Primary time in one of WHYS’ favourite states. If you tune to OPB to hear WHYS, let us know who you support and why. Barack Obama is getting very close indeed to an unassailable lead in the delegate count (that’s not including the super-delegates). If he gets there, should he declare victory?
42 Responses to “I’m from Oregon and this is who I’m voting for and why”
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It’s so funny that it’s in Hillary’s interests that if Obama gets the nomination, that he loses, so she can run again in 4 years. She’ll be behind the scenes, aiding Mccain.
@ Steve,
I don’t think you’re a fan of Hillary from your posts.
As to your question :” Is anyone else getting sick of Hillary and her fake southern accent? ” https://worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/talking-points-for-20-may/#comment-24106
This is what I think:
Concerning Hillary faking a southern accent reminds me of 2000 presidential elections when Al Gore and George Bush tried to reach out to the Hispanic voters by addressing them in Spanish. Some joked about this and said the one with a better Spanish accent could get their support. Maybe George Bush from Texas felt he could outdo Al Gore.
I think trying to mimic the voter’s way is rather unconvincing. The Americans know where Hillary is from. They don’t want to see her speak like them, but if she can speak about their needs and have a vision how to realize them.
I wonder when she was making her campaign in New York, did she attempt to use New York different accents, especially of that of the black?
As Obama’s colour is still an issue for many voters in the USA, I think it’s better for Hillary to stick to her original linguistic colour. Faking accents or personalties to impress can disastrously backfire.
I just spent a week in Atlanta, I’m now in Texas and I put my vote for Obama in the mail before I left home. I heard him speak before he was running and he won my vote back then.
judy from Oregon, but not there now
I mailed in my ballot a week ago and voted for Obama. My wife voted for Hillary.
Obama got my vote because he says something that I have wanted to hear from a candidate for decades: That there are issues which divide us – things like abortion, prayer in schools, gay marriage and so on – things that boil down to basic philosophical principles and that these are all issues that are worthy of discussion…. LATER. We have bills in Congress dealing with health care and social security that have been tabled every year for over 30 YEARS and these have to be faced NOW.
If McCain wins, nothing changes. If Hillary wins it will be gridlock for four years and nothing changes.
I believe Obama can do it, and if he goes over the top in delegate count today it doesn’t matter if he declares victory or not – everyone knows how to count.
I voted for Ron Paul. He is the only one who understands why prices are going up. He is the only one who understands why the system is collapsing. He is the only one who knows what to do.
None of the others have a clue. It’s all bandaids and duck tape.
Obama is smart as a whip. There is a chance he can learn on the job, at our expense, of course. Yesterday he rallied 75,000 Oregonians and showed he is a pro at sounding great and saying nothing. His biggest liability is not his skin color – that is irrelevant. His biggest liability is his Harvard Law education.
Lawyers are at the heart of our systemic problem. Their training is to maintain the status quo. They are the lobbyists who bribe the candidates. They are the facilitators of the use of force to solve every ill. The mindset simply is wrong.
Yesterday Obama said Americans are a self-reliant people. Then he went on to say that together with Government “we” can solve everything. Government? It has failed at every level. We are a self-reliant people. If you get Government out of our way we can care for each other and solve the problems that really matter for ourselves. NO middle man.
There is not a competent politician among any of the candidates. If we are going to have incompetence, then at least let it be our own. That way the least harm is done.
Ron Paul has read the Constitution. It’s his employment agreement.
Let’s run our own lives and our own country for a change.
The last day of polling here in Portland (Oregon) begins in a half an hour – 7 am.
And ends at 8 pm. My ballot went into the mail at Hawthorne Fred Meyer last Thursday. Oregon has entirely voted by mail since the year 2000.
I was finally able to realize that my hospitalizations tended to be timed with voting.
A long story. My sense of reality entirely distorted by all the lies and claims and distortions to the point where I had to seek refuge. Vote by mail helped cure me of that pattern. (Also my birthday and my daughter’s birthday around the first of November.)
