This diary is written in response to a diary posted by YellowDem1129, wherein he or she insinuates that Barack Obama's lack of political experience disqualifies him, or at least underqualifies him, to be President of the United States. And so the diary proceeds to lambaste the media for not stating unequivocally that Barack Obama is not qualified to be President of the United States, and so forth and so on...

So given the premise that vast and extended experience in government is the sine qua non for a successful presidency, let's test this notion by examining the public sector experience of the presidents who are widely regarded as the most successful in our nation's history.

In this post I will try to cover several issues concerning the horse race numbers. First let look at Ohio. Rasmussen has McCain ahead of Obama by 10. The number does not run against Rasmussen other Ohio polling. Without pressing, the lead is 6. Prior monthly polls have the lead at 1 or 2. So essentially the shift is a 4 point shift - pretty much between the MOE range and Obama having lost some of his luster. Nevertheless, has anybody noticed how Obama can increase his popularity with a notch at any given time? BTW- Rasmussen is the only outfit that shows McCain consistently ahead of Obama so his weighing is obviously different than others. An intesting question would be why leaners trend towards McCain- an obvious answer is that while the Republican party has suffered loses in affiliation, the new independents lean conservative and McCain is a good fit for them.  I think polls this year are inaccurate because of the Bradley effect and the new voters surge; however, it is the only thing we have - the RCP average is specially helpful as it incorporates all the adjustmensts done by the different polling outfits in this difficult polling season.  I think Ohio would ultimately go McCain becasue of Appalachia unless 1) it is a landslide (which is a big possibility) or 2) Hillary is in the ticket (my best guess is yes).
Virginia is true a tossup (I live here) but I think McCain will prevail because of the Bradley effect since it clearly happened once before(Wilder).
Florida is in play only if Hillary is part of the ticket. Rasmussen now has Obama ahead by 1.
Ultimately, the election will be decided in Colorado where Obama has a strong advantage in structure, money and demographics. I do not foresee Michigan flipping at all.
The party that wins election would be the party that has won the most the last 100 years. Right now both parties are tied 48-48.
One more observation, after 7-8 months of running one would have thought the McCain operation would have been smoother. There is no reason to think they will improve in the next three months and will probably continue campaigning negatively.        

I have little doubt that Senator Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Nominee had it not been for her caving to right wing talking points and voting for the Iraq War. Being on the wrong side the the biggest foreign policy disaster in a generation is what advanced her career from inevitable nominee to junior senator. At the time, many of us in the netroots were flabbergasted, we knew it was a disastrous course of action and came to the conclusion that those who sided with George Bush and the neocons either had no grasp of the situation or were doing it for as a purely political calculation (and a poor one at that as Clinton discovered).

Iraq was the single biggest foreign policy decision, but when it comes to the global climate crisis, I'm getting a sense of déjà vu from the positioning and language used by San Francisco Mayor and 2010 California Gubernatorial hopeful Gavin Newsom as to why he's siding with PG&E against the Sierra Club on clean, renewable energy.

(cross posted at Kickin it with CG and Clintonistas for Obama)

In a sign that senior Democratic party officials remain deeply concerned that post-primary bitterness, two top Democratic officials have emailed a sharply-worded letter to major donors and other leading Dems confessing "fatigue and irritation" at those withholding full support from Obama and demanding that they get behind him "without conditions or demands."

Dear Democratic Friends:
2008 is a Democratic year-at all levels in all the states. The opportunity is ours. We just have to seize it.

We experienced an exciting, intense, sometimes difficult, campaign to nominate our presidential candidate. Now it's over. Barack Obama won.

I supported Hillary Clinton and am proud and pleased that I did. But she lost. Barack Obama won. It's over.

It is time for all Democrats, supporters of Senator Clinton and all other contenders for the nomination, to stand with him to secure his election and the election of Democrats at all levels of competition.

I must confess a bit of fatigue and irritation with people who continue to carp, complain, and criticize the results of the primary and lay down conditions for their support. The Los Angeles Lakers didn't establish conditions to recognize the Boston Celtics as NBA Champions; Roger Federer did not demand concessions before recognizing that Rafael Nadal defeated him at Wimbledon.

It is time to act in a mature and resourceful fashion. It's time to put the primaries behind us. It's time to support Barack Obama without conditions or demands.

