Weight Maven

A quick lunchtime blog so that I can bookmark this post from Ali Eteraz on HuffPo re Obama. Ali suggests that we should vote for Obama because he is Nietzschean:

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher. In the nineteenth century he predicted that over the next two centuries, the philosophy of nihilism — purposelessness and despair — would take over the Western world, leading to an unprecedented level of violence and world-wide war. Obviously he was correct.

However, Nietzsche only made this prediction so that he could also posit a way of defeating nihilism. He put his faith in Art.

To be more specific, Nietzsche recommended that the way of defeating nihilism was for each individual to treat his or her life as an ongoing and unfinished work of art. The simple work of “giving style” to ourselves, expressing to the world our “overflowing creativity,” would give us a way to “Say Yes to Life.” This, argued Nietzsche, would stifle nihilist pessimism.

There’s more for the inclined.

I quoted this section in particular because I (like hundreds of thousands of Oprah fans) have been reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth and am seeing a parallel between the discussion of ego in that book and personal attachment to candidates, as indicated by this Gallup poll that says that many Clinton and Obama supporters will vote for McCain if their candidate isn’t elected.

I’m sympathetic…I really am finding some of what’s going on on behalf of Hillary problematic (Richardson as Judas?! Really?). But as Josh Marshall writes in TPM:

But to threaten either to sit the election or vote for McCain or vote for Nader if your candidate doesn’t win the nomination shows as clearly as anything that one’s ego-investment in one’s candidate far outstrips one’s interest in public policy and governance. If this really is one’s position after calm second-thought, I see no other way to describe it.

Me? I will vote for Hillary if she’s the candidate. But either way, I think I will do a lot more thinking about making my life an ongoing and unfinished work of art.

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I may be an Obama fan, but this made me go ouch: Clinton Pursuing ‘The Tonya Harding Option’:

The delegate math is difficult for Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, the official said. But it’s not a question of CAN she achieve it. Of course she can, the official said.

The question is — what will Clinton have to do in order to achieve it?

What will she have to do to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, in order to eke out her improbable victory?

She will have to “break his back,” the official said. She will have to destroy Obama, make Obama completely unacceptable.

“Her securing the nomination is certainly possible - but it will require exercising the ‘Tonya Harding option.'” the official said. “Is that really what we Democrats want?”

The Tonya Harding Option — the first time I’ve heard it put that way.

It implies that Clinton is so set on ensuring that Obama doesn’t get the nomination, not only is she willing to take extra-ruthless steps, but in the end neither she nor Obama win the gold.

Worse, if this meme sticks, it’s not just a case of losing this election. It’s a question of tarnishing her legacy and making her future in politics a bit of a crapshoot.

After all, look where Tonya is now.

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So I was watching Hardball tonight, and heard Michael Smerconish talk very positively about Barack Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

The paperback is just $9, so I went ahead and sent it to my younger sister, who is leaning towards Clinton. I’d send it to my Dad, but he’d vote for McCain over Clinton, so he’s a definite Obama voter in the primary. And I’d send it to my brother, but he’s a former Promise Keeper, so I’m guessing he can’t vote in the Dem primary.

Given the number of weeks between now and April 22nd, I think this is a great tactic for those who have friends and family in PA. I’ve already sent the suggestion to both MoveOn and the Obama campaign.

Hmmm…I wonder if there are other ways to get books to potential voters?

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Like Liz, I was bummed after March 4th. More so when I talked to a colleague in the biz whose take was that Hillary had the nomination. Yikes.

I’m feeling hopeful again. And I really, really hope that my peeps in PA show that it is more like Wisconsin than Ohio. We’ll see. I consider it a plus that PA is not an open primary state, which means that the Rush Limbaugh minions won’t be a help the way they appear to have been in Ohio, Texas, and Mississippi.

But for other fans of Obama, I point you to this on NPR … it’s the Obama campaign’s annotation of a Clinton campaign’s email re PA:

The path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue goes through Pennsylvania so if Barack Obama can’t win there, how will he win the general election?

[Answer: I suppose by holding obviously Democratic states like California and New York, and beating McCain in swing states like Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin where Clinton lost to Obama by mostly crushing margins. But good question.]

After setbacks in Ohio and Texas, Barack Obama needs to demonstrate that he can win the state of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the last state with more than 15 electoral votes on the primary calendar and Barack Obama has lost six of the seven other largest states so far — every state except his home state of Illinois.

[If you define “setback” as netting enough delegates out of our 20-plus-point wins in Mississippi and Wyoming to completely erase any delegate advantage the Clinton campaign earned out of March 4th, then yeah, we feel pretty setback.]

Pennsylvania is of particular importance, along with Ohio, Florida and Michigan, because it is dominated by the swing voters who are critical to a Democratic victory in November. No Democrat has won the presidency without winning Pennsylvania since 1948. And no candidate has won the Democratic nomination without winning Pennsylvania since 1972.

[What the Clinton campaign secretly means: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT WE’VE LOST 14 OF THE LAST 17 CONTESTS AND SAID THAT MICHIGAN AND FLORIDA WOULDN’T COUNT FOR ANYTHING. Also, we’re still trying to wrap our minds around the amazing coincidence that the only “important” states in the nominating process are the ones that Clinton won.]

Check out NPR for the rest.

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I’ve been reading the litany of “why I’m for Obama” or “why I’m for Clinton” posts on HuffPo for weeks now, and this one really resonated for me. So it was funny to find out it was written by the actor who played/plays Charlotte’s hubby on the Sex and the City series/movie.

In I Can’t Believe I’m Standing Up for Obama… But I Am, Evan Handler writes:

I am not a devotee or disciple. I am a skeptic, and remain somewhat skeptical. Still, over the past few weeks I have become convinced that Barack Obama is the better choice for the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. And, well… God help us all if that’s not enough to make him president.

My conclusion is based on several components, but coheres around one theme. Besides what I have experienced as his superior demonstrations of strength, composure, restraint, and reasoning during their last two one-on-one debates, Senator Obama has structured his campaign around what I feel is an irrefutable truth: the United States government will never again function efficiently unless United States citizens force it to do so. His insistence that the U.S. government must serve its citizenry, and his acknowledgment that it will do so only if the citizenry once again holds its government accountable is a statement so simplistic that it is, for some, dismissible. It also happens to be a truism so profound that it might, I have come to hope, be unstoppable.

There’s a lot more I agree with (including the discussion on their relative policy positions), but this is the kernel of it for me … and when you couple this with Obama’s 50-state strategy, it tips the balance for me.

That said, I was really surprised to hear this morning that 11 out of 12 of Chris Matthews’ regulars think that Hillary will drop out if she doesn’t win both TX and OH on Tuesday. Yes, she will have an unsurmountable delegate shortage, but me, I think it will be good to let PA weigh in (assuming that Hillary goes the Huckabee route … if she goes incredibly negative, then that would be really bad).

This contest is bringing a lot of new voters to the race (as the numbers in Texas, in particular,
illustrate). And while Texas may not go blue in the presidential race in November, all those D voters can make a big difference in a whole lot of Congressional races this year.

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