If you actually read the bailout bill sections 108-110, you will see that there isn't any real help to homeowners. There is suggestive language that doesn't mandate anything real to be done to stop foreclosures. Realizing this is a Republican administration who instinctively repudiates government intervention, it is not hard to imagine the Executive branch doing as little as legally possible.

Democrats should vote no on this bill and force strong language to help this nation's struggling homeowners. For example:

The government should offer every homeowner who has enough income to pay 75% of their mortgage and is facing foreclosure, the option to have their mortgage purchased by the government with the following consequences:

The government should "write down" the home loan to 75% and offer a 100% guarantee to any lender to offer a new loan.

Then the government will take a lien against all back monies owed, in addition to any "write down" amount, to be collected if/when the house is sold at a profit.

This would allow many responsible people to get on the right track, and would vindicate Democratic policy.

Craig Farmer
making the word "liberal" safe again!

Though it has abated somewhat with Obama's surge in the polls, many people on t.v. and in print have talked about how "race" is factoring and  will work against Obama on election day.  It is now Conventional Wisdom that keen politicos should subtract at least a few percentage points from obama's poll numbers in a close race because of America's reluctance to vote for a black man.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/38 0244_obamarace24.html

Sure there are some who will vote against Obama because of race, but I agree with the author who points to a MUCH LARGER GROUP who will vote for obama BECAUSE of race:

"The first major group would be the blacks who view his candidacy as a vindication of centuries of abuse and as a matter of healing grievous wounds that still fester in the hearts and souls of the black experience in this country. The second major group is composed of whites, mainly liberals, who believe that this nation must demonstrate to the world that America has put its bigoted past behind it and welcomes with open arms its first nonwhite chief executive."

The key to remember is: these are new voters; blacks who would not vote otherwise, and otherwise uninspired liberals who feel this is a turning point in American history.

blacks who wouldn't have voted +
liberals who wouldn't have voted

minus

bigoted voters against Obama who either wouldn't have voted or would have voted for a white democrat
------------------------------------
Obama nets votes because of his race.

Look at the latest North Carolina Poll from Rasmussen:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_c ontent/politics/election_20082/2008_pres idential_election/north_carolina/electio n_2008_north_carolina_presidential_elect ion

Obama is getting 98% of a fired up Black vote.  This is as opposed to 90% of a lukewarm black vote for a typical white democrat.  That in and of itself adds at least 2 to 4 points to obama's total.

----

It is sad to see intelligent people on the left leave out the obvious factors to make a political point.

You can't take all of the positives that Obama brings to the race for granted as a starting point, and then just focus on the negatives in a vaccuum.  It is intellectually lazy and bogus.

Obama has done the right thing by attacking McCain as out of touch and stuck in 1982.

He should keep that up, and double down.

But Obama needs to take ownership of an issue and offer a bold change that Americans may agree/disagree but makes Obama's plan the issue.

Education is the best place because it impacts so many Americans directly, and everyone indirectly.

my plan for this election cycle:

Instead of offering ideas that will leave the current students in the same mediocre to poor school systems around the country while we try to "fix" the system, we as Democrats and Obama should propose to:

1.  Increase the Federal education money available by 2 times. couple this spending with the decreased money that we had been spending in Iraq.  For anyone who claims we can't afford it.  The answer is:  "If we could afford Iraq all of these years, and more of the same if McCain gets elected, we can afford to invest in our children in an unprecedented way.   This will pave the way for more productivity, more economic growth, more medical technology, less crime in the future, and an overall better quality of life for all Americans."

2.  Mandate that in order to receive Federal Education money,  every state has to offer each parent a check for the amount of money spent each year on their child that allows them to choose any accredited school, home school, or other alternative for education.  They may of course use this check at their local public school if they are satisfied with it.

3.  Develop a bonus system that gives money to students, teachers, and all education professionals who prove educational excellence and/or progress.

so the gist of the plan is to create a parallel funding system that gives every parent choice.   This is important because as we try to reform the system from within, the parent as the ultimate veto to say they have a better choice.

