There are eight states which John McCain would not have won if the Democrats voting for him had instead voted for Barack Obama.
These states are:
Missouri
Montana
Georgia
South Dakota
Arizona
West Virginia
Kentucky
Louisiana
This represents a total of 64 Electoral votes.
As it stands, the Electoral count is 364/174, Obama.
Had it not been for Democrats voting for McCain, this count would have been 428/110.
The PUMA voting block may not have prevented an Obama presidency, but it *did* prevent Obama from having a Reaganesque win… and thus, with it, his attempt to garner the mantle of being the Democrat’s Ronald Reagan.
And — lest anyone think that these are states which could not have been won by a Democrat anyways — all of these states (with the exception of South Dakota) were won by Bill Clinton in either 1992 or 1996… or both.
Missouri (Clinton 92/96)
Montana (Clinton 92)
Georgia (Clinton 92)
Arizona (Clinton 96)
West Virginia (Clinton 92/96)
Kentucky (Clinton 92/96)
Louisiana (Clinton 92/96)
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west virginia From December 2007 to March 2008, I wrote various drafts of a proposal on how our political parties — starting in 2012 — might adopt primary election procedures that would better serve our country in selecting presidential candidates. I originally drafted a hypothetical calendar for 2008, based on general election results from 2004. Now that we have the results for 2008, I can now propose a calendar specific to 2012.
The system by which our parties choose their presidential candidates has proven itself to be, at best, highly questionable — at worst, severely flawed.
The primary calendar we need most is one that is built on an orderly and rational plan — one that is based on mathematics and on recent historical outcomes — and not on an arbitrary, publicity-driven, system of one-upsmanship. The change I propose would provide for a more effective, equitable process than the one we have now.
The following factors are the key ones to consider:
Margin of Victory
- The state primaries would be placed in order according to the leading candidates’ margins of victory in the preceding general election — with the states registering the closest margins of victory going first.
For example, John McCain won Missouri by 0.1% and Barack Obama won North Carolina by 0.4%; conversely, McCain won Wyoming by 33%, and Obama won Hawaii by 45%. Therefore, the primary calendar I propose would commence with primaries being held in states such as Missouri and North Carolina — and would close with such states as Wyoming and Hawaii.
- The purpose of ordering the states according to the margin of victory is to help the parties determine which candidates can appeal to those states that have found themselves most recently on the Electoral Divide. A narrow margin in the general election is reflective of an evenly divided electorate. In this scenario, a candidate who appeals to, say, Florida and Montana is more likely to appeal to a greater number of Americans on the whole.
Iowa, New Hampshire, and Fairness
- Iowa and New Hampshire might object to this new system, given their longstanding tradition of being the first states to cast their ballots. However, so long as Iowa and New Hampshire retain their record of being fairly bipartisan states, they’ll maintain their position towards the front of the primary schedule.
- Just because a state should have its primary later in the season does not mean that that state will prove invaluable to the process. Indiana and North Carolina weren’t held until May 6th, but those two states might have very well decided the fate of the 2008 Democratic nomination.
- This new system allows other states to play a greater role in how the parties select their candidates. For example, Missouri and North Carolina would be two of the states to get the limelight in 2012. Likewise, based on the results to come in November of 2012, a still-different slate of states could have a more significant role come 2016. A rotating system will be healthier and fairer.
Groupings of Five, and Timing & Spacing
- By placing states into groupings of five, no one state will be overly emphasized on any given date.
- Candidates will still need to address the concerns of individual states, whilst having to maintain an overall national platform. For example, a candidate will be less able to campaign against NAFTA in Ohio whilst campaigning for it in Florida.
- Given that each state has its own system for electing its delegates, these groupings of five states will act as an overall balancer. Ideally, caucuses will be done away with altogether by 2012. However — should that not happen — states with caucuses, states with open primaries, and states with closed primaries can all coexist within a grouping, therefore no one system will hold too much influence on any given date.