It's time to WIN for Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, America, and our future. We have an unparalleled opportunity. I hope we will all do everything we can to seize the moment.

See you at the Inauguration.

Sincerely,

Don Fowler
DNC Member At-Large, South Carolina
Former Chair of the Democratic National Committee

Alice Germond
Secretary, Democratic National Committee

Bullying progressives that are wary and mistrustful of the party and/or its nominee by barking that it's "time to support Barack Obama without conditions or demands" is categorically dumb and goes against what the party is supposed to represent. It comes across as treating the electorate as nothing but votes to exploit, certainly not as people with genuine issues that need urgent addressing, and it echoes the dictatorial tone of the administration currently in office.

Who could have possibly thought this letter was a good idea?

My online reading spans the political spectrum from far left to far right.  And, it pays, because you never know where you'll find something that makes sense (if you're willing to listen to and hear all voices).

Read this from The American Conservative:

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/07/ 22/someone-doesnt-get-it/

2008 has been a year of unbelievable change in American history. This is true regardless whether the topic is pop-culture, business, legal issues, or politics:

*We've seen a mind-boggling spike in oil prices.
*We've seen a presidential frontrunner, Rudy Guiliani, not win a single primary.
*We've seen a top movie star, Wesley Snipes sentenced to 3 years prison for tax fraud.
*We've seen the passing of the most influential Washington insider, Tim Russert, well before his time.

etc.

But 2 of the biggest shockers:

1.  Barack Obama, with no experience wins Dem nomination and is the frontrunner for POTUS

2.  Gays from around the country can travel to California and legally marry.

have 1 thing in common:

The media has ignored their significance because of political bias towards them.

1.  With Senator Obama, it is factually true that he lacks foreign policy experience in any real sense.  Yet, Obama has never been asked to defend this lack of experience.  No "news reports" have focused on it in an objective way. It has been left to partisans to assert in  "clumsy" ways that Obama is not ready.  Hillary was left on her own to try to "bring him down", the media wouldn't be fair for 1 news cycle.  McCain similar is finding out that news people won't make obvious statements and present the news in a template that makes the most sense.  So running against obama, you have more than 1 opponent.

So the end result is that since, Wolf Blitzer won't say, "Obama has no FP experience".  Chris Wallace won't say, "Obama is not qualified to be President" because of his lack of experience.

Not once.  Sure, they might hint around and ask secondary questions and speculate about whether he needs a VP to bolster credentials, but what I say is objectively true.

You might think, maybe that's not their role to make declarative statemtents, but they do it on every issue.  The "objective" media asserts "facts" that are debatable all the time. But when something is obvious as Obama's non-existent FP resume, they have been silent.

Right now the media is asserting that the "surge clearly has worked".  Whereas earlier, the "surge clearly hadn't worked".

Whatever you think, they are taking a position.

Think about other issues/people

Remember Tim Russert with his obsession with Social Security going broke?  It was all premised on a lie.  There was no crisis.  The worst case scenario was that decades from now, if nothing changed retirees THEN would receive 70+% of promised benefits, which in real terms would be larger than today's payment.  Maybe not the best politics, or the best policy, but not a crisis.  But Russert declared repeatedly to every Politician "the looming crisis" and then asked questions.

What about, Al Gore's problems with "the truth"?  Media magnified small issues into character problems.

So this year, when you are a journalist, don't you have to ask an Obama supporter, "Obama has no experience, if he's qualified, who isn't?"

But what happened is that they refused to ask the questions, make the statements, present the facts, and then people voted.  Now that people have voted,

Obama is qualified because people voted for him.

Obama is doing a great job on his trip overseas.  He is really good.

But honestly, we are back in a situation just like with Bush where we have to trust he has good advisors, and hope they don't hijack the agenda like the neo-cons did to Bush.

Only the most pro-Obama person could still think he would have voted against the Iraq War. He has been a conventional Dem all the way since getting in a position of power.

So we have an inexperienced politician who portrayed himself as big change, and is now showing himself as really conventional.

But because of the media's refusal to ask serious questions, and make obvious statements and conclusions:

Democrats are guaranteed to win  this election.

Just as much as Republicans were guaranteed 2004 when the media accepted the Swift Boating of Kerry allegations and the Flip Flop label.

