The Dems have only elected 3 presidents since Ford served 1874-1977. That’s 31 years. The Nixon pardon probably caused Ford to lose to Jimmy Carter by a very small margin or it could have been only the two Bill Clinton terms.

We have the best chance due to circumstances–mainly that Bush, the Republican Congress and their dysfunctional co-family members the spineless Democratic Congress have run this country completely into the ground on a panoply of fronts.

Put your eyeballs on this–it’s Hillary Clinton and one reason she gave the last speech of her life that is anywhere near a Presdiential race. It’s over. Obama needs her, and we need the supporters of Hillary and we’ll get most of them. It’d be a group of very stupid people who vote McCain.

I can tell you this straight up. Ever since I stumbled onto the FDL family of blogs, I began comparing financially successful “staunch” Republicans that I know including a number of attorneys, physicians, etc. with the average FDL commenter. As to prescience, historical context, and knowledge about day to day government affairs and foreign affairs there is no comparison. FDL commenters are a paradigm shift above the other group that have grad school educations and financial success. My point does not go to financial background, but to the educational level of FDL commenters and their level of political and historical awareness whatever their chosen profession,or however much formal schooling they’ve had. It seems to me that FDL people like to read things that analyze how their government is working a good deal, and I’m not so sure about the other group I feel sorry for the former group that I compare to FDL commenters to, because they are often systemically ignorant as to current events and historical areas, but that’s the way it is.

They are content with platitudes like “the surge is working” but they can’t begin to tell you why. When I point out to them that if they were making a federal appellate motion or brief, or doing a medical workup they’d have to come up with a lot of specificity they didn’t give me they don’t like it.

This is a straight up sketch of your candidate Clinton. If you want to see her do some good email her some suggestions for some issues she didn’t notice the last seven years in the Senate or else chose not to do a damn thing about.

What’s Hillary’s MO to secure a good FISA solution in place of the clusterfuckup that Syl Reyes and the Republican morons are crafting? The Senate is in session Monday. Is she planning to now engage with her expensive staff that we pay completely for and get to work fighting for all those women who whirled their fists in the air?

How many of those women can give you a discussion of national affairs or foreign affairs at the level of the average FDL tab commenter? Not many but they want some of the same things.

That’s what I thought. As I’ve been saying all along, the real Hillary Clinton would have made a nice fit for McCain as a running mate and depending on her future conduct, there’s still time. Frank Rich makes the exact same point I’ve made for months, and I consider him one of the best writers in the history of the NYT during his ten years as the theater critic and thankfully after his years as a theater critic.

Modo Nails Hillary Clinton Yet Again

FRank Rich Nails Clinton and McCain Yet Again

June 8, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Watch Out, Meryl Streep! She’s a Master Thespian.
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

How much Hillary Clinton can help Barack Obama will depend on how good an actress she is.

And I bet she is a very good actress indeed.

Not only because, as first lady, she played the diverse roles of someone interested in China and someone interested in china. Not only because, as a presidential candidate, she morphed from Queen Elizabeth I to Norma Rae, as Newsweek put it.

But because, through humiliation and pain, she has shown herself to be a skilled survivor. She said she embraces the old saying, “Fake it till you make it.”

After the roiling rollout of the Clinton administration, a sad and unnerved Hillary sought answers from self-help gurus like Jean Houston.

“Houston felt at one point that being Hillary was like being Mozart with his hands cut off, unable to play,” Bob Woodward wrote. “She felt that the first lady was going through a female crucifixion.”

At critical junctures of her life, Hillary makes the same mistake. She comes on strong, showing an arrogant, abrasive side, gets brushed back, and then repackages herself in a more appealing way.

It happened when she began as Arkansas’ first lady; when she campaigned with Bill in ’92; when she started as a “two for the price of one” first lady; when she did health care; and when she started her presidential campaign wearing an off-putting ermine robe of entitlement and presumption. And it happened when she lost the nomination, refused to admit it and, instead of congratulating Obama, wielded her female fan base as a bludgeon over him so she could once more share a presidency.

