Our Primary/Caucus Votes

[Sonic Youth]

And Sonic's referring specifically to exit polls showing a more solidly pro-Hillary bias to latinos and asian americans of ALL ages. Hillary has the solid support of middle age and elder white voters. It's the trend and I think what Sonic is trying to say that black or white, the black voters will still vote largely for the democratic candidate. latinos and asian americans tend to be moderate in their voting trends, which means with such solid support, Hillary would have the better chance of carrying those voters in the election than Obama.

Correction: I didn't see any age breakdowns for Asians in the exit polls, probably because they're too small a constituency for pollsters to study.

There's no question that racism ain't limited to whitey. I'd have thought that went without saying. But since people cling to a ridiculous, simplistic fallacy that UNLESS YOU SAY SOMETHING WITH GREAT EXPLICITNESS it then means YOU SO CLEARLY TAKE THE OPPOSITE POSITION OF WHAT YOU DIDN'T SAY IN THE FIRST PLACE, then I have to elaborate my meaning. Otherwise, who knows what other fantasies we might extrapolate in between the lines of what I write?

Obviously, anyone who's shocked to see racism between non-white groups is naive. It's just as naive - astonishingly naive - to say racism is the exclusive reason and leave it at that. It's also lazy, taking the simplest answer and not wanting to do the hard work of any deeper analysis. There must be plenty of reasons why Latinos and Asians came out in full-force for Hillary, and I was wondering what they were.

Since no one else wants to figure it out, I'll try. There's also economics. Bodega owners or immigrants forced to work crap jobs in poor, urban neighborhoods to pay for grad school - and who come face to face with sometimes intimidating prejudice as a result - will have a different experience with black-*fill-in-the-blank* relations than someone else might. Their associations with black people will be different from those of white, upper-middle class graduates of affluent universities whose close contact with the black community has mostly been with college professors (much like Obama himself!) and who have the luxury to be broad-minded (while having no difficulty getting through airport security or hailing a cab). And since there's a correlation of race and economic standing all throughout the country, this could be one reason.

But we can't stop there. Let's not forget that the polls say that among white voters, Obama does best with the super-educated and wealthy. Among ALL races, there is a subtle distinction between the wealthy, highly-educated, upper-middle class, white-collars, and the poorer, less educated, mid-lower class, blue-collars. We all know that Obama's not making great inroads with the working class whites. But he's not making significant inroads with working class members of ANY race other than black.

And then there's simple history. There was a huge increase of Asian and Latino naturalization during the '90s, when Bill Clinton was president. And at the time, this period was being touted as a golden age of promise and prosperity. (And under this fool president, it sure looks that way in retrospect more and more.) Maybe immigrants just have fond memories of the '90s - they were less demonized then than they are now. So, I'd say it's natural that they feel indebted to the Clintons. It's just identity politics (as opposed to racism, which is very different).

If anyone wants to discuss the above in-depth, I'll be happy to. But please check your superficialities at the door.



Edited By Sonic Youth on 1202406449

[OscarGuy]

Please read my statements again, Akash, I'm putting myself in the minds of the NOW leadership for why THEY would want her to represent them.

I don't really care what a person's gender or race is. I go based off of their records and their ability. While I wouldn't necessarily say Hillary has a great record, I think she sticks by her principles more readily than Obama.

And you know what, I think it's great that she hasn't bowed to the right's insistence she distance herself from her support of the war. It's partially what killed Kerry so long ago. He switched his position on it and thus created a punchline for the republicans. Hillary supported the measure back then because, like everyone else in congress, she saw only the cherry-picked intelligence the white house provided and with the heavy support in the public eye, she did what almost every other politician did, voted based on the provided evidence. Obama may be able to claim he was against the war, but he didn't vote for or against it because he wasn't yet in office. So whether he was for or against it, he can't say that he wouldn't have voted for it because he's got the prism of experience to look back through.

