pacino wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

dajafi wrote:So... our Republican friends here really don't think race has anything to do with it? Nothing at all?

Race has plenty to do with voting behavior in this race. I was the one who you all kept yelling at for posting the racial breakdowns from the exit polls back in South Carolina and such. Obama is hurt in a lot of places by being black. And he won 90% of the black vote by being black.

a Democrat gets 90% of blacks to vote for him...surprise.

Hillary Clinton's party affiliation is, what, exactly?

dajafi wrote:So... our Republican friends here really don't think race has anything to do with it? Nothing at all?

Race absolutely has something to do with it. However, I believe it will and already is being used as a tsk-tsk roll-eyes bludgen to explain away far more than it should in regard to Obama's performance one way or the other.

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

meatball wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:Not true. A very real part of the story is more than half of the Democratic base in one of the three or four most important states electorally in the whole country prefers someone who is not going to be the nominee of their party.

Edit - Re: Bakestar's point.

But does that mean they wouldn't support Obama in November, especially since he was competitive in those states?

(Real question...I'm a political n00b. Just doesn't seem like a logical argument to me.)

The exit polls showed that 50% of Clinton PA voters said they would support Obama if he is the nominee, the rest will either vote McCain or not vote at all. 67% of Obama voters said they would support Clinton if she's the nominee.

So Obama loses 50% of the Clintonians while HRC loses 33% of the Obamies.

These types of polls are BS. They are taken in the heat of the nomination battle between two camps that hate each other right now. Nonsense. The fact that a smaller number of Clinton voters say now that they wont vote for Obama is simply a reflection of their dissapointed petulant sense of entitlement.

The knocks on Obama's campaign are overdone. Hilary won the northeast states almost exclusively because older women voters voted for her, in no small part, BECAUSE SHE IS A WOMAN. Those are voters Obama can't ever get in a race against Hilary. When they are up for grabs in the general and gender is no longer relevant, Obama will take a greater share of these votes.

VoxOrion wrote:

dajafi wrote:So... our Republican friends here really don't think race has anything to do with it? Nothing at all?

Race absolutely has something to do with it. However, I believe it will and already is being used as a tsk-tsk roll-eyes bludgen to explain away far more than it should in regard to Obama's performance one way or the other.

The thing is, I'm not sure what the heck pacino and dajafi's point is. Ok, race has something to do with it. Well cripes almighty fellas, these are your fellow party members voting against Obama. The independents and crossovers all largely want Obama. So shape up your party or leave it. I know that for me, a long suffering Democrat, it's time to go independent again. Remember, I didn't leave the party, the party left me.

Alright, so there are 469 pledged delegates up for grabs between now and June 3rd. For the sake of argument, lets assume Clinton and Obama split them 50/50. That would give Obama 1,948 total delegates (including his declared super delegates to date).

There are still 303 uncommitted super delegates, which would mean Obama would only need 25% (78 delegates) of them to get to the magic 2,025 number. Put another way, Clinton needs to convince 75% of them to vote for her which seems terribly unlikely considering she has added something like 20 super delegates between Super Tuesday and last night.

In all seriousness, how loud would the calls for Obama to drop out be if the shoe was on the other foot?

jeff2sf wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:

dajafi wrote:So... our Republican friends here really don't think race has anything to do with it? Nothing at all?

Race absolutely has something to do with it. However, I believe it will and already is being used as a tsk-tsk roll-eyes bludgen to explain away far more than it should in regard to Obama's performance one way or the other.

The thing is, I'm not sure what the heck pacino and dajafi's point is. Ok, race has something to do with it. Well cripes almighty fellas, these are your fellow party members voting against Obama. The independents and crossovers all largely want Obama. So shape up your party or leave it.

