It's been a while...now for something a little different

Why is there so much hate between Americans these days?  Reading several comments sections about political stories tonight I realized how deeply this hatred goes….and I cannot understand it.  People are acting as if our country is going to fundamentally change next January.  These ideas come mostly from the people not wanting Barack Obama to be president.  I say this not out of partisanship, because most Obama supporters believe nothing is going to change if McCain is president.  First of all, let’s admit this.  A McCain presidency will be better for the country than a George W. Bush one.  And an Obama presidency isn’t going to socialize America.  We aren’t simply going to disregard the constitution and turn this country into a huge government babysitter. 

Yes, some things will change if Barack Obama is president.  I’m putting my hope into the thought that the changes will be for the better.  Anyone who thinks that we are all of a sudden going to be stripped of our right to bear arms is out of it.  This is not the priority of the Democratic party.  The Democratic party wants to change energy policies, economic policies (not socialize it), and wants to improve health care.  They are not going to drastically change a thing.  Besides, there are checks and balances for a reason.  This isn’t a dictatorship.  Even IF Obama wanted to do these things that I read about, they would NEVER pass Congress.  Even a Democratic controlled Congress is too moderate to pass some of the ideas that I’ve seen floated around. 

We have to stop with all the hatred.  Let the politicians do the dirty work.  Let’s keep on them about their policies.  Let’s not resort to name calling and getting so worked up that we forget what this election is about: us.  All conservatives are not hawkish, rich, old, racist white guys who praise Jesus and own guns.  All liberals aren’t baby-hating, big government loving, godless homosexuals.  People on both sides of the spectrum want the same thing.: A better life.  We all want our jobs to pay more money, gas prices to be lowered and basically to be left alone to live our lives as we see fit.  People may disagree with how to accomplish these things, and that’s fine.  There is no reason that we cannot all get along.  No one is completely right and no one is completely wrong.  We have to listen to each other and come up with ideas that work for everyone.  The back and forth is getting us nowhere.  We need to come together as a country and move forward.  When we actually sit down and discuss issues, you may see that we aren’t too far apart.  But the hateful words and name-calling are just pushing America further away from what she was meant to be.

Pennsylvania is done....what now?

Another goalpost has come and gone.  There are still the same questions about Obama's ability to withstand the Republican attack machine.  Clinton still has her issues of trustworthiness.  I've come to hate what politics has become.  Now Barack Obama is in quite a predicament.  He has to prove his toughness while at the same time trying to stay above the 'politics of old'.  

I'm going to try to play the role of Obama strategist here for a minute.  I would advise Obama go back to what got him here.  Write some more inspirational speeches that speak to the working class so called 'Reagan Democrats'.  Talk about hope as it is involved with specific issues that trouble working class voters.  Let Clinton keep attacking you.  If you ignore her, she will eventually go away.  You don't need to prove yourself to her anymore.  The people have spoken.  While it is not a decisive lead, you lead her in popular vote.  That is as simple as it sounds.  More people have voted for you than for her.  She can try to cast all of these doubts about your past and your patriotism, but the people have shown nationwide that they don't have those same questions.  Show your strength by telling the American people what you're going to do.  Your actions will prove to those who have doubts about your personality.  When they see your plans exist to help them out, they will shed all these false doubts that the Clinton campaign has created.  

Instead,  you need to turn your focus to John McCain.  The days of being gracious to Senator Clinton are over.  You have to get serious about general election campaigning.  Since the differences between your plans and Senator Clinton's plans are almost nonexistent, show the American people how different you are from John McCain.  He IS another Bush term, as far as you're concerned.  You must fight back against the notion that you're going to raise everyone's taxes.  Tell the American people that lower and middle class taxes are not going to rise.  Tell them that, in fact, they are most likely to be cut.  Show the people that you are fighting for them, to pull one out of Hillary Clinton's book.  The three things you need to do are:  play up hope again with new and different speeches, focus your charges on John McCain (but don't go negative, just compare, compare, compare) and last but not least you need to get very specific about what you want to do.  Mix a lot of specifics in with your message of change and hope.  

I think with this strategy, you will not only win the Democratic nomination, but you will also win the General Election in November.

Special Interests

American politics is getting to be a depressing subject to think about.  First, I'm saddened at how little the American people seem to care about what is going on in the world and our own country today.  I can understand how most of them wouldn't care though.  Most people are trying to raise a family, support themselves and their family by keeping a steady job, and in their spare time are trying to a enjoy a life full of hard work and tribulations.  