- Racial and geographic diversity in this process has been a great concern for many. The narrowest margins of victory in 2008 were in a wide variety of regions — the Midwest, the Great Lakes, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West.
- All parties would have an interest in addressing these narrow-margined states early on. The incumbent will want to win over those states that were most in doubt of him in the previous election, and opposing parties will want to put forth candidates who have the best chance of winning over those very same states.
- Primaries will be held biweekly, giving candidates and the media enough time to process and respond to the outcomes of each wave of primaries.
- Washington DC will be placed in the same grouping as whichever state — Virginia or Maryland — is closer to its own margin of victory.
- American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Americans Abroad — not having Electoral votes of their own — will determine their own primary dates, so long as they occur between the first grouping and the last grouping.
Under these guidelines, the proposed calendar for the 2012 primary season is:
January 2012
Tue, 1/10
Missouri
North Carolina
Indiana
Florida
Montana
Tue, 1/24
Ohio
Georgia
Virginia
Colorado
South Dakota
Tue, 2/7
North Dakota
Arizona
South Carolina
Iowa
New Hampshire
Tue, 2/21
Minnesota
Pennsylvania
Texas
Nevada
West Virginia
Tue, 2/26
Mississippi
Wisconsin
New Jersey
New Mexico
Tennessee
Tue, 3/6
Kansas
Nebraska
Oregon
Kentucky
Michigan
Tue, 3/20
Washington
Maine
Louisiana
Arkansas
Alabama
Tue, 4/3
Connecticut
California
Illinois
Delaware
Maryland
Washington DC
Tue, 4/17
Alaska
Idaho
New York
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Tue, 5/1
Utah
Oklahoma
Wyoming
Vermont
Hawaii
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Will Bower Steve Clemons of “The Washington Note” raises a point that PUMAs have made for a while, Hillary should be the Senate Majority Leader in the next congressional session…
A few excerpts:
I spoke to a senior Obama campaign official yesterday who told me that they are doing all the can to rev up their female base and to get people out talking — but that he knows it still feels like a less than adequate footprint.
I don’t think women are moving en masse to McCain/Palin — but the fizzle of enthusiasm for Obama/Biden is wanting.
Hillary Clinton is the key — and probably always has been. It’s too late to put Hillary on the ticket — but I wonder if Obama is willing to make his first tough-minded political act his support of Hillary Clinton as Senate Majority Leader.
It would cost him as Harry Reid doesn’t want to be deposed and Richard Durbin and Chuck Schumer want the job — and she’s not a formal part of Senate leadership as of now.
But extraordinary challenges require extraordinary fixes and gestures.
MSNBC tried a bold experiment this year by putting two politically incendiary hosts, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, in the anchor chair to lead the cable news channel’s coverage of the election.
That experiment appears to be over.
After months of accusations of political bias and simmering animosity between MSNBC and its parent network NBC, the channel decided over the weekend that the NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory would anchor news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.
The change — which comes in the home stretch of the long election cycle — is a direct result of tensions associated with the channel’s perceived shift to the political left.
“The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming,” said Davidson Goldin, formerly the editorial director of MSNBC and a co-founder of the reputation management firm DolceGoldin.
Executives at the channel’s parent company, NBC Universal, had high hopes for MSNBC’s coverage of the political conventions. Instead, the coverage frequently descended into on-air squabbles between the anchors, embarrassing some workers at NBC’s news division, and quite possibly alienating viewers. Although MSNBC nearly doubled its total audience compared with the 2004 conventions, its competitive position did not improve, as it remained in last place among the broadcast and cable news networks. In prime time, the channel averaged 2.2 million viewers during the Democratic convention and 1.7 million viewers during the Republican convention.
The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.
“In a rapidly changing media environment, this is the great philosophical debate,” Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said in a telephone interview Saturday. Fighting the ratings game, he added, “the bottom line is that we’re experiencing incredible success.”