What if we turn it around a bit? Not to deny that there isn't a racial element here. But consider several propositions:

1. Lots of women may be enthusiastic about a woman candidate.
2. Many on this board don't get Hillary's appeal. And those same people, I imagine, don't get Bush's appeal. There is some element to Bush and Hillary that appeals to certain voters that people who post here in general just don't get.
3. On policy, there's little difference between Hillary and Obama. Thus, being able to appear comfortable in a diner is a way voters decide who to support. The idea is called symbolic representation among political scientists, and under the circumstances, deciding on the basis of these symbols is rational, given the information available.

Of course race matters. But it isn't the whole story.

dajafi wrote:Also, since this is the "only" politics thread, I guess I post it here:

A Knox College student, John Ashcroft, and torture

I think she pretty much nails it with the "banality of evil" comparison. I remember reading a couple years ago that Ashcroft does really good "Simpsons" voices, including Monty Burns; he's also capable of countenancing monstrous and disgraceful acts.

Hopefully, this is just a start, although unlike Ashcroft, most of the other high-ranking types from this administration don't put themselves in a position to be asked questions like this. Ashcroft didn't really answer the questions, but I'll give him a bit of credit for going to address a public forum he probably knew would be unfriendly.

But this snippet of the DailyKos diary pretty much shows what kind of response these legitimate and respectfully addressed questions got:

TOM: This story was made public by ABC a few weeks ago. It claims that you, Rice, Tenet and others met in the White House to discuss different methods of "enhanced interrogation," is that correct?
ASHCROFT: (angrily) Correct? Is what correct? Is it correct that this story ran on ABC? I don't know that. I don't know anything about it! Is it a real story? When was this story, huh? Huh?
TOM: Um, early April, April 9th, I think...
ASHCROFT: (interrupting) You think? You think? You don't even know! Next question!
TOM: The article says that you discussed "whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning"...
ASHCROFT: I said, next question!


I'm almost certainly naive but I still keep hoping that after this election, we'll have a strong president and a strong Congress - and Bush, Cheney, et al. will be on their way to the Hague to finally be held accountable for their actions.

BuddyGroom wrote:I'm almost certainly naive but I still keep hoping that after this election, we'll have a strong president and a strong Congress - and Bush, Cheney, et al. will be on their way to the Hague to finally be held accountable for their actions.

This is a wonderful fantasy, but it is strictly a fantasy.

There's no way any president would allow top American government officials to stand trial before a foreign court. The political cost at home would be unbearable, and whether it was Obama, Clinton, or anyone other than maybe Kucinich, they wouldn't want to see their entire agenda held hostage to a media battle about past crimes.

dajafi wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:I'm almost certainly naive but I still keep hoping that after this election, we'll have a strong president and a strong Congress - and Bush, Cheney, et al. will be on their way to the Hague to finally be held accountable for their actions.

This is a wonderful fantasy, but it is strictly a fantasy.

There's no way any president would allow top American government officials to stand trial before a foreign court. The political cost at home would be unbearable, and whether it was Obama, Clinton, or anyone other than maybe Kucinich, they wouldn't want to see their entire agenda held hostage to a media battle about past crimes.

Then, American power truly is unaccountable. Terrifying. Hard to blame much of the world for hating us. Hard to understand why any other country trusts us.

BuddyGroom wrote:Then, American power truly is unaccountable. Terrifying. Hard to blame much of the world for hating us. Hard to understand why any other country trusts us.

I don't disagree, just saying that no mainstream American politician would put domestic standing at risk for the sake of world opinion. Whether this is symptom or cause of some of our problems is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

Time-Travelin' Hillary:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBGyuYKlxIg[/youtube]

I'm not sure the perceived benefit to you or the perceived increase in respect from the world is quite as high as you might think from putting those people on trial. Very few good things and a lot of bad things could happen if such a thing took place, not just domestically.

Let's act like realists here.

BuddyGroom wrote:

dajafi wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:I'm almost certainly naive but I still keep hoping that after this election, we'll have a strong president and a strong Congress - and Bush, Cheney, et al. will be on their way to the Hague to finally be held accountable for their actions.

This is a wonderful fantasy, but it is strictly a fantasy.

