Bill Clinton alleges Obama has been the subject of some kind of media deification. Again, there’s another interesting parallel with the Rudd campaign – the “where’s the scrutiny?” line being pushed by his political opponents (though in the case of Kevin07, I think he got heaps of it). In the case of Obama, his good press is no doubt facilitated by the symbolism of his candicacy, and let’s face it, a lot of his candidacy is about symbolism. Not substance. And the substance, such as it is, is tilting right as he tacks to the centre to capture the votes of Independents and Republicans in open primaries.
There’s always something a bit illusory about candidates who run on platforms that can be reduced to soaring rhetoric and to calls of “come, let us reason together”. If change, which has become the buzzword of the race, seeping into the GOP’s debate as well, is what is wanted, then inevitably people won’t be united. Tackling endemic problems such as healthcare and climate change in the US would actually involve enormous stoushes with well entrenched vested interests, and an awful lot of division, and sound and fury.
Aside from I suspect that part of the appeal of Obama’s campaign is that he is promising to heal the wounds after a presidency that couldn’t have been more inconsistent with Bush’s claim to be a “uniter not a divider”. Americans have shown their distaste not just for Bush’s partisanship but also the partisanship of the Democratic Congress. In a similar way, perhaps, to Kevin Rudd, Obama promises the hope of rising above an intensely partisan and divisive predecessor. The parallel can’t be stretched too far, as there’s obviously a strong undercurrent of a racial reconciliation factoring into Obama’s appeal which is absent from the Australian scene. But it is worth wondering what sort of policy flesh might end up on the rhetorical bones.
Americans have shown their distaste not just for Bush’s partisanship but also the partisanship of the Democratic Congress.
Don’t you mean “lack of partisanship of the Democratic Congress”, Mark?
We’re agreed that Bush is awful. George McGovern even argues that he’s worse than Nixon. So I can’t take Nancy Pelosi’s statement that “impeachment is off the table” as partisanship. Cowardice, yes – but partisanship?
Commonsense, Down and Out, not cowardice. An impeachment process would have been time-consuming and divisive and with Bush being in his final two years in office quite likely not to have been completed by the time his period in office expired. The Democrats would never have been in contemplation of getting a two thirds majority in the Senate for his removal and even if they did it would be a complete Pyrrhic victory with Cheney taking over.
GregM, that last point reminds me of when I saw “Death of a President” – a “what if” documentary about the assassination of Dubya.
At the point when the ‘senior adviser’ talks about Cheney becoming President, one viewer in the cinema who clearly hadn’t thought ahead, in a really loud voice exclaimed “Oh God!”
Down and Out, I invite you to summarise the substantive achievements of the 110th Congress.
In any case, my comment referred to the perceptions of the US public – the approval ratings for Congress are about as low as George W. Bush’s.
“Tackling endemic problems such as healthcare and climate change in the US would actually involve enormous stoushes with well entrenched vested interests, and an awful lot of division, and sound and fury.”
Really? That assumes you want a Whitlamite Big Bang reform. Fix the American healthcare system in one fell swoop. Good luck.
What a centrist Democrat like Obama might do is attack it incrementally by improving current programs, Medicaid and Medicare, and extending their coverage.
If he took advantage of his ‘unifier’ persona and his relatively good relations with the GOP, he might well get them aboard, particularly if his approach was framed around families and children. Even Republicans love being seen to help families and children!
Much better than what you’d get from someone like Edwards, which would be a lot of sound and fury, achieving nothing.
I don’t think so, Paulus. You underestimate the huge structural impediments to meaningful health care reform in the US, and the way the GOP have responded to even modest proposals to reform the drugs industry as “an attack on the market” is indicative. Incremental reform in the US rarely gets anywhere. Hillary had it right the first time around – with the big bang approach, not with the policy wonk complexity.
why don’t you say the say to GregM, who suggested I kill myself, Nabs, who suggested a few days ago some one else kill themselves and is the ad hom queen/king of the site, Liam, etc. etc and perhaps, above all, yourself Kim who routinely savages on a personal level, other commenters.
You are transparently racist.
I don’t even believe you are a woman.
I haven’t seen comments suggesting people kill themselves, Wolfe, and I’d be obliged if you drew them to my attention, as they’re quite inappropriate if they are saying what you say they are. I’d be more than happy to delete them and warn offending commenters very seriously as such comments are wholely unacceptable.
