While winning California is important this is not a winner take all state when it comes to delegates. So it is possible to lose in California but still gain a huge number of delegates. This is important because I don't think February 5th is going to be the end of the campaign for Obama/ Clinton.

This makes the Kennedy endorsement all the more important but gives Clinton, who has many Super Delegates already pledged, an advantage. No matter what this is riveting political drama and I believe helpful for the Democratic nominee.

Barack Obama voted for a 700 mile section of border fence against Mexico- are you down with that, Bay Guardian?

How come everyone I know who is working on Obama's campaign is so far to the left of him? Can't we do better than a centrist who gives pretty speeches?

What happened to the anti-war and enviornmental movements? Will they keep raising money for a candidate who backs continued war in Afghanistan and nuclear/clean coal? Is this any different than Kerry 04?

Where are the real changes to money's influence in politics? I'm sick of watching coronations for whichever millionaire raises "the most" money.

And if the Democrats really wanted to stop the war, why don't they stop funding it? Because Iraqis and US soldiers dying in the next 9 months will deliver them the White House.

Hey Whatever - You sound like a spoiled little kid who gets ice cream and cake for his birthday and complains that it's the wrong flavor.

Obama's campaign has electrified the country (and the world) because he represents a significant change from politics-as-usual. He's not the party establishment. He's not a Washington hack. He took his Harvard law degree (and credentials as editor of the law review) and instead of cashing it in for a six-figure partner-track job at a firm, he went to the streets of Chicago as a community activist.

You're right. He's not Gandhi. He's not even Kucenich. Instead, he's a real candidate with a real chance to win and a real chance to change the world.

Incidentally, Whatever, if case you haven't been paying attention, you NEVER get the perfect candidate. You have to choose the best available option.

This year you choose between Obama and Hillary. That's the way the system works. Obama ain't perfect, but he's the best we've got.

Or maybe vote Green and give the White House to the GOP trogs for another 8 years.

So what you're saying is we have no right to ask a politician to move to the left? He's beholden to moneyed interests but that's as good as we're going to get?

Is that realism? Or Defeatism?

Democracy is something you just do once a year or every 4 years in the voting booth, and holding politicians accountable for their allegedly progressive bases is unrealistic/undemocratic?

Are Obama's clean coal/nuclear planks really so well-thought-out and immutable that the progressive youth turning out the vote for Obama has no right to question their new messiah?

And thanks for the rhetoric lesson, time4change, I could read Obama transcripts myself. I also appreciate your name-calling instead of addressing the war issues, immigration issues, and environmental issues. Serves me right for discussing politics on an internet blog. Can't you see that I'm not your enemy and I am genuinely interested in how to pull Obama to the left in his positions (not his flowery rhetoric)? Stop being a jerk and please respond again more civilly.

It's a shame that his electrifying youth campaign is so centrist. Don't we have an opportunity here to put someone with real leftist values in the White House, not just another millionaire taking money from AIPAC??

I don't think "the system" does work that way- choosing between two evils every four years.

I think "the system" works better when I ignore national politics aka millionaire advertising feuds and instead help organize local communities where it's actually possible to make a difference in peoples' lives because we can do things like raise the minimum wage, provide health care, and respond to the immigration police state crisis. That's the best we've got. Hillary v Obama is a boring reality TV show that's been in reruns for decades, a farce of democracy and everybody knows it but still watches it and gives it ink and pretends that "change" is gunna kick ass this year! GO CHANGE!!

Barack Whatever, I disagree.

The system DOES work in such a way that you choose one of two people every four years. I don't love it, but that's the way it is. Until it changes, that's the system we've got.

Also, you don't have to choose between local or national issues. Both matter. National issues are hugely important. If W hadn't stolen the election in 2000, do you really think we'd be wasting countless lives and billions of dollars in Iraq right now? No way no chance no how.

If Clinton's vice-president Gore were president, yes, I think we would still be punishing children in Iraq for their oil and hemmorhaging money into the military industrial complex and leaving millions of US citizens in poverty just as we did during 8 years of union-busting NAFTA-loving Clinton (500,000 iraqi children dead from sanctions, boeing handouts, dot com bubble, purging the wellfare rolls). And Clinton circumvented congress for criminal military intervention schemes as expertly as Bush ("non-emergency" intervention in Haiti to support a bloody anti-democratic coup). Bush does not have any intellectual lock on imperial military power- and he's not as good as Clinton at spinning the media to ignore his wars.

Surely Gore would have invaded Afghanistan as a response to September 11th. What do you think Vice-President military hawk Leiberman would have suggested? Surely he would have rivaled Cheney's creepy right-wing evil.

