CNN

I sure can tell ya that he isnt running on his own merits,he uses hillary words shes been around longer than him and she makes complete and total sense. he did not vote for that k/l act he was in hiding,you dont say you wouldn't of supported it,your supposed to be going to vote so i dont think that answer is sufficient enough.but goes after Hillary for voting on it,and she explained her answer with that vote,and its sensible. you have missed every senate vote almost 100 votes,How can you run for President,irresponsible, chicago is talking you have not been there you deserted your job, Your preaching at rallys,about religion that is nonsense your views on America are goofy,you used cocaine so that would be a concern to me....you would never get my vote,you are inelectable ,politics is what are you going to do for the Anerican people you have not said so.What Hold rallys and your thinking more like in cloud.your ideas bring nothing.same ole same ole crap.running a rude campaign,your supporters are all crazy for donating to you,you are a thrifty spender like a republican, seriously think Hillary has it and wins it. hands down.her intellect is way over your head ,your speeches are umm umms uhh's , I dont trust him on foreign policy,i dont trust his judgement on his religious background,he holds rallys and thinks and preaches like Islam,you can see it in him,and he was raised on it you dont loose that,go to the islamic websites and there leaders are just like OBomba,but you know Islamic you could be at home reading the koran be a Islamic in Hiding.How would we know,and he also join a church 3 months before he decided to run.This is very serious issues with BHusseinO,that is a Islamic name.

Phillip, IN, you said you voted Bush twice, this time you may vote Obama, it means you made mistake twice, what did you learn from your lesson? Obama will be same as Bush because he is naive, inexperenced and capricious in political view. Not smart judgment again.

Fred in Reston,
You are not a pragmatic democrat. You are a sad, sorry and disillusioned man.
Obama is not Nadar...not even close. How dare you say anyone can waste their vote if they vote their heart? You have not followed Obamas' path or you would be singing a different tune. Everything Obama says warrents our passion, hope and conviction to a better US.
Who else would you consider Fred? Hillary??? It must be her or you would have not been afraid to say who you support. Would you choose the most divisive, corrupt, unelectable person running over HOPE? Look at her negatives Fred. Hillary will guanantee a republican victory just so people can vote against her. People HATE her. So many say "anyone BUT HRC". Please Fred, rethink your position. Obama supporters are not full of hate and rage and we are not rude. We have hope and faith in a new way.
OBAMA 08

I'm really wondering how Lance and the other Obama groupies will cope with Barack Hussein losing the Dem nomination.

There is no way that the American public will elect Barack Hussein Obama.
Period.

It is specious to suggest that Obama supporters were Nader supporters. Although Obama has brought many people into the process who had not supported any candidate in the past - most of his support comes from the mainstream of the democratic party. We see an inspired new leader as the best anticeptic to seven years of bad luck.

Gore, for example, is an independent thinker even though he has been part of the Washington scene for decades. The test is whether a candidate thinks about and expresses fresh ideas and will approach problems that way.

The problem with Clinton is that she was for the War as recently as two years ago, has failed to be bold and independent since she lost on health care, and is not independent of Washington insiders.

It is not "pragmatic" to keep supporting the same established machine politicians. We have not had so rare an opportunity to create change since 1968. Imagine if Bobby Kennedy had lived and been nominated. He would have won - and he would have changed history.

Karen in NJ:

As a woman and a mother, I cannot begin to understand how you could support Hillary.

With great sincerity, I would like to know how you can support someone who voted for this war which has killed thousands, and injured tens of thousands of American's finest?

Even if you can let that go, how can you be OK with her voting against limiting power to execute the war?

And most recently, she voted to identify the Iranian Guard as a terrorist organization, fueling the fires of war with Iran. A conflict of this nature would make it necessary to reinstate the draft, because we do not have the forces to cover all of the conflicts that she has supported.

Today, she sent a 3 page letter to Iowans trying to explain this vote. It was a terrible vote, and now she is trying to reassure Iowans that she has the judgement to be president.

What evidence do you have to show me that she has the judgement to be president?

You can't possibly be OK with this.

Obama is the best thing that could and will happen to this country I say will because I believe that american's will countuine to vote the for the right people after bush is gone as they have before. Bush was and is a great president. He will go down in history as the president that had to deal with the most while he was president but I don't think anyone could have handle it better.

Obama is in denial; he forgets that he doesn't have any executive experience.

I am Republican, but BARACK HAS MY VOTE, I VOTE NO TO ANY MORE WARS WAGED BY GEORGE BUSH, PERIOD!!!

OUR NEXT PRESIDENT MR. BARACK OBAMA NEED TO COME COLORADO SPRINGS, CO HE CAN RESTORE AMERICA PLACE IN THE WORLD AS A LEADER. JUST LISTEN TO THE WORDS FROM HIM

Hey Philip from Elkhart, IN: You are the most honest person that I have come across on the ticker. I will not bash you for the Bush vote(s); instead, I praise you for your courage to seek a leader of a different party, and admitting your mistakes. You are a stand up guy.

Sophomoric ads about "...an end to conventional thinking" aren't going to get this guy elected. If he gets even close to the nomination, Hillary's army of goosesteppers will dig up all the dirt they can find on Obama, including his shady real estate deals with Chicago's infamous Tony Rezko. (Not that Hillary hasn't been involved in her own shady real estate deals!)

From my perspective, conventional thinking means what made this nation great: free-market capitalism, a strong defense, and the liberties guaranteed us by the Constitution. If Obama has something else in mind, I think he'd better start getting specific. Oh, wait, maybe being non-specific is the only thing keeping him in the race. This guy might win a sappy bromide contest with Maya Angelou, but start asking him some tough questions and he'll wilt like the 1969 Cubs.

