Political Roundtable: News, Opinion and Commentary

That’s right all you change mongers, unificators, and yes-we-canadians.  Barack Obama will divide our country even further.  He will do it right under your liberal noses.

How?

His campaign claims he will erase hatred and bigotry yet most of his supporters call John McCain “Politics as Usual” simply because he is a wealthy, elderly, white male.  Well to me that sounds like racism, ageism, sexism, and class warefare all bundled up in one convenient package with big ears and a slick tounge.

His biggest proponents claim he will unify the country.  I cannot imagine a more idiotic statement.  Obama is the most Liberal candidate to win the Democratic nomination in my lifetime.  How is a man who makes Hilary Clinton and Ted Kenedy look like conservatives suppost to unite the country?  In fact, if you look closely at his policy, he is even further to the left than everyone’s favorite villain, Bush, is to the right.  So how will this mend the tear between the parties?  It will serve just the oposite effect of increasing the divide between left and right.  If one candidate actually has a chance at unifying the country it is the extremely moderate McCain who is only a stone’s throw away from a Democrat in terms of policy and has been the single most outspoken critic of the Bush Administration on that side of the aisle since the 2000 primaries.

I’m sorry Obamacons, but your boy is only another Bush riding a Donkey instead of an Elephant and you can’t even see it coming - No you can’t.

~Man Overboard

 (AP) By rights, a group that helped elect Bill Clinton president and counts Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as one of its leaders should be hostile territory for Barack Obama. But members of the Democratic Leadership Council seem ready to embrace Obama rather than risk squandering an opportunity for victory this fall.

“Ultimately, what I care about is putting a strong Democrat in the White House,” said Phil Bartlett, a state senator from Maine who backed Clinton in the primary.

But many DLC members, meeting in Chicago on Sunday, argued victory will require following their centrist organization’s philosophy.

They urged Obama to emphasize practical solutions to the problems directly affecting voters - gas prices, inflation, failing schools, job security. He can’t let Republicans define him as a tax-and-spend liberal, they said, and he can’t let the left push him toward a campaign based on retribution against the Bush administration.

“We need somebody who can pull us together,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Md., a DLC vice chairman. “Voters want us to be united and they want us to govern from the middle.”

The Democratic Leadership Council was formed in the wake of Walter Mondale’s huge loss to Ronald Reagan in 1984. The goal was to change the party’s image and focus by stressing such issues as welfare reform, charter schools and business opportunity.

The group helped Bill Clinton win in 1992, although critics say it ignores Democratic principles and the poor and vulnerable who need the party’s help. The group’s president is a former Clinton aide, and Hillary Clinton heads its “American Dream Initiative.”

Some former Clinton backers admit to a little hesitation about Obama.

Peggy West, a member of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, says she’s still “taking inventory” after Clinton’s loss to the Illinois senator in the Democratic presidential primary.

“I’m not, at this point, enthusiastic about Obama, but I am going to be out there doing doors and giving what little money I can,” West said. “I’m definitely in his camp.”

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who endorsed Obama after ending his own run for the Democratic nomination, urged DLC members to put aside any hurt feelings from the long primary race.

“There is still probably a need to heal a little bit,” he said in a speech to the group. “It may take a little time - hopefully not too much longer. Everybody needs to find ways to recognize that we have an incredible opportunity to regain the White House.”

The DLC meeting took place just across a small courtyard from the building that houses Obama’s headquarters. While the campaign didn’t make any overt effort to woo the group, senior Obama aides did meet with members during the conference, “many of whom are elected officials who have been involved with the campaign for a long time,” said spokeswoman Amy Brundage.

Obama won the nomination without help from top DLC leaders, but that isn’t stopping them from taking a little credit.

Al From, who founded the group, argued Obama’s theme of putting solutions ahead of bipartisan bickering matches what the DLC has championed from the beginning. And in the early stages of the general election, Obama shows signs of continuing that theme, he said.

Obama didn’t condemn a Supreme Court decision restricting gun control laws, From pointed out, and he endorsed a congressional compromise on legal protections for telecommunications companies that aided Bush administration wiretapping - two positions that disappoint some liberals.

“He’s shown me that he knows how to be practical,” From said.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin argued that on almost any issue, Obama can get voters to listen if he emphasizes results over ideology. He said Obama should make the case that Republicans have failed to get results on health care, government spending, the war on terror and more.

Voters know Obama is smart and inspirational, Manchin said - now they need to know that he has specific plans to make their lives better.

In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, John Bolton writes again and this time, ”The Tragic End of Bush’s North Korea Policy”, as if the world is about to end.  Bolton cries out as maybe Thomas Paine might have trying to awake the citizens to a colossal mistake and hoping to rally the troops to a response.  Bolton appears unaware that the Bush Administration has long ago lost its way, and with North Korea, quite by accident, may have found its way… Or at least a way that the US can afford.

Bolton speaks so strongly of a country (North Korea) that consistently does not keep its word in international agreements and suggest that the Bush White House must be in a daze if it thinks North Korea will keep it this time.  Never once does Bolton consider the obvious… so what if they do not keep to this agreement?  What could we do anyways?

Or consider that North Korea boarders China and is also very close to the Soviet Union.  Both of these nations have little to gain with any of their neighbors proliferating nuclear weapons.  One or the other is also key to the support of a country that can not support themselves (in other words, North Korea depends upon the good will of China and Russia).  With both Russia and China on the ascendancy and enjoying a return to the “good life”, they have little tolorance for a wild card country.  With any type of international diplomacy and cooperation, the US could gain these allies in offsetting the fear of North Korea with nuclear weapons.

John Bolton has written before about North Korea and has chastised the Bush Administration on its handling of these negotiations.  I simply wonder if there is any connection between Dick Cheney’s preferred style of negotiating and the fact that both Bolton and Cheney were key members of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and sing from the same choir book.  For reasons still unexplained (other than there were no other options since our military is already over committed to Iraq), the State Department won this policy battle.  It tells you a lot that Bolton writes so vitriolic about the President that made his UN appointment while Congress was adjourned.  The neocons take no prisoners.



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