The Clinton Iraq Plan - Keep Troops There Permanently

Parent Cafe
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<p>Edwards is pretty much dead in the water. His strategy was to stake out a position to the left of a calculatingly centrist Sen. Clinton. Obama’s rock star campaign pulled the rug right out from under him. He’s the odd man out in the big money game.</p>

<p>The old-school nominating process would have been more favorable for a candidate like Edwards. Use four years of work to tally a win in a low population state like Iowa or New Hampshire to create momentum out of whole cloth. The front-loaded primary calander makes it very difficult indeed for anyone but a big money candidate.</p>

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<p>I don’t know, ID. He may appear to be so at the moment, but the Dems realize that they must field the most electable team. As a moderate voter, Edwards appears to me to be the candidate with the least warts (from either side). People are tired of the polarizing extremes. We want some stability, and will elect whom we feel can offer some of that for a change.</p>

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<p>I ■■■■■■■ at any supporter and enabler of the Bush administration who decries polarization. Too late. Be prepared to be swept into the dustbin of history. If you don’t like the game as it is, you shouldn’t have used 9/11 as a naked political tool, compared Max Cleland with Osama bin Laden, equated dissent with treason, posited Iraq as a response to 9/11 (we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over there), etc. </p>

<p>We’re giving as much quarter as they had been disposed to give over the past six years. Now, when it looks to some as if they may have miscalculated, some start to take of their hats and ask for different terms. They ought not have started it in the first place but having done so, we’re going to finish it. Last November was only Act I of a five-act play. We’re going to swing hard and I hope to God that Republicans and Bushies feel like they’ve been hit in the face with a two-by-four. As it is, that’s not nearly payment enough for the damage inflicted on my country but it’s a good down payment.</p>

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<p>A lot will ride on how Obama runs his campaign. He’s got to be bloody brilliant over the next 20 months to convince me he can sit across the table from Putin or Chavez or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the Pooh Bahs at the Pentagon. Good looks, a sense of humour and a keen intelligence can only carry a man so far.</p>

<p>What did Dick Morris say? They made Clinton wait until he was 21 (21 months into his presidency) before they let him step into any serious foreign policy. The next president does not have that luxury.</p>

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<p>There’s just no oxygen left in the room for Edwards. I think the first quarter fundraising reports are going to tell the story, for both Edwards and John McCain.</p>

<p>Unless you have followed politics closely, you may not know how relentlessly Sen. Clinton has positioned herself for a moderate centrist run. I wouldn’t start handicapping the general election until it is actually underway.</p>

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<p>Good Lord, Cheers. Bush has engaged in foreign policy for six years and not known a damned thing about it. At least Obama shows signs of intellectual curiosity, a willingness to draw in expertise, etc. Instead of Republicans, the Bushies could just as well be called Know Nothings, except the name was already dibbsed.</p>

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<p>“He’s got to be bloody brilliant over the next 20 months to convince me he can sit across the table from Putin or Chavez or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the Pooh Bahs at the Pentagon”</p>

<p>And junior has pulled this off? </p>

<p>This is almost like son/daugther dating advice isn’t it?</p>

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<p>“I ■■■■■■■ at any supporter and enabler of the Bush administration who decries polarization. Too late. Be prepared to be swept into the dustbin of history.”</p>

<p>Huh? Are you accusing me of being a “Bush enabler”, TheDad? The most I’ve felt inclined to give Bush (other than the belief at the time that he was probably the lesser evil of two odious choices, once inside the voting booth) was a “wait and see” attitude early on in the Iraq War. I believe I’m on record here as being one who has always eschewed the idea of, political polarization as a “good thing”. Therefore, I really don’t understand the gleeful rubbing-of-hands that celebrates the idea of “revenge at all costs”, nor the concept of absolute loyalty to any one party . I have a history of voting on both sides of the isle (and lamenting the fact that there are only two to choose from—not-so-opposite sides of the same wretched coin) since I cast my first vote. Like it or not, we are all in the same leaky boat, and the only thing that’s going to save the ship from going down is the single-minded desire to save our collective @sses. The gunwales may soon sink below the water-mark. Is the time really better spent sticking daggers in the ribs of your neighbor?</p>