There's no way any president would allow top American government officials to stand trial before a foreign court. The political cost at home would be unbearable, and whether it was Obama, Clinton, or anyone other than maybe Kucinich, they wouldn't want to see their entire agenda held hostage to a media battle about past crimes.

Then, American power truly is unaccountable. Terrifying. Hard to blame much of the world for hating us. Hard to understand why any other country trusts us.

It's called national sovereignty, and despite what the we are the world people think, it matters a lot.

I don't know whether this is related to the latest coverage in the states, but Philippe Sands, a QC and human rights lawyer, is due to publish a book called Torture Team shortly. Excerpts were printed in the guardian at the weekend.

The majority opinion, reaffirming the "minimal protection" offered by Common Article 3, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens. One of the Justices went even further: Common Article 3 was part of the law of war and of a treaty that the US had ratified. "By Act of Congress," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote pointedly, "violations of Common Article 3 are considered 'war crimes', punishable as federal offences, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel."

Justice Kennedy's remark put the issue of war crimes on the American political agenda. Individuals who had contributed to a violation of Common Article 3 would know that they were at risk of criminal investigation and prosecution. Even more ominously, it underscored the risk of being investigated outside the US.

Parties to the international Torture Convention are required to investigate any person who is alleged to have committed torture. If appropriate, they must then prosecute - or extradite the person to a place where he will be prosecuted. The Torture Convention is also more explicit than Geneva in that it criminalises any act that constitutes complicity or participation in torture. Complicity or participation could certainly be extended not only to the politicians and but also the lawyers involved in the condoning of the 18 techniques. After all, the scheme applied to al-Qahtani was devised by lawyers, reviewed by lawyers, overseen by lawyers.

I'm guessing that the supreme court's rulling on the decision on geneva is nothing new to you guys. still, the final paragraph is interesting - if prosecutions aren't made at the highest level, it's still not unlikely that a lot of the lawyers who condoned this stuff could be brought to book.

I'll be interested on reading the book. His previous title, Lawless World, was quite informative, and surprising in how it underlined america's previous commitment to the use of global legislative rulings. If I recall correctly, europe and the UK would have done nothing about the CFC threat to the ozone layer if they hadn't been threatened by america
with international legislation.

I notice that Obama seems to be leading with the college educated crowd. What does that mean precisely?

My reason for preferring Obama to Hilary is very very simple. I don't trust Hilary. She's part of a political elite that already had 8 years in the White House. She only won a Senatorial seat because of that, and so it's not that I think there is a deep difference in policies -- it's that in Obama, there is a slight hope that before he's totally owned and controlled, he might accidentally do something good, out of the box, or put some better people in to some posts whereas I know what I'm getting with Hilary, there's hope in the unknown with Obama...

McCain is also a known quantity, and a distasteful one at that.

It has nothing to do with a personal feeling, who seems more real with their cameo at my local diner....

TenuredVulture wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:

dajafi wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:I'm almost certainly naive but I still keep hoping that after this election, we'll have a strong president and a strong Congress - and Bush, Cheney, et al. will be on their way to the Hague to finally be held accountable for their actions.

This is a wonderful fantasy, but it is strictly a fantasy.

There's no way any president would allow top American government officials to stand trial before a foreign court. The political cost at home would be unbearable, and whether it was Obama, Clinton, or anyone other than maybe Kucinich, they wouldn't want to see their entire agenda held hostage to a media battle about past crimes.

Then, American power truly is unaccountable. Terrifying. Hard to blame much of the world for hating us. Hard to understand why any other country trusts us.

It's called national sovereignty, and despite what the we are the world people think, it matters a lot.

So do the rule of law and the Geneva Convention.

The United States is a representative democracy - if the actions (I'd say crimes) of Bush, Cheney and co. go unpunished, it's in part because we allowed it. Because we didn't set our sights high enough, because we didn't have enough reverence for the what the founders put in place.

Many of you watched the John Adams mini-series. I did not but have studied Adams in the past. I know I am talking about the man who enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, but do you really believe he would shrink away from the challenge the Bush/Cheney government has put before us? Would Jefferson? Would Washington or Franklin.

