I should probably save my arguments for people who the forum takes seriously...

Ron Paul in 08!

Hah, you better watch yourself Peppers.

Ron Paul is the new "Slintler" of the PRF. You might as well start asking which pop filters were used on In Utero, and how this changed all of 9/11...

tmidgett wrote:I have a couple of bets out already that he will run in '08.

I think latent racism and assassination attempts are the only obstacles he faces. Experience is a red herring. No one cares.

The factor of latent racism, however, is offset by two things:

1) White guilt--white people love to feel good about black people, and he is very easy to feel good about, and

2) The huge 'get out the vote' potential among African-Americans. I mean a turnout that can cover the evangelical vote completely and then some.

Anyway, I have been following him for a long time, and he really has it. Really. He does.

Man, I wish more people had taken me up on my open call for $100 bets against B.Ob running.

I only hooked one person that I remember....I better double-check.

What they meant to say was this:

Paddy Power, said: "From a profit-making point of view we reckon that we really shot ourselves in the foot by giving such good odds on Obama. With each passing day Obama is looking more like he might actually get the Democratic vote, and as far as we're concerned we're going to pay out now because we're covering ourselves in case he does win - if we carried on taking bets we could lose shitloads. So damn you, all who backed him, and as for the rest of you - ha ha! You can't bet on him anymore."

They don't believe the race is over at all - they just said that because they can't actually tell the truth i.e. they fucked up by not taking Obama seriously in the first place and let too many people bet with too high odds.

This seems emblematic of how pernicious Obama's appeal is to those on the left:

Barack Obama wrote:I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.

The "excesses" that Reagan stood against were those of "feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement," not to say trade unions and working class empowerment. Obama counterposes these to capitalist "dynamism and entrepenurship." I know Obama's supporters don't claim to be anything but optimistic liberals looking for advanced capitalism with accountability and a conscience--and I know Obama has been very critical of some of Reagan's policies--but even still I'd think this might be a wake-up call to the lengths Obama cultivates an appeal lacking political content altogether: an emotional appeal to hope itself, whether brutally right-wing or nebulously centrist--so long as it appeals broadly.

How is an appeal to a false commonality--that no one has anything to lose (that there is no class conflict)-- anything but nationalism in service of a refreshed status quo (100 000 more troops, proposes Obama).

Angus Jung, on page 2, wrote:Harper's readers know he's not a progressive.

Andrew. wrote:The "excesses" that Reagan stood against were those of "feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement," not to say trade unions and working class empowerment. Obama counterposes these to capitalist "dynamism and entrepenurship." I know Obama's supporters don't claim to be anything but optimistic liberals looking for advanced capitalism with accountability and a conscience--and I know Obama has been very critical of some of Reagan's policies--but even still I'd think this might be a wake-up call to the lengths Obama cultivates an appeal lacking political content altogether: an emotional appeal to hope itself, whether brutally right-wing or nebulously centrist--so long as it appeals broadly.

How is an appeal to a false commonality--that no one has anything to lose (that there is no class conflict)-- anything but nationalism in service of a refreshed status quo (100 000 more troops, proposes Obama).

Do you honestly expect anyone with a serious chance at the presidency to be able to expose class conflict, directly challenge the capitalist system, and win?

whiskerando wrote:First off, he is not going to run for president in '08. Not. NOT.

maybe in 6 years this post will look very foolish. i don't know for sure.

This made me laugh today.

fidelista wrote:

Andrew. wrote:The "excesses" that Reagan stood against were those of "feminism, the consumer rights movement, the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and the antiwar movement," not to say trade unions and working class empowerment. Obama counterposes these to capitalist "dynamism and entrepenurship." I know Obama's supporters don't claim to be anything but optimistic liberals looking for advanced capitalism with accountability and a conscience--and I know Obama has been very critical of some of Reagan's policies--but even still I'd think this might be a wake-up call to the lengths Obama cultivates an appeal lacking political content altogether: an emotional appeal to hope itself, whether brutally right-wing or nebulously centrist--so long as it appeals broadly.

How is an appeal to a false commonality--that no one has anything to lose (that there is no class conflict)-- anything but nationalism in service of a refreshed status quo (100 000 more troops, proposes Obama).

