I noticed that too. It's no coincidence I'm sure.

I think the Obama campaign staff all need to be on the same page as to how they will proceed.

You know, I'd like to see even the slightest evidence that Obama isn't just another posturing, holier-than-thou phony.

He talks about changing the tone of politics, but then hires a consultant who created an ad sliming Dean. And, just by coincidence, of course, his piece of work, self-absorbed supporter Geffen goes after BOTH of the Clintons, and smears our previous Democratic President, who was both quite successful and highly popular?

You know who Obama is starting to resemble? Joe Lieberman. The same vicious undercutting of other Democrats. The same sanctimonious tone while doing so.

It's actually quite revolting.

This is why intramural fights are so much more interesting - you can't say either party is 'evil.'

I was very big into Dean, going to the meetups and to a Jefferson Jackson dinner in Iowa.

Still, I think looking for a 'nice' attack dog is a contradiction in terms. Billary is out to play hardball and B O needs someone who knows when to cut corners. That person's going to have dirty hands by definition.

I doubt any Dem is considering Joe as a running mate. Now Repubs, especially McCain who could use Joe for geographic diversity might.

“I told my staff that I don’t want us to be a party to these kinds of distractions because I want to make sure that we’re spending time talking about issues,” Mr. Obama said. “My preference going forward is that we have to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it customarily is played.”

Obama said this AFTER the fracas had played out. The telling words are "I told my staff..." and "My preference going foward..." Sounds to me as if Obama's staff got a spanking from Obama himself.

If you ask me like it or not that ad goes right to the heart of any argument against Dean in 2004. It's not surprising a Dem, any Dem, would use it against him in IA. If he had won the nomination you can be sure the Repubs would have used it against him in the general. It's all about electability for our caucusers and voters in IA and NH. If Jerome Armstrong thinks every Dem who criticized Dean in 2004 ought to be ostracized we're not going to get anyone elected.

Gibbs worked for Obama in 2004. He apparently didn't do anything to embarrass the candidate then. Obama won by a landslide, even in Republican DuPage County. Granted Gibbs probably wouldn't have been heard anyway if he did make boneheaded comments over the sound of Alan Keyes detonating verbal IEDs under his own campaign.

Gibbs may or may not be a drag on Obama in the coming year but I doubt it's as bad a move as hiring a blogger who regularly uses the term "cunt" in her posts. You don't have to be a wingnut Christian to be put off by that. Be my guess 90% of American women find that offensive.

Is this the same guy who was complaining about Hillary Clinton's consultant saying Obama would lose every state in the nation and every Democrat on the ballot would lose with a black presidential nominee?

I thought it was pretty outrageous for that fellow, Darell Jones, to say that but now that you've reminded me of the attack on Dean, I don't care any more! Let all the poison thats in the mud hatch out. It makes people ridiculous for caring about integrity among these politicians.

I'm suspicious of any politician who talks about "changing the tone" of politics. Thats Bush's line and he's been nothing but obnoxious.

So Sirota is unhappy that Obama doesn't tilt at windmills like Wellstone and instead chooses to try for results. I like results.

Conason hates Lieberman, so do I. Obama made a campaign appearance for him in May. Here's some other other people who backed him then: Reid, Boxer, both Clintons, and just about every other Senate Dem. These are all people who are gonna have to talk him out of going Republican on us too. I doubt they'll let him sit at the kewl kids table in the cafeteria though. Get over it.

The effort to tarnish Obama by reference to the consultant he hired is beyond ridiculous. Consultants like Gibbs are hired guns, sort of like attorneys. They have to follow the direction of the client and utilize the client's own themes. All of the most experienced consultants, unfortunately, have worked for candidates that played a harder form of hardball than most of us would like.

Brother Dean's own consultants put out some awfully harsh materials when they were representing others, including Dean. If Obama had not hired someone like Gibbs with a lot of experience, the same MSM pundits overblowing the latest spat would say that Obama was not a serious player, because he could not line up respected, experienced talent.