2.  A similar thing is happening with the gay marriage debate.  This is  a  tremendous change in america, and night after night there isn't discussion on cable, barely a mention in the papers.  Almost nothing.  Why?  Because by ignoring this large change, it makes it more normal everyday.  By election day, supporters of GM will be able to say, how is your life different because we have had this "right" for the past 6 months."

The media is lulling people to sleep so as to allow the issue to be more normal to moderate people.

It is absolutely working.

Republicans don't talk about it.
Democrats don't talk about it.

Only the far left activists talk about it.  By them being so extreme, it allows the moderates to move the mainstream pendulum on the issue to the left.

So for instance, civil unions is almost universally supported in terms of major party politics.

Again, imagine the media being fair, and saying, "whoa, whatever you think, this is large, this is huge".

What does it mean for our values?
What does it mean for what we teach our children?
What does it mean for the already weakening institution of marriage?

Are there any boundaries that can't be broken, if enough people agree?

But, silence.

I support Obama.
I oppose the gay rights movement.

But in both cases, the media has ignored the major issues becuase of political bias.

Here at mydd, we have people who jump 2 steps ahead and ignore reality.

They talk as if its' normal to nominate a person with no experience.

They talk as if it was only a matter of time before the "bigots" were defeated and the  "last civil rights issue" was acheived.

I wonder where are the realists?

No matter what side, to accept reality, and then present their viewpoint.

No normal person wants 2 "married men living next to them".

No normal voter wants an inexperienced Senator becoming President.

But we are approaching these because of the elites in media working together to shape the issues.

Ultimately with Obama, I sense we will get lucky and he will turn out okay as President. I think he will surround himself with good advisors, and make good decisions.

I always remember as a black person being told that becuase of racism, "we have to be twice as good" as whites, especially when we break a barrier.  Like Jackie Robinson or Thurgood Marshall.  But Obama clearly isn't twice as good, he's not qualified in an objective sense according to what we've thought all these years.

Yet, this year, we've changed, and it's not a story?  How many Democrats railed against Bush for lack of experience in 2000?  I'm trying to show the power of a group of elites in the media who can control our politics by what they say or even don't say.

It seems I'm the only Democrat here at mydd who will speak obvious truths that are politically incorrect.  But those of you who are ready to call me names, even you have to admit at some level

This is risky.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

Make no mistake: Heath Ledger is the star of The Dark Knight.

Everything you've heard about his performance is true, and then some; no amount of hype could possibly prepare an audience for the singular genius and perfection that is Ledger's swan song -- rightly characterised by many as on a par with James Dean's and, I would argue, far more deserving of its elevation to one of the finest performances in film history.

And forget about adding any caveats about his death upping the Ledger-Love Quotient; if he'd lived, the man would be receiving just as much attention and just as much adulation for this Herculean acting accomplishment. The tragedy of his untimely death adds only melancholic pain to the experience. That someone with such a gift, presaged by his performance in Brokeback Mountain and reaching a premature apotheosis in The Dark Knight, so obviously capable of so much, should have been wrenched away at such a moment is almost too much to bear.

News of Ledger's death upset me when it came; on seeing his name in the final credits (which elicited a deserved standing ovation from the Sunday afternoon crowd), I burst into sobs. As is so often the case, I wept not for him, but for myself -- what a desolation, what a horrifying loss. For anyone who treasures and reveres the art of acting, the closing credits of The Dark Knight will inevitably provide the background to at least a few minutes of sincere sadness.

You may recall the nuclear deal that the Bush administration negotiated with India recently.  That deal was in considerable jeopardy because of opposition within India.  The Indian government is run by a coalition of parties, and a bloc within the ruling coalition (the leftists) were strongly opposed to the deal.  They pulled out of the coalition on the same day that the Indian PM decided to go ahead with plans to "operationalize" the deal.

As a consequence, the Indian government was reduced to a minority, and the India President asked the PM to prove his majority in the relevant Parliamentary house on July 22.  The government managed to scrape through (275 for, 256 against).. so the nuclear deal survives for another day.

During the debate, there was one speech that impressed me.  It was by Omar Abdullah, who is a Member of Parliament from Srinagar.. the capital of Kashmir.

He began by proudly declaring: I am a Muslim and I am an Indian... and I see no distinction between the two.  

These are the types of words that can lift a people up.  These are the types of words that can win the war on terror.

I have excerpted parts of his speech (along with some commentary) below the fold.