U.S. Presidential Election 2008

Article in the UK Grudina today saying that while Obama has admittedly "flip-flopped" towards the political center (sic), McCain is doing it much more but rushing to the right trying to pick up votes from evangelical Christians and conservatives who weren't so keen on him so far.

and yet even McCain is protesting against this cover as "tasteless and insensitive" and subscriptions for the magazine are being cancelled in droves according to this Guardian article

i always wondered why americans have issues against english food?

In general, I would like to have a thoughtful President who can be persuaded to change his/her mind without having to worry about people yelling "flip flop" every time s/he does it.

However, what MT is describing is how America keeps being dragged to the right politically. The Republican candidate has to go even further right than he might feel comfortable with, in order to get the social conservatives' vote, and the Democratic candidate has to go right in order to be closer to the political center.

Those of us radical lefties who worry about petty issues like civil rights, meanwhile, are left without a major candidate to represent our paltry views.

Oh man, that stuff with some Birds custard is deeelicious.

How bout if everyone but Americans were allowed to vote for the next president.

I'd vote for Clint Eastwood

Can I vote for Jodie Foster?

You might as well, eurovol.

I would vote for Howard Stern

Howard would be nothing new, we already had that with Bill.

Excellent. Well you have to go with what has worked in the past I guess. Hillary as a running mate would be a perfect match then (if Obama let's her leave, that is)

What we need is a movie like F°911 to motivate people. I got it and Howard Stern could produce it! A "get out the vote" election year x-rated movie called Bill and Ted's Excellent Erotic Adventures (I tried to think of some Republicans, but then it would end up being a gay movie).

Jane Fonda in a sassy bitchy cameo role a la "Monster in Law / Schwiegermonster " to get the gay boys out to vote.

US exports record oil!


Funny that???

Obama website's opposition to successful surge gets deleted


Obama VS. David Axelrod on the surge

A wry look at the campaign from UK comedian Mark Steel in today's Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/comme...elf-868650.html

McCain's latest campaign advert begins "For some, 1968 was the summer of love. But not for John McCain, as he was in Vietnam fighting for his country."
You'd think that most people, having taken that route, would spend the rest of their lives going "You'll never guess what I did in 1968
– instead of making love and listening to Jimi Hendrix I went off to drop napalm and get my fingernails pulled out –what a knobhead."

The comments make for an excellent read. You can just feel the rage of the champagne socialists as Obama slithers his way to the political center...

What I find truly disturbing about that advert is that there must be large numbers of people in the US, even today, who believe that spending the summer of 1968 killing people in Vietnam (or being killed) was a more honorable use of a young person's time than listening to music, smoking pot, and advocating for peace. Otherwise the ad wouldn't resonate at all.

Given Steel's politics (more trot than the Household Cavalry) he wasn't going to be surprised at Obama's slither to the center (sic).
It's the wishy washy liberals that are gonna be broken hearted.

Exactly. The hard left has always disliked Obama, which is one of the reasons why, considering its influence in culture and media in Europe, that I doubt that the honeymoon will last long if he is elected.

I'm one of those who is pretty frickin' dismayed right now, thanks.

Obama doesn't need to move to the center; he should have the Presidency handed to him on a platter after the many disasters and scandals that have plagued the US under the current administration. I personally fear that his rush to please the center is the one way he can mess it up and not get himself elected. You think all those university students who treated him like a rock star in the primaries, because they thought Hillary represented more of the same and Obama represented radical change, are going to stay enthusiastic?

I'm disappointed because I supported Hillary and was wary of Obama's claims to be a different kind of politician. Now I'm peeved because he seems to have grabbed the nomination partly on false pretenses. This race to the center makes him even less different from old-syle pols than many people thought he was, and I wish people would have taken a closer look at Hillary instead of swallowing the seductive Change Kool-aid.

Which is why the Berlin thing is clever JW, will maybe buy him a bit more time in European hearts.

I did, she sucked. I also took a good look at Obama and so far I am happy.

Even on the FISA bill, eurovol?

I think that Obama will have some goodies for the hard left, e.g., support for reparations for slavery. The real deal with the hard left is that it is impossible to please them- they are congenitally and pathologically unhappy and protest prone. Obama, being a smart lawyer, knows this, and won't break his presidency by trying to accomplish the impossible, i.e., fully pleasing the hard left.

On the FISA bill, note that Hillary (with close ties to trial lawyers and no longer a candidate) voted against it, whereas Obama voted for it (my take is that he doesn't want to limit the power of the executive branch should he head it and doesn't want to miss out on campaign contributions by telcos).