 

What most people want from government is just the tools they need to accomplish these things.  Most people aren't concerned with a war in Iraq when they are battling everyday to simply put food on their table or pay their bills.  With today's mortgage crisis, people are too worried about keeping their roof over their head than having the Bush administration fight to give immunity to companies participating in the illegal wiretapping of American citizens. People are too scared of another terrorist attack to care about what tactics America is using to try to get information from 'suspected terrorists'.  

Government needs to reestablish the American citizens' trust in it to take care of our very basic needs before it can hope to drum up support for any other action.  It's going to be very hard to get the American people, myself included, to get serious about global warming until our basic needs are taken care of.  When we can stop worrying about having to pay back tens of thousands of dollars in student loans and about all the things listed above, we can take on bigger, worldly issues.  For now, American politics is at a stalemate with itself.  It has to convince people that they will take care of it's own citizens while at the same time convince the rest of the world that we are still in a position to lead the world into this new century.  

My second problem with American politics, is the divisive nature of it all.  It doesn't seem like anyone wants to work towards real solutions anymore.  With politicians so worried about appeasing either its own party or special interests to fund their reelection process, it's hard to put the focus back on the American people.  Politicians stick to party lines so much that many of them are unwilling to move to conclusions that will help the American people.  I'm not saying that a politician should compromise his/her ideals or morals to pass a law with sections that contrast to their own views, but they must work together to focus on laws that will help the American people achieve their most basic of goals.  I think the majority of American people are more inclined to support a bill to help our economy get out of the recession it is currently in than bills banning gay marriage or banning abortions.  There are some special interests out there, whose main goal is either banning gay marriage or getting gay marriage added as an amendment, but we as American people need to realize that there are more important things we need to work on before tackling a society's morality.  The politicians can help move this along by eliminating the bowing to special interests.  Special interests are so effective because they are organized in a manner that the American people just cannot do.  They have a focus of one area and throw all of their resources (money and people) into that issue.  It has been found that having a lot of money will not get special interests' agendas approved; but what their money will do is buy the lawmaker's time.  This time could be spent listening to the American people about it's concerns, needs, and wants.

Instead, we have politicians more worried about keeping their status-quo as the perennial incumbent than about the needs of the people.  I won't make this a blanket statement, as I think there are some politicians out there who generally want to help the people.  There obviously aren't nearly enough of them, however.  I cannot think of a bill or law that has been passed since I've been following politics (about 8 years....yeah I know, the Bush administration, but still) that has actually helped the American people.  It seems like every bill or law that has been passed has been about terrorism, war, or trying to promote the economy in ways that haven't worked, i.e. tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations.  Oil companies have sustained record profits each quarter, while our government continues to provide them money to support alternative energy research.  At the same time, Americans are paying more and more for gas every week.  What I propose is, reinstate the taxes to these corporations, and use the tax money made from these companies, along with the grants we were giving them to do research, and invest it in universities.  These universities can work on new technologies without having to worry about turning a profit.  This money can be used to grow scientists of the future, while at the same time creating opportunities for jobs in the new markets their findings create.  

I'm not an economic expert, by any means, but it seems essential that we invest in the future of the economy while making sure that these companies don't pass on the lessening of their profits to their consumers.  Instead of having a bottom-up model of distributing the costs of these taxes, take it right off the top starting with the CEOs.  The common stockholders, low to mid level employees, and the consumers should not have to suffer anymore so that the CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation can have an extra 50 million dollar bonus.  

This is just one of the many issues that needs to be addressed by politics today.  The only way this is going to be possible is if the special interests are taken out of the government, which in turn will get our politicians doing the thing they are supposed to be doing to begin with: serving the American people.  In return, Americans will be comfortable with their lives and willing to support more broad legislation to improve the world for the future generations.  I don't know how to get the ball rolling, but I have great faith in Barack Obama to be the candidate that can get things started.  You may say/think what you want to about the Senator, but since he has been elected to public office, he has made his number one fight be ethics in government. He wants to make our government more transparent; hold them more accountable.  I think getting rid of special interests is the only way to get American politics back on track.  

