The Next President?

Have to say that i have only seen snippets of the campaign so I am sure you have a better idea of whats going on, but for Obama to get beyond the idea that he is all rhetoric, hes going to have to step outside the bubble hes surrounded himself with....other wise it will be perceived (rightly) as a weakness. I wonder if he can do that...

The closer any campaign gets to decision time the more the head rules the heart

I certainly think dismissing him as a "windbag" merely because he is a great orator is oversimplistic and wrong.
Click to expand...

No. Many a great orator has had a firm grip of his brief (Bill clinton for one...).
 
Not yet Gal. Caucuses only ended a half hour ago.

Will be a big blow to Hillary if she can't carry Nevada (even without the culinary workers union), given the uphill battle she's likely to face in South Carolina.
 
FWIW - and it might not be much - Fox News are projecting:

Clinton 50%
Obama 45%
Edwards 5%



Romney won the Rep version.
 
Hard to know. I would imagine he will stick around until Super Tuesday and then get out fairly quickly after.

Of course, he could still have an influence on the race if he decides to try his luck as a "kingmaker" by throwing his weight behind Obama.
 
Landslide victory for Obama in South Carolina - looks like the Clintons' resort to 'dirty tricks' and mud-slinging is rebounding badly. They are showing themselves in their true colours pretty early!


Telegraph report on Obama victory in SC

I like this on page 2:

<< Many Democrats fear the highly public row has handed ammunition to the Republicans for the general election. Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan presaged the likely line of attack, calling Mr Clinton a "civic embarrassment" for treating "a proud and accomplished black man who is a US senator as if he were nothing, a mere impediment to their plans."

And Michelle Bernard of the group Independent Women's Voice, said: "How un-feminist it is to get your husband to do your dirty work." >>

From another article on the site:

<< Rezko affair rattles skeletons in Clintons' closet

Just three days after Hillary Clinton taunted Barack Obama with taking money from Tony Rezko, the indicted businessman, a photograph of him standing between the former First Lady and her husband Bill appeared on the Drudge Report website.

Mrs Clinton insisted she had no memory of the encounter, which may have occurred when Mr Rezko attended a Democratic fund-raiser. But at a time when Mrs Clinton was trying to score points, it was a reminder that she and her husband have been dogged by financial questions for decades.

During the current campaign, Mrs Clinton has returned $850,000 (£429,000) in contributions linked to a convicted fraudster, Norman Hsu. Controversies during her husband's presidency included giving stays in the White House's "Lincoln bedroom" to donors, and a pardon for Marc Rich, a financier who fled abroad from fraud charges. His wife was a supporter.

The Clintons were hounded for years by a criminal investigation into their Whitewater land investment in Arkansas, although they were never charged. And the day after Mrs Clinton attacked Mr Obama's legal work on Rezko-related business, Mr Clinton was said to be preparing to sever ties with the investment firm of his friend Ron Burkle. >>


The American friends I was with in Amsterdam last week are educated, liberal, well-travelled people aged late50s/early 60s: the sort you would imagine to be natural Democrats. Jim in particular is so rabidly anti-Clinton that whenever anyone bought a newspaper and he found a photo of either Clinton in it, he ripped it out, screwed it up, and put it in the nearest trash can :nuts:
 
Neither can win outright on Super Tuesday, Obama gets a small amount of momentum but not much, and definitely too little to make a major impact
 
Rudy's last stand in Florida is the more interesting angle, before then


And yes, I accept I've done my money :)
 
Originally posted by Gareth Flynn@Jan 19 2008, 09:20 PM
Do you think Edwards will stick around through to Super Tuesday?
Click to expand...
Well, he won't be sticking around. Gives Obama a fighting chance?
 
Absolutely right Gareth - - -

<< Coulter took aim at McCain's positions — particularly his fervent anti-torture stance >>

:eek: :eek: :eek:

If the article is correct that the Republican 'Establishment' is behind this relatively liberal candidate then let's all hope they succeed... America has to understand that to win back the respect of the 'rest of the world' it has to abjure the wholesale abuse of people's human rights, of which torture and imprisonment without trial are the two most glaring examples.

