TonTon: As far as I can see, no-one's yet linked to John Pilger's article on Obama.

[Gyuri's response to the Pilger article]

Toro: Gyuri - you would think that would be obvious to any sane person.

But believe me, it somehow seems to have entirely escaped TonTon. And beyond that, I am not fucking touching this topic again

It's pretty clear cut to me. I mean for Christ's sake, TonTon didn't even say anything about his opinion of the Pilger article was, other than he found the bit about Bobby Kennedy funny.

The point about Tikkun is well taken nefertiti, and the points about the legacy of African American and Jewish American solidarity.

I still think it was a massively anti-Palestinian speech and one that he didn't need to make in these terms at this time.

Reed: I think he does have massive political capital. Aside from the far right and other racists he's won people over all over the country. The young people of the USA seem to think he's fantastic. Yes the media will stack up against him, but that's true of anyone not on the right, but he has a huge platform to say things to which the whole country (and world) will listen.

And you know what, the world did listen last night. This may not matter a huge amount in the context of the election, but for the future, I reckon he's made a big mistake (especially on, but not limited to, the Jerusalem thing). He's painted himself into a corner.

I completely agree that it would be a big mistake if that speech comes to represent the limits to which any Obama administration would be willing to go. I will be massively disappointed if that happens.

I just don't think that it will, in part because I believe that this campaign provides a chance for Obama to break the current model of what states (and positions) are necessary in order for a Democratic candidate to win the presidency and have a workable majority in Congress.

But it may very well be true that I've just been drinking the Kool-Aid. None of us can really know.

What I think we do know, however, is that it is massively important to the future of the country (both at home and abroad) that Obama win this thing.

I don't know, I thought the point about RFK was more than funny. If your belief in how to end the problems in the world is to rely on US exceptionalism, then that is likely to be warm words which as we know, butter few parsnips.

We've seen Obama's come and go. We've seen people build cities on hills, be the soi-disant last best hope for freedom on planet earth (quite possibly the known universe, too), and guess what? The US keeps on consuming, invading, bombing, liberalising, acquiring, depleting and the rest.

Now, we're all aware that the US polity is so royally fucked up that for him to be expressly programmtic on how you deal with the issue he's mentioned (joblessness, inequality, war, peace, climate change) would be bad news, but having seen the world pin its hopes on people who refused to be specific, and therefore couldn't be held to anything at all, then the burden of lifting the sceptism is with the progressives in the US, not with the sceptics worldwide.

And what Ad Hoc said - it's all very well saying that this is what Obama needs to do to get elected. But until and unless someone - anyone - starts telling the US the truth about it's Israeli policy, it's pretty clear which road Palestinians will take who wake up with yet another dead son or daughter, killed by US-provided weapons. Do they pin their hopes on a Obama and the US politcial system to achieve justice for themselves, or so they wish a plague on all your houses? The answer it pretty fucking clear to me.

Finally.

Time to change the thread title, btw.

QUOTE:
So, you'll forgive me, I hope, when that hope is pretty much dashed in the case of Palestine. And if I woke up this morning feeling "shit, that's another 4 years at least of no hope for them" how do you think they felt this morning? Maybe my disappointment comes from having invested some hope in this guy or maybe it's because here seemed to be a man who gave a shit about world affairs.

Ad hoc, I certainly understand and appreciate this sentiment, and I can't come close to comprehending how terrible it must feel for a Palestinian to think that there's at least another 4 years of the status quo. My point was only that that I think its premature to lose hope at this moment. There will be plenty of time for that later, once governing reality replaces campaigning. Also, I have a hard time remembering another mainstream US presidential candidate who has said in front of AIPAC that "The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper." That, from my perspective, is a pretty significant statement (under the declarations-against-political-interest rule that I just made up about why some things in campaign speeches are important, while others aren't).

Further, I'm having a hard time remembering a president who actually was constrained by positions he took while campaigning. George "No New Taxes" Bush raised taxes, Clinton flipped on gays in the military, etc.