They can choice to stay in the current public school system(s) nationwide or go their own way.  Secondly, we want to incentivize every person involved in the process to acheive actual results.  

Of course this will get attacked both on the left for the market forces, and on the right for the big spending.  But this would be real change.

Coupled with a sustained attack on Mccain's unfitness, Obama can and should win this election.

Right now, Obama has lost the "change" argument because there really isn't anything "new" in his plans.

His change is from Republican to Democrat.  McCain has a record of acting like a Democrat and can beat that kind of change.

Obama needs to show he can plant a flag and fight to defend it.

Craig Farmer
making the word "liberal" safe again!

During the Primary, I truly despised that Olbermann supported Obama while I supported Clinton because he clearly is an orginal thinker and a primary political force rather someone responding to conventional wisdom.

Keith is  clearly Obama's best and most efective ally, and this past week has been trying to show Obama the correct course in this election.

Now that we are on the same side, I can once again truly appreciate his God given talent.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/10 /olbermann-slams-republica_n_125525.html

Yesterday's Special Comment was so unbelievably good that it should be used as a template for Democrats for the rest of this election season, and years to come.

The main thing Keith did was to GO ON OFFENSE.

He rightfully attacked McCain on his supposed strength and used facts and logic to buttress his opinion.

The passion he displayed was proper in terms of the seriousness of the topic.

Obama should learn from this.  Get on offense and stay there.
Show that when you are attacked.  Yes you respond.  But then you attack back on a whole new front to put THEM  on defense.

Democrats must learn a good National Defense means going on offense.  You can't be good at it by "protecting the people".  You have to survey, find, and attack your opponents on your terms before, during, and after they attack you.

Otherwise the good guys lose.  That is why Dukaksis, Gore, and Kerry will never be President.  They didn't have in their gut what Keith displayed yesterday.

It's clear to me that being a "fighter" is not in Obama's DNA naturally.  Hopefully he can learn it, or else have others do it for him.  But surely the Obama camp must know that saying,
"Enough" and "that's not true" is not good enough.

Keith Olbermann can't be much clearer without breaking the campaign finance laws. He is an American hero.

Keith is the type of liberal that I aspire to be.
Strong. Intelligent. Aggressive. On Offense.
Doing what he honestly thinks is best.

Craig Farmer
making the word "liberal" safe again!

New York Governor Patterson and others are talking about how McCain-Palin, starting at the Republican Convention and now in stump speeches, are insinuating negative stereotypes based on race about Obama when they describe him as a
"Community Organizer" and contrasting that with  a mayor:

"who is sort of like a Community Organizer, except you have actual responsibilites".

---

They are right!

The whole concept is a way to turn Obama into Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson who many have decried to "get a job" and of whom almost none of these swing voters would vote for.

There is totally a racial aspect to this that is not good.  Though the same line of argument could and probably would be made against a white Democrat without the emotional punch....

oh wait,

A white democrat with Obama's background wouldn't be the democratic nominee.
----

All Obama supporters need to let this argument go.  Democrats deserve this for allowing innocent comments like "fairytale" concerning the Iraq War, and "Jesse Jackson won S.C. " to be portrayed as coming from an evil place.

Almost everyone here and many Obama supporters in the media have made very negative insuinations about McCain's age which are downright creepy.

None of us know when/where our lives will end, and to talk about those possibilities are at least as bad as playing the race card with "community organizer".

In addition, the Obama team has played the race card trying to get sympathy from a liberal media and electorate too often.  They are "the boys who cried wolf".  Remember the chatter that morphing Spears and Hilton with Obama played on white fears of a black man?

People are panicking and reverting to true form.  I implored Democrats in the past, and do so again today to celebrate the greatness of this country.  Stop looking for the bad people with the bad ideas.

