Reply #65: I don't think any of those things are a crime. [View All]

But it's widely perceived that Obama is identifiable with the upper-middle class, educated voters, i.e. the latte set. Hillary has demonized him with the lower-middle class rural voters, i.e., people who are at risk of republican defection. So it stands to reason that the VP would be someone who can appeal to these people and bring them back into the fold, lest McCain offer them an alternative.

I like Jim Webb and General Clark, because they shore up Obama's national security experience and the "bubba gap" at the same time, and they deliver states as well (Obama will be competitive in VA anyway, but Webb probably seals it, Arkansas is going to be hard for Obama, but Clark could definitely put it into play, and Clark will be advantageous in other swing states where national security issues are important, and he also has the benefit of backing up Obama on the war being wrong from the start, and he's not an elitist college professor, he's the former freaking Supreme Allied Commander of NATO).

And I don't think there's anything wrong with the latte liberal style, even if the stereotype the Republicans tend to throw out is idiotic. I am a white male urban liberal, I have a degree, I like coffee (black, thanks), and I make no apologies for any of those things. I think pandering to rural voters is stupid, because it assumes that they are stupid and seeks to kiss their ass, and they don't like that. Does anyone in rural America take Hillary and Bill seriously when they ride up on the back of a pick-up truck? That kind of shit will get them past Obama, but it won't work if there's a folksy Republican alternative. These are people who could go to McCain, but shouldn't, if we tie him to Bush policies and give them someone on the ticket who respects and gets respect from them. If we give them Pelosi, who I think is awesome and totally identify with, we are basically writing those voters off.

Pelosi has always been heavily identified with San Fran as a liberal city, perhaps unfairly by Republicans who want to portray her as more liberal than she is, not unlike Hillary, who clearly is not as liberal as the republican media likes to portray her as. The fact is that Pelosi is probably more liberal than she governs as the Speaker (her pre-speaker votes seem to support this), which is fair, because the Speaker is bigger than one representative; the position requires one to build a coalition that gets things done with people who are less progressively-minded than Pelosi.