Short Report from YearlyKos

[barking_iguana]

EDIT: East, West, the twain met in my mind. But outside of my mind, it's Drew Westen, not Will Easton who wrote The Political Brain.

Best line of the convention (that I heard):
Questioner to Obama: [paraphrasing: Republicans are going to throw all sorts of nasty stuff at you if you're the nominee] so do you have an LBJ side to your personality, in addition to the sunny populist?
Obama: Well, first I'd like to welcome you all to Chicago...
Then he gave a good answer on what to do about swiftboating, which maybe I'll repeat in a longer post.

Watching Wes Clark was weird. By accent, cadence, gestures, and facial expressions (especially his upper lip) he's a dead ringer for Bush. I guess that would have been his campaign theme had he been the nominee last time: A man like Bush, but without the stupid.

Having seen Richardson both on TV and in person, I get the impression he is not well. If it's nothing life-threatening, he needs to say it, and then occasionally joke about it, before it becomes bandied about by people with wider audiences than me.

Biden didn't show up at the candidates' forum.

Hillary is articulate about what she gets, and could be an effective President. But there's too much she just doesn't get. She actually cited us being willing to take off our shoes to board a plane as an example of something that had made us safer.

Obama looks even younger in person. He is so good on issues he's prepared to speak about, but he's weak when he hasn't had time to come up with something brilliant. Edwards can't hit Obama's high notes, but he's much more consistent.

Besides, Obama's appeal is less empathetic than Edwards', and I think Edwards will have more appeal to folks who have different personality types from me and aren't already solidly anti-Republican. Obama would be perfect as a head of a movement, within or beyond the Party, but I think he'll be a stronger candidate, and would be a more effective President, eight years from now.

It hurts to say that. Because Obama speaks for me more than any of the others do. Edwards/Obama or Edwards/Napolitano would be great tickets. (I should qualify that: I've never seen or heard Napolitano; I'm relying on what I've read about her and my own assessment that a female governor would be a good match for Edwards.)

I had enjoyable conversations with John Dean and Cenk Uygur, and had shorter conversations with Rick Perlstein and Juan Cole.

What Will Easton Drew Westen has to say is related to what the more famous George Lakoff has to say, but Easton's Westen's message is more important and more consistently right. Easton's Westen's book is The Political Brain. Oh, I had some back and forth with Lakoff when he was on a panel.

I just got back from a Teamsters reception. My earliest political memories are from 1968. Seeing muscle-based union leader Hoffa Jr. speak, in Chicago, of all places, gave me the creeps. But not as badly as seeing Daley Jr. be the host at the 1996 convention did. I nearly puked, then. That was rubbing progressives' noses in the fact that we had thoroughly lost the party to the triangulators and corporatists. My attitude was, yes, we'll carry water for you now (then), because it's the most useful role we can play for the country under the circumstances. But having Daley on the stage was (though I hope unintentional) triumphalist symbolism that was just going too far for me, as one of the people who had been triumphed over. The party has moved to the left since then, so I guess I'm not quite as prickly, but I still wish this were Harold Washington's city.

Comments

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

Obama would be perfect as a head of a movement, within or beyond the Party, but I think he'll be a stronger candidate, and would be a more effective President eight years from now.

Yeah, that. Actually, I wish I could clone Obama and fill at least a quarter of the Senate with him. I hate the idea that the Senate is becoming just a jumping-off point for the Presidency, because it fosters and symbolizes the increasing power of the executive branch and the weakening of the checks and balances that distinguish US government from, say, the unicameral French government. I wish Obama would stay in the Senate for another eight or twelve years, mentoring other progressives, then win himself a governor's seat for a decade or so, and then win the Presidency. But I've never gotten my wishes in politics, so I see no reason why I'm likely to get this one.

[cinema-babe.livejournal.com]

Thanks a lot for this post. I'm loath to begin thinking about presidential politics more than a year before the election, however there isn't anyone in any party that is impressing me.

If I had to vote today, I'd be in big trouble.

Any little bit of analysis helps.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

It's only anout 6 months until the candidates will be selected.

[cinema-babe.livejournal.com]

I thought that wouldn't be done until next summer?

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

The conventions aren't until the summer, but most of the delegates will be selected much earlier. Unless it's extraordinarily close, the nominees will be effectively chosen by mid February. The primamries used to bemore spread out—from February through June. But now many states have moved theirs up.