Posted on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 11:58 — by MikeSar
Suppose a SuperDelagate, a high elected official, is approached by close friend, over an after-meal drink, and tells him, "Yesterday, a friend of mine made a substantial contribution for your re-election campaign and I wanted you to know that we are prepared to double that contribution provided you help us spare the nation the ugly spectacle, possibly embarrasing, of a good citizen, who happens to be of a kind the American people has never and would never support for the office of President of the United States, is not nominated. Don't decide anything now, just think about it, we will watch what you do at the convention." Then, another close friend approached, but this one wore a Roman collar...
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Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 325
Everything I hear, is Obama got a lock on the nomination. There isn't enough delegates remaining for Hillary to catch up. Did you hear otherwise?
Mike, you create interesting comments for dialogue, why don't you come out and play..... we can talk:)
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 494
Mathematically, Obama has a lock on the nomination. Hillary needs to win in North Dakota and Indiana by about 65%, and then continue at that pace to overcome Barack by the convention. If she loses in those two states, she has to win the remaining states by an 85% margin. Neither is impossible; yet all are highly improbable. My own simple math done the other day in a hospital waiting room, which used the following very basic and ball-park computation for each candidate (number of delegates currently committed subtracted from votes needed -- 2025 -- divided by number of delegates still to be determined -- 718) revealed that Hillary needs to win 64% of those remaining 718 delegates, and Barack only 45%. That seems pretty close to the figures I cite above.
Okay, so there are only three ways that Hillary can win the nomination: (1) win 65% (or more) of all remaining elections; (2) claim, and receive, ALL the delegates from Florida and Michigan (which she is trying to do) ... which not only reflects a contradiction of her own Party rules, but also reflects the fact that even though she signed a pledge NOT to run in Michigan, she broke her promise and allowed her name to appear on the ballot, which is why she got votes ... and not award any representational delegates to Barack; or (3) broker some back-room deal with enough super delegates to vote against the overwhelming majority of people who have so far cast votes for Barack.
The first method, should it occur, would be honorable, and would put Rocky to shame! I don't think it is going to happen.
The other two options have a chance of taking place, and I wouldn't take any odds on them right now. I can tell you this, however. Should she win by either of the latter two methods, she will have proven herself to be worse, and less reliable, than John McCain ... something even worse than a hawkish, corporate controlled Republican. And if you think the Reverend Wright has some harsh things to say about white America, I have a very sinking feeling that to deny Barack Obama the nomination because of a political deal will unleash such a strong racial backlash that the riots of the sixties and eighties will look like a stroll through the park. At the very least, a HUGE majority of black voters will sit out the election and not vote for Hillary. I mean, my dad ... who lives in Los Angeles ... told me that gang-bangers were lined up to vote in his precinct, and several of them were asking him to tell him how to operate the machines so they could cast their votes. He told me that 9- and 10-year olds were approaching him outside the polling place (a legal distance away, he pointed out) pleading with him (and others) to vote for Barack because they couldn't. I spoke to a good friend of mine just yesterday, who happens to be a black retired school teacher, like me, and he said he has twenty black friends who have been registered Republicans for the last couple of decades (and, as I remember it ... and them ... a bit of a contentious part of his private life) who are going to vote for Obama if he gets the nomination.
These are, of course, anecdotal bits of evidence. They mean nothing, except what they tell me in my gut. Some hopes and expectations are quietly rising ... no one wants to come out and say anything because it has been so long in coming that no one really expects it to happen, or believes that it can, or wants to once again have hopes dashed ... and they can only have a very bitter and angry crash at the end if they are not realized.
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 585
The Republicans are celebrating, because there is a question regarding how many Democrats will vote for Obama? How many of Clinton's supporters will decide that McCain is a closer fit for thier own philosophy then the Black Nationalism that Obama seems to be bring to the race?
Mike Sar is a Times reporter--he may not be participating because the journalistic ethics of his position. Is ethics a word you are familiar with?
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 494
... only some republicans are celebrating. You may have noticed that John McCain, who essentially is running against NO ONE, is struggling to get even 3/4 of of the votes of Republicans who bother to vote in Republican primaries. Indiana: McCain, 77%; North Carolina: McCain 73%. Large numbers of Republicans are going out of their way to show their displeasure with their presumptive nominee.
Bodes ill for the Publican Party in the general election.
And to answer your question ... 134,000 NEW democrats in Oregon, alone! Most will vote for their candidate (or will sit out). Few Hillary supporters will vote for McCain.
