Although Obama will need as many votes as possible to win in the Fall, it is dangerous to allow the Clinton campaign to use blatant racism, (Puerto Rican primary talking points) phony "voting result" math, and bogus charges of "sexism" without a very strong condemnation from Democrats.

The media will not call the Clintons on this because the media never questions anything. It is up to Democrats to shut this kind of talk down by calling it what it is: BULLSHIT!

While the Obama campaign has planned and executed a brilliant political primary campaign on the 50-state strategy front, his campaign is doing very poorly on the front lines of the media battle.

Every day we see a parade of clowns on TV: republicans, Clintonoids, and pundits, but rarely does an Obama supporter ever seem to appear.
This is eerily reminiscent of Kerry's awful media (non)campaign in '04.
There were countless oppurtunities for Kerry to rip the Bush administration a new one, on every issue, but the Kerry folks shirked at every oppurtunity.
Consequently, the rightwing dominated the news and spin, giving people the impression that Kerry was unable to respond because he either had no effective response to begin with, or he was afraid to...

This is almost too brief to warrant a diary, but I think the substance will become manifest in the follow-up comments....

Has anyone seriously broached the possibility of an independent Obama presidential candidacy?

Joe Lieberman is already being solidly portrayed by the MSM as a sore loser, a whiner and as spoiler who's only interested in his own ego. His appearance on "Today" this AM was pretty embarassing.

But Joe is continuing his campaign like the political junkie he is, unable to deal with the agonizing withdrawls of retirement. He simply can't stop being a politician. His whole ego depends on his own self-image as a senator.

He now says he's an independent, who's an "alternative to the partisanship divide".

 Over the past 20 years or so, Americans have voted for the GOP. They have gotten elected at all levels and developed a program based on fairly strong right-wing philosophies.

Did the people of America suddenly turn into wingnuts in 1980?

I have been trying in vain to get this issue discussed for the past 10 days, but few Kossacks seem to be interested. Every time I diarize it, it gets washed away by a flood of posts.
It is becoming obvious that the right will use Katrina as an example of why "government" is bad. They will argue that FEMA failed because it isn't "privatized".
They say, "See, government is useless, we have to privatize everything!".
The reality is, it is ALREADY "privatized", and that is EXACTLY why it performed so miserably.
Read this:
 http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2004-09-22/cover.html

This issue will be EXTREMELY IMPORTANT for the future of the "left" in this country- it should be No 1 right now, because we're gonna see alot of anti-govt backlash as a result of Katrina.

 We need to start thinking about this :
"It is the privatization of Govt functions under the GOP that resulted in FEMA's disastrous performance".

Nobody has really said much about this aspect of the NOLA fiasco, yet. It's still too soon to really know exactly why FEMA performed so miserably.

Think strategically, folks!

I think the Big Question in the wake of this fiasco might be: With the emphasis on "privatization" of so many gov't services over the last few years (decades),my two-part question to any of you out there w/ knowledge is this:

This disaster is a blatant, DIRECT result of Republican policies for the last 25 years.
This is what the GOP's massive tax cuts have resulted in - a broke, helpless and feeble Federal Gov't which cannot help and protect its own citizens in a time of crisis.
This is not just about Bush.