Now, as she transforms herself into a team player, she must again fake it till she makes it. She still doesn’t believe Obama can win, but she knows she can move ahead only as a beguiler, not a begrudger.

Meanwhile, she wants another power-sharing arrangement. She will help Obama be king, if he lets her be queen of the women.

As The Times’s Jodi Kantor wrote Saturday, Hillary’s “grieving” voters “say that she will remain their leader, that she has created a lasting female constituency, a women’s electoral movement unlike any other.”

So, you may wonder: Will Hillary’s historic bid turn out to be good or bad for women?

The Wall Street Journal reported back in March that some women were worried that “the resistance to Senator Clinton may embolden some men to resist women’s efforts to share power with them in business, politics and elsewhere.”

It’s a reasonable fear. Every fizzy triumph of feminism I have covered — Geraldine Ferraro’s selection, the Anita Hill hearings, Hillary’s co-presidency — ended up triggering awful backlashes. In the end, feminism sputtered out as a force.

Hillary has brought back that old feminist religion, at least for now.

She should not have pitted the women against the men. She did it to her detriment within her own campaign, where Patti Solis Doyle, the tyro campaign manager and self-styled “queen bee” of Hillaryland, battled with Bill’s “White Boys,” as they were known, and often left Bill feeling dissed.

And Hillary did it to Obama’s detriment with her female fan base, stirring up such fury that some women are still vowing to jump to John McCain, even if it means voting against their self-interest.

She should not have repeated the mistake she made after her health-care plan failed. Instead of simply admitting her own mistakes in judgment, she played the victim and blamed sexism.

Of course, powerful women evoke sexism, and the attacks are more personal and slights can be grating. But it’s counterproductive to dwell on it, magnify it and exploit it during a campaign — especially when you’re getting all that love from Joe Sixpack.

I don’t believe Hillary’s campaign will cause a backlash. As long as her Denver Liberation Army doesn’t cause Obama to lose, it may well be good for women.

When I interviewed scores of women after Ronald Reagan won the women’s vote in ’84, I was stunned at what I heard. Many working-class women said they didn’t vote for Ferraro because they didn’t feel capable of running the country, so how could she?

Maybe women have seen enough male boo-boos in the last eight years to give them more confidence. Or maybe Hillary’s grit and gall allowed them to easily envision her cuffing generals and dictators.

While studies continue to say that being taller and having a deeper voice can make you seem like a more credible leader, Hillary thrillingly proved herself the best debater and the toughest candidate while being shorter and having the higher voice.

She didn’t lose because she was a woman. She didn’t lose because America isn’t ready for a woman as president. She lost because of her own — and her husband’s and Mark Penn’s — fatal missteps.

June 8, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
One Historic Night, Two Americas
By FRANK RICH
WHEN Barack Obama achieved his historic victory on Tuesday night, the battle was joined between two Americas. Not John Edwards’s two Americas, divided between rich and poor. Not the Americas split by race, gender, party or ideology. What looms instead is an epic showdown between two wildly different visions of the country, from the ground up.

On one side stands Mr. Obama’s resolutely cheerful embrace of the future. His vision is inseparable from his identity, both as a rookie with a slim Washington résumé and as a black American whose triumph was regarded as improbable by voters of all races only months ago. On the other is John McCain’s promise of a wise warrior’s vigilant conservation of the past. His vision, too, is inseparable from his identity — as a government lifer who has spent his entire career in service, whether in the Navy or Washington.

Given the dividing line separating the two Americas of 2008, a ticket uniting Mr. McCain and Hillary Clinton might actually be a better fit than the Obama-Clinton “dream ticket,” despite their differences on the issues. Never was this more evident than Tuesday night, when Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain both completely misread a one-of-a-kind historical moment as they tried to cling to the prerogatives of the 20th century’s old guard.

All presidential candidates, Mr. Obama certainly included, are egomaniacs. But Washington’s faith in hierarchical status adds a thick layer of pomposity to politicians who linger there too long. Mrs. Clinton referred to herself by the first-person pronoun 64 times in her speech, and Mr. McCain did so 60 times in his. Mr. Obama settled for 30.

