Excellent post. Thanks very much.

Posted at March 29, 2008 10:38 AM in response to Expediency, Morality, and the McCain Economy

IAWTP, as far as I know.

Posted at March 29, 2008 12:29 AM in response to The Mythic Clinton Narrative

Hi Laura,

Picking a presidential candidate is always a gamble. Few would have predicted that Bush would have turned out to be the monster (can I say that without being denounced and rejected?) that he's become if they based their opinion on how he behaved as governor.

In my case, I think that votes on bills are important, and policy statements are important, but it's also important that I have a gut feeling that the candidate respects the people and has the capacity to think. Obama gives me that feeling. He doesn't talk down to me in his speeches that I've heard. He is willing to listen to both sides of arguments and has demonstrated that he has the intellect to consider policy options that don't fit into the "Taxes == Bad, Government == Bad" mindset. He also doesn't believe in the 50% + 1 theory of politics that has ruled Washington for the last 7+ years. And he has legislative experience to back up my feelings - he's not an unknown quality in government.

Hillary also has the capacity to be a very good president, but I believe that she has character flaws that will prevent her from having that opportunity. I would have thought that her being crushed by the health care debacle in the 1990s would have been a great advantage in the campaign because, AFAIK (other than losing to Bobby Rush in 2000), Obama hasn't suffered a major political defeat. All politicians do, eventually. Hillary could have learned from her defeat about the importance of transparency, of building broad support, of being persuasive without being doctrinaire and without being strident. She hasn't learned those lessons, IMO, and instead continues to reinforce the stereotypes that she only cares about herself and political power. Her overstatements of her experiences is another illustration of her flaws.

Is Obama flawless? Of course not. But he's the best of the lot and has the capacity to make good things happen for a change.

It goes without saying that McCain would be an unmitigated disaster for the US and the world. :-(

So, for me, the choice is an easy one. :-)

Cheers,
grunculus.

Posted at March 28, 2008 11:57 PM in response to The Mythic Clinton Narrative

Hi DF and All,

An interesting topic. I'll play Devil's Advocate for a while. :-)

What has she done? Well, I think she is credited with getting more money to NYC after 9/11 than Bush originally wanted to spend. And some of her proposals were approved in committee (I don't know if they became law). I think many people (at least those who don't live in NY ;-) think she was an important person in those battle.

I also think that it's not unusual for members in the party out of power to have few legislative accomplishments to point to - the majority has ways to foil such things. So I don't know that not having major legislative accomplishments is a strike against her.

As others have mentioned, she was very good in the early debates and she is able to convince people that she knows what's going on in the government. I think that supports some of the apparent wonkyosity.

I also agree with the implication that she has run a very poor campaign by accusing her opponent of not having qualities that she herself has not demonstrated. In fact, her campaign seems to be imploding as a result of people (finally) looking behind the curtain.

With all of that out of the way, while I agree with your general impression that there's little objective substance behind many of these qualities that her campaign has pushed (like her supposed inevitability), I think your post would have been stronger with some links to specific statements from her campaign or surrogates. If I were unkind, I could accuse you of building a strawman. :-)

Cheers,
grunculus.

Posted at March 28, 2008 10:38 PM in response to The Mythic Clinton Narrative

Hi Andrew, Josh and All,

(Since this is an old thread (that I just found), I'll send this to the e-mail address as well.)

I appreciate your efforts.

I have a few of suggestions, which may or may not be easy to implement.

1) Permit editing of posts, but have a link at the bottom that calls up the previous version. That lets the reader see what was changed (and keeps authors from revising history).

2) Have a default Preview view before a new post goes in the queue. If that's not possible, give the poster the option of putting the post in a Test forum. (Its not immediately clear what HTML tags are permitted, etc., so it's not easy for newbies to know what the post will look like).

3) Make the "Recent Reader Posts" queue longer (double?). As the Cafe gets more popular, this list will be scrolled faster. As it stands, readers of Election Central often won't get a chance to see many posts if they only stop by a few times a day. Clicking on "All Readers Posts" isn't a full solution because that link brings up all the posts in reverse chronological order - meaning you have to sort through them again, and if you get to the bottom and click "Previous Post" you get the full list from the current time and have to sort through them all again. Adding a dedicated column for reader posts and recommended posts might be a solution, but I know that would be a very big change.

I'll quit now. Thanks again.

Posted at March 28, 2008 7:39 PM in response to Update on TPM Community Tech

If you're going to cut-and-paste Hillary's talking points, it would be good to post the URL so that you aren't accused of plagiarism.

For your convenience, it's below.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=6752

HTH!

Posted at March 25, 2008 8:37 PM in response to Why Obama's Lies Are Important

Hmmm. I thought Waldengirl's excellent post was about Hillary, not Barack. I don't quite understand how your reply is on-topic.

BTW, if you're going to cut-and-past Hillary's talking points, it would be good of you to include the URL so that readers won't accuse you of plagiarism.

For your convenience, the URL is here:
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=6752

HTH!

Posted at March 25, 2008 8:08 PM in response to Why Hillary’s Lies are Important

I saw it this morning on TV in the DC area. It's clearly not meant to be a "SuperBowl" ad in the vein of Apple or Budweiser.

It's a very good ad, IMO.

Cheers,
Scott.

Posted at February 3, 2008 5:24 PM in response to Obama's Super Bowl Ad: "We Can Change The World"