I just don’t get it. I mean, I don’t assume Obama is a male incarnation of Hillary Clinton just because they agreed on most every material policy issue raised during their primary battle (and thus, had to resort to name-calling on the immaterial issues). Nor do I presume that McCain is W. Redux just because he has some things in common with Bush. Instead, where Obama is like Hillary in ways that I don’t like, it will count against him in my eyes come election day. And where McCain is like Bush in ways I don’t like, it too will be counted in the negative on Nov. 4.

Rather engaging in all this guilt by association crap, why don’t people just judge the candidates on who they really are and where they really stand? Am I asking too much of our political process? Probably.

Thankfully, there’s only about 75 days left until all this is over. For sanity’s sake, I plan on tuning out 90 percent of what I see and hear from either side until we get inside the final 30 of them.

Peace friends. :D

I’ll get to this in greater detail in my response to Mark but having lived now in 10 countries, I really believe more than ever that words such as “left” and “right” in America in ABSOLUTE terms don’t make sense. In RELATIVE terms, they do.

Most of the two signficant parties in each country of the developed West outside the USA self-identify as “center-left” or “center-right” because both Marxism and Nazism have been completely discredited. Some sort of democratic capitalist system prevails everywhere in West.

The problem with the labels that tossed around here is this: if Barack Obama ran with his American platform in any country with a “center-right” government he’d be considered “a right-wing extremist” and couldn’t get 20% of the vote no matter how big his crowds were two weeks ago. Obama would have to campaign pro-death penalty, in favor of incarcerating minors with adults, against single-payer health care, against subsidized university education, against the ICC and World Court, against Habeus Corpus, very fuzzy on property rights, and with a far more aggressive foreign policy than any other Western country.

As “leftist” as you may consider Obama, he’s surely right of all of the major center-right or right-wing Western leaders: Harper, Calderon, Uribe, Garcia, Berlusconi, Merkel, Sarkozy, Olmert…I’m sure I’m leaving some out.

I think Democrat and Repubican are more specific and meaningful.

@ MARK: I favor Obama in this although I don’t vote in the USA. That said I suppose Ron Paul or some Ron Paul/Dennis Kucinich fusion ticket come a lot closer to my beliefs than Obama does. I’m a fairly strong free-marketeer and civil libertarian.

I really don’t see a lot of Marxism in Democratic Party politics. Any, in fact. You’d consider me to be very “left-wing” but my views on such things as taxes, regulation, property rights and capital markets are probably more purely capitalistic than those of most Republicans. And there are certain populist ideas of Pat Buchanan’s which I like as well, although I’d consider myself much more of a fiscal and monetary conservative.

If I wanted to get really specific, I think a grid of Populist, Liberal, Conservative and Libertarian gives a fully picture of the range of US ideology.

It is on foreign and social policy, I think, where you and I disagree usually. I see no reason to bring any of that up now.

I also agree that Obama’s campaign could use a lot more clarity and now I have no idea what kind of an effect Ron Paul or Bob Barr will have. I don’t see McKinney or Nader having any effect at all. Looking at thngs today, I once again agreeing with you that this race is so volatile that a landslide for either one is possible as is a Florida 2000 tie scenario.

Perhaps it has something to do with another real oddity of 2008 — it’s the first time since Stevenson ran against Eisenhower in ‘52 that neither a sitting president or vice president is the nominee of either party. It’s also the first time ever (I think) that both nominees are sitting Senators. Obama is the first black nominee, McCain the oldest first time nominee. This is a very odd election year by any measure.

Obama is sure showing a level of flexibility - the worry is that he’s not just smoothly rolling through the stresses of political life but cynically using whatever tool comes to hand to advance himself. Unfortunately, there’s no way for us to know that in advance for certain…but I don’t want to risk America on finding out of Obama’s just pragamatic or if he’s just a cynic…we had, on the GOP side, a politician who was that un-moored from core values, and his name was Richard Nixon…

Be that as it may, I use “left” and “liberal” pretty interchangably these days and, yes, I know there are differences between a Houston liberal and a San Francisco liberal. My point in this sort of writing is to try and demonstrate just how far hard left ideology has penetrated what used to be American liberalism…which had enough of its own problems without getting mixed in with the dregs of Marxist thought…but, if you like, you can mentally switch “liberal” for “left”, if you really want to continue to keep some distance between them.

And, yes, Obama has a chance to win it big - but so does McCain. The real oddity of 2008 is the number of plausible scenarious one can present for how things may go. While I’ve long thought it would be a high turnout election, I’ve started to see some indicators that it will be a rather ho-hum turnout election…we don’t really know how many conservatives will show up for McCain, but we also don’t know how many Democratic moderates will show up for Obama. This could be the kind of year where rain on election day plays a huge role - depending on where it is. Additionally, we don’t know how many new voters will be brought in - the conventional wisdom is that lots of new voters works to Obama’s advantage, but the GOP is also going to be out there dredging for new voters (which, if you like, could be the GOP looking for people we haven’t ticked off, yet)…

neocon is spot on - it will be an interesting summer.

