Why Obama Should Not Be the Democratic Nominee

There are a lot of reasons.  But before I start let me say that I'll vote for Barack if he's the Democratic nominee. He would be infinitely better than John McCain.

1. He wants to bring people together. Give me a break! The only people he needs to bring together are the Republican Senators who will filibuster every piece of Democratic inspired legislation to death and effectively stop anything the Democrats want to do. Think he'll get the bloc-voting, filibustering Republican Senators to come over to the Democratic side? Think again. He'll either get nothing done or triangulate as Bill Clinton did. Instead of triangulation what we need is a President who will take on the filibustering Republicans and the legitimacy of the filibuster itself. This might spark a constituional crisis but so be it!

2. As nominee, the Republicans will generate all kinds of rumors about his African connections. Half his family lives there. Then there are the rumors about his lack of patriotism. The Republican smear machine will go to work on Obama. You can see they are ambivalent about who they'd rather run against because they've already developed a well-spring of hatred and demonization for Hillary over the last 20 years or so. They'll have to start from scratch with Obama, but they're already working overtime to make up for lost time.

3. As President, there will be all kinds of pressure on him to intervene in Africa. We've already got a mess on our hands in Iraq, that road to hell having been paved with bad intentions. We don't need another one in Africa, this time the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Mia Farrow, Steven Spielberg and others have been pressuring politicians to intervene there. And who's already there siding with the bad guys? China. They want the oil and they don't give a crap about who gets pushed off their land in order for them to get it. We don't need a confrontation with China in Africa.

4. Lack of political sophis-tication. We don't need Amateur Hour in the White House.

5. More susceptible to cooption and selling out. He'll want to triangulate with the Republicans as Bill Clinton did (a big mistake in my opinion) in order to get anything done. Republican pressure will undermine his agenda and determine the course of legislation. (Witness Bill Clinton with Gatt-NAFTA and signing the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which led directly to the sub-prime mortgage crisis.) Hopefully, Hillary has gotten beyond "triangulation," realizes the errors of her husband's ways.

6. Obama is more likely to pander to powerful interests. Hillary has been there, done that and has nothing to prove.

7. Obama still hasn't made his fortune; Hillary has nothing to sweat financially. This would make Obama more likely to sidle up to and be impressed by powerful financial interests.

8. Hip-hop in the White House? Oh, noooooooooo.

Comments

[Clay Shentrup]

I adamantly disagree with your position, and I think Obama would make a vastly more principled and competent leader than Clinton. Most of your points fly in the face of the evidence. I'll address some that stand out to me.

1. Obama IS a uniter, especially compared to Hillary Clinton. If you just take a look at their legislative records, Obama has made noteworthy bipartisan accomplishments in terms of generally SUBSTANTIVE legislation, such as the Obama-Lugar bill to reduce nuclear proliferation. And whether they are Republicans or not, Obama has the kind of negotiating prowess and innate charisma to generally earn key co-sponsors. By contrast, Clinton's legislative record shows her often going it alone (considered a major reason her health care initiative under Bill's administration failed), and pushing for lots of symbolic but failly insubstantial legislation, e.g.

S.RES.176 : A resolution recognizing April 30, 2007, as "National Healthy Schools Day".
S.RES.222 : A resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.

An good read through their legislative accomplishments shows that Obama has worked for more substantive policy, and done a better job of getting it through Congress.
-- http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/20/201332/807/36/458633

The top pollsters have shown Obama doing better than Clinton against McCain for some time. That makes sense considering that Hillary is highly polarizing, and Obama is better supported among the independent "swing" voters.

"Obama has much greater personal appeal to independent voters than does either McCain or Clinton. Fully 63% of independents rate Obama favorably, nearly twice the percentage expressing an unfavorable view of him (32%). The balance of opinion toward McCain also is favorable, but by a much slimmer 51% to 38% margin. The share of independents with an unfavorable view of Clinton is substantially higher (50%), while just 45% view her favorably."
-- Pew Research Center, http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=1254

Other indicators back this up. In the Wisconsin primary, almost nine per cent of Obama's vote came from Republicans, according to exit polls. A few big-name Republicans have led the move to Obama, including Rhode Island's former senator Lincoln Chafee.
-- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-wiener/republicans-for-obama-ho_b_88353.html

Given Obama's general success at mustering bipartisan support from conservatives, and the extreme loathing that many conservatives feel for Hillary, you are speaking completely contrary to fact when you say things like, "He'll either get nothing done or triangulate as Bill Clinton did."

