The Empty Throne
I wish I were enough of a political maven to understand two items which seem intrinsically related. Item 1: "Hillary has pulled way ahead of Obama in the key state of New Hampshire, and now enjoys a 23-point lead over her rival, a poll just released by CNN finds." Item 2: The biggest candidate-related group on Facebook is no longer "One Million Strong for Barack". Obama has been relegated to second place -- by the group "Stop Hillary Clinton (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary)". Taken together the two items suggest that the "stop Hillary" sentiment is alive and even surging but that hopes Barack Obama can do the stopping are fading. If Hillary buries Barack in the coming contests, where will the discontent go?
The separability of these two impulses -- anti-Hillary and pro-Obama -- this late in the campaign implies the existence of a movement whose leadership no one can credibly fill. Can the Daily Kos wrest control of the anti-Hillary forces? Not likely, argues David Brooks, who dismissed the Kos crowd as a spent force, worn out by their own excesses.
Now it’s evident that if you want to understand the future of the Democratic Party you can learn almost nothing from the bloggers, billionaires and activists on the left who make up the “netroots.” ... In the first place, the netroots candidates are losing. In the various polls on the Daily Kos Web site, John Edwards, Barack Obama and even Al Gore crush Hillary Clinton, who limps in with 2 percent to 10 percent of the vote. Moguls like David Geffen have fled for Obama. But the party as a whole is going the other way. Hillary Clinton has established a commanding lead.
But if Obama goes under, who becomes the torchbearer of the Stop Hillary Movement? Brooks argues that whoever that is, it won't be the Kos crowd. Minus Obama, who does that leave? The Republican candidate? Or does this portend a genuine Democrat shift to the center; an anti-Chicago, 1968? And should one welcome it, even at the price of returning a dynasty?
Nothing follows.
posted by wretchardthecat at 9/25/2007 02:40:00 PM
37 Comments:
Here’s a prediction: If Hillary wins the election, we’re in for another four years of scandals, ‘ethical lapses,’ and sleaziness in the White House.
But there will be a crucial difference. Since 9/11, the Bush administration has built a vast surveillance apparatus to fight the war on terror. There has been a lot of hand-wringing by the libs, but so far there’s no evidence that it’s been misused for political purposes. Say whatever else you want about him, but at least in this regard, Bush has been an honest man.
If she’s elected, Hillary will inherit that apparatus. Say whatever else you want about her, but Clinton is not an honest woman. She won’t hesitate to use that apparatus — for power, for control, and finally for revenge, and no one will be safe. By slow degrees, Hillary Clinton will create a REAL police state far worse than anything Michael Moore has thus far imagined.
Minus Obama, who does that leave? The Republican candidate? Or does this portend a genuine Democrat shift to the center; an anti-Chicago, 1968?
Your question slides past its Kabuki component - is Hillary actually the candidate of the blue collar electorate described by Brooks, or is she just playing that role while she gets herself elected?
Take a look at her background and the milieu in which she personally prefers to hang out, planted firmly among the "affluent, educated intelligentsia". The question answers itself.
She wears the 'blue collar friendly' mask, but behind it she's the same puritanical Yankee collectivist egghead she's always been. The only real opponent for left activism is thus likely to be, as usual, the Republican. Unlike Bill with his endless flexibility and desperate desire to be liked, what she offers is a direct ticket back to Chicago in 1968.
I agree also with 'clioman' - the powers of the Presidency and the Constitution are just conveniences for a lifelong ball of self-righteousness like Hillary. She'll probably unleash on us a reign of academics armed with facile justifications for whatever they want to do, as FDR and Kennedy did.
Full disclosure: I don't like her.
I don't know much about the subject but I'll jump in a naive way. The problem the anti-Hillary people face is complicated by the existence of the Republican Party. The netroots people consciously went Left in part because much of the center was already pre-empted by the Republicans; and the "lesson" of the last two elections was the supposed futility of running as Republicans-lite.