Surely the priorities of the "hard left" (sic) are the same as much of Middle America?
Leaving aside the foreign issues, even though but the Iraq bloodbath doesn't seem that popular on Mainstreet USA either.
Surely top issues would be job security, keeping your roof over your head, incomes for low to average income Americans in the face of rising food and fuel costs and establishing / stabilising universal healthcare coverage?

Don't worry. Nader is running, so the Democrats have an excuse lined up when this all goes tits up

Never a truer word said on the issue. This applies to right wing extremists too.

Those may (or may not) be your concerns, MT, but the hard left in the US has no time for such bourgeois concerns unless it is to pay lip service to them.

Their agenda includes the following:

Racial and ethnic preferences in the workplace and in academia

Full legalization and path to citizenship for all people in the US illegally

Universal access to taxpayer-funded abortion on demand

Reparations for slavery

A separate, race-based governmemt for native Hawaiians

An end to government supervision of the previously corruption-ridden Teamsters union

The usual "soak-the-rich" income redistribution pipe dreams

I'm in favor of none of those things, Conquistador, thank you very much. Many of those are issues I've never even heard of.

That's bad news for Obama, because that means I'm not so far left after all, and maybe not someone whose vote can just be dismissed as lost anyway.

How would intelligent people spend their money?

Wasting money on a war that should have never been started and stay in that war for the next 100 years to come (awards aka kickbacks from Halliburton are sure flowing back to corrupt politicians)

OR

education, environmental protection and other meaningful US stimulus packages?

Send McCain back to Vietnam and incarcerate him there.
Elect Obama right away for 8 years.

Dorky, brainless Republicans have ruined the US economy each and every time.

cinzia, although you are certainly a woman of the left, I never in a million years would have thought of you as being of the hard left. You do seem to be in the old Bob LaFollette Progressive tradition as well as the old Humphrey DFL tradition, both of which were far more intellectually sound than the hysterics one sees from some other leftist traditions in the US

You can't even talk about other people's posts without twisting things beyond recognition. How anyone would listen to your continued crap is beyond me.

Isn't there a scheduled Demagogues Abroad seance tonight? :
Seriously, the post you have quoted stands on its own-those are some salient issues for the hard left (research the Backbone Campaign, where you'll find a number of those I listed). As far as I can tell, eurovol, you aren't far left, thus they may not be on your own personal radar screen.

I think euro is still pissed that they ran him and his ilk out of the Hofbräuhaus.

I think he's bitter that Obama double-crossed him on the telco immunity.

If Nobama picks Hillary as his running-matess...euro will be the laughingstock of TT!

Actually, who is currently favourite to be his running mate(ss)?

I outlined what I think (as a distant observer) are the main issues for middle of the road America and how they are one and the same as what the "Hard Left" (as defined by Conq) wants. They'd be my priorities and they are fairly in line with my prioities as I'd see them in Europe.

Having the "hard left" priorities being the same as mom and pop next door doesn't of course fit to the conservative agenda so there have to be some other imagined straw men priorities that are more dragged out than BadBob in a Jane Fonda wig. Foolish believer that I am in the "democratic process", I have attempted to make a measured response:

The "Hard Left" supposedly wants:

Racial and ethnic preferences in the workplace and in academia
--> I'm dubious about quotas. I wasnt to see that everyone gets a fair chance and I think that starts from kindergarten level.
Too many people with migrant backgrounds are condemmed to low prospects.

Full legalization and path to citizenship for all people in the US illegally
--> The US NEEDS those workers, ask the agricultural industry.
How can those workers make the best contribution to America's future?

Universal access to taxpayer-funded abortion on demand
--> Women who want to end an unwanted pregancy will do so.
Abortion isn't the first choice; America could cut the rate of abortion by implementing sex education programs that Bush doesn't like.

Reparations for slavery
--> To whom? Top of my head, why not invest some money in projects to gain energy from the sun in sub-saharan Africa or use the USA's advanced computer technolgy to bring some benefit on the communications field?

A separate, race-based governmemt for native Hawaiians
--> Native Americans in the Mid West to South West already have some autonomy no?
I'm not in favour of "racially pure" forms of government or state but don't see this as the major challenge facing America.

An end to government supervision of the previously corruption-ridden Teamsters union.
--> The Teamsters Union does have a reputation for corruption.
But more often than not in favour of the ALU-CIO (sp) establishment rather than the demands of the workers.
You only have to glance for 5 minutes at TT to see that workers, blue or white collar, get a shitty deal in the USA compared to Europe, I think workers should be allowed to stick together and stand up for their liberties - a very American concept I believe.

