All Things Pro-Hillary

[BigSqwert]

Why would caucus states not be counted? I thought Hillary wanted everyone's vote to count?

[BigSqwert]

Why would caucus states not be counted? I thought Hillary wanted everyone's vote to count?

Oh I know why....she lost almost every caucus. So apparently only states she wins count.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Why would caucus states not be counted? I thought Hillary wanted everyone's vote to count?

I saw an interview on MSNBC last night with a Clinton Supporter from Florida. Normally I would say she was just spouting talking points, but you could tell this was her real opinion and heart felt. She said that the primary system basically needs to be blown up. The caucuses have serious flaws and the length is rediculous.

 

I, for one, agree.

[BigSqwert]

I saw an interview on MSNBC last night with a Clinton Supporter from Florida. Normally I would say she was just spouting talking points, but you could tell this was her real opinion and heart felt. She said that the primary system basically needs to be blown up. The caucuses have serious flaws and the length is rediculous.

 

I, for one, agree.

As do I but these are the rules both campaigns agreed to. You can't change the rules mid-stream.

[HuskyCaucasian]

As do I but these are the rules both campaigns agreed to. You can't change the rules mid-stream.

no argument from me. I am willing to meet halfway with the delegates counting as half, but anything beyond that is not acceptable.

[southsider2k5]

As do I but these are the rules both campaigns agreed to. You can't change the rules mid-stream.

 

Then why does everyone assume the popular vote would have gone to Gore in 2000 if those had been the rules instead of the electoral college? Isn't that changing the rules in the middle of the game?

[HuskyCaucasian]

Then why does everyone assume the popular vote would have gone to Gore in 2000 if those had been the rules instead of the electoral college? Isn't that changing the rules in the middle of the game?

Gore DID win the popular vote, but we run on the electoral college system. So, Bush won fair and square.

 

The analogy would be if between Nov and January, congress pushed through an amendment that got rid of the electoral college and it was ratified by 2/3 majority of states and made retroactive to the previous election. Then Gore would have won.

[southsider2k5]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...0,1928261.story

 

The white vs. off-white election

 

Meghan Daum

May 20, 2008

 

If you're white and you like stuff, maybe you've bookmarked the Internet blog Stuff White People Like. The creation of Christian Lander, a 29-year-old Culver City, Calif., copywriter, it's an ever-growing list of the kind of privileged preoccupations that traditionally are coded "white."

 

Examples include not having a TV ("The No.1 reason why white people like not having a TV is so that they can tell you that they don't have a TV."), indie music ("To a white person, being a fan of a band before they get popular is one of the most important things they [sic] can do with their life.") and, a bit abstrusely, awareness ("White people . . . firmly believe that all of the world's problems can be solved through 'awareness.' ").

 

To date, there are 99 items on Stuff White People Like.

 

Barack Obama, at No. 8, was among the first entries. Guess who is not on the list?

 

Somehow, Hillary Clinton, whose campaign now coasts on the fumes of a particular variety of white voter (the fuming kind), has failed to meet the rigorous standards of Stuff White People Like.

 

The reason, of course, is the same reason cliches such as mayonnaise and square dancing don't make the cut either. The one thing Clinton has over Obama, which she has clumsily described as "hardworking Americans, white Americans," is that certain white people like her more. But, to borrow a phrase from Lander and company, they are "the wrong kind of white people." Could that mean they're barely "white" at all?

 

Clinton's white voters lack the salient feature of the white experience—privilege. As Stuff White People Like suggests, privilege now functions as a rarefied club that excludes people based not on their skin color but on their economic status, personal tastes and aesthetic sensibilities. The Web site tips toward progressive emblems of privilege (public radio), but because plenty of Republicans like iPods and farmers markets, it's safe to say the actual cohort is bigger than that (or at least could support a sister site about white love for McMansions, mega-churches and golf).Yes, this club is still called "white," but as time goes on, that whiteness becomes more conceptual than literal. You don't have to be white to be white. You just need enough disposable income and the desire to buy the lifestyle accessories and adopt the points of view that were once exclusively associated with it.

