The Influx Of Younger Voters

Here is New York Times columnist Bob Herbert commenting on the Obama phenomenon:

When Barack Obama asks how many
people in his overflow audience are still undecided and a third of the people
raise their hands, it’s a sign that there is a hunger for new leadership but
that it won’t be easily satisfied.
Something is stirring all right. Voters
are paying attention. Young people are coming into the process. The electorate
is fed up and ready to invoke the prerogatives of citizenship to hold the
leadership to higher standards.
The textbooks tell us that’s exactly how it’s
supposed to work.

The Times notes the influx of younger voters into the campaign in it's lead story this morning. For me, that's the best thing about what's happening today - the hope for positive change that the shifting age demographic is bringing to politics. In other words, I'm hoping that less conservative younger people are replacing the older, more conservative generation that has given us 40 plus years of mostly Republican rule. I can hope, anyway.

Jim

Poor Hillary

Watching the political drama play out moment by moment as Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency seems to be imploding is nothing short of fascinating - like watching a movie where you just know that the outcome is going to be bad for her. I still think she can recover even from a double digit loss to Obama, but maybe not - maybe that will finish her off as so many pundits seem to be saying. Now she get teary-eyed on the campaign trail. That's not good. She says she's for change, but then she touts her experience while saying the Obama is not ready. No wonder she's in trouble. Meanwhile Obama has his act together. He's a great speaker, and he can and does easily turn the inexperience critique to his advantage by pointing out that real change means a rejection, not only of the Bush policies, but by extension., also the policies of the Clinton years. Poor Hillary, she is really in trouble. Boo Hoo.

PHOTO; Subterranean Penn Center - this was once an ice skating rink many years ago.

Jim

Sunday, Busy Sunday

I had a table at a local toy train show today. This was the first time I actually sold stuff at one of these shows. After a while, after several years of collecting, the time has come for me to adjust my toy train collection and sell off some of the items that I bought long ago in which I am no longer acutely interested. The benefits of this sort of thing to a collector are: 1. it makes room for new acquisitions; and 2. the money raised is welcome. So I was busy for a good part of the day today at the train meet. I had a good time and I did sell some stuff.

I also managed to listen to a couple of the Sunday morning political shows. The most interesting thing I heard on one of the shows, the Chris Matthews Show, was that ten of his regular guests were polled and they all thought that Obama would be the Democratic presidential nominee. Myself, I think it's too early to write off Hillary. Anyway, it has been fun to observe the fallout from the Iowa caucuses. Obama really shook things up on the Democratic side. Huckabee's win also disrupted the best laid plans of Mitt the flip-flopper, which made my heart glad. This week comes New Hampshire. It will be fun to watch even though I don't like any of the leading candidates on either side of the aisle.

Jim

The Slanted Network Reporting

Media Matters, the media watchdog group, reminds us that we're being served a constant slanted version of the news by the network political pundits including Tim Russert and Chris Matthews. These people are not objective journalists. They have their own personal agendas, which they allow to color their on air reporting in a most unprofessional way. The latest example comes as these "professionals" gush over John McCain even though he finished fourth in Iowa:

In case you're wondering, no candidate, Democrat or Republican, has ever won his or her party's nomination after
finishing fourth in a contested Iowa caucus, or after winning as little as 13
percent of the vote. Yet this is "very good news for John McCain," according to
some of the nation's most powerful journalists, ignoring the fact that the only
way in which this is good news for McCain is that they keep saying it is good
news for McCain.

If the network news stars say it is so it must be so, right?

PHOTO: Philadelphia's Suburban Station, a deco masterpiece.

Jim

Obama's Iowa Win: Not Good For Gays

Richard Rothstein gets it right:

The Iowa primary represents a remarkable day in Black American history and
as an American I am deeply moved by the prospect of our first African-American
President. But as a queer I have to come to terms with the fact that as
President, an Obama
will not cross his power base and any hope of equal civil rights for queers
anytime in the near future was possibly run to ground last night in an Iowa
cornfield.

Don't forget, Obama sanctioned the inclusion of an anti-gay black clergyman as a part of his campaign. You can't be for social justice for gays and do something like that.

