It's the only reason I can think of for him to write this stupidity.
For Obama, a Lost Moment
By David S. Broder
Thursday, May 15, 2008; A15Barack Obama really didn't need a victory in West Virginia. He was already well on his way to wrapping up the Democratic nomination, and the 28 delegates at stake were not going to change that picture, no matter how that primary came out.
But he should have competed there, if only to signal his awareness of its special place in Democratic history. Forty-eight years ago, it was West Virginia more than any other state that propelled John Kennedy into the White House. And it did so in a way that Obama should have wanted to emulate.
Repeat after me, David...
"Heads bleed. Walls don't."
Do us all a favor and take the pension, dude.
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Broder's Article Sucks For...
many reasons.
It would have been helpful for me to know exactly how Kennedy managed to win this "Klan redoubt." Surely Broder's word choice is intended to lead the witness since were it truly the bastion he suggests, Kennedy would have made no serious inroads.
Last night, I head someone (a talking head) say that no one has won the Presidency without winning West Virginia. You know I hit the remote...back to the game.
One thing that this campaign has demonstrated is that America (as a nation) simply lacks the capacity for sustained discourse about issues. The MSM is already obsolete among certain portions of the population. As that continues to unfold, the only hope for maintaining these bland, empty narratives will be vacuous bloggers with high hit counts.
It's getting easier to "turn the channel."
"King and chief probably had a big beef; 'Cause of that now I grit my teeth." - Chuck D.
How JFK Won West Virginia
"It would have been helpful for me to know exactly how Kennedy managed to win this 'Klan redoubt.'"
M-O-N-E-Y is the answer. The Kennedy campaign literally gave folks fistfuls of dollars. JFK, for example, said that one political leader asked the campaign for "thirty-five."* The guy meant $3500. Kennedy thought he meant $35,000 and gave it to him. Kennedy carried the county where this guy lived. When Hubert Humphrey said afterwards that his campaign did not have enough money to defeat Kennedy in West Virginia he was not talking about newspaper and television ads.
I find it funny that our corporate media is now endlessly bleating on behalf of folks in West Virginia when we all know that they do not give a damn about folks in West Virginia. The Obama Campaign is not stupid. It knows that winning places like West Virginia would be more than a tall order for any black man who is also a Democrat. That is why it has set its sights on states like Colorado, Iowa and Wisconsin. West Virginia represents the old Democratic Party coalition. The party needs to make new friends.
*Where Kennedy hailed from you couldn't buy a county's voters for $3500 but in West Virginia that was a lot of money to spread around. Thirty-five thousand dollars must have made those country folks feel as if they had died and gone to heaven.
The West Virginia primary of
The West Virginia primary of 1960 was also notable because the Kennedy's were able to get FDR Jr. to perform a hit job on Hubert Humphrey. The Kennedys shamelessly convinced the younger Roosevelt to raise questions about Humprhey's patriotism because he had not served in WWII. Forget all the baloney about how this primary symbolized a death knell for religious bigotry. It symbolized politics at its worse just as Clinton's racist comments prior to this primary symbolizes the same.
From Kaizergrande: "The
From Kaizergrande:
"The media's pornographic obsession with the so called white working class vote demonstrates the innate bigotry that exists in even the so called liberal media. Nobody's freaking out about Hillary winning only 8% of the black vote even though she can't win the general election without a huge majority of that vote. Personally I prefer the racism that comes from ignorance to that which masquerades as intellectual discourse."