 

So where does that leave Clinton's last-ditch voting bloc? Barred from this new whiteness (and apparently unwilling or unable to make common cause with others who are also outside the pale), the people who handed Clinton a decisive victory in West Virginia have been stripped of so much social currency over the last few decades that you wonder if a new racial category—called "off-white" perhaps?—is about to emerge.

 

How else to explain the air of irrelevance that swirled around the primary? Granted, no one expected a nailbiter, but watching the media coverage, most notably the news clips in which one voter admitted to being "sort of scared of the other race" and another cavalierly insisted Obama was a Muslim, was to feel like the whole state had been written off as one big trailer park through which Clinton would take a final joy ride.

 

Some of that dismissiveness may be the result of the near-impossibility of Clinton getting the nomination. But it also may be a reflection of the way that, in the last 50 years, white people without college educations have gone from being the most dominant segment of American society to the most ignored.

 

A recent Brookings Institution paper on the decline of the white working class points out that in 1940, whites without a four-year college degree represented 86 percent of the over-25 population. Last year, they accounted for less than half. Moreover, in 1947, 86 percent of American families were white and earning (in 2005 dollars) less than $60,000 a year. By 2005, such families comprised only 33 percent.

 

But in addition to their dwindling demographic presence and their diminished status, these people constantly battle another head wind: culturally sanctioned mockery. Unprotected by the political correctness that makes deriding other minorities unacceptable or at least uncool, poor whites are often regarded not as people but as mullet-sporting, mobile-home-dwelling vessels of kitsch.

 

West Virginia had too few delegates at stake to matter much. Still, it's been easy to get the feeling that some people, particularly those in the Stuff White People Like demographic, have concluded that the place is so backward it doesn't matter at all.

 

The problem is, voters like those in West Virginia don't see it that way. They may represent a shrinking demographic, but, as all the campaigns know, there are still enough of them that they can't be ignored. The catch is that in an election in which race plays such a prominent role, the greatest tension may not be between black and white but white and off-white.

 

Meghan Daum is an essayist and novelist in Los Angeles. E-mail: mdaum@latimescolumnists.com

[EvilMonkey]

More funny than anyting else, but at least twice, Obama refers to the town he is in by the wrong name, and noone corrects him. Amazing what you can get away with when you are the messiah.

 

[Cknolls]

Does he lie or just embellish? Over the weekend Obama said his uncle was among the troops that liberated Auschwitz???? Was he in the RED ARMY?

[southsider2k5]

Does he lie or just embellish? Over the weekend Obama said his uncle was among the troops that liberated Auschwitz???? Was he in the RED ARMY?

 

Wow. That's not good at all.

[Mplssoxfan]

Does he lie or just embellish? Over the weekend Obama said his uncle was among the troops that liberated Auschwitz???? Was he in the RED ARMY?

I haven't seen this. Do you have a link?

[southsider2k5]

I haven't seen this. Do you have a link?

 

A quick Google gave me this...

 

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/27/obam...ated-auschwitz/

[Balta1701]

Wow. That's not good at all.

As far as I can tell, Obama never spoke the actual word "Liberate". He says his Uncle was one of the first Americans to go there. No idea whether or not it's true, but it's certainly true that Americans were brought to the facility by the Russians after it was captured. The word "Liberate" seems to have been added by CBS as far as I can tell, because the WaPo doesn't use it.

 

CBS Version:, note the fact that liberate is outside of the direct quotes.

Obama also spoke about his uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic. “Now obviously, something had really affected him deeply, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain,” Obama said. “That’s why this idea of making sure that every single veteran, when they are discharged, are screened for post-traumatic stress disorder and given the mental health services that they need – that’s why it’s so important.”

 

WaPo version:

Obama said he suspects that one of the reasons his grandfather seldom spoke of his wartime experience was the trauma he had witnessed.

 

"In World War Two we didn't have the concept of post traumatic stress syndrome. People had to basically handle it on their own," he said. Referring to an uncle who had been one of the first U.S. troops into Auschwitz, the concentration camp, Obama said: "The story in the family is he came home and just went up in the attic."

