#2008 election

[randyite]

[deadpresidents]

Just after the 2008 election, outgoing President George W. Bush invited all of the living former Presidents to the White House for a private lunch with President-elect Obama. A memorable Oval Office photograph shows the Bushes, Bill Clinton, and Obama chatting like old friends on the left, with Carter standing alone on the right. One of the Presidents confided later that the photo perfectly captured the chemistry of their meeting and lunch that day. The other Presidents gave Obama convivial advice on the peculiarities of the office, while Carter wanted to press his serious policy agenda. Carter later told Brian Williams of NBC News that the body language was deliberate because "I feel that my role as a former President is probably superior to that of other Presidents."

-- Jonathan Alter, writing about a lunch at the White House on January 7, 2009 with all living American Presidents and President-elect Barack Obama which highlighted the often-strained relationships that former President Jimmy Carter had with his successors, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO).

[lesterwillington]

home, a poem from the perspective of Barack Obama

This is for a poetry book I'm working on that covers every single president through poems. It's very much a work in progress as you see in this draft. Any constructive feedback would be much appreciated.

[harriswalz4usabybr]

Speech Governor Walz gave in Indianapolis, IN!

~BR~

[erebusvincent]

Palin’s teenage daughter being pregnant was what made me vote for Obama.

[reallifeeloise]

Flashback: McCain tells supporter Obama is 'a decent...

This is how an adult reacts to lies and racism against their opponent.

[closingremarks]

Hello! This past year, Neo-Nazis have been making greater strides to make themselves known and spread their propaganda in Nashville; one of the only progressive cities in ultra-conservative Tennessee. I wrote about not only this problem, but also how it connects to a broader pattern called “White Rage” that has prevented social progress throughout U.S History. If you’re interested I would love it if you read and subscribed to my Substack 😅

[liberty1776]

Thomas Sowell and a Conflict of Visions

Sowell describes the critical differences between interests and visions. Interests, he says, are articulated by people who know what their interests are and what they want to do about them. Visions, however, are the implicit assumptions by which people operate. In politics, visions are either a  constrained  or  an    unconstrained.   A closer look at the statements of both McCain and Obama reveals which visions  motivates their policy positions, particularly as they pertain to the war, the law, and economics.

[galapagosvagrant]

"BACK TF OFF!" MITCH MCCONNELL SNARLS, HISSES, BITES SENATE DEMOCRATS

[lightdancer1]

One would of course be willfully blind to neglect the great change that was the 2008 election:

After two terms of Shrub the American public were willing to accept a Black man not only winning the nomination of a major party, but in the end prevailing over Senator John McCain in one of the most key elections in recent history. However much did not change, the election of Barack Obama as President (and he was the first President I voted for in my first election) was a point where the political ceiling cracked in a way that cannot be undone.

[deadpresidents]

What other campaign souvenirs do you have with that badge you shared?

It's actually not a ton of stuff. I wish I'd been better over the years about collecting campaign memorabilia because I'm always jealous whenever I see someone who has a cool collection of things.

I have a ton of buttons and stickers from the Obama campaigns, as well as an Obama '08 yard sign that's signed by Obama. I have a stack of Clinton/Gore bumper stickers that I somehow held on to after all these years.

In 2000, I was young and idealistic and caught up in the excitement of the first Presidential campaign I was of legal voting age for, so I jumped on the Bill Bradley bandwagon very early on in the Democratic primaries. Most of you probably have no idea who Bill Bradley even was, but he was the 2000 version of Bernie Sanders once the legendary Paul Wellstone decided against running for President. Deep down, we all knew that Vice President Gore was going to be the nominee, but there was some excitement for Bradley early on even though he didn't win anything and was basically finished by Super Tuesday. I have some Bradley buttons and stickers, and I have an invitation to a Bill Bradley fundraiser that was going to be held at the home of Geoff Petrie in Granite Bay, a wealthy suburb of Sacramento. At the time, Petrie was the General Manager of the Sacramento Kings and he was a close friend of Bradley, so that was exciting for a 20-year-old basketball fanatic. (Oh...for those who really don't know anything about Bill Bradley, I should also note that not only was he a U.S. Senator from New Jersey, but before that he was star basketball player who won two NBA titles with the New York Knicks and is in the pro and college Basketball Hall of Fame.)

