9 posts tagged “party”

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News on Monday, Independent Party presidential hopeful (it is hard to type that without believing it should be followed by a punchline), Ralph Nader, made some very interesting statements. 

When asked what is different about Senator Obama relative to other democrats he has run against, he stated that the only difference was that Senator Obama is “half African-American.”  Oh yes he did.  He went there.

He also said that Senator Obama is trying to (are you sure you are ready for this, hold on to your chair) “talk white.”

Did a person running for president actually accuse another candidate of talking white?  Seroiusly? 

It is interesting that the other candidates have mostly relied on their supporters and spouses to say incredibly stupid things, but not Mr. Nader.  He doesn’t need others to do his “stupid” work, he is perfectly capable of doing that himself. 

This crazy candidate (I will avoid the other descriptive terms that come to mind) even took a shot at Jessie Jackson while trying to explain why Senator Obama is talking white.  He stated that one of the reasons he is talking white is (hold on, I have to compose myself) he doesn’t want to “appear like Jessie Jackson.”

Holy smokes!

Is this guy for real?  I seriously think he has come to believe that he can gain more support than he has gotten in past elections by getting the racist vote.

Remember all of the talk about voter who said race mattered in the elections mostly voting for Senator Clinton.  It seems he heard that and decided that being a racist was his best bet in trying to get support.

I have looked at comments on several blogs and some chats on the subject and this foolishness seems to have some support. 

As for me, a person who does not belong to political party, I have to say I hate to have to refer to myself as an independent voter for fear that I will be associated to such an person (I’m being politically correct and nice instead of using many of the other descriptive terms that come to mind for this person). 

Just to leave us with a thought, what exactly are the implications of saying that a person of color or of mixed origin can attempt to “talk white?” 

Is he referring to that fact he does not use slang or “Ebonics” or sound like any of the rap stars on the television.  That would mean that he is saying that those who are white and “talk white” are okay in sounding educated, but any person of color or mixed origin who “talks white” is faking it to distance themselves from someone (as Mr. Nader implies) as stupid as Jessie Jackson or other persons of color.

Is he saying that “talking white” speaks of people who have money and that he is avoiding talking about those in the inner cities and poor neighborhoods of our country.  As if there are no people of color in these better neighborhoods and only people of color live in poor areas and inner cities. 

Need I go on?  How dare anyone who is not a publicly proclaimed racist support this man.  This is an assault on our sensibilities and the Independent party has a responsibility to all of us who call ourselves Americans to pull the plug on this racist madman.

Another blogger recently made some very good comments about third party candidates on one of my blogs.  The basic point was that having a competitive third party candidate most often will not get that person elected but slip the votes between that person and the other party closest to what they stand for. 

If that third party candidate  leans a little left the votes would split between that person and the Democratic candidate. If the third party candidate leans a little to the right the votes would be split between that person and the Republican candidate.  The split would allow the unified vote on the other side of the spectrum to win the election and reduce that third party candidate to the role of spoiler and never really lead to a successful candidate.

In thinking about this, I find the evidence to support this hypothesis to be very strong.  This is worrisome to me.  The party system we have in place is clearly broken and these facts clearly show that there is no hope otherwise.

Maybe if there were to just be one other serious party (along with all of those minor parties that get like one to two percent of the vote every four years) that represented the area closer to the middle.  Not too right, not too left, just in the area near the middle. 

Obviously, there would be conflicts within this party on some issues and some areas that members of this party could possibly never agree upon, but this party would best represent the average American. 

I also think that two serious contenders for the title of president is clearly not enough.  The only alternatives we are left with are ridiculously irrelevant and a waste of our time. 

The only way there will really be change is if the voters come together and vote for someone else from another party who represents the overall values of the people.  That would first require a highly qualified candidate that would attract all of these voters form both ends of the spectrum and was different enough from the other candidates to really represent change. 

The sad fact id that I personally have not seen a person even close to this and I think that the other candidates who are running are in fact simply the spoilers who will devour the campaigns of the parties they used to belong to.