The usual "soak-the-rich" income redistribution pipe dreams
--> Let us look at the development of the gap between rich and poor.
There are millions of hard working Americans who still remain poor and there are a number of leisured Americans who are unbelievably rich.
Doesn't there need to be some kind of smoothing of that cliffhanger? I believe it to be self-evident.

Oh, MY. Thank you, from the bottom of my lil' ol' Wisconsin-heritage heart.

I really think no current national-level politician has anything to fear from whatever hard left political group whose agenda it is you're referring to. But there are plenty of us who feel that the Democrats currently in leadership positions are unnecessarily abandoning rather standard liberal values (abortion on demand, individual privacy rights, etc.) for unknown reasons.

I've probably mentioned it before, but I'm sure that people who have supported the Republican Party their entire lives because they like the idea of small government, fiscal conservatism, etc. probably have felt the same dismay that their party has been taken over by people who trumpet social conservatism, which is not always a logical extension of the traditional Republican ideals as I understand them.

Although I would welcome any genuine move toward the center on your part, MT, you are an admitted Marxist, which definitely does not put you anywhere near the "middle of the road" in the US (or Europe). Like it or not, the US is a center-right country.


Your words betray the fact that you are a European resident in Germany, MT. Racial preferences are one of the closest things to a religious belief for the US hard left- yet anytime Ward Connerly gets a referendum on them on the state level, they seem to lose rather handily.

Your claim of "too many people with migrant backgrounds condemned to low prospects" while technically accurate (one person would be too many) shows a clear misunderstanding of the US, place where the immigrant entrepreneur is ubiquitous (and, by definition, not everyone can be above average, meaning someone's income or prospects will at any given time be low in relative terms to those of others). I am myself the son of an immigrant from Central America (and not a wealthy one, either). Unfortunately, the sad truth is that illegal immigration condemns not only many (if not most) illegal immigrants to low prospects, but also legal migrants with similar skill sets.


Even if you believe the US only has 12 million people there illegally, surely you would have to admit that the country doesn't need anywhere near that number of agricultural workers, a number of whom are anyhow legal. A program to issue visas solely for agricultural work and ensuring that labor laws (including wage laws) are followed to the letter is the answer, IMHO. Rather than rewarding those who have broken the law, I would concentrate on speeding up the issuance of visas for family members of US citizens and legal residents who are going through the process legally.

Australia has a large agricultural sector, how do they do it?

Those in the US illegally should go home, and try to come legally, otherwise they should stay away. One of the most unsubstantiated bits of nonsense passed around by the left is this fairy-tale "need" for illegal labor. Should we all work illegally if it's so desperately needed?


The old leftist fallback- Bush must be at fault for everything, even the personal choices of individual Americans . Ho-hum. Anything new under the sun in hard left land?

BTW, MT, education is primarily reserved to the local and state level in the US, so blaming Bush rings very hollow.


No, MT, I am not referring to foreign aid to Africa (even you should laud Bush for the increase in US money going to fight AIDS there) but rather to the desire of Michigan Congressman John Conyers for reparations to be paid to African-Americans (slavery ended in the US in 1865).


You obviously aren't familiar with this issue, which is understandable. Even its proponents admit it could lead to the secession of Hawaii from the US. Once again, only the hard left or hard right would even dream of bringing about any sort of race-based government anywhere in the US.

Native Americans do not have "autonomy", MT.


The supervision came about as a result of organized crime's influence on the Teamsters (dating back to the 1920s) and has reduced organize crime's influence on the Teamsters. Of course Barry Obama wants to end the monitoring.


You think leftist rants on TT or the occasional odd American who knows hardly anything about life in Europe but thinks offhand about coming here are proof of this? Aren't you, MT, the TTer complaining the hardest about European workers' wages? Is the long-term unemployment problem worse in the US than it is in Germany? And so on... Every individual's situation is different, meaning there are obviously going to be quite a few American workers worse off than European ones and vice-versa, but your generalization is inaccurate.

BTW, think about what the effects on the wage levels of a number of blue collar occupations are when large numbers of people who are in the US illegally work in those occupations? Hint: substituting illegal labor for legal labor depressing wages. Yet you claim illegal labor is needed! Read some of George Borjas' work- BTW, he is an immigrant himself.

The monitoring of the Teamsters doesn't in any way restrict collective bargaining rights, MT.


Like it or not, MT, there will always be people who, for one or more reasons are poor at any given time (often because they are not hardworking).

MT, you should realize that illegal immigration, which you claim the US "needs", is a prime driver (along with technological change and structural changes in the global economy) of income inequality in the US (for obvious reasons). Ask yourself why famed United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration.

