Frankly, their policy difference are not that great and their platforms in general fall far short of what is needed.

Obama, however, is a truly inspirational figure and has the capability of being a transformative figure who can shift public support towards the "left" on some key issues. Whether or not he has the substance to live up to his potential is an open question but given the lack of a real distinction between Obama and Clinton on substance I think Obama would be preferable. And, all things being equal, might as well go for the person who is truly a great orator Let's also not forget that in a country that is still living with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and is still deeply racist - the social impact of electing a Black president should not be underestimated.

[ 13 February 2008: Message edited by: aka Mycroft ]

Black cats or white cats?

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Originally posted by Rikardo:
Why is this discussion in CANADIAN POLITICS ?
Can't we tell the difference any more ? Will Obama be OUR president ?

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Originally posted by tweety:
Who would you choose as Democrat candidate for U.S. President? Which one would be better for Canada? Would women in politics get a boost from a Hillary victory in Canada? Would visible minorities in politics get a boost from an Obama victory in Canada? Or should progressive voters in Canada be indifferent to the outcome?

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Originally posted by realityshow:
one name:

RON PAUL

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Obama also is inspiring younger and previously marginalized voters- that too could cross the border.

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In other news, I had no idea this was in Canadian politics until now. So, obviously, I'll be moving this to International News and Politics. The US being another country and all.

[ 18 February 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

We don't say: "Kim" (Campbell), "Belinda" (Stronach) or "Nancy" (Pelosi).

There's no need to distinguish Hillary from Bill when you're talking about Clinton vs. Obama.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
It's either Hillary and Barack, or Clinton and Obama.

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Why isn't she HRC?

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West Coast Greeny: Obama can pull together the largest and strongest electoral coalition since Reagan.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
This thread title contains a big pet peeve - using the woman's first name and the man's last name. It's either Hillary and Barack, or Clinton and Obama.

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And whichever becomes president, we could be assured of four years of peace.

I personally prefer Rodham, because of her solid record of fighting for universal public health care, despite all the odds against her (namely, living in the White House for only 8 years).

But Barack could be good too. He has shown tremendous personal courage by overcoming his humble and oppressed origins to now sympathize with the oppressors of the Palestinian people. Think that's easy? Just try walking a mile in those shoes, bud.

Of course, I think American would be in safe hands with McCain's frozen foods as well, but I'm still with Fraudham Rodham because of that, oh, I dunno, that je ne sais quoi, you know, whatever.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
This thread title contains a big pet peeve - using the woman's first name and the man's last name. It's either Hillary and Barack, or Clinton and Obama.

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Originally posted by unionist:
I see very little to choose between Rodham and Barack. I believe either one of them would be really really good. Surely both would see the injustice of the Free Trade Agreement and rectify past sins against Canada. Surely either would instantly cancel the almost half-century embargo against Cuba and normalize relations. They would not only shut down Gitmo tout de suite, but offer their support for an International Criminal Court which could hear charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

And whichever becomes president, we could be assured of four years of peace.

I personally prefer Rodham, because of her solid record of fighting for universal public health care, despite all the odds against her (namely, living in the White House for only 8 years).

But Barack could be good too. He has shown tremendous personal courage by overcoming his humble and oppressed origins to now sympathize with the oppressors of the Palestinian people. Think that's easy? Just try walking a mile in those shoes, bud.

Of course, I think American would be in safe hands with McCain's frozen foods as well, but I'm still with Fraudham Rodham because of that, oh, I dunno, that je ne sais quoi, you know, whatever.

God bless America!

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Originally posted by unionist:
I personally prefer Rodham, because of her solid record of fighting for universal public health care, despite all the odds against her (namely, living in the White House for only 8 years).

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She may have been fighting for universal public health care, but perhaps not all that effectively:

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My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

So when senior members of the economic team said that key senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have this-and-that objection, she told them they were disloyal. When junior members of the economic team told her that the Congressional Budget Office would say such-and-such, she told them (wrongly) that her conversations with CBO head Robert Reischauer had already fixed that. When long-time senior hill staffers told her that she was making a dreadful mistake by fighting with rather than reaching out to John Breaux and Jim Cooper, she told them that they did not understand the wave of popular political support the bill would generate. And when substantive objections were raised to the plan by analysts calculating the moral hazard and adverse selection pressures it would put on the nation's health-care system...

Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch--the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.

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Improvements of this kind are not just good for USians; they're good for the rest of us. They set standards. I know, the US is the US and we are not likely to see anything really worth cheering for in either of our lives - I hope I'm wrong about that; but improvements matter.