California Assembly Bill 1819, is a plan to get sixteen and seventeen year old voters to preregister to vote.  This means that these teens would automatically be registered and sent the sample ballots when they are eighteen.  This bill has passed the assembly and is currently in the senate.

Here is the interesting part:  The vote in Assembly split right down party lines with Democrats voting for it and Republicans voting against.

I listened to and read some of the debate for and against this bill and I see merit in both sides of the argument.  I am still undecided on what I think of this idea. 

The thing that struck me in all of this is that the Republican Party in California is in such fear of the late teen voters.  I know that whoever it is that controls the youth controls the future.  Judging by the results of this vote, I am left to wonder if the future holds a one party system for California.

It would seem that the Republican Party needs to do some kind if image make over if the general feel of the party (at least in California) is that an entire generation will be their undoing as soon as they decide to vote.  I am also stunned at the fact that the only plan to combat this is to keep this whole group from voting as long as possible.  That’s it, the whole plan?

The Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, seems to be doing okay and managed to get elected in the first place.  I understand that he started as a public figure, but the state seems to be within the realm of a balance of power between the parties.  It seems like with a little work the Republican Party could restore the balance.  This work may be with those same youth that would be registering under what is outlined in this bill.

As a person who does not like the current party system and all of the partisanship, I have to admit that a one party system made up of one or the other of the major parties really scares me.

I am worried that one whole party is scared of the youth thinking about voting. I am still deciding what I think of this bill.

The Democratic Party’s activities from this weekend should be convincing evidence (when combined with the past few years of what has been done by the Republican Party) that the current party system and those in power cannot possibly produce a good presidency out of this year’s voting.  We need someone else and that person is nowhere to be found.

Let’s slow down and backtrack a bit to the Democratic National Committee mess.

The Hillary Clinton camp has completely lost its mind with desperation and Senator Barack Obama’s camp and the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee are afraid to say so.  The D.N.C. has agreed to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan but to only give them half votes.  The problem is that the Democratic Party has continued to allow Senator Clinton and her camp to go on with the outlandish demands she makes publicly hoping to create a big enough push by her supporters to force the party to give in to her unreasonable ideas.

The wildest of stupid suggestions I have heard was the idea the Clinton camp proposed to the D.N.C. that Senator Obama shouldn’t get any delegates from Michigan because his name was not on the ballot in that state.  Are these people serious.

Let me get this straight.  These states decided they were not important enough in the primary process so they were going to move their primary forward (the ironic thing is that with all of the ruckus to move primaries forward last year the states that came last turned out to be the ones who became more important).  Other states also had done the same which would make their move less impacting.   These two states decided they would move their primaries in front of the other states even though they knew it violated Democratic Party rules.  The Democratic National Committee informed these states that this was against party rules and would lead to the punishment of not having their votes count for the primaries.  These states moved their primaries anyway.  The D.N.C. stuck to its guns and its rules and did not allow the votes of these states to count with the approval of the candidates.  The candidates agreed also, not to campaign in these states and in Michigan some of the candidates (including Senator Barack Obama) pulled their names off of the ballot all together in support of the D.N.C.’s decision. 

Senator Clinton wins both states, but all of the candidates, including Senator Clinton had already agreed that the votes would not count. Then Senator Clinton turned out not to be the untouchable candidate that she had thought she was by loosing a string of primaries to Senator Obama.  All of a sudden the Clinton camp begins redirecting her campaign efforts to promoting how unfair it is that these votes are not being counted and a focus on getting them counted in her favor.  Her supporters begin to threaten the party saying if things don’t go her way they will vote for the most likely Republican candidate, Senator John McCain.

Why is this even still being discussed?  If the party as a whole cannot make rules that they can follow amongst themselves what business do these people have running our country.