[Akash]

LOL, Zahveed. My personal favorite is the line "the crazy will of a Margaret Thatcher" from Aimee Mann's beautiful, hazy, "You're With Stupid Now" from the album "I'm With Stupid" which -- if you guys haven't heard anything by Mann before "Magnolia" -- go to Limewire right now and download the whole damn thing.



Edited By Akash on 1202404278

[Zahveed]

Was Margaret Thatcher anything to be proud of?

It made for some good Pink Floyd songs in the late 70's and early 80's.

[Akash]

And the position of NOW is probably that if the country can recognize and place a woman into power then all their hard work over the years has had an appreciable effect. And, with a woman in power, gender equality gets turned on its ear by its general nature. A woman at the top of the pyramid whether she's an active proponent of radical change or not, means that there is a change. Once the country can recognize, as a whole, that a woman can run it, it opens up significantly more doors than a continued lock of the gender gap.

Except Oscar Guy, that she has no reason to challenge the status quo because she benefits from it (and it is the hand that feeds her). It's a little naive (no offense) to assume that just putting a woman where a man used to be makes everything OK. Would you say that if a Republican woman took office? Condoleeza Rice? Was Margaret Thatcher anything to be proud of? And some Republicans are already calling Hillary more conservative than McCain. And your point about Obama being male is also a bit naive. Had Kucinich or Edwards gotten the nomination, do you really think their positions wouldn't have been better for women's rights than Hillary's, despite the fact that they are both men?

Anyway, this article says it better. I've highlighted some of the salient points. Note how many times Clinton ignores the problems of the female working and lower class, which is Steph's point, I think, about N.O.W. And it's not a bad one. Also note the larger point about how OTHER WOMEN can be just as bad for women's rights as men can be:

Published on Tuesday, February 5, 2008 by The Nation
Which Womanhood?
by Laura Flanders

I wish I felt what Robin Morgan feels. “Our President Ourselves!” she cheers, in a rousing pitch for Hillary Clinton. “We need to rise in furious energy - as we did when courageous Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the US Senate, as we did when desperate Rosie Jimenez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through.”

Morgan asks, “Why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans women and men are justly proud of their struggles?”

I wish I felt her poet’s passion for Clinton as a player in the global women’s movement, but I don’t. Indeed, I’m reminded that there are parts to be proud of in this movement of ours, and less attractive parts, of which Hillary Clinton, I’m sad to say, constantly reminds me.

Morgan recalls how Clinton defied the US State Department and the Chinese Government to speak at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women. I saw Hillary Clinton speak that rainy day in China and her defiance was something of which to be rightly proud.But even as Clinton called for the recognition of women’s rights as human rights, the rigged-for-profit trade policies that she supported then and continues to endorse were encouraging a global sweatshop economy that has all but eradicated the right to unionize in most of the world — a working woman’s best protector. (It took her six years to get off the board of the anti-union giant Wal-Mart.)

“For too long the history of women has been a history of silence,” Clinton told the World Conference then.But almost exactly a year later, she supported her husband’s signing of the so-called Personal Responsibility Act, which successfully shifted responsibility for poverty in an affluent society off that society and onto the backs of poor mothers.Those moms barely got to say a word, while DC pols slandered and steamrollered them.

Clinton writes in her autobiography “Living History” that she would have opposed her husband over welfare reform if she thought it would hurt young children.On the campaign trail, she recalls her dedication to Marian Wright Edelman’s Children’s Defense Fund. But I can’t forget Peter Edelman’s resignation from the Department of Health and Human Services in protest.In 1996, welfare “reform” cut almost 800,000 legal immigrants off aid entirely and even denied them food stamps, but no one denies that it helped get Bill Clinton re-elected. “Welfare reform became a success for Bill” writes Hillary in “Living History.” It was all about politics, not poor people, said Edelman.

And that’s the saddening, shaming part of Clinton’s record - and the part that reminds me just how often white middle class women have advanced our own fortunes at the expense of other women.[/B]

There is a heterogeneous, global, diverse women’s movement that has indeed raised women out of servitude and fought - and fought again - for reproductive, economic and social/sexual self-determination as a human right.

