Posts by Neil Morrison
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Has Senator Clinton done the same?
Has Obama stopped beating his wife? Honestly Craig I've tried to keep my comments snark free and am tired of your line of argument by innuendo. I find it unpleasant.
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...where are these "more votes"?
That's what I mean about it all depends on how the maths is done. If Florida and Michigan are included then she's got the lead (not likely to last long). Real Clear have it under Popular Vote (w/FL & MI).
That's not an uncontoversial way of looking at the votes as many will argue that those states should not be counted but it's an argument that might sway some supers. Those votes may not get counted now but they will be voting in Nov.
I've seen a few more pieces putting forward the argument that the drawn out campain is beneficial -
It's like mini-tornadoes...Think about how the primary process changes each state as it moves through. Pennsylvania is now altered politically because all of this happened. Bucks County started this process Republican, it's now considered a Democratic county. Montgomery County, Philadelphia suburb, ditto, went from majority Republican registration to majority Democrat because of these new voters. In that way this has kind of changed the political landscape.
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The maths relates to the delegates...
yes, but as you go on to say there's still the undecided superdelegates and the popular vote could influence them. So the maths is still open.
And in terms of the legitimacy of her continuing the campaign the fact that she has more votes than him is a strong argument.
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...but I don't think the maths has changed.
depends a bit on how the maths is done and how that's interpreted.
As of this moment Clinton ahead in the popular vote when it comes to the total of Democrat voters that have turned out to vote (that's including the votes in Florida and Michigan).
At present there's a bit of a fight going on over whether or not the Florida and Michigan votes will count - but if one's looking at who people are voting for it's still an important consideration.
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Anything over 50%. Voter registation and turn out in PA is at record levels - 300,000 new registrations since the beginning of the year. The last time PA had any say in the nomination process was back when Carter was running.
Info on those new registrations goes into a - by now - massive database with a great deal of data that will be of use to whoever is campaigning in Nov.
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This thread, from a year back on PBS, if you can wade your way through it, makes for an interesting discourse.
it sure does -
As for the Dalai Lama himself, he seems to spend more time moving around the planet with the skilled opportunism of a political chameleon, preaching mysticism to Western New Agers rather than participating in traditional Tibetan religious rituals.
Finally, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the Tibetans in exile and their supporters have consistently exaggerated the human rights abuses that have taken place in Tibet, as Barry Sautman and others have convincingly demonstrated. Such exaggerations from the Tibetan community in exile come as no surprise though. As Michael Parenti says:...
And there's the usual CIA conspiracy theories - the Dalai Lama's a CIA agent etc.
This seems to be taking the don't-be-too-hard-on-China line just a little too far into apologist-for-tyranny territory.
It's an odd phenomenon - Tibetan human rights is a pretty straight forward issue and yet there's a few on the Left who make this sort of argument.
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Another nice post on Alas a Blog, about Obama vs. Clinton, arguing that there are two issues that really matter, health care and foreign policy, that on health policy, there are no real differences, and then saying that Obama is better on foreign policy, and promising another post detailing why.
Yes a good post. I'd argue slightly differently.
Health Reforms -
Ampersand argues that HRC's reforms are slightly better than Obama's but that in the end it doesn't matter much because both sets of proposals will go through the political grinder so the likelihood of either of them getting their policies through unchanged is slim.
I'd say that the policy differences are more than slight and that Clinton has spent a lot of energy on getting the opponents of reform - the insurance industry etc - on side. So I'd say she's got a slightly better chance of getting her reforms through.
But there's plenty of variables that could swing things differently. And I suspect that a Pres Obama would adopt HRC's health policies - he came in late on this issue and she'd already taken the best positions - he had to offer something different.
Foreign Policy -
Ampersand hasn't put her argument yet. My view is that their differences are purely rhetorical. Their foreign policy teams are very similar in outlook but they have to make the most of what differences there are - which comes down to various semantic squabbles over what "soon" means when talking about troop withdrawals from Iraq. On most the both look like having pretty standard Democrat foreign policy positions.
There is the argument that his personality and background would play a significant role. That's possible but one could also make the same argument about a woman Pres. In the end I don't think it's an issue that can be decided now. There might just be a set of events that would be better dealt with by Obama or by Hillary.
She actually lists the Electability argument as the most important and I agree with her view -
The trouble is, although both sides play with math semi-persuasively (”only large states count!” “No, only swings!” “No, only Reagan Democrats!” “look at the fundraising!” blah blah blah), there’s no way we can know or even reasonably guess who will beat McCain by the larger margin, because we don’t get to run the general election twice.
Very hard to second guess the voting system so one may as well pick the candidate whose policies one prefers.
But in the bid scheme of things these arguments are rather subtle and really there are good reasons for preferring either candidate.
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Key used "bureaucrat" yet again yesterday in the context of the proposed increase in foreign affairs staff. Once he did that I didn't really bother to listen to the rest of what he had to say.
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...Cullen's arrogant streak was simply a bearable downside of his intelligence...
Mockery's a bit tricky to get right when you're not working from a guaranteed position of strenght. If not then you have to do Mockery+ Bluffing which is pretty difficult. That's what Clark and Cullen tried and failed to do.
That wouldn't get me voting National but if they keep on doing things like that plus acting in bad faith over the EFA then I'm going to devote my full attention to US politics as a form of escapism.
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RB, I was thinking I should repsond to your substantive points since I've been asking for that sort of thing.
Obama has been able to tap into the most liberal and politicised generation of twentysomethings in decade -- he's getting them to the polls. He probably promises the biggest turnout of black American voters ever.
That's definitely to his credit. On the other hand Hillary has been motivating other sections of the population - woman, hispanics etc. And looking at the popular vote (including Michigan and Florida as we're talking about hwo many are turning out) out of 28 million voters Obama has just 94,005 more. So their ability to motivate people to get involved is pretty much even.
But more than that, I like and appreciate the fact that Obama speaks in joined-up sentences, and expresses ideas.
He's a far better speaker than her and I don't mean that in a he's-just-all-talk way. But there are some relatively important policy differences on the basis of which it's quite reasonable to prefer one over the other.