So instead of competing with the Republicans to craft a winning strategy in the War on Terror, they did the un-victory thing. The Kos people crafted a policy of blatant appeasement. However the harsh reality was that American voters were closer to the center than the position that the Kos-niks had assumed. This gave Hillary the opportunity to flank them; and she did this by maintaining a Sphinx-like silence or opportunistic position that only worked because all she had to do was move to the right of the Kos people, and not into a truly defensible position, to defeat the netroots. In fact the Kos people simply rushed all the way past her to the Left, their momentum carrying them right over the cliff. They simplified her task; she just had to step out of the way and watch them hurtle to their destruction.
And that's why despite all the rhetoric, the antiwar people are beginning to notice that the professional Democratic pols are really going to do nothing to end the war. In the last analysis they know that "cutting and running", when the bill comes due, will result in their political annihilation. So whatever they say to the netroots in public they will do whatever they need to survive in private. Hillary knows this and has appealed to their secret hearts. Whether Hillary is, as Clioman suggests, actually licking her chops over the prospect of turning the surveillance mechanism designed to stop terrorists to political purposes I not so sure of.
To my ignorant way of thinking, an opportunity exists within the Democratic Party to craft an anti-Hillary front built around a winning national security platform, not just a shambolic or opportunistic one. The key, it seems to me, to finding a viable way to Stop Hillary within the Democratic Party, is to avoid the main strategic blunder of the netroots: the idea that to regain control of the Democratic Party, it was necessary to turn the rudder as far Left as it would go. This made them unelectable and guaranteed, rather than prevented a Clinton dominance.
Wretchard,
"an opportunity exists within the Democratic Party to craft an anti-Hillary front built around a winning national security platform,"
Realistically, I think it is too late for that to happen, at least for this cycle. Her machine has too much momentum, the system has become very slanted towards the frontrunners, and none of the others who could reasonably have a platform of that nature have shown much at all.
Obama could have done that earlier, but at this point he has been too much against the war; a significant change to that would be too damaging. It would be interesting to know if that is what he actually believes, or if it was simply a tactical decision that he (probably) regrets now.
I do think that Hillary "gets" the war on terror, so I do not feel that a victory for her would be disastrous on that front. Domestically, though ...
I'm starting to wonder whether at least part of the hard Left isn't on the verge of abandoning the political game and gearing up for literal war.
Recent history has shown, and not at all surprisingly, that when Dem presidential candidates hew toward the center they'll sometimes win, sometimes lose, but at least keep the race competitive - but if they veer too far to the left, they're pretty much guaranteed to get crushed. This leaves the hard Left with right around zero chance of actually getting one of their own into the White House, or even of commanding a majority of either house of Congress; the best they can hope for are a few Congress-creatures and Senators here and there. So, whichever way the Dems move as a party, the Left is basically screwed when it comes to ever winning real power in this country. Only now, though, is this cold hard reality starting to slowly dawn on the hard Lefties, with their failure to force an end to the Iraq war despite a Democratic (but not a hard Left) majority in Congress. But once they finally conclude that they just can't win in the political process, how do you think they will respond?
Barack Hussein Obama a serious contender for the office of Commander-in-Chief while the war against Bad Guys With Names Just Like His goes on?
Redleg,
I am by no means an Obamessiah disciple, but come on. Eisenhower could have been the name of a member of the German High Command. Now, it's that Ivy League pedigree that should be the concern, not the name.
Joshua,
If I were arguing the case before the Left I'd maintain that the only way it will ever gain sustained power is to defeat Radical Islam. Consider. The Left was well on its way to establishing a cultural hegemony over the West before 9/11. The arrival of a real Radical Islamist challenge was a catastrophe for them. It re-elected George Bush. It moved conservative governments into power in both Germany and France. And indeed, were Europe not geopolitically sheltered by American power, were it left alone to face resurgent Islam the sheer share of the demographic and military threat would probable whack the whole political alignment on the Continent to the right. The American umbrella over Europe is all that stands between the Left and political catastrophe.