But there is also a history of some “womanhood” advancing apart, when the “we” of womanhood became too burdensome. In 1976, when the Hyde Amendment banned most public funding for poor women’s abortions, too few of us rose up - but some of us rose in society thanks to obtaining abortions anyway. Today Senator Clinton calls abortion “tragic” and looks for “common ground” with choice’s enemies. Later, when every-woman’s ERA failed, most of today’s politicians moved on.And then, as the “war on drugs” advanced, most female lawyers (including Clinton) carried on rising up, even as thousands of disproportionately poor and drug-addicted women were sent down. Women - as a whole - didn’t do much at all, when, in the name of “defending marriage,” our government (under President Clinton) banned some women’s marriages.

I’d like to believe a female president would be good for the advancement of “womanhood” worldwide. But so far Senator Clinton’s votes have not been good for Iraqi, or Palestinian, or a whole lot of global womanhood.One million dead in Iraq alone. (US forces killed another nine civilians including a child today.) At what cost does one woman prove she’s ready for the White House?

The fact is, I’m ready for leadership that means “we” now, not sometime when the wars on “terror” or “drugs” or the “vast right-wing conspiracy” are over. (Or when there’s a budget surplus, or a woman in the White House, or maybe after she’s won re-election.) And so me and my womanhood are rooting for a movement that might someday build for structural change — and that kind of leadership. Today, with fingers crossed, I’m voting for Barack and Michelle Obama. At least we can call their community organizers’ bluff. Or we can go down — or rise up — trying.

Laura Flanders is the host of RadioNation and the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians, out now from The Penguin Press.



Edited By Akash on 1202403076

[OscarGuy]

Well, I know the people on this board pretty well. I've known most of them for more than 5 years and I can say without doubt that none of them have ever shown an ethnic bias. They may be hiding it really well, but it's not visibly perceptable.

And the position of NOW is probably that if the country can recognize and place a woman into power then all their hard work over the years has had an appreciable effect. And, with a woman in power, gender equality gets turned on its ear by its general nature. A woman at the top of the pyramid whether she's an active proponent of radical change or not, means that there is a change. Once the country can recognize, as a whole, that a woman can run it, it opens up significantly more doors than a continued lock of the gender gap.

And I'm sure Sonic would agree that since there's no substance to much of what Obama's done (what has he really accomplished that his entire party hasn't accomplished?), you can't assume that just because he's part of a minority that he would suddenly open more doors for women. He's still a man and regardless of race, he's still part of the patriariacal establishment.

[Steph2]

OG, why should they favor the only woman in the race when her OWN positions haven't been kind to their causes? Replacing the face of the existing power structure with a female face who isn't going to challenge said power structure at all, is not in the progressive interests of women (which N.O.W. claims to stand for) It's just hollow identity politics. N.O.W has shown time and time again that they only care about white middle class women's rights.

And with all due respect, you can't possibly believe that being "liberal" naturally immunes someone from societally conditioned race bias. Especially when that person defends the racist and race-baiting tactics the Clintons used in this ugly campaign.

[OscarGuy]

Where the missing sentence is, please insert the following:

Obama's getting solid support from black voters and young white voters.

Why Internet Explorer won't let me post this sentence as part of the whole, I don't know.

[OscarGuy]

There's a difference between a husband's position and a wife's. And I'm positive that NOW had no consideration of race when they selected Hillary. Of course they're going to go for the only woman in the race. I think it's awful naive to assume that their selection of Hillary, based on her record, not her husband's, is based on anything but female solidarity.

I don't care if you're white, hispanic, black (which not all blacks are African Americans as a matter of fact), asian or none of the above, I'll vote for whomever I think will make the better president.