Obama can direct Gibbs as to the kind of message Obama wants to convey, and by all appearances, Obama is giving clearer direction to Gibbs in the wake of the campaigns' first kerfuffle. If Obama actually begins to put out foul ads or obnoxious press releases, then judge him for that; don't judge him for hiring Gibbs -- especially since Gibbs had worked for Obama in the past and, together, there were no obnoxious ads or press releases anyone can turn up.

There's no evidence Obama is insincere or phony; why put the burden on him to prove he's not a phony? I find it interesting that the worst things anyone says about Obama correspond to the consensus view of Hillary's characteristics. In other words, it's basically common ground that Hillary is a triangulating, maneuvering soulless politician. Virtually no one thinks she is an idealist. Even her supporters say that skillful triangulation and maneuvering is what's needed to beat Repubs, not that these are traits foreign to Hillary. Indeed, on this very website, over the last 2 weeks, countless ardent Hillary supporters defended her vote in 2002 based on the idea that it was wrong, but politically necessary for her to show she was tough. Check the archives. So, even if Obama turns out to be less than perfectly saintly, it's hard to see him being worse than Hillary.

And, if on that score, they are close to equal, then the battle turns to this: who had the political courage and the soundest judgment on the most important issue in American politics in the last five years? The answer of course is Obama.

Just yesterday, Josh Marshall posted on the main TPM page a video clip from an interview Obama gave in November 2002, one month after the Iraq war authorization vote and five months before the war started. Obama comes off as less polished than he is now, but: Guess what? everything he says is measured, sound, and correct.

 No military or foreign policy experience? Sounds suspiciously like Obama.

Sounds suspiciously like Bill Clinton and GW Bush, as well.

. My guess is the only women who would be so offended by "vulgar" words wouldn't be voting in the democratic primary anyway.

You are an exceptionally poor guesser,then. That word is far more vulgar and offensive, than whore, pussy or bitch. Female democrats will be voting in the primary and do find the term abhorrent.

My beef with Obama is as other posters have said, is his sanctimoniousness

Please provide evidence, facts and/or examples to substantiate these totally subjective characterization please.

BO also has a habit of castigating "his fellow democrats".

What statements, when and about which specific democrats can you use to support this being a 'habit'?

Perhaps because the link appears in every thread where Obama is mentioned with little actual comment contributing to the discussion....

I gotta tell ya, I've taken a look through the user's history of comments, and I really can't see anything that should be troll-rated, aside from a remark, accusation, really, that Obama's autobiography is "fiction." That's a stretch.

But other than that, it just seems like this person is raising questions about Obama, and some people don't like that.

Caveat, I haven't gone through everything, so maybe there's more to it than I saw.

But this really seems like a case of disagreeing with opinion, and abusing the ratings system. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Obama then added that he would have voted "nay" on the authorization resolution anyways, because the resolution gave Bush "carte blanche" to launch a preemptive war, imposing no conditions. That, Obama said, was a bad precedent. Right again.

Imagine that. Here is a person who understands the Constitution unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Yale educated lawyer, who claims that it was the 'flawed intelligence' and 'failed execution of the war' causes her vote to look bad. Yet, here we have a candidate who only needed to apply the democratic principles in our Constitution under our systems of governance by the rule of law to know the AUMF should not be affirmatively voted on. Hillary's vote looks worse and worse.

It screams poor judgement and personal ambition are the foundation of her vote. Neither of which is a good thing to have in a President. GWBush has taught us that lesson well.

You are being overly nasty and you obviously can't think for yourself.

What's wrong with Obama calling for Democrats to compete for support from religious people? Like it or not we're the most religious country in the Western world. Dems aren't gonna win anything without getting some regular churchgoers to vote for them. How about a little context Rooktoven? Do you remember the backlash after the 2004 election in our party against religious people that went overboard because one poll showed "values voters" put Bush over the top? That was nuts and if it kept up we would have been marginalized. We never would have won in 2006.