But as the past two weeks have shown, that success has a downside. When the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin lamented media bias during her speech, attendees of the Republican convention loudly chanted “NBC.”
In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”
The employee, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because the network does not permit it people to speak to the media without authorization. (The New York Times and NBC News have a content-sharing arrangement exclusively for political coverage.)
Mr. Olbermann, a 49-year-old former sportscaster, has become the face of the more aggressive MSNBC, and the lightning rod for much of the criticism. His program “Countdown,” now a liberal institution, was created by Mr. Olbermann in 2003 but it found its voice in his gnawing dissent regarding the Bush administration, often in the form of “special comment” segments.
As Mr. Olbermann raised his voice, his ratings rose as well, and he now reaches more than one million viewers a night, a higher television rating than any other show in the troubled 12-year history of the network. As a result, his identity largely defines MSNBC. “They have banked the entirety of the network on Keith Olbermann,” one employee said.
In January, Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” began co-anchoring primary night coverage, drawing an audience that enjoyed the pair’s “SportsCenter”-style show. While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night — something that has never happened — MSNBC insisted that Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary.
But in the past two weeks, that line has been blurred. On the final night of the Republican convention, after MSNBC televised the party’s video “tribute to the victims of 9/11,” including graphic footage of the World Trade Center attacks, Mr. Olbermann abruptly took off his journalistic hat.
“I’m sorry, it’s necessary to say this,” he began. After saying that the video had exploited the memories of the dead, he directly apologized to viewers who were offended. Then, sounding like a network executive, he said it was “probably not appropriate to be shown.”
In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Olbermann said that moment — and the perception that he is “not utterly neutral” — restarted months-old conversations about his role on political nights.
“I found it ironic and instructive that I could have easily said exactly what I did say, exactly when I did say it, if I had been wearing a different hat, and nobody would have taken any issue,” he said.
“Countdown” will still be shown before the three fall debates and a second edition will be shown sometime afterwards, following the program anchored by Mr. Gregory.
The change casts new doubt on what some staff members believe is an effective programming strategy: prime-time talk of a liberal sort. A like-minded talk show will now follow “Countdown” at 9 p.m.: “The Rachel Maddow Show,” hosted by the liberal radio host, begins Monday.
Mr. Griffin, MSNBC’s president, denies that it has an ideology. “I think ideology means we think one way, and we don’t,” he said. Rather than label MSNBC’s prime time as left-leaning, he says it has passion and point of view.
But MSNBC is the cable arm of NBC News, the dispassionate news division of NBC Universal. MSNBC, “Today” and “NBC Nightly News” share some staff members, workspace and content. And some critics are claiming they also share a political affiliation.
The McCain campaign has filed letters of complaint to the news division about its coverage and openly tied MSNBC to it. Tension between the network and the campaign hit an apex the day Mr. McCain announced Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. MSNBC had reported Friday morning that Ms. Palin’s plane was enroute to the announcement and she was likely the pick. But McCain campaign officials warned the network off, with one official going so far as to say that all of the candidates on the short list were on their way — which MSNBC then reported.
“The fact that it was reported in real time was very embarrassing,” said a senior MSNBC official. “We were told, ‘No, it’s not Sarah Palin and you don’t know who it is.’ ”
Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams, the past and present anchors of “NBC Nightly News,” have told friends and colleagues that they are finding it tougher and tougher to defend the cable arm of the news division, even while they anchored daytime hours of convention coverage on MSNBC and contributed commentary each evening.
Mr. Williams did not respond to a request for comment and Mr. Brokaw declined to comment. At a panel discussion in Denver, Mr. Brokaw acknowledged that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews had “gone too far” at times, but emphasized they were “not the only voices” on MSNBC, according to The Washington Post.
Al Hunt, the executive Washington bureau chief of Bloomberg News, said that the entire news division was being singled out by Republicans because of the work of partisans like Mr. Olbermann. “To go and tar the whole news network and Brokaw and Mitchell is grossly unfair,” he said, referring to the NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell.
