Obama - Retired U.S. General Wesley Clark

McCain - he'll pick an African American senator, preferably from Illinois, who shares his foreign policy thrust (Amerika Über Alles)

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Anyone want to put any money on Clinton?

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Nope. A candidate attempting to embody change won't pick a Clinton. There's also that whole "crowded White House" thing.

(Michael Moore is urging Caroline Kennedy to "pull a Cheney" and recommend herself)

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Originally posted by Adam T:
My favorite for Obama would be John Kerry.

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Yeah, me too. I liked his passion:

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Kerry also said that he believes he can "run a more effective war on terror than George Bush."

"I'm absolutely confident I have the ability to be able to make America safer. But we are united in our determination to hunt down and kill the terrorists."

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... his humanity:

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I will hunt them down, and we'll kill them, we'll capture them.

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... his keen dedication to justice:

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“I regret that when George Bush had the opportunity in Afghanistan and Tora Bora, he didn’t choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden.”

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Two major problems with Boxer/Sebelius:

- the reaction from Clintonistas ... how dare he choose a woman that's not Hillary, she's not even the #1 woman in his eyes, etc.

- Problem #2

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The image of Sebelius and Obama side-by-side might make some Americans, well, uncomfortable. "She's a bit older than Obama, but not old enough to be maternal," a Democratic operative with ties to organized labor told New York magazine's John Heilemann earlier this week. "And she is quite attractive. They'd look too much like a couple together. [Putting her on the ticket] would risk evoking on a subconscious level every American trope about miscegenation — a recurrent, threatening theme throughout our cultural and political history... And that's exactly the kind of anxiety you do not want to raise in white working-class men — the fear that this handsome, charismatic black guy is after their women."

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With Warner giving the keynote, I'll be surprised if it's Kaine.

Obama needs to have a VP that he can trust, trust now, not choose them and hope trust develops. He doesn't trust Clinton. Therefore, she's out.

Bayh is in favour of welfare-to-work, lethal injection, and he co-sponsored the resolution to authorise Iraq. So, Bayh would be a signal that he's willing to do anything to win Indiana.

Biden is likely, but the problem with Biden is that he's a loose cannon. That can be interpreted as "attack dog" or "he'll tell Obama what he really thinks and won't be a yes man." Or he could say something really dumb at a key point in the final month of the campaign. The other problem with Biden is that he may overshadow Obama on foreign policy.

Personally, I think that it'll be a damp squib if Obama chooses anyone that the pundits have been speculating about for the last two months.

Obama has joked that for Gore to take the Vice-Presidency again would be a step down from being an Oscar winner and a Nobel winner, but it would be an interesting way of reminding people what happened in 2000 and the importance of turning out to vote.

Obama could choose one of these alienated former Bush generals (Anthony Zinni?).

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Originally posted by Willowdale Wizard:
Biden is likely, but the problem with Biden is that he's a loose cannon.

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
Obama: Joe Biden

McCain: Mitt Romney

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I've always kinda favoured Biden, partly because he'll be seen as having foreign policy creds, but mainly because Obama will need someone who doesn't bring a knife to a gunfight.

Romney? hmm, I dunno, I think it may be a mistake, which is fine by me of course. The guy has too many of his own ego issues, and I could see the two of them sparking a bit. They sure have a history.

[ 22 August 2008: Message edited by: oldgoat ]

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For the first time in a dozen years, a majority of Americans believe that churches and religious institutions should “keep out” of politics, according to the annual Pew Religion and Public Life Survey.

It’s the highest level of public concern with faith’s effect on politics since Pew began asking the question in 1996.

The rise in Americans’ desire to separate religion and politics — from 44 percent in 2004 to 52 percent today — appears due to a surprising increase in conservative distaste for mingling the institutions — from 30 percent in 2004 to half of conservatives expressing the view today.

Among white evangelicals, 36 percent want religious groups to stay out of politics, a dramatic rise from 16 percent four years ago.

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...a surprising increase in conservative distaste for mingling the institutions...

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[ 22 August 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

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Barack Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware late Friday night to be his vice presidential running mate, according to a Democratic official, balancing his ticket with an older congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues.

Biden, who has twice sought the White House, is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.

Across more than 30 years in the Senate, he has served at various times not only as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, but also as head of the Judiciary Committee, with its jurisdiction over anti-crime legislation, Supreme Court nominees and Constitutional issues.