I'd like to believe we're as capable of courage, integrity and statesmanship as we were 230 years ago.

dajafi wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:Then, American power truly is unaccountable. Terrifying. Hard to blame much of the world for hating us. Hard to understand why any other country trusts us.

I don't disagree, just saying that no mainstream American politician would put domestic standing at risk for the sake of world opinion. Whether this is symptom or cause of some of our problems is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose.

I understand what you're saying.

jeff2sf wrote:I'm not sure the perceived benefit to you or the perceived increase in respect from the world is quite as high as you might think from putting those people on trial. Very few good things and a lot of bad things could happen if such a thing took place, not just domestically.

Let's act like realists here.

Realism supports the destruction of the Constitution, clear violation of treaties our government has signed, reversing the modern principle of war among civilized nations (that a more powerful nation doesn't attack a less powerful nation without provocation?).

I respect where you're coming from, Jeff, honestly I do - but really think about what you're saying. I care less about how America is viewed internationally than I do about still believing in the possibility that Bush and Cheney actually may face justice some day.

They are two of the worst criminals of our time - and they for the most part acted boldly in broad daylight. They more or less said to the entire world, including a huge swath of the American people "do something about it."

BuddyGroom wrote:I'd like to believe we're as capable of courage, integrity and statesmanship as we were 230 years ago.

This is interesting to me. By any standard, we are far, far more of a "representative democracy" today than we were 219 years ago (1789 being a better cutoff, for obvious reasons). But I think you're also clearly right in pointing to the generation of Founders as more principled individuals than their heirs in government. It confounds the imagination to think of mediocre and small-minded people like Cheney or Bush as 18th-century heroes.

My sense is that high-minded people like Jefferson (the slave-holder whose "property" was good enough to bear his children but not to merit manumission), Franklin (a notorious libertine), Adams (who in terms of personality evidently made Hillary Clinton seem like Mr. Rogers), and Washington (another slaveholder who committed blunder after blunder on the battlefield) wouldn't be able to survive politically in the contemporary context.

Whether it's because we're more focused on flaws ("character," or more accurately a twisted derivation of character) now than we were then, or that there are so many more of us and the criteria on which public figures are judged has shifted accordingly, I'm just not confident that comparisons to the distant past are useful.

dajafi wrote:

BuddyGroom wrote:I'd like to believe we're as capable of courage, integrity and statesmanship as we were 230 years ago.

This is interesting to me. By any standard, we are far, far more of a "representative democracy" today than we were 219 years ago (1789 being a better cutoff, for obvious reasons). But I think you're also clearly right in pointing to the generation of Founders as more principled individuals than their heirs in government. It confounds the imagination to think of mediocre and small-minded people like Cheney or Bush as 18th-century heroes.

My sense is that high-minded people like Jefferson (the slave-holder whose "property" was good enough to bear his children but not to merit manumission), Franklin (a notorious libertine), Adams (who in terms of personality evidently made Hillary Clinton seem like Mr. Rogers), and Washington (another slaveholder who committed blunder after blunder on the battlefield) wouldn't be able to survive politically in the contemporary context.

Whether it's because we're more focused on flaws ("character," or more accurately a twisted derivation of character) now than we were then, or that there are so many more of us and the criteria on which public figures are judged has shifted accordingly, I'm just not confident that comparisons to the distant past are useful.

Maybe. But when I think about the founders compared to today's leaders, I also think about that saying about how if men had to give birth, the species would have died out long ago.

So maybe the comparison is not useful - you're right that so much has changed and we've practically deified figures who still were mortal men.

But that they were mortal men is part of the point - when Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and the others signed the Declaration of Independence, they knew they were committing treason in the eyes of the crown. If the colonies lost the war, which seemed the more likely outcome, they probably would hang.

Compare that today, where Nancy Pelosi took impeachment "off the table" either because she thought it helped the party's chances at the ballot box or because the Democrats were afraid of the media.