As I noted elsewhere though, I think we’ve had enough of meta-commentary about moderation, and we’re not going to have any more of it. Everyone please take note.
Wolfe, I’ve searched all GregM’s comments going back to November, and I see no comment where he even mentions you, let alone makes that sort of suggestion.
In fact, the only comment I found that was all relevant was an ad hominem comment from you directed against GregM:
Therefore, I consider this case closed.
Wolfe, I don’t recall any comment that I have made that could remotely be construed as suggesting that you should kill yourself. Come to think of it I can’t think of any comment at all that I have made that has been addressed to you. However if there is such a comment I have made then please draw it to Mark’s attention and I would be quite happy if he forwarded it to me, so that I could examine it and if that is what I have in fact done then I would have no hesitation in extending to you my most sincere apologies.
Also, I have no idea why that comment was posted on this thread at all.
Wolfe, now Mark has drawn my attention to your comment to me I do recall its circumstances and as far as I am concerned I am sorry for the comment I made which provoked your comment, and I apologise for it. I thought your riposte was deserved and I found it amusing.
Down and Out, I invite you to summarise the substantive achievements of the 110th Congress.
In any case, my comment referred to the perceptions of the US public – the approval ratings for Congress are about as low as George W. Bush’s.
I agree – I’ve seen the figures. Both in the 20s, I believe. But I’m not certain why you choose to consider partisanship as the main reason for Congress’s unpopularity, when ineffectiveness will do.
As an example, this Polling Report page quotes an ABC/Washington Post question: “Do you think Democrats in Congress have gone too far or not far enough in opposing the war in Iraq?”. The “Too fars” decreased from 37% to 35% (August to September); the “Not far enoughs” went from 53% to 55% over the same period. Partisanship doesn’t seem to be the issue here.
Hillary lost ground when she got stuck on the question of whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to have drivers’ licences. According to the wonk theory (detail is good), this should have seen her skyrocket in the polls and win Iowa and New Hampshire convincingly.
First, you widen the scope of action available in the debate, and then you’re more likely to get the change you need. Hillary can’t expand the debate, everyone knows where she stands.
The structural barriers to reforming the US healthcare system are the same as those of the Permanent Republic Majority. If people are prepared to give Obama a go, the scope of the debate will be expanded. If people give Hillary a go, it means they want a solution that’s not different to the status quo.
Hillary is the optimal candidate where the economy and foreign policy are ticking over nicely, say 1988 or 2000, where her gender would be transformative enough. Now that the economy’s shaky and foreign policy needs a rethink, it’s time for a change in scope.
Yes, it is. Mind you, where is the President whose policy agenda mid-first-term could have been predicted a year before he took office?
I have screened saved GregM’s chilling comments Mark, and it was emailed widely, by me, on the day,or rather evening, it happened.
You also seemed to have missed GregM’s diatribe about me being simultaneously a fascist and a Communist and having been personally responsible for the deaths of millions – even though I wasn’t born at the time being discussed.
And why don’t you just ask Nabs about his invite to a first time blogger to kill themselves, only a week or so ago. It is all on the record. Do your own research.
Down and Out, the way these things tend to play in the US if nothing happens then people tend to assume it’s because of partisanship – eg why aren’t the Demos passing legislation that the GOP could support and Bush sign? It’s actually a bit of a misconception, but that’s how it’s read I think.
True enough.
But I think Hillary is conscious that Bill’s mob wasted the first two years of his first term because they didn’t have a clue what to do or know how to do anything, and that’s what she’s insinuating Obama would be like.
I see GregM has admitted he made an objectionable comment, and apologised for it, Wolfe. I have been trying to write a 1500 word paper for the last two hours as part of my work commitments and accordingly I only scanned GregM’s comments quickly – there were a lot of them. I’ve emphasised repeatedly that over the Xmas holiday period, in particular, I wasn’t watching any threads except the ones I enjoyed, and indeed we’re always telling people that most of the time on a blog with the volume of comments this one gets, there is no one watching. Unlike the News Ltd sites or whatever, no one is paid to do it, and we’ve got lives to live and work to do. The most appropriate thing if someone objects to something is to email us at the time and draw our attention to it.
