Mar

6

Its hard to take a middle ground when you have something to say…

Filed Under Commentary on the News, Political Musings, Writings/Rants 

Well friends, I’ve been avoiding talking about it for a while but after talking with a friend last night and after my friend Goob’s post the other day, I feel its time that I leave my footprint of my opinions on the election here on my blog.

I haven’t hid that I’m a supporter of Senator Barack Obama, but at the same time, its not because I’m some biased yuppie college student wanting change. Its because I’ve done my research. Let’s back up a bit and I’ll explain.

As I’ve said many times before, I keep up with the news fairly regularly. Now with the install of Newzie–which I’ve fully embraced and love–I get my MSNBC.com so much faster and with many articles that I think I would have missed had I not been following it regularly. With this, with all of the news that I watch and read (CNN/Reuters/AP Wire), and with the fact that I’ve taken the time to try to look over all of the candidates? Well, for me, it was about making my own independent educated decision.

First of all, I’ve always been a registered Democrat. I’m proud of that, and I believe that I’m a bit more of a moderate liberal with only a few outlying ideas. I believe a lot in social and individual freedoms and the lessened power/force/impact of big business on our world. I believe that big government is not the answer, and that a military impact against terrorism as a “first strike” as we did in Iraq was not a wise move, but that I support our troops and I want to see them well funded and brought home fast because all projections for the area show that there would be the same military collapse if we were or weren’t there. That’s an entry for another time.

Needless to say, when it came to the early run of the Democrats, I had no idea who Obama was. All I knew was that Senator Hillary Clinton was running, and I didn’t like her really. Oh sure, I thought her Soprano’s rip off advertisement was funny, but that wasn’t enough to do it for me. She always grated on me. There was something about her as a female figure who walked that line between being soft and powerful and balancing that in a very unbalanced fashion, always leaning away from the femininity and more towards a butch masculinity. And there’s nothing wrong with that because it works for her and her supporters believe in her.

In the early races, I actually favored Governor Bill Richardson and Representative Dennis Kucinich. Both well spoken men, they had powerful presences and good platforms. And as a matter of fact, Kucinich matched up to me on most of my political beliefs with Clinton/Obama falling next on most of the political questionaires that I took when I was early researching the candidates. I know that those questionaires get it wrong most of the time, but if you use a few of them, it lets you see different platforms and ideas, and from there it gives you a good sounding board to really delve further into researching the candidates.

So, what from there, right? The next step is to really look at voting records of the candidates and see what they’re about, you could say. And a lot of people say that Clinton and Obama are exactly the same. Well, while that can be shown to be a bit true in a lot of regards back and forth there, the easiest way is to pull up voting records. Now, you could go through congressional websites, or you could pull one of many articles already written about this one. There’s a great one on the DailyKos which if the link I just provided there doesn’t work, you can read it over on Jonah Matranga’s blog. And if that isn’t enough, there’s a nice little article from The Washington Post that details it in a bit more reader friendly terms rather than just listing bills and support. When you look at the supports side-by-side, they do agree on a lot of issues, but there are a few things where Obama stands out: health care, Iraq, and education. You can delve further into those articles, there’s no use in me beating the ground on what’s already been traveled.

After I had done so, I happened to be sitting in front of the television on January 28th and I had on MSNBC like I often do. And this was the Kennedy News Conference with Obama and their public endorsement. There was something in that moment so beautiful and serene and perfect. I will openly admit that I was crying. I was inspired and I felt that despite these past 7 years under a very bureaucratic presidency that blurred everything our founding fathers stood for, that there could be something different. The only words I have that could possible describe that feeling aren’t my own: “It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death…and yet…I think…this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.” - Anne Frank, 15 July 1944

So, at this point, you’re probably thinking “Well, Adam, you haven’t mentioned Senator John McCain at all, what about the Republican candidate?” I can not and will not lie about him. I’d love to give him fair coverage here in this blog post and give you some facts about him, but to me, I could never vote for him after 2004. I felt he gave good fair straight-talking runs in 2000 and 2004, but since then I’ve heard him flip-flop on very many views and even on simple things as knowing people and what people have been or not been authorized to say. For that alone and for not sticking to being “The Straight Talk Express,” I cannot give him a fair and unbiased coverage. Maybe I’ll come back to this as it gets closer to the election, but not right now.