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 1
Dick Harpootlian is quoted as saying the race-based votes will cancel out. But as the article also points out, Obama was more affected in Pennsylvania. I calculate that racism contributed to 85% of the 9.4% Clinton victory margin. Here is how: Exist polls showed that 16% said that “race was important”. Of that 16%, 12% voted for Hilliary, only 4% for Obama. Therefore, Hilliary’s excess yield from this group was 8% (12-4). And 8 / 9.4= 85%. Gov. Rendell set the stage. In February, before Wright, before “cling”, he said that some Pennsylvanians “may not be ready to vote for a black man”. Welcome to Pa. Shame on Rendell. He shouldn’t have left the analyzing of this painful truth to Obama. Who isn’t going to stumble trying to explain prejudice against oneself? It was Rendell’s state; where was the outrage and moral leadership?
JohnLee
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 585
That Democrats are racists? I thought that the party line was that the Republicans were racsists and that the Democrats were as pure as the driven snow.
Guess your snow is kind of yellow isn't it.
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 494
Republicans are racists. That's because Ronald Reagan successfully convinced all those old southern Democrats to leave the Democratic Party and join him.
Here's a couple of ideas to mull over ...
In 1964 (100 years after the Civil War and the "unforgivable" victory of Lincoln and Republicans over the South), the ONLY states that Barry Goldwater carried outside of Arizona were in the south. Four years later, George Wallace carried most of the southern states with a campaign built primarily on ... ahem, shall we say it wasn't based on love, respect, or support for Civil Rights (or the rights of black people, in general). By 1978, Ronald Reagan completed the flip by running a campaign focused on many neo-conservative talking points, chief amongst them states' rights and "welfare queens" (without once having to explain ... nudge, nudge, wink, wink ... just what color those "welfare queens" were ... and without once having to ever having to provide concrete evidence that they even existed). Today, almost half (42%) of all Republicans in the House of Representatives are from southern states, only slightly less than all the House seats controlled by southern Democrats in 1954 (47%). In the 2000 and 2004 election, white Americans voted for George W Bush by less than 5 percentage points more than they voted for Al Gore or John Kerry outside the south. In the south, they outvoted whites who voted Democrat by over 35 percentage points.
It isn't hard to see that Republicans have built their national political power primarily because they have secured the vote of white racists in the south.
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 585
An interesting reaction. Republicans are racists, Democrats are racists--everyone is a racist. Democrats are just more sensitive, like you have just demonstrated, to having that reality pointed out in their own behavior.
In another discussion, I think we had decided that at some level everyone is a racist--yet you object to me pointing out racism when it is expressed on these boards?
It isn't hard to see that Republicans have built their national political power primarily because they have secured the vote of white racists in the south. While overlooking that your analysis resulting in this conclusion is based on a lot of assumptions about what desicisions were raially motivated, (all your wink wink, nod, nod that may or may not have occurred), let me just point out that those white racists are, primarily Democrats voting for Republicans because they have nothing in common with the Democratic party. If these people changed to the Republican party, would Democrats hold a majority in the Senate and House?
Another false assumption you make is that the only racists in this nation are white Southern men. Doesn't Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakan prove that there are racists amoung Black northern men? And I believe that quite a few hispanics are also very racists against blacks.
These are just a few highlights. I believe if you honestly look closely, you will find that racism is very well distributed in the Democratic party. In fact, it is possible that racism will divide your party in this election.
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 494
See my other post. Racism (which is always based on fear) is rampant in this country. Dems and Pubs both are cursed with it. Hillary, in the death throes of her campaign, is attempting to exploit it, and we are seeing that she is right. There are racists in the Democratic Party who will support her (despite all warts) just so they don't have to support "him".
I'm going to go out on a limb and make a couple of predictions.
I think the Republican Party has hit its height and now is doomed for a couple of election cycles (hopefully more) of pit row. People have become hip to the cr*p this party has tried to make us swallow ... people (even Publicans) have realized that a once majestic party of equality and small government and hard individual work has been hijacked by a well-organized group of elitists that are willing to sell out party ideals for their own narrow narrow narrow political agenda.
People are tired of, and see the wickedness of, waging an unnecessary war while the real villain gains in strength and poses increasing threats against us while we fiddle and pass money amongst private contractors who are overly cozy with the power mongers giving them the money. Even you seem to sense that we have focused on the wrong guys, and that no matter how much we spend and how many young Americans we sacrifice, those terrorists seem to be getting stronger and might even be looking for a nuke to detonate in our midst!
People are tired of watching health care grow increasingly impossible to have, and no longer buy the argument that they don't deserve it.
People are growing increasingly tired of being bombarded with advertisements for drugs that prove to be deadly, and then told the reason that those drugs are so expensive is because it costs so much money to advertise them.
... and so on.
