Open Thread: Big Talk Butters No Parsnips
3 days ago
Showing posts with label Endorsements. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Endorsements. Show all posts
Monday, November 3, 2008
Barack Obama for President
My favorite blogger, Andrew Sullivan, just wrote a new, epic must-read article explaining why we need Obama at this time in our country's history:
As someone once said, in the unlikely story of America, there is never anything false about hope. Obama, moreover, seems to bring out the best in people, and the calmest, and the sanest. He seems to me to have a blend of Midwestern good sense, an intuitive understanding of the developing world that is as much our future now as theirs', an analyst's mind and a poet's tongue. He is human. He is flawed. He will make mistakes. His passivity and ambiguity are sometimes weaknesses as well as strengths.Read The Whole ThingBut there is something about his rise that is also supremely American, a reminder of why so many of us love this country so passionately and are filled with such grief at what has been done to it and in its name. I endorse Barack Obama because I will not give up on America, because I believe in America, and in her constitution and decency and character and strength.
And the world needs that America now as much as it ever has. Can we start that healing, that rebirth, tomorrow?
Yes. We. Can.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Esquire Endorsed Obama; First in 75 Years
Esquire magazine endorsed Barack Obama today -- the first such endorsement in 75 years.
On Obama:
Senator Obama is the only one of the two candidates who seems to believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, that there are those things -- be they the guarantees in the Bill of Rights or mountains in Alaska -- that we own together. Barack Obama stands, however inchoately and however diffidently, for the notion that a common purpose is necessary for common problems, that "government," as it is designed in our founding documents, is our collective responsibility. It is this collective responsibility that built America into a great power without peer in the history of the world. And it is this collective responsibility that has succumbed to nearly thirty years of phony rightist populism, corporate brigandage, and the wildly cheered abandonment of a common American civic purpose. It is shocking that in America an argument for salvaging the common good is regarded as a radical notion by anyone, but that is where we are. And that is what Barack Obama seems to stand for. After all, as a young man with his potential, he could have headed straight to midtown Manhattan and made a fortune. Instead, he took a church job working for poor people in Chicago, and for his troubles, he and those poor people have been viciously jeered by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin. Such is their regard for the common good. And such is Obama's promise. And in that, however inchoately and however diffidently, Obama stands not only against Bushism, but against Reaganism, which gave it birth. And that is more than enough.
On McCain:
[Obama's] Republican counterpart is one of the first presidential candidates in history to run as a parody of himself. John McCain has decided on a cheap and dishonorable campaign. He has embraced the tactics with which he was slandered in 2000, and he has hired the people responsible for them. In so doing, he has become something of a mockery of everything he once purported to be. He has stated that he wouldn't now vote for his own immigration bill. He has operated in violation of the very campaign-finance law that bears his name. And even though his own body bears the scars of torture, he has silenced himself on the issue of the torture sanctioned and designed by the government he seeks to lead, so as not to alienate "the base." The most underutilized trope of the campaign is the notion that John McCain is running against John McCain.
Read the Whole Thing
Monday, October 27, 2008
NASCAR Patriarch Endorses Obama
One of the founding fathers of NASCAR, Junior Johnson, endorsed Barack Obama in a fundraising email to Obama supporters:
My family and I have given this election a lot of thought.
Our country is in a rough spot, and we're going to need some serious change. There's only one candidate ready to deliver it -- and that's Barack Obama...
Every day I talk to someone else who's never voted for a Democrat, but now they're voting for Barack Obama. They realize that Barack understands what we're going through here in North Carolina. And they're ready for change.
So I've made up my mind, and I'm ready to get involved. I know that I could never have won a race without my pit crew, and I know Barack can't win this one without us.
Newspaper Endorsements: An Obama Landslide
Editor and Publisher magazine has updated its list of newspapers that have endorsed either McCain or Obama. The results? A 3-to-1 Obama landslide, with a deluge of papers that backed Bush now in the Obama column:
Two more major papers that had backed Bush in 2004--the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Providence Journal--came out for Obama, joining at least 35 others who had done the same thing already.
In another embarrassment for McCain, the Indianapolis Star, which also supported Bush in 2004, revealed that it would not endorse this year. At least two other Bush 2004 papers, the Ann Arbor (Mich.) News and the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, took the same route.
Another paper just now backing Obama: The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, which made no endorsement in 2004. He also earned the nod from the Financial Times and the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.
Obama still leads by almost 3-1 in all editorial endorsements. Updated with the latest from today his lead stands at 180 to 75.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Anchorage Daily News Endorses Obama
The Alaska newspaper of record, the Anchorage Daily News, endorsed Obama for President:
Sen. McCain describes himself as a maverick, by which he seems to mean that he spent 25 years trying unsuccessfully to persuade his own party to follow his bipartisan, centrist lead. Sadly, maverick John McCain didn't show up for the campaign. Instead we have candidate McCain, who embraces the extreme Republican orthodoxy he once resisted and cynically asks Americans to buy for another four years.