Remarkably, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain had the grace to offer a salute to Mr. Obama’s epochal political breakthrough, which reverberated so powerfully across the country and throughout the world. By being so small and ungenerous, they made him look taller. Their inability to pivot even briefly from partisan self-interest could not be a more telling symptom of the dysfunctional Washington culture Mr. Obama aspires to mend.

Yet even as the two establishment candidates huffed and puffed to assert their authority, they seemed terrified by Mr. Obama’s insurgency, as if it were the plague in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.” Mrs. Clinton held her nonconcession speech in a Manhattan bunker, banishing cellphone reception and television monitors carrying the news of Mr. Obama’s clinching of the nomination. Mr. McCain, laboring under the misapprehension that he was wittily skewering his opponent, compulsively invoked the Obama-patented mantra of “change” 33 times in his speech.

Mr. McCain only reminded voters that he, like Mrs. Clinton, thinks that change is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. He has no idea what it means. “No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically,” he said on Tuesday. He then grimly regurgitated Goldwater and Reagan government-bashing talking points from the 1960s and ’70s even as he presumed to accuse Mr. Obama of looking “to the 1960s and ’70s for answers.”

Mr. Obama is a liberal, but it’s not your boomer parents’ liberalism that is at the heart of his appeal. He never rattles off a Clinton laundry list of big federal programs; he supports abortion rights and gay civil rights with a sunny bonhomie that makes the right’s cultural scolds look like rabid mastodons. He is not refighting either side of the domestic civil war over Vietnam that exploded in his hometown of Chicago 40 years ago this summer, long before he arrived there.

He has never deviated from his much-quoted formulation in “The Audacity of Hope,” where he described himself as aloof from “the psychodrama of the baby boom generation” with its “old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago.” His vocabulary is so different from that of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain that they often find it as baffling as a foreign language, even as they try to rip it off.

The selling point of Mr. Obama’s vision of change is not doctrinaire liberalism or Bush-bashing but an inclusiveness that he believes can start to relieve Washington’s gridlock much as it animated his campaign. Some of that inclusiveness is racial, ethnic and generational, in the casual, what’s-the-big-deal manner of post-boomer Americans already swimming in our country’s rapidly expanding demographic pool. Some of it is post-partisan: he acknowledges that Republicans, Ronald Reagan included, can have ideas.

Opponents who dismiss this as wussy naïveté do so at their own risk. They at once call attention to the expiring shelf life of their own Clinton-Bush-vintage panaceas and lull themselves into underestimating Mr. Obama’s political killer instincts.

The Obama forces out-organized the most ruthless machine in Democratic politics because the medium of their campaign mirrored its inclusive message. They empowered adherents in every state rather than depending on a Beltway campaign hierarchy whose mercenary chief strategist kept his day job as chief executive for a corporate P.R. giant. Such viral organization and fund-raising is a seamless fit with bottom-up democracy as it is increasingly practiced in the Facebook-YouTube era, not merely by Americans and not merely by the young.

You could learn a ton about the Clinton campaign’s cultural tone-deafness from its stodgy generic Web site. A similar torpor afflicts JohnMcCain.com, which last week gave its graphics a face-lift that unabashedly mimics BarackObama.com and devoted prime home page real estate to hawking “McCain Golf Gear.” (No joke.) The blogs, video and social networking are static and sparse, the apt reflection of a candidate who repeatedly invokes “I” as he boasts of his humility.

Mr. Obama’s deep-rooted worldliness — in philosophy as well as itinerant background — is his other crucial departure from the McCain template. As more and more Americans feel the pain of spiraling gas prices and lost jobs, they are also coming to recognize, as Mr. Obama does, that the globally reviled American image forged by an endless war in Iraq and its accompanying torture scandals is inflicting economic as well as foreign-policy havoc.

Six out of 10 Americans do want their president to talk to Iran’s president, according to the most-recent Gallup poll. Americans are sick of a national identity defined by arrogant saber-rattling abroad and manipulative fear-mongering at home. Mr. Obama closed his speech on Tuesday by telling Americans they “don’t deserve” another election “that’s governed by fear.” Of the three candidates, he was the only one who did not mention 9/11 that night.