Quoting Sirota who apparently has set himself up as an Obama critic (for who's benefit I might ask and you should to) doesn't do much for me. Obama voted against Roberts, voted for a filibuster against Alito and Sirota synopsizes Obama's long article at Kos and other statements into two sentences. I suggest you go back and read what Obama himself actually said. You might
get a better understanding than you'll get from two sentences claiming he opposed his own votes.

Anyone who undermines brand democrat deserves the Lieberman comparison.

And who decides that? You? Or the guy who does your thinking for you? Arguing with you is like arguing with Repubs in 2004 who claimed John Kerry voted 350 times to raise our taxes while in the Senate.

You know, it's interesting to look at the ratings whiterosebuddy gave on this thread.

Essentially, so far as I determined, every comment praising Obama he awarded a very high score to, and every comment criticizing Obama got a very low score.

A little transparent, you know?

It seems to be carryover from another post...it's all the same people with the zeros.  

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Sirota, and apparently you, think that undermining the brand "Democrat" happens when you undermine Nation-magazine or Daily Kos orthodoxy. Most Dems opposed filibusters of Alito and Roberts, so weren't those who supported it undermining the "brand" on your logic? Indeed, Feingold supported Roberts and opposed filibustering Alito; so he is not a Sirota-certified Democrat.

Oh, and is it impolite to mention that Hillary busted the brand "Democrat" big-time when she voted for the war resolution. (If you count all Congressional Democrats, House and Senate, the majority Democratic position was against the war resolution).

On the war I want to watch what they do, not what they say. I'm very wary that some of the candidates would talk a good spiel but would leave US troops in huge numbers in the Middle East for decades, threatening some of the countries and stoking American jingoism that we're the aggrieved party. You know, we'd never hear the end of the same vicious, saber rattling crap that we've lived with for so many years.

Here's a critical article on Obama's pronouncements on the war from antiwar.com

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10181

>

You know, I'd like to see even the slightest evidence that Obama isn't just another posturing, holier-than-thou phony.

Trying reading Obama's autobiography "Dreams from My Father." Obama's words are profoundly eloquent, but far more eloquent are his actions:

After graduating from Columbia. He gave up a good job, in his field of international economics, to become a community organizer at $10,000 a year in the projects of south Chicago.

After graduating from Harvard, at the top of his class and as the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review, he could have gone anywhere he wanted to go. He could have clerked at the Supreme Court. He could have started at almost any firm in the country at big bucks. Instead he went back to south Chicago and joined a small firm specializing in civil rights and pro-bono work for community organizations. Obama compiled a strong record as an effective, progressive legislator in eight years in Springfield. I find Obama's words powerful, and I find his actions persuasive.

Why is is that so many PC Lefties can't recognize a true progressive, who actually has a chance to win, when he is right in front of our noses? Sirota's piece, which is quoted frequently, is full of half-truths, distortions, and unsupported assertions.

I am a lefty, but sometimes my fellow lefties seem far more interested in idealogical purity than in actually winning and affecting change. Obama isn't perfect. Someone who is "perfect," in the eyes of the left, can't win. As the old saying goes, "the perfect is often the enemy of the good."

Obama has a good chance of actually getting elected. If he does, he is liable to be the most progressive President we have had snce FDR. That is "good enough" for me.

Look, the way one smears and undercuts another candidate is only rarely in direct words.

So, let's see what you are saying is you have no facts to support your head on direct attack on Barack characterizing him as 'viscious and undercutting'? You are unable to come up with a single example of Barack directly and visciously attacking an undercutting another candidate...is that it? Gotcha. Your statement was nothing but bloviating.

As I pointed out, he hired in a major in his campaign the very guy who slimed Dean in Iowa with the ugliest of TV ads.

And? This guy also has worked for Obama previously and there are no ads from Obama during prior campaign where he slimed opponents.  Seems this is more about folks who are paid by the candidate doing what the candidate pays them to do, rather than about the experience of the consultant. If anything this example shows that when folks work for Barack they do not have to produce ugly TV ads, since he tells them  what he wants. Bottomline: consultants represent candidates the way they are PAID to represent them.