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<p>BTW, if anyone wants to see a comparison of how the candidates are performing on the stump, many of them – including Clinton, Obama, Edwards, McCain, and others spoke to the firefighters union this week. CSPAN has video of all their speeches up at this website:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?CatCodePairs=Issue,PE;&ArchiveDays=100&Page=1[/url]”>http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?CatCodePairs=Issue,PE;&ArchiveDays=100&Page=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Go to page two for Obama and Edwards.</p>

<p>I enjoy seeing the political strategy behind the speeches. I enjoy seeing a candidate on a first name basis with “Vinny” the union boss. Or giving an LBJ-like reminder of having scratched some backs and expecting some back-scratching in return.</p>

<p>I enjoy seeing how the candidates are developing. How are their stump speeches? Their deliveries. Are they comfortable? Are they connecting on a personal level? Are they believable? Are their campaign advance teams giving them specific morsels of red meat to throw to that specific audience? Are they legitimate heavyweight contenders?</p>

<p>Anyway, this series of speeches to the same audience is an interesting early comparison.</p>

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<p>If you wanna see a politician bomb, watch Sam Brownbeck speak to a union. Bawaaahaaa.</p>

<p>“I met some firefighters once. My apartment building caught fire…”</p>

<p>Seriously, this guy ought to stick to Jerry Falwell conventions and Halliburton corporate retreats.</p>

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<p>We are watching Hillary self destruct. She feels entitled, yet abandoned by many. Only calmness and circumspection can help this early. </p>

<p>After being married to Bill, any semblance of the idealistic Wellesley graduate are
gone. All that is left are campaign strategies and compromises. Sad.</p>

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<p>This is true. And yet what’s really bizarre is that huge swathes of the country think she’s a fire-breathing, horn-spoutin’ radical.</p>

<p>She will never, ever, be elected. And you supposed Dems who are backing her are handing the election to any Republican left standing after the mud-flinging between them is over.</p>

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<p>I expect to see her accepting the next nomination of her party in the fall of 2008. </p>

<p>She’s worked very hard for this and in some sense deserves it; I always like to see people’s honest efforts and marital perseverence come to a good end. It gives us all hope.</p>

<p>She may even be great as Ms President–certainly evolution must give some advantage to having no discernable principals or, for that matter, clear ideology.</p>

<p>As the species continues to evolve Hillary may be well ahead of the game.</p>

<p>.</p>

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<p>mini-I would really like to be a fly on the wall in your voting booth! I don’t imagine you have ever pulled a party lever but rather engaged in a zig zagging walk down the slates of candidates!!!</p>

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<p>'mini-I would really like to be a fly on the wall in your voting booth!"</p>

<p>I voted for John McCain in 2000. And I have once in my life voted for a Democratic candidate for President, and regret it to this day, as he turned into a genocidal child murderer (“we think it is acceptable”) whose 1998 lies prepped the “astute, intelligent, and experienced” members of his party to support the invasion of Iraq.</p>

<p>Where is David McReynolds now that I need him? ;)</p>

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<p>Interesteddad, from post #29…</p>

<p>Who do you think did well?</p>

<p>How are you handicapping the race?</p>

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<p>dsark:</p>

<p>It’s too early to handicap the race. Like predicting the outcome of a NFL season in September.</p>

<p>As for the speeches, there’s not much point in me commenting on the Republicans. I give the them high marks for the courage to show up to a union meeting when their party steadfastly fights the unions. But, it’s a bit like Democrats speaking at Liberty U. They have to dodge the elephant in the living room issues.</p>

<p>Rather than grade the three top Democratic candidates, I’ll approach it thematically:</p>

<p>a) “The LBJ factor” – By this I mean that primary races are typically won by politicians with a network of political hacks for whom they have done favors and who owe support in return. Anyone who has listened to any of the LBJ Tapes will understand the most extreme examples of “LBJ factor” arm twisting and the ultimate party politician who would pull a hack’s arm out of his shoulder socket if necessary. Clinton did a masterful job of this, as she did earlier in the week speaking in New Hampshire. Her first name relationship with the union pres and Vinnie the Union Hack, her stories of meetings with said union bosses on 9-12-2001, and so forth. Her repeated references to “being there for the union”. These were all effective LBJ factor themes, delivered skillfully. Edwards had a little of this, referencing his national campaign work with the union. Obama simply doesn’t have much “LBJ factor” to leverage.</p>