The official who spoke did so on condition of anonymity, preferring not to pre-empt a text-message announcement the Obama campaign promised for Saturday morning.

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Oh my, no need for Biden's accolades.

- Become the attack dog. His zingers are both blunt and brilliant.
- Play foreign policy czar. Even we know he has the credentials for the job.
- Pull in those Blue Collar/Clinton/Reagan Democrats Obama has such a hard time holding onto.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Wasn't he the one in the debates who was saying that a fast withdrawal from Iraq was unrealistic?

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"He also won praise for a peace plan which would have divided the country along ethnic lines." Wonderful.

Oh, and he was just in Georgia.

And,

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Biden told the New York Observer newspaper: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate, and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

Some took the remark to remark to be racially offensive, but Obama said he was not offended and the matter was dropped.

He was also forced to defend his remark that "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent".

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Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards agreed that it would be wrong to promise that they could get all American forces out of Iraq by 2013.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Wow, the first mainstream "articulate," "bright," and "clean" African-American guy ever, huh?

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Something most white people would never pick up on without help is that it's sometimes insulting to compliment black people. In particular, it's insulting to say something nice about someone who is black that you wouldn't say about someone who is white.

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In particular, it's insulting to say something nice about someone who is black that you wouldn't say about someone who is white.

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So this thing that Biden said about Obama - yes, ignorant, and yes, racist, even if unconsciously so. But what is Obama going to do, realistically? Denounce him for it? There isn't enough of a critical mass in the US who "get it" yet for Obama to be able to do that. So of course, Obama's going to say, "I wasn't offended" and brush it off. Because there's no other real way to handle it without having your entire message turn into a nation-wide debate about whether calling a Black man "articulate" is racist or not.

Sometimes you have to make decisions when it comes to messaging. Heck, even among progressives here, there isn't agreement on whether statements like that are racist or not. Isn't it a bit much to expect Obama to single-handedly, in the course of one presidential campaign, not only cover all the issues the majority consider important, win the presidency, but also bring the entire nation up to speed on critical race theory?

If you want to set someone up to fail, that's the way to do it. And we don't expect it of any other presidential candidates - why do we expect it of the Black guy?

[ 23 August 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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So this thing that Biden said about Obama - yes, ignorant, and yes, racist, even if unconsciously so. But what is Obama going to do, realistically? Denounce him for it? There isn't enough of a critical mass in the US who "get it" yet for Obama to be able to do that. So of course, Obama's going to say, "I wasn't offended" and brush it off.

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And now, CNN is playing clips of Biden criticizing Obama.

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Ronald Reagan picked Bush as his VP, and the media had a field day replaying all of Bush's insults lobbed at Reagan during the primary season, including saying that his economic policy was "voodoo economics". It didn't stop Reagan from winning easily.

If Obama had picked Hillary, there would have been about 100 times more negative stuff she had said about Obama to be mined.

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:
Yes, he voted in favour of Iraq, but he did call the vote a mistake.

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Biden still hasn't repudiated as a mistake his "Biden Plan" for Iraq:

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When Biden, who initially supported the war, was running for president, he repeatedly insisted he was the only candidate with a workable plan for ending it. His campaign created a video, featured in the YouTube debate, that said, "Joe Biden is the only one with the experience and the plan to end this war responsibly so our children don't have to go back."

That plan was widely seen as calling for the partition of Iraq. It read, in part, "The United States should actively support a political settlement in Iraq based on the final provisions of the Constitution that create a federal system of government and allow for the creation of federal regions, consistent with the wishes of the Iraqi people and their leaders." Despite Biden's occasional objections, that wording was read by other politicians and the media as calling for the division of Iraq into three regions, one for Sunnis, one for Shiites, and one for Kurds. For that perception, Biden has himself to blame.

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I would have voted for George McGovern for President even though he voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and I think Biden is a good choice for VP even though he voted to give Bush authorization to go to war but now says that he was wrong to have done so and that it was based on false information.

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Originally posted by RosaL:
I just heard a bit of a news clip. It seemed as if Biden was talking about the "de-democratization of Latin America". And I think it was Chavez he had in mind, not Uribe. "De- democritization" As if it used to be democratic!

