The Obama haters ignore the speech that propelled him onto the national stage. . .

. . .you know the reason he is a viable candidate. The speech that made America take note. I see boosters of other candidates telling him to quit it with the unity and criticizing him for calling some of the Republicans decent people. Well folks I hate to disappoint ya, but guess what? He is being consistent with the Barack Obama of 2004, the Barack Obama that many of you (even the haters) found to be inspiring when he delivered the speech.

DUer's who know me know that I love nothing more than whipping GOP/CONSERVATIVE ass and I'm not ready to give that up, HOWEVER after over 20 years of partisan acrimony I want a president that can actually unite the country, one who people like and respect even if they do not share his or her ideology. That is one of the things that drew me to General Clark in 2004 and puts me in the Obama camp today.

Haters go ahead and hate AFTER ALL THAT IS WHAT YOU DO BEST The haters like to spend more time bashing other candidates (not just Barack), than they do supporting their own candidates. The good news is this hate doesn't mean their candidates are deficient, it just shows that these haters are either too intellectually ignorant or just too damned lazy to sell their candidates without hating on others.

Fortunately, we have a good crop of candidates too choose from and I look forward to ENTHUSIASTICALLY supporting whomever the nominee is but as long as we have a choice I'm fighting for Barack.

An excerpt from Barack's speech that inspired many of us (including some of you haters)

-snip-
If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child.

(APPLAUSE)

If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent.

(APPLAUSE)

If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

(APPLAUSE)

It is that fundamental belief -- it is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: "E pluribus unum," out of many, one.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.

(APPLAUSE)

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19751-2004Jul27.html

YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNCLomrqIN8

thanks for posting this

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It's a shame people on DU thrive on bashing the personal character of other candidates.

at first it was polite and then, towards the end they are crying and cheering and going nuts.

Centrists aren't interested in poverty or social justice. The Nineties proved that.

Barack needs to stop treating progressives as the enemy.

. . .crawling from underneath a rock.

and then posts something like this?

Is there a problem?

bye-bye.

Like you, I am heartily sick of the divisiveness of the past 20 years.

Hekate

Obama needs to get a reality check and stop spewing whatever the polls tell him sound good.

"The good news is this hate doesn't mean their candidates are deficient, it just shows that these haters are either too intellectually ignorant or just too damned lazy to sell their candidates without hating on others."

. . .you to the conclusion that anyone is saying its illegal to question Obama.

That is a cult-like attitude.

Ha!

Right over your head.

And be a Hillary cheerleader at the same time?

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Barack stopped caring about poverty when he started presenting himself as a "centrist" "Third Way" guy.

Barack needs to stop treating progressives like we're to blame for the party's problems.

He's looking beyond primaries to what it will take to win a General Election.

you moved away not him. You believed the media and republican spin. Obama is saying what he said then and it is still his message as he believes in it and I do to!

One should be able to offer criticism without being called a "hater."

Do you mean DNC, or am I missing something?

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

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Just sayin'.

Too many DUers throw shit out in a reckless manner and every now and then its good that that they are called out.

You won't even miss him.

and while some of the responses to DMC's threads are legit arguments, most reactions seem filled with hate and derisive mocking and don't even begin to address the legit concerns of his/her posts.

Thanks

. . .you are burying your head in the sand if you think I'm complaining about criticism.

and in what proportions do they each appear on DU?

Obama gets less snarky remarks than either Edwards or HRC. Far less.

My guess is most people here want to like him, but have a hard time with some of his utterances. So, they point that out.

It's hard to deny that he is swinging to the middle, and that is not the guy that many hoped he would be. That's my reckoning.

I have never experienced the attacks here that I have since yesterday when discussing Obama's "Coburn is a friend of mine comment."

I have been called a hater, a basher, a concern troll, someone with an agenda, to cool my jets, to not dump my "poo" here (must have been a five-year-old talking) etc etc etc.

I've quietly enjoyed DU for lo these 30,000 posts and all of a sudden I am a "hater" because I wanted to discuss this one thing. It boggles my mind.

1) Obama makes positive comments about a draconian bigot

2) Some at DU who are on the receiving end of the bigot's hate take notice

3) Others at DU get very angry with the group that questioned why Obama would make such comments

4) The group that wonders why Obama would give plaudits to a homophobe now become "Obama haters" in the eyes of some of the Obama supporters.

An extremely twisted dynamic, if you ask me.

I have experienced it firsthand and am stunned.

When the Democrats have an actual liberal as the front runner, please wake me up. Until then I will snooze through the parade of moderate conservatives that the DNC is trying to force feed down my throat.

So he was able to give an emotional speech, whoopie do. I have seen the guy a couple times live and he was great reading material but was less than impressive ad lib.

Nothing against the gentleman, I am sure he is a jolly good ol' chap... I am just tired of having to compromise my center/left ideology. I am of the opinion that the shiniest part of an excrement, is still that: shit.

But the delivery bored me then, and still does. It's not that I "hate" him, I just think he needs to be less flat and slow, and speed up his delivery.

that night and it was electric..but the party concerned me ..because it was so well planned..it was like it was all contrived..a very expensive party..i wondered who backed it or paid for it..probably the most expensive party..at the convention...beside the Democratic party ..party..and a few very private parties..

