1. I deserve this, and he does not (this plays into the whole "affirmative action hire" ugliness, and contrasts McCains POW cred with Obama's thin resume)

   2. I am a maverick reformer, and he is a tool of corrupt special intersts (McCain will point to Obama's ties to Rezko and Obama's vote in favor of the recent Energy Bill--which McCain and Clinton both opposed)

   3. I can keep you safe from slavering Islamofascist barbarians, and he cannot.

   4. I am a real American, and he is not. (McCain's campaign will phrase it more subtly, but FOX, Regnery Press, Rush, and the 527s will do the heavy lifting.)

This is a year in which the GOP is losing on every issue under the sun. So they won't make it about issues, and they won't make it about Democrats or Republicans. They will try to make Americans WORSHIP John McCain and DESPISE Barack Obama as INDIVIDUALS. And based on past history, I wouldn't bet money against their succeeding.  

Hillary's Exit

"Hillary Clinton goes loudly as Barack Obama seeks to woo her supporters"

Obama's campaign enjoys a significant fundraising edge over that of McCain, 71, after raising $272m in the past 18 months.

The Obama and Clinton camps are tentatively beginning to merge their fundraising apparatuses after Hillary told leading donors on a conference call: "He needs to know all of you. He really needs your help."

She is planning to keep her core donor team in place, however, so she can control how to dispense the cash. Clinton's finance chairman predicted that her supporters could bring in a further $200m but warned that the amount could depend on whether Obama picked her as a running mate.

Clinton has not fully accepted her vanquished status, despite her eloquent speech. The New York senator merely suspended her campaign last night, ostensibly so that she could raise money to pay off her $30m debts. A transition team has been appointed to negotiate the terms under which she will campaign for Obama - a somewhat bizarre case of the defeated usurping the role of victor, since losers rarely get to set the conditions.

Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer who handled Tony Blair's multimillion-dollar book deal, and Cheryl Mills, another lawyer and confidante, are expected to bargain hard for help with settling Clinton's debts, including an $11m personal loan that she made to the campaign.

Clinton is believed to be haggling over the extent to which she will be Obama's highest-profile campaigner against McCain, as well as over the guarantee of a star turn at the Democratic National Convention.

I don't know if the debt talk is real, or how well-sourced any of this stuff is.  But the presence of a transition team on her part certainly indicates that dismissing Clinton and figuring out her role will be no simple matter.  She will inevitably be high profile, and if Obama watched the crowd yesterday he would be able to see that people are very excited about her playing a role in the coming election.  

Change as a rallying cry or motto isn't enough to do it: the person behind the word really has to bring it.

It worked for Bill Clinton because he really was a unique personality and uniquely talented politician.

It worked for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania because she used her time there well, worked her butt off in the ways that matter, and supplemented her work with her 1/3 budget. Most importantly, she personally earned voters' support and votes.

Both Clintons faced their attackers and doubters head on and on their turf.

Barack Obama doesn't do this. He runs away. He doesn't -- or his "brilliant" campaign doesn't allow him to -- risk his "brand". He is disassociated in a bad way, and wooing the wrong people.

Right out of the gate, adopting as a personal virtue the selling point that HRC was divisive was a wrongheaded strategy, a wrong approach and a wrong mentality for to hang onto for anyone who wants to win straight up and emphatically.

As he and his Club never cease to remind people, he's not either one of the Clintons.

1. This is a change election and change has been the central message of the Obama campaign. To many, the Clintons represent the past. The Obama campaign might conclude that choosing Clinton is not consistent with his change message.

2. Bill Clinton was both an asset and a liaibility to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The Obama campaign might conclude that managing Bill Clinton's involvement in the campaign is more trouble than it's worth.

3. Both the vice presidential candidate and their spouse will have to undergo intensive vetting of all financial interests. It's not clear that Bill Clinton is willing to undergo such a process or that the outcome of such a process would be as free of questions as necessary.

4. The Obama campaign may determine than a different vice presidential candidate might bring something essential to the ticket that Clinton doesn't.

5. Polling in early August may determine that Hillary Clinton is not the strongest vice presidential choice.

6. Obama may determine that in terms of governance, the chemistry is not sufficient with Hillary Clinton to make an effective team. And No. 2 above also applies to the White House.

7. Clinton supporters who insist that Obama has no choice but to pick Clinton may make it impossible for him to choose her without looking weak.