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Yes, it was. That bugged me too. I'm no Chavez-right-or-wrong cheerleader and it annoys me when people freak out at any and all criticism of left-wing leaders. But in this case, he specifically mentioned Chavez trying to make himself "president for life" as an example of the "de-democratization of Latin America."

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Originally posted by unionist:
I'm disappointed that Biden accepted Obama as his running mate.

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Funny you should say that. Obama just introduced Biden and slipped a bit. He said, "Let me introduce to you, the next President...the next VICE President of the United States of America...Joe Biden!"

How much do you want to bet the right-wing bloggers will go batshit over that little slip?

Ouch. Biden just said that Obama was raised by a single mother who raised him to "believe in America" and that there is no obstacle big enough to stand in the way of your dreams if you work hard enough. That's the America he and Obama believe in. That's the American dream.

[ 23 August 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

[ 23 August 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
My argument is that people people take positions and that they later change their minds about and that they describe as mistakes.

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And this is your response to my saying that practically everyone who voted for the Iraq war now admits it was a mistake?

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
I don't hear any Republicans expressing regret about invading Iraq...

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And here's another. And he did vote for the war.

So it turns out you're full of shit.

[ 23 August 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:

Funny you should say that. Obama just introduced Biden and slipped a bit. He said, "Let me introduce to you, the next President...the next VICE President of the United States of America...Joe Biden!"

How much do you want to bet the right-wing bloggers will go batshit over that little slip?

Ouch. Biden just said that Obama was raised by a single mother who raised him to "believe in America" and that there is no obstacle big enough to stand in the way of your dreams if you work hard enough. That's the America he and Obama believe in. That's the American dream.

[ 23 August 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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So it turns out you're full of shit.

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I have news for you. Obama is not a Communist (unless you believe some of the wilder rightwing conspiracy theorists) and he's not a socialist. He is a liberal Democrat - and given that, Biden is about a good a person as he could have chosen. If you seriously thought that Obama was going to pick Noam Chomsky to be his running mate, I could have told you a long time ago that you would be disappointed.

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support illegal wars, occupations, racist foreign policy, curtailing of civil rights, environmental destruction, attacks on immigrants, and the advancement of a police state,

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

Aren't you being very hard on the Soviet Union and Communist China?

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Aren't you being very hard on the Soviet Union and Communist China?

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"Change” and “hope” are not words one associates with Senator Joe Biden, a man so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our political system that a computer simulation of the corporate-political paradigm senator in Congress would turn out “Biden” in a nano-second.

The first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal sanctuary. Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task. Find any bill that sticks it to the ordinary folk on behalf of the Money Power and you’ll likely detect Biden’s hand at work. The bankruptcy act of 2005 was just one sample. In concert with his fellow corporate serf, Senator Tom Carper, Biden blocked all efforts to hinder bankrupt corporations from fleeing from their real locations to the legal sanctuary of Delaware. Since Obama is himself a corporate serf and from day one in the US senate has been attentive to the same masters that employ Biden, the ticket is well balanced, the seesaw with Obama at one end and Biden at the other dead-level on the fulcrum of corporate capital.

Another shining moment in Biden’s progress in the current presidential term was his conduct in the hearings on Judge Alito’s nomination to the US Supreme Court. From the opening moments of the Judiciary Committee's sessions in January, 2006, it became clear that Alito faced no serious opposition. On that first ludicrous morning Senator Pat Leahy sank his head into his hands, shaking it in unbelieving despair as Biden blathered out a self-serving and inane monologue lasting a full twenty minutes before he even asked Alito one question. In his allotted half hour Biden managed to pose only five questions, all of them ineptly phrased. He did pose two questions about Alito’s membership of a racist society at Princeton, but had already undercut them in his monologue by calling Alito "a man of integrity", not once but twice, and further trivialized the interrogation by reaching under the dais to pull out a Princeton cap and put it on.

In all, Biden rambled for 4,000 words, leaving Alito time only to put together less than 1,000. A Delaware newspaper made deadly fun of him for his awful performance, eliciting the revealing confession from Biden that "I made a mistake. I should have gone straight to my question. I was trying to put him at ease."

Biden is a notorious flapjaw. His vanity deludes him into believing that every word that drops from his mouth is minted in the golden currency of Pericles. Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc, nourished by deferential acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns and the like. On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the week immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident.