It sounds as though a few people in positions of influence are now starting to grasp this.

Bill Clinton of course won an early election - as Governor of Arkansas - by refusing an appeal to spare the life of a severely retarded black man who had killed someone although any civilised person would have understood that the guy wasn't responsible for his own actions. It's believed that sending him to the chair swung the election in Bill's favour - that's alright then! - and the rest is history.
 
Did any watch the Daily Show Global Edition last week?

They had put together a montage of various newreporters, analysts and experts all of whom had a expressed the same view:

That the current difficulties being experienced in the American economy were being caused by the prospect of a democrat being elected to power.

There was at least half-a-dozen of them - all independent of each other - and all were being serious.

All were broadcast on the Fox News Network. :D
 
Not much value in the market anymore, though I do think Hillary will be shorter than 4/7 after next Tuesday..

I was mildly surprised to see Edwards getting out before Tuesday, but it was only a matter of time really..

It will be interesting to see where his vote goes now. While the logical conclusion seems to be that it will go, in large part, to Obama, it's certainly not that clear-cut IMO. In fact there is a school of thought, of considerable merit IMO, that many of those who threw their weight behind Edwards because they viewed him as the "electable" one (not half as many as Warbler would have liked, mind you!) are more likely to switch to Hillary.

McCain can't be stopped now surely. The last nail in the coffin for Romney surely must be the fact that a majority of Floridians saw McCain as best fit to handle the economy.

Ann Coulter is to conservatism what Nick Mordin is to speed figures.
 
Originally posted by trackside528@Feb 1 2008, 11:29 PM
(not half as many as Warbler would have liked, mind you!)
Click to expand...
Too bloody right.

I'm reminded of the observation made by some American professor I was chatting to a few months ago who assured me to never under-estimate the democrat's ability to elect the most unelectable candidate :laughing:

My best guess is that his vote will pretty well split evenly.

I'm secretly hoping that Rudy can get himself on the McCain ticket as it's a spectator sport for me from now on in, and Guiliani is always good theatre. I must admit though, he's called this all wrong, and seems to have over-looked a fundamental characteristic of the American pysche in that they like to associate with winners. By the time Florida came round he was holed below the water line
 
Originally posted by trackside528@Feb 1 2008, 11:29 PM
I was mildly surprised to see Edwards getting out before Tuesday, .....
It will be interesting to see where his vote goes now. While the logical conclusion seems to be that it will go, in large part, to Obama, ..........

Ann Coulter is to conservatism what Nick Mordin is to speed figures.
Click to expand...
ROFL NICE ONE :clap:

I'm afraid there is going to be a biggish feminist vote for Hillary just on the grounds of her sex -
the US equivalents of the ghastly Harriet Harman who said a couple of weeks back that she was sorry she wasn't American as shed like to be able to help vote in a woman Presdident. I hate that kind of mindless gesture politics. I'd rather eat a saddle than vote for Clinton

Mind you I guess Obama will have most of the black and other ethnic minority votes sewn up on similar grounds shrug:: so it works both ways!

I agree Warbler that much of the fun has gone out of the contest with Rudy's demise - very disappointing! He's such a gadfly, I was really waiting for him to rev into action to take a serious interest
 
You can tell Harriet Harman that if she wants to vote in an American election, it's very easy to do :suspect:
 
LOL! trust you to know that |Warbler!

An interesting article about the election and primaries in The Spectator, including an assessment of McCain's and esp of Obama's broad appeal:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/fe...r-tuesday.thtml

Revealing article on the Wall Street Journal "Who Was Hillary Clinton" on the couple's efforts to limit access to the records of their time at the White House [and earlier]:
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/opinion.html

It's also worth reading the article on that page by longtime Democrat activist Dan Gerstein: "Decline of the Angry Left" which points up the increasing split in the Democrat activists between those still fighting old-style confrontational political battles and those seeing an effort to develop a more inclusive political vision as the way forward. He offers some intriguing explanations for Edwards' failure to make progress.

If his analysis is correct, Obama's bandwagon should drive the Clintons over a very steep cliff.


Text of McCain's anti-torture article published in Newsweek, republished here:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/111305Y.shtml
 
Back
Top