It might have been more productive to have emailed it narrowly – to us, who could have and would have done something about it. You don’t seem to understand the amount of juggling and unpaid work running a blog like this entails. It’s also more difficult to identify where GregM was talking to you because I wasn’t sure which of your various monikers you were using.
I’m sure GregM would be the first to admit that he and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, and that I’ve asked him to modify his commenting on occasions (which he’s cheerfully complied with as I recall). I’ve had a long day – things might be “slow at work” for you but I’ve just finished for the day and I’m now going to relax. If someone can link to the offending comment, I’d gladly delete it, but I’m too tired to look now and I note GregM’s apology.
Now, as I’ve also said, none of this has anything to do with Bill or Hillary Clinton or Obama, and it shouldn’t be discussed on this thread. You’ve been told that before, and I don’t know why you posted on it here. But this is the absolute last time we’re going to do on site discussion of moderation. Full stop.
GregM, hasn’t apologised to me. Am I just a monkey, perchance, in your view, Mark, and in GregM’s and Kim’s?
And if so I guess this is why you think it unimportant rhat he, or you, actually apologise to me for such inhuman, violent and irresponsible verbal abuse?
I’m not sure if this should be on this thread or the one about Hillary Clinton and the NH Primaries, but I don’t suppose it matters as its all to do with the US election.
1. Hillary’s female vote went up. I suggest this may, repeat may have been a reaction to Edwards attacking Hillary for being teary.
2. A Socialist newsletter I receive from overseas suggests Hillary got far more of the working class vote in NH than O)bama did, and that Obama appeals more to the wealthy.
3.According to the same newsletter,the economy seems to be the main election issue so far according to exit polls.
Some interesting takes on the result on The Grauniad’s Comment is Free blog:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/category/us_elections_2008/
“It might have been more productive to have emailed it narrowly – to us, who could have and would have done something about it.”
That is crap and you know it. And why did no other blogger or reader draw your attention to these comments? Because they know these people are your mates, are part of the mob, don’t want to raise their heads. That is why. You encourage such a culture.
Right. For the last time I’m allowing some of your comments to appear because in my view they show your total unreasonableness in discussion of this matter, and also, because within reason (and I have to consider the fact that most people reading the thread would no doubt prefer to discuss its topic), I believe you have a right to put your case. But within reason. I would swear on a stack of bibles that I never saw that comment, that I don’t have any particular connection with GregM (with whom I often disagree) and that I’m too bloody tired to go looking for a comment after a very long work day. It is the simple truth that I didn’t see the comment at the time and it is also the simple truth that you would have been more effective in responding to it by emailing us rather than emailing it to all your friends or workmates or whomever. If you don’t believe that, that isn’t my problem, but nor is it my responsibility to go on responding to you under what ever sockpuppet identity you care to assume to make points you’ve made repeatedly before.
I don’t know what you’re talking about when you refer to monkeys. I have no idea.
If your aim is to succeed in provoking people to anger, you’ve succeeded insofar as I am concerned. Every comments thread on this blog does not have to be about whatever your latest gripe about moderation is. And it won’t be in future.
If you are as convinced as you appear to be that we are in bad faith, and if you believe this blog is some sort of conspiracy against you, I think you are deeply mistaken but I invite you to find some other outlet for your blogging urges, because I’ve absolutely had enough of responding to you. It’s our blog, and it’s our space, and you have no right to comment here if you can’t recognise that. I’d always be prepared to entertain a return from you if you sincerely apologised for your claims – which I find highly offensive – that you’ve been differentially treated because of some personal characteristics. That is untrue. But I strongly suspect that you are unable to give any ground, or adapt yourself in any way to others’ requests that you behave in the way that we request people to behave in our space. So I imagine that I’m bidding you farewell.
I said on a previous thread that I’d gained enjoyment and edification from many of your comments. You responded that I was being “patronising”. In that case I don’t see how I can win, but what I said is true, and you might like to adopt the practice of standing back from an argument and reflecting on it. I’ve more than once admitted that I’ve been in the wrong, either partly or wholly. It’s a good habit to cultivate.
I don’t take kindly to being called a liar, and I am not going to tolerate its repetition on a blog that I own. So farewell.
It might be better if any further on topic comments are posted here, since this thread has well and truly run off the tracks. Thanks.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/08/new-hampshire-primary/#comment-425979