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Originally posted by Coyote:
To be fair, the campaigns are "Hillary for President" and "Obama in '08". .

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the fact is, this strong fighting forceful whatever woman has decided that HER choice (hers!) is to explicitly brand-name her Presidential campaign with her first name ...

who the hell are some web posters to say otherwise, all in the name of some tedious PC levelling urge?
she wants it, she gets it.

if a headline somewhere said:
"Madonna, McCartney in Music Copyright Dispute", would anyone say, "My goodness, she is also Louise Ciccone (or whoever) and it demeans her to use just her first name (which she consciously and with calculation uses for her professional advancement)" ?

Hillary has focus-grouped this name choice to death: bet on it.
-- Next!

(PS There was a similar notion afloat in the French presidential election, when it was Sarko-Ségo everywhere -- why not use Royal? But the very presidential site that Ségolène Royal set up used a Ségolène www address, and her interactive forum was the "Ségosphère". Plus of course, no French Socialist wants to be called "Royal". Case closed.)

ANYWAYS,
on serious matters -- can Hillary win???
A.: yes, with a few lucky bounces:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8581.html
.

[ 19 February 2008: Message edited by: Geneva ]

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We must once and for all get out of this 'every-four-years-I-shall-act-blindly' rut. They do not give a rat's ass who we support. They only worry if we don't support them, and get really irritated when we oppose them. So, let's at least give them more things to worry about.

The two ruling parties are in the midst of a family dispute. The kind of Republicans that have been running their party for the past seven years, and are deeply unpopular, are reportedly not liking McCain (clearly popular with the Republican rank and file) representing their party in the presidential elections; some are even willing to support Hillary Clinton, who they claim to have better conservative credentials.

Likewise, the Democrats are split between two factions of their party; one representing the Establishment (the DLC/Openly Corporate wing), and the other representing the establishment in more nuanced, still-capable-of-imagination, that old dreamy, vague, happy to remain abstract (since the concrete ain't pretty, and to face it you'd have to get specific) wing of the party associated mostly with the Kennedy nostalgia and his general aura. As of this writing, the dreamy wing is slightly ahead, proving that the rank and file of the Democrats are not too happy with the establishment wing; or else they just like dreaming.

This dreamy wing of the party, do not forget, gave you the big opening into Vietnam, and refused to immediately sign into law any civil rights acts, even though it ran the executive branch and possessed a comfortable majority in the legislative. JFK also gave you the Alliance for Progress, which was the beginning of the institutionalization of death squads in Latin America. Also, don't forget that Obama finds nothing wrong with the war being waged against the people of Afghanistan, and in fact intends to intensify it (much like Clinton) and don't forget what Obama said about 'going into' Pakistan if need be. That is an imperial mentality.

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(...)We have ended up in a lopsided era of change. After all, how many of us wanted to see male leaders transformed from cowboys to conciliators? Now we see a woman running as the fighter and a man modeling a "woman's way" of leading. We see a younger generation in particular inspired by ideas nurtured by women, as long as they are delivered in a baritone.

So, has the women's movement made life easier? For another man?

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Your book makes an interesting argument that Barak Obama is a more feminized candidate than Hillary Clinton. How so?

Charles: One example is Obama´s campaign slogan, "Yes, We Can", which illustrates his understanding of a new kind of values politics. Yes, We Can conjures feelings of community, equality, and change—the core values of the feminized majority. However, it´s important to remember that Clinton faces many challenges because of her gender. As columnist Ellen Goodman says, women candidates must "walk a fine line to erase a gender line" and remain in the "comforting center." Thus, while Obama is able to embrace feminized "change" rhetoric and imagery, the Clinton campaign may feel restraint is necessary to win the general election.

As it stands now, Obama has just swept the Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. primaries, leaving Hillary Clinton to play the comeback kid. Would you care to share who you think will end up winning the Democratic nomination? [Interviewer´s note: Obama has won 11 primaries in a row since this interview.]

Katherine: At this point, Obama seems to have the edge but Hillary still has a chance. Either one will carry feminized values into the general elections. As a woman, Hillary symbolizes the feminized majority but Obama´s emphasis on change has energized the feminized majority´s passion for transformation in a more dramatic way.

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This [election frenzy] seizes the country every four years because we have all been brought up to believe that voting is crucial in determining our destiny, that the most important act a citizen can engage in is to go to the polls and choose one of the two mediocrities who have already been chosen for us. It is a multiple choice test so narrow, so specious, that no self-respecting teacher would give it to students.