Jim

Iowa: After The Deluge

Michael Moore feels bad for Hillary:

"I can't tell you how bad I feel for Senator Clinton tonight. I don't believe she
was ever really for this war. But she did -- and continued to do -- what she
thought was the politically expedient thing to eventually get elected. And she
was wrong. And tonight she must go to sleep wondering what would have happened
if she had voted her conscience instead of her calculator."

...and, Moore has an interesting question for Mr. Obama:

"...if you can, tell me why you are now the second largest recipient of
health industry payola after Hillary. You now take more money from the people
committed to stopping universal health care than any of the Republican
candidates. "

I don't feel bad for Hillary myself. She is firmly in the Clinton tradition, the same tradition that abandoned core Democratic Party principles under the guise of being "moderates," and using centrist-based triangulation when Bill was president. (Triangulation: that's when you stake out a fuzzy third position on an issue with lotss of generalities that allows you to pander to both sides on an issue by telling each what they want to hear, e.g., on gay marriage, Hillary is against it but she favors domestic partnerships at the state level.) She would be more of the same. Ugh!

As for Obama, he's a Kennedyesque figure and a powerful orator. However, he cannot bring himself to stand for full equality for gay men and lesbians, which leaves me with the feeling that for all of his fine talk, he's not ready to back it up with courageous stands for social justice. Like Moore, I have serious questions in my mind about Obama.

PHOTO: A locomotive projection on the wall of Grand Central Terminal - part of the holiday laser light show this year.

Jim

Gore Can Still End Up Being The Democratic Nominee

Huffington Post analyst Paul Abrams lays out a scenario whereby Al Gore can become the Democratic presidential nominee:

With the potential of a truly fractured Democratic field, the one person
who could heal that wound and set the race on fire would be Al Gore. Untarnished
by the primary battles, redeemed both by his own successes and Bush's failed
presidency, with a cause that percolates down to 1st graders who go on nature
walks, and with a conviction not to be handled by "handlers" (who are killing
Hillary now, as they did Gore in 2000), Gore would be perfectly positioned to
run a winning fall campaign. Although Hillary herself would be loathe to
"release" her supporters to Gore, many of the super-delegates and a large
fraction of the actual delegates would nominate Gore in a heartbeat, and only
those states where the delegates are committed on the first ballot could be
held.

Obama would have to win the Iowa caucuses tonight for this to happen, according to Abrams' scenario, starting a process that ends up with none of the Dems arriving at the convention with enough delegates to win the nomination. It's an interesting scenario. We'll have a better idea if it's actually possible after tonight.

PHOTO: The upper level tracks at AMTRAK's 30th Street Station

Jim

Train Travel: A Luxury

PHOTO: The ticket counter at AMTRAK's 30th Street Station decorated for the holidays.

Amtrak tickets are so expensive these days. It's to bad that this country has de-emphasized rail travel; and we continue to build and drive gas guzzling automobiles. Maybe if the price of gasoline increases dramatically in the Spring, as is forecast, this will finally begin to break the obsession that Americans have with their large, inefficient automobiles. We'll have to see.

Jim

Twilight Of The Age Of Reagan

Gary Hart gets the big picture right over at Huffington:

The age of Roosevelt was replaced by the age of Reagan which itself is
coming to an end. The age of Reagan was relieved only briefly by a rare period
of peace and prosperity in the 1990s. The brief Clinton era pursued "centrism"
at the cost of blurring the fundamental principles of the 20th century
Democratic party -- a sense of national community (Roosevelt), citizen duty
(Kennedy), and equality and justice for all (Johnson). Return to the age of
Reagan, under the current administration, destroyed the security alliances
established by Truman.

But who will return us to the values of the Age Of Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Johnson? Mrs. Clinton? No. Obama? Maybe. Any Republican currently running for president? No.

Jim

Road Trip South For The New Year

This great relief, a tribute to progress in the various modes of transportation and now located inside Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, was originally installed in the Pennsylvania Railroad's Broad Street Station. Soon we'll be riding the rails departing from 30th Street en route to Washington, DC for a day trip. We'll be visiting the National Gallery, the venue for an exhibition of the paintings of Turner.

Happy New Year to all!

Jim