I am going to send this to everyone I know who is voting in the Democratic primary.

Clinton's manipulative and divisive. I like Obama. Unfortunately, being in a state where registered independents can't vote in the primaries, I don't get a say.

Did your heart grow three times this day?

Damn, I agree with you again. I will be casting off my independant status for a day to vote for Obama in NJ. While I am pretty sure that if he's elected he'll be coopted by the Washington establishment, as they all are, it might take a little longer with him.

I voted for Bill in 92 because I thought he represented a generational shift. That didn't last long. I can't believe we're now in a "post baby boom" election; the boomers only got two presidents before we washed our hands of them.

Unless of course, McCain wins. Then it's one more pre-boomer. Either way, my generation doesn't seem to have been very successful in presidential terms.

*fixed for accuracy*

All kidding aside, this is about who will lead the free world not social or generational divisions. If we expect to live in the "land of the free and all that jazz" then perhaps we should consider voting for the best candidate, regardless of which demographic they happen to fit.
just my .02

I can't wait to bump this thread in November.

You love to bathe in the misery of others, don't you?

Obama sounds like every black preacher i've ever heard
Hillary sounds like every mother-in-law i ever had

i'm tried of the same old archetypes
show me someone new
give me something original

or nevermind

Don't blame me, I voted for Vermin Supreme!

ohhh I see where you go.
At least I can't say you are an hypocrite... fair enough.

What is important now is not what Hillary Clinton believed about the last war. What is important is how she will react to the next one. We can use one to try and predict the other, but it is a very fuzzy undertaking at best. It is certainly not the cut and dry I told you so you imply here.

Hillary is helped by the fact that in this theoretical matchup, she faces someone who unambiguously would be closest to the Bush mold of foreign policy of all the Republican candidates. Instead of neoconcervatism, he has a sort of neodefeatism towards perpetual war. In some ways that is scarier. He does want to pass on the casualties from our burden to the Iraqi military (Yay us, sucks to be you Iraqi Joe), but he forsee the American public not being "concerned if we're there for one hundred years or a thousand years or ten thousand years."

Since you are measuring electibility, she has no problem on this issue. Remember that the Presidency is a zero sum game. One winner, one loser. There are no style points. Hillary has a lot of give. We can get to the poll that has you all bothered a bit further down.

Let's set aside the circular causation. Over the eight years, your memory of the Clinton presidency in relation to Clinton himself was his interaction with the press and the press interaction with him. However, this was a minor part of his time/duty as President. You can see from GWB that you can ignore the press, and in fact public opinion and function as president.

You don't have to be popular to be President. You just have to be popular enough to be elected President. There is a threshold for that. Hillary meets that threshold. It just so happens that the demographic on the internet (male, younger, higher education) happens not to be her demographic and happens to be Obama's demographic. But we can't let our own prejudices influence our analysis.

It would be like a Raiders fan betting his monthly check every time they played the Patriots. Because he and everyone he knows is a Raider fan (and hates the Patriots). That doesn't mean the Patriots won't win.

But he gets such a small percentage of the vote, and an even smaller net number of votes than even our #2. It is such a Pyhrric victory. You have also dilated time a bit, ignored everything before New Hampshire, and presupposed what will happen on Super Tuesday, and giving more importance to McCain as a positive and less importance to his opponents lacking positives.

The real lesson is that the Republicans have a bad field in a bad year. They have many more incumbents retiring, and are expected to lose seats in both the House AND the Senate.

This is nothing. Everyone endorses the perceived winner (or actual winner even). Those superdelegates, they even change to the winner.

The fourth estate is not a solution to the first three.

You could have cut everything above this paragraph. It reverses what you say above.

I hope it is true that Republicans are motivated to come out against Hillary Clinton. The only way the democracy grows is with more participation instead of less participation. Less people can claim bias, ask for third parties, feel underrepresented, find themselves out of the "triangulation", and so on... if they just voted. Politics might seem like a game. But it is not. People die. People suffer. All based on the decisions of the masses.

This poll is one of the most invalid polls out there. Let me count the ways:

1. It is a national poll. Our elections aren't national.
2. It is a hypothetical poll. It is like asking, "What would you do if you won the lottery?" Except you didn't win the lottery. If you really won the lottery... wouldn't you take more time and think about it?
3. Hillary's negatives are at their peak. Obama can still gain more name recognition. McCain really has not even seen where his negatives can go. Check out the Washington Post today for a hint.
4. The Democratic side has much more media coverage, both positive and negative. People's view of the Republican's is less fleshed out.
5. Ads, personal visits, and media coverage vary by proximity to early primary states. So a national poll from day to day really has wide margins of name recognition/candidate exposure.
6. The polls show much less "strong" support for each candidate and there is a solid chunk of outright undecideds.

Oh, by the way... there are a separate set of problems with the polls involved in this statement:

It mostly has to do with early voting, voter stickiness, when they decide on their candidate, and so on. Basically it boils down to Obama not performing up to the polls (because he surged.. and that means early voters would have voted for Hillary... with polls being a snapshot of the days they were taken over).

This will not be decided today. Both Hillary and Obama will have victories. With proportional representation, everyone comes out with delegates from every congressional district. Delegate calculus is complicated, but in the end, it will roughly be analogous to the number of people that voted for each candidate (with superdelegates then stacking on the winner).

So the best thing you can do is to vote for your preferred candidate when your Primary comes up.

If I like chocolate ice cream and you like mint chocolate chip ice cream and you tell me that my ice cream might have Salmonella (it happens if they are transported with contaminated eggs in unfrozen trucks), am I more likely to:

A. Stop eating chocolate ice cream.
B. Stop eating chocolate ice cream, but start eating mint chocolate chip, or
C. Trust my immune system.

If you want me to eat mint chocolate chip ice cream, stop the BS and just tell me how good the freakin' ice cream is.

Negative attacks on a person's particular candidate just push people out of voting that cycle. Building up attachment to a candidate is not an automatic condition like jumping from one bar to another on a jungle gym.

As an aside, I support Obama over Hillary... but I would sit you down and tell you why I liked Obama before I told you why I don't have Hillary as my first choice. In Republican country, that has helped me move people to the Democrats over time, without getting them to regret their decisions.

And you know, every time a Republican votes Democrat an Angel gets his wings.

i just realized that i'm not registered as a Democrat here, so i can't participate. i marked down "Other" because the Dems were especially spineless and waffling douches during at the time i registered here. now it's bitting me in the ass, because i'd really like to go try to get Obama some support.

are the liquor sales shutdown today ? dam im all out of beer and whiskey.


go obama 2008 !

Too bad you don't have Same Day Registration. But I was just happy when the Motor Voter Law went through.

We aren't one of the Super states. Never have been. But this Saturday, for the first time (I think) Nebraska Democrats are holding a caucus. I'm going to be trying my hardest for Obama. I fear a Clinton presidency. Ignoring the whole "first woman candidate" thing, she is simply too divisive to be effective. Her enemies are many, on both sides of the aisle. I don't know if Obama will do a better job than her. But he doesn't have the political enemies that would hamper him out of spite. Or, if he does, they haven't been making themselves generally known.