Comments on: Toiling In Obscurity

By: taxman10m

taxman10m — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:39:37 +0000

McCain will not yield to reason or public opinion.

Obama may be reasonable, and if not would most likely yield to public opinion.

And then there is the root issue, which candidate do the neocons support and which candidate supports the neocons? I’ll take the other guy.

By: General Mobius

General Mobius — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:24:55 +0000

Daniel: I understand your concern, but I can’t fathom how you could think McCain comes out better. (Also, I realize that you have no qualms about a third party vote, so my forcing of a binary choice is artificial.) He will not end the war, he will not end the torture regime, he will not end warrantless wiretapping, he will not reexamine the GOP’s position on trade, and he will likely seek to liberalize immigration law (I don’t consider all of those things bad, but I’m fairly certain you do). He is the successor of, as Bacevich compellingly argues, a radically unconservative Republican Party. The probability that Obama leaves the United States better off in 8 years is not zero. That strikes me as a decisive argument both in his favor and against McCain.

Adam: It doesn’t become magically acceptable in the slightest. But my choices are a) a guy who opposed the war from the start, thinks it was a stupid and foreseeable mistake, and has said getting our troops out is more important than “finishing the mission” (whatever that means); and b) a guy who thinks there’s nothing wrong with leaving troops there forever. I don’t have to have delusions about Obama for this to be an awfully stark choice.

By: Adam01

Adam01 — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:47:17 +0000

“Obama may end the war”

I keep being stunned that so many people are willing to hang a vote for Obama on this very small (and quickly shrinking) hook. I recall that Obama, in a debate, declined to guarentee that all US troops would be out of Iraq by Jan. 2013. Does an American troop prescence in Iraq magically become acceptable when the CINC has a “D” after his name?

By: Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:55:09 +0000

“Whatâ€™s left to debate at this point? ”

Oh, I don’t know. What about everything else that the government does, fails to do or should do?

By: General Mobius

General Mobius — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:20:55 +0000

Ambinder’s graphs are bizarre. We have choices of very conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, and liberal. I realize he got them from the McCain campaign, so of course they’re propaganda, but we could at least point that out, couldn’t we?

The actual breakdown for McCain is 46 conservative, 31 moderate, 11 liberal. Obama is 8 conservative, 24 moderate, and 55 liberal. So… people think McCain is a conservative and Obama’s a liberal. Shocking, I’m sure.

As for the conservative case for Obama, far be it from me to make it. I would just as soon see conservatism disappear from the earth, but you’ve made the positive argument for Obama in this post. Obama may end the war; McCain most assuredly won’t. What’s left to debate at this point?