Some tensions have spilled out on-screen. On the first night in Denver, as the fellow MSNBC host Joe Scarborough talked about the resurgence of the McCain campaign, Mr. Olbermann dismissed it by saying: “Jesus, Joe, why don’t you get a shovel?”
The following night, Mr. Olbermann and his co-anchor for convention coverage, Mr. Matthews, had their own squabble after Mr. Olbermann observed that Mr. Matthews had talked too long.
Some staff members said the tension led to the network’s decision to keep Mr. Olbermann in New York for the Republican convention, after he ran the desk in Denver during the Democratic convention. MSNBC said that he stayed in New York to anchor coverage of Hurricane Gustav. But some workers say there were other reasons — namely, that Mr. Olbermann was concerned about his safety in St. Paul, given the loud crowds at MSNBC’s set in Denver.
NBC Universal executives are also known to be concerned about the perception that MSNBC’s partisan tilt in prime time is bleeding into the rest of the programming day. On a recent Friday afternoon, a graphic labeled “Breaking News” asked: “How many houses does Palin add to the Republican ticket?” Mr. Griffin called the graphic “an embarrassment.”
According to three staff members, Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal, and Steve Capus, president of NBC News, considered flying to the Republican convention in Minnesota last week to address the lingering tensions.
Up to now, the company’s public support for MSNBC’s strategy has been enthusiastic. At an anniversary party for Mr. Olbermann in April, Mr. Zucker called “Countdown” “one of the signature brands of the entire company.”
Just last year, Mr. Olbermann signed a four-year, $4-million-a-year contract with MSNBC. NBC is close to supplementing that contract with Mr. Olbermann, extending his deal through 2013 — and ensuring that he will be on MSNBC through the next election.
Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting for this article.
—————————————————————————–
September 8, 2008
MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat
An Open Letter to Democrats, Republicans, and Independents
by DONEDems.com
September 3, 2008
To whom it may concern:
We, as supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton, are alarmed by the vile denigration of Sarah Palin and her family by unsavory elements of the media glitterati and the fringe left. These sensationalist bigots attack Gov. Palin’s motherhood, insinuating that she cannot achieve what male Vice-Presidents have done for decades in balancing family life and executive duty. We wonder why this has never been asked of John McCain, father of seven; Barack Obama, father of two; nor of Joe Biden, who began his Senate career as a widowed father of two.
Sexism from the chattering classes diminishes Gov. Palin’s successful gubernatorial experience, ignoring her credentials as an executive who managed a $10million budget and her record as a reformer who fought the good-ole-boys in her own party and won. We wonder where the outrage was when John Edwards – a one-term Senator with no foreign policy credentials or executive experience – ran for Vice-President and President. We wonder also why the media does not question the inexperienced Obama – who has spent his single Senate term running for President.
We stop our wondering when we note that Gov. Palin is a woman while these others are men.
Moreover, the use of Gov. Palin’s special-needs child and pregnant daughter as bludgeons to diminish their mother horrifies us. Ham-handed schlock artists in the press – prominent among them NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, CNN’s Campbell Brown, herself the unapologetic working mother of an infant child, and the New York Times’s sewage spewing Maureen Dowd – are practitioners of the most loathsome kind of ‘journalism’ imaginable. Their juvenile, sexist political analysis belongs in the gutter or in a boys bathroom stall – not in mainstream discourse.
The hateful treatment of Gov. Palin proves that the liberal establishment has learned nothing from our much-publicized journey with Sen. Clinton. We are upset that continued abuse of female candidates leaves us in the unenviable position of rallying around one who holds many views antithetical to our own. But whether the candidate in question is progressive or regressive, we are unable to tolerate sexist attacks which turn our stomachs and cheapen the discourse.
We challenge politicians to stand with male and female Hillary Democrats as they failed to do during the primary season. Democrats and Republicans must unequivocally assert that attacks on any woman candidate focused on gender and not on her record must immediately cease. They must reject and denounce sexist rumor mills like the Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and any other smear monger in the press.