Other than that, I have some posters and a ton of buttons from various campaigns. When I lived in Austin and was regularly going to the @lbjlibrary I would often buy handfuls of the assorted campaign buttons that they sold in their gift shop. I don't know if they still sell them, but it was a huge collection from dozens of different Presidential campaigns from various decades. I think the oldest button I ended up with was for Al Smith's 1928 Democratic Presidential campaign. I'm especially fond of my Wendell Willkie button because it's always fun to mention Wendell Willkie. I got a bunch of Nixon and McGovern buttons and even got a Romney button, but it's not for Mitt -- it's for the unsuccessful campaign for the 1968 GOP nomination by his father, former Michigan Governor George Romney. I have a McGovern/Eagleton button from 1972, which is interesting because Thomas Eagleton was nominated as McGovern's Vice Presidential running mate at the 1972 Democratic Nation Convention and then dropped from the ticket for Sargent Shriver just nineteen days later. And of course, I got a TON of LBJ and LBJ-related buttons -- from the 1964 campaign which sometimes featured LBJ and sometimes featured Hubert Humphrey and sometimes featured both LBJ and HHH, and from the 1960 Kennedy/Johnson campaign.

Here are a few of them (the "We Shall Overcome" button is my favorite:)

The coolest bit of political memorabilia that I have are a set of staff passes from the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment proceedings for President Clinton's impeachment in 1998, including one from the day that the special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, testified. Former Republican Congressman James E. Rogan, who was one of the thirteen Republicans House Managers who actually acted as prosecutors during the Senate trial following the President's Clinton's impeachment, wrote a really great book called Catching Our Flag: Behind the Scenes of a Presidential Impeachment (BOOK | KINDLE) that I reviewed way back in 2011. In the book, Congressman Rogan (he's a Judge in California now) mentioned that he was a collector of political memorabilia and that he was very cognizant of the fact that he was playing a part in a major historical event -- which I mentioned in the review -- and I also noted that I respected how fair his book was despite the fact that he was a major political player in the impeachment and that he was so clearly from the opposite side of the political tracks than I am. His fairness actually resulted in President Clinton offering to help when Rogan was struggling to win re-election to Congress after the impeachment (which Rogan was grateful for, but turned down because it would hurt him more with his GOP supporters than any Democrats on the fence). ANYWAY...after I posted my review, Congressman Rogan contacted me and thanked me for the review and SENT ME SOME OF THE PASSES THAT HE HAD SAVED FROM THE IMPEACHMENT:

Here's the review of Congressman Rogan's book from 2011 (go buy it). Here's a post where I wrote a little more detail about getting the passes sent to me (and about the whole idea of tickets to impeachment proceedings in general). Also, as I noted in that post, if you are a stalker or a hater, don't go to the address on the letter that Congressman Rogan sent me in that photo because I haven't lived in Texas since 2011. (Also, if you're a stalker who looks like Shakira or Tessa Thompson, just send me a message and I'll give you my address.)

[skinnyscottishbloke]

Trump literally said this tonight. At this point I don’t give a flying fuck how you feel about VP Harris, we all need to get up off our asses and vote to stave off fascism cause it’s fucking here. HE DOESN’T WANT US TO VOTE ANYMORE. EVER.

PS this doesn’t mean we can’t have fun organizing and canvassing for her, I just want us to stay laser focused and determined and know what we’re up against. One of the Kamala Harris for the People campaign slogans in 2019 was #joyfulwarrior and I just feel like that sums up her and us so well. So let’s fucking go WIN this thing and send orange shitler into hiding once and for all.

[harriswalz4usabybr]

Sunday October 13, 2024 - Tim Walz

The Walz family along side, the Cheney family, and the Buttigieg family campaigned together starting the day off in Pete Buttigieg's hometown of South Bend for Church Services. The 'official' schedule of the events

South Bend, IN Event Location: Cathedral of Saint James Episcopal church Event Type: Sunday Worship Services Event Time: 8:00 - 12:00 ET *The group visited the church that the Pete and Chasten Buttigieg were married in. This wasn't just important to the campaign to make sure they visited an inclusive church for Sunday worship services, but also important to Tim and Gwen Walz as they are getting to know the Buttigieg family well. After the event concluded, pete gave the campaign a short tour of South Bend. Before the group had a private lunch.

Indianapolis, IN Event Location: Gainbridge Fieldhouse Event Type: Campaign Rally Event Time: 18:00 - 21:00 *Full-text of this speech will be released shortly.

~BR~

[thashining]

Flashback: McCain tells supporter Obama is 'a decent...

At an October 2008 rally, then-presidential candidate John McCain had to take a microphone from a supporter and tell her that Barack Obama is "a decent, family man."

"These people were just waiting for their Donald."

[mapsontheweb]

Swing from 2008 to 2020 presidential elections, by Congressional district

[the-yearning-astronaut]

I think I'm going to be sick