I voted for Steve Novick for Democratic candidate to go up against the incumbent, (R) Gordon Smith. I voted for my friend, David (The Ack) Ackerman for Mayor. I did not vote for any of the judges – they are all incumbents and I don’t know them. For State Representative I voted for one of the men with an excellent resume and an endorsement by former governor John Kitzhaber and who actually knocked on my front door on Sunday. I did not vote for a woman named Gray who I was considering until receiving at least ten!!! slick direct mail advertisements. Where is she getting all That money and spending it so foolishly? And finally I voted for Barack Obama. He caught my interest at the 2004 Democratic Convention with his, as I remember, keynote speech. I was supportive of Hillary early on but one of her minor campaign people was so rude to me on the phone, that I decided to support Obama. Did so for email and online for a long time but finally unsubscribed and wrote a check to Chicago and to he and his wife to say I hoped he got the nomination and I’d check back in then.
And that’s where I am at right now.
Hey Free Oregon: Good commentary on Ron Paul. Good vote.
Wanted to conclude with the fact that the Democrats have a way to go and Obama can go up against McCain all he wants but he’d be wise to get Michigan and Florida figured out to Hillary’s satisfaction and the remaining three primaries done with. The Democratic Party has to be united and it is far from that.
Virginia in Portland, OR
In Case Hilary loses to Obama, she should have no grudge for him. Al gore spent 24 years in active politics, 8 of which as vice president. He was confident of winning as the US economy was booming. Bill Clinton was a very popular president. Yet Al Gore still believes that Bill’s sexual scandals during his presidency tarnished his chances to win because the conservative Republicans reminded the voters of that issue. Al Gore lost to George Bush who looked politically inexperienced, especially in foreign matters.
Now it seems history is repeating itself with Hillary. After decades of being active in politics as First Lady of Arkansas and then as First Lady of the US and then as a Senator, she is now under the threat of losing to Obama, who is younger in age and less old in politics.
Hillary, in case of losing to Obama, should be forgiving. She forgave Bill for having betrayed her with Monica Lewinsky. Now she should forgive Obama for having marred her chances to be the first female US president, after years of being the first lady at the state and national levels.
Three years ago, I became disgusted with politics (mostly, with self-serving politicians). I didn’t know if I would ever vote in a national election again!
Last year, I was introduced to Ron Paul and for the first time in my life, there is someone in Washington who actually believes and supports the Constitution (what a novel concept!) and I love the fact that he refuses to meet with lobbyists! (A joke I’ve heard time and again: Why are Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul so slender? They refuse to allow the lobbyists to buy them lunch!).
I have read so much of his articles and speeches on RonPaulLibrary.org. He just makes so much sense to me! I feel honored to have cast my vote for him. For the first time in my voting “career” (I started in 1980) , I have a candidate who is uncompromising on principles.
@ Abdelilah Boukili
Little surprised by your comments. You really think Hillary “forgave” or even cared about Clinton/Lewinsky? They have a bogus/sham marriage. It’s a political thing. If you have political aspirations, you HAVE to be married. Remember the McGreevy thing in New Jersey? Another total sham marriage, she got offered the chance to be the first lady of NJ in exchange for a sham marriage with a gay guy.
Hillary won’t forgive Obama any more than she will forgive Bill. She, like most politicians, views other people as a means to get an end. Obama is shattering her dream of being the first woman president, and she will be bitter and resentful for the rest of her life if he wins the Presidency, becuase that means if he serves 8 years, she will never get to be president. She feels absolutely entitled to be president, so she WILL help Mccain to win, so that she can run again in 2012.
My 20 year old son registered to vote this spring. Before Obama he hadn’t seem much point in it-
I had always been a Democrat until a few years a ago, when I was totally fed up with the entire system- stopped voting, then registered as an independent- this spring I reregistered as a Democrat just so I could vote for Obama- he is the first person I have felt good about voting for in YEARS!
