primaries | Multiple Enthusiasms

Tag: primaries

March 19, 2008

Yesterday, Barack Obama made a speech that’s getting quite a lot of attention. If I’d been home in South Jersey, I probably would have recruited some friends to try to catch it; he spoke in Philadelphia, apparently just across the street from the Constitution Center. Thanks to Alma for emailing me the link to its transcript, and now I’ve found it on Youtube. It’s long, but I think it’s well worth watching:

It’s a brilliant speech by a powerful orator. I don’t think I’ve seen such an excellent speaker so long as I’ve seen any political candidates ever. It rivals “Ask not what your country can do for you.” It rivals “I have a dream.”

It is about unity over division.

And it reminded me of my personal favorite candidate, John Edwards.

Obama spoke on race; Edwards built his platform around class, which is just as divisive as race (and is often so intricately tied, one to the other). Division? Yes, there is white and black, Latino and Asian. But there is also 300,000 versus 150 million (top income earners versus everyone else). There is also the Hummer-driving, Starbucks-drinking, valet-parking population of Hollywood and its handful of burbs versus the Coleman stove-burning, seedy motel-showering population of so-called Tent City not even an hour away in Ontario (and probably walking distance from Ontario’s Outlet Malls).

Here’s a speech Edwards gave at the Service Employees International Union (you’ll note, at time of linking, its front page features a banner with Barack Obama):

And a spot he did about his beliefs and hopes to bring America together:

Reading about Tent City gives me a bad feeling; that it’s happening to those people. That it could happen at all. That they are giving out armbands now.

Back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, a similar situation occurred across the nation.

This is not now a crisis; it’s been headed this way for a while, and it’s only getting worse.

And I think the two subjects of this post, Obama and Edwards, can get us through this, but I think they need to commit. I think it’s about time Edwards quit waiting around to see who might earn the nomination and endorsed Obama before it’s too damned late to do so, and I think, at the same time, it’s time for Obama to shake Edwards’ hand and offer him the VP spot on the ticket. It’s time for the primaries to be Obama & Edwards v. Clinton.

Obama & Edwards: Yes we can

March 12, 2008

I’ve started reading Seth Godin’s blog because, through my business course, I’ve learned enough to realize I don’t yet understand everything about marketing.

I caught this entry, and I don’t mean to come off as a chest-pounding proponent of revolution, but bear with me a moment.

According to above post, Borders discovered that, by displaying books with their covers out (rather than their spines), they increased their sales by 9%.

(of course, 9% in terms of the publishing industry is next to nothing, but that’s beside the point)

The Espresso machine is built to print a book in five minutes, flat. Consider that all that shelf space might instead be devoted to revolving banner advertisements with a limited number of books on hand, all of which can be previewed via the Espresso machines, as well as every other title in existence. Whatever you want, bookstores’ll have it.

And yes, certainly, some people browse books in the store, but I think the majority of perusal applies to magazines. So keep a periodicals section, while you devote all that glorious shelf space to 100 Espresso machines.

Certainly, it’d take a bit to get the venture started, but I have a feeling that’s how most bookstores are going to look in ten years. The fucker is pretty much a book vending machine:

This thing will take up less than five cubic feet, which, as many publishers know, is about the size of the remaindered rack in your average Borders or Barnes & Noble bookstore. What’s going to have to change, unfortunately, is how much publishers make via booksales. Because at this point, publishers are the equivalent of primaries; they’re in place so you know who’s good enough to buy books from, just like the primaries let you know who’s good enough to vote for president.

I’d say, in the future, it’s going to be more difficult to find the quality, but hey, you got to this blog, didn’t you? Just goes to show, somehow, it works out.

March 5, 2008

The big news (besides that Bush endorsed McCain) today seems that Clinton broke Obama’s winning streak. By this I might be more impressed had she won any decisively, as the media seems to be saying, but she did not; the only place she won by more than 10% was Rhode Island, and what’s 10% of Rhode Island? Like, 3 people, or something? Seriously, it’s smaller than Delaware, isn’t it? Texas was a squeaker of a primary, 51% to 48%.

The problem, though, is that McCain clinched his nom while the Dems are now still petty-bickering about who voted how when. Obama says he’s the man to beat McCain, but he’s got to get there first.

Personally, I think Obama should invite Edwards onto his ticket now, solidifying his stance. Because if Edwards were still in the race, he’d have diverted votes away from Clinton, I think, and Obama would have won all the primaries yesterday.

There are so many interesting ways this could all go, though. Clinton could lose the democratic nomination, but what if McCain invited her to be his vice president? I could see McCain doing something like that. On the off chance Clinton wins the Dem nom, though, I’m betting she’d go with Bill Richardson for her VP. But in which case, I’d love to see Obama and Edwards run an independent ticket.

They probably mightn’t get enough electoral votes to actually win election, but I’d bet they’d completely fuck up the system hard enough that nobody would know what was happening.

Anarchy rules!

No, but seriously, I really do think the division between Obama and Clinton is doing more harm than good. Not for the Democratic party, mind, because I think the Democratic party does enough harm to itself without having to seek external blame, but because the fact that the two leading candidates for nomination are a black man and a woman is being overshadowed by the woman’s constantly attacking said black man. Clinton is doing more to set feminism back several decades than Howard Stern ever managed.

And the truth of the matter is, I’ve never minded McCain. I wish he’d beaten Bush’s underhanded tactics and won in 2000, because there are few men I could see leading our country through 9/11 better than I think McCain would have.

But I do wonder who he’ll run with.

Multiple Enthusiasms

Infinite jest. Excellent fancy. Flashes of merriment.

Tag: primaries