Please stop making excuses for Obama's perfidy. This was not a ploy to force McCain's hand. Obama did not say that if McCain comes around and signs a final agreement to stay within public financing, then the Obama campaign will revert to public financing too. No. Obama violated his pledge; he betrayed his backers in the general public; he ripped a hole in the entire idea of public financing of campaigns. The pretense that he has himself developed a form of public financing would be laffable were it not contemptible. The money he is raising over the Internet won't be shared with McCain! (much less with Ralph Nader). How is that public financing of campaigns? Ridiculous.
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Obama is totally without honor, and millions of Democrats will be voting for McCain this year. If Democrats violate their pledges and expect immunity from indignation, what does any of Obama's promises mean? Nothing. And that is part of why Obama will be TROUNCED in November.
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Liberals can hope that the Democrats take both Houses of Congress by veto-proof majorities, but when Obama is standing against gay marriage even after it starts in California, he is out of step with the very Liberals who are his only chance of taking the White House. Where he should have changed his stance because of changed circumstances, gay marriage, he stands firm, against full rights for gay men and lesbians. He is as much an antigay enemy as Bush, McCain, or Focus on the Family.
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For anyone to pretend to see Obama winning the White House without the South is astonishing in its brazen dishonesty. Nobody believes that there is enuf Obamania in the rest of the country to make up for a thrashing in the South. Newstalk pundits keep talking nonsense, pretending that Obama will not only win an election he cannot possibly win but that he will win by a landslide! Yes, the Solid (Republican) South is going to vote for a black man! Of course it is. The only way Obama could win, if only by a hair, is if McCain does something totally insane, like nominating Condoleeza Rice as Veep. But I seriously doubt that the carefully controlled Republican Party will make so astonishingly suicidal a choice. Pundits cannot possibly believe that Obama stands a chance in the United States of 2008. For you to talk such nonsense is plainly intended only to keep people watching your silly commentary past commercials. Who is fooled?
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You need to change everything about this discussion and face facts: the United States has a HUGE racial problem — yes, today — and is NOT going to elect a black man President in 2008. Period. Obama's historical importance is only as the first black person to win a major-party nomination, so that in a future election someone else, such as Newark's Mayor Cory Booker, might actually win the White House, in 2016 or 2020, when the millions of white people who fled the cities in the 1960s and will NEVER FORGIVE blacks are pretty much all dead. You need to stop talking about a cakewalk by Democrats and talk instead about how Obama can change the minds of tens of millions of Americans who will NEVER vote for a black President. And if he can't — and I'm pretty sure he can't — start asking how long it will be before this country really can elect a black man.
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P.S. Your presenting 'programming' of 30 seconds between far too many commercials is despicable. You're not giving us anything new, merely running (repetitive) "teases" to make it possible for MSNBC to jam more commercials into the hour. Contemptible.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:24 PM