And Sonic's referring specifically to exit polls showing a more solidly pro-Hillary bias to latinos and asian americans of ALL ages. Hillary has the solid support of middle age and elder white voters. <HAVING POSTING PROBLEMS, SENTENCE MISSING HERE>. It's the trend and I think what Sonic is trying to say that black or white, the black voters will still vote largely for the democratic candidate. latinos and asian americans tend to be moderate in their voting trends, which means with such solid support, Hillary would have the better chance of carrying those voters in the election than Obama.

Race is going to play a part in the race whether any of us like it or not, but no one on this board has any bias based on race, because most of us are liberals and most of us vote based on our overall opinion of a candidate, not based on their full or half skin color. So there's no reason to accuse someone of racial bias, at least not here.



Edited By OscarGuy on 1202401327

[Steph2]

But there's no age discrepency among Latinos. Obama loses all age groups. Asian-Americans have also massed around Hillary. Why this is is anyone's guess, but I doubt it's because they're allured by the white hegemony.

Wow. As if people of color can't be awful to other people of color as well? You're being really naive about the realities of race relations and class relations in this country. Especially when it comes to 1) any other group versus Blacks and 2) Asian-Americans.

But I'm not surprised given that your sustained dislike for Obama -- against all reason, even when Clinton does and says exactly the same things or much worse (Your latest lame excuse about Pakistan for example, is an obvious attempt to legitimize your pre-determined position when almost every other analyst and progressive publication has described Clinton as more hawkish and more war-mongering than Obama) -- I repeat, your sustained dislike for Obama, may have something to do with race as well. This has been uncomfortably clear for a while. And you're not the only one on this board, and there are others in the media as well.

I'll just target this one, I think N.O.W. coming out in support of Hillary when her husband's administration betrayed them, and when her own record clearly goes against their beliefs, smacks of deep seated racism. Why don't they just admit they only care about white middle class women's rights?

[Akash]

I think this one says it best.

THE NATION
The Choice
by CHRISTOPHER HAYES
[from the February 18, 2008 issue]

It's gotten to that time in the primary contest where lines are drawn, camps are solidified and conversations around dinner tables grow heated. My friend Dan recently put it this way: "You start talking about the candidates, and next thing you know someone's crying!" The excellent (and uncommitted) blogger Digby recently decided to shut down her comments section because the posts had grown so toxic. The recent uptick in acrimony is largely due to the narrowing of the field. While once the energy was spread over many camps, it is now, with the exits of Dennis Kucinich and John Edwards, concentrated on just two, leaving progressives in a fierce debate over whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would make the better nominee, and President.

According to polling data as well as my conversations with friends and colleagues, progressives are evenly split or undecided between the two. This is, to me, somewhat astonishing (about which more in a moment), but it also means that at a time when other subgroups within the Democratic coalition are leaning heavily toward one candidate or the other, progressives are at a moment of maximum leverage.

Insofar as the issues discussed during a presidential campaign are circumscribed by the taboos and pieties of the political and media establishments, they tend to be dispiriting for those of us on the left. Neither front-runner is calling for the nation to renounce its decades-old imperial posture or to end the prison-industrial complex; neither is saying that America's suburbs and car culture are not sustainable modes of living in an era of expensive oil and global warming or pointing out that the "war on drugs" has been a moral disaster and strategic failure, with casualties borne most violently and destructively by society's most marginalized and--a word you won't be hearing from either candidate--oppressed. And yet, this election is far more encouraging (dare I say hopeful?) than any in recent memory. The policy agenda for the Democratic front-runners is significantly further to the left on the war, climate change and healthcare than that of John Kerry in 2004.The ideological implosion of conservatism, the failures of the Bush Administration and, perhaps most important, the shifts in public opinion in a leftward direction on war, the economy, civil liberties and civil rights are all coming together at the same time, providing progressives with the rare and historic opportunity to elect a President with a progressive majority and an actual mandate for progressive change.

The question then becomes this: which of the two Democratic candidates is more likely to bring to fruition a new progressive majority? I believe, passionately and deeply, if occasionally waveringly, that it's Barack Obama.