We dropped off our ballots at the community center on Sunday
I’m a twenty-year-old man from Portland Oregon and I mailed in my ballot for Barack Obama last week. At the beginning of this presidential primary race I chose to support Obama because my personal believes are quite liberal, and he was (in my opinion) the best chance to get a liberal democrat into the white house. At first, my opinion of Clinton was mixed and i most likely would have been pleased if she had won the presendential primary and gone on to become the first woman president of the united states. However, as the race to become the official nominee of the Democratic party went on I became aware of Clinton’s somewhat dirty tactics. I am certainly not naive to the point of believing that any presidential candidate is completely honest and fair. I realize that each candidate has their own personal agenda and they all desperately want to win their seat at the head of this country. However, Hillary Clinton has proven that she will do and say anything to get votes even if it compromises the core ideals of her party. She has proven (to me, at least) that she will lie through her teeth to the American people in order to sway public opinion even a fraction of a percent in her favor. She has proven that, like her husband, she will not admit when she is caught out in a lie and that she will not admit her mistakes nor will she apologize for her mistakes and bad choices (such as supporting the war in iraq) in the past. If you were to have asked me a year ago, i probably would have been fine with the idea of Hillary Clinton as the president of the united states. Today, the idea of it makes me sick. I know that Barack Obama will be a capable president, and I truly believe that when he takes control of the executive branch of the government we can begin working on repairing the damage that the past administration has inflicted on our nation, as well as the damage that they have inflicted on the global community and our reputation as a country of intellegent and peaceful people.
I began this election cycle like I have the past few–I didn’t care about it, and probably wouldn’t have voted.
Last election I was a paratrooper in the active duty military. Our captain gave a speech about voting, barely not mentioning Bush’s name as he told us “who pays our paychecks” and blah blah blah. I yelled out from the back “Go Kerry” and then got called a faggot. heh.
This is the first election where I am actually excited for not just one candidate, but TWO.
I have been a staunch Ron Paul supporter the whole time. I like that he is not corruptible, honest, and is a statesman to help the country.
Obama is my second favorite. His speech on race completely won me over, as the rest of the political world was arguing over worthless things like flag pins and race, he set them straight with one speech and made them look like fools. He is honest, and ready to tackle the presidency. Also his nucleus of hope is a bankable thing, economically.
Hillary is a politician. She has been caught lying multiple times, and I believe she has too many issues to be a successful president.
John McCain is out of touch with reality. I realize he was in the military, but he couldn’t even do that right–he got shot down! (hehe, just kidding)
But to ensure that Obama wins the Democratic nod, I voted Obama. I did however vote Merkel
Free Oregon commented that “We are a self-reliant people. If you get Government out of our way we can care for each other and solve the problems that really matter for ourselves. NO middle man. ”
I think you would agree that humans are better off working and living in groups than as individuals, yes? Working in groups effectivily requires organization and rules to reach agreement on priorities and effective courses of action, as well as to ensure contributions from all its members. Whatever structure this organization takes becomes, de facto, a type of government. You can complain up and down about our current government and get lots of agreement from me, but this attitude that government can just go away and everything will be fine seems wrong-headed. You’ll either have anarchy or you’ll just replace one government with another. What will this other be? Will it come from people grouped together for financial profit (corporations)? People grouped together for the benefit of family (tribes)? People grouped together for the benefit of a religious group?
I think there’s plenty to not like about the US government. I’d like to see a significant devolution of power to states and smaller organizational units. But this “government is the problem” mantra ignores an essentail fact: the government is us! We make up the government. Tear down government and we’re still here. We’ll still need to organize. And that organization will become government. Given that the component parts (i.e. us) will not have changed, how different do you really think it will be?
BTW I didn’t vote in the primaries. I can’t bring myself to identify with either party, although I keep voting D simply because they’re the only ones that come close to recognizing the environment can’t survive a truly free market combined with every increasing population and industrialization.
In case my previous post didn’t get through, I’m voting for Obama.
@ Virginia
That will be sorted with the “merging” of campaign funds. Basically Obama will pay off the Clinton debt and she will thank him and support him asking that Florida and Michigan support him.
They will be seated with a 55/45% split in favour of Clinton.