His “experience” in foreign affairs consists in absolute fidelity to the conventions of cold war liberalism, the efficient elder brother of raffish “neo-conservatism”. Here again the ticket is well balanced, since Senator Obama has, within a very brief time-frame, exhibited great fidelity to the same creed.

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:
This is bullshit. It wouldn't matter who Obama picked. You would still come charging in saying whatever candidate manages to penetrate the mainstream of American thought is a neo-conservative genocidal imperialistic maniac.

Its so fucking unproductive.

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I find this to be an unfathomable statement, just what would you find, or consider to be, productive, by way of commentary?

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:
whatever candidate manages to penetrate the mainstream of American thought is a neo-conservative genocidal imperialistic maniac.

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I don't know if they would necessarily be neo-conservative, but, generally speaking, the rest is true. I don't think you could even disagree with that part of your own statement.

It would be almost impossible for a true agent of change to rise to management level of the first and last line of defence for the status quo.

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Its so fucking unproductive.

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
Obama couldn't have picked a more "old guard" candidate. I'm shocked, just shocked, to learn this talk about getting rid of the old guard was just rhetorical.

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Originally posted by remind:

I find this to be an unfathomable statement, just what would you find, or consider to be, productive, by way of commentary?

Moreover, why would you not believe that mspector is quite on money with such an observation, considering the only thing that motivates the USA, and its citizens, is imperialistic manoverings? And if genocide needs to happen, for them to be sucessful, "oh well", is the norm, not the exception.

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America isn't special in this regard. Virtually every society that achieved the status of global superpower has used that power to become ruthless imperialists. Name one, one superpower that hasn't constantly acted in self-interest.

Its not enough for me to simply condemn every candidate that doesn't strictly adhere to my own ideals, or even my own opinion on how to pragmatically run a country. You have to recognize incremental change once in a while, if you don't, politicians won't bother listening to you at all. And then what do you have left? A coup?

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I don't know if they would necessarily be neo-conservative, but, generally speaking, the rest is true. I don't think you could even disagree with that part of your own statement.

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I don't think Obama is genocidal, or a manic and I don't think he's particularly imperialistic either, compared to previous presidents.

[ 23 August 2008: Message edited by: West Coast Greeny ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Ha! McCain's campaign is ALREADY jumping all over Obama's slip up introducing Biden as the next President and calling it "freudian". Not even half an hour later. I knew it! Nothing of substance to talk about, so of course they jump on this. (Although I guess they'd be stupid not to.)

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Obama couldn't have picked a more "old guard" candidate. I'm shocked, just shocked, to learn this talk about getting rid of the old guard was just rhetorical.

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Actually, I think Hillary Clinton would have been more representative of the "old guard" than Biden. Some of the other possibilities might have less Washington experience, but they are also more centre-right and brag about compromising with Republicans. Biden apparently has the third most liberal voting record in the entire US Senate - so what's not to like.

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Senator Biden wrote the ground-breaking Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in the 1990s that set the national agenda on criminalizing violence against women and holding batterers truly accountable.

It encouraged states to set up coordinated community responses to domestic violence and rape; was the catalyst for passage of hundreds of state laws prohibiting family violence; and provided resources to set up shelters so battered women abused by husbands and boyfriends had a place to go.

The law also established the national hotline that over 1.5 million abused women have called for help. By empowering women to make changes in their lives, and by training police and prosecutors to arrest and convict abusive husbands instead of telling them to take a walk around the block, domestic violence is down 50 percent and rape is down 60 percent nationwide.

Each time the Senator renewed the Act – in 2000 and 2005 – he pushed for new initiatives. In 2000, the Act was attached to ground-breaking laws on human trafficking – crimes where over 80% of the victims are women. In 2005, the Violence Against Women Act tackled issues like domestic violence in public housing and treating children witnesses of family violence.

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:

Update on House-Gate: It turns out that prospective VP candidate Mitt Romney also, like McCain, owns a lot of houses. I wonder how the GOP are going to spin two rich white guys who between them own a dozen expensive residences?

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Originally posted by Boom Boom:
If elected, Obama + Biden = status quo, probably a little right of centre, and likely more wars against smaller countries. McCain will be even more right of centre. Progressives in the US (and I imagine there still are a few) should vote Green.

