Aside from the obvious plus of george w bush leaving office for good, the two big hyped canidates are a black and a woman

but WHY-when the election is 21 months or whatever-are these 2 people getting so much attention for presidential aspirations?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070222/ap_ ... nton_obama

the presidential race seems to be more like obanma vs. clinton than democrat vs. republican.

The media in this country is just flat awful, that's why.

I don't know which side of party lines I'll vote, but as of now I haven't decided much ...

Obama: Need to hear a lot more about his politics as he doesn't have much of a track record to go by.

Hillary: Don't like her, would never vote for her.

McCain: Really like him in 2000, not so much anymore. I haven't totally ruled him out like Hillary, but he has a VERY long way to go before I would think about voting for him.

Guilani: Just don't know enough about him. He really seems like my kind of republican. He leans toward the middle, and is on the right side of a lot of issues I disagree with the Republican Party on. He's my favorite thus far.


I don't like making up my mind early, and won't do so. Edwards interests me, but he will really have to win me over in the coming year. Obama, I just don't know enough about him to say. Time will tell.

I think you've answered your own question. A black guy and a woman. But that of course is only part of the story. The media interest in Hillary has always been a puzzle to me. She's a moderate Democrat with a famous husband. She's a mixed bag in the Senate and otherwise unremarkable. Not bad, just unremarkable.

I think the obsession with Obama is interesting because he's the closest thing to a new BILL Clinton that we've had since...well...Bill Clinton. He's charismatic, very smart, and very savvy. As a bonus, he's thus far less divisive than Bill Clinton, and certainly less so than Hillary (although her divisiveness is not really her doing but a manufactured hysteria from right-wing douche bags).

IMO, the media is hyping up the Democratic front runners over Republicans for a couple of reasons. Mainly, the Republican field thus far is quite appalling. The closest thing to a real candidate is Guiliani, a former mayor. Brownback is a scary right-wing fundamentalist. Romney has renounced virtually every position he ever had in order to pander to the scary right-wing fundamentalists. And McCain has sold out so much that he now endorses TORTURE. He's basically a shell of the man he was in 2000. It's really quite sad.

The other reason is because of the public's Bush-fatique and cynicism of every Republican candidate who sucks up to him. Even Guiliani came out the other day and endorsed Bush's utterly pathetic escalation in Iraq. So has McCain, and he's supposed to be maverick!

And I say this as someone who WANTS to vote for a Republican. I think a divided Congress and WH just works better, as it did under Bill Clinton the Republican Congress. But it would have to be a Republican I could stomach, and that's Guiliani (as long as he's not running against Obama). But Guiliani has little to no chance of getting out of the primaries. He's pro-choice for one thing. And right now the scary right-wing fundamentalists control the Republican party and dictate its platform.

I'm not sure I agree with you when you say Guiliani has no chance at getting out of the primaries, but other than that I ... gulp ... pretty much agree with most of your comments.

Though i don't think Guiliani and McCain supporting Bush's escalation plan is necessarily a bad thing. I'm really not sure what I will want to do in 2008 regarding Iraq, but at the moment I think escalation is the right answer. My logic being: We can't just pull out, we can't phase down the troops just yet and leaving them at their current levels is suicide.

I'm not sure what I think should be done about Iraq, and I really look forward to debates in 07 about possible courses of action. I am very interested to hear how each candidate wants to handle it, as it is such a tough decision.

Can you spell d-i-s-t-r-a-c-t-i-o-n...

I'd just get out while there is still a functioning army available. Fortify the hell out of Kuwait and Saudi as a safeguard if needs be because the US are just stuck in the middle of a massive civil war at the moment and their presence is pointless unless they pump something into the area of 500,000 troops in. (I'm taking that figure as it was the approx troop to civilian level used to stablise Northern Ireland in the early 70s during the height of the troubles which was pretty mild compared to the Iraqi bloodbath) I read a very interesting piece a while back from Andrew Sullivan which made the very valid point that if the US got out and the killing continued the Arabian states would be unable to blame the US for the continuing violence and force them to deal with what to me looks like their version of the European Reformation wars.

Bradley, what is the distraction and what is this distracting from?

Yes, this is very anticipated:

1. No sitting Pres or Vice Pres running. In 2004, there was virtually no Republican primary. This year the fields are wide open.

2. Money. Candidates need money, lots of it. So they hold a fundraiser, which gets reported in the press, raising buzz. Then other candidates see the buzz, need money, and hold funraisers of their own, more buzz etc. This will be a billion-dollar election.

3. Hillary is getting lots of attention because she has lots of money already. Obama is getting lots of attention because of his charisma. The media tries to bring up the Black part and the response is largely Who cares. The Republicans interesting because they are ALL flip-flopping one way or the other.

My prediction is that television will unwatchable in Summer Fall 2008 because of the all the attack commercials.

Exactly.

Isn't Gore still going to announce whether he's going to run or not?