Mr. Obama isn’t flawless. But it’s hard to see him hitching up with Mrs. Clinton, who would contradict his message, unite the right, and pass along her husband’s still unpacked post-presidency baggage. A larger trap for Mr. Obama is his cockiness. His own tendency to preen and to coast could be encouraged by recent events rocking the Straight Talk Express: Mr. McCain is so far proving an exceptionally clumsy candidate prone to accentuating everything that’s out-of-touch about his American vision.

Mr. McCain’s speech in a New Orleans suburb on Tuesday night spawned a cottage industry of ridicule, even among Republicans. The halting delivery, sickly green backdrop and spastic, inappropriate smiles, presumably mandated by some consultant hoping to mask his anger, left the impression that Mr. McCain isn’t yet ready for prime-time radio.

But the substance was even worse than the theatrics. Incredibly, Mr. McCain attacked Mr. Obama for being insufficiently bipartisan while speaking to the most conspicuously partisan audience you can assemble in today’s America: a small, nearly all-white crowd that seconded his attack lines with boorish choruses of boos. On TV, the audience came across as a country-club membership riled by a change in the Sunday brunch menu.

Equally curious was Mr. McCain’s decision to stage this event in Louisiana, a state that is truly safe for the G.O.P. and that he’d last visited less than six weeks earlier. Perhaps he did so because Louisiana’s governor, the 36-year-old Indian-American Bobby Jindal, is the only highly placed nonwhite Republican he could find to lend his campaign an ersatz dash of diversity and youth.

Or perhaps he thought that if he once more returned to the scene of President Bush’s Katrina crime to (belatedly) slam that federal failure, it would fool voters into forgetting his cheerleading for Mr. Bush’s Iraq obsession and economic policies. This time it proved a levee too far. The day after his speech Mr. McCain was caught on the stump misstating and exaggerating his own do-little record after Katrina. Soon the Internet was alight with documentation of what he actually did on the day the hurricane hit land: a let-us-eat-cake photo op with Mr. Bush celebrating his birthday in Arizona.

Anything can happen in politics, and there are five months to go. But Tuesday night’s McCain pratfall — three weeks in the planning by his campaign, according to Fox News — should be a clear indication that Mr. Obama must accept Mr. McCain’s invitation to weekly debates at once. Tomorrow if possible, and, yes, bring on the green!

Mr. Obama must also heed Mr. McCain’s directive that he visit Iraq — as long as he avoids Baghdad markets and hits other foreign capitals on route. When the world gets a firsthand look at the new America Mr. Obama offers as an alternative to Mr. McCain’s truculent stay-the-course, the public pandemonium may make J.F.K.’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” visit to the Berlin Wall look like a warm-up act.

The Clinton block of women referred to are these ones:

Clinton Bloc Becomes the Prize for Election Day

And the Clinton campaing was this one:

The Long Road to a Clinton Exit

yes, obama expands the map…. into places like Pennsylvania, California, and New Jersey.

if obama is going to try and leverage the black vote in the south, he’s demonstrating the willingness to tear this country apart in order to gain power — and it is only by exploiting racial identity politics that Obama can even me competitive in states like Georgia and Mississippi He’n not competitive there, based on models that use traditional levels of black voter participation — his number among white voters are abysmal (21.5% in Georgia) , and there are very few ‘undecided’ black voters — and there is a strong likelihood that you will see a backlash among white voters in November thanks to Obama’s use of identity politics.

Obama made a huge mistake in refusing to campaign in West Virginia and Kentucky — the combined message of winning primary contests thanks to massive african american support, and the contempt shown to white working class voters in WV and KY, is going to create a toxic atmosphere this election season. The GOP doesn’t have to ‘dog-whistle’ this campaign, because Obama sent the message already….

Obama made a huge mistake in refusing to campaign in West Virginia and Kentucky

I thought I was the only one who believed that. He should have shown up for the fight even if he was destined to lose. My WV family refered to him as chicken****. If he’d shown up, he’d have earned quite a bit of respect for trying. No crime in losing a fight, but running away from one is a different story.

He’ll have to correct that perception, especially in WV.

