[…] Join the Campaign to Change America / John Edwards ‘08 Blog wrote an interesting post today on With competitors in town, Obama hits the airwavesHere’s a quick excerptThough John Edwards and the Clintons received most of the attention here this weekend, their Democratic competition began his ad charge in Missouri. […]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ezpF11dFwIY

I have never been prouder as an American overseas than last December at the Sorbonne/Paris displaying the new Obama book, Audacity of Hope, which I had bought at O’Hare airport. I told the very international crowd (representatives from all continents) that Obama would be our next President, and they cheered.

My lowest moment overseas as an American was in the mid-1990’s at a law conference in EDHEC/Nice/Provence, where I disclosed that my co-author was at the same law firm as Ken Starr, the independent counsel investigating Clinton’s sexual misdeeds. The French were not happy about the persecution of Clinton, and I told them that my co-author and I were supporters of the President despite his sexual history. But nobody was particularly proud of our President back then. They booed because they were not happy with Starr, not happy with Clinton, and not happy about the disgrace of America that was an unfortunate diversion from real world problems. The French booed us for our stupidity.

I am not worried about a return of the Clintons to the White House, because a McCain opponent would help Hillary indeed make history: the first woman nominee devastated in the electoral college. If anything, I’d like to see her uniquely ineffective managerial style in office because it would discredit many of the supporters who are currently blinded by the prospect of electing a woman, for the mere sake of electing a woman, and currently suspending their good judgement.

I am worried, however, that the country will be missing an opportunity to elect a great President. I really thought Mario Cuomo, Al Gore, and Bill Bradley were special Democrats, and Barack Obama combines the best of them — a strong moral thoughtfulness with a populist centrism, a willingness to survey the best, most diverse advice, and to include others in his actions, a consistent and impressive record of returning government to the people through ethics reform and funding transparency legislation. I thought Geraldine Ferraro was a noble groundbreaker, and I see more Ferraro in Obama’s campaign than Clinton’s. I’m especially proud of Senator McCaskill for seeing through the hoopla and making a rational decision to endorse Obama. How can other local politicians endorse Clinton even though their own constituents strongly prefer Obama? How can one be a representative of communities that prefer Obama, yet work for the election of Clinton, mainly out of the exuberance of shared gender? Such elected officials probably will not, and should not, last long in a properly functioning democracy.

Food for thought my friends…
Well, I am too poor to travel overseas as Ronald Loui did. I am not from the wealthy class, but I am independent in spirit and mind.
Why I will never vote for Obama?
o Obama’s message is just empty rhetorics, filled with catchy words, like “hope” or “change”. I need to know specifics. Well, unless he convinces me what kind of change will deliver, how could one vote for him? And his list of major accomplishments is NULL. Who would name an unexperienced guy a CEO to our country? Think about this. Sure, he might have a great future, but he needs to SHOW any sort of results, beyond his church. His is still in the kindergarden of politics.
Also, he talks about change, by most of his advisors are same old clintonesque figures. Lies again. Sure, all these guys - jumping from one boat to another-will play major role in his team if he wins. So, nothing new under the sun, Mr. Obama.
o I have already seen some African-American leaders (Oprah, Denzel, etc) making his candidacy a racial one, as they use churches and other forums to push African-Americans to vote for him. Is he becoming a puppet in their hands? At what price for our society? Scary to me…
We need a president for all americans, be they of indian, latino, european, african descent.
o I’ve lived in Chicago for the last 7 years and everybody knew that fundraiser Tony Rezko, a Chicago businessman was corrupt, was under federal investigation for influence-peddling and bank fraud charges. And Obama used his money to get elected senator and now, that he got caught decided to return some money back? Give me a break. All his talk about change is nonsense. Let’s be honest and agree that he is as corrupt as all the politicians in this country are.
But, like the Clintons and just about any other American politician, he has assiduously done just that. According to the Washington Post, Obama has raised $78,915,507 and relied heavily on people such as Kenneth Griffin, a Chicago-based hedge-fund manager who reportedly earned $1.4bn last year. Obama is a con man — nothing more.
It should be illegal for Obama to donate these funds to charities of his choice. He may donate money to agencies that will give him a political gain. How is this ethical coming from Mr Ethics Obama?
o Also Republicans like his candidacy as he will be washed out in case he makes it to the final contest. People seems to be neglecting the Republican machine. For example I can see many Republican web sites against Hillary, but not against Obama. Why? Much harder to defeat Clintons than Obama. Are Clintons or Edward perfect? Noo. But for me Obama stands no chance to win or ability to lead the country. I just want a democrat to win at this time in history. Any democrat is better them corrupted republicans.
I hope democrats will choose a better candidate to represent the party, or we will witness another Busk-like era.

Jean Valjean — that is a lot of food. Some of it is indeed worthy of thought and I hope you will continue to keep an open mind.

First, I am not rich. But I am independent in spirit and mind, like you. I am a professor who chose to contribute to society rather than get-rich-quick, who has recently suffered considerably at the hands of people whose ethics I strongly question. So if I happened to have business overseas once a decade, please forgive me — it might not ever happen again.

More importantly, let’s look at Obama. He has gotten four major bills passed in two years in the US Senate. The score, then, is Obama 4, Edwards 2, Clinton 0. The major bills that Clinton talks about were passed while her husband was President. If you include those, then in fifteen years, she has put her name on three major bills. That’s an empty rhetoric. That is an experience of legislative weakness, probably because she is too strong-headed to work with others.