It would not be the first time I was wrong, but I am becoming increasingly confident that the time of letting rich and powerful people make all of our decisions for us is passing.
And ... as reported in a different message ... it looks like about 25% of all Republicans are going out of their way to tell their Party that they don't like John McCain.
Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 762
This was written by an Obamarama Activist in the Frisco Paper - as part of the now open warfare with the Klintonista Camp... If you didn't get a chance to see last Sundays Comic "OPUS" (by Berke Breathed Click Here: Check out "Opus" ) - the not so subtle digs at Hillary Supporters as being Flaming Radical Feminazis (of a certain age, color, attitude...) was too priceless to miss. Enjoy... Ohso.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> When can I call myself a feminist again?
Caille Millner Monday, May 5, 2008
I was never one of those young women who had a "problem" with feminism. You know what I'm talking about - you've met those young women who, when they hear about a situation that's blatantly sexist, begin their tirade against it with, "I'm not a feminist, but..." I've never said anything like that.
I never thought feminism had anything to do with burning bras, armpit hair, men equaling bicycles, or any of the other hackneyed stereotypes that it's been "associated" with in popular culture. Think men and women should have equal pay in the workplace, and equal rights under the law? That made you a feminist in my book, whether you were male or female. Whenever I heard women my age complaining about how they believed in equality but not "feminism," I smiled blandly, fully and rather myopically convinced that they were just misinformed.
Now that the primary election has brought a lot of the old-school, Second Wave feminists out of hiding, though, I'm horrified. Has Gloria Steinem always been as divisive (not to mention clueless) as she sounded after the Iowa primary, writing in the New York Times that "some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system ... women are the one group that grows more radical with age?"
Has Geraldine Ferraro always been as despicable as she has been in recent months, whining, after she resigned from the Clinton campaign for making laughable allegations about how easy African American male politicians have it in this country, that Hillary's opponents "are attacking me to hurt you." Has Erica Jong always been as self-indulgent as she was in February, when she wrote a sniveling piece in the Washington Post titled, "Hillary vs. the Patriarchy," claiming that her own life has been an endless sob story because she "found my voice as a writer while exiled to the boonies with a husband who cheated?"
Is this what all those young women have been reacting against - this vision of feminism as a shell game of victimhood, as something almost cartoonish in its narrow-minded concerns? Is this what people have been associating me with when they heard me blithely call myself a feminist? How did I get fooled?
I'm starting to think about adopting a more pragmatic approach - something my peers have already done. "I don't focus on talking about gender equality," said Rebecca Weeks, who is my age - 29 - and has what might be considered a "feminist" career as the head of business development for a comprehensive community for women on the Internet, divinecaroline.com. "I prefer to show men and women that I can negotiate, take care of finances, and work to anyone's ability." Less talking means less whining and less identity politics. I like it.
Weeks adds that she "doesn't get too involved in talking about politics. I'd much rather go out and be the change than argue for the change." Yes. This is sounding good. This is sounding empowering, rather than depressing.
"The new behaviors we're seeing in young women - buying their own homes, starting their own businesses, traveling the world - these aren't revolutionary behaviors," Weeks went on. "It's the attitude of these women that's truly progressive. They're not angry at men for historical grievances. They're just trying to take advantage of all these different opportunities without having anyone get in their way, male or female." Of course! This is my life - and Weeks' life - and the life of virtually every other young woman we know. When and why did this perspective become incompatible with feminism? Was it because of a semantic issue; based on young women's unwillingness to associate themselves with the excesses of Second Wave feminist thought? Or was it because those same Second Wave feminists have now decided that they don't want anything to do with we younger women because we've resisted doing what they tell us we should do and resisted feeling the way they tell us we should feel? I want the word feminism back.
Of course, this may mean that I have to duck my head and pretend that the dreadful doyennes from the Second Wave didn't actually reappear from their time machines, educating a new generation of girls and women about why there was a backlash to feminism in the first place. It may mean that I have to follow Weeks' plan - no words, no politics, nothing except a slow steady climb toward the reality I've already been living, encouraging other girls to do the same - and stay quiet, at least for now, about the actual word "feminism."
After all, I wouldn't want to be labeled as, you know, in denial or anything. Caille Millner is a Chronicle editorial writer. You can e-mail her at cmillner@sfchronicle.com.
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 325
Ohso, you seem to be coming to terms with your addiction to metaphors. Congrats. Did you have to suffer through all those horrible symptoms of withdrawal craziness? I feel for you buddie.
