Religion and Guns in small-town America

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
I don't know if any Dem contests are winner-take-all

None are. That's what's dragging this thing out. It's also what's allowing Obama to compete, since if the contests were winner-take-all Hillary would arguably be way ahead by now by dint of winning bigger states (though you could also argue that, if the contests were winner-take-all, the Obama campaign would have adjusted tactics -- and tactics have been their long suit).

[Dinner]

Re: Re: Re: Religion and Guns in small-town America

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe


Who said manufacturing has left the US? Clinton up by 20 in PA.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/pa/pennsylvania_democratic_primary-240.html

Actually 8.6 which is 0.2 worse then the day before.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Aeson


If he isn't now, he probably will be before he's elected president. Because our nation just won't have the truth come out. A politician starts talking about actual problems, which tend to be because of us, and people will throw a hissy fit. You also can't just speak your mind, you have to have someone carefully word what you "think" so you don't slip up and say something someone somewhere might take offense at and get on the news to replay endlessly.

(Plus he's a D, which means he has to be ~the same as all the other D's, so he gets the D nomination and a ~50% chance of winning so long as he can figure out how to read a teleprompter and avoid addressing issues.)

And this my friends is the sad truth about modern America.

[Dinner]

Rufus, are any Republican contests winner takes all?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Rufus, are any Republican contests winner takes all?

Most of them are. That's what allowed Mccain to break out so efefctively.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Oerdin


And this my friends is the sad truth about modern America.

You illustrate exactly what he's saying. You don't even see it, do you? THAT'S the problem.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Returning to the spirit of the OP, this is the best piece I've seen on the controversy so far:

Shot and a Chablis

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, April 15, 2008; Page A15

Hillary "Shot-and-a-Beer" Clinton has given us the perfect illustration of what's so insane about American politics: the philosophical dictum that could be summed up (with apologies to Descartes) as "I seem, therefore I am."

Clinton spent the weekend bashing Barack Obama for not seeming to be enough of a regular guy -- not for any actual deficit of regular-guyness, mind you, but for giving the impression that such a deficit might exist.

The former first lady, whose family has made $109 million since her husband left the White House, then made a show of demonstrating that she's actually just a regular gal. The point wasn't really to convince anyone that she, Bill and Chelsea commute between their two lavish mansions in a five-year-old Ford F-150 pickup with a gun rack and a "Jesus Rocks!" bumper sticker. Her aim was to prove to the nation -- or at least to Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana -- that she's better at feigning regularness than Obama.

This is how we pick a president?

This whole sideshow began when Obama committed what she portrayed as the apparently unforgivable sin of trying to describe the resentment felt by some working-class Americans, venturing that "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

This seemed "elitist . . . and, frankly, patronizing," Clinton charged. Never mind whether it actually was elitist, patronizing or, for that matter, inaccurate. No, the eagle-eyed Clinton took dead aim at a different target: the impression Obama might have given.

As if to show her opponent how it ought to be done, Clinton -- a longtime advocate of gun control laws -- spoke of her lifelong reverence for the Second Amendment. "You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl," she said. "Some people have continued to teach their children and their grandchildren. It's part of culture, it's part of a way of life."

Clinton also made a point of telling audiences about her deep religious faith. The topper -- or the chaser -- came at Bronko's Restaurant and Lounge in Crown Point, Ind., where Clinton threw back a shot of Crown Royal whiskey and followed it with a beer.

Clinton bristled, though, when a reporter had the temerity to ask at a news conference when she last attended church or fired a gun. "That is not a relevant question for this debate," she said. "We can answer that some other time. This is about what people feel is being said about them. I went to church on Easter. I mean, so?"

Um, so the issue isn't whether you regularly sit in a church pew or even occasionally go hunting, but whether you can manage to seem like the sort of person who does? I think I need a shot and a beer, too. Just give me whatever the lady's drinking.

Obama has apologized for using the word "bitter" to describe some frustrated voters, but managed to have a bit of fun with Clinton's new persona. "She's talking like she's Annie Oakley," he said, adding that she gives the impression of spending every Sunday in a duck blind.

But I think Clinton is serious at some level. She argued Sunday night that Democratic candidates Al Gore and John Kerry lost because they seemed elitist -- not because they actually were, but because they seemed to be. In reality, she said, they were "good men, and men of faith." So is Obama, she allowed. But they didn't measure up in the seeming department.

As you've guessed, I have a couple of problems with Clinton's seeming-is-being theory of campaigning for the nation's highest elective office. First, given the urgency and complexity of the problems the next president will face, who's going to think it's a good idea to elect Joe or Josephine Sixpack? I realize that Gore was deemed inferior to George W. Bush on the "Who would you rather have a near beer with?" question, but the 2000 election took place at a time of peace and prosperity. Oh, and Gore did win the popular vote.

Here's my other problem: Clinton's argument assumes that "regular" is a synonym for "unsophisticated" -- that to communicate with voters who have not attained a certain income or education level, a candidate has to put on an elaborate disguise and speak in words of one syllable.

So tell me: Who's being patronizing?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/14/AR2008041402449.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Whatever else is wrong with Obama, and least he's not faking it; if he goes down, he's going down like Adlai Stevenson did -- without apologizing for himself. It's Hillary who now seems far more likely to serve up a steaming helping of Dukakis-in-a-tank/Gore-in-flannel shirts inauthenticity of the type that tends to undo Dem candidacies.