It is Sen. Obama who truly promises fundamental change in Washington. You need look no further than the guilt-by-association lies and sound-bite distortions of the degenerating McCain campaign to see how readily he embraces the divisive, fear-mongering tactics of Karl Rove. And while Sen. McCain points to the fragile success of the troop surge in stabilizing conditions in Iraq, it is also plain that he was fundamentally wrong about the more crucial early decisions. Contrary to his assurances, we were not greeted as liberators; it was not a short, easy war; and Americans -- not Iraqi oil -- have had to pay for it. It was Sen. Obama who more clearly saw the danger ahead.
Friday, October 24, 2008
McCain Adviser Charles Fried Votes for Obama
CURRENT McCain adviser and staunch conservative Charles Fried endorsed Obama today and said that he voted for him by absentee ballot. Ouch, kinda close to home for Sen. McCain...
Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.
This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."
Fried is exceptionally thoughtful and principled; his vote for Obama is especially noteworthy.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Republican Former Minn. Governor Endorses Obama
The flood of Obamacons continues unabated:
Arne Carlson, a former Republican governor in Minnesota, has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Carlson said Thursday that the Illinois senator's stances on the Iraq war, the economy and green energy goals won him over. Carlson, who served from 1991 to 1998, also cited recent comments by GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann questioning whether politicians have "pro-America or anti-America views."
"Regardless of our party, regardless of our partisan inclinations, there is no interest more compelling than the interest in the well-being of the United States," Carlson said at a gathering of Obama supporters at the state Capitol.
Carlson added, "He has laid out for this nation a vision for a national purpose."
Ordinary Conservatives for Obama - Video
This is a pretty powerful video of ordinary, everyday conservatives speaking out on why they're supporting Obama over McCain in this election:
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Obamacon Quote of the Day
Larry Gellman opines on the state of the GOP:
This latest descent completes the utter destruction of the Republican party as a force for good in this country. Until eight years ago, Republicans had a deserved reputation for being more socially and fiscally conservative and responsible. When the party culture became infected with the Bush/Rove/Cheney virus, it began to morph into a divisive force that possessed none of those qualities.
Now the mass exodus is underway. Anyone who is fiscally conservative can't call himself a Republican anymore. Anyone who is a religious Christian can't honestly be part of this since Jesus preached about caring for the sick and the poor--not about eliminating reproductive choice or issues related to same-sex marriage. There's nothing Christian about the agenda of the Religious Right--it's a totally political movement focused on issues that Jesus never mentioned and they ignore the issues about which Jesus preached constantly.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Conservative Ken Adelman Endorses Obama
Conservative foreign policy hawk Ken Adelman joins the ranks of the Obamacons.
A brief bio from the New Yorker:
Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.
In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life.
Here's an excerpt from his endorsement:
Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?
Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.
When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.
Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.
That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.
Fareed Zakaria Endorses Obama
Highly respected foreign affairs journalist and commentator Fareed Zakaria endorsed Barack Obama for President. No doubt right-wing pundits will now accuse Mr. Zakaria of being a communist terrorist sympathizer.
On McCain:
To watch McCain address the current economic crisis is to see a man out of step with his time. His responses have been a recitation of old slogans—cut taxes, limit the government, cut spending—that are largely irrelevant to today's problems. Does anyone really believe that tackling earmarks will get credit markets functioning? In some ways, McCain's intellectual fatigue reflects the exhaustion of the ideological revolution begun by Reagan and Thatcher. The country needs fresh thinking that is ready to accept new facts and new ideas. It's a new world out there...
McCain's problem is not only one of substance but perhaps more crucially of temperament. Throughout the campaign, he has been volatile and impulsive. He moves suddenly and unpredictably—one day suspending his campaign, the next urging that the chairman of the SEC be fired, the third blaming Democrats for the economic crisis.
On Obama:
Obama's broader economic agenda—health-care reform, infrastructure investments and a major push for alternative energy—are large solutions to the growing problems of our times. They are not radical, but neither are they overly constrained by the fear of seeming liberal. Bill and Hillary Clinton were always careful not to stray too far from the country's comfort zone. Obama is pushing to change the parameters of that zone. That's leadership.
On foreign policy, Obama is cool to McCain's hot, discriminating about the fights he wants to pick. He argues for greater international cooperation and the aggressive use of diplomacy. He sees a world in which America doesn't have to get adversarial with everyone and tries instead to work with other countries—of whatever hue—to solve the common problems we face...
I admit to a personal interest. I have a 9-year-old son named Omar. I firmly believe that he will be able to do absolutely anything he wants in this country when he grows up. But I admit that I will feel more confident about his future if a man named Barack Obama became president of the United States.