Where the Left is not itself a militant revolutionary movement it can only remain in power in a world in which all existential threats have been removed, such as in 1999 Europe. A re-emergence of any bona fide existential threat will immediately explode its fantasy position and become a long-term source of weakness to its program. That's way 9/11 was so devastating to the Left and why they will never be able to win a convincing electoral victory without first defeating the global Islamist threat.
You may ask: why can't the Left become a genuine revolutionary party again? Because the Left sissified itself to adapt to its Gramscian strategy of conquest by political correctness. It's become a flightless bird. Once a real Marxist would have resembled Leon Trotsky or Ho Chi Minh. Today all they have left is Code Pink, optimized for yelling on stage and dead meat before any al-Qaeda with a loaded AK-47. Any realistic assessment would show that the former armed revolutionary role of the Left has passed, perhaps permanently, to the Jihad. Therefore the Jihad represents not only the chief roadblock to the Left's electoral victory, it constitutes it's chief rival for the crown of Baddest Guy on the block.
The Left cannot leave Radical Islam undefeated and hope to win. It is therefore in their interest to plump for an American victory. This is not such a radical idea. Stalin suddenly became chummy with Churchill and Roosevelt after Hitler attacked him. But he needed that impetus to overcome his delusions. The Left of today, like Stalin in the immediate Molotov-Ribbentrop period, is like Chthulu, lies "dead but dreaming" in its fantastic, grotesque world.
I sort of think Al Gore is still waiting to ride to the rescue.
Wretchard, I fundamentally agree with your assessment overall of the Left (good points about Lenin vs. Code Pink) but fundamentally disagree with your assessment of Hillary and the Left.
Hillary *IS* a creature of the Left, the Hard Left, and will therefore for that reason lose to whatever Republican wins.
Hillary beholding to Moveon could not repudiate the "Betray Us" ad. She could not repudiate Ahmadinejad's visit to the UN, Columbia, his Holocaust Denial, nukes, or anything else. Neither could any other Dem.
Meanwhile who has the money? Moveon and Soros and the Hard Left. Obama actually leads or until very recently led Hillary in fundraising. Interestingly, Hillary has run a hard-left campaign that is hostile to particularly working whites. Amnesty, Open Borders, Affirmative Action all create massive losses among that portion of the electorate and winners among the Dem coalition of the Hard Left and various interest groups.
Hillary will win the Nomination, likely, because she's better organized and has more name recognition. Though Obama has openly asserted to Dems that the Clinton restoration will leave frozen out all ambitious younger pols in favor of Albright, Holbrooke, and Sandy Burglar.
The problem Hillary faces in the General Election is that hard-left politics from Moveon, Kos, etc. since 2002 or so have left her with no wiggle room. She can't respond to Iran's various acts of war because the Party won't let her. Very embarrassing to say the least when she looks weak, wimpish, and dare I say it, Clintonian appeasement driven if/when Iran does something like launch missiles at Israel, air attacks, or lets off a nuke. To say nothing of more Iranians being caught red-handed killing our guys.
Then there is North Korea. Republicans can and will run to the right of GWB on that issue. Hillary can only run to his left. Offering appeasement and cringing in response to an outsourced North Korea-Syria-Iran triangle of missile and nuclear development.
Meanwhile at HOME, Muslims demand all sorts of things: Sharia Law, Polygamy, foot baths, no cartoons of Mohammed, blasphemy laws for Korans dropped or what have you. While sudden Jihad Syndrome continues.
Giuliani's barb will stick: if Hillary is too weak to stand up to Moveon (and she is) how can she be expected to stand up to Iran or Pakistan under AQ control?
Wretchard,
Perhaps. But I think that now we come to the weakness of "the Phalanx" and of the party line whose strengths you had noted in an earlier post - when survival within a group becomes predicated upon allegiance to a party line no matter what the facts may be then the ability to think for oneself is no longer a survival trait and there is a perverse incentive for all within the Phalanx to forfeit that ability. If the intellectual culling that the party line imposes lasts long enough the Phalanx goes from having reached the point where it will march off a mountain cliff without thinking upon command to the point where it does march off the cliff without thinking because none of its officers had the sense to order it not to or else did not dare lest they themselves be purged.
