You really think Hillary Clinton is more of a conservative or a hawk than Colin Powell, the guy who sold the invasion of Iraq and one of the architects of Gulf War I, Jim Baker, who put together the coalition for Gulf War I, and Clark who was a former general? FISA deals with overseas intelligence.
I think there was a general perception that Obama was too the left of Hillary Clinton and it seems like most of Obama most ardent supporters have been those on the left. As FB noted though Obama has been careful in his rhetoric and at face value there really isn't anything there that would indicate that he wouldn't be center left and not far left. For me I chalk this up to that his rhetoric was very nebulous and many people, particularly the Move On set projected a certain set of expectations that Obama didn't necessarily have. As for his appointments while they certainly are not far left and if that is what you are looking for I can understand your dissapoint but in the overall political spectrum they are definately left of center and if you consider "progressive" as being opposed to "conservative" they are overall on the progressive side.
This only became the case after Hillary went a bit nuts after Super Tuesday. For the first part of the campaign, Obama dominated amongst Republicans and moderate Independents in the primaries. That really didn't change until the "3AM" ads going into Texas/Ohio which seemed to work pretty effectively with independents and Republicans - but that wasn't a change on policy so much as risk.
I think Move On.org got on board with the Obama campaign long before the 3AM adds. My impression, and this is my own impression, is that Obama's base of support early on was from liberals. Consider here on clutchfans the most ardent and early Obama supporters have been the most liberal. I found that to be true offline also.
MoveOn got on a few days after Edwards dropped out - they were staunchly anti-Clinton and their base was split 50/50 between Obama and Edwards. But looking back at exit polls, it seems his support was a bit mixed. Obama performed better amongst liberals than moderates/conservatives in the early states when divided by ideology. However, he performed better amongst Independents & Republicans than he did with Democrats when divided by Party. I'm not sure how exactly that worked out, but it seems that his base was liberal Democrats and then Indepedents & Republicans. He did substantially better in open primaries than closed ones because of that.
I wouldn't consider myself ultra liberal. I think he appealed to young adults because he wasn't constrained by party dogma and his relative youth made him impervious to Conservative charges of being elitist, snooty, or professorial. Ron Paul once remarked that it was odd that his own supporters would consider Obama their second choice after him even though they had completely different platforms. So it wasn't only traditional lefties that Obama appealed to. It couldn't have been because they weren't primarily the ones filling up his massive internet war chest much earlier than the Iowa caucus.
You didn't establish anything. I'm liberal/progressive and think Obama's appointments are terrific. He's doing something as old as politics... you appoint people that appeal to the moderate/center/right, which gives you political cover to pursue a progressive agenda and, also very important, get elected to a second term. That also works in reverse, if you have someone governing from the Right who's smart enough to do it. Anyone who doesn't think that's what he's doing simply isn't looking closely enough. Frankly, I like a tough, pragmatic group of people as the "face" of our foreign/defense policy. Liberals have never been shy about kicking the crap out of those who wish ill on this country. And anyone who doesn't believe that just doesn't know history. In my opinion.
absolutely. and believe me, i will never forgive powell. but that doesn't mean i don't find him to be more moderate, at least today, than clinton. gulf war I was necessary, and baker did a superb job at creating the coalition. and as far as more recent examples for clark, powell even when clark was smoking hillary coolaid, he was great on his analysis on what was needed in terms of foreign policy, especially the middle east. and powell's analysis on the russia/georgia crisis is superb. where is samantha powers?
Election is like Opium for the mass. It solves 20% of the problems, but offer people the delusional sense of full controlling themselves. It has the value of the concept of ......GOD, anaesthetizing your nerve for a while, then you live on.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081128/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/obama_adviser WASHINGTON – An adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign who was forced to resign earlier this year after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster" is now working on the transition team for the agency Clinton is expected to lead. State Department officials said Friday that Samantha Power is among a group of foreign policy experts that the president-elect's office selected to help the incoming administration prepare for Clinton's anticipated nomination as secretary of state. The Obama transition team's Web site includes Power's name as one of 14 members of the "Agency Review Team" for the State Department. Clinton's role at State is expected to be announced after the Thanksgiving weekend. Power's apparent rehabilitation is another sign of that impending move. Clinton's office declined to comment on Power's inclusion in the State Department transition, but an official close to the Obama transition team said Power had "made a gesture to bury the hatchet" with Clinton and that it had been well-received. Power has been given an official State Department e-mail address and has been seen in the building, said the State officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the transition. A State Department spokesman referred questions to Obama's transition team, which later declined to comment. Power, a Harvard professor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and noted commentator on genocide, is dealing with global humanitarian issues as part of the team, according to the officials. It is not clear if she is in line for any State Department job, they said. Power made headlines in March during the height of the fierce fight for the Democratic presidential nomination when she called Clinton "a monster" in an interview with a Scottish newspaper, setting off angry exchanges about the tenor of the campaign. Power told the Scotsman newspaper that Clinton would stop at nothing to defeat Obama. "She is a monster, too," Power said in the interview. "She is stooping to anything." Power added that "the amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive." A few hours after her comments were published, Power announced her resignation, saying the remarks were inexcusable and contradictory to her admiration for Clinton. At the time, Power said that Obama had rebuked her for the comment and "made it absolutely clear that we just couldn't make comments like this in his campaign." Clinton's campaign seized on the remark, sending an e-mail to supporters telling them about the "monster" comment and asking for contributions to "show the Obama campaign that there is a price to this kind of attack politics."
Didn't Clinton win most of the open primaries, NH, CA and MI? I'm not sure which other states had open primaries. It seems to me that Obama did better in caucus states which aren't open by nature due to his ground organization rather than drawing from independents and moderates.
This is good news. I'm very high on Samantha Power and was disappointed she got the boot, but I'm glad she's back.