I’m in my 60’s and mailed in my vote for Obama ten days ago. I look forward to being done with the Clintons, AND the Bushes.
I voted for Obama. I have great respect for Senator Clinton, and I believe that she has led an impressive political career. However, I believe that she (and McCain) represent the old way of doing things in D.C. They have been entrenched in the world of shady political dealings, lobbyists, and personal agendas. Some say that Senator Obama does not have the experience to be President, but as a younger American, I believe that is exactly why he should be President. Call me naive, but I like the fact that he is a fresh face, and has not been in D.C. long enough to become corrupted by our political system.
I was undecided between Hillary and Obama until I heard Hillary mimic McCain’s ridiculous gas tax vacation idea. The gas tax vacation would encourage business as usual, driving a lot in low mileage vehicles. If we want energy autonomy, shouldn’t we be encourageing the opposite behavior? At least Obama knows a bad idea when he hears it, so he gets my vote.
I will be placing my vote for Ron Paul. I am doing this to help send the message that the constitution is not being followed. I am a strong believer that the federal government has taken over to much of the government and that the states are the true source of government in the country. By the states not using their individual powers the federal has been able to usurp the control of the day to day operations when this was left to the states by the tenth amendment from the Bill of Rights.
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
I have struggled with this decision all the way up until I filled out my ballot. Ultimately, I kept coming back to the same thought process. I work in community development and planning and have experienced the power of working on issues from the community level and addressing issues at the level with the greatest capacity for their realist solutions. Key to this is to find a member of the community exhibiting some charismatic leadership to rally others toward the solution of their common goals. Obama was one of these people. Coming up from the South Side of Chicago, he understands this notion of local capacity building and will enable communities thoughout the world to help themselves.
Obama versus Ron Paul!
Now that would be a dream election.
Promises impossible to fulfill versus do-it-ourselves action!
The wisdom of age vs. the brilliance but incompetence of youth!
Bugs Bunny vs. Bugs Bunny, instead of Bugs Bunny vs. Elmer Fudd (Bugs wins every time).
The least corrupt of McCain, Hillary and Obama, versus integrity from top to bottom.
Who wants a corrupt leader? Do you prefer the Keating Five? Do you prefer cattle futures as a payoff vehicle? Do you prefer insider real estate deals?
We should not have to make choices of this kind. And we don’t!
Give me uncompromising integrity any day.
the one thing that gets me about hillary, is that she is persistantly courting the lowest common deneominator, the blue color hick vote. winning these states is absolutly meaningless since the gun toting, bible bashing “hard working white americans” will always vote for the republicans. i was shocked by some of the statments by some of the so-called democratic voters there. shut-up and carry on playing your banjo.
I voted for Barack Obama because he is a breath of fresh air, in a stale and stodgy political system. He’s intelligent, and thinks about how decisions impact people. Let’s face it, we haven’t had the best and the brightest in the white house in 8 years. The Baby Boomers have had their chance at the helm, and look where it has led us. For the past 20 years only two families have controlled the white house; the Bushs and the Clintons. How is that real change? Hillary Clinton wants to extend on those same tired old policies. It’s time to pass the torch to the younger generation, and repair our damaged world image. Obama will do that for us. He inspires. Even my children want to vote for him, and are frustrated they cannot.
My party affiliation is “Unaffiated”, so I could not vote for in the primary for the presidential canidate I support as in Oregon, you can only vote (in the primary) for the presidental canditate(s) that you are affiliated with. Had I been willing to change my registered patry affiliation to “Democrat”, then I could have participated.
It’s a fairly frustrating system to me. It is a rediculous idea that an “Unaffiliated” candidate, much less two or more, will ever be a viable candidate in the US for presidantial office. Also, it’s rather unlikely that the Oregon primary will be a major factor in deciding any presidential candidicy any time soon- and I my input was ruled out for maintaining my belief that neither Republicans nor Democrats are always deserving of my registered support.
I maintain my independant status as I am a prudent skeptic of my representatives in my government, and prefer to maintain it throughout.
In New York State, where i am from! We had our “primary” on Super Tuesday.