Boxturtle (Morning Cliff!)

You can spew this as long as you like. And you’ve been coy but you’re voting for McCaine like a few and I mean a few of your sister HillNormaRaenistas right?

If so, work hard to get that Clinton McCain ticket that I’ve talked about for months, Frank Rich wrote about today, and is a viable possibility if Hillary gets tired of acting the way Modo is correct that she is.

Georgia is going to Obama.

Why Georgia is Going for Obama

And there’s an excellent chance Jim Martin, who is a better senator and attorney than Saxby Chambliss who is one of the more dim witted of many dimwitted Republican Senators is going to beat Chambliss.

Last night, Al Franken was officially endorsed by the Democratic party in Minnesota and he’s going to replace Norm Coleman.

Obama didn’t start to campaign against McSame who is pathetic and he will now. McSame has had an opportunity to campaign for months and he still is hurting relatively fund raising wise.

McCain is walkikng into a buzz saw trying to take on Obama in either a town meeting or a debate. Obama has the facts way in his favor, and McCain is stiff and out of his element in any competition on the same stage with Obama.

Bring it on –it’s going to be fun watching your candidate get chopped up.

Are you the designated troll from the right wing blogs or just some disaffected Hillirinista who is so mad her poorly run campaign got its butt kicked that you want to spend the rest of your posts fantasizing on how effective McCain is going to be in your imagination?

I’m paying Hillary’s salary. Tomorrow I expect that pantsuit back in the Senate working for me and her constitutents for a fucking change. I haven’t heard you mention FISA but it’s about time she focused on it.

Boumidiene v. Bush may release tomorrow and Clinton is on 3 Senate Foreign Relations Committee subs on the military. It’s time for her to get off her ass and work on cleaning up the farce that Bmaz has written about at Gitmo and in the so-called military justice system.

We don’t need an S. Ct. skewed any more to the right, and Obama is going to help balance it.

I noticed on ABC This Week that Lindsay Graham and your fellow McCain (90% Bush votes over the Bush administration 7.5 years; 97% in 2007 and 100% in 2008) is pushing the tact that Repubicans target ignorant poorly educated voters including those with 2 SUVs in the garage and 6 figure incomes as well as white bigots.

Graham who did graduate a law school like so many others didn’t take the trouble to understand a present vote in the Illinois legislature.

‘Present’ Perfect

Here’s a tutorial for him and for you from former Illinois legislature member, DC Circuit Judge and White House Counsel (current Distinguished Prof U Chicago School of Law) Avner Mikva:

Unlike Congress and the legislatures of most other states, each chamber of the Illinois Legislature requires a “constitutional majority” to pass a bill. The state Senate has 59 members, so it takes 30 affirmative votes. This makes a “present” vote the same as a no. If a bill receives 29 votes, but the rest of the senators vote “present,” it fails.

In Congress, in contrast, a bill can pass in either the House or the Senate as long as more people vote for it than against it. If 10 people vote in favor and nine against, and the rest either vote “present” or don’t vote at all, the bill passes. It can actually pass with just one vote, as long as no one votes no.

In the Illinois Senate, there can be strategic reasons for voting “present” rather than simply no. A member might approve the intent of legislation, but not its scope or the way it has been drafted. A “present” vote can send a signal to a bill’s sponsors that the legislator might support an amended version. Voting “present” can also be a way to exercise fiscal restraint, without opposing the subject of the bill.

I recall voting “present” on many bills when I was in the Illinois Legislature. In the 1960s, for instance, I voted “present” on the annual highway appropriations bill. Like many of my fellow senators, I thought some of the money being allocated should have gone to public transportation. Still, I didn’t want to vote no, because I did not want to stand against the basic principle of maintaining our public roads. So I voted “present.”

It never occurred to me or to any of my critics that I was ducking responsibility for a making a decision. Mr. Obama was an outspoken member of the Illinois Senate, and not someone known for dodging questions, whether they were on ethics, police responsibility, women’s choice or any other hot-button issue.