We will be watching closely over the next two months. Our pleas for decency cannot be met with just more silence. We urge that sexist attacks against Gov. Palin be shut down forthwith – removing the politics of identity, grievance, and prejudice and allowing all to refocus on ideas, qualifications, and character.
Otherwise, if need be, we are prepared to use the ballot box to make a final statement against hatred of women.
We are saddened that it has come to this.
UNDERSIGNED by
DONEDems.com
An Open Letter to Senator Hillary Clinton
From: Marcia A. Pappas, President of NOW NYS
August 28, 2008
Dear Senator Clinton:
You gave a fabulous, eloquent, and dynamic speech at the Democratic Convention. It brought tears to the eyes of the millions of women who worked so hard for you. One phrase in your powerhouse delivery rings on in my ears. In your call for us to back Obama you asked: “Were you in this campaign just for me or were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?”
For some people your question was a turning point. I was one of those people. And I need to answer you, not just because you are my wonderful Senator from New York, but because I want to give you the answer I know many are thinking, but lack the forum to express. You see, my dear Senator, I too sometimes have the occasion to speak for the invisible. In my capacity as President of New York State National Organization for Women, I often speak for the millions of women who are denied reproductive healthcare. I speak for the women who are beaten and abused by their partners, and whom no one believes. I speak for the women who lose their children when corrupt judges award custody to the abusers. I also sometimes speak for the millions of women who feel discrimination in the workplace, and for victims of rape and trafficking.
Then, on a micro scale, I even campaigned for and won a contentious race, backed by supporters who believe I’m a person who speaks truth without fear. I was the person they trusted would work for justice in the lives of women and all oppressed people.
So I know what you wanted to hear, Senator. You wanted to hear people in loud unison declare: “No, we were not just in it for you, Hillary; we were in it for the invisible.”But for me, the only answer can be: “Yes, Senator, I was in it for YOU, precisely because YOU were in it for those people who feel invisible, and because YOU were the candidate who saw clearly that over fifty percent of the population was being ignored.”
Who are those people? Why they are the poor, the hungry, the underinsured, i.e. women and their children. YOU are the person who addressed the issues of that fifty-plus percent. YOU are the person who worked her entire life for that fifty-plus percent. YOU are the person who, in the face of rife opposition and ridicule, stood firm in favor of health care for the invisible. YOU are the person with a proven record on Emergency Contraception for all women, because YOU understand that without reproductive freedom, women are held hostage to unwanted pregnancies. And it is YOU who has proven, over and over, that you can deliver for the invisible.
YOU were the candidate whose followers felt they knew so well, they could call her by her first name. Little girls yelled “Hillary” because they knew their future was in your hands. Single mothers saw hope for the future, knowing that their struggle would lessen under your leadership. Older women came out in the wintry Iowa Caucuses to finally vote for the first truly possible woman president. They looked into your heart, into your eyes, into your soul, and saw something different. And those of us, who traveled around the country, working for your campaign, watched you emerge as a new kind of politician. We saw YOU.
Today, your popularity endures, bigger perhaps than even you imagined. Why? Because YOU represent the invisible. YOU persist as our symbol of hope, justice and equality. Please don’t be afraid of it. Please embrace it. YOU inspired us, brought us to tears, made us laugh, and made us finally feel that we were not voting for the lesser of two evils. There are eighteen million people out here who are, like me, not ashamed, like me, to say: “Yes Hillary I was in it for YOU.”