And I'm not even going to get into ordering Crown Royal, as opposed to Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, or Wild Turkey, when having a shot and a beer. I may be an effete liberal egghead, but even I know better than that.

[KrazyHorse]

Yeah. What American politician orders Canadian whiskey?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Yeah. What American politician orders Canadian whiskey?

The same one who settled on a Celine Dion song as her campaign theme...

[KrazyHorse]

Are you serious?



Stealth nation technology strikes again. We have a crypto-canuck running as a major candidate for prez of the US and nobody notices.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
The same one who settled on a Celine Dion song as her campaign theme...

****. Now I have to pick between Obama and McCain.

[KrazyHorse]

You can't seriously think you'll get me believe that you were going to vote Hillary before.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Are you serious?



Stealth nation technology strikes again. We have a crypto-canuck running as a major candidate for prez of the US and nobody notices.

Oh, it's even better than that. Read on!

Rosa Brooks:
Hillary's tone-deaf campaign
A Celine Dion theme song? Written for Air Canada?
June 22, 2007


AFTER MUCH trumped-up suspense, Hillary Clinton's campaign announced this week — via a YouTube spoof of the last episode of "The Sopranos" — that the votes are in.

No, sorry, not those votes. You'll have to endure another year of stilted YouTube spots before the last presidential primary votes are cast.

I mean the votes from the Clinton campaign's YouTube "pick our theme song" contest. And, in case you missed this major national event, the winning song was "You and I," by Celine Dion.

Clinton staffers have declared the "pick our theme song" contest a resounding success. And who knows what her wacky campaign will do next? Maybe Clinton will soon have YouTube viewers select her campaign's strategy for ending Iraq's civil war or reducing greenhouse gases. If she's going to base her decisions on the lowest common denominator, Clinton could just eliminate her cadre of overcompensated consultants and pollsters and go straight to YouTube for all her policy needs.

And Celine Dion really is the lowest common denominator. If the SAT's analogies section tested politics and pop culture, even the dimmest teenager would agree that "Hillary Clinton: Politics = Celine Dion: Music." Both Clinton and Dion have enjoyed astounding career success. Both showed early talent but are now widely accused of being sellouts. Dion's interesting, edgy early songs were replaced, during her bid for superstardom, by trite and formulaic crowd pleasers; Clinton's interesting, edgy early policy positions were replaced, during her bid for elected office, by trite and formulaic crowd pleasers.

Selecting "You and I" may ultimately come to seem like a Clinton campaign blunder. For one thing, Dion's name summons up, unbidden, thoughts of other major Dion hits, such as the "Titanic" theme song and the title track from Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." Neither suggests helpful associations.

In any case, "You and I" is not exactly in its first run as a theme song. It has already been used by Air Canada. Not just "used": Air Canada commissioned the song, and the airline's advertising consultant wrote the lyrics. (Art at its purest, it ain't.) This isn't the first time a presidential campaign has relied on a song that's basically an advertising jingle, but I think it's the first time a campaign has relied on someone else's advertising jingle.

That the "someone else" is a foreign country's national airline doesn't help. The Canadian-born Dion released "You and I" at an Air Canada event in October 2004. "Wearing a stylish new Air Canada uniform," an Air Canada news release gushed, Dion sang with "a chorus of Air Canada employees," telling the admiring crowd, "[It's] an honor … to promote Air Canada and this great country around the world…. We are all ambassadors for Canada." Oy.

Speaking for myself, having an "ambassador for Canada" run for president might not be the worst thing in the world — Canada's been looking good to me lately. (Though I can't call Air Canada uniforms "stylish.") Clinton's critics, however, were quick to pounce: Clinton's so unpatriotic that she outsourced her campaign song! To a Canadian! Who speaks French!

This misses the point. The real problem with "You and I" isn't that it was sung by a French Canadian — the real problem is that, like most of Dion's oeuvre, it's just a crummy song. Superficially, it sounds like "music," but it isn't really. It's just the product of a well-paid advertising agency's successful formula for producing persuasive — and mildly sedative — background noise.

"You and I" is suitable as elevator music and as the soundtrack for visits to the dentist, but that's about it. And its selection as campaign theme song may ultimately underscore what Clinton's critics have long charged: that her policy platform offers more pablum than principle, more formula than inspiration.

Not that this will necessarily matter. As Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz noted Tuesday, it increasingly appears as if "Hillary Clinton is inevitable." Well … so are death and taxes, but I don't have to like them. (I'm more in sync — politically, not musically — with YouTube's Obama Girl.)

We'll probably end up with Hillary Clinton leading the Democratic ticket. And inevitably, sooner or later we'll all find ourselves in the dentist's chair, numbed by Novocain, listening glumly to piped-in Muzak by Celine Dion.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Religion and Guns in small-town America

Originally posted by Oerdin

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/pa/pennsylvania_democratic_primary-240.html

Actually 8.6 which is 0.2 worse then the day before.

RCP is an averaging of polls and does not account for latest swings due to Obama's gaffe. Another words wait for it it padawan, the effects are coming due.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
You can't seriously think you'll get me believe that you were going to vote Hillary before.

Kuci and me were both very strong pro-Hillary peeps. Believe it, Kuci was going to vote for Hillary (if he hadn't already in the primary, as I had).