Have you given any thought to the problem George Will references that Obama can afford to campaign anywhere he wants anytime and McCain simply can’t? And this is because of grass roots dollars from the little guy through the net when the stingy Republicans in the large mansions in the cities aren’t giving to McCain at the clip Republicans are used to enjoying. McCain has a significant money problem and he knows it and his big month of Mayis going to be one of his few big months. Obama is going to continue to set money raising records.

Don’t get too confident of that funding gap. McBush will get a lot of swiftboat support, and that money is potentially unlimited.

Obama’s advantage is that he has money HE can use. And he has it right now. I’m not seeing any swiftboating yet, and being in Ohio I’d expect to see it here first. So the swiftboat money is not in play yet.

McBush is likely going to have to accept public financing. Obama can reload anytime by just calling on the internet. The GOP is not used to being on the short end of the money stick and it’s an open question how well they’ll handle it.

My bet is that the GOP finance machine is going to direct everything they need to in order to keep a filibuster in the senate, and McBush gets the rest. And the house is left out to dry.

Boxturtle (Buying stock in TUMS, Rolaids, and Alka-seltzer)

One of my big worries is that in many of the downticket races that I’m hoping excitement over Obama will provide long coat tails is that the Republican incumbants have big war chests, like for example Chambliss in Georgia where Jim Martin way outclasses him as a legislator and an attorney.

I’m not over confident, but I’m sure looking forward to any time Obama and McCain get on the same stage debating or answering Town Hall questions.

And as you know too well, the 527s are gearing up to appeal to the most ignorant common denomiators possible–I watched it today with a panel composed of conservative idiots:

Obama is a wild eyed liberal (when in fact he’s not near left enough for a lot of peoples’ tastes)

Ayres Ayres Ayres–lol he consorts with terrorists

This is from people who wouldn’t understand that El Quaeda’s popularity is pandemic and spreading in Africa, That’s terrorism not fucking Ayres who was a Weatherman 40 fucking years a fucking go and is more concerned about keeping a Lexus or a Prius or a Mercedes or all 3 in great shape.

The work to do that you so correctly talk about earlier in the thread is that we have to explain what Obama is really about to your neighbors in Ohio and people in places like Kentucky outside Louisville (where I grew up and lived before I left for school) and outside Lexington. And it is going to be difficult work, but we have to pierce through the slogans I heard from Lindsay Graham this morning and the idiot Republican news pundit at the conference I listened to this morning.

These people are banking on ignorance as the infrastructure to get McCain elected and the many downticket chickenhawks that are Senate and Congressional incumbents like Chambliss who draft dodged and his son whose biggest risk is a hottie will throw a drink in his face at a DC Country club babe hustle.

Paul, do you think the 100% European American Democrats in WV and Kentucky were begging Obama to appear with them?

Do you think the 100% European American Democrats in WV and Kentucky were begging Hillary and Bill to appear with them?

OT,

….”if obama is going to try and leverage the black vote in the south, he’s demonstrating the willingness to tear this country apart in order to gain power”

This is high quality, refined, white supremacy.

If Obama wanted to “leverage the black vote,” or “tear this country apart in order to gain power,” all he has to do is mention “the debt.” What America owes to Blacks.

Will you promise to tell us when he mentions it?

I’m interested in how Obama did anything to initiate “identity politics” other than being born?

Paul, have you done as I requested, hopped in a car with four of your closest friends, who have ancestors who were slaves? Did you drive with them into a section of town that was pretty close to 100% European American and count how many times the cops pulled you over?

Bullseye, thanks.

Paul, have you done as I requested, hopped in a car with four of your closest friends, who have ancestors who were slaves? Did you drive with them into a section of town that was pretty close to 100% European American and count how many times the cops pulled you over?

I just happen to be the only non-african american person on my block. In fact, I’m the only “european-american” homeowner for quite a few blocks.

This is high quality, refined, white supremacy.

no its not. its a rejection across the board (not just among european-americans) of identity politics as the determining factor in a presidential election.

I’m interested in how Obama did anything to initiate “identity politics” other than being born?

you mean besides the massive GOTV vote he put together in the African American community? besides his campaign co-chair’s katrina remarks? Besides the lies told by his surrogate on the DNC (Donna Brazile) about Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” remarks? Besides his official campaign spokesman (Bill Burdon) telling reporters that “people have a right to make up their own minds” when asked whether it was outrageous to suggest that Hillary Clinton was disparaging MLK when she pointed out the role played by LBJ in getting the Civil Rights Act passed?