Marcia A. Pappas
President
NOW NYS
NewYorkStateNOW@aol.com
WE ARE THINKING DEMOCRATS - NOT YELLOW DOGS
by Bill Boe
Hillary’s speech answers the burning question that has been on the minds of her supporters since that Saturday afternoon when she suspended her candidacy—quo vadis? (i.e. dear girl whither go’est thou?). Are you still the war goddess we saw on the night of the South Dakota victory just waiting for the right opportunity to launch a counteroffensive; or have you abandoned the quest and if so why? The answer is neither. Instead, Hillary has decided to wrap herself in the tattered principles of the party, and the highest ideals of our nation, and to dare the rest of us friend and foe alike to follow her lead. In this safe haven, she finds personal and political salvation. She knows who Obama is and supports him only to that extent.
The more I think about it the more I realize that this is the right answer for Hillary. Consider the matter from her perspective: you have given everything you have to this ship of fools called the Democratic Party–everything. During the past eighteen months you made a clear, cogent and convincing case for your candidacy, your party and this nation. It resonated with the American People. You made them feel that they were a part of something wonderful which was about them and more than them. Big Media dismissed the historic nature of your candidacy but we did not. You re-energized women and caused conservative men to rethink the whole issue of women’s rights at a time when this country needs all heads in the game. You connected with real people and changed the world for the better.
At the same time, what you have done for this country has come at a high personal cost– in terms of heartbreak, betrayal, and disappointment. We admire your commitment to duty and the self discipline it requires. But no human being is immune from such sentiments. Thus, we can only imagine how it broke your heart to see two of your closest friends and allies suffer tragic deaths in the days leading up to the Convention. Or to see your beloved daughter savaged by the likes of David Schuster and his MSNBC cronies. Likewise, we can only imagine how it felt to see people like Bill Richardson forget all you have done for them and turn their backs on you in your hour of political need—after they promised to support you. Or to be targeted by traitors like Dean, Pelosi and Brazille who conspired with the likes of Karl Rove to undermine your candidacy, and the standing of centrist Democrats in the party. Or insiders like Patty Solis Doyle who betrayed your confidence and made you wonder who you can trust. Finally we understand the bitter disappointment of winning the popular vote only to be cheated out of the nomination by the forces of corruption, and thus deprived of the rightful opportunity to do great things for the country you love.
The Democratic Party has made a fatal mistake in nominating Barack Obama to be President of the United States. Now they will do everything fair and foul to foist that mistake on the American People. They will hack voting machines in key states, they will lie cheat and steal, and they will launch the same misogynistic attacks against Palin that they did against you while Obama maintains plausible deniability. No doubt, you will do what you can to prevent this but it is not in your hands. Rather it is in the hands of people like Axelrod who are devoid of moral scruples and in the primary we saw the lengths to which they would go to disenfranchise voters. They are left wing ideologues of various stripes, their goal is to take over the country as they have the party and if they fail then they will try to make you a scapegoat.
These people cannot connect with the traditional base of the party and they know it. Therefore, they will cast you into the breach. They will ask you to sell their candidate to the same audiences who previously rejected him in favor of you. Then they will ask you to spearhead the attack against Palin to neutralize the gender issue. I hope you will tell them that Obama and Biden must sell themselves to these audiences—it cannot be done by proxy. Furthermore, I hope you refuse to attack Palin personally and confine the discussion to policy related issues. Everyone knows your candidacy is what made hers possible. And, you know that if you attack her on behalf of Obama then you will diminish the good will you have worked hard to establish with those audiences. Lest we forget, it is Biden’s job as vice presidential nominee to handle any attack on Palin. If he is sane, sensible and sober, then he will keep it to a bare minimum. There are plenty of snarling hyenas in the press who are chomping at the bit to destroy any opponent of Obama for a Pulitzer, a promotion and a passport to hell.
We are your supporters and we are thinking Democrats—not yellow dogs. The party of Barack Obama is no place for centrist democrats. When Howard Dean calls the Republican Party the white peoples party, when the Chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party tells black voters to not support white candidates, when Obama himself claims that people who live in small town America are bitter, cling to guns and religion, and when former Democratic Chairman Don Fowler hopes a hurricane will hit New Orleans during the Republican Convention something is clearly amiss. Furthermore, we know who is running the party now and what their real agenda is. Finally, we know who Obama is, who he is not and if he is elected then woe betide the country. We need leaders within the party who remember how things were before he took over and continue to fight for the American People. But the Obama cancer is metastasizing throughout the party and the only way it will be cured is through a sweeping defeat at the ballot box.