I hope that people in Oregon, get out and vote!
Dennis~Madrid, United States of America
@ Free Oregon
I can’t believe that you see a Harvard Law education as a liability. Since when is being educated and spending time with some of the modern world’s greatest thinkers a bad thing? Lawyers aren’t trained to “maintain the status quo.” They are trained to uphold and defend the Constitution or to challenge it when its laws are no longer relevant. Furthermore, I’m sure sure that both Clinton and Obama are intimately acquainted with the US Constitution as it is a requisite of obtaining a law degree, which both of them have.
@Matt
You don’t think Obama will become part of the system here in DC? Everyone ALWAYS says they are new to DC, that they are different, and always become part of the problem. The only ones that are different are the independent types, not ones from a major political party. it will be more of the same, though his skin color will be different.
@ Steve,
In response to your comment: https://worldhaveyoursay.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/im-from-oregon-and-this-is-who-im-voting-for-and-why/#comment-24377
I agree with you. Politicians are usually thick-skinned. They care just about attaining or keeping in power. For Hillary, she seemed to have tried all means to get enough votes, even shedding tears in public before trying a southern accent. Some would consider them as crocodile tears.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7180184.stm
This shows that some politicians seek to be showpeople, by staging spectacles, rather than showing substance.
As to what you said “she will be bitter and resentful for the rest of her life if he wins the Presidency, because that means if he serves 8 years, she will never get to be president.” she doesn’t have to despair. In case Obama is elected president and stays in power for eight years, she still has her daughter Chelsea to prepare to become US first female president! This means the Clinton Dynasty still has a chance of survival.
@ Abdelilah Boukili
I doubt Hillary would be satisfied waiting a minimum of 12 years for Chelsea to be President. That’s also presuming Chelsea Clinton wants to enter politics. She will have to have served some kind of office for years, so realistically that would take about 15-17 years if she began today… Hillary would be in her mid-late 70s by then.
“Two-thirds of Hillary Clinton’s supporters in Kentucky say they would vote Republican or not vote at all rather than support Barack Obama, exit polls show. The results come as Obama is poised to take a majority of the pledged delegates overall after voters weigh in today in Kentucky and Oregon. full story”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/20/primary.wrap/index.html
I am from Oregon, but am not registered with any party; and thus am intelligible to vote in the election.
If I had a choice, though, I’d vote for Barack Obama in the primary (the election I intend to write-in a ballot for a local community leader; he won’t win, but he’d ought to, and I feel obliged to vote for who should win rather than who campaigns).
I would vote for Obama because he has so pressed his agenda of changing Washington that when he finally gets to office he will HAVE to change it at least a little bit. I have lost all faith in modern day Washington D.C. and view it as a mere proxy for whoever has the biggest purse to have his way with the nation; be it Halliburton, Oil companies, Corporate executives, or financial institutions most recently being bailed out by the Federal government.
If only homeowners could be “bailed out” when the banks are taking back their homes.
barack may become more of the status qou but atleast the government won’t be ran by old people. Someone once said, “Old men go to war but young men fight and die.”
I am registered as a Fascist because i believe if you do nothing for the country the country should do noting for you. Unfortunately as mentioned earlier i was unable to vote in the primary. I would have cast my vote for O’Bama as McCain has shown me nothing other than anger and, that he is so old that when he is giving speeches he doesn’t even know the differance between Iraq and Iran. Does that remind anyone one we might all know….. one word for ya strategery.
Oh and @ the person who said Gore lost the election to to bush the younger more inexperanced canidate. I beleive the election was stolen from Gore amazing how all that went down.
Like i mentioned before i believe this election process has breathed a whole new breath into politics. I see the Hil Obama fight as a sibling rivalry and i hope i am right that when Hil admits defeat she stands with Obama
@ the person who said Ron Paul was the only one who knew how to fix things……did you ever hear edwards speak. the only canidate i know of that when you said hey how will you fix health care could take you step by step preocess that made sense. Integrity the man said in Portland, Or. to a lesbian couple that he didn’t support same sex marrige. which is prolly a big reason he fell out so early he had real plans to fix things and said what he meant. even the pundits said he won every debate he was at the others were jsut put into celebrity status.