Triangulate? Obama was rated the most liberal senator of 2007 by National Journal.
-- http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/

If by triangulate you actually mean "compromise", then of course you're right. The whole point of our system of checks and balances is that we don't have a dictator. But Obama has shown that he is far and away superior to Clinton when it comes to building support for legislation that has a bipartisan appeal, and building the kinds of coalitions it takes to get things done.

There's a reason that Kathleen Sebelius (KS) and Claire McCaskill (MO) -- two Democrats in very red states -- have endorsed Obama. They want a candidate who can make progress in the face of GOP opposition.

(...continued below)

[Clay Shentrup]

2. You talk about how the Republican smear machine will go to work about Obama, but you admit that they've already galvanized opposition to the Clintons going back many years. Even if they try to "make up for lost time", the fact is that it would be hard to take away Obama's lead among the independents who may be swung to the GOP by such rumor strategies. And Obama will most certainly draw more GOP defectors than Clinton, most of whom have grown sick of precisely the kind of Rovian machinery of the neocon agenda that Clinton has thus far duplicated in her campaign. This perception supported by every statistic under the sun.

3. Wow, talk about hypocrisy. How easily do you forget that Clinton VOTED for the authorization to use military force in Iraq, while Obama was actively speaking out against it saying that he does not oppose all wars, but he does oppose "a dumb war". Notice this speech he gave back in 2002:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhpKmQCCwB8

As Mike Gravel pointed out in the Democratic debates, Hillary supported the neocon saber-rattling, and drumming up the support for a possible second Iraq, by also voting to declare Iran a terrorist state. And I have read reputable reports that Clinton has received more money from the military-industrial complex than any other candidate in either party! Does that sound like someone who's prepared to end this Iraq fiasco, or who would be more likely to keep us out of irrational wars? No!

Obama on the other hand has consistently made the call for rational foreign policy. In the last debate, he made the reasonable assertion that we should talk to leaders like Castro or Ahmadinejad without necessarily placing pre-requisites on those talks; he pointed out that conditions make it seem like we are above those other countries, and bolster the standoffish behavior that leads to enmity and war. Clinton had every opportunity to portray herself as a sane and level-headed person, and CHOSE to counter Obama's ambassadorial leanings with an affirmation that she would indeed place conditions on any such meeting.

In short, Obama has shown massively better judgement, and espoused an air of humility and calm, while Clinton has sounded more or less like the same Orwellian administration she seeks to replace. If Obama did engage in any sort of foreign entanglement, you can bet it would be short-term, and have specific objectives and a timetable for withdrawal. After all, he's the one whose spoken strongly in favor of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, while Clinton has left withdrawal as open-ended as McCain.

(...continued...)

[Clay Shentrup]

4. Political sophistication? Now I'm starting to think this piece is sarcastic and aimed at humor. As if it was not enough to watch the debates (which I assume you didn't do) and see Obama's more rational and reasoned response to questions on matters of health care, foreign policy, economics -- you name it -- one need only look at their tactics, and the kind of company they keep to see how backwards you have it.

One day she was talking about what an honor it was to be with Obama, and the next day she was comparing his tactics to those of Karl Rove, with the shrill sound of hatred in her voice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_mcgO3Iva0

Well how ironic. Her campaign's ringmaster stategist, Mark Penn, is considered by many to be the Democratic Karl Rove. One day he or his associates compare Obama to Republican scum bags like Ken Star, and the next day Obama's too LIBERAL.

"Independent and Republican support is diminishing as they find out he's the most liberal Democratic senator.. As they get more of a sense that he's not ready to be Commander-in-Chief, a lot of Independents who were supporting him are disappearing."
-- http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/17/080317fa_fact_lizza

The nerve of these guys.