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 494
The Democratic alliance of southern crackers and urban liberals was successfully exploited by Ronald Reagan. Prior to that (and going all the way back to the Civil War), the southern branch of the Democratic Party would have been happy as clams in Pretoria or Johannesburg, and a large number of their northern brethren wouldn't have been too far behind them. Part of the 14th Amendment (namely Section 2) was written because a lot of northern legislators were not too keen about guaranteeing free black men in the north the right to vote, either.
So, do you know a political party that doesn't have skeletons in its closet?
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 585
The Democratic alliance of southern crackers and urban liberals Maybe the problem is the you are using derogatory terms to label segments of your own party. The term southern cracker is a pejorative label . To quote Wikipedia “According to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, "cracker" is a term of contempt for the "poor" or "mean whites," particularly of Georgia and Florida. Britannica notes that the term dates back to the American Revolution, and is derived from the "cracked corn" which formed their staple food. [2] “ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_%28pejorative%29 This is more then a bit of embarashing past history—it is the current make-up of your party and it is impacting how Democrats function Obama’s “promise” is to heal the differences in our nation—I think you need the differences in your own party before you try to run a nation. One solution is for your conservative southern white Democrats to come over to the Republican party—where I believe they would be very welcome and find more compatable philosohies. And that just may happen in this election cycle.
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 494
I will call a spade a spade. Racist Democrats in the south left the party en masse, and are now all Republicans. Democrats remaining in the south are quite different than those of the fifties and sixties who blocked school house doors to keep little black children out of their schools. This does not rid the Democratic Party of all its racists ... racism is virulent and widespread in this country. We'll have to wait and see whether the promise of sending an honest and exciting young man to lead the country can defeat the fear and regressive tendencies of those who want to cling to a past that has become defunct. Corporatism is coming to an end (hopefully). Narrow self-interested support for an elitist aristocracy is coming to an end (hopefully). A young black man (flawed ... like us all) vs a wishy-washy "I'll do anything and sell out all my beliefs if I can get elected" old f*rt will be an interesting choice.
My bet is that the supporters of old-f*rtism will be amazed at how out of touch they are with what people actually want.
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 325
Clayton: "That Democrats are racists? I thought that the party line was that the Republicans were racsists and that the Democrats were as pure as the driven snow. Guess your snow is kind of yellow isn't it."
Clayton, you just spread charm where ever you go. I see you made another "friend" on the forum to have a future thoughtful discussion with. Yellow snow? Your statement says it all to the impartial reader who happens upon this thread. Your comments are wonderful examples of your fanaticism, cynicism, and stupidism. According to the above, you just don't have anything relevant to say.
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 585
and not a single opinion on the topic. You apparently can not answer the question why you and other Democrats are proving to be racists. In fact, you fail, repeatedly to use valid language and grammer. What is the point of posting if you have nothing to contribute and lack the skills to communicate properly. In this case, stupidism is not a word in the English language.
Answer the question if you can.
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 325
Clayton, stupidism is a word I just invented for you. I thought that you would have figured that out by now. The English language is a beautiful language......so fluid and flexible.... words coming into and out of usage. Maybe that one will stick. By the way, my English skills are every bit as good as yours. If you dispute that assertion then: "Lay on McDuff"
“Democrats are racist.” Wow, I don’t even know where to start with that one. Clayton you embarrass yourself. I’ll just keep it short and simple so you will understand...... Clayton, you and your brother Ohso are nuts. Did that answer the question?
Now let me ask you a question: you are obviously an Arab racist, where does your moral authority come from?
My goodness, I don't believe you actually counted my words; if I'm making you crazy then I will consider my mission a success.
P.S. Get a dictionary
Joined: Jul 2005
Posts: 494
Few people would rise to such an inspiring and positive challenge.
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 249
Obamination apparently has given up on soliciting white voters (a racist act) and turned to the more easily seduced Hispanic vote (another racist act). I know you didn't see anything in the CCTimes about McAmnesty and Obamination addressing LaRaza this past week, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
So what, exactly, did these two reconquistas promise this hate-mongering, pro-invasion, racist group? Hint - it will cost you dearly. Bottom line - you will have less things, less freedom, less security because you will be forced to share with the have-nots who aren't even citizens of this country.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080620/D91DI6LO0.html
http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=788054
(Don't you think it's embarassing that we have to get news about our candidates from foreign country sources?)
(see poll http://forums.contracostatimes.com/poll/what-should-we-do-with-immigrati... )
Joined: Oct 2007
Posts: 585
it is a consequence of a biased and unprofessional journalism.
Notice that Obama is not expressing the liberal perspective that Hispanics are not a race, (that was expressed on this Board) probably because he was talking to a Hispanic group known as The Race. The Democrats gave us Slick Willy, so do we now have the Slick Bambi runnig to be the boy President?