Maybe it would be on a lesser scale, sure, but please don't pretend that every US president in the past 60 years isn't a war criminal on some level, thanks to a dominant imperial military and extinction-level nuclear arsenal.

Obama's support for military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan suggests that US's imperial, military expansionist (CRIMINAL) aims would be continued for as long as the economy can support it- or longer, probably, once the military has completed being outsourced to India or Chile or Blackwater or Boeing or whatever.

Are nuclear options on the table for Obama too- as Bush is saying about Iran? Or will he fight for nuclear disarmament as his many progressive supporters should surely be urging him to do?

Someone ask his Youtube page for me.

Let me wade into the middle of this for a moment because I think it's an interesting discussion. BW, I normally sympathize with your frustration at what the the two main corporate-sponsored parties give us for presidential nominees every four years, and I regularly argue your basic position against the more pragmatic approaches of people like Realist and T4C.
But in this case, I think that BW has taken a couple of less than progressive Obama stands and used them to paint an misleading portrait of the candidate. The reality is that Obama's rhetoric and policy stances are more progressive than any top Democratic Party candidate since maybe Mondale. That's why he's giving progressives hope, that and the potential that exists in a candidate of color from a new generation that has not risen through the normal Establishment channels. If Gore in 2000 talked like Obama and adopted his economic and social justice themes, then he would have had more enthusiastic support from the left and would have easily won. That doesn't mean Obama is Paul Wellstone, but he's closer to that than the hawkish corporate shill you're trying to make him out to be. I don't want to question your motives, BW, but there is only one other campaign out there who benefits from such deceptions. Are you supporting Hillary? If not, who are you voting for?
One last point: Realist is right when he says that our choices may be limited nationally, but there's much work to be done locally and lots of leaders who hold truly progressive values and who face serious obstacles in creating a more sustainable and egalitarian community. If you seek the ideal, let's try to create it locally and then export it.

I don't appreciate your faux-friendly attitude of "normally sympathizing" with the likes of me followed by allegations of "such deceptions" when I ask about Obama's support of imperial US military aspirations and the fact that campaigns at the presidential level are won by millionaires who can outspend their opponents.

If you will read my earlier post, you will see that I had already made it clear that Bill Clinton is a war criminal. Hillary is a hawk that I would never vote for, takes money from AIPAC (same as Obama) and supports her husband's racist embargo of Cuba.

It appears as if you are trying to turn this into an argument and painting me as the "hillary is everywhere" straw bogeyman. Not cool, please stop it, take a chill pill.

I am not painting Obama as a hawkish corporate shill, I am asking a question that people are ignoring: if so many people working for him are far to the left, how come he's not running to the left? Not even drastically to the left, let's just say as far left as Edwards? (also not voting for him- maybe he was further "towards" that great rhetorician Mondale?)

On the one hand you seem to try and dissuade me from encouraging people to pull Obama further to the left, then you say that Gore should have run further to the left. Okay.

How is trying to influence our elected representatives not a "pragmatic" approach?? Especially when there are so many progressives in the Obama machine? Democracy is not a spectator sport.

I don't know how to reconcile Old Obama's grassroots organizing with New Obama's spending $9 million on television ads in Iowa- rewarding the advertising industry and tv networks for kingmaking whoever spends the most money. Shilling for money to run for office. Hope some of that money trickles down to the progressive organizers turning out the vote- a fair critique of the Democratic Party- except when Obama's running.

I find your suggestion of exporting San Francisco "ideals" to the rest of the US very similar to Reagan exporting "democracy" to Central America or missionaries bringing dresses to Polynesia.

"how come he's not running to the left?"

Because he wants to win. You don't win the general election by appealing to the fringes, you win by appealing to the middle.

And by the way, feel free to blather on the Clinton is a war criminal, but remember that under Clinton (a) we weren't at war in Iraq, (b) thousands of acres of wilderness were protected, and (c) the federal government ran a budget surplus.

"how come he's not running to the left?"

Because he wants to win. You don't win the general election by appealing to the fringes, you win by appealing to the middle.

And by the way, feel free to blather on the Clinton is a war criminal, but remember that under Clinton (a) we weren't at war in Iraq, (b) thousands of acres of wilderness were protected, and (c) the federal government ran a budget surplus. He's not perfect, but he's a hell of a lot better than W.

OK. I'll weigh back in. First of all, it's an analogy not name calling.

Second, this entire discussion comes down to three simple points:

1. Barring complete oddness at the conventions, one of the following four people will be the next president: Obama, Clinton, McCain or Romney.

2. That is reality. You may wish the world worked in some other way, but it doesn't.

3. Of the four candidates, the clear choice for progressives is Obama.

So the problem with this discussion is that "Whatever" is stuck on point 2 and the responses are all about point 3.