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No. Actually, by your logic they should vote for for Nader. he's now an independent.... But real politick time here...The U.S is a two party system, (although both sponsored by many of the same corporations). In the U.S most Dems are to the right of what we would define as centre. (Also true of the Liberals here by the way, although they deny it). Obama is at least the most Liberal of the democrats. (see his voting record in congress). And quite frankly Team McCain has been swallowed whole by the neo-con crowd, they're running the show in his campaign. So the choice for U.S progressives is a very simple one.... more team Karl Rove, or repair the damage done by them and restore at least some respectability to the U.S from the rest of the planet, while at the same time proving that Amerika can elect a black man president. Now THAT is progressive.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Biden apparently has the third most liberal voting record in the entire US Senate - so what's not to like.

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So he's right up there with Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold, etc.?

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Originally posted by Mojoroad1:
So the choice for U.S progressives is a very simple one.... more team Karl Rove, or repair the damage done by them and restore at least some respectability to the U.S from the rest of the planet, while at the same time proving that Amerika can elect a black man president. Now THAT is progressive. GO OBAMA GO[/QB]

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Obama has drifted to the right ever since he won the nomination. I don't have any faith at all that he will implement a progressive platform if he wins in November. If I were voting in the US, I most definitely vote my conscience and for the Greens. As for voting for a black candidate, what if Condi Rice was the GOP candidate?

ETA: actually Obama drifted to the right before he clenched the nomination. His comments on Pakistan should perk up any progressive's ears.

[ 24 August 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

Choosing Biden was a shrewd move politically. The national security/'experience' card is really the only one McCain has to play against Obama. McCain can't run as an agent of change after eight years of cheerleading for Bush. He can't run on Bush's record. In the wake of 'House-Gate', he can't run an 'Obama is elitist' campaign. All he's got is 'who do you want answering the phone at 3AM?', and Biden helps neutralize that as a factor.

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Of course he's drifted to the right. During the primaries, he had to pander to the activist left of the Democratic primary, now he has to pander to the centre/centre-right where most American voters are.

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Originally posted by ghoris:
...now he has to pander to the centre/centre-right where most American voters are.

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As for Obama...

[ 24 August 2008: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

excerpt:

Obama is on record as being prepared to expand the war into Pakistan and maybe Iran, now apparently even generically anywhere in "Mesopotamia" (NYT, 7/14/08), after he does the Randolph Scott move and "talks" to his targets a couple of times. He's also made pretty clear that AIPAC has his ear, which does it for the Middle East, and I wouldn't be shocked if his administration were to continue, or even step up, underwriting covert operations against Venezuela, Cuba (he's already several times linked each of those two governments with North Korea and Iran) and maybe Ecuador or Bolivia.

excerpt:

An Obama presidency would further legitimize the imperialist orientation of US foreign policy by inscribing it as liberalism or the "new kind" of progressivism.

excerpt:

(on the courts) There's no reason to expect anything from him in this area, especially when you factor in all the hedge fund and investor class money he gets and his close University of Chicago Law School and Economics Department connections.

You want to cast your vote for a progressive party? Vote McKinney/Clemente '08!

McKinney’s acceptance speech

excerpt:

Had the Green Party’s values been reflected in public policy since the beginnings of the Green Party in this country, the United States would have long ago implemented a livable wage; there would be no civil liberties erosion; diversity would be respected, appreciated and welcomed; education would be interesting and relevant to students’ lives and no student would graduate from college $100,000 in debt in a Green Party USA because education, not incarceration and militarization, would be subsidized by the state. In a Green Party USA, health care would be provided for everyone here through a single payer, Medicare-for-all type health care system. We would have no homeless men and women sleeping on our streets and everyone who could work would have work. Rebuilding our infrastructure, manufacturing green technology, retooling our economy so that those who protect us, train us, heal us and prepare us for tomorrow are compensated in what is their true value to our culture and our society, based on their contribution to our civilization. Vietnam War-era veterans would be our last war veterans because we would never have been engaged in war and occupation against Afghanistan and Iraq. We would forego imperial designs on our neighbors to the north and south, never building any wall of division, not ever encroaching on their geographic or cultural sovereignty. In fact, if Green Party values were now reflected in U.S. public policy, our country not only would not be engaged in war and occupation, there would be peace in the Middle East based on self-determination, respect for human rights, and justice. We would strive to perfect our democracy at home through election integrity and no one would be denied their rightful place in our Union due to discrimination. Our neighbors in the global community would look up to us for our cultural and technological accomplishments. We would have apologized for genocide against the indigenous peoples of this land and the abomination of chattel slavery. Our country would have dignity on the world stage and in every international forum, and no one in this country would be made to live in fear.