And sad to say, the Presidential contest has mesmerized liberals and radicals alike. We are all vulnerable….

The very people who should know better, having criticized the hold of the media on the national mind, find themselves transfixed by the press, glued to the television set, as the candidates preen and smile and bring forth a shower of clichés with a solemnity appropriate for epic poetry.

Even in the so-called left periodicals, we must admit there is an exorbitant amount of attention given to minutely examining the major candidates. An occasional bone is thrown to the minor candidates, though everyone knows our marvelous democratic political system won’t allow them in.

No, I’m not taking some ultra-left position that elections are totally insignificant, and that we should refuse to vote to preserve our moral purity. Yes, there are candidates who are somewhat better than others, and at certain times of national crisis (the Thirties, for instance, or right now) where even a slight difference between the two parties may be a matter of life and death.

I’m talking about a sense of proportion that gets lost in the election madness. Would I support one candidate against another? Yes, for two minutes—the amount of time it takes to pull the lever down in the voting booth.

But before and after those two minutes, our time, our energy, should be spent in educating, agitating, organizing our fellow citizens in the workplace, in the neighborhood, in the schools. Our objective should be to build, painstakingly, patiently but energetically, a movement that, when it reaches a certain critical mass, would shake whoever is in the White House, in Congress, into changing national policy on matters of war and social justice.

Let’s remember that even when there is a “better” candidate (yes, better Roosevelt than Hoover, better anyone than George Bush), that difference will not mean anything unless the power of the people asserts itself in ways that the occupant of the White House will find it dangerous to ignore….

Today, we can be sure that the Democratic Party, unless it faces a popular upsurge, will not move off center. The two leading Presidential candidates have made it clear that if elected, they will not bring an immediate end to the Iraq War, or institute a system of free health care for all.

They offer no radical change from the status quo….

None of this should surprise us. The Democratic Party has broken with its historic conservatism, its pandering to the rich, its predilection for war, only when it has encountered rebellion from below, as in the Thirties and the Sixties. We should not expect that a victory at the ballot box in November will even begin to budge the nation from its twin fundamental illnesses: capitalist greed and militarism….

Historically, government, whether in the hands of Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, has failed its responsibilities, until forced to by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

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It's time for Hillary Clinton to give up her futile quest for the U.S. presidency. She needs to get out soon, putting a united Democratic party ahead of personal ambition before her reputation in a sometimes-ugly campaign is further sullied.

After Barack Obama's blowout victory in Wisconsin last week, the Clinton camp vowed to "go negative" on an opponent who has won more than twice as many primary-season contests as Clinton; leads her in popular vote and pledged delegates; is making gains in Clinton's base of women, blue-collar workers and Hispanics; and is shown in most polls beating John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in the general election in November, with Clinton trailing the Arizona senator.

Democrats have never nominated a candidate who lost 11 consecutive contests, as Clinton has since Feb. 5. Turning back the Obama tide is a mathematical improbability, given the Democratic practice of apportioning delegates by popular vote. To even narrow Obama's lead in pledged delegates, Clinton has to win the next two delegate-rich states of Texas and Ohio on March 4 by wide margins.

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Guess she's not interested in being VP, huh?

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Accusing the Obama campaign of using tactics “that are right out of Karl Rove’s playbook,” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton angrily denounced Senator Barack Obama on Saturday for sending fliers to Ohio voters that she said falsely characterized her position on trade agreements.

It was not the first time the Clinton campaign had seen the flier, which cites an article from Newsday that says Mrs. Clinton believed that the North American Free Trade Agreement was a “boon” to the economy. Mrs. Clinton said the newspaper has since corrected the article. (Editors from Newsday responded on its Web site last week, stopping short of a correction but saying that “Obama’s use of the citation in this way does strike us as misleading.”)

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And a few days ago, during a debate, she attacked Obama for something he said in a speech, claiming he didn't come up with it himself, but plagiarized it from another politician.

Because, I'm sure that Clinton writes all HER speeches herself. I'm sure SHE doesn't have a stable of speechwriters and people dreaming up the stuff she should be saying on the campaign trail.

Maureen Dowd: Quién Es Less Macho?

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If this is truly the Decline and Fall of the Clinton Empire, it is marked by one freaky stroke of bad luck and one striking historical irony.

How likely is it that a woman who finally unfetters herself from one superstar then finds herself eclipsed by another?

And when historians trace how her inevitability dissolved, they will surely note this paradox: The first serious female candidate for president was rejected by voters drawn to the more feminine management style of her male rival.