 

It's entirely possible he was wrong on the facts and his uncle hit some other camp other than Auschwitz, I have no idea. But it appears as far as I can tell he never described it the way the CBS writer did.

[StrangeSox]

This page has a video of Obama speaking at the same location. At 5:14, he talks about his uncle. It's hard to hear over the wind, but the exact quote seems to be:

 

"I had an uncle who was one of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz [...]"

 

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/27/obam...ated-auschwitz/

 

Now, he doesn't say they liberated it, just that they went into Auschwitz, so he's being misquoted there and then its distorting into more ridiculous statements in all the fantastic blogs out there. Were any American troops ever there after the Soviets liberated it?

Edited May 27, 2008 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

Were any American troops ever there after the Soviets liberated it?

Unquestionably yes. Eisenhower even ordered the U.S. 4th armored division to tour Auschwitz so that they could all see with their own eyes what the Nazis had done, in the hopes of denialism from springing up. On top of that, you would have had probably hundreds, maybe thousands of Americans going through those facilities in preparation for the war crimes trials.

[StrangeSox]

That article says that the 4th was ordered to tour a different camp, not Auschwitz. I'm really doubting that US Soldiers were allowed into Soviet territory.

[Balta1701]

That article says that the 4th was ordered to tour a different camp, not Auschwitz. I'm really doubting that US Soldiers were allowed into Soviet territory.

My error on that one, gotcha, but I'll still bet that the U.S. had more than a few people tour that site.

[StrangeSox]

Investigators, sure, but GI's? Probably not. I'm thinking Obama just gaffed on the camp's name on this one.

[Balta1701]

Investigators, sure, but GI's? Probably not. I'm thinking Obama just gaffed on the camp's name on this one.

I could certainly believe that, but it's not as bad of a gaffe to my eyes as saying that they "Liberated Auschwitz".

[BigSqwert]

Earlier, the Republican National Committee pounced on Obama's improbable statement that an uncle had served in the unit that liberated Auschwitz.

 

In fact, campaign spokesman Bill Burton says, his great uncle was a member of the 89th Infantry Division that liberated the Ohrduf camp, part of Buchenwald and according to the Holocaust Museum, the first concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops.

 

LINK

[StrangeSox]

LINK

 

...he still wasn't at Auschwitz.

 

Its a meaningless gaffe, but a gaffe nonetheless.

[NorthSideSox72]

...he still wasn't at Auschwitz.

 

Its a meaningless gaffe, but a gaffe nonetheless.

I find is irritating that so much attention has been focused on the occasional verbal gaffes of Obama and McCain. Not only are they silly things to dwell on, but let's put this in perspective here - neither of them are nearly as prone to them as Dubya is. Not even in the same ballpark. And yet, the MSM continues their laughable slide into becoming "A Current Affair", providing us with a deluge of pedantic and idiotic fodder for the pounce-and-denounce crowds to use as artillery. Ridiculous.

 

If these sorts of things are what make you choose McCain or Obama, then I respectfully hope that you get lost on the way to the voting booth.

 

[Mplssoxfan]

I find is irritating that so much attention has been focused on the occasional verbal gaffes of Obama and McCain. Not only are they silly things to dwell on, but let's put this in perspective here - neither of them are nearly as prone to them as Dubya is. Not even in the same ballpark. And yet, the MSM continues their laughable slide into becoming "A Current Affair", providing us with a deluge of pedantic and idiotic fodder for the pounce-and-denounce crowds to use as artillery. Ridiculous.

 

If these sorts of things are what make you choose McCain or Obama, then I respectfully hope that you get lost on the way to the voting booth.

Concur.

[Rex Kickass]

I remember Cheney talking about being helicoptered over Arlington Cemetery and seeing all the crosses and being inspired or something by it.

 

There are no crosses at Arlington.

 

There are lots of mistakes that candidates make in their speeches. Most of them aren't intentional. This one wasn't.