His speech moved everyone of the delegates...

i just had a funny feeling ..as did a few of my friends who were also delegates..that Obama was being packaged by someone or something..and it never sat well with me..call it gut feeling..i don't know what it is..

I like him..but i want to wait and see..i want to hear more from all the candidates before i ever make a decision who i will support and vote for..it is still way too early for me to decide.

fly

:applause:

government at every level had become “too cavalier about spending taxpayer money.... A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities.... Reagan offered Americans a sense of common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster,”

Very different from his platitudes in his speech so very long ago.

I say we should let Obama serve 8 years as VP, then 8 years as Prez.

My dream ticket for 2008 would be Gore-Obama, or Clark-Obama. B-)

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And not just directed at Hillary, but thrown directly at her supporters, and those who dare question Obama. I've been on the receiving end myself more than once. On the whole, I haven't really seen a lot of insulting or hateful comments from Hillary supporters.

I require something more than spoken eloquence in my chosen candidate. I require substance on issues. While Obama is probably the best of the 8 at giving rousing, emotion-triggering speeches, his positions on issues are what I look at. I don't like what I see. Just 3 examples:

He supports mentor pay for teachers. I am adamantly opposed to mentor pay.

He thinks it's ok to unilaterally invade other countries in order to continue and extend the bogus "war on terror." I don't, to say the least.

He claims to be "against" the Iraq war from the beginning, but he has repeatedly voted to fund it, leading me to understand that he doesn't walk his talk.

All the silver-tongued words in the world will not overcome these things, and will not earn my vote.

Edited to add: I am not an "Obama hater."

I disagree strongly with his positions. I don't like his campaign. That's not hate. I don't hate anyone, on principle, and don't harbor any personal ill will for Senator Obama.

Referring to people who disagree with him politically, and who say so, as "haters," is false propaganda. While I don't hate people, I do hate propaganda with a passion.

to mean capitulation by Dems. I can't imagine anyone running for office saying, we're not going to work with the other side no matter what.

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by pretending criticism is hate. He says all candidates are flawed and there is nothing wrong with opponents pointing that out. If one wants to hear nothing but praise for one's candidate, one can always find websites where all criticism is banned. He cites the article below as a rightwing attempt to censor legitimate criticism. He suggests we not follow this path.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/04/big_loss_for_the_bush_haters/

Big loss for the Bush haters
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | November 4, 2004

For four years, Americans watched and listened as President Bush was demonized with a savagery unprecedented in modern American politics. For four years they saw him likened to Hitler and Goebbels, heard his supporters called brownshirts and racists, his administration dubbed "the 43d Reich." For four years they took it all in: "Bush" spelled with a swastika instead of an `s,' the depictions of the president as a drooling moron or a homicidal liar, the poisonous insults aimed at anyone who might consider voting for him. And then on Tuesday they turned out to vote and handed the haters a crushing repudiation.

Bush was reelected with the highest vote total in American history. He is the first president since 1988 to win a majority of the popular vote. He increased his 2000 tally by 8 million votes and saw his party not only keep its majorities in the House and Senate but enlarge them. And he did it all in the face of an orgy of hatred.

The smears and rancor were bottomless and venomous. Michael Moore accused Bush of being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. George Soros said the president's policies reminded him of the Nazis. Cameron Diaz warned that if Bush was reelected, rape would become legal. Randi Rhodes told her radio audience that Bush, like Fredo in "The Godfather," should be taken out and shot. Whoopi Goldberg headlined a New York fund-raiser in which Bush was called a "thug" and a "killer." Howard Dean speculated publicly about the "interesting theory" that Bush knew what was going to happen on Sept. 11 but kept silent.

The novelist Nicholson Baker went so far as to publish a novel that revolves around Bush's possible assassination.

John Kerry never sank to that level of slime, but he never repudiated it, either. Instead of condemning the foul things said about Bush at that New York fund-raiser, for example, Kerry told the audience that "every performer tonight . . . conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country."

If Kerry had urged his supporters to speak about Bush with the same courtesy they would want Bush's supporters to speak about him, voters would have been impressed. If he had made it clear that he is disgusted when Bush is compared to Hitler or Mussolini and ashamed that such comparisons could be made by people backing him, he would have won the public's admiration. If he had insisted that Michael Moore leave the Democratic convention instead of being given a place of honor next to Jimmy Carter, he would have been rewarded with a surge in the polls. Instead he said nothing -- and the voters noticed.

more...

our nation's history.

I stood in a room of Democratic county officials and watched Barack Obama on the stage in Boston for our 2004 convention. My colleagues were astute, informed, hardbitten realists from the stuff-those-envelopes school of Democratic campaigns. One was a former U.S. Senator.

They were uniformly amazed. They knew that the man speaking on the stage that night in Boston would be heard from for some time to come, that they were watching a pivotal moment, when people who would comprise the heart and soul and muscle of our party a generation from now were listening as well, and that what they were hearing in that speech by this man would transform them.

Obama is a gifted soul. And he may be our next president.

I don't want another one. Unlike Obama, I do believe in a Liberal and a Conservative America. He is naive to think that the split doesn't exist.

Yeah, I hear ya.

It's about persuading people, not dismissing them. Obama gets that.

"We live in a liberal democracy....That’s what we created in this country. I think we should be very clear on this. You know, this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment... It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can’t lose that in this country. We've got to get it back." - Wes Clark on Real Time with Bill Maher (5 September 2003)

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