I applaud you for a well written, well articulated post. There was no evidence of white christian paranoia, or the liberal epidemic of BDS, so well done.

I think the Democrats have become to beholden to far left groups; KOS, CodePink, Environmentalists, Abortion on demand lobby etc, and those groups vote en masse during the primaries and they now expect allegiance.

The problem many Dem candidates have is that they pander to those groups during the primary to secure the nomination, then eventually lose much of that support as they tack to the center during the general. Those far left groups are so myopic, and self centered, that they don’t realize that they are a minority and any candidate that trumps their agenda, and only their agenda, has no shot at winning the general.

Now the GOP certainly has it’s wingnut base, albeit on a far less obtrusive scale.

The other problem Obama has is the public’s familiarity with him, which is negligible. You state that he is politically right of Boxer, Lautenberg, etc. Well, I don’t know that, and I don’t think many others do either, and his current “re-defining” of issues is also further confusing the general electorate and seriously irritating his far left base.

It will be an interesting sumer.
Que sera sera
peace, neocon

I’ll quibble with you about the labels (”leftist” and “conservative”), but you make sense. The ideological choice is clear. McCain probably has a more REPUBLICAN record overall than Bush has and Obama’s voting record tends to the middle-left of the Democratic Party (despite the mathematically-weak National Journal viewpoint). Obama’s certainly to the right of Feingold, Sanders, Kennedy, Boxer, Levin, Wyden and Lautenberg, just thinking off the top of my head.

I’m not a Democrat anymore but I was one for many years and I’ve often chided Democratic friends for taking a too reflexive view of Bush’s administrations. I don’t think there’s a “left” in the sense the world has come to know in America, but using that short-hand, I think you’re right that Bush has run circles around the Democratic Party. I’ve often suggested that imitating some of Bush’s style and political strategy and tactics might not be such a bad idea for Democrats.

When Rove quit, I said I thought Dean should sign him immediately!

I’ve admired Bush’s steadfastness and have despised Democratic flip-flops despite being — on many issues — a REAL “LEFTIST.” Obama strikes me certainly like a flexible guy when it comes to his views but I also believe that he thinks he’s got a good chance to win very big, so he’s now willing to take a chance on cutting into some Red-State points.

We’ll see what happens.

Here’s the thing - you see, come this November, you won’t find President Bush on the ballot. Hate him or love him, he’s not there to vote for or against…I know that since President Bush has run rings around you leftists for the past 14 years (if you count Texas) you really, really would like to beat him but, ya know?, you’ll never get the chance…2004 was your last shot at him, and you blew it.

So, now we GOPers have nominated John McCain…given that he’s a Republican of conservative bent, there’s bound to be some similarities between Bush and McCain, but they aren’t the same man and they don’t want the exact same things…in fact, there is far more divergence of opinion between McCain and Bush than there ever was between Obama and Hillary or, indeed, any of the Democrats who sought the nomination.

What will happen in November is that the American people will choose between Obama’s leftism and McCain’s conservatism…Bush won’t factor in except for those kook left voters who weren’t ever going to vote for a GOPer anyway…everyone else will, by then, have moved on, ya dig?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/145737

Despite having spent 1/4 BILLION dollars to defeat Hitlary, and despite the 14 point media encouraged bump after he defeated her, Obama is in a virtual dead heat with McCain. McCain has spent what? $342.78 on his election so far.

At this point Kerry was leading Bush by double digits, and he lost.

Gore was leading Bush by double digits and he lost, despite your conspiracy theories, HE LOST.

Carter was leading Reagan by 14 points at this stage and he LOST.

And this isn’t even October. Wait until the rest of the electorate begin to take notice of your socialist messiah.

It doesn’t look good for you over confident leftist wackos. So the next thread should be a contest to determine the most likely excuse/conspiracy thoery, following the November election, as to why the messiah lost.

Here are my top 10.

10. The gun toting Bible toters came out in force to vote against Obama.

9. Jesse cut his nuts off.

8. Michelle cut his nuts off.

7. The pro al Queda vote wasn’t a s big as he expected.

6. Angry white women write in Hillary

5. High gas prices prevented Obama supporters from getting to the polls.

4. Campus vote depressed due to pop quiz

3. (Ed Note: Over the Top bit deleted).

2. Elitist votes depressed by 12 hour Gucci sale on election day.

1.Its Bush’s fault!!!