Anyway, ad hoc, giving up hope now because you don't want to be disappointed later is a defensible position, but, I would think, not strictly necessary based on Obama's general election campaign.

QUOTE:
Time to change the thread title, btw.

Let's not jinx anything just yet, I'll believe she's dropped out when I see it.

"Further, I'm having a hard time remembering a president who actually was constrained by positions he took while campaigning. "

One of GW Bush's first official acts as president was to break a campaign promise on regulating CO2 emissions.

Rupert's NY Post sticks the knife in and twists it:

Ad Hoc, I think he had to make this speech at this time because it's AIPAC's big jamboree at the Washington Convention center. I imagine they had to book the hall long in advance. There was no way of knowing that it would coincide with the day he won the nomination. Especially since he spoke there after McCain got up there and said that Obama has excercised "poor judgement" in foreign policy, it would have been politically difficult for him to say anything else.

Living here, I don't see this great political capital that you do. When I think of political capital, I think of a president that has just won big - like Reagan or even Clinton in 1992, or perhaps a situation where the world is willing to cut America a lot of slack, like after 911 (which we promptly pissed away). He doesn't have anything like that and he won't unless he wins and even then, it could be tough.

Given how unpopular the current regime is, Obama's narrow lead in national polls seems frustratingly slim (in some polls, he's trailing McCain). Obama is very popular among young people and black people, and especially young black people, but in case you haven't noticed, young people and black people don't exactly run the country.

David Runciman's piece in the latest LRB was interesting - be interested in thoughts on it, particularly in respect of the US polling industry's flaws.

I agree with Reed. Normally, when a candidate seems destined for the nomination, primary voters coalesce behind him. That didn't happen this year. Obama basically became the winner who couldn't win. Had he won Texas, this would have been over a lot sooner, but he couldn't do it. His near-refusal to campaign in places like W. Virginia and Kentucky might seem like shrewd politics (because he didn't need them) - but it's not exaclty the actions of a guy who believes in a 50-state strategy, is it? He's sending signals to the working class end of Hillary's coalition that he doesn't need them, that he's not interested in talking to them.

Ferraro may have said some objectionable things over the past few weeks, but she wasn't wrong when she said that a lot of people who might be called "Reagan Democrats" (people Bill Clinton successfully wooed back to the Democrats in 92 and 96) have a hard time relating to Obama. Clinton had a whole single-mother, Bubba thing and a donuts obsession to humanize his Ivy League degrees. Obama doesn't have that at all. His background is - literally - foreign to a lot of Americans. He's very smooth on TV (the contrast with McCain is quite amazing), but there's a lot of Americans that don't trust that kind of smoothness.

The only thing I would say about that LRB articles is that the polls got far better as the campaign went on. I think Democratic voters were genuinely volatile between Iowa and the end of Feburary - things were changing every day. But I think if you go through the archive of RCP polls, you'll see that from the Ohio/Texas primary onwards, there have been no real surprises on voting day.

"He's sending signals to the working class end of Hillary's coalition that he doesn't need them, that he's not interested in talking to them."

I don't think he's doing that now. For example, right now he's in Bristol, VA which is on the Tennessee border and is best known for having a NASCAR track (well, that's all I know about it). That's exactly the sort of place where he didn't do so well against Hillary.

QUOTE:
Clinton had a whole single-mother, Bubba thing and a donuts obsession to humanize his Ivy League degrees.

That wasn't true at first, as I recall. It took James Carvel and that whole bullshit about "A Man from Hope" to turn him into Bubba. I never saw Bill that way. He struck me, and still does, as the kind of douchebag that runs for Student Government in college just to pad his law school application.


Appropos of nothing, I'm struck by how unbelievably stoked so many black people are about his nomination. It may seem obvious that they would be excited about this historic milestone, but remember about a year or so ago a lot of people in the media were suggesting that he wasn't "black enough?"

[Edited to add: Reed beat me to the punch on mu