<p>b) Specifics. When speaking to a special interest group, such as a convention of union reps, being able to cite specific issues is useful. I thought both Edwards and Clinton did this effectively, refering to funding for the SAFER legislation and other specific issues. Again, Clinton was heads and shoulders above on specifics as she has served this constituency effectively as a NY senator. I thought she was particularly effective in attacking “the administration” for paying lip service to firefighters and then repeatedly gutting the Homeland Security Funding on specific programs. Obama doesn’t have specifics with this particular group, so had to be more general in his remarks.</p>

<p>c) Campaign themes. Edwards is calling on the playbook from his personal injury lawyer, calling up tear jerk images of a crying 5 year old girl being carried to the emergency room because her mother doesn’t have health insurance. It’s effective, but probably not as effective for him in this larger setting. Also, he appears to be speaking to the poor more than the middle class. I still don’t think Edwards has achieved “looking Presidential” status. I found Obama’s speech to be good, but a little less powerful (MLK-esque) than other appearances. As the rock-star candidate, I think he does best in a “rock concert” setting where the audience is feeding him energy like a thermal current rising up a mountainside. Without the whooping and hollering, his oratory didn’t soar. I didn’t think he passed the “looking presidential”, larger than life test in this speech. He seemed a little tentative. IMO, Sen. Clinton has a homerun stump theme that she first unveiled a week ago in New Hampshire – the “you are invisible” rhetorical device. That really gets at the heart of anti-Republican vote, a sense of being invisible to the administration. On a more subtle level, it’s worth noting that Clinton’s stump speech and its rhetoric is aimed specifically and relentlessley at middle and working class issues. She is NOT talking about the poor. This is calculated and intentional.</p>

<p>One more observation that addresses Garland’s point about the “Hillary the fire-breathing dragon” sentiment. I think that Sen. Clinton has found an effective voice in confronting this one head-on by joking about how she is used to being attacked. In this speech, she gave the example of the very union not being sure about her, endorsing her opponent in the 2000 Senate race and how her hard work on their behalf won their enthusiastic support by 2006. In this all-male setting, she scaled back a bit from her New Hampshire speech on Saturday, when she made a subtle, but effective, connection between these attacks and fear of strong female leadership. In both cases, the message was that she’s a fighter who is tough enough to take a punch. I think this message is going to work for her, especially with female voters (who now make up a majority of the registered voters).</p>

<p>Sorry for not including Richardson and Biden. I confess that I haven’t watched their speeches. They are non-players at this point. I’ll probably go back and watch Richardson at some point because I think he’s a viable V-P candidate.</p>

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<p>Not really surprising. She’s been the poster-child devil-incarnate focus of 15 years of relentless attacks – attacks that have known no bounds of shame (she and Janet Reno are lovers, she killed Vince Foster, she should do something about her teenage daughter’s curly hair – seriously out-of-bounds personal attacks).</p>

<p>The good news for her is that her negatives can only go down from here. Her attackers have spent all their ammunition. I mean, what’s left? Accusing her of fathering a black illegimate child in South Carolina? I think the Republicans better be very careful on this one. She’s subtly countering these attacks, not without some justification, as attacks on women. Some unsuspecting white male, good ol’ boy Republican might walk into a killer left hook on this one in a debate setting. Do not underestimate the potential “you go, girl” undercurrents in this race.</p>

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<p>ID–I don’t think the strategy of turning it into being attacks on women in general is going to work. I think the women i know who can’t stand her tend to be middle-class, blue collar, confident women who will be insulted by that approach, like they can’t make any kind of distinctions between one woman and another.</p>

<p>And, for whatever reason, this antipathy I run across everywhere, IRL as well as in the virtual world, is strongest in my experience among women.</p>

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<p>Garland:</p>

<p>Yes. But, the negatives are based on perceptions of a mythical figure. Most Americans, watching cable news, have not seen Clinton work the crowds in upstate New York for seven years. Nor, have they seen her campaign.</p>

<p>I don’t know if she will overcome the negatives. Just saying that we should probably monitor the negatives as people watch the candidates in the here and now.</p>