McCain won't win because Obama's black.
Obama won't win because McCain's is older.

This "card" wouldn't matter except the polls have moved dramatically towards McCain unexpectedly.

They will move back towards Obama, if he demonstrates Leadership in a time of political crisis.

Obama needs to knock down any talk from his supporters about racial politics.

Racial politics won't work in today's world unless people think Obama is being cynical:

If I win: America's great.
If I lose: America couldn't overcome its' prejudices.

Most people don't take very well to blackmail.  
Even though "Community Organizer" is using race in my opinion.  It won't sway many votes, though the response to it just might.

Again, I suggest a response should be 100% on offense.  Find a way to attack Mccain on his POW days, on his age, on his temperament, which let's them know Democrats are tough enough not only to protect ourselves, but to destroy the attacker.

You can't win on defense.

Today is a good example of why I deplored the dynamics of the democratic primary, where at first everyone in the media left-center and right promoted Obama as a roadblock to Hillary being "coronated"; then the left-leaning media along with African Americans and elite liberals in the Democratic Party declared that Obama MUST WIN based on made-up rules that didn't exist:

"the will of pledged delegates".

So as Hillary won every contest she could and had to:
New Jersey, California, Ohio, Texas, Penn., Indiana, West Virgina, Kentucky,

The Democratic establishment kept moving towards Obama in a stunning fashion.  They refused to allow a "fair fight".

By that I mean there were constant warnings about "sensitivity", about "Democratic Unity", and the over-riding racial themes were inescapable.

The end result is we now have a candidate in his first real National  race, and he as of now looks just like Kerry and Gore.

Obama is on defense, responding to McCain, and has done so for the past few months.

He and we thought, NO MATTER, "we've got all the indicators and fundamentals on our side".

But now that the Republicans have shown something Obama hasn't seen in his Senate race or the Primaries: a Candidate who will do whatever it takes to win.

Hillary wasn't allowed to. Alan Keyes was a joke.  

Obama is our candidate because the cost of rejecting him would alienate the African American base our party so badly that we couldn't win any national election.

Had Obama won a fair fight, he would really be battle tested, but he won a fight where Hillary had 1 hand tied behind her back due to her own black supporters, the media, the liberals.

Now what should we do?
---------------------------------------- ---
Obama needs to shed the Kerry and Gore image and hit McCain - Palin hard with an "unfair charge".

This can be done by a 3rd party group or in the campaign's name, but Obama needs to risk the media backlash of "this is not who he said he was" or he is going to lose.

The biggest detriment to Democrats winning the White House is the inherent and obvious reluctance to protect themselves and hence the country from attack.  Obama is the 3rd straight candiate and 4 out of 5 (excluding Clinton) who projects weakness in terms of their demeanor.

Each time, the Republicans lie, spin, and just accuse Democrats of crazy things, and then the Democrats keep saying something to the tune of:

"The American people aren't that stupid to beleive...",

"I'm just going keep telling the truth...."

==
Obama needs to be on 100% offense. For example:

1. attack McCain as being mentally unstable to govern based on his torture from Vietnam.  This along with his age presents too much of a risk.

(must be subtle but hard-hitting--similar to the Republicans saying Obama was a "Community Organizer")

2.  say outright- Palin is unqualifed to be Vice-President.
 Use the fact that she needs the advisors and Lieberman to coach her to get ready for the job.

True these are personal attacks but when you're being shot at, you can't win by trying to avoid getting hit.

You have to attack back and take out the shooter.

Democrats need to learn this both in policy and in politics.

---
Black radio in Wash D.C. have started the "race card" games again.  Not a week after the polls turned, there is open talk of how many racists are still in the country.  Also how Obama is not being treated fairly(?).
----
Once again Obama should make clear that this is a great country win/lose, and he should then get on offense both policy wise and politically for the final 2 months.

I hope he is a good politician, but America is going to find out for the 1st time right now in the biggest election of our lives.