I suspect that anyone on the Left who you made that case to would no longer have the ability to see that you are correct even if they dared and would not dare even if they, with the assistance of Groo, still had the ability to see it. Hence the reason they will continue to implode. Hence also the reason no one within the Democratic Party would have the ability to govern even if they were elected.
And yet the fact remains that the Democratic Party not only controls both Houses, albeit by a small majority, but is favored to win the White House in 2008.
Observing the Democrats are ridden problems doesn't mean the Republicans aren't either. That they are in their current state is proof enough there are problems enough for everyone. But that's for another post.
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I see this coming election as one of the final arguments within my narcissistic generation; an argument that centers around the natural conflicts between the female and the male.
This coming political drama will be repeated in many American households where the man and woman go at each other. Symbolism will abound.
That is why I have been saying for some time, if my hunch proves correct, the presidential players will be Hillary and Bill Clinton's older brother Newt. It's too perfect a match not to happen.
Hillary believes government should have a teat for every group, every cause, every right whether true or fabricated.
Newt thinks he can reorganize government to work better than a swiss watch while he ponders every problem brought to him, knowing he will come up with a better solution.
Smack down, tapout, call it what you will...this is the Honeymooners gone wild!
Just my hunch. Personally, I don't much care for Hillary, never have. As for Newt, I think the office will contain some of his energies, thus he would be my choice.
Maybe an effect of internet and blogs is to weaken extremist elements in both parties. Buchanan, Dean, Ron Paul, and Obama are all weak horses. The frontrunners are racing to the center, presumably following public opinion.
Recent history has shown, and not at all surprisingly, that when Dem presidential candidates hew toward the center they'll sometimes win, sometimes lose, but at least keep the race competitive - but if they veer too far to the left, they're pretty much guaranteed to get crushed.
Conventional wisdom -- but not consistent with the facts.
If we look at total votes cast in presidential elections since WaterGate, something strange sticks out. Total votes for the Democrat candidate have grown at about the rate of population growth. Hence, incompetent politician Al Gore got more votes that wonderful campaigner Bill Clinton. And wooden replica John Kerry got more votes than Gore. It is almost as if voting for the Democrat Presidential candidate is a little like having blue eyes -- just an inborn characteristic.
In contrast, total votes cast for the Republican candidate shoots up & down. Especially interesting is the role of Ross Perot -- he clearly attracted people who otherwise would not have voted at all.
Once in a while, the Republicans nominate a candidate like a Reagan or a Bush 2004, who attracts the votes of that group of people who otherwise would not vote at all -- the Contingent Voters.
Unless the trends are broken, the 2008 election will be decided (like all recent elections) on the Republican side. Will the Republicans nominate someone who appeals to the Contingent Voter?
For the Democrats, this means that they can nominate whoever they want -- hard left, center left, corrupt, lily white -- it does not matter to the bulk of the Democrat voters.
Al Gore, Savior of the Planet.
Hillary Clinton has two characteristics that stand out. She craves power above all other things and she will lie even about small unimportant things.
Debating whether to support or appose her based on her statements of her positions or what anyone perceives as her positions is useless. She will say and do anything that gains power for her. She will love you only as long as you are useful to her, toss you aside when you aren't anymore and crush you if you are a threat to her power.
The Left has always had a love affair with leaders who tended toward being sociopaths. They have sown this for a long time and now we all my reap it.
1) If the Left have become chestless, then (not that it would happen) would an evil Bush regime be able to purge them with ease? Or an uprising of the Right?
I don't mean that it would or will happen, but there is a posture wherein all these troofers and people who should know beter get quite a gleam in their eye when I remind them that Bush WILL be leaving office Jan. 20, 2009.
Obviously, if he doesn't, then he is the tyrant they all fear. (And obviously, if he does, he isn't.) So, if he (or Pres. Cheney) declares martial law and starts sending Columbia faculty and students off to the next Gitmo:
would their self-preservation kick in,
have they unknown defenders,
or would they fall like ripe corn?