It is clear to us that this train is headed in the wrong direction. Therefore, we must step off and switch to another train for the time being. Yes, Obama talks a good game but if past is prologue then he will break his promises to the American people, and honor the ones he makes to big business and to a new coalition that does not include us. We are freer than you are in this respect, since we do not have a constituent base to serve, or a senate position to protect. We can flatly state that an Obama presidency would be an unmitigated disaster for the country. Consequently, we cannot possibly vote for him. So keep the torch lit dear girl, fight for us as best you can and lord willing we will rendezvous with you in after the election when Barack is beaten and this fever has passed. Until then we bid you a fond adieu.
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PUMA Smokin’ Joe came out swinging last night. A true democrat and a great leader, here are a few excerpts from his speech. Full text follows afterward.
Senator Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But eloquence is no substitute for a record — not in these tough times.
In the Senate he has not reached across party lines to get anything significant done, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party.
Contrast that to John McCain’s record, or the record of the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, who stood up to some of those same Democratic interest groups and worked with Republicans to get important things done like welfare reform, free trade agreements, and a balanced budget.
Governor Sarah Palin, like John McCain, is a reformer who has taken on the special interests and reached across party lines. She is a leader we can count on to help John shake up Washington.
That’s why the McCain-Palin ticket is the real ticket for change this year.
Thankfully P.U.M.A Power is alive and well in the democratic party.
Posted by GrandPUMA
Remarks As Prepared for Delivery: U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman
Thank you for that warm welcome. I am honored to be here.
We meet tonight in the wake of a terrible storm that has hit the Gulf Coast but that hurts all of us, because we are all members of our larger American family.
At times like this, we set aside all that divides us, and we come together to help our fellow citizens in need.
What matters is certainly not whether we are Democrats or Republicans, but that we are all Americans.
The truth is, it shouldn’t take a hurricane to bring us together like this.
Every day, across our country, millions of our fellow citizens are facing huge problems.
They are worried about their homes, their jobs, and their businesses; they are worried about the outrageous cost of gas and of health insurance; and they are worried about the threats from our enemies abroad.
But when they look to Washington, all too often they do not see their leaders coming together to tackle these problems.
Instead they see Democrats and Republicans fighting each other, rather than fighting for the American people.
Our founding fathers foresaw the danger of this kind of senseless partisanship. George Washington himself — in his Farewell Address to our country — warned that the “spirit of party” is “the worst enemy” of our democracy and “enfeebles” our government’s ability to do its job.
George Washington was absolutely right. The sad truth is — today we are living through his worst nightmare, in the capital city that bears his name.
And that brings me directly to why I am here tonight. What, after all, is a Democrat like me doing at a Republican convention like this?
The answer is simple.
I’m here to support John McCain because country matters more than party.
I’m here tonight because John McCain is the best choice to bring our country together and lead our country forward.
I’m here because John McCain’s whole life testifies to a great truth: being a Democrat or a Republican is important.
But it is not more important than being an American.
Both presidential candidates this year talk about changing the culture of Washington, about breaking through the partisan gridlock and special interests that are poisoning our politics.
But only one of them has actually done it.
Only one leader has shown the courage and the capability to rise above the smallness of our politics to get big things done for our country and our people.
And that leader is John McCain!
John understands that it shouldn’t take a natural disaster like Hurricane Gustav to get us to take off our partisan blinders and work together to get things done.
It shouldn’t take a natural disaster to teach us that the American people don’t care much if you have an “R” or a “D” after your name.
What they care about is, are we solving the problems they are up against every day?
What you can expect from John McCain as President is precisely what he has done this week: which is to put country first. That is the code by which he has lived his entire life, and that is the code he will carry with him into the White House.
