Readers better get used to a "Black President" - Official Groundbreaking Prediction of 2007

There is a two-word concept we, as Americans, are going to have to get used to over the next year and a half — black president.

There is no chance our next president will be a Republican. The hardcore partisans in either party will be voting for the “D” or the “R” no matter whose name precedes it on the ticket. But the Republican base is split and there isn’t a Republican candidate out there who can “unite the right.” In order to win, any candidate will have to bring undecided “swing” voters over to his or her side because neither party can hope to carry a national election with only their base (the Republican base can’t even carry a local election).

That rules out any possibility of a Republican president in 2008.

Of the Democrats, we can forget about Senators Dodd and Biden, and Gov. Bill Richardson (all of whom will make outstanding Cabinet secretaries). John Edwards might (again) be a compelling candidate for vice president, but hasn’t distinguished himself as strong enough to occupy the top spot on a Democratic ticket. That leaves Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. With Feb. 5, 2008 shaping up as a “super Tuesday” national primary, the real race is going to be run this year, and the Democratic “donor base” and “activist base” will play the pivotal role in selecting the next president.

Why Senator Obama and not Senator Clinton? Several reasons, not the least of which being one out of five Democrats say they would not vote for Senator Clinton for president, as do one of every two (all-important) Independent voters. Those numbers spell absolute doom for her in a general election, and no party wants to nominate a candidate who they know cannot win nationally. But the main reason is because no Democratic candidate can win a general election without uniting the donor base and the activist base because the donors provide early campaign funding and the activists supply the energy and enthusiasm. Both now belong to Barack Obama.

Look at donor base incarnate, David Geffen, and the embodiment of the activist base, Phil de Vellis. Geffen, as the billionaire founder of Dreamworks SKG, has a license to print money and has raised almost $20 million for the Clintons over the years. De Vellis, a web designer and grassroots campaign veteran of the critical 2004 battle for Ohio, is one of the thankless millions of campaign volunteers and canvassers who put their lives on hold — forsaking comfortable beds and a living wage — for the chance to get their candidates elected. Geffen and de Vellis have significantly impacted this race by eroding Senator Clinton’s once impenetrable air of inevitability. And it was that overpowering sense that “Hillary is coming and she can’t be stopped” which was supposed to carry her through Iowa and New Hampshire and
straight to the nomination.

But then Geffen came out and said, “everybody in politics lies, but (the Clintons) do it with such ease, it’s troubling.” In calling out both Bill and Hillary, Geffen told the donor base he’s with Obama, while providing cover for others wanting to come along. For his part, de Vellis (aka ParkRidge47) mashed up the revised edition of Ridley Scott’s “1984” Apple ad — with Hillary Clinton in the role of “Big Brother.” The ad was on cable news for weeks and told the activist base the eventual Democratic nominee doesn’t necessarily have to be Hillary.

The key was that chinks in Senator Clinton’s armor came early enough in the first quarter of 2007 that Senator Obama was able to reap the rewards — as evidenced by his fundraising totals: $25 million to Senator Clinton’s $26 million, which wasn’t enough of an advantage to marginalize his campaign. In addition, he got 100,000 contributors to Senator Clinton’s 50,000 (more contributors means more people he can go back to), about $7 million contributed on-line compared to about $4
million for Senator Clinton (donations on the Web are the acknowledged wave of the
future), 90 percent of his contributions are in amounts of $100 or less (far less than the maximum of $2,300 each for the primary and general election cycles), and almost all of it ($23.5 million) can be used for the primary (Senator Clinton hasn’t announced her primary vs. general election cycle breakdown).

With any Republican candidate dead in the water, Hillary losing 20 percent of Democrats and half of Independents, and the support of the donor and activist bases of the Democratic party, Barack Obama — a black man — will be the next president of
the United States.

Remember where you read it first.

Nancy Pelosi is the real Speaker of Washington - Getting out of Iraq

The center of power in Washingtong has shifted away from the White House, down Pennsylvania Avenue, and has rested squarely in the office of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. For proof, you need look no further than sthe spending bill she just pushed through the House. It was a time-consuming effort which wasn’t at all cost-effective, but she got it done.

The Speaker had to add about $20 billion to the bill funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to make it palatable for those members with weaker stomachs (and hungry constituents) and she had to do some serious hand-holding with the anti-war caucus in order to convince them that this was as close as they were going to get to a full, immediate withdrawal. After weeks of negotiations, she collected the 218 votes required and the bill passed — establishing a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq. In announcing the passage of the bill, the Speaker said, “proudly, this Congress has voted to bring an end to the war in Iraq,” and, “the American people have lost faith in the President’s conduct of this war. The American people see the reality of the war, the President does not.” The only problem is she missed her opportunity to re-frame the debate around our Iraq policy — in that she’s still calling it a “war.”

Language creates — and the misuse of language can create mistaken impressions. U.S. military operations in Iraq could have been called a “war” in March of 2003 when we first invaded. But after a few weeks of “shock and awe,” Saddam Hussein was in hiding, we had taken the capital, and the war (such as it was) was over. In fact, the
President himself said “major combat operations have ended” in May of that year.

Yet our military is still there, fighting and dying, to provide security in Iraq. It’s been a long time since ninth-grade social studies, but if I’m not mistaken, the correct term for the invasion, conquest, and control of a nation by foreign armed forces is “occupation,” not “war.” This misapplication of the English language is also what leads “civil war” to become “sectarian violence” and turns U.S. military “advisers” into American “targets.”

But by allowing the President to continue to refer to military operations in Iraq as a “war,” the Speaker is still playing defense, reacting to the whims of the White House, and conceding the Iraq issue to the President as commander in chief. She
cleverly avoided the predictable charge that she was endangering troops in the field by actually giving the President more money than he requested for Iraq and Afghanistan, but still left herself and her Democratic colleagues in Congress open to the charge that they are “micromanaging the war” by requiring the Iraqi government
to achieve certain goals in order for U.S. forces to stay and continue to provide security. It’s time to play offense so that as soon as the “war” becomes what it really is (an “occupation”), the President’s role as commander in chief is diminished — since Iraq wouldn’t be a military operation overseen by the Department of Defense (professional killers), it would be a political effort managed by the
Department of State (professional diplomats).

It’s safe to say that My Fellow Americans would be more agreeable to much stricter Congressional oversight of a $100 billion reconstruction project (in which Americans are being killed) than a military operation (in which they expect casualties).

If the Speaker and the Democrats in Congress really saw “the reality” of our military
operations in Iraq (over 3,200 killed, over 24,000 wounded, $80 billion spent each month, and no end in sight), they would have already begun counting votes in the Senate. They would be working on the 20 Republicans who are up for re-election nex November and getting them on the record as being opposed to an open-ended commitment in Iraq.

Norm Coleman can’t go back to Minnesota and admit he’s standing with the President and not the troops. John Cornyn of Texas, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee barely won their last elections, so you know they were paying attention when Democrats swept into power in November. This group represents the 10 votes it will take to bring our troops home. The Speaker of the House did her job. It’s now up to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to find out what it will take to get these people on board — and dare the President to veto it.