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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (59716)	4/17/2008 12:01:51 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542785

From John Dickerson at Slate: "If Obama's numbers hold, what might have saved him tonight? Every time the candidate was presented with a tough political question, he turned the question into proof of what he's running against: game-playing and politics as usual. He got two rounds of applause, and because I'd scooted my chair up right next to the television, I could hear viewers across the land saying "amen," too. Early in the evening, the excuse for the questions about screw-ups was that they were framed in terms of how these liabilities might play out in the general election. In their answers, Clinton and Obama demonstrated their likely general-election techniques against McCain. Clinton kept after Obama, landing punches, glancing or not, while Obama deflected, always trying to move to the higher ground. It's an upside for Obama that Hillary Clinton isn't especially attractive when she's on the attack. When she's trying to raise troubling questions over his associations without ever really saying what she means, she doesn't look presidential. More like a little shifty. Given how little voters trust her, this could matter. Clinton was at her best in the second 45 minutes of the debate, when the e-mailers got their wish and the examination ended of the friends listed on Obama's Facebook page. Obama did well enough, but Clinton had sharper, more confident answers on the economy and Iran (although her idea of a new security umbrella to protect a new set of countries in the Middle East seemed alarming). That will help her if enough undecided voters resisted the urge to change the channel. But it's not so much that Clinton was thoroughly dazzling. She was just far better than the candidate who has appeared via sounds bites on the evening news in the 50 days since the last debate. Voters who consider the debates important have by overwhelming margins voted for Clinton in previous contests, because she comes across as competent in these settings. She may have reminded voters who once liked her, but then moved away, why they liked her in the first place. Asked at the start of the debate if they would take up Mario Cuomo's unification suggestion—that they fight out the remaining contests but then promise to join forces as one ticket in the end—both candidates said it was too early to talk of such an arrangement. Given the glowing ill will beneath the surface tonight, it seems obvious that they're going to have to bicker and fight like a divorced couple before they can ever get married."

To: Dale Baker who wrote (59716)	4/17/2008 2:17:54 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542785

The financial community assumed papa Bush would receive a second term. When Clinton was elected, there was an immediate push by Enron and its PACS to get the necessary legislation through to deregulate the nat gas market. (The legislation had been forming in the last year of Bush.) Clinton opposed it. The bill sat on his desk awhile....if memory serves it might have been sent back and rewritten. At any rate, Congress was lost to the Rs in 2002 and the dereg bill passed with some modest revisions. Clinton didn't veto. In retrospect, it's clear Clinton should have vetoed. In the climate of the times and not having a crystal ball, his failure to veto was logical enough. But he did recognise the inherent risks of deregulation and was proved right. Enron didn't manipulate the CA market until after Bill was out of office. I think it started around the beginning of 2001 and then the company collapsed about a year later. The financial derivatives that have damaged the credit markets are a recent thing. Their exponential growth didn't occur until 2003. Nothing Bill could do obviously. Don't know if Hillary voiced any concerns or not, but as a Senator there's nothing much she could have realistically done. As far as what moves markets, there's a difference between speculative bubbles and market manipulation. A speculative bubble would be the stock price of an agri company. No interference by any govt. entity should take place with a stock price. Market manipulation has to do with the prices of the commodities themselves. That can and should be investigated. She's talking about the latter. Speculative bubbles like the dot.com one or the RE frenzy aren't vulnerable to manipulation and have to run their course. There's nothing Hillary, Bill or anyone else can or should do about these.