Comments on: McCain, Obama: The Generation Chasm

By: pacatrue

pacatrue — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:52:26 +0000

I don't understand why a civil campaign favors Democrats unless Republican or conservative ideas can't be expressed with reason, honesty, and politeness -- something which I, even as a Democrat, reject. McCain can attack Obama's or Clinton's ideas relentlessly and thoroughly while maintaining respect for Obama or Clinton as an individual, and vice versa.

Of course, it's largely moot because, even if McCain and Clinton/Obama conduct themselves relatively decently, there will be tons of money on both sides slinging as much innuendo and character assassination as they can afford.

To be honest, this reminds me historically a little bit of many Christian institutional attacks on philosophy and science by limiting their expression or doing away with the people expressing the ideas, instead of combatting the ideas directly. This always seemed wholly unnecessary as Christian philosophy can go toe to toe with almost any other philosophy that it had to compete with.

In the same manner, conservative philosophy can battle civilly with liberal philosophy just fine. The main problem might be that we will discover most Republicans don't hold a conservative philosophy and most Democrats don't hold a liberal philosophy, whatever that is. We simply support certain people and certain issue and vote for whoever advances that hodgepodge of values.

By: DLS

DLS — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:05:20 +0000

Bottom-up (Obama) versus top-down (McCain to some extent; definitely in the case of Clinton) — it has that feeling this year, though it's largely superficial.

By: DLS

DLS — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:04:03 +0000

Not yet, SD. We must wait at least another decade or two before it's as you suspect — like the 1980s and 1990s in the NFL when the NFC championship was the real Super Bowl [Dem primaries], because the NFC team routinely defeated the AFC team in the official Super Bowl [general election].

By: superdestroyer

superdestroyer — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:10:13 +0000

A civil race will end up as a rout for the Democratic party since a civil election is about personality and usually ignores issues.

The only question in 2008 is whether the Democratic party gets 60 seats in the Senate or has to wait until 2010.

I wonder when the MSM decides that the Republican party is irrelevant to American politics and thus is not worthy of any more coverage than the Green party or the Libertarian party?