I’m not one of those who flocked to Obama, but if I had to guess about why people seem to like Obama more than Edwards, I’d say that it probably has more to do with Edwards coming off like a disingenuous ambulance-chaser (which is what he was before he ran for office). Also, Edwards tended to demonize his opponents, where Obama doesn’t…particularly in regards to business. Simply put, a pure populist message (which is what Edwards uses) doesn’t fly these days, so the appeal of that message is very, very limited. Didn’t have that much to do with Edwards’ experience level at all.

This may sound lofty, but I do not think it is lofty in the way utopian liberalism suggests. It is lofty the way Reagan was lofty and Kennedy was lofty, which transcends ideology. Set apart from their actual achievements in office (on which scale Reagan dwarfs Kennedy), they both recast this country’s self-understanding – and the world’s understanding of America. This shift occurs in the heart, and it is not about promising heaven on earth. It is about being all we can be at this moment in history. It is about us – not policy; our self-understanding – not self-recreation.

I think you missed something important here. When he talks about Kennedy and Reagan, I’m with him. There was, from what I’ve read, as well as from what I’ve heard from my 90-year old grandmother in the case of Kennedy, a cultural change that came with Kennedy and Reagan. Aside from their blunders, they were better presidents than many (and better than all of the recent presidents, in my opinion). They inspired people to believe that they should contribute something and/or take back the control that they once had over their lives. Granted, the era of feel-good politics was short-lived, but at least it was there.

With Obama, there’s the same sort of cultural change going on. When Sully talks about the shift being about self-understanding, I take it as meaning this: the change from a more libertarian-minded national awareness to one that is more socialist-minded. Where once the people as a whole, or at least a pretty large minority of them, may have believed that their lives should be their own and they didn’t owe anything to their neighbors and that their neighbors didn’t owe anything to them, now it seems as though the people as a whole believe that their lives belong to the state and that they owe something to their neighbors and that their neighbors owe something to them.

To me, this is more dangerous than any elected politician could ever be. After all, even if some politician did become so abusive of our rights that we forcibly removed him, what kind of person would we replace him with? Odds are, someone who is considerably more leftist than the politicians that we have now (once the people have the taste of free money why would anybody expect them to act differently when given the opportunity to start over again?).

Whoops, sorry, I confused the law with the executive order signed by George H.W. Bush in 1989.

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines04/0910-21.htm

As for Obama, I’m slightly optimistic he’ll wind down the Iraq War before an economic crisis hits. I have no such illusions about what McCain would do. But yes, we agree that they’re both worse choices than Barr :)

Before you talk about something I wrote, I suggest you read it.

Here’s the link, come back when you’re done:

http://tinyurl.com/yvdewg

Back ?

Good, because now you can see that I voted for Obama in February because the Republican primary was over by the time it came to Virginia and because voting for him was the best way I knew to contribute to the political death of Hillary Clinton and her husband, which I considered then, and now, a good thing.

As things stand right now, I’ll be voting for Barr/Root, and that would be true regardless of who the Democratic nominee was.

lawlz x 10. you once wrote an article here titled “Why this libertarian is voting for Obama”. jesus dude do you even know who you are?

You’re being disingenuous. Remember the closing paragraph of Doug’s original post?

Does this mean I would vote for Obama in November if he’s the nominee ? No, and, frankly I probably wouldn’t. I also won’t vote for John McCain. But the Democrats deserve to have their best candidate as their nominee, and they deserve to have the Clinton machine destroyed, and if I can help in that process I am happy to.

I think he’s being perfectly clear in the post that his vote “for” Obama was simply a vote to damage Hillary, because she’s an even worse option than Obama.

Now, I can’t speak for Doug, but if I had to put money on it, I think he’ll probably be voting Barr/Root in November.

oil, you have plenty of legitimate reasons to disagree with us here, there’s no need to resort to poisoning the well. When you mischaracterize his position regarding his primary vote for Obama, you attempt to invalidate his post here, even though you know full well that Doug does not in any way support Obama’s politics, DESPITE voting for him in the primary.

Assault weapons ban was under Bush 41.

And let’s be clear about one thing…the biggest reason socialized medicine failed under Clinton was because he put Hillary in charge of the project and she alienated everyone else who worked on it by acting like…well, acting like herself. The Democratic Congress was quite supportive of her efforts until they found out she was a miserable shrew who had no interest in working with others unless they gave her everything she wanted and she didn’t have to give them anything, plus she had a tendency to throw others under the bus publicly for simply disagreeing with her. That was the clearest indication of why she’d have been a horrible president…she’s utterly unsuited for any leadership role because of her personality.

Immigration’s one of the issues where I’m somewhat supportive of McCain. And he’s more publicly supportive of free trade than Obama. It’s not enough to overcome the other baggage, however…the man’s sponsored some of the worst legislation in U.S. history.

I know that you’re under the impression that I’m looking for a perfect candidate, but I’m actually not…I recognize that politics is about tradeoffs and that it’s a matter of weighing plusses and minuses. Currently Barr’s the only candidate to my mind whose plusses outweigh his minuses.

having trouble remembering keeping consistencies straight?

I have no idea what you’re saying here. I’ve always been pretty clear about what I think of the religious right of the Republican party. I’ve also been pretty clear about what I think about the racists who’ve become prominent in the Republican party (and they’re not exclusive to the religious right or the neoconservatives). Overall the GOP is a mess right now and with a very few exceptions I’m not a fan of it at all. But I recognize that long-term they’re still the best bet for pushing some of our ideas, as long as they can get back on track.

Actually- isn’t this a good thing? About the only anti-liberty things that Clinton accomplished were the assault weapons ban and Waco…not that either of those things were good, mind you. But my point is that the incompetence of the first two years of the Clintons destroyed universal healthcare for 15 years, and led to the period of 1994-2000, which was for the most part the most libertarian period in recent American history. A few months back, Cato and Reason both published a graph that showed that the Clinton Era was the first time in recent American history where the percentage of Americans who received more from the government than they gave went down. Under Bush, that percentage hasn’t just gone up, it’s now reached something like 60%.

“I’m just sick of the direction the Republicans have gone in, I’m sick of the fanatical religious right and their <<>>”

having trouble remembering keeping consistencies straight?