I have personally seen John, over and over again, bring people together from both parties to tackle our toughest problems we face –to reform our campaign finance, lobbying and ethics laws, to create the 9/11 Commission and pass its critical national security reforms, and to end the partisan paralysis over judicial confirmations.
My Democratic friends know all about John’s record of independence and accomplishment.
Maybe that’s why some of them are spending so much time and so much money trying to convince voters that John McCain is someone else.
I’m here, as a Democrat myself, to tell you: Don’t be fooled.
God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man.
If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have taken on corrupt Republican lobbyists, or big corporations that were cheating the American people, or powerful colleagues in Congress who were wasting taxpayer money.
But he did!
If John McCain was just another go-along partisan politician, he never would have led the fight to fix our broken immigration system or to do something about global warming.
But he did!
As a matter of fact, if John McCain is just another partisan Republican, then I’m Michael Moore’s favorite Democrat.
And I’m not.
Senator Obama is a gifted and eloquent young man who can do great things for our country in the years ahead. But eloquence is no substitute for a record — not in these tough times.
In the Senate he has not reached across party lines to get anything significant done, nor has he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party.
Contrast that to John McCain’s record, or the record of the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, who stood up to some of those same Democratic interest groups and worked with Republicans to get important things done like welfare reform, free trade agreements, and a balanced budget.
Governor Sarah Palin, like John McCain, is a reformer who has taken on the special interests and reached across party lines. She is a leader we can count on to help John shake up Washington.
That’s why the McCain-Palin ticket is the real ticket for change this year.
The Washington bureaucrats and power brokers can’t build a pen strong enough to hold these two mavericks.
And together, you can count on John McCain and Sarah Palin to fight for America and to fight for you! And that’s what our country needs most right now.
What we need most is not more party unity in America but more national unity!
Especially at a time of war, we need a President we can count on to fight for what’s right for our country — not only when it is easy, but when it is hard.
When others were silent, John McCain had the judgment to sound the alarm about the mistakes we were making in Iraq. When others wanted to retreat in defeat from the field of battle, when Barack Obama was voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground,
John McCain had the courage to stand against the tide of public opinion and support the surge, and because of that, today, our troops are at last beginning to come home, not in failure, but in honor!
Before I conclude, I ask the indulgence of those in this hall tonight, as I want to speak directly to my fellow Democrats and Independents who are watching.
I know many of you are angry and frustrated by our government and our politics and for good reason.
You may be thinking of voting for John McCain but you’re not sure. Some of you have never voted for a Republican before and in an ordinary election, you probably wouldn’t.
But this is no ordinary election, because these are not ordinary times, and John McCain is no ordinary candidate. You may not agree with John McCain on every issue.
But you can always count on him to be straight with you about where he stands, and to stand for what he thinks is right regardless of politics.
As President, you can count on John McCain to be a restless reformer, who will clean up Washington and get our government working again for you!
So tonight, I ask you whether you are an Independent, a Reagan Democrat or a Clinton Democrat, or just a Democrat: This year, when you vote for President, vote for the person you believe is best for the country, not for the party you happen to belong to.
Vote for the leader who, since the age of 17, when he raised his hand and took an oath to defend and protect our Constitution, has always put our country first.
So, let’s come together to make a great American patriot our next great President!
Here’s the Vid. Might as well use MSNBC’s feed, though they sold their soul to Obama for a buck and a quarter, they still have their uses.
GrandPUMA
It’s time for we 18,000,000 Hillary supporters to take our voices to the next stage!
Please visit: http://hrcforsenatemajorityleader09.com
…and encourage your Senatorial candidates, your Senators, the DSCC (the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee), the media, your friends & neighbors, and Hillary herself to do the same!
THANK you!
Will Bower & his fellows at HRC4SML
http://heidilipotpourri.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-senator-hillary-rodham-clinton-must.html
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