All in all, though, why do I choose to write about this today? Four events have lead me to this:

  • On Tuesday morning, I read an interesting editorial on Newsweek’s website from Jonathan Alter called “Hillary’s Math Problem.” If you don’t feel like linking over, I’ll summarize: because of the margin of votes that Obama won by in his sweeps during February, there’s no way that Clinton can catch up, even if she wins every single primary ahead–which is of course, highly unlikely. Alter goes through the Slate Delegate Calculator and shows that the chance of her being able to win everything still puts her behind in pledged delegates, not even including superdelegates, and not even including the fact that she’d still be behind in popular votes too at the same time.
  • Yesterday while watching Morning Joe they had on Senator Evan Bayh from Indiana, who is a superdelegate pledged to Clinton. They were discussing Clinton remaining in the race after all of her wins, and he had a comment that was–and I can’t find a transcript for an exact quote, so don’t shoot me–pretty much saying “We have a Democratic process and the folks in my state have not had a chance yet to have a say in this process, so it wouldn’t be right of her to drop out.”
  • This morning, Alter revisited his Tuesday article with a new one called “Hillary’s New Math Problem.” In this, he goes to detail that even after the wins on Tuesday, if she still were to sweep everything as he detailed out on Tuesday? She still would be behind with number of pledged delegates, and unless she was winning in popular vote and was able to petition for Florida and Michigan to be seated? She’d still be out of it. The math just doesn’t add up.
  • Also this morning, Florida and Michigan are stepping up. Florida Governor Charlie Crist has stated that he wouldn’t be opposed to running a Democratic caucus in Florida and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has also agreed that a do-over election should be held there too. Its an interesting read, in one of the news releases that I saw. And this isn’t about either campaign in particular, this is about democratic processes and the DNC.

    So, those four events combined led me to this blog. I feel its time that I’m no longer silent and I step up and express my opinions and thoughts here. And what I’m going to say is going to be very slanted towards my candidate, but I feel say it with what I believe is full justification and my personal right to my opinions and free speech thereof:

    Senator Clinton: You have done your country a great service and have run a phenomenal campaign against Senator Obama, but maybe it should be time to end this campaign. All of the math doesn’t add up in your favor, and this includes the “fuzzy math” that our current president has spoken about in the past too.

    For one of your supporters to say that it would be unfair to a democratic process for you to drop out when all of the numbers crunched to even the most unfair bias to you show that you stand no chance? Senator that leads me to believe that instead of running a Presidential Campaign Bid in these primaries and caucuses, you’re now running a War of Attrition for a Vice Presidential Campaign Slot. While you keep running this way, you are just keeping your name and your status elevated high, doing continual and permanent damage to the front running candidate just for personal positional gain. The longer you keep this on, you will only be forcing him to choose you as a running mate, which would not be a beneficial move to force upon someone.

    For the good of the Democratic party and for our possible chances of having a good run for office in 2008, I beseech you as an informed citizen to please step down and discontinue your bid. It would not be against the democratic process for all of the states that didn’t have a chance to vote yet. Look at all of the states before now that had candidates drop out before their primaries: while Richardson and Edwards and Kucinich and Biden might have been on ballots, votes for them would not have done any good to yourself or Senator Obama. They understood that for the democratic process to continue, it was time to bow out to the greater force.

    Senator, I beseech you. Please do the same.

    ———-

    Now, I know that might be a little harsh to say and to attack like that, but its the honest truth when you look at all of the facts presented. Its about time to step up and unify behind one candidate and as long as there will be in-party fighting and then the other party’s candidate there to fire opinions down against the front-runner as well? We do nothing but damage the party’s unity.

    Unity, hope, change. That’s what we all want this year and every year. And sadly even though Former-President Clinton was referring to Senator John Kerry in his bid in 2004 for the presidency with the October quote I priorly posted, he was right. His wife is fear-mongering, Obama is calling for hope and change. Maybe he was on to something.

    Obama doesn’t want red states, he doesn’t want blue states, he wants a single solitary United States. And as long as the Democratic party is divided and lets this drag on? Red and blue will remain easily discernable, and partisanship won’t loosen its hold.

    Thanks for bearing with me through this one… I know its long. I’ll go more into this topic at another time…

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      • About The Site


      Thanks for stopping by, folks! My name is Adam J. Cohen, and I'm a guitarist/songwriter in Champaign, IL, recently relocated from Orlando, FL where I'm a UCF grad. Here, you'll find vignettes on my life, setlists and show reviews, and whatever else crosses my mind. Enjoy!