If you want to know proposed policy specifics, they are available at barackobama.com. You kow that. Everyone knows that is where the specifics are. To say that there are no specifics is just to be unwilling to have a look for yourself. By all accounts, Obama is as much a “policy wonk” interested in the details as Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton. As for CEO experience, people who have worked for Obama since the late 80’s invariably praise him. People who have worked for Hillary Clinton usually do not have good things to say about working for her, regardless of their politics (obviously they must have been strong Democrats to have worked for her). I don’t know how you could support a CEO whose experience is that of dividing and offending people, making unnecessary enemies, and constantly apologizing for past poor judgement. That is a problem-CEO that a board will have to soon replace. People who are actually in executive positions prefer Obama to Giuliani, regardless of Rudy’s rhetoric on the subject (as evidenced by donations).

I completely agree with you that we need someone who can represent all races, and all classes, and all regions of this country. No one is better suited to do that than Barack Obama. If you’re curious, you should read about the history of Hawaii and its successful integration of the races over the years. Punahou School not only houses people of all races and faiths, it has about as many Republicans as Democrats, and it has as strong a history of producing military leaders as civil rights leaders. Chicago is a divided city, I suppose, and I am sorry for that. But Obama has a pretty good idea how things could be different. Have a look at what former Punahou graduates, Elbert Tuttle, John W. Gardner, and Samuel Chapman Armstrong did for the country. Obama’s half-sister, for example, is half-Indonesian, half-founding-father-American, and married a Chinese fellow. They find Buddhism interesting, like your Chicago-born actress who fled to London, Gillian Anderson, hardly a threatening non-Christian. Obama gave his first daughter a Hawaiian name and his second daughter a Russian name. The Jewish colleagues of Obama were the first to project him as a future president. Just because some prominent black people like Obama doesn’t mean his appeal is limited. On the contrary, if you were to name a demographic, I would find people of that kind who support Obama. For women who like strong women, Michelle Obama is incredibly accomplished, speaks her mind, and can get things done without offending people. As for his church, I know a lot of church people who are better on Sundays than they are at making public statements. Not every church goer believes everything the preacher says.

I know all about Tony Rezko, and I’d rather have bought land from Rezko at a fair market price than have accepted $800,000 from the convict Norman Hsu, then returned only $40,000 after the Clinton camp said they would return it all. Do you really want to compare Obama’s very clean history to other candidates’? If you want, you can look at what Hillary Clinton was investing in, 35 years ago, when her “experience” clock magically started.

Speaking of hedge funds, isn’t Chelsea Clinton working as a hedge fund manager?

As for ethics, are you saying you don’t want taping of interrogations by Illinois police? You don’t want the government to have to disclose its spending on websites? You don’t want bundlers’ names disclosed and search engines that permit you to see who gave what to whom? All of these “promotion of the truth laws” are because of Obama’s work. The reason your voice matters on this blog as much as Denzel Washington’s, to the extent that you can be as reasonable and persuasive, is because of campaign finance reform. Obama is the one who has consistently fought to return government to the people by permitting people like you and me to have the tools we need to provide oversight, and to be just as important as the Tony Rezko’s and Norman Hsu’s who would take government away from its proper priorities.

I don’t “just want a Democrat.” I used to think that way, but I’ve changed my mind in the past six months. McCain is not perfect and has many skeletons in his closet. But he may be a better choice than Hillary Clinton, if Obama is not nominated. I think about 60% of America would agree. The more people know Obama, and the more they know about him, the more they support him. Look at the national polling numbers. Look at what happened in New Hampshire and Nevada, where he closed 20- to 30-point gaps and turned them into draws. The same thing is happening in California, where the Clinton lead will soon be consistently in the single digits. The more people watch Bill Clinton, the more they remember that the 90’s were not always so great. The more people know about the Clintons, the less they like them. Obama consistently beats his Republican challengers in pairwise polls because Obama draws a lot of support from the middle, and he is not running a campaign that will offend half of the Democratic party (which is what Hillary Clinton is doing).

You do have an excellent potential Democratic nominee. You just have not done enough reading. Instead of listening to KMOX and O’Hannity, and reading email from people no-longer-connected-with-the-Hillary-Clinton-campaign, you could start by reading the wikipedia page about Obama. This information is free, and it is there precisely for the independent spirit and mind.

Do you know why we like Hilary more? Because as engineers, we don’t like mouth people that much. But Mr change(or Mr dream) keeps throwing around a lot of fancy words without even a little proof supporting them, which made me doubt his capability (and personality) more and more. “Change” is a doing word, but not a empty daydreaming noun.

He thinks he is young so he can be the 2nd bill clinton? That’s funny, since he hasn’t a wife called hilary. He thinks he looks black, so he can be the 2nd MLK? Come on, we all know he is WHITER than the white.

You know what is the funnies thing I heard from him? Obama, or no, Omega(which is called by a voter voting for him without knowing his name) said if he can be the next president, he will never import any toys from China. Any high school student is supposed to know economics globalization began from last century, which is a irreversible trend. How come a potential leader for the whole country said something so naive. There can be only 2 possible reasons: 1.he lacks common sense; 2. he knows but he lies. These 100% absolute promises sound so exciting but only indicates how overblowing this person is.

People defending obama always said a general doesn’t need to know too many details in a battle.
OMG, I know too many MBA without any technical background working in IT field. These insane people almost damaged this industry years ago. Don’t scare me any more. Beg you~!