Obama/Edwards 08 so that way even if something happens to obama we will have a good president
To be honest I think Obama’s policies will continue us down the path of economic ruin just at a much slower pace then Clinton or McCain. Ron Paul was the only offering that could have actually offered policies that might turned our economy around. But then again, remember that a president doesn’t write bills, he just signs them into law once they reach his desk. He might be more effective in the legislative branch anyway.
We win, wahooo!
I still say an Obama/Paul ticket would be a shoe-in!
Growing up a Reagan Republican, I got disgusted with the party and have been voting Green, Libertarian, Constitutional, and Democrat where there was no other choice. I’m happy to say I can return to the party of the Republic and vote for Ron Paul, a true, honest, tested Constitutionalist!
I will vote for Mr. Obama in the fall, but not because he is my choice. He’s just the only choice of those that are left. I wish that the candidates I feel have real political chops could sell themselves to this media-driven electorate. Joe Biden was my favorite, though I was excited about John Edwards getting further into the Democrat race. It just seems to me that the people that are bitterly skeptical of the Bush administration cannot remember that critical eye when they focus on the next race. Especially as it may be their race to chose the candidate to ‘fix’ what’s left for the US to ‘fix’- if that’s even going to be possible anymore. I just prefer a fact or two before I follow “change” down the 2008 rabbit hole.
That said, the terrible things made law or consequence in the last seven+ years; I cannot believe they’ll be undone by Clinton or McCain. But Barak Obama might.
And so my vote lives on that wait-and-see …
Well, Obama won Oregon. What a relief. And with Ron Paul’s Youtube show, you might just wonder what is in their minds.
Obama would never pick Ron Paul as his running mate.
Obama/Edwards!
Hillary is staying in the race for one reason: Money.
http://infogiant.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/clinton-begs-superdelegates-to-allow-her-to-stay-in-the-race/
Obama knows how to give an inspiring speech but he will do exactly the same things as Hil and McCain will do in the white house, just with a slightly different flavor. Real free markets (not like the ones politicians like to call free markets), very small government, and personal responsibility create the fairest, most prosperous and peaceful societies. Not socialism i.e. unsustainable welfare programs and social security and national managed health care, nor the soft fascism of our corporate and special interest controlled wealth devouring government, nor central banking systems like our Fed driving our currency ever faster towards worthlessness to prop up an empire of preemptive war and finance their cronies badly run big business bailouts.
It is clear to me that the majority of Americans are not aware of, or have foolishly chosen to disregard or ignore the lessons of history, even very recent history that show the ALWAYS devastating results of collectivist governments. We will not be able to make it work any better just because we are Americans. We have no magic shield to protect us from the effects of an approach to government, collectivism, that by nature favors the rich and concentrates power into a minority of elite hands.
We must take a step back and shake off the addiction to the power high that comes from forcing everyone else to support our cause via a democratic vote, and get back to some basics. We need to talk about why and how our Republic became a Democracy, and who that REALLY ends up favoring.
If we don’t, this collectivist government will do what they always end up doing. It will take away our freedom and our wealth and assure our compliance using terror and lies. It will eventually implode via a long drawn out civil war, or through an economic collapse like the former soviet union, or through the rest of the world uniting against us in world war to stop our incessant meddling and war making. And those of us who are ‘lucky’ enough to survive will be stuck with cleaning up the mess and starting over with depleted resources and scarred people.
I would prefer to change now with much less chaos, and of my own free will instead of waiting for it to be pushed on me in the most uncomfortable circumstances. Yeah, I’m one of those “kooks” who voted for Ron Paul. I believe Americans are better suited as individuals telling “the man” where to stick it and doing for ourselves and our unfortunates (cheaper, faster, and higher quality), than spending our valuable time attempting to convince him to force other people pay for it for us and then do it for us. Geesh. Really.
End rant. Logical though it may be.