Ave you ever bee in a grocery store or some such place and observed parenting that looks like this.  Little Jimmy, starts touching something little jimmy should not be touching. Mom or Dad or both tell little Jimmy to stop.  Little Jimmy doesn’t listen and keeps touching.  The parent or parents keep telling little Jimmy and then move to threatening little Jimmy.  Let’s say its “Jimmy if you don’t stop I am going to drag you out of this store and spank you!”  Little Jimmy keeps on and eventually breaks whatever it is. The parent says something like “Now look what you did Jimmy” and rushes little Jimmy to another isle and tries to act like it never happened.  Guess what little Jimmy starts doing in the next isle?  Of course, Little Jimmy starts touching more things.

Can our entire country be run like this?

Do not get me wrong, I think that the Republican party has shown clearly over the past few years that they are not capable of running this country, but now we are seeing the Democrats are no more capable than the Republicans.  But, are we content with simply picking the lesser of the evils.

The current Democrats in power are clearly swayed far too easily by pressure from powerful people (like the Clintons) to ignore what is right.  The vote to fully seat the delegates from Florida as voted in January received twelve votes for it and fifteen against.  These twelve people are the problem.  If there is a clear rule and several warnings that say if you do something so and so will be the consequences and within your own party you cannot stand your ground what kind of wishy-washy government would one led by such people turn out to be. 

If Senator Obama is not a strong enough leader to stand up to this sort of nonsense and not only say it is wrong, but get the general public to see it and turn on Senator Clinton for being so ridiculous, he is clearly not ready to be president either.

Of course, it seems obvious, that the fact that Senator Clinton and her supporters act so much like spoiled children who will do anything to win demonstrates that the country needs few things less than it needs this crazy Senator and her folks in office.

I have maintained and will continue to maintain that when you look at the voting records of these candidates and the actions of the three candidates we are flooded with information about, none of the three are a good option.  It is becoming clearer and clearer that a large percentage of the population is voting not for what is best for the country, but for some ideal represented by one candidate or the other regardless of if the person is crazy or will make a terrible president.  Someone somewhere has to come up with a better option for the American People and the good of the country.

Our country and its people are in far to fragile of a time in history right now to be putting a crazy person who has no business in the White House into the position that will most determine what happens to us for at least the next four years because they simply are Republican, Democrat, Black, White, a woman, a man, a veteran, upper-class, middleclass, he or she drinks beer and shots, he or she bowls or doesn’t bowl, that person’s pastor is crazy or not crazy.  We need to find the person who can take the reigns and do what is right from day one and is clearly not what either party has been doing for at least the past few years. 

None of these three are that person!

The end of the Democratic Party as we know it is looming.  With Senator Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton beginning to pull the conspiracy theory cards the push to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates in a way favorable to Senator Clinton.  Clinton supporters are beginning to focus on this effort and are in the planning stages of protests of party gatherings.

Legal experts for the Democratic Party released a memo that states that the party rules only allow for the seating of half of the delegates from each state.  This I guess would be sort of a reduced sentence. 

I mean the party warned these states that if there they broke party rules their votes would not be counted.  These states broke the rules, the party followed through on their threatened punishment, and the Clinton family has been the driving forces for overturning this punishment or in other words for insuring that threats of punishment made by the party no longer have any weight.

The question is how do you divide these delegates fairly?  The party told the candidates to not campaign in these states and in Michigan, Senator Barack Obama, in being obedient to the party rules even went as far as having his name removed from the ballot.  Now Senator Clinton and her supporters want the vote of this state to count as a win for her.  Not only is this a shameful assault on the reasoning of the people, it is a set up for a lawsuit against the party and a whole lot of conspiracy theory talk from supporters of Senator Obama.

The problem is that Senator Clinton has positioned her support in such a way that if the delegates are not seated in such a way that benefits her, they will believe that there has been a terrible injustice and a conspiracy. 

The crack in the party has just grown again. 

I have to wonder how it is going to be received when this is all over and one of these people is chosen and the other running as vice president.  Truthfully, neither candidate wants to run as vice-president or really wants the other as vice-president on the ticket if the winner.  The only reason I am sure that this will be the case, is that this is the only way that the democrats could possibly patch the cracks in the party through the rest of the election.

