One of those mocking, derisive but ultimately silly attacks made by both Giuliani and Palin yesterday had to do with mocking Obama’s time as a community organizers. I’ve read many different posts today defending the work community organizers do but Obama, as you might expect, puts the right perspective on the issue. Steve Benen has more background.
(he slightly misspeaks at the start — it was 20 years ago, not 3).
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www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com
As much as Kerry is killing me, the alternative is far worse. Now if only Kerry would go back to being a free trader, I would be much happier.
April 29th, 2004 at 5:01 pm
out of curiosity, why is Kerry “killing you”?
April 29th, 2004 at 5:13 pm
The main issue is his stance on trade. In the past, Kerry has been for free trade. However, due to Edwards and Dean, all of a sudden, he is “re-evaluating” his position. NAFTA hasn’t been the greatest success, but leaning towards protectionism is far worse. You thought Bush hurt the economy…just wait to see the prices on consumer goods after we start proping up non-competative US- industries.
I also think that civil unions are a cop out.
I fear that Kerry may prematurely get take us out of Iraq (we are there already, so let us at least try and do something useful). I’m not sure Bush would be any better an this issue. Then again, I think Bush is a douche bag and I won’t vote for him.
April 29th, 2004 at 11:01 pm
I think the free trade thing is a red herring… The U.S. is protectionist already… ask any farmer.
Also, Bush isn’t much better if you want free trade… Bush set up tariffs on steel. He recently revoked them. In both cases (setting them up and revoking them) he considered his re-election possibilities… see here.
What’s my point? Simply that I don’t find Kerry any different than Bush in this regard… I don’t find it remarkable, in fact, that a politician would consider his own popularity when considering policy decisions.
On a side note, “free trade” means too many things… different people have different objections to the way “free trade” is being implemented (as in it’s not really free, or it doesn’t have the right regulatory framework, or it’s skewed toward certain outcomes, etc). It’s hard to argue that all of these concerns have no merit.
In other words, I’d rather Kerry be right than consistent (that goes for any politician). If he’s going to listen to people because they see a problem, we should encourage that… I wish Bush could say, “Geez, I’ve learned that my original position wasn’t entirely correct…”.
Granted, netierh Bush nor Kerry are saying anything like this, just changing their positions willy nilly, so it just washes for me.
Civil unions are a cop out, but I don’t know that it’s inconsistent with who he is and what he believes… i’ll leave that out, but as a policy problem I’m happy he’s not advocating an amendment to the constitution. (why is it that conservatives are always rushing to modify our core founding document… seems like they’re being awfully liberal with the amendments…)
Finally, I don’t believe that he’ll take us out of Iraq. First, he’s a military man and knows the mess that the guys on the ground are in. He might actually get the troops body armor and more troops. Everything I heard from him on this has been leaning toward increasing our presence and focusing on fixing our relationships with the outside world.
I KNOW Bush would be much worse on this issue because he’s proven that he’ll listen to political advice and ideology (we can topple governments for cheap said the Neocons) over the advice of good, smart generals like Shinseki. I just read comments from Zinni essentially saying the same thing. Woodward’s book, on the other hand, describes the President and Rumsfeld as interested in modernizing the military planning because we really don’t need all those troops on the ground. It’s sad…
April 29th, 2004 at 11:38 pm
I’m not going to argue too much as I am going to vote for Kerry. I just agree that he is a douchebag. Since there are really only 2 viable choices, I’ll have to go with Kerry. Given a true Republican or even better, a libritarian (note the small “L” there), I’d vote for that candidate over Kerry.
I think I liked Kerry better when I actually lived in Massachusetts.
April 30th, 2004 at 1:32 am
fair enough. The short version of what I said is basically:
Douchebag is too strong, both are doing what politicians do. one is just more credible at this point (guess which one I think is more credible).