2) ISTM the only sane Dem is Biden. Sane by our standards, I mean. Other than, in the GWOT sense, Hillary!. So I can only see him as the viable Dem rival, which he is not. Therefore I can see no alternative this cycle.
(That probably means, if Hillary! wins, she gets a free ride in the primaries in 2012. But onwards...)
The only one who can match her is Giuliani. He is the only one who is credible in the Bull Halsey mode (Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill More Japs) without seeming canned.
Of course I like him generally, but if an Edwards or an Obama won, it is possible that Thompson, say, or even Romney might look better to me. I see it as kinda Rock-Paper-Scissors. You say Clinton, I say Rudy.
Rudy might go with Fred Thompson as VP - seems about right for his historical work ethic; he has appeal and gravitas; shores him up on 2nd Amdt and such; right geography.
Now, I do think Rudy Giuliani, with or without Fred Thompson, is the best bet against Hillary Clinton.
Is that best, good enough? Or are X million evangelicals, or whoever is the decisive bloc, going to stay home, wash their hands, and allow...the worst to happen?
I don't see another way. Romney, not gonna happen. McCain, I forgot him...there you are, I forgot him. He might do as VP, I suppose, he is after all a man grown old in service to his country. But I don't think he can take it all the way nor will he be offered the chance.
Is a Huckabee, a Hunter realistic? Some unknown governor?
I don't blame them for moving up the primaries. I think this matchup is ready now. Certainly Hillary is acting like it. What did that fellow say about her Sister Souljah moment being due? Anytime now, I'm sure.
And yes, re: domestic oppression, I do think past performance is the best predictor of future performance. Maybe the weeding of 'pervy' Reps is good, because with her in, they would never be able to keep a secret again.
And I heartily agree, as I told leftists of my acquaintance long ago, that the smart thing for the Left to do was grin and ber it, all get behind and push for victory. Sooner the war is over, sooner they're free to mock Bush without looking all copperhead.
But no, delayed gratification is out. Tant pis! That's what happens when you spit on the classics of Western civ. Homer was just another dead white male with nothing to say.
But no, I will not be heading into the hills with my gun if she wins. (Not right away ;>) The social compact demands at least an attempt at comity.
BTW I can't believe she could get the vote of any free person who can hear her voice. I suppose all the pessimism here is good, it calibrates me against a rather nasty shock. I couldn't believe Bush pere could lose against the Hamburglar either.
But I hardly recommend relaxing and enjoying it. Take more than thoughts of England to distract my mind off that...No, ladies and gents, do let's fight.
I like that Newt scenario. Just think, an actual conservative theoretician who is also obsessed with practicality --and who understands history and what it actually means.
Newt could be just exactly what we need.
Wretchard's thesis is intriguing, to say the least. But carrying it out requires some sort of event that would allow Democrats to accept a sunk cost. Like the Copperheads of 1864 they placed all their bets on a stalemate that they'd be able to sell as defeat. And then Atlanta upended all of that. The result was that the culture of the country, and most of its political institutions, were controlled by Union veterans for the next 70 years. It was an annihilation... until the Great Depression (disregarding the little blips of Cleveland and Wilson). The last member of the GAR died in 1951. All of their children, and most of their grandchildren, are now also gone to greener pastures.
Unless there is an event that allows a kind of selective amnesia on the part of the Democrats, or unless we actually fail in Iraq, the future of the country will be determined by a relatively small group of veterans, edging back into American life. They may very well change the Republican Party, but they probably will not ally with the Democrats.
Which all goes to say that either history will be repeated, or it won't.
yep--I'll bet I'm not the only one to note how easily "President Petraeus" rolls off the tongue and into the mind.
My slant on the Presidential election is that Hillary will win the Democratic nomination and Giuliani will win the Republican nomination. Contrary to popular belief, the general election will probably be driven by economic concerns and not by the war in Iraq which should be largely defused by mid-2008. Giuliani is the Republican best able to compete against Hillary. Unfortunately not even Abraham Lincoln could beat Hillary if the economy fully tanks in 2008 which IMHO is probable. The wild card in this analysis is Iran. If the economy seriously tanks, Bush may launch raids against Iran to take out the Iranian nuclear capability. It's difficult to predict how the American electorate would respond to that. The moonbats with the full support of the MSM would have hissy-fits but that might(?) actually help Giuliani win the general election. Giuliani has shown himself to be skilled at using moonbats to his advantage.
