in my new book The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him And Why Independents Shouldn't. When I wrote it, I endeavored to write about the actual man, not the myth or the media legend. Perhaps that was where I crossed the line...."

• Shoddy! Tawdry! A Televised Train Wreck! | New York Times | Frank Rich:

  "...I can’t remember a debate in which the only memorable moment was the audience’s heckling of a moderator. Then again, I can’t remember a debate that became such an instant national gag, earning reviews more appropriate to a slasher movie like “Prom Night” than a civic event held in Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center:
  
  “Shoddy, despicable!” — The Washington Post
  
  “A tawdry affair!” — The Boston Globe
  
  “A televised train wreck!” — The Philadelphia Daily News
  
  And those were the polite ones. Let’s not even go to the blogosphere....
  
  [...]
  
  The unequivocally good news is that ABC’s debacle had the largest audience of any debate in this campaign. That’s a lot of viewers who are now mad as hell and won’t take it anymore."

• Gary Hart: Breaking the Final Rule | The Huffington Post:

  "It will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party's nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned...."

• Raw Dawg Buffalo: Eighter from Decatur:

  "...Now days, Hillary Clinton sound like she shoot dice. She is always taunting her 35 years experience. So I have been doing some thinking, If she is 60 now, that means she been in public service since age 25, which I find hard to believe. Sure a large amount of that time was as first lady of Arkansas and the First Lady of the United States, but really, outside of that, what experience does she have? ..."

• McCain Is Now Officially a Campaign Finance Criminal | AlterNet:

  "But as Media Matters points out, you'd never know it from reading AP writer Jim Kuhnhenn."

Technorati tags: Election, President, Primaries, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, politics, campaign