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Author Topic: Politics  (Read 510976 times)

saltine

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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #230 on: August 28, 2008, 04:40:00 PM »
I say this because I also feel like we need an 8-year Presidency, given the complexity of issues etc.  A person approaching 76? 80? should not be President.  Everyone loses a step or two as they age, everyone...

actually i'd rather have a new guy every 4 years - they seem to get more accomplished when they think there is a possibility of being held accountable to the voters on the horizon (this goes for the senate and anyone serving more than 2 terms in the house as well)

You know we don't have time to get the Constitution amended, don't you? ;)
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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #231 on: August 28, 2008, 04:44:24 PM »
I say this because I also feel like we need an 8-year Presidency, given the complexity of issues etc.  A person approaching 76? 80? should not be President.  Everyone loses a step or two as they age, everyone...

actually i'd rather have a new guy every 4 years - they seem to get more accomplished when they think there is a possibility of being held accountable to the voters on the horizon (this goes for the senate and anyone serving more than 2 terms in the house as well)

You know we don't have time to get the Constitution amended, don't you? ;)

Nah, they have to believe they will get another 4 or the whole thing doesn't work.  Voters just need to start kicking them out - the shorter yr in there the less chance yr in some lobbyists pocket and frankly i think the more willing ur to work with the opposition to accomplish something positive for the voters. 

Also this looks great as long as it doens't come off as completely insincere - though i'm sure the pundits on both sides will spin it to death.

Quote
In a switch, McCain to Obama: "Well done" By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 5 minutes ago

DENVER - In a brief break from a fierce advertising war, Republican presidential candidate John McCain will air a one-evening-only ad with a simple message for Barack Obama: "Job well done."
 
The ad will air before, during and after Obama's nomination acceptance speech on national cable television.

In the ad, McCain addresses Obama directly, congratulating him for becoming the Democratic Party's nominee. McCain also recognizes the symbolism of a black man accepting the nomination on the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

McCain says: "Senator Obama, this is truly a good day for America. Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say, congratulations. How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day. Tomorrow, we'll be back at it. But tonight Senator, job well done."

While the ad represents a moment of comity, it also casts McCain as a generous and gracious rival on the final day of the Democratic National Convention where McCain was regularly portrayed in a negative light.

As McCain concedes, this won't last.

Both candidates have been running a series of ads criticizing each other, vastly outnumbering any positive ads about themselves. But this is the first positive ad of the election by one candidate about the other.


oneaprilday

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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #232 on: August 28, 2008, 05:36:55 PM »
Good Obama story in the Guardian today:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/28/uselections2008.race

Quote
[Regan] was in favour of states' rights, he said, earning a lusty cheer. That sounds innocent enough as a political statement, but made in the deep south it had resonance. It was a euphemism, widely recognised at that time, for support of southern racial segregation and opposition to the meddling anti-racism of the federal government.

Is this really true? "states' rights" = racism? Even if that term encompassed racist attitudes, I find it hard to believe that that's all it meant? It seems an extremely simplistic reading (though it certainly works well in setting up Pilkington's article). But maybe someone else more familiar with the South can fill me in.


Quote
Given the location, Reagan's clarion call for states' rights was a bold and deeply cynical move. As the liberal commentator Paul Krugman has put it: "Everyone got the message."

And the message stuck. It helped convert southern whites, the so-called Dixiecrats who had backed the Democratic party for decades, to defect to Reagan's cause, securing him victory in 1980 and completing the Republican stranglehold on the south that remains firm to this day. Mississippi has voted Republican in every presidential election since Reagan entered the White House. In 2004, John Kerry carried not a single southern state.

I also find this an extremely simplistic reading of a shift from Dem to Rep for Southern whites. Pilkington's essentially saying, isn't he?, that since Regan affirmed racial segregation/racist attitudes in the South, the Republicans won enough white voters to win the election. I certainly don't know much, if anything, about the shift from Dem to Rep, but to condense it to racism is hardly useful, even if it is partly true (I'm not naive enough to say it isn't). There must have been other factors - the rise of the religious right as it was associated with the Republican party, for example, given the deeply conservative/religious leanings of the South, "the Bible belt"?

Again, if I'm misreading Pilkington, someone let me know. I'm sure racism is rampant, and probably all too horribly so among white Republicans, I'm just incredulous that racism alone made Regan win and John Kerry lose.

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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #233 on: August 28, 2008, 05:45:29 PM »
"States' Rights" has been a cover for racism since before the Civil War.  IIRC, the name of Strom Thurmond's pro-segregation splinter party was the States' Rights Party (these are also the Dixiecrats referred to in the above quote).

The shift from Democrat to Republican in the South can't entirely be chalked up to racism, of course, but it was certainly a major factor.
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oneaprilday

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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #234 on: August 28, 2008, 05:54:15 PM »
"States' Rights" has been a cover for racism since before the Civil War.  IIRC, the name of Strom Thurmond's pro-segregation splinter party was the States' Rights Party (these are also the Dixiecrats referred to in the above quote).

Huh. Ok. So Regan was indeed consciously endorsing racist attitudes, then?

Colleen

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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #235 on: August 28, 2008, 06:03:58 PM »
The "southern strategy" goes back to Nixon before Reagan, he just continued it.  But yes "states rights" is a word that means something particular to southern whites while in general others would hear a more innocuous call to reel in the federal government.  The Republicans have been overtly reaching out to white Southerners who had always been Democrats but who were disaffected from the party from the civil rights movement onwards and the increasing attention to various "special interest groups" within the party.

sdedalus

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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #236 on: August 28, 2008, 10:52:06 PM »
"States' Rights" has been a cover for racism since before the Civil War.  IIRC, the name of Strom Thurmond's pro-segregation splinter party was the States' Rights Party (these are also the Dixiecrats referred to in the above quote).

Huh. Ok. So Regan was indeed consciously endorsing racist attitudes, then?


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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #237 on: August 28, 2008, 10:52:59 PM »
Obama was amazing tonight!
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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #238 on: August 28, 2008, 10:53:30 PM »
Ok - I think that speech was a little slice of political history. Obama called McCain out and he used everything the GOP had been throwing at him in reply.
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philip918

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Re: US Elections 2008 Edition
« Reply #239 on: August 28, 2008, 11:08:08 PM »
It was a great speech. 

I absolutely can't stand the right wing pundits who just regurgitate the same lame attacks immediately following any of Obama's speeches.  All they say is it's a bunch of fluff in a nice package.  I, for one, heard a lot of substance tonight and at least McCain and his advisers have the class to run a positive ad congratulating Obama on his nomination.  These days I don't think pundits (on both sides) have the intelligence to divert from their talking points.  At the very least most of the Democratic pundits use counter arguments.  The Republicans just come out spewing bile and bull[cinecast].

 

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