Had you told me a few years ago that the left of the Democratic Party would be split between Obama and Clinton, I'd have dismissed you as crazy: Barack Obama has been a community organizer, a civil rights attorney, a loyal and reliable ally in the State Senate of progressive groups. For the Chicago left, his primary campaign and his subsequent election to the US Senate was a collective rallying cry. If you've read his first book, the truly beautiful, honest and intellectually sophisticated Dreams From My Father, you have an inkling of what young Chicago progressives felt about Obama. He is one of us, and now he's in the Senate. We thought we'd elected our own Paul Wellstone. (Full disclosure: my brother is an organizer on the Obama campaign.)

That's not, alas, how things turned out. Almost immediately Obama--likely with an eye on national office--shaded himself toward the center. His rhetoric was cool, often timid, not the zealous advocacy on behalf of peace, justice and the dispossessed that had characterized Wellstone's tenure. His record places him squarely in the middle of Democratic senators, just slightly to Clinton's left on domestic issues (he voted against the bankruptcy bill, for example). As a presidential candidate, his domestic policy (with some notable exceptions on voting rights and technology policy) has been very close to that of his chief rivals, though sometimes, notably on healthcare, marginally less progressive.

But while domestic policy will ultimately be determined through a complicated and fraught interplay with legislators, foreign policy is where the President's agenda is implemented more or less unfettered. It's here where distinctions in worldview matter most--and where Obama compares most favorably to Clinton.The war is the most obvious and powerful distinction between the two: Hillary Clinton voted for and supported the most disastrous American foreign policy decision since Vietnam, and Barack Obama (at a time when it was deeply courageous to do so) spoke out against it. In this campaign, their proposals are relatively similar, but in rhetoric and posture Clinton has played hawk to Obama's dove, attacking from the right on everything from the use of first-strike nuclear weapons to negotiating with Iran's president. Her hawkishness relative to Obama's is mirrored in her circle of advisers. As my colleague Ari Berman has reported in these pages, it's a circle dominated by people who believed and believe that waging pre-emptive war on Iraq was the right thing to do. Obama's circle is made up overwhelmingly of people who thought the Iraq War was a mistake.

Clinton's fundamentally defensive conception of how to defuse the Republicans on national security (neutralizing their hawkishness with one's own) is an example of a larger problem, rooted in the fact that so many of her circle served in her husband's Administration. Their political identities were formed in the crucible of crisis, from the Gingrich insurgency to the Ken Starr inquisition. The overriding imperative was survival against massive odds, often with a hostile public, press or both. Like an animal caught in a trap that chews off its leg to wriggle away, the Clinton crew by the end of its tenure had hardly any limbs left to propel an agenda. The benefit of this experience, much touted by the Clintons, is that they know how to fight and how to survive. But the cost has been high: those who lived through those years are habituated to playing defense and fighting rear-guard actions. We know how progressives fared under Clintonism: they were the bloodied limbs left in the trap. Clintonism, in other words, is the devil we know.

Which brings us to the one we don't. A President cannot build a movement, but he can be its messenger, as was Reagan. Part of what tantalizes and frustrates about Obama is that he seems to have the potential to be such a messenger and yet shies away from speaking in ideological terms. When he invokes union organizers facing Pinkerton thugs to give us our forty-hour week, or says we are bound to one another as "our brother's keeper...our sister's keeper," he is articulating the deepest progressive values: solidarity and community and collective action. But he places more rhetorical emphasis on a politics of "unity" that, read uncharitably, seems to fetishize bipartisanship as an end in itself and reinforce lame and deceptive myths that the parties are equally responsible for the "bickering" and "divisiveness" in Washington. It appears sometimes that his diagnosis of what's wrong with politics is the way it is conducted rather than for whom.

In its totality, though, Obama's rhetoric tells a story of politics that is distinct from both the one told by Beltway devotees of bipartisanship and comity and from the progressive activists' story of a ceaseless battle between the forces of progress and those of reaction. If it differs from what I like to hear, it is also unfailingly targeted at building the coalition that is the raison d'être of Obama's candidacy. Consider this passage from Obama's stump speech:

"I've learned in my life that you can stand firm in your principles while still reaching out to those who might not always agree with you. And although the Republican operatives in Washington might not be interested in hearing what we have to say, I think Republican and independent voters outside of Washington are. That's the once-in-a-generation opportunity we have in this election."