Joshua said...
"I'm starting to wonder whether at least part of the hard Left isn't on the verge of abandoning the political game and gearing up for literal war."
I sub-divide the "Hard Left" into moonbats and the treasonous left. The moonbats and the treasonous left often engage in identical behavior. The big difference between the two groups is the moonbats due to emotion have allowed their prefrontal lobes to disconnect from the rest of their brain while the treasonous left are deadly rational in their hatred of America and western society. IMHO, Noam Chomsky is a member of the treasonous left while Barbara Boxer is a common moonbat. I anticipate that the treasonous left will engage in violence as their influence in the Democratic Party diminishes. However the moonbats are in a bit of a dilemma because they'd really rather be members of the Green Party rather than Democrats. As we all know, the Green Party split the left wing vote between Ralph Nader and Al Gore thus allowing Bush to become President. It is my impression that most moonbats hate Hillary but will vote for her anyway rather than allow another Republican victory. Who knows what they'll do after Hillary becomes President (probably cause her considerable grief).
Wretchard -- the pundits who believe Hillary will win the General Election remind me of Pauline Kael. Who could not understand why Reagan won. No one she knew on the Upper East Side voted for him.
Hillary's coalition guarantees considerable opposition and presents favorable conditions to Republicans. Feminists (men lose), Minorities (whites lose), Open-borders/Amnesty/La Raza (non-Mexicans lose). Code Pink, Moveon, etc: military supporters AND gun owners lose.
Do you honestly think ANY gun owner will vote Hillary? NRO's campaign spot has analysis showing Hillary hurts Blue Dog Dems. She could actually LOSE seats for the Dems. GWB won't be on the ballot. And Guiliani will likely run to Bush's right, hammering home Hillary's weakness.
With foreign dictators, and particularly because she is a woman, Hillary IS weak. Hectoring schoolmarm, yes. Tough enough to stand up to bin Laden? No.
Pakistan falling to AQ, nukes going off in US cities, Iran lighting off a nuke, Bush hitting Iran (perhaps with FRANCE), what will Hillary do? She will of course be FORCED to embrace weakness as part of her coalition. All of which are profoundly threatened by anything but surrender.
[One of the things that the Primaries have done is tie ALL Dems to Moveon and Code Pink -- more perfect attack ads could not be imagined.]
If Hilary wins the WH then for most of the adult life of almost everyone on the planet either a Bush or a Clinton would have been POTUS. The mind numbs at the thought.
Several interesting thoughts in this post and all these comments.
Wretchard's thesis about the Left is interesting, but I agree with those who posit that the movement is incapable of accepting the deferred gratification that defeating Islmofascism would require. Far more likely that elements of the Left will try to marry into Islamofascism so to speak. It's too attractive for some elements not to go that way: it's authoritarian; it's Third World; it's anti-American.
If Hillary falters, I think Al Gore is the candidate. He unites the Obama crowd, the Edwards people and is the paladin of the Left Global-Warming religion.
As for Joshua's comments on the hard Left, I have begun to wonder about that myself. I still think that a Democrat victory in 2008 is the way to bet it, which should bleed off some of the frustration driving the left this way -- but whoever wins, they're a one-term wonder who will have nothing but headaches.
Whoever mentioned President Petraeus is onto something.
The Republicans are in trouble: because of Iraq, but more crucially because big money is deserting them. Some business interests want the government to take over their health care obligations, and think that the Global Warming craze is a done deal, and that they might as well get in on the ground floor of the new regulatory world, and use the government to kill their rivals.
But just suppose things don't work as predicted, and the Democrats, for whatever reason, don't win in 2008 ? Won't we live in an interesting world then? The rage and frustration of the Left will defy description. Whoever mentioned 1864 might be onto something...among other things, is anybody paying attention to the Vermont secession movement ?