Republicans may not agree with his platform and his economic strategies or his foreign policy stances; but our greatest fight is none of these things.  Our greatest fight, at this time, is a personal fight.  It is a fight to recapture the American dream.  It a fight to live comfortably without worrying about where your next meal is coming from, or if your home is going to foreclosed on tomorrow.  The first step to this comfortability is making sure that the government is doing all it can for YOU, not for a special interest group pumping money so get their issue face-time with the lawmakers. 

The Democratic Conundrum

The Democratic party is in big trouble.  And unless something is done soon, they risk losing an election that was pretty much handed to them on a silver platter.  A party with a president that has an approval rating in the lower thirties, that holds power during an economic recession, and that started and continues a hugely unpopular war has a chance to keep the most powerful elected position in the world.

This Democratic nomination fiasco is not about electability.  Although the campaigns would both like you to think that their candidate has a better shot at beating McCain, this is not their reason for fighting.  If it was truly about electability, the campaigns wouldn't be throwing potentially damaging arguments against someone in their own party who has a possibility of running against McCain!  

The blame should be placed on two entities.  First of all, and this has nothing to do with my support of Senator Obama, the blame lies on the Clinton campaign.  In an article on Politico.com yesterday, some advisors on the Clinton campaign put her odds of winning the nomination at 10%.  I think Hillary Clinton is a great candidate.  I think that if Barack Obama wasn't her competition, she would have run away with the nomination.  But the Clinton strategy is flawed.  They are seemingly keeping her around in case something huge happens to Barack Obama to knock him out of the race.  At the same time, they are saying things and doing things to try to knock him out of the race.  In this situation, you run the risk of knocking Obama down instead of knocking him out of the race.  If he is knocked down, and still wins the nomination, he runs a serious risk of handing the presidency back to the Republican party.

For the past several weeks, we have seen both Bill and Hillary Clinton praising John McCain.  Just yesterday, Bill stated that if we get John McCain and Hillary facing off against one another that we would have "an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country, and people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."  With this statement, he is seemingly insinuating that Obama vs. McCain would not have two candidates that both loved and were devoted to our country.  The only element different is Obama, so he must be insinuating that Obama does not love our country nor is he devoted to the best interests of our country.

This is one of those little jabs meant to try to knock Obama down instead of knocking him out.  This is damaging to the party.  In my opinion, if Hillary Clinton truly cares about the democratic agenda and the democratic voters, she will step aside.  She can continue to serve the country by being a wonderful senator.  Let the Democratic party throw Obama at the Republicans.  Stand behind him and support him on his way to the White House.  It is more important for the state of the Democratic party that you get someone in the White House than it is to fight an uphill battle against someone who has the same ideas as you, save small differences in health care policies.  

The other party I blame is the media.  The media loves a horse race.  Clinton vs. Obama is providing this horse race.  I turn on the news and I see every statement, mannerism, and breath critiqued.  Yet, John McCain, this week got away with making some crucial errors.  These errors weren't about his personal life.  These errors were about the basis of his campaign, his foreign policy experience.  The media was too busy targeting Obama on the Rev. Wright issue than to bring up how important these gaffes were by McCain.  Even today, Bill Clinton got coverage for questioning Obama's patriotism.  While I think that is an important issue, it is a Democratic party issue.  If the news media's goal is educating the American people, they are failing miserably.  What McCain said, and apparently believed since he said it four times, is extremely important.  If McCain makes people think Iran is training al-Qaeda, then people are more likely to support military action against Iran!  This deserves more coverage than Bill Clinton taking small swipes at Obama, or Rev. Wright's comments on race and 9-11.  If McCain convinces the American people that Iran is training al-Qaeda, the same thing that happened with Iraq will happen.  Only we will still be in Iraq. 

The media has a responsibility.  Instead of talking about what Obama meant by 'typical white person', they need to focus on issues that have a direct impact on the lives of the American people.  If McCain is setting up another war, as of right now, the media is not doing enough to hinder his cause.  I don't know if McCain is trying to do this, so don't get me wrong.  But what I am saying is that if Americans turn on the news and see McCain say 'Iran is training al-Qaeda in Iraq', some are going to believe him.  And they are going to think that it is in our country's best interest to take out that threat.  