His very prominent supporter, Geffen, goes to the biggest gossip columnist in the country, M. Dowd, and calls both Hillary AND Bill Clinton liars -- just among other things.

Geffen is a man who worked for the Clintons for 16 years, longer than Barack has been in politics, and he raised a lot of money for the Clintons. Surely, this man is entitled to his own personal opinion of the Clintons based on that relationship.  Point of fact, he said that all politicians lie, but that the Clintons do so much easier than others. Based on the response from the Clintons camp he was dead on, given that Wolfson said Geffen was the financial chair for Obama's campaign, knowing full well that he was nothing but a fundraiser, having worked with him for 16 years alongside the Clintons. But that easy lie, tied Geffen to the Obama campaign for easily duped folks, like yourself, it appears.

  Surely, you do not expect Obama to be accountable for private citizens personal opinions who happen to raise funds to support his campaign. Geffen is NOT part of Obama's team and you are crazy to try to hold Obama accountable for something an individual who raised money for him says. That's ludicrous. 

And, of course, Obama, apparently completely smug in his phoniness, refuses to repudiate in any way (so far as I know)

Obama made no remarks to apologize for. Do you think that Hillary was smug about denying having said that Obama went to an extremist Madrass school? Was it phony on her part to repudiate having nothing to do with the smear?  If not, Barack's actions for statements by Geffen are no less phony or smug. You simply have twisted logic.  Folks you hang with must find it difficult to be around you the way you attempt to hold folks accountable for others actions and remarks.

Geffen's remarks, while simultaneously posturing still more as the above-the-fray, highminded, morally superior paragon.

Yeah, it is becoming clear that you are lost in the labyrinth of your own mindless logic. You started out describing these remarks as viciousviciously, undercutting and gossipy lies, ...now they are morally superiour?  sigh...can't keep up with your twists and turns....er,  triangulating.

Essentially, so far as I determined, every comment praising Obama he awarded a very high score to, and every comment criticizing Obama got a very low score.

Your determination is false.

Had your determination been objective  you would have noticed  that I responded to those posts I disagreed with. Every comment criticizing Obama was not given a low score.

If I rate a post lower than 3, it is due to the poster not having supported their statements. Such as yours where you assert a need for the 'slightest evidence' and then fail to provide anything to substantiate your own opinion. I responded to that, after rating it marginal, because I value evidence as you appeared to be saying you needed as well. My response  asked for your evidence to support your reasoning/assertions.

  If you look at the posts that are  'criticizing' Obama, (according to you), you will find that I did not rate them at all.

 It is far more transparent that I respond to posts I disagree with, such as yours, rather than rate them low. Which is the approrpiate response according to the ratings rules.

Passion is one thing. Ratings abuse, another. 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Just to be clear, are you now saying that you do not beleive when a post is repeatedly posted that it is troll behavior?

The same exact post over and over? Yes.

That's not what I see going on here.

Dissent Protects Democracy.

Sorry for the snarky tone of my earlier post. I was in a bad mood after reading several posts criticizing Obama from the left. I get furious at ignorant comments that equate Obama to Lieberman. Look at their positions and their comments, the two have almost nothing in common. I agree that Odom's ideas have great merit and hope that they will provide a way forward.

I think it is important, however, to realize the inherent limits on the ability of candidates to actually lead on foreign policy issues. If any candidate, especially someone like Obama, who is relatively new to the national stage, gets too far ahead of the public or the MSM, they are likely to be heavily criticized. Obama first has to get elected, then he can lead.

Ok what's Odom's position on single payer? Tax cuts? The nat'l. debt? abortion?

Odom is great on Iraq as is that op-ed in the WaPo. He was even better tearing Hugh Hewitt a new one on Hewitt's own radio show. But he was Reagan's head of the NSA. He has no political experience and as far as I know after a career in the military none on these and a whole host of other issues. Besides he's not running.

I'd be a little more careful in projecting your wants on guys like him and Hagel. They didn't rise high in Republican administrations and politics by believing what we do.