Read More
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Conservative Newspapers Endorse Obama
The flood of conservative and other newspapers endorsing Obama continues unabated:
The Eagle - Bryan/College Station:
Houston Chronicle:
Of great concern is McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Like Obama, she has little experience in governing, but unlike the Illinois senator, she is a candidate of little intellectual curiosity who appears to be hopelessly unready to be president. The fact that people are confused by the difference between Palin and comedian Tina Fey's caustic impersonation is clear evidence that Palin should not be, as they say, a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Obama appears to possess the tools to confront our myriad and daunting problems. He's thoughtful and analytical. He has met his opponents' attacks with calm and reasoned responses. Viewers of the debates saw a poised, well-prepared plausible president with well-articulated positions on the bread-and-butter issues that poll after poll indicate are the true concerns of voters. While Arizona Sen. John McCain and his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin have struck an increasingly personal and negative tone in their speeches, Obama has continued to talk about issues of substance.
Perhaps the worst mistake McCain made in his campaign for the White House was the choice of the inexperienced and inflammatory Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Had he selected a moderate, experienced Republican lawmaker such as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison with a strong appeal to independents, the Chronicle's choice for an endorsement would have been far more difficult.
Others: Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, Idaho Statesman, Las Vegas Sun, Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal, Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal, Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, Daily Breeze of Torrance, Ca., Rockford (Ill.) Register, Nashua (NH) Telegraph, Concord (NH) Monitor, Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune, Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard, Daily Herald of Arlington, Ill, Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, Mid-Columbia Tri-City Herald.
Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama
This is big news. Former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President:
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Sunday that he will break with his party and vote for Sen. Barack Obama. "He has both style and substance. I think he is a transformational figure," Powell said on NBC's Meet the Press.
"I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities -- and you have to take that into account -- as well as his substance -- he has both style and substance," Powell said. "He has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president."
Powell noted that McCain has been a good friend for 25 years, but expressed disappointment in the negative tone of the GOP campaign, as well as in McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the vice presidential nominee.
"Now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don't believe she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president," Powell said. "And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made."
Friday, October 17, 2008
Washington Post Endorses Obama
The conservative Washington Post endorsed Obama yesterday:
THE NOMINATING process this year produced two unusually talented and qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.
The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during this long race. Yes, we have reservations and concerns, almost inevitably, given Mr. Obama's relatively brief experience in national politics. But we also have enormous hopes.
Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Ex-Governor Un-Endorses McCain
Republican ex-Governor William Milliken of Michigan today un-endorsed McCain, saying he is disappointed with McCain for the tenor of his campaign and his increasingly negative personal attacks against Barack Obama.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Wife of Sen. Chuck Hagel to Endorse Obama
Lilibet Hagel, wife of Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, plans to endorse Obama:
Lilibet Hagel has scheduled a 10 a.m. news conference in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday with Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of Republican President Eisenhower. Susan Eisenhower also is an Obama supporter. [...]
She said it will be her first endorsement of a Democrat and that perilous world conditions were a factor. "The fact is we're in two wars, two of the longest we've ever been in. We've run up a third of our nation's debt in just the past eight years. We're in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression," she said.
The Hagels know John and Cindy McCain, and she said her endorsement was not meant to slam them.
"This isn't anti-McCain. This is pro-Obama. I'm just convinced he's the right person," she said.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Wingnut Krauthammer Calls Election for Obama
If you don't know who ultra-conservative wingnut Charles Krauthammer is, well, that's just as well. Suffice it to say that he isn't a huge fan of Obama.
Regardless of that, he basically just dismissed McCain and called the race for Obama. Pretty stunning.
TPM reports:
One thing to watch for: Prominent conservatives essentially conceding that the race is over. This morning, none other than Charles Krauthammer waves the white flag:Part of reassurance is intellectual. Like Palin, he's a rookie, but in his 19 months on the national stage he has achieved fluency in areas in which he has no experience. In the foreign policy debate with McCain, as in his July news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama held his own -- fluid, familiar and therefore plausibly presidential.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a "second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament." Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition -- do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.
As if that weren't enough, Krauthammer also compares Obama's temperament to that of Ronald Reagan, causing no shortage of wailing and gnashing of teeth at McCain's Arlington HQ. Not exactly the message the McCain team wanted from conservative megaphones on the morning after Sarah Palin's big makeover debate.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Conservative Wick Allison Supports Obama
This is pretty remarkable. Conservative writer, former board member and publisher of the ultra-conservative National Review Wick Allison today wrote an article endorsing Obama:
Read MoreToday it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.
This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse...
“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Sarah Palin's Mother-in-Law Skeptical
Right from the horse's mother-in-law's mouth:
"I'm not sure what she brings to the ticket other than she's a woman and a conservative. Well, she's a better speaker than McCain," - Faye Palin, Sarah Palin's mother-in-law, laughing.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Cindy McCain's Sister Voting for Obama
Hmm:
"I'm not voting for McCain," Kathleen Hensley Portalski tells Us. "I have a different political standpoint.
"I'm voting for Obama," the Phoenix resident says. "I think his proposals to improve the country are more positive and I'm not a big war believer"...
Portalski's son Nathan, an aerospace machinist, is also backing Obama.
"I wouldn't vote for John McCain if he was a Democrat," he tells Us. "I would not vote at all before I'd vote for him.
"I question whether Cindy is someone I'd want to see in the White House as first lady," he adds.
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