Betrayal! Turncoat! Disappointment!

I can't vote for him! He has no principals...!

After all of the kafuffle of the past two weeks, my head is about to explode. It seems some folk are so lost in the leaves they can’t see the tree and have no inkling of the forest. So let’s all take a deep breath… 1…2…3! Okay, now breathe in… deeper…. Deeper… hold it… now slowly exhale.

Now… the time has come, as the walrus said, to return to a little sanity. It seems as the general election campaign unfolds that we have forgotten some very basic realities.

After extensive research into the state constitutions of the aforementioned states, this author has uncovered compelling evidence that Senator Obama will clench 100% of the popular vote in each one, virtually guaranteeing a landslide victory in November over McCain.  

How is that possible you ask?

Gabe's 2nd Birthday $5 Obama Fundraiser Link

My son Gabe (Gabro) turns 2 years old on July 18, less than two weeks away. In the last two years, his mother and I have been blessed with the fact that he has been healthy, playful, social, and loving. For those who have had the chance to spend even a small amount of time with him, I think they can agree that those are just a few of his overall characteristics. We are also blessed to know that he loves NPR in the car, has his own "Daddy's lil Democrat" tshirt, has had "Lefty" the beanie baby donkey in his crib/bed since he was born, and understands the necessity to severely limit Fox News in the household he tends to spit up when watching it) :)

So far, we have $71 raised, 14% of our goal.

Political opinions, election decisions, and other decisions, are often made by groupthink. Obama and McCain both rely on groupthink to haul in large portions of their bases. However, for Republicans, groupthink works. For Democrats, it doesn't. What is groupthink, what are its problems and symptoms, what can be done about it, and why does it help Republicans but hurt Democrats?

There has been quite a bit of work in the area of groupthink, but I do not know if anyone has examined it with regard to political parties and political opinions. I'm not a communications researcher, so my opinions are derived mostly from reading political blogs and newspapers, and watching televised news (mainly CNN) and this diary is rather simplistic. The purpose of this diary is to see what we, as Democrats, can do about our unsuccessful tendency towards groupthink, in order to help elect a more liberal President of the United States.

Barack Obama promises to end the stale and bitter arguments which have divided this country for 40 years, turned our politics into a blood sport, and kept progress from being made.

Pundits have nothing new and of interest to talk about with regards to the 2008 Election , so they are stuck reporting basically nothing and trying their hardest to look and sound like they are excited. Those disappointed in the outcome of the Democratic Primaries are still pulling out that left over Beef Stroganoff (sp) casserole , combing for little bits of meat while ignoring the overwhelming smell of mold in their argument. Republican activists , realizing that for the first time in 6 years , they failed to successfully politicize the Fourth of July to their advantage, are now strategizing to politicize the anniversary of 911. Democratic activists do what they always do when they get bored in a General Election; seek to fine tune their party's candidate , analyzing him with a magnifying glass and going over the party's talking point positions, with a fine toothed comb in preparation for the Fall.

I awaken  at 6AM to the sound of huge garbage trucks grinding bags of malodorous refuse piled curbside.

The garbage men do not collect the litter piled beside them, broken bags torn asunder by the homeless men and women who wander the streets nearby searching   for bottle returns to pay for the next few vials of crack.  Fat flies hover, searching for another place to alight, and the soft buzz of mosquitoes is drowned out by the sound of West Indian jitney vans and private car service drivers honking horns loudly; impatient to speed on their way to the next fare, competing with New York Transit buses for fares and winning at 1.00 a ride to the subway.   The neighborhood stirs and awakens to start yet another day of grinding poverty.

The Republicans can still win, McCain can still win, and the destructive deadly policies of this Bush Administration can still continue.

Think of this, as you call for your donations back, as you attack Senator Obama, rightfully or not, and relegate him to the "Boy Junior Senator from Illinois."

The results of November are not set in stone. There is still a long fight, a long battle left, if we are to take back even a part of Washington for the people who have dedicated themselves to this movement and who have invested so much of their time, their efforts, and their dwindling finances in a common effort to elect a man the next President of the United States. A man, who not 200 hundred years ago would have been brought to this country as a slave bound in shackles and mastered into servitude, a man brave enough to speak to our hopes and dreams for this country, a man who has demonstrated his political abilities, in only a short time, in the halls of national government, a man, who despite the racial divides that still exist in this country, who despite the political divides that tear us apart, who despite the dangers that threaten our country, continues to send forth a message of peace in our time.

I understand the fear.