You mean besides Obama’s deliberate strategy of turning Jeremiah Wright into a ‘racial’ issue — rather than what it really was…. a legitimate question about the kind of people Obama had chosen as “mentors”. Obama sent a message loud and clear to the African American community — that raising questions abour Wright was an assault on black churches. (Of course it wasn’t — it was about Obama and Wright.)

Jeremiah Wright was not chosen in any way shape or form as a mentor for Obama, and he didn’t function as one at any time. Tony Rezko was not chosen as a mentor nor did he function as one.

The church was a place for Obama to take his family and to contribute to the communtiy financially and socially and that’s what he did.

Avner Mikvah who offered him a job out of Harvard as clerk in the D.C. circuit has been a bit of a mentor. That’s the same Avner Mikvah who was Bill Clinton’s White House Counsel. Now at the U of Chicago he’s an informal advisor to the Obama campaign. He’s white.

Bill Clinton and HIllary Clinton first shacked up in their friend Greg Craig’s apartment that he rented to them for practically nothing. Greg Craig organized his impeachment defense. Greg Craig is on the Obama team. He’s white.

We are working hard to get out the vote and particularly to get African Americans to vote with about 8 days to go in some southern states. No one has to apologize for that. I’m trying to get whites to register as well. I’ll try to explain what Obama correctly believes to people ignorant of it whatever their color. If you’re black McCain sure as hell doesn’t give you any reason to vote for him and Bush not only has chain pissed on you, he flew over Katrina in a daze.

Obama didn’t make Wright an issue. The meida, Clinton supporters, and the Republicans did. It’s very difficult to tell Clinton supporters from Repubkicans as to issues and tactics.

Obama didn’t raise the quesitons about Wright or the stupidity that prominent Republicans push on Ayres with whom he simply sat on a hospital board with.

Judson Miner was a mentor of sorts when Obama worked for his law firm doing civil rights work. where he represented community organizers, discrimination victims and black voters trying to force a redrawing of city ward boundaries.

Bernadine Dohrn was not a mentor to Michelle Robinson Obama at Sidley Austin as the ditzier Hillary blogs often tried to suggest trying to depict the Obamas as radical terrorist organizers.

People trying to smear the Obama’s with fictiional associations are going to end up losers. There’s pretty strong precedent for that this week, and it will continue with McCain’s campaign since they have exhibited every indication they will encourage the 527s to try to depict
the Obama’s as associates of radical bomb makers.

If as many Republicans and some of the ditzier Clinton fan blogs believed you believe that Obama was on a hospital board with Ayres so they could figure out how to manufacture bombs, I’d say you need acute psychiatic treatment and “rapid tranq”– a method we use in the emergency room that helps get wildly psychotic patients under control and in better control of their thought processes.

“I just happen to be the only non-african american person on my block. In fact, I’m the only “european-american” homeowner for quite a few blocks.”

No Paul you’re not. I’m quite sure a lot of the other people in your neighborhood have European American ancestors, as well as ancestors who had no ancestors who were slaves. You just don’t notice, because they’re not 100% European American.

My strong supposition is that what makes you “unique” in your neighborhood is that you’re 100% European American and that’s pretty rare.

“no its not. its a rejection across the board (not just among european-americans) of identity politics as the determining factor in a presidential election.”

Paul, this is wonderful news. When did this rejection take place?

Here’s what you posted at FDL back on June 3.

After Saturday, I don’t think Unity is possible…. it wasn’t possible for me personally a couple of weeks ago, but now I’m angry enough that I will do what I have to in order to make sure that Jewish voters, Hispanic voters, women and older voters understand the message that Obama sent them on Saturday — “if you don’t support me, you deserve only half a vote”.

Why didn’t you include gays and lesbians in YOUR survey of “identity politics?”

you mean besides the massive GOTV vote he put together in the African American community?