Do you honestly expect anyone with a serious chance at the presidency to be able to expose class conflict, directly challenge the capitalist system, and win?

First of all, it's very sweet of you to have set up a new account, uploaded an avatar and all, simply to respond to my post. It shows that you care but you are bashful about your stakes in the conversation--and that's genuinely endearing.

Secondly, of course not. But if you look at the list of things identified by Ralph Nader as beyond the pale of legitimate debate or consideration in this country (Nerbly posted this recently), you see it's a list of modest but substantive reforms. There's nothing radical about it. Nader's list does not enumerate anything that would change the political-economy of the United States. It's just stuff that would constitute a claim. A defensible stance that any progressively minded person would avow and that any working class or middle class person, in theory, could be convinced of.

Thirdly, politics as "the art of the possible" is a sham. That's not politics; it's a spectrum of repetition and reiteration. Politics is changing the conception of what is possible. The force of Obama's appeal is that he draws on the rhetoric or appeal of the latter in service of the former. Obama's feel-good realpolitik is at odds with every mention he makes of MLK Jr, for example. It's bad faith. He doesn't simply foreclose honest discussion of race and poverty, he makes such a discussion unfashionable. The stuff of the past.

Fourthly and finally, I'd happily take him over Edwards for two reasons: 1) he's black 2) listening to him grasp at the coattails of the civil rights movement doesn't irk me half as much as Edwards' John-Grisham populism.


Meanwhile, Rick, what you say is irrelevant. You think maintaining a 100+ page flame-war on an internet message board is a political act. My posts here aren't representative of my politics. Unlike you I realize that anonymous fulminating isn't a political act: as everyone with half a brain on the board knows (especially where you are concerned), it's a self-satisfied neurotic compulsion or obsession. Political action happens elsewhere. And that's where I participate in it.

Andrew. wrote:
First of all, it's very sweet of you to have set up a new account, uploaded an avatar and all, simply to respond to my post. It shows that you care but you are bashful about your stakes in the conversation--and that's genuinely endearing.

Secondly, of course not. But if you look at the list of things identified by Ralph Nader as beyond the pale of legitimate debate or consideration in this country (Nerbly posted this recently), you see it's a list of modest but substantive reforms. There's nothing radical about it. Nader's list does not enumerate anything that would change the political-economy of the United States. It's just stuff that would constitute a claim. A defensible stance that any progressively minded person would avow and that any working class or middle class person, in theory, could be convinced of.

Thirdly, politics as "the art of the possible" is a sham. That's not politics; it's a spectrum of repetition and reiteration. Politics is changing the conception of what is possible. The force of Obama's appeal is that he draws on the rhetoric or appeal of the latter in service of the former. Obama's feel-good realpolitik is at odds with every mention he makes of MLK Jr, for example. It's bad faith. He doesn't simply foreclose honest discussion of race and poverty, he makes such a discussion unfashionable. The stuff of the past.

Fourthly and finally, I'd happily take him over Edwards for two reasons: 1) he's black 2) listening to him grasp at the coattails of the civil rights movement doesn't irk me half as much as Edwards' John-Grisham populism.


Meanwhile, Rick, what you say is irrelevant. You think maintaining a 100+ page flame-war on an internet message board is a political act. My posts here aren't representative of my politics. Unlike you I realize that anonymous fulminating isn't a political act: as everyone with half a brain on the board knows (especially where you are concerned), it's a self-satisfied neurotic compulsion or obsession. Political action happens elsewhere. And that's where I participate in it.

I didn't set up a new account to respond to you.

Looking at the list, sure it doesn't seem like much. However, the interests that would be harmed by those proposals own most of our media, so they would never get a fair hearing in the court of public opinion, no matter how much sense they make. Anyone publically acknowledging the desire to break up the media monopolies would face a similar response.

Single payer, for example, Obama would support in a perfect world, and he has gone on record saying so. However, every republican, and half the democrats, would be automatically opposed to such a system. There would be no way to get such a proposal passed through congress, even with a democratic super-majority.

From what I have read, Obama seems to be focusing on the structural changes necessary for these types of ideas to get a fair hearing, while pursuing a moderately progressive agenda. I feel that is the best we can expect at the current time, and any smart candidate who wants to fix these obvious problems with our society, would be wise to stay quiet about most of it until they are in office, and then proceed with caution from there.