I feel OK about lumping them together.  They even percieve & describe themselves as a movement.

Obama is the "act."

However, I'd suggest that you step away from the "whining" rhetoric altogether...unless of course you're really not all that invested in the Unity Pony meme.

If you are not, keep going. I'm pretty sure that'll be very helpful when you try later to convince the person you've just called a whiner that he or she needs to vote for your candidate in the GE.

Why can't Obama invoke the good economic times of the Clinton administration?

Because he's on record dismissing it, and emphatically on record dismissing the 90s as a terrible time in our country's political history.

You can see, I hope, why this new information would be a lot more distressing to us then being told something we've long known about John McCain and his party?

After all, we haven't been voting for John McCain and his party. We've long known that they aren't are allies.

So the questioned to be answered isn't whether or not John McCain is my friend on gender issues.

The question to be answer is this; what do I do now that I know that the Democrats disdain women like me, and our vital issues, just as much as McCain and the Republicans do?

There will be no superdelegates and no caucuses in November, just the American people and Obama and McCain.

Remarkably, in a year when a Democratic win should be a sure thing, I honestly think that all McCain has to do is convince the electorate that he is healthy. The GOP are going destroy Obama--and Obama without a teleprompter is a gaffe-machine who is going to shoot his own self in the feet, often.

I truly do think the Democratic superdelegates and party elders have decided to anoint the weaker candidate.

By alienating Clinton Democrats, he's cut off a lifeline, which many Democrats seem to feel they don't need.  We don't see any Carter Democrats getting in line behind a Carter culture! Because there isn't any. The Clintons still have power despite the national pontificators, the media.

The Clintons have us. We believe in them and we are their power. No one can take that away, though they try. Not even Obama. Okay, we may be hanging by thread, but we're hangin; it's called loyalty.

As a fellow navy veteran, I salute Senator McCain's service to his country, as a husband, I cannot salute the disregard he showed toward his first wife and he returned from captivity and found that she was severely injured in an auto accident while he was a prisoner. I cast my first vote by absentee ballot in 1968. The only vote I cast on the winning side legalized liquor by the drink in Virginia. I remember going out to dinner with my parents when we returned from our deployment in January 1969 and my mother commenting that it was the first time she ever got a mixed drink before dinner in Virginia.

But why am I writing this?

As a believer in the importance of the DEMOCRATIC process, a process that reflects the wishes and will of the people, I was saddened by the primary campaign. The stupidity of the DNC and their focus on Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina were absurd. The decision just last week that said that Florida and Michigan, my present and former states, somehow should be punished for trying to become significant in the process of selecting a candidate are sad.

My personal choice this campaign season was John Edwards. Had there been a campaign in Florida, Senator Obama might have influenced me. Since there was not, my contact with his campaign has often come from the blogs and from the despicable, sexist behavior of many of the MSM pundits. If they had been anywhere near as racist as they were sexist, all would have been fired.

Senator Obama will get my vote in November. Whether or not he will get the grass roots support I gave to John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, my former comrades in arms in Viet Nam, Al Gore, and John Kerry, has yet to be determined. I went door to door for these candidates, I stuffed envelopes, I drove people to the polls, and did a lot of other things.

Beyond using those (purported) negatives to create a contrast, which is intelligent campaigning, harping on them is patronizing to the voters, and using them as personal virtue plays poorly except when the media is ravening to get back into CDS.

That last part was another reason it would be a mistake to assume the Koolaid Kids and Kewl Kids media will be Obama's side in the general.

They had a grand old nostalgic pile-on having at Sen Clinton AKA Those Clintons but at no time were they similarly disgusted with McCain.

Too much of Obama's focus has been on the purported negatives of rivals than on shoring up his personal attributes.

Here's a huge landmine: Dumping Wright, his preacher and mentor of 20 yrs, in a heartbeat because a tiny, albeit transiently influential, audience of media and party insiders are paying attention speaks volumes about the character of the man. Does Obama think that that "problem" has been resolved?

What will look worse than the (obvious) Repug strategy of tying Obama to Wright will be Obama's own actions in the face of that controversy.

He got wrong-footed on Wright and didn't personally know how to react until a long huddle with his marketing obsessed, brand-making, frame-crazy experts.

1. His exotic background. This is going to sound petty but living overseas as a child and having a foreign sounding name can turn off enough voters to swing an election.

