n a t b s

On the eve of what looks to be another indecisive primary, I think it’s time we started giving money to a group that will use it to attack McCain rather than fellow Democrats: the DNC. They have been outraised more than 2-1 by the RNC this year:

According to the latest Federal Election Commission reports filed through the end of March, the RNC had $31 million in cash on hand while the DNC had only $5.3 million. The RNC has raised $36.5 million this year while the DNC has raised $17.7 million. [cbs]

It’s sad, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been raising record amounts of cash, and yet the DNC has seen little advantage from all the enthusiasm. The problem with giving money to either candidate right now is that they will use it to bring the other one down. The DNC, on the other hand, spends it’s money on McCain attack ads and helping congressional Democrats get elected. So rather than spend your cash on our Democratic civil war, how about spending on attacking our mutual enemy? I think all Democrats can agree on attacking McCain so let’s get started already! The DNC needs money, and they will spend it far more constructively (at this point) than either Clinton or Obama. It’s time to pull this country to the left again. So please, start giving to the DNC. And when one of them wins the primary, you can give to the candidate again.

Hillary has been receiving a lot of criticism recently for her gas tax plan.  She was asked to name a single non-political expert who supported her plan.  Here’s her campaign’s response:

“We believe the presidency requires leadership,” said Wolfson. “There are times that a president will take a position that a broad support of quote-unquote experts agree with. And there are times they will take a position that quote-unquote experts do not agree with.”[HuffPo]

I don’t think anyone who refers to experts as “quote-unquote experts” should be making important decisions.  Generally when one’s knowledge of a subject is lacking it’s a good idea to consult a quote-unquote expert.   Hillary is quote-unquote a moron and the thought of her running the country quote-unquote scares me more and more with each passing day.

Following Wright’s unapologetic press conference today, Obama had his own, and he strongly denounced Wright’s words. From Salon:

“I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” Obama told reporters about Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I had come to know over 20 years.” While he said he gave Wright “the benefit of the doubt” because “soundbites [of his sermons] created a caricature of him,” in Wright’s sneering Monday press club performance “he caricatured himself.”

“I gave him the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church,” he said. “But when he states and then amplifies such ridiculous propositions as the U.S. government somehow being involved in AIDS; when he suggests that Minister Farrakhan somehow represents one of the greatest voices of the 20th and 21st century; when he equates the U.S. wartime efforts with terrorism – then there are no exuses. They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced, and that’s what I’m doing very clearly and unequivocally here today.”

“It is antithetical to my campaign. It is antithetical to what I’m about. It is not what I think America stands for,” he said.

Can we finally put this matter to rest? I like that Barack tried to avoid doing this as best he could, but after Wright’s unapologetic appearances this weekend and today, I don’t think he had a choice. This controversy just keeps cropping up, and hopefully, after today’s strong clear words denouncing these ridiculous statements (except for the US terrorizing people, that one I agree with, but I also completely understand why Obama must denounce it) it will finally go away. Obama said the remarks offend him, he said they’re antithetical to his campaign and himself, and he even said Wright was no longer the person he had known for the past 20 years. So please, America, stop talking about it. And please, Jeremiah Wright, shut up for the next 7 months. Thanks.

I’m sick of the way pollsters and news people talk about the electorate. They’re always talking about “the white vote” or “the black vote” or “the female vote” or “the whatever vote.” To me, it seems somewhat absurd and insulting. They look at how poor white people voted in Texas, for example, and then they look at how poor white people voted in PA and they say “politician A is losing the white vote.” My point? Maybe two people in two different states have different opinions even if they’re the same race! No, that couldn’t be it, because they’re poor and white, so they must all think the same. And also, their poorness and their whiteness are the only personal traits that inform their choices apparently.

It’s ridiculous, and it’s prejudiced. The news media, and politicians, view us purely based on whatever superficial group we’re apart of. I thought we were supposed to be judging people based on the content of their character, not on their demographic group. I’m not a statistician, or a sociologist, so I’ll ask: is there any evidence of a correlation between voting choices of demographic groups in one region and demographic groups in another? Sure you could say “Obama has been getting 90% of the black vote so there’s your proof right there.” But that’s too easy, and I think a little skewed. I can see how the first viable black candidate in a country founded on racism and slavery is very appealing to African Americans, and so this is a unique circumstance.

It just seems to me that referring to all white (or whatever) people as “the white vote”
is troublesome and probably misleading. There are so many factors that determine peoples’ decisions that to call it the white vote, as if someone’s whiteness was the only quality that mattered, seems morally and practically wrong to me. Perhaps it explains why these pundits can’t predict anything.

Doesn’t this method also have the problem of overlapping groups? If you’re talking about the white vote, and the educated vote, and the poor vote, and the urban vote, etc, there’s going to be a lot of people who fall into several of those categories. So maybe when Obama does something to appeal to “the white vote” that same action might alienate him from “the urban vote” but what if there’s a white urban person?! Did he gain that person’s vote or lose it? Gah! It’s so confusing! Though I guess they need fodder for their endless chatter, right? Poor news people, they have so much time to fill, we can’t expect them to also be accurate and not-racist.

When they talk about “the anything vote” it just rubs me the wrong way. And it also seems like it’s probably the wrong way to analyze the situation. And it also defines people based solely on their race, sex, or class. I thought we were supposed to be passed that in this country.

BTW: I’m a young educated white male who lives in an urban area. The young, male, educated, and urban parts of me want to vote for Obama, but the white part of me wants to vote for McCain. No part of me wants to vote for Hillary (not even the part that used to intern for her). In the end Obama got my vote. After all, 4/5 of me wanted to vote for him.

On this PA-primary-eve-day one might consider writing a scathing post about team Hillary’s latest bs, but that’s been done to death. What I’d rather do is issue a desperate plea to the people of PA to please, please end this horrible primary. There is only one way that you can end it, by giving the win to Obama. See the thing is, Obama already won sometime back in February, and Hillary’s been in denial ever since. Don’t believe me? Than how come every big contest has been do or die for Hillary? If you’re winning like Barack, you can afford to lose a big contest, but if you’re losing like Hillary, one big loss is the final nail in the coffin. So please Pennsylvenians, vote for Obama. At this point a vote for Hillary is a vote to help McCain. I wont go so far as to say it’s a vote for McCain as that would be excessive, but it is definitely a vote to keep this slugfest going, and every day it does is a gift to the McCain campaign.

I hate to break it to you but she really can’t win. So please, vote for the Democrats to finally have a candidate. If you make the right choice, we can have one tomorrow. And then we can finally start going after our real opponent John McCain. He is formidable and we can’t keep wasting our time.