The problem is that the battle has so divided those that call themselves Democrats that no matter the outcome one or more large segments of the party will probably be enraged at the outcome and at the party as a whole. 

Realistically, Senator Clinton is the only person who could possibly do anything about the impending doom her party faces.  I suppose that is because in her desperation to win at all costs, she has done more harm than good to her party and to her own approval rating.

The war in Iraq will be won and the troops will be withdrawn by the end of my first term in office was the message or should I more properly say “campaign promise” of Senator John McCain this weekend.  A win and a withdrawal of our troops from Iran by the year 2013.  Was this a big stand for Senator McCain or another ploy to separate from the failed plans of the current regime.

As I heard this statement, the first thing that crossed my mind was an image of Senator McCain telling his staff that he was about to say this to the public and one of his staff asking him, “What if that doesn’t happen?”  In my little daydream Senator McCain responds with:  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, right now we’ll do anything to win.

The truth is, Senator McCain had to do something because he has been plagued by the comment he made a few months back where he stated that America will stay in Iraq for a hundred years if that’s what it takes.  You couple a comment like that hundred year comment and the fact that he is from the same unpopular party that the current president, who started the war in Iraq is from.  The current president, a certain President, George W. Bush, is extremely unpopular and growing more unpopular almost by the second.  If you are a Republican candidate at this moment, this is the one person you would least want to be associated with at this point in history.

This was just the tip of the iceberg; it gets worse for Senator McCain. Earlier this week, while visiting Israel, President Bush attacked anyone that thinks that negotiation with those who consider themselves our enemy and implied that such a person would be stupid.  The obvious implication here was that Senator Barack Obama’s foreign policy ideas were stupid.  This is an opinion and agree or disagree it is at least a valid opinion.

The problem is that the source of this passive aggressive attack was the very unpopular President Bush.  This creates several problems for Senator McCain. 

The first and probably biggest problem is that while Senator McCain is just getting out of the blocks in the media (compared to Senators Clinton and Obama who have been all we hear about) the man who will probably have the lowest popularity of any president in history is doing his campaign dirty work for him.  Once this became the view of the public as a whole, the months of work he has done in trying to distance himself from the president all but vanished in one fell swoop.

Then Senator McCain made an almost predictable error.  He went along with the attacks of the President and demanded that Senator Obama explain himself. Could John McCain and his entire camp be so stupid as to not see what was to come next. 

Senator Obama, pulled out his two favorite aces. 

The first card Senator Obama pulled was to write off the whole ruckus as old Washington politics.  It must be clear to the entire planet that the American people are tired and dissatisfied with the way our government works and would vote for Mickey Mouse and Goofy if they thought there would be a change.  Once a politician is marked as “Old Washington” in this election year that person has one foot and two arms in the political grave.

Besides, if you are going to say that applying pressure to a nation by not talking to them (not negotiating with them) will work, you have to site cases where that has worked.  That goes double when you are discussing countries like Iran where that strategy has not only failed, but seems to have made matters worse.  Every candidate this year has to keep in mind that the American people are hungry for “change” and if you say that something should stay the same, you had better have a real good reason for not changing.

The second card that Senator Obama pulled out was the “extension of the Bush presidency” card.  As unpopular as the current surveys state that President Bush is, being tied to him cannot be a good thing in a presidential race. 

I remember in something I was watching in the movies or on television, I think it was C.S.I. episode, where the criminal took a guy and tied him to a dead body because that would cause all of the rotting and decaying that was happening to the dead person to happen to the other person while he was still alive.  I know that is gross, but that is what it is like to be tied to the current presidency publicly.  That is the fact.  Fair or unfair, warranted or unwarranted, the American people as a whole are unhappy with the current presidency and anything that is tied to it. 

It was as if the entire party of Democrats was crouched in waiting for this moment.  The moment when President Bush and Senator John McCain would team up and attack Senator Barack Obama so that the ambush could take place on the Republican party as a whole.

Within a day, democrats came out of the woodwork to attack President Bush and Senator McCain and make them look like a team unified in being stupid.

