{"id":198113,"date":"2007-12-11T17:39:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-11T22:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/12\/11\/jerome-armstrong-has-the-definitive-word-on-obama\/"},"modified":"2007-12-11T17:39:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-11T22:39:00","slug":"jerome-armstrong-has-the-definitive-word-on-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/12\/11\/jerome-armstrong-has-the-definitive-word-on-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Jerome Armstrong Has the Definitive Word on Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;Blogfather&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mydd.com\/story\/2007\/12\/11\/13220\/987\">just put his finger on my problem with Obama<\/a>, and I did not realize that I hadn&#8217;t gotten what was wrong already.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, someone who writes better than I ever will.<\/p>\n<p>Barack Obama is lacking in the most basic experience of a presidential candidate: He has never run a real campaign against a Republican.<\/p>\n<p>His state senate races were in a safe Dem district, and for Senate, he ran against Alan F###ing Keyes.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;\" ><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">All of his real political campaigns have been against Democrats, in the primaries<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:130%;\">.<\/span> <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">&#8230;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">This questionnaire in and of itself is just one thing, but Obama&#8217;s response to it coming out is unsettling in it&#8217;s pattern of positioning himself above the partisan fray. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Obama has never faced a serious Republican challenge. Not one.<\/span><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"> Obama has no experience of the hostile and polarized political environment that he&#8217;d enter were he to win the nomination, and he has distanced himself from partisan Democrats during his campaign for the nomination. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s spin to question how Obama might actually do once he confronts Republicans on the campaign trail, instead of across the table in those bipartisan negotiations he longs for making happen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">My guess is that, once he&#8217;s personally experienced the confrontation of the Republican machine, it would totally transform the way Obama views campaigns. Rather than <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">viewing partisan progressives as something to Sister Soulja<\/span> while he appeases the non-partisan media machine, he would come to realize the value, in today&#8217;s partisan environment, of engaging partisan Democrats as part of his campaign. He&#8217;d prepare to battle with us, rather than trash us as tokens of the past.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">&#8230;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">For Democrats that think about how a campaign might position itself best to win, the question really comes down to this: <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;\" >Do you believe that this nation is going to transcend partisan politics in 2008?<\/span><\/span>  <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-style:italic;\">(emphasis mine)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I disagree on only one point, the media machine is not non-partisan. It&#8217;s had it&#8217;s tongue up the right wing&#8217;s ass for way too long.<\/p>\n<p>Hillary <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">might<\/span> win. She is the most vetted candidate in history, and she understands the war, and even savors it a bit.<\/p>\n<p>Edwards <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">would<\/span> win. He has been blooded by the 2004 election, and his own contentious senate campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Obama <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">can&#8217;t<\/span> win. The press loves him right now, because he sucks up to them, and the &#8216;Phants are keeping their powder dry. He is bringing a knife to a gun fight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;Blogfather&#8221; just put his finger on my problem with Obama, and I did not realize that I hadn&#8217;t gotten what was wrong already. Once again, someone who writes better than I ever will. Barack Obama is lacking in the most basic experience of a presidential candidate: He has never run a real campaign against &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1002,1064,978,977],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-writing","category-media","category-politics","category-presidential-campaign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}