[ 24 August 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

Maybe that's why such a large percentage of Americans just don't bother to vote? When your choice is between the Barack McBush and and John Obush, why bother?

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Originally posted by Willowdale Wizard:
I find this reason enough to support Biden as Obama's VP.

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Yeah, Biden's a real feminist, all right. Just ask Anita Hill.

At the same link, some commentary on his lukewarm support for abortion rights too.

Let's not get carried away here. Biden's okay, but he's no hero for women, even though he touts himself as a better feminist than the real live feminists in the US.

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After the Thomas confirmation, Biden went on to champion the Violence Against Women Act. Dana Goldstein followed Biden on the campaign trail during the Iowa primary, and she had some observations about how he discussed his record on violence against women:

And he never forgets to tout his leadership in passing the groundbreaking Violence Against Women Act of 1994. He's fond, à la anti-choice conservatives, of criticizing national feminist organizations for arriving late to the cause. "They were more concerned about the choice and gender issues," he intones. "While others talked, I got it done." (Eventually Biden partnered with the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, now known as Legal Momentum, to write the legislation.)
That said, he has been good about shepherding the legislation through its various reauthorizations.

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Yeah, how about fuck you, Joe? Women have been building shelters long before you came along and took all the credit, asshole.

[ 24 August 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

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Biden apparently has the third most liberal voting record in the entire US Senate - so what's not to like.

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Um...

Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown, Jack Reed, Ben Cardin, Robert Menendez, Bernard Sanders, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Richard Durbin, Frank Lautenberg....

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
I've already debunked this myth.

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According to those nifty charts you linked to, a whopping 48% agree that "gay relationships are morally acceptable". Not marriage, mind, not even civil unions, just the existence of gay relationships at all. A staggering one-third think that organized religion should have less influence on the nation's business, while a shocking bare majority (55%) think it's "morally acceptable" to have a child out of wedlock! Look out - buncha crazy liberals in the States!

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There are a lot of legitimate, serious reasons that voter turnout in the US is so low (56% in '04). The assertion that 44% of the public is to the left of the Democrats is not one of them. If there was such a large empty space in the USpolitical spectrum, someone, somewhere, somehow, would have managed to exploit it.

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Originally posted by ghoris:

According to those nifty charts you linked to, a whopping 48% agree that "gay relationships are morally acceptable". Not marriage, mind, not even civil unions, just the existence of gay relationships at all. A staggering one-third think that organized religion should have less influence on the nation's business, while a shocking bare majority (55%) think it's "morally acceptable" to have a child out of wedlock! Look out - buncha crazy liberals in the States!

Yup, that 'most voters are in the centre' myth's been debunked alright.

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There is still another reason why the selection of Biden is remarkably terrible news. All accounts suggest that one of Biden's major selling points as Vice Presidential candidate (to the Obama camp, at any rate) is his supposed foreign policy expertise. Biden is unquestionably a foreign policy "expert," if by that one means that he represents the complete embodiment of the views of the foreign policy establishment. I remind you that the foreign policy establishment is committed to American global hegemony, to be achieved by military domination of the world and by overthrow, covert operations, war and occupation as required. And Joe Biden is certainly a bloodthirsty enthusiast for this program: there is no intervention, no bombing campaign, no foreign incursion that he doesn't love. If you were looking for "change" in this arena, and if you hoped for peace, well, you're just out of luck, my friend. If you thought fundamental change in foreign policy was possible with an Obama presidency, and if I were ruder (but still honest), I would say you were a fool. Obama has already told us that he fully supports a notably aggressive interventionist foreign policy, as discussed in "Songs of Death." --

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[ 24 August 2008: Message edited by: ceti ]

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Originally posted by West Coast Greeny:
Urrgh. Could somebody tell me, if not Biden, who Obama should have picked?

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Ralph Nader.

What a weird question. Whom should Harper have picked for the environment, if not Ambrose or Baird?

In fact that McCain wanted Biden as his secretary of state the first time he ran for president.