I can hardly imagine why Senator McCain would not have steered clear of this whole mess.  The entire planet knows that his support among the more rightwing Republicans is shaky at best.  I am wondering why a person relying so heavily on voters who are nearer to the middle would do something that damage his support from that group as well.

If Senator McCain is to be a serious player in this election  he has to do one of two things. 

1. Keep up the gopher hole campaign strategy where he stays underground, once in a while poking his head out to give a short speech, while the democrats destroy each other.
2. Base his campaign on rhetoric that says he is different and in many ways distant from the current regime and that he represents the magic word:  “CHANGE!”

Just as the Democratic candidates looked to both have their fingers on the red button that would self-destruct their party, President Bush and Senator McCain gave them a reason to unify (even Senator Hillary Clinton attacked the President and Senator McCain on this one) and get some good press.  I am just seriously surprised at how both of the main parties are their own worst enemies this primary season. 

It is as if we are not voting for the best candidate we are simply going to vote for the last person standing after both parties implode and the smoke clears.  What a mess.

Since his primary win in North Carolina, Senator Barack Obama has moved from a gradual trickle to a near avalanche of superdelegates who have moved to support the senators bid for president.  The tide is so in Senator Obama’s favor that if this continues at anywhere near this pace there will be an absolute crushing of Senator Hillary Clinton within weeks in spite of the predicted wins in the next few primary states.

This has to be a blow to Senator Clinton and her support base.  With only a few more superdelgates for Senator Obama, Senator Clinton could win all of the remaining primaries and seat Florida and Michigan only to loose the Democrat’s nod and a whole lot of her own cash (not to mention whoever it is that is still throwing money into this sinking ship) 

I am not sure how this story ends, but I know it is looking more and more hopeless for Senator Clinton in light of the surge in support for Senator Obama.  As more primaries loom, I am wondering if the attacks are about to ramp up again further damaging the Democrats as a party and the popularity of each of the candidates. 

At what point does a determined candidate like Senator Clinton say that the remote possibility of creating a miracle come-from-behind win is not worth the risk of possibly damaging their party?  As I watch this whole thing unfold I am more and more convinced that her whole candidacy is completely about her and not a single sole else.  All of the ranting about the poor and the middleclass etc., is simply rhetoric.  I am left to ask, who is she loyal to.

If the party says certain states should be punished because of not respecting the rules of the party, to exert tremendous pressure publicly to override that ruling because you may gat a little closer to winning, even though it makes the ones you are supposed to be loyal to and representing look terrible, is incredibly self-centered.  To campaign in a state that your party instructed you not to campaign in so that you could plan this party revolt shows premeditated disloyalty. 

I admit I am not a fan of our current party system and usually welcome some venturing outside of traditional party boundaries, but I am not convinced this woman has any true loyalty to anyone but herself.  What kind of president would a person like that make?

I do believe however, that she is desperate enough to get into the Whitehouse that she will definitely run as a Vice-presidential candidate with Senator Obama if asked and prove to be a formidable opponent for the Republicans and other candidates.

The real problem is that a person with no loyalty whatsoever, has no value system that can outweigh the value of personal gain.  This is a person who would sellout anyone or group of person for money, power, and/or respect.  This is a seriously scary president or vice-president.

If you watch, listen to, or read the commentaries on the primaries taking place every couple of weeks, the news has drifted into a public battle of race, age, and gender.  I have been struck by the amount of news that basically states that Senator Hillary Clinton is winning over middle class, whites (the exact words that the media seems to be comfortable using), older “white” voters and is campaigning to win over women.  The other side of the coin is that Senator Barack Obama is winning over African-American voters (in the media known as “black voters”) and new, young voters.

This race may not be what has split the party, but no matter how you think it got there, I think it is safe to say that, the party is split and it is being made obvious to the whole planet. 

The last few days of news has brought lots of stories and discussion about the possibility that events of this primary season are negatively affecting the party as a whole.  Some say that the events of the last few months are not negatively affecting the party.  Again, that may or may not be the case, but the party has a huge negative point at this minute:  The party is divided. 