2. The fact that he's an AA, big city, machine politician. This is something that has a negative connotation with lots of voters.

3. The lack of experience is the biggest problem I think he has. Too many voters over 40 are going to look at his lack of experience and just say "no way".

4. Never having run a tough race. Now he knows how to "work the system" as you might say but that doesn't translate into much of a skill during general election time.

5. Some of the problems he is going to have in Nov are due to the fact that the party is divided. The GOP will be sure to run those things Obama and Michelle said during the primary over and over again.

6. What I have read about his ge strategy doesn't really inspire confidence. He plans to base his presidential run on having rallies and voter registration. I guess this could be the ONE time that voter registration works but it's certainly never worked in the past because these newly registered voters always seem to forget to vote.

I don't like Obama taking all of the uncommitted in MI.  He wasn't even on the ballot.  He made a strategic decision to gain favor in Iowa, it worked, he won.  He should accept the MI loss along with the IA win.

He hijacked the votes of people who voted for Mike Gravel or others.  I know people who said their 2nd choice would have been Hillary, not Obama.  That's vote stealing.

And, I don't like him sending his goons into the caucuses to steal delegates through threats, force, theft, fraud, and corruption.

Plus, I may sound like a broken record, but Obama's first run for state senate, which he won by disqualifying his opponents, is hardly (in my view) good experience or (I might add) good karma, for those who care for such things.  

More: Since joining the US Senate, Obama has done little but spend his first term running for president -- exactly the path that HRC was admonished (by the chattering classes) to avoid.  I note that she has put far more effort into being a good senator than has her opponent.  The standard reply is that Rethuglican obstructionist tactics prevented any Dem from shining in the senate in the last few years -- but then comes the news that HRC was a (perhaps the) key person in implementing the Democratic war room.  Leaders will find a way to lead.

"Yet even if Hillary Clinton goes to great lengths to ensure Obama's election, there's no guarantee she'll emerge unscathed from an Obama loss."

"I don't think there's any doubt that fingers will be pointed," said Thomas Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County."

"Obama supporters will blame Hillary. ... Hillary supporters will say 'I told you so,'" said pollster Scott Rasmussen in an e-mail."

As far as your concerns, sigh, you're buying a line if you think the GOP isn't just waiting to attack Clinton.  You shouldn't be fooled into thinking they don't have a football stadium full of attacks to roll out on her. They wanted her as the nominee.  'Nuff said.  Moreover, Clinton made a huge mistake in trying to force her way onto the ticket...there's no way to look like a leader if your rival forces you to take them on. The narrative needs to change before he can accept her.  And the whole idea that there is not a wide range of pros and cons to choosing Clinton as VP shows a level of partisanship unsullied by awareness of Obama's recent victory.  Some pros: she's smart, she's ready, she's popular. Some cons: Motivation of GOP turnout, too strong of a personality to play the lesser role, the appearance of overshadowing due to having a former president lurking about, the financial information regarding his library donations may not survive vetting (this according to her own people), her questionable judgment in the conduct of her campaign (Penn, no strategy past Super Tuesday, etc.), having McAuliffe introduce her as the next president.  There are more pros and cons, those just easily come to mind.

The people you are speaking of, the ones who believe it was only happy days when Bill Clinton was in the oval office, know nothing of what McAuliffe and the Clintons did to the structure of the democratic party during their tenure.  I'm sure you recognized that when Markos' & Jerome's book came out...there must be plenty of old comments.  In addition, Bill Clinton floated ceaselessly to middle roads (welfare reform comes easily to mind) after his first election and his first term. And both the Clinton's have credibility issues.  Yes they are popular, yes, he finished out his first term with a high approval rating.  It doesn't mean she's the automatic pick.

If Obama picks her, fine.  It may mean he needs her. But they're not talking right now, so it's pretty hard to paint them with any hostility until they do say something.  Until then, you're just guessing. And it's post like your's, filled with unfounded and assigned emotional reactions, that will do more to create divisions in the party that anything that actually happens.  If he's not going to pick her, she will be ahead that saying she doesn't want it and you will not be able to disprove that without it coming from her mouth.  

Why focus on the negative?

I'm looking for an argument that does not use fear tactics, bully tactics, fallacious reasoning, or condescension.

At no point have I called for you to kiss anyone's posterior region.

I'll let Jeralyn decide who needs to be banned out of this thread.