Obama makes a distinction between bad-faith, implacable enemies (lobbyists, entrenched interests, "operatives") and good-faith ideological opponents (Republicans, independents and conservatives of good conscience). He wants to court the latter and use their support to vanquish the former. This may be improbable, but it crucially allows former Republicans (Obama Republicans?) to cross over without guilt or self-loathing. They are not asked to renounce, only to join.

Obama's diagnosis of the obstacles to progress is twofold. First, that the division of the electorate into the categories created by the right's culture warriors is the primary means by which the forces of reaction resist change. Progress will be made only by rejecting or transcending those categories. In 1971 a young Pat Buchanan urged Richard Nixon to wield race as what would come to be known as a wedge issue. "This is a potential throw of the dice," he wrote, "that could...cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half." Obama seeks to stitch those halves back together.

Second, that the reason progressives have failed to achieve our goals over the past several decades is not that we didn't fight hard enough but that we didn't have a popular mandate. In other words, the fundamental obstacle is a basic political one: never having the public squarely on our side and never having the votes on the Hill. In this respect the Obama campaign is uniquely circular: his political appeal is rooted in the fact that he's so politically appealing. This means that when he loses, the loss affects him worse than it would other candidates, since it also cuts against his message. But when he wins, particularly when he wins big, as he did in Iowa and South Carolina, the win means more because it reinforces the basic argument of his campaign.

The question of who can best build popular support for a progressive governing agenda is related to, but distinct from, the question of electability. Given a certain ceiling on Clinton's appeal (due largely to years of unhinged attacks from the "vast right-wing conspiracy"), her campaign seems well prepared to run a 50 percent + 1 campaign, a rerun of 2004 but with a state or two switching columns: Florida, maybe, or Ohio. Obama is aiming for something bigger: a landmark sea-change election, with the kind of high favorability and approval ratings that can drive an agenda forward. Why should we think he can do it?

The short answer is that Obama is simply one of the most talented and appealing politicians in recent memory. Perhaps the most. Pollster.com shows a series of polls taken in the Democratic campaign. The graphs plotting national polling numbers as well as those in the first four states show a remarkably consistent pattern. Hillary Clinton starts out with either a modest or, more commonly, a massive lead, owing to her superior name recognition and the popularity of the Clinton brand. As the campaign goes forward Clinton's support either climbs slowly, plateaus or dips. But as the actual contest approaches, and voters start paying attention, Obama's support suddenly begins to grow exponentially.

In addition to persuading those who already vote, Obama has also delivered on one of the hoariest promises in politics: to bring in new voters (especially the young). It's a phenomenon that, if it were to continue with him as nominee, could completely alter the electoral math. Young people are by far the most progressive voters of any age cohort, and they overwhelmingly favor Barack Obama by stunning margins. Their enthusiasm has translated into massive increases in youth turnout in the early contests.

Finally, there's the question of coattails. In many senses there's less difference between the two presidential candidates than there is between a Senate with fifty-one Democrats and one with fifty-six. No Democratic presidential candidate is going to carry, say, Mississippi or Nebraska, but many Democrats in those states fear that the ingrained Clinton hatred would rally the GOP base and/or depress turnout, hurting down-ticket candidates. Over the past few weeks a series of prominent red-state Democrats, most notably Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, have endorsed Obama. When I asked a Democratic Congressional candidate in the Deep South who he preferred at the top of the ticket, he didn't hesitate: "Obama is absolutely the better candidate. Hillary brings a lot of sting; he takes some sting out of them."

