Because there are no facts, there is no truth, Just data to be manipulated

but he's gotten a lot better as it's moved along.

No he hasn't. MTP looks terrible.

The gas tax issue is such a gimmick and silly of Clinton to push it.  The more one learns, the more idiotic it gets...

Hope and Change are a gimmick. BS speeches in Phillie that are contradicted a week or two later are gimmicks. Proposing to suspend a tax is dollars  cents. Presidencies rise and fall on commodity prices. To think it doesn't matter is evidence of social and economic insulation.

So he spawns this notion that rolling back the Federal taxes on gasoline helps the working class (which it clearly does) and he gets a substance-free benefit because he knows that even if this legislation actually made it through the House and Senate, it's a certain Bush veto.

Now Hillary gets this and so she signs on but then figures that she can pay for this tax loss (and the highway funds hit) by instituting a 'windfall profits tax on the oil companies' - brilliant.

So Obama sees that there isn't any room to improve on it so he just disses it as being the typical stuff that emanates from Washington.

While it never was much of an issue in an of itself, it's rather telling as to where each of the candidates actually stand...

McCain, the panderer for working class votes

Clinton, the policy wonk for trying to build a program for a policy that panders to the working class votes.

Obama, the pragmatist that shows neither the desire to pander to working class votes nor to find a policy that works.

But it is is a message of hope, a message that the public is being heard, and it could have an effect on the consumer confidence index.  That is an assessment mechanism that always baffles economists, because it is a measure of an intangible -- of emotion . . . of hope for the future.

A politician who truly understood how to instill hope would study how FDR did it, instilling hope to revive a discouraged country that then supported his next measures, the New Deal.  FDR's first steps were  dissed by economists, too, as only short-term measures -- and they dissed many of his next ideas, too.  

But by then, the public knew to ignore economists who didn't understand how politics works and go with the guy who understood that -- and them.

Did you see the elderly women tell Obama that she doesn't see anything wrong with it?  Listen to her - not just her words.  But who she is.  Her tone.  Her entire being!

It's psychological - we want to know that someone somewhere is worrying about "us".  It's only $25 a month, but I know what even that would have meant to my 93 year old mother...and my brother, who has had to stop going to our family's week-end place because he can't afford the gas.  Those little amounts ACTUALLY MEAN THINGS TO SOME PEOPLE.

I suspect most of the people here throw $25 dollars away a week on stupid things.  But not every American is so lucky.

Instead, Obama et al, are screaming about things that are important from an intellectual and elite standpoint (yup, I did use that word).

Democrats used to support ideas and options that helped the less blessed among us.

I am very blessed.  I don't need that $25.  I don't need my Michigan tax return (which I felt guilty about receiving).  I am one of the lucky among us.

It's evident that you think all opinion that believes Hillary is a better candidate is ignorant and I wonder what benefit you think you are bringing to TalkLeft by coming here.

Do you think you are doing your chosen candidate any favors? I would submit not.

Do you think you are enlightening the ignorant few who post here? I would submit not.

Do you think your purpose here serves any greater good? I would submit not.

Some may still be able to hold their nose and vote for him if he's the nominee. But keep insulting them and annoying them and inserting trite comments and that may not continue to be true.

Also, while we are at it. Do you really think it is productive to spend your time insulting the very people that your candidate will need to win over if he is the nominee? Do you think insults generate support or could you possibly think that your actions might have an adverse effect on the candidate that you support?

Personally I think China,  Russia and  India will see it for the PR move that it is.   They will also note the  crisis in American confidence that this PR represents.

And then it would be really interesting if it included interviews with women ambassadors and women leaders.

What the "Obama will bring hope to the world!" crap represents is a manifestation of wishful thinking.  It is "hope" that he will change America's image just by virtue of being himself--as if Clinton would not do the same, if not more for humanity.

If you want to talk about real-world implications, what sort of message will a woman US president send to Saudi Arabia's women?  To the opium bridge of Afghanistan, thirteen year olds sold into "marriage" to pay off family debts?  To beaten, battered and tortured women in Iraq who can be burned alive for angering their husbands?  To Egyptian girls who are castrated with the broken end of Coke bottles?  To eastern bloc women who are sold into white slavery?  To anyone forced to wear a burkha or head scarf or who has to hide in the trunk of her brother's car to be driven to work?

I am so sick of this straight man crush bullsh*t with Obama.  He has absolutely no experience, no leadership abilities and no real power in the political arena.  The intelligencia should be asking themselves what it will mean to the world if a weak, aa version of Jimmy Carter gets one term and screws the democratic party back into the Reagan years (which, according to his own words, would please Obama)

</snark>

That alone is reason to vote for whomever the DEM nominee is.

Then McCain will assume that role.

Just watch.

Sorry, sports fans. He's got to close it on his own steam. He's got to win it on his own cred. He's got to earn and earn back voters he's made skeptical and alienated by presenting his own record, words and actions to them.