I'm dissappointed in Joe Lieberman for making a dishonest case for John McCain last night.  He reminded me so much of the bloggers here and the partisans elsewhere, who instead of celebrating the greatness of the country by engaging in an honest politics, they use our political system to demonstrate their personal character flaws.

For instance, to ask democrats to "vote for the best person" regardless of party, at the Republican Convention where they explicitly are not going to do the same thing is dishonest and shameful.   There was irony  in that McCain didn't choose the best person for the country to run as his Vice President (perhaps Lieberman himself) because he put the party first.

It's sad because a newcomer to politics might become seduced with the "bipartisan" rhethoric only to be dissillusioned later.

There are many honest cases to be made for both Senators to be our next President.  

By "honest"  I mean they are logical, based in actual truth rather than political spin, and would be recognized as valid a year from now by fair observers from both sides.

Here are my reasons for voting for Obama:

- He will bring with him a team of Democrats to staff the various agencies in government, as well as make appointments to the Judiciary with whom I generally agree with more than McCain would do.

- I agree with Obama's approach on an issue like Universal HealthCare.  His general framework along with a Democratic Congress will produce a better system for all Americans.  I especially like the idea of making affordable healthcare available to everyone, while making an effort not to force people to buy it unless it was actually necessary for the system to work.  McCain has a more piecemeal approach that relies more on the individual in a market that clearly has failed to work as well as it should.

- Though it probably won't be passed out of Congress, Obama supports common sense gun regulations and safety measures that coupled with continued law enforcement could make the U.S. safer.
McCain would be much less likely to sign these measures.

- In the current system, I agree with the Obama plan to cut 95% of the people's taxes and raise taxes on the wealthy.  This is better than running a deficit that will have to be addressed in the future.

I don't believe McCain would actually veto spending bills when push came to shove.  So the political choices are: more debt, more taxes on the wealthy.  I think we are better off as a nation with less debt for mundane business.

- I'm a yellowdog democrat who is dedicated to building up our party.  I think it is important for people to choose sides and stick with them.  Fight to improve them if necessary, but I don't like "swing voters" who are able to be swayed by the media and tv ads.  They cheapen the process and put our democracy in peril by their intellectual laziness.

-At this point, Obama needs to be elected because we as a Democratic Party haven't dealt with the emotions of African Americans if he loses.  It could be really dangerous both physically and psychologically.  So, it is important Obama win because of what it would represent to Americans and people around the world.

-----------------------

2 examples of dishonesty that I reject are:

-McCain would be a Bush 3rd term.  He has demonstrated his indepedence from Bush on the War, drilling, taxes, spending.  It nearly cost him the nomination, but he survived.
Sure he has flipped/flopped, but no one honestly expects McCain to be just like Bush.

-Obama will bring real change to Washington.  There is nothing that I can point to that makes that a reasonable statement other than he is black; which most people explicitly state that is not the reason to vote for him.

---
now I wish Obama:

-  wasn't culturally a left wing person.  I would prefer a Biden, Hillary, or others who might have to deal with the left but wasn't one of them instinctively.

-supported a stronger defense by being more aggressive.  I don't believe for instance that he would actually attack Bin Laden in Pakistan without their permission.  Though it would be the right thing to do.  I think he's saying something that he doesn't expect would ever happen to look tough.

-advocated for school vouchers for everyone so we all could choose the best available school for our children.

- promoted traditional moral values, he sometimes talks about them (like in the Warren forum), but again I don't believe him based on the infrequency and lack of passion.

-advanced fair trade that would actually make the world a better place by demanding higher standards around the world before you could trade with us.

- legalized internet poker and sports betting, and other gambling, and let the government regulate it.

But this is not a perfect world, so I make my choice:

Obama/Biden.

I have tried to warn my party about the danger of nominating Barack Obama under the current circumstances.

He was the least qualified among the major the contenders.

His base supported him because of identity politics.