Whoever is elected in November, progressives will probably find themselves feeling frustrated. Ultimately though, the future judgments and actions of the candidates are unknowable, obscured behind time's cloak. Who knew that the Bill Clinton of 1992 who campaigned with Nelson Mandela would later threaten to sanction South Africa when it passed a law allowing the production of low-cost generic AIDS drugs for its suffering population--or that the George W. Bush of 2000, an amiable "centrist" whose thin foreign-policy views shaded toward isolationism, would go on to become a self-justifying, delusional and messianic instrument of global war? In this sense, Bill Clinton is right: voting for and electing Barack Obama is a "roll of a dice." All elections are. But the candidacy of Barack Obama represents by far the left's best chance to, in Buchanan's immortal phrasing, take back the bigger half of the country. It's a chance we can't pass up.
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20080218&s=hayes

[Sonic Youth]

Asian-Americans have also massed around Hillary. Why this is is anyone's guess, but I doubt it's because they're allured by the white hegemony.

My Beloved is Filipino and not only did he vote for Hillary but. much to my chagrin, he keeps giving her money.

She needs it. Now I'm reading her campaign is tapped out.

I think she's gonna lose.

[Damien]

Asian-Americans have also massed around Hillary. Why this is is anyone's guess, but I doubt it's because they're allured by the white hegemony.

My Beloved is Filipino and not only did he vote for Hillary but. much to my chagrin, he keeps giving her money.

On the other hand, his Mom voted for Obama. As did mine.

[Sonic Youth]

An unapologetic vote for Obama here in California. Voting for him is a bit of a risk, because we don't really know him. I think his strategy is to play it safe by not saying much, and it appears to be working. Once he has the big prize and thus nothing to lose, he may end up being a pretty effective president.

G.W. Bush Flashback, G.W. Bush Flashback, G.W. Bush Flashback...

Actually what you just said is pretty scary. It's this sort of thinking that has kept him in the race, while someone like Joe Biden - who knows more about foreign policy than any fifty people combined... and what's more, we KNOW that he knows - drops out almost immediately.

CLINTON WINS THE COASTS BUT OBAMA EXCELS ACROSS THE MAP...

G.W. Bush Flashback, G.W. Bush Flashback, G.W. Bush Flashback...

Anyone remember that map of the continental 48, with large swaths of land covered in red and the coastal states in blue? I've seen Bush supporters wear them as t-shirts as their way of proving Bush won more votes when all he did was win more square acreage. I know that's not necessarily the case now, but it still made me shudder.

The states where Obama did well are generally red states where the Democratic strongholds are weak and independents have . Clinton did well in traditional Dem strongholds where her institutional support gives her strong support. (I didn't think Cali. was going to be called so quickly.) I'm not sure one necessarily has a decisive advantage over the other.

In California, Obama won the black vote, of course; and nearly the white vote as well. But Latinos gave him the smackdown. I don't think the media is giving enough credence to this. Why else hasn't New Mexico still hasn't called a winner? The older white voters are, the more likely they'll vote Clinton. But there's no age discrepency among Latinos. Obama loses all age groups. Asian-Americans have also massed around Hillary. Why this is is anyone's guess, but I doubt it's because they're allured by the white hegemony.

[Sonic Youth]

Clearly Pennsylvania's not irrelevant.

I hope it is by the time April rolls around. You all may be excited, but I'm sick of the whole thing already. The way everyone's carrying on, you'd think this was a race between Jesse Jackson and Shirley Chisholm. We're faced with two mediocrities with striking physical characteristics.

But I'll be voting for Clinton if it comes down to it. Maybe I can overlook Obama's health care proposals (not even Edwards proposal was all that good), his Reagan speech, his maddening lack of specificity, his arrogant air about him, his support of the Iraq war while pretending he's against it, etc. But it was his stating that he'd have no druthers invading Pakistan that sealed the deal for me. If he's ultimately the candidate, I'm voting third-party this year.


In 2000, the election demonstrated that the U.S. was effectively split in half. Now we're in quarters, with the two halves split into half. Why can't we just jettison this useless two-party system and have a parliament instead?



Edited By Sonic Youth on 1202369179