I got a little off subject there, but I thought it needed to be said.  The media is also keeping Clinton alive in this race.  If it would have been Obama and John Edwards at this point, Obama would be the nominee.  The same way the media stopped giving coverage to Ron Paul on the Republican side, they would have done to any other candidate.  They are making it appear as if Clinton has more of a shot than she does.  This does two things.  It allows Clinton to keep jabbing at Obama, trying to knock him out.  The other thing it does is raise false hopes in the Clinton supporters minds.  By raising these hopes, you are setting them up for a fall.  This fall could take the Democratic party with it.  This fall could bring feelings of blame towards Obama for ruining their chances.  There is a huge risk with making voters think Hillary is just as much in this race as she was before February.  The reality is, she isn't.  The Clinton supporters are now facing much more of a disappointment.  This disappointment could make people stay at home on election day.  And that is not the American way.

State of the Race - 2008

In this post I'm going to give a quick summary of where I think all potential candidates are in the race.

John McCain - I believe John McCain is right where he needs to be.  He is the hardest opponent the Democrats could've been handed this year.  He has the title of Republican Candidate, which is enough to help out with the branches of the conservative base that don't listen to Rush Limbaugh or pay too much attention to mainstream media (MSM).  At the same time, however, he can pull the more-informed Independent voters based on his long record in the Senate.  While the non-MSM watching Republican voters will believe McCain is conservative based on him being a Republican, the informed Independent voters will look at his record and his more moderate stances on campaign finance reform, torture, and earmark spending and like what they see.  It doesn't hurt his cause that right now he is traveling around, looking almost presidential, while his opponents on the other side of the aisle are fighting amongst themselves.  We'll see if his luck holds up.

Barack Obama - Barack Obama is in trouble.  After a barrage of attacks that didn't seem to stick that well, there is now the explosive story of Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright.  This is an attack that wasn't launched by his political opponents, but instead, by the YouTube generation.  This attack shows that, for all the Americans how there who are willing to look beyond race and politics of old, there are still so many who draw conclusions based on stories like this.  And, trust me, there are going to be a lot of these voters.  With the story breaking this evening about contracted workers for the State Department illegally viewing Mr. Obama's passport records, as well as the information that Gov. Bill Richardson will be endorsing Barack later today, we'll surely see how much traction this Rev. Wright story gets.  Does anyone else notice how the MSM has in effect silenced Hillary Clinton throughout all of this?  All this attention, albeit mostly negative for the past week, on Barack Obama, has somewhat pushed Hillary Clinton out of the forefront of people's minds.  It seems to have become less about the fight for the Democratic nomination than about Barack Obama's personal fight to prove himself in a rough political world.  Will this attention, in the end, help or hurt Barack Obama in his attempt to become the Democratic Nominee?  The attention has not all been negative of course, with his remarkable speech on Tuesday as well as the impending endorsement of Bill Richardson.  We'll see what luster Barack Obama has left, if any, next week.

Hillary Clinton - Where has Hillary been?  While Barack Obama is in the fight for his politcal life on the personal front, Hillary Clinton is in the fighting to stay afloat and provide herself a pathway to the nomination.  This has been the week of Hillary Clinton trying desperately to get the Michigan and Florida delegates counted.  She has slammed Barack Obama for not doing enough to ensure the Michigan and Florida votes are counted.  It is going to be very hard for her to get this attack across right now, with all the Rev. Wright stuff floating around.  As well as the State Department story.  Apparently, Hillary Clinton has decided to fight to win a state that Barack Obama was picked to win with flying colors.  My state, North Carolina.  Bill Clinton is going to be here in Charlotte as well as near Raleigh, NC tomorrow to promote his wife's candidacy.  As the ˆNew York Timesˆ stated in their article, Hillary needs three things to happen to win this nomination.  She needs to get the most popular votes (which she desperately needs Michigan and Florida to do), she needs to win Pennsylvania handily, and she needs for something major to happen to make Barack Obama falter.  This Rev. Wright thing could be fulfill the third step, but as of right now it doesn't appear to be.  It doesn't seem to be affecting the superdelegates, as even afterwards, Bill Richardson is going to endorse Barack. Hillary has a tough, tough fight ahead of her, but if her past is any indication she is just the type of candidate that can withstand the odds that are in front of her.

Welcome!

This is my first attempt at blogging.  Bear with me.  On to politics.  First, a little about me.  I'm a 22 year-old college student living in Charlotte, NC.  I am a registered Democrat and currently support Barack Obama.  The reason I am telling you this is because I think transparency is a good thing.  If you know where I'm coming from, you hopefully will have some sort of basis for trust.  I am going to try my best to keep this thing unbiased.  If you see that I am being biased in anyway, let me know.  I want to do my best to be a voice of unbiased reason.  Please enjoy!