First you mention that the issue of "character" would be a certain winner for McCain.  But in the same post where you make this comment you repeat a character driven charge of sexism against Obama.  You also state that McCain would "wipe the plate" with Obama if character became a defining issue, which clearly implies that McCain's character is superior to Obama's.

Apart from the above most certainly constituting a two-pronged attack on Obama's character, and apart from the somewhat curious statement that sensitivity to sexism among Clinton supporters was first created by the actions of Barack Obama (something I certainly don't believe, but which, if it were true, would be horrifying), I cannot agree with your conclusions.  A large part of character is based on possessing the courage of one's convictions.  This does not mean not changing one's mind when conditions change or when a better argument is made, but it does mean not changing them for personal gain.  Senator McCain challenged evangelists when it was in his maverick, courting independent votes interest to do so.  He embraced them and courted them when it was in his solidifying his base interests to do so.  Senator McCain opposed tax cuts for the rich when it was in his maverick, deficit hawk interests to do so.  He promised to make them permanent when it was in his defending his flank against Mitt Romney interests to do so.  There are a multitude more such examples, from Senator McCain using his wife's corporate jet after decrying the very practice to claiming to be a champion of our folks in uniform while voting against benefits for them.  And they all indicate the same sort of "character" all of us who have chafed under the diminution of what our nation is over the last eight years have prayed for an end to, hypocritical situational morality and a worship of political advantage as the paramount consideration in creating policy.

Certainly a matter of character.

You also agreed that it was a fair criticism of Obama that he was a naïf for being willing to speak to Iran, conflated his willingness to enter Pakistan to press the real war on terrorism against those who actually attacked us into a vague but ominous "invade", and suggested that his healthcare plan, which by the way, is inferior to Clinton's (which itself fell short of ideal) somehow "disowns" all those in need.

The latter borders on the suspiciously misdirecting.  McCain's healthcare "plan" is to rob more millions of Americans of even the slight collective strength they currently possess to obtain healthcare coverage through employers and would, in a time of great economic uncertainty, make these millions of Americans negotiate as individuals with insurance companies.  It is, plainly speaking, McCain's plan to give citizens a tax credit to obtain insurance on their own while taking away business tax incentives, and thereby providing a justification for employers to stop doing so.  To state that Obama's plan "disowns" those who wish for universal healthcare while not providing any context as to what the McCain alternative would be is, at best, disingenuous.

And the idea that it is appropriate that Obama be distrusted because he is willing to negotiate with the leadership in Iran requires both blinders and a lack of understanding about both the politics of the region and the current strategic situation faced by our nation.  The blinders are required to ignore the fact that we are currently negotiating with North Korea, that the Israelis are talking to Hamas, that Senator McCain has himself advocated talking to Hamas and that the core of a responsible and mature foreign policy rests in knowing and engaging those nations whose interests may be in conflict with your own.  It requires a lack of understanding about our current strategic situation because we are currently overextended both financially and militarily, in a world where both the balance of power and our nation's diplomatic standing are in a period of rapid, unfavorable flux.  To pursue an unyielding, militaristic stance with Iran, as Senator McCain at least says he would favor, can only harm us, perhaps catastrophically.

I write this because I care far less about Barack Obama than I do all those issues above.  I will work and vote for Senator Obama, just as I would have worked and voted for Senator Clinton.  Because as of Saturday the question of loyalty to one or the other became moot.  What matters now is the direction of our nation.  The health of our nation.  The destiny of our nation.  You could certainly have doubts about Obama's ability and intent to actually move our nation in the direction he has indicated he will.  Others may have had similar doubts about Clinton.  I had doubts about both of them.  But I don't have doubts about Senator McCain.  In your comments which I have referenced above I see the way in which Obama could lose.  It would occur, as did John Kerry's loss, by misleading broadsides remaining unchallenged, by conventional but inaccurate wisdom being put forward as accepted fact and by unilateral disarmament on issues which will determine the future health of our nation and on which there are clear and chilling differences between what Senator Obama and Senator McCain stand for.

Either Clinton or Obama or Edwards was acceptable to me and before the end of the year I will have voted for a white woman as my choice to be president and a black man as my choice to be president. Being an old white guy, it makes me smile to see how far we have come since I was born.

The Republican Party has shot themselves not just in the foot, but in both feet. The DEM's will control the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives after November. Hopefully, we do much better than the GOP did when they found themselves in the same situation..