As for "smoothing over" your idea of this is quite different from mine. I suggest finding ways to ensure people are able to get health insurance at reasonable prices (or via Medicaid if their incomes are too low) and lowering the tax burden at the bottom rather than trying to re-create the traditional Scandinavian welfare state in the US, where it would be disastrous. Aren't you also the person who railed about the changes to the social net ushered in under Schröder?

I suspect every society has a number of "leisured people who are unbelievably rich". Our wealthy in America very much tend to have gotten there through hard work. Sorry to bust the Marxist bubble. Even if they didn't (cough, the Kennedy clan) their property rights still need to be respected after they pay their taxes. BTW, you might be interested to know that the upper income quintile in the US pays a larger share of total taxes than its German counterpart does, including a disproportionate share of majority of income taxes (and rightly so, I might add). People also move up and down the income scale, MT, over the course of a lifetime.

you mean: "Tax at the appropriate level to fund state provision of public services"

Just like we have here in Europe, without the sjky falling on our heads.

The sky isn't falling on our heads yet, though it would appear, for example, that many of us will never see a eurocent of the pension funds that we will have contributed to through heavy taxation our entire working lives. Actually, experts recommend that people look to insurance companies, in other words, the private sector (!?), for more reliable long-term alternatives.

It's time to take the blinders off, BTC, and realize that we have serious problems here which go beyond softcore kneejerk anti-capitalism.

I suggest that you parley with people like the self-described Trotskyite Villager on the tax issue, since he wants to see the US tax system used for income redistribution and wants much more discretionary spending. Eurovol and Kat may feel similarly as well. It would not surprise me if they weren't the only TTers. Anyone who wails about the distribution of income while simultaneously calling for tax increases on capital and higher incomes isn't concerned about paying for public services which are already funded- they are interested in redistribution and "soaking the rich" (and often the not-so-rich).

Of course, BTC, perhaps even you will acknowledge one day the role US security guarantees for Europe have had in making it easier for social welfare to be funded here.

Pigs flying come to mind here... I have had discussions on this particular point on and offline on numerous occasions and most people would rather drop dead than admit that there is at least some truth to this. Negating this is so ingrained into the psyche here that it's not even worth having a discussion over this. If you insist, you'll be accused of being some McCarthyist kook within five minutes, as the Soviet threat was just some US fabrication anyway. Eastern bloc? Heh? Afghanistan? Who? Brezhnev? What? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

As this usually segues into a debate on American militarism and defense spending, I usually suggest that one of the main reasons why European countries, who were global players on a par with the US previously, have become completely uninfluential diplomatically over the past fifty years, is simply because they don't have the ability to show any muscle when and where it's required. A velvet glove requires an iron hand in order for it to be effective! This usually provides enough relief and downtime for a quick bathroom break...

Western Europe was occupied by the USA during the cold war in an analogous way to Eastern Europe being occupied by Russia (though considerably less brutally). Would you also expect the Czechs to thank the Russians. Face it the Cold War was a simmering conflict played out in numerous client wars around the globe and with a monumental face off between Russia and the USA in Europe. If that face off had failed it would not have been Los Angeles, New York or Washington, Stalingrad, Lenningrad or Moscow that would have been destroyed - the theatre of that war if it had happened would have been over the bones of Western and Eastern Europe. Forgive me if I am not grateful for that.

BULLSHIT If you can say something like that with a straight face and then actually believe it to be true, you're more fucked up than your incoherent socialist rantings here indicate.

BTC, your view is rubbish. Fact is, without the US Western Europe sans the UK would certainly have been satellite states of the USSR. I know that you have a soft spot for Russia (even wanting them to join the EU) but surely even you will have to admit the US homeland was never under military threat from the USSR other than by nukes (which MAD took care of) meaning the US presence in Western Europe with the NATO alliance was not about defending the US, rather it was for the defense of Western Europe. Of course there would have been no need for a US defensive presence in Western Europe if Europeans had been able to avoid slaughtering each other for the second time in a generation.

Funny how European leftists completely misrepresent the willingness of the US to potentially sacrifice its own servicemembers' lives so that Western Europe could be free and enjoy a high standard of living. Very ungrateful. There is no evidence to support the unsubstantiated rubbish you posted above with regards to the US role in defending Western Europe during the Cold War. Furthermore, how anyone could even suggest or imply that the US presence in Western Europe during the Cold War (with the official permission of European governments) was "brutal" in any way is completely delusional.

Maybe you really are a member of the far left, BTC.