That gnawing fear that, even though our party has every advantage this year, we'll somehow manage to fuck it up and lose.

It's an awful fear, and I expect everyone here feels it in some measure some days as the election draws closer.

One manifestation of that fear in recent weeks has been a sort of lashing out, an accusation of purity trolling at every diary that has the gall to criticize Obama.

But here's the thing: there has to be a difference between valid criticism of our candidate and purity trolling. And there have to be ways we can be critical of our candidate in constructive ways that will actually strengthen him going into November.

That's right.  That is what we have today; the best government money can buy.

In case you missed it, this isn't just about FISA, the Constitution, or even about the war.  This is about politicians whose votes are bought and sold like cattle at an auction to the highest bidder.

Let's see.  According to Chuck K., Obama's the flip-flopper supreme, changing his mind on every issue from guns to abortion to Iraq.  First of all let's get something straight, politics is not about 100% pure consistency from birth till death.  It's about reviewing facts and circumstances and making decisions that foster enough concensus to lead in a general direction.  Successful politics is about big ideas, general themes, and gaining trust.  It's also absolutely about finesse, ambiguity and nuance.  It has to be.  No one can or should be 100% consistent about every issue all of the time.  To think so is to simply not understand human nature.  

Note: I'm the author of a new book, Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest, but I'm not part of the Obama campaign.

An Associated Press news "analysis"this weekend reveals a great deal about the right-wing attacks on the Obama campaign and media’s complicity in spreading their falsehoods.

The articleby Jennifer Loven begins, "Is Barack Obama close to being shadowed by giant flip-flops and, worse, having the image stick with people all the way to the voting booth?" If the press keeps falsely reporting Obama’s policies as flip-flops when they’re not, he certainly does.

This image suggests some of kind of bad monster movie, where an enormous pair of casual footwear haunts Obama everywhere. But the reality is much worse than cheap sandals: Media coverage in the past few weeks indicates that the press in 2008 may be even worse than in 2000 and 2004, when we "learned" that Al Gore invented the internet, and John Kerry invented his military service in Vietnam.

Barack has taken a lot of flak recently here.
Obama is a Progressive. He always has been.
He spoke out against the war when 58% of the DEMOCRATIC SENATORS VOTED FOR IT. Populista pointed out his work on behalf of this planet for the last two decades. He is unabashedly a supporter of Universal Health Care (albeit a different way of getting there). He proudly supports unions. He is not a DLC Democrat. His general positions are progressive, but take a slight turn to the center on some details.
Posters here pointed out correctly that Obama's current position on FISA is wrong, appears different and doesn't seem to be defensible (exclusivity is not unique to the new legislation).

Well, as usual, we have members of this site saying they won't/might not vote for the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.

It happened in the primaries, with mainly Obama supporters saying they wouldn't vote for Clinton if she became the nominee.

Clinton, and now Obama failed a "purity test" to some people.

To quote New York Mayor Ed Koch has often said that a one-issue candidacy isn’t sufficient to run on. "If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, you should vote for me," Koch often has said. "If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, you should see a psychiatrist."

I have become convinced in the last several weeks, following the emergence of Barack Obama as the probably Democratic Presidential nominee, that the Daily Kos store should be stocking vast quantities of litmus paper . . . because it seems so many Kossacks are proposing this or that absolute test for the candidate.

We have moved from being a critical lot to being a testy lot.  

We seem to want everything to go our way.

We seem to have adopted the mantra "He's either with me, or he is against us."

Why?

And what will that get us?

OK, ick: FISA, faith-based programs, big military, death penalty, etc.

With that out of the way, here's 3 reasons to still vote for Obama, even if you have to hold your nose to do it:

Greetings everyone.  I write this diary entry from sunny Caracas, Venezuela.  I am here for a week to attend the wedding of my cousin this afternoon and have been spending quality time with the half of my family that I rarely see, largely thanks to the distance and expense associated with making the trip.  I thought I would share a very interesting conversation I had with my uncle as he was driving us to the Teleferico, an amazing cable car that takes you up into the mountains for a stunning view of the city...

Gabe's 2nd Birthday $5 Obama Fundraiser Link

My son Gabe turns 2 years old on July 18, 13 days away. His mother and I were asking people to make a simple $5 donation in Gabe's name to commemorate his 2nd birthday. Our goal is to raise $500 for Senator Obama in Gabe's name. We believe this can be a very reachable goal if friends, family, Democrats, Republicans, and other Obama supporters help out.

So far, we have $61 raised, 12% of our goal.