The media shielded him from many legitimate criticisms.
---
Now as Obama engages in his first REAL nationial campaign of his life, he finds himself against John McCain who is actually trying to win and Republicans don't have to worry about  hurt "feelings" from their strategy or attack.

The choice of Palin was brilliant.  I thought it would be a woman (Hutchinson of Texas) for the very reason it turned out to be Palin.

Obama and his crew won by leveraging the black vote, irrespective of issues.  

If each democratic primary voter chose their candidate based on the issues, then Obama wouldn't have gotten 90% of the black vote, and Hillary wouldn't have gotten the lion share of the older white women vote.   There really wasn't any serious issue debate in the Democratic Campaign.  It was a circus about identity politics.  The subtext of Jesse Jackson Jr., Michael E. Dyson, John Lewis, John Kerry, and others either overtly or in more subtle ways alluding to Obama's race was/is bad both morally and politically.

I pleaded with Obama (and supporters) to reject the support on that basis, and now it will come back to harm him.

Gov. Sarah Palin is making a cynical appeal to women, BECAUSE SHE'S A REAL WOMAN!

Never mind the issues.
She's a 5 time mother.

Never mind the politics.
She's a spouse and a working woman.

What should concern us as a nation is:

SARAH PALIN is totally unqualifed to be President or Vice President of the United States.

Democrats will try to make a rational case as to how being a woman with a right-wing agenda doesn't help women, but the problem is we've spent months voting/not voting based essentially on women vs blacks vs men  vs whites.  The Obama team did the math and realized that if they combined the black vote with the young voters and elite liberals, they couldn't be stopped, and superdelegates wouldn't move against the first black candidate with a chance to win.  The Denver convention showed why the Obama camp was correct.

But now we have harmed our country by lowering the standard for POTUS.  The republicans have nominated someone who doesn't pass the laugh test.

Before 2008, Democrats would have said this loudly and clearly, but now we have to redouble our efforts and find a sensitive way to criticize Palin while not harming Obama with the same shot.

By the way, I judge Palin as I do every other aspirant:

She has not assumed power or elected to an important position (governor in this case), done a great job and been re-affirmed (re-elected) by the people.  She has not been tested in a real way.  

Now just as many  blacks support Obama because he's black.  Even though many of them are very conservative and disagree with Obama on many issues.

Gov. Palin is seeking similar support from women, white women especially, and has the various "cards" to play:

mother of child with disability
mother of son in Iraq
working woman "not afraid of the good ole boys"
reform against her own party.

The truth of each assertion doesn't matter, just like Obama's real position on Iraq or various issues doesn't matter to many of his supporters.

Republicans have now ruined their party's principles to win an election.  They used to stand for merit and now that is clearly another tenet that has been abandoned.

They chose their VP based on factors other than merit.

If you listen to her speech, she sounded like a Democrat.  She's a working mom, part of a Union family, and celebrating the anniversary of women suffage.

I know she is right-wing, but she is the "new" right-wing that asks for Left-Wing votes based on Identity politics.

It would be nice if we as democrats would have rejected this in the primary.

But no one wanted to listen.

---
Before the conventions this election was a dead heat with a slight lean towards Obama. After the conventions I expect much the same, except if Palin doesn't mess up, the lean towards Obama will be less so.

Going forward,
Democrats should get ready for a big battle in the fall by advancing issues that matter to people:

-judges on the Supreme Court
-Universal Healthcare
-better foreign policy
-cleaner environment

and stop talking about "history".  This is code for "vote for the black guy" so America can move beyond race.  

The Republicans found their answer this morning, "vote for the white woman".

They aren't exactly equal in that Palin in running for VP, but it gives enough energy on the margins to make a difference.

Especially in light of what happened to HRC, it might work.

Learn the lesson today and quickly.

Craig Farmer

btw.  this wouldn't be a bad time for Joe Biden to drop out of the race, and let HRC take her rightful position.