The bullying and bellicosity of the Bush administration have left many Americans exhausted and yearning for a more nurturing and inclusive style.

Sixteen years of politicians in Washington clashing in epic if not always essential battle through culture wars, the right-wing war against the Clintons, the war-without-end on terror, and the war-with-no-end-in-sight in Iraq have spawned a desire for peace and pragmatism.

Hillary was so busy trying to prove she could be one of the boys — getting on the Armed Services Committee, voting to let W. go to war in Iraq, strong-arming supporters and donors, and trying to out-macho Obama — that she only belatedly realized that many Democratic and independent voters, especially women, were eager to move from hard-power locker-room tactics to a soft-power sewing circle approach.

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Frank Rich: The Audacity of Hopelessness

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WHEN people one day look back at the remarkable implosion of the Hillary Clinton campaign, they may notice that it both began and ended in the long dark shadow of Iraq.

It’s not just that her candidacy’s central premise — the priceless value of “experience” — was fatally poisoned from the start by her still ill-explained vote to authorize the fiasco. Senator Clinton then compounded that 2002 misjudgment by pursuing a 2008 campaign strategy that uncannily mimicked the disastrous Bush Iraq war plan. After promising a cakewalk to the nomination — “It will be me,” Mrs. Clinton told Katie Couric in November — she was routed by an insurgency.

The Clinton camp was certain that its moneyed arsenal of political shock-and-awe would take out Barack Hussein Obama in a flash. The race would “be over by Feb. 5,” Mrs. Clinton assured George Stephanopoulos just before New Year’s. But once the Obama forces outwitted her, leaving her mission unaccomplished on Super Tuesday, there was no contingency plan. She had neither the boots on the ground nor the money to recoup.

That’s why she has been losing battle after battle by double digits in every corner of the country ever since.

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Clinton's opportunistic support for the war is coming back to haunt her big time. She wanted to be one of the boys well she's going down with the good ol' boys now as well.

If our own opportunistic war-lover Stephen Harper had made the decision for Canada to enter Iraq he would be toast now and would be blown out of the water in the next election.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: mary123 ]

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If our own opportunistic war-lover Stephen Harper had made the decision for Canada to enter Iraq he would be toast now and would be blown out of the water in the next election.

[ 24 February 2008: Message edited by: mary123 ][/QB]

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Originally posted by aka Mycroft:
An interesting analysis of Hilary Clinton's disastrous campaign. The Audacity of Hopelessness

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Originally posted by Scott Piatkowski:

I think it was much more interesting when I posted it yesterday

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"Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of “shameful offensive fear-mongering” by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.

Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling attention to the African roots of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

“The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat front-runner dressed as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya,” the Drudge Report said.

excerpt:

[ 25 February 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
And a few days ago, during a debate, she attacked Obama for something he said in a speech, claiming he didn't come up with it himself, but plagiarized it from another politician.

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Looks like Clinton's not so innocent herself in that regard.

Change you can Xerox!

[ 26 February 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

What a quick and pointed response to the Hillary Clinton ringing phone ad.

[ 29 February 2008: Message edited by: Doug ]

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Morning in America
The Nation
(...)It was a casual gathering, but one that settled down to business quickly. We were all progressives but diverse nonetheless. We differed in our opinions of whether to vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama--our goal was not an endorsement. Rather, the concern that united us all was the "race-gender split" playing out nationally, in which the one is relentlessly pitted against the other. We did not want to see a repeat of the ugly history of the nineteenth century, when the failure of the women's movement to bring about universal adult suffrage metastasized into racial resentment and rift that weakened feminism throughout much of the twentieth century.

How, we wondered, did a historic breakthrough moment for which we have all longed and worked hard, suddenly risk becoming marred by having to choose between "race cards" and "gender cards"? By petty competitiveness about who endures more slings and arrows? By media depictions of white women as the sole inheritors of the feminist movement and black men as the sole beneficiaries of the civil rights movement? By renderings of black women as having to split themselves right down the center with Solomon's sword in order to vote for either candidate? What happened, we wondered, to the last four decades of discussion about tokenism and multiple identities and the complex intersections of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class? (...)
On the one hand, we celebrate the unprecedented moment in which a black person and a female person have risen to the lead in the Democratic race for President of the United States. On the other hand, both of them are constantly pressed to deny their race or gender, to "transcend" it, to prove by their very existence that misogyny and racism no longer exist.(...)

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[ 01 March 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

Hey who says Clinton isn't getting good press these days!

Limbaugh actively campaigning for a Clinton victory.

[ 03 March 2008: Message edited by: mary123 ]