Barack Obama gains on Hillary Clinton electability concerns
The Barack Obama buzz is so thick you could cut it with a knife as the media swarms all over its latest Democratic “rock star”. But when you peel off the celebrity veneer, Obama is a left-wing liberal with limited qualifications. Only John Kerry has a lower ACU rating among Democratic presidential candidates and a quick inspection of his record shows there isn’t a moderate or conservative bone in his body.
Obama’s record also shows very few real qualifications for our nation’s highest office. There’s no indication of success as an executive decision maker, and he’s only a little over 2 years removed from being a state legislator. Democrats complained about President Bush’s qualifications, but being the successful governor of our 2nd largest state is a far cry from being just another Illinois legislator.
Ironically, Obama actually benefits from his limited record and experience. Democrats believe it increases his electability because it’ll be easier to pretend he’s a moderate. On the other hand, Hillary is already correctly perceived as a far left-wing candidate, and it’ll be an uphill battle to erase those perceptions in the general election. The ’04 nomination hinged on electability concerns as Democratic voters abandoned their favorite candidate (Howard Dean) for a more electable candidate (John Kerry). The ’08 nomination could hinge on the same factor.
Archived in: Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, John KerryJanuary 16, 2007 at 3:15 pm | Trackback
16 comments
So far, we haven’t had much difference among the potential candidates in both parties: Obama, McCain, Clinton, Romney, Guilliani, and Edwards.
Let us see what Tancredo can do to give the polar position a player.
Obama might run; he has no record to trip him up, but he appears to be a lightweight because of this condition. As for appearing moderate, I think he has baggage from his past to illuminate that fallacy. Hanging with one’s Buds is instructive of someone’s thought patterns.
One thing that will be glaring. Obama is a cigarette smoker. How will that appear.
“One thing that will be glaring. Obama is a cigarette smoker. How will that appear.”
He’s also hinted at past drug use. However, liberals have infinite wells of forgiveness for their fellow liberals who are “victims”. It’s only the conservatives that need to be hung out to dry for their felonious deeds, don’t you know.
How will smoking appear? Excusable and maybe even style-setting, if you ask me. The Obama Phenomenon is about glamor, about fashion, fantasy and wish fulfillment. Ideology is malleable enough, to liberals, to accomodate the rascal, and even encourage him in his vise as long as he believes the right things. A little finger-wagging accompanied by a wink, and the smokes are just so much smoke.
“Obama Phenomenon is about glamor, about fashion, fantasy and wish fulfillment.”
Can you say John F. Kennedy? It seems awfully similar to me.
OP:
Of course. It’s the same; in fact, it reached its maturity with JFK. It explains practically everything about the Kennedy family. Ethnicity explains the rest, with Obama too.
That’s “vice”, not “vise”. I even changed it to “vise”. Stupid.
What I can’t find on Obama is what, if any, significant legislation has he sponsored. For that matter, has he filed any bill’s on his own at all?
His appeal to the left is he is tall, “dark”, and handsome. He agrees with everything they say, and unlike many of the democrats (Kerry, Gore, Dodd???), he appears to have absolutley no record to call into question.
This should be interesting. It will get good when the Clinton smear machine flips the on switch. I understand Obama may have a shifty land deal or two in his background.
I don’t know, Mike. Remember Harry Reid? I still want to know how Chris Dodd can perch in his restored school house in East Haddam on the CT River on a Senator’s salary. Or on the inheritance from his crooked father.
Rhod, maybe he will be in a vise. When the other Dems put on the squeeze. you’re so prescient.
Yes, VW. Even when I don’t know I’m doing it, I’m doing it.
Your praise is expected. I knew it was coming.
I guess I am not used to the senators in Massachusetts during my life being crooks. they are just liars, and trust fund babies. Though Kerry just goes after the trust funds of his wives since he has none of his own.
I don’t live in MA, but I believe it’s a special case among the states, and so are its people. You have a long and admirable reformist tradition, and maybe the best of liberalism originated there…if you exclude Virginia, and one of the Carolinas, and still think that American began as a liberal experiment.
But MA proves to me how superannuated statist liberalism can become, and how tenaciously the classes it least effects can cling to its obsolete ideas, out of tradition, snobbery and arrogance. Maybe it’s the degradation and corruption caused by ease, unearned prosperity and the intellectual lethargy induced by beautiful surroundings. I don’t know. It isn’t simple. All the detestable qualities of the old blue stockings have collected in the people who displaced them.
No one in his right mind can believe that Kerry and Kennedy represent classical liberalism or Emersonian respectability, unless you void the necessary component of personal responsibility, and virtue entirely. And in Kerry,s case, intelligence. The man’s a dolt. Even JFK with his weaknesses carried the style of his class well, and seemed to understand who he was and what America was about. His brother Ted and the Winthrop poodle are an embarrassment to the country and Massachusetts.
After JFK was gone, everything wrong about liberalism disseminated itself into his myth and eventually became the force and stimulus behind a Barack Obama. He’ll carry Massachusetts by a huge majority.
I find it ironic that half a century to a century ago the Dem’s siren songs’ lyrics were all about compassion for the poor, equality, and elevation of a Catholic to the highest office in the country sprinkled with attacks on those Country-Club Republicans who lived in the houses that none-of-the-rest-us could afford…..
Anyways…..Who is John Curley and what would he think today?
Totally off topic — but you’ll be very interested to see this video.
Can’t get to it for some reason, Wave. Immigration consequences? Doesn’t matter, in the long run. FISA Court. I expect Mogtada will be offered a Cabinet position, or Chairmanship of the RNC, by Bush just after the 21,500 troops start clearing out Sadr City.
Try this Rhod:
http://screenshotblog.blogspot.....rsmov.html