I’m very interested in how GOTV was an endorsement of “identity politics.”
Do you think they will vote for McSane?

“besides his campaign co-chair’s katrina remarks?”

Which campaign co-chair and what remarks?

“Besides the lies told by his surrogate on the DNC (Donna Brazile) about Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” remarks?”

Link?

“Besides his official campaign spokesman (Bill Burdon) telling reporters that “people have a right to make up their own minds” when asked whether it was outrageous to suggest that Hillary Clinton was disparaging MLK when she pointed out the role played by LBJ in getting the Civil Rights Act passed?”

I think all intelligent people understand what a pivotal role LBJ played in integration.

I’m LMAO, however, at HRC trying to make that exact point in the shadow of Iraq. MLK took a huge risk by breaking with LBJ on Vietnam and history has proved him right. “People have a right to make up their own minds.”

“You mean besides Obama’s deliberate strategy of turning Jeremiah Wright into a ‘racial’ issue — rather than what it really was…

…”

Paul, did the semitic peoples in early 20th century Europe “turn it into a ‘racial’ issue” too? Was the Holocaust their fault?

“a legitimate question about the kind of people Obama had chosen as “mentors”.”

Were those the same kind of “mentors” that convinced Booker T. Washington to give up the vote against the protests of W.E.B. Dubois? The same kind of “mentoring” that Joe Louis received to counter Jack Johnson? The same kind of “mentoring” that Willie Mays received to counter Jackie Robinson? The same kind of “mentoring” MLK received to counter Malcolm X and the Black Panthers? The same kind of “mentoring” that Joe Frazier got to be a counter to Muhammed Ali?

Obama sent a message loud and clear to the African American community — that raising questions abour Wright was an assault on black churches. (Of course it wasn’t — it was about Obama and Wright.)

Do you have a link to this “message?”

Paul, the reason Churches are so critical for Americans who had ancestors who were slaves, is because they have no other place to safely congregate. The wages of legalized white supremacy are very real.

How’s the unemployment rate in your neighborhood? How many of you neighbors have relatives in jail right now?

Will you at least give Obama a little credit for staying silent on the issue of repayment of “the debt?” He knows he’ll never get elected if he even mentions it. If asked, he’s going to say “no.”

The guy’s a very tough, savvy pragmatist.

wow.

you said you wanted to know ‘how Obama did anything to initiate “identity politics” ‘

you then ask for links to facts that are common knowledge, elide the Obama campaign’s responsibility for the Clinton MLK/LBJ smear by bringing up Iraq, and then lecture me on the importance of the black church.

…in other words, rather than deal with the facts that I provided you, you chose to ignore them because they are inconsistent with Obamamia.

The rest of the country — those who are not part of the Obama personality cult — understand how Obama has exploited identity politics, and that is going to create problems not just for Obama, but for race relations in this country in general.

Paul Lukasiak on 3 June 2008:

….After Saturday, I don’t think Unity is possible…. it wasn’t possible for me personally a couple of weeks ago, but now I’m angry enough that I will do what I have to in order to make sure that Jewish voters, Hispanic voters, women and older voters understand the message that Obama sent them on Saturday — “if you don’t support me, you deserve only half a vote”.

You’re the one who keeps repeating what sounds like very refined white supremacist language. If you can’t find a link, or if you’re just too lazy, just say so.

Part of me thinks you were dying for a job in a Clinton administration and saw your what sounds like refined white supremacy comments as your chance to ingratiate yourself demonstrate your “loyalty.” I’m a liberal, who sent money to Feingold and Edwards. As I keep telling you, I’ve never found much daylight between HRC’s and Obama’s positions. Unlike you, however, I’m happy to enthusiastically support the Democratic nominee for President.

Paul,

I would strongly invite you to write a letter to Caroline Kennedy, Eric Holder and Jim Johnson requesting that they select HRC to be Obama’s running mate. You have already assembled a lot of data in favor of this, which you could incorporate into such a letter.

I would invite you then to copy that letter to the Obama campaign and to Senator Clinton. Then post it in the comments section here at FDL.

A separate written apology to Marcy for maliciously and falsely calling her a liar, would also be nice.