I have been befuddled by how comfortable the media has been in reducing the campaigns to the group that seems to vote for the candidates.  Now we can all think of Sen. Clinton as the candidate of middleclass “white males” and “older white” voters while Sen. Obama as the candidate of African Americans and new voters.  But, in thinking about it, although these facts are uncomfortable, they are true and this is news.

The problem is not the reporting, the problem is that the Democrats are comfortable with this as a whole.  It does not matter if the party split yesterday, over this primary season, or ten years ago, it is still split and the gap between the different factions is growing. 

The problem has the potential to move from a large crack in the party to a completely broken party in the near future. 

If Sen. Obama wins, the middleclass white males will feel disenfranchised and may not be in as much of a hurry to vote for him simply because he is a Democrat.

If Sen. Clinton wins, by the overturning of the popular vote by superdelegates, or by getting the states that Sen. Obama did not campaign in to count, a large part of the African American community will feel cheated by the candidate that represents middleclass, “white” America.  Has the party not thought through how overriding the popular vote of the people or including the votes of states that the first African American candidate did not campaign in (in accordance with instructions from the party) would speak to the African American populous. 

In polls the voters have made it clear that if their respective candidate did not win, they may vote for a Republican, Independent, or at the least no longer affiliate themselves with the Democrats. 

Both middleclass “white” and the “black” voters are major demographics that have been the base of the party for the past few years.  One of these groups is likely to be alienated in the next few months.  Then what?  How about the young voters that are voting for the first time?  Alienate them and you have succeeded in alienating the future!

I suppose the party has counted on being to get the two candidates coming together after some sort of solution is reached and running together as presidential and vice-presidential candidates.  This would be the case normally, but this current unusually prolonged  primary season and the nature of the “firsts” represented in the candidates, has allowed more time for voters to get their heart set on their candidate and to foster more dislike for the opponent. 

The end of the party seems to be coming faster than the end of the primaries.  If I were a Democrat (and not a complete independent) I would think that this has to stop now, because this one presidency is not worth risking the destruction of the party.  As an independent that thinks the party system is broken, I think if the one party explodes in front of the entire planet it will force the government and the country as a whole to look at revamping the party system.

This weekend the frenzy of debate between the Democratic presidential hopefuls ratcheted up again.  The rhetoric is back up to speed as Senator Obama switched to the attack and Senator Clinton was on the defensive.

Senator Barack Obama was on the attack in the press this weekend most notably stating that Senator Hillary Clinton’s Iraq policies are “too much like” President Bush’s Iraq policies. 

Sen. Obama has been skillfully dancing through questions about his friend Mr. Wright in an impressive manner.  The truth is that the damage has been done and even if it is going to be turned around, it will take a few weeks.  Of course there is the possibility that a certain Mr. Wright might resurface and again lose his mind publicly.

Senator Clinton now has been tied to a gimmick in the form of this gas tax holiday.  Sen. Clinton has done fairly well in the polls and in the public recently.  She has seemed to realize that whenever she goes on the attack against Sen. Obama her popularity drops fast, so she has taken a kinder more generic tone in her debate about who is a better candidate and why.

It is going to be interesting over the next couple of days as we head into two more big primaries (haven’t they all been).  For the past few weeks Sen. Obama has been dropping in the polls and Sen. Clinton has been gaining ground.  The tone is about to change for the next couple of days, but I suspect that any major switch in the direction each candidate has been going the past few weeks, will be slow and will not be seen clearly for two to three weeks.

Then there is the groundhog candidacy of Senator John McCain.  Just like a groundhog or a gopher he pops up here and there and then disappears underground.  I am not sure this is the best way to campaign against a pair of media-hogs such as the Democratic senators.  If all that the people have been hearing about is the Democrats much of what the Republicans could say negative about the candidates has been beaten to death, the only interesting news left is going to be the negative news about the player; Senator McCain and his new vice president candidate.

There is an old saying amongst the acting community that can be translated two ways.

No Publicity is Bad Publicity!