If Gore gets the Democratic ticket with either Obama or hillary as VP (though I doubt Hillary will settle for VP), I can see him easily winning the election.

Technically, gore did get more votes when he ran against Bush in 2000 and since then, I really think he's gotten even more popular. His movie's about to win the Oscar for Best Documentary, he's been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and after the 2000 election, at least to me, it seems like he wasn't so stiff anymore (I mean he did appear on SNL didn't he? )

Republicans have alienated the rest of America and have one base demographic left, and that's the crazy religious fundamentalists. They control the Republican party. And Guiliani would be their LAST choice.

Two things could save him. He pulls a Romney and renounces every view he ever had in order to pander to the crazy religious fundamentalists. Or whatever is left of the base pulls together and overrides their powerful voice within the party, an exceedingly difficult task.



No offense, but this is a war you and every other Republican supported and have been spectacularly wrong about every single step of the way. That you would attempt to prognosticate yet again about the best course of action, and invoke logic of all things, seems a tad absurd. One would imagine that someone who's so wrong about so much would be a bit more chastened about what he thinks is the right course of action for a war he supported and helped fuck up in the first place.

Say along with me: "You know what, progressives have been right this whole time about Iraq, maybe we should be listening to what they have to say for once."

As long as it's someone who doesn't want to continue the Bush/Cheney-debacle status quo. That's what Eagle and other Republican supporters seem to want - to keep doing what Bush says no matter how disastrous and nonsensical - and that's what makes me hesitant about Guiliani.

Here's a comment from Sully that's sums up your point I think: "Bush has somehow managed to give the U.S. a soft-power deficit - in a war against some of the most barbaric, evil enemies we have ever faced. That really is an achievement. And it will take another generation to fix it. It's one reason Obama is so appealing, I think. Electing him after Bush-Cheney would amount to the strongest signal that America is moving past the Bush-Cheney era. That's a message the world is desperate to hear, and it would make enlisting more allies in the war against Islamist terror much easier."

Historically some other ideas:
James Polk- decided in the house..
Teddy Rosevelt- Bull Moose Party..
Truman- who would replace FDR??

Currently, there's a war on, the end of two terms, first women, first black, first wife/husband.. First 'boomer'.. (George is old school..)

Gore will probably wait a year, after the other candidates have beaten each other up, and then enter the race as the Elder Statesman (and maybe even Oscar and Nobel prize winning Statesman at that). He has said more than once that he will say what he thinks if he runs again and will not listen to his political advisors, and I think that may be just the welcome change we need. (I certainly see Edwards doing the same thing now -- telling the truth as he sees it, damn the consequences. A very laudable thing, if you ask me.) Gore actually does have a good sense of humor, too. After all, his daughter is one of the head writers on Futurama, she must have gotten it someplace. (That's why Gore's head is often seen on the show, with his real voice.)

Gore/Obama in 2008! He won once, why not again?

Kristin Gore is his daughter??? Jesus, why did I not see the connection!

Please don't get our hopes up like this!

I'll vote for whoever focuses more on our space program

Not to mention it's gonna delay the transition to full-on idiocracy for another 4-8 years...

Yep; went to Harvard, wrote for the Lampoon, did some work on Saturday Night Live for a bit, went to Futurama, and now is writing novels.

There's the beeblebrox I know, love and ignore.

Kind of like you do with reality.

Eagle: "I think escalation is the right answer."

Me: "That's what Eagle and other Republican supporters seem to want - to keep doing what Bush says no matter how disastrous and nonsensical"

Sticking your head in the Iraqi sand with all the other Bush supporters won't change reality, no matter how much you choose to ignore it.

I don't think he's going to run. He hasn't ruled it out, but the field is getting crowded and won't really thin out until it's too late for him to make a decision.

Too bad.

Look, despite what conservative want to imply, you have to admit that for the past 16 years, the American people have not shown any great desire to elect the crazy conservatives into power. Clinton won handily twice, the majority of the population wanted Gore, and then Bush won "re"election by the smallest margun any President has ever been elected by, and there were numerous election irregularities (which is why all exit polls showed Kerry winning -- for some reason, the numbers from those electronic machines had something different). Then, in case our voice wasn't heard enough, Republicans were trounced in the 2006 election.

People never were really Bush/Cheney supporters and now people are really sick of them.

I am not sticking my head in the sand. I am very open to listening to the candidates regarding their respective Iraq plans. Long term I have no idea what I think is best.

Short term, I think it would destabilize the region to quickly pull out, and that's not something I support. As such, I feel that for the time being, escalation is the correct answer.

Certainly some do, and they can count Eagle firmly in their pro-Bush-war camp. He's been behind the guy through war, the lies, the cover-ups, the torture, the suspension of habeas corpus, detainees in Gitmo, and now the escalation.

In fact, the only issue the base has really railed against Bush on is when he actually showed some sparkle of compassion for illegal immigrants. Then, boy, did questioning the president suddenly become acceptable.