And yet the fact remains that the Democratic Party not only controls both Houses, albeit by a small majority, but is favored to win the White House in 2008.
When you read a poll citation, ALWAYS ask yourself three questions:
1. Who did the poll and how were the questions phrased?
2. Who did the pollsters select to answer the questions?
3. Who tallied the answers?
It's been my experience that most polls quoted by both American and Middle East MSM are heavily tilted towards questions in the vein of, "When did you quit beating your wife?"
We've also seen quite a few instances where the people being asked the questions were 2/3's Democratic registered, which means that a Republican point of view would be outweighed from the get-go.
Finally, we know that if the numbers in a poll don't add up to what the poll-takers think they should be (i.e., the NY Times), the questions will be re-asked and a new poll taken. This makes me wonder how many polls that don't produce the "right" answers simply are dropped and never published in the first place.
I simply do not believe that the Democrats are as strong as the pollsters keep telling us they are, especially when the Democrats throw in their lot with the Code Pink / Cindy Sheehan / MoveOn loons, and Americans *know* that that is what they'd be electing if they elect Mrs. Bill Clinton.
And yet the fact remains that the Democratic Party not only controls both Houses, albeit by a small majority, but is favored to win the White House in 2008.
When you read a poll citation, ALWAYS ask yourself three questions:
1. Who did the poll and how were the questions phrased?
2. Who did the pollsters select to answer the questions?
3. Who tallied the answers?
It's been my experience that most polls quoted by both American and Middle East MSM are heavily tilted towards questions in the vein of, "When did you quit beating your wife?"
We've also seen quite a few instances where the people being asked the questions were 2/3's Democratic registered, which means that a Republican point of view would be outweighed from the get-go.
Finally, we know that if the numbers in a poll don't add up to what the poll-takers think they should be (i.e., the NY Times), the questions will be re-asked and a new poll taken. This makes me wonder how many polls that don't produce the "right" answers simply are dropped and never published in the first place.
I simply do not believe that the Democrats are as strong as the pollsters keep telling us they are, especially when the Democrats throw in their lot with the Code Pink / Cindy Sheehan / MoveOn loons, and Americans *know* that that is what they'd be electing if they elect Mrs. Bill Clinton.
My explanation for the data: Obama was never a serious candidate, merely an unknown quantity who's favorable coverage stemmed as much from the desperation of the anti-Hillary coalition as from any intrinsic merit.
Obama has made some truely monumental gaffes, mostly covered up by the friendly mainstream media. The same weekend he said he would pull American troops out of the "civil war" in Iraq and let our Iraqi allies be slaughtered by the terrorists, he said he would send American troops into the civil war in Darfur. Why are the poor Darfurians MORE deserving of our help then the Iraqis who risk their lives to support America's efforts to rebuild Iraq?
Obama doesn't have a foreign policy, he substitutes DailyKos opinion polls.
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 09/26/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
As to Obama...don't the race people down in Kentucky, when breeding time arrives, bring down a horse to confront the mares in order to discover which one is in heat prior to introducing the stallion for actual breeding?
Sure, Obama might just get lucky...there may be enough "observers" in the paddock to demand he be allowed to mount the mares...
In your dreams! And this has nothing to do with gender nor color, well certainly not color.
huh?!? Was that a country-fried way of saying "stalking horse?" Or what?
Stalking horse? Watch the pictures of Bill Clinton embracing Al Gore if you want stalking horse shots.
Remember, Al Gore had daughters the age of Monica while Bill was being serviced...and he did nothing. Now Bill is advancing his game plan and Al still sucks up to this guy!
Ask me who is in control!
I don't like Bill, Hill or Al, but I still don't understand what you are saying in this post or the last. Sorry, I am trying.
The stop Hilllary crowd will prevail.
The Democrats will give us Gore and Obama.
...I still don't understand what you are saying in this post or the last. Sorry, I am trying.
Two possibilities:
1. "stream of consciousness" and it's all psychological navel-gazing pushing outside the envelope.
2. you're stupid.
Yes, he does seem upset.
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