(...continued...)

[Clay Shentrup]

Nancy Pelosi even recently said that an Obama-Clinton ticket is totally inconceivable after all the negative comments about Obama from the Clinton campaign:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/11/pelosi-dream-ticket-imp_n_90981.html

But Obama's people are refreshingly different, and better sports. Consider the response by Samantha Power, top policy advisor to Obama, after recently venting to a paper that Hillary is a "monster" (a comment I fully agree with, mind you):
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/03/samanthas-apolo.html

You'd NEVER see such a humble response from Hillary or Penn. Heck, she didn't even acknowledge Obama's wins during her post-primary speeches in numerous states. Obama on the other hand has always shown good sportsmanship throughout his campaign (and then not followed it up with a "shame on you Hillary!" hate speech the next day).

Dear god, she's so zealous to get this nomination, she's actually saying that she and McCain are qualified to be President, but Obama is riding on nothing more than his 2002 anti-war speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o10lQUm5gKM

(...continued...)

[Clay Shentrup]

It shouldn't surprise us that she'd sink so low. In one of the debates, she suggested Obama had wavered on his anti-war position, claiming his famous anti-war speech had been taken off his web site.

Clinton: "It was after having given that speech, by the next year the speech was off your website."

Lawrence Lessig: "Now as Hillary Clinton knows, this statement is both false and misleading. It's false because in fact, the speech that she says was removed from Obama's website remained on Obama's website throughout the course of the next year. You can know that by going to this site, The Archive org's Wayback Machine, and you can actually see copies of the web taken in every couple of month intervals from 1996 on. And here's a copy of the Barack Obama website — we have to decode it a bit by looking at the very top line — this is a copy of February of 2003, there's Obama's speech."

I don't think blatant lying is "sophisticated". The overall intellectualism of Obama's rhetoric, from campaign speeches to debate performances, has simply surpassed Clinton's. His general method of operation is to use objective and rational analysis of the facts to make sensible decisions, whereas Clinton has routinely passed up common sense for political expedience. From the Iraq vote to the Iran vote that has been true. Heck, she even voted for the Flag Desecration Amendment, which narrowly would have weakened the First Amendment in the name of stopping the "dangerous crime" of flag burning. Anyone so willing to casually violate one of our most cherished Constitutional provisions in the name of such trivial unimportant aims, is not fit to be President of this country.

(...continued...)

[Clay Shentrup]

6. Are you saying that Hillary won't pander to special interests anymore, because her only reason for doing so in the past was to "prove" something, not to get money and political leverage? That makes absolutely no sense in the first place, and the overall argument is especially weak when you consider this.

Obama Was A Key Player In Assembling And Passing The 2007 Ethics Reform Law, Which Curbed The Influence Of Lobbyists And Was Described As The "Most Sweeping Since Watergate." In the first week of the 110th Congress, Obama joined with Senator Feingold to introduce a "Gold Standard" ethics package. Many of the Obama/Feingold bill's most important provisions were included in the final ethics reform package passed by the Senate in late January: a full ban on gifts and meals from lobbyists including those paid by the firms that employ lobbyists; an end to subsidized travel on corporate jets; full disclosure of who's sponsoring earmarks and for what purpose; additional restrictions to close the revolving door between public service and lobbying to ensure that public service isn't all about lining up a high-paying lobbying job; and requiring lobbyists to disclose the contributions that they "bundle" - that is, collect or arrange - for members of Congress, candidates, and party committees.
-- http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/03/08/fact_check_on_new_york_times_s_1.php

7. The idea that Obama cares a great deal about money is contradicted by the fact that he passed up the opportunity to work in the private sector, and went straight into being a community organizer. It is also contradicted by the fact that he's taken less money from special interests, and has fought harder for ethics reform.

Hillary Clinton apparently doesn't want people to know about all the nefarious means by which she made her millions, so she's withholding her tax returns.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4421457&page=1

8. At this point I'm going to try to console myself by forcing myself to believe this is a parody, even though you seem so serious in all your other points.

Clay Shentrup
San Francisco, CA
206.801.0484
clay@brokenladder.com