And as far as "...pledging to restore American leadership in the world," if that means turning to European socialism just to get the French elites to swoon over Obama, I'll gladly pass on that. If freedom and prosperity means being envied and hated by those whose main achievement has been destroying Europe's wealth and culture, I'll take a second helping.

To Fred from VA,

You're comparing Nader to Obama? Say what?! Obama has more money than any other candidate in history, which he's raised completely outside the washington beltway corporate establishment. He is not the candidate of partisan division, HILLARY IS. Hillary says stuff like, "if you want someone to take on the right, I'm your girl." whilst Obama continually calls to unite the country.

I have canvassed for Barack. I can tell you I've never encountered a single Democratic voter that had ill feelings toward him, while meanwhile Hillary evokes a viceral dislike even from many Dems that are fed up with the division that started not under Bush but under Clinton.

Anyone that thinks the inspiration and voter outreach that has happened due to Obama will simply transfer over to Clinton is misguided. If she's the nominee, she will find a democratic electorate that is largely apathetic and she'll find a Republican base that is as fired up as they can be for no other reason than to make sure she's out.

I have stood in rooms with a hundred or more people so fired up to support Obama they'd drive 400 miles to Vegas just to canvass for him. I've seen people with walkers get out and knock on doors for him. I've seen high school kids canvass for him. I've seen people never involved in politics before taking an interest.

To compare him to Ralph Nader and to say that he's an unelectable candidate is simply niave and shows you're not paying attention.

Hillary had a rally in her home state of NY. 2400 people attended. Mostly older women.

A few weeks later, Obama had a rally there at the same place. 24,000 people attended, of every race, age, gender, background. You name it, they came out for Obama.

You tell me, who is truly unelectable?

Is it the establishment candidate that is well funded by corporate lobbys and titans of industry, or is it the candidate that has garnered more money that thought possible from the largest donor base of individuals, mostly under 200 dollars from half a million people, in the history of this country.

I ask you, who is really the underdog here?

Go to Hillary Clinton's site and go to events and type in your zip code within a hundred miles. I did that with my zip code and maybe a dozen events came up, mostly a few training classes for volunteers.

I did the same on barackobama.com, and I got over a hundred events in the area alone.

She's got 360 blog pages. He's got 3680 pages of blogs.

You know what the most populated site on the web is? It's on Facebook. Until recently it was "1 Million Strong For Barack." with 350,000 members. But it's been supplanted by "1 Million Strong TO STOP HILLARY CLINTON" with almost 500,000 members.

Really think before you talk. Don't go throwing around Ralph Nader's name and the idea that someone is unelectable until you actually figure out who the really, REALLY unelectable candidate is.

As the right wing nuts know, that person would be Hillary Roddam Clinton.

Fear is a crazy emotion and it will lead to our great country spinning downward even faster than it is now if we don't make a drastic change. The resistance to Barack Obama is made up of fear – fear of the unknown. All of the other candidates are very well established in the Washington way and we are all very familiar with them. Where have they gotten us in the past? Well, look at where we are today and that will answer your question.

Take a serious look at Barack Obama – without the fear, without the rhetoric and with an open mind. Go to youtube and check out his SF Women for Obama speech – absoutely amazing. Check out his 2004 Democratic convention speech. These are Barack Obama – I have met him on multiple occasions and fancy myself quite cynical on the subject of politicians and their "honesty". Barack Obama is as sincere of a politicians as you will ever find – I take him at his word. It is time to step out of our comfort zone and take on the responsibility of doing the greater good – that is voting for real change, ending "conventional thinking" in Washington and voting for Barack Obama as the next President of the United States.

Lance,
great novel.
"Here is a man that has devoted his life to bettering the lives of others at the expense of his own monetary advancement."
my problem with obama and the other socialist candidates is that they want to force you to give at the expence of monotary gain, not give you the choice to do it like Obama did. Philanthropy will increase when the socialists learn that taking peoples money doesnt do anything for anyone except increase the power of the nanny state. We have a bunch of people with a victim mindset. Grow up and take care of yourself. By the way good for Obama for giving at the expense of his monotary gain, im sure he didnt write any of it off on his tax returns.

The conventional thinking–spoonfed to us by the media–is that Obama is an exciting and inspiring candidate. The new wisdom, which comes from actually observing him during this campaign, is that its all fluff and he's an empty suit. So, by all means, let's dispense with this conventional thinking in favor of what our own eyes and ears are telling us.

To Fred from VA,

Nader supporters!?! Hillary is the super partisan one. Obama is way more electable than she is and has plenty more legislative experience than she does. Obama supporters are in no way Nader supporters, they are true democrats probably more likely to have voted for Gore. And to put some more of that in your face, I read in Time magazine Gore might be considering endorsing Obama.

Obama '08!!

So... I'm a Republican. I voted for Bush twice. (Maybe mistakenly the second time...) (I know, I know... all you left wing people are saying, "maybe mistakenly both times.") At any rate, if Obama gets the nomination, I'll probably vote for him. (I still like McCain.) I don't think that's throwing my vote away. If he doesn't get it, I'll write his name in. I don't think I'm throwing my vote away. I would hate it if Hillary or Rudy got in. It's not "costing us the white house." You lost it by not getting Obama on the ticket in the first place.

Names have been changed dear to protect you and I now we must cry.cry...I. oooh our blues away..

pledges to restore "American leadership in the world."

Yes, I look forward to the Inauguration!

What else can a presidential candidate who is different (black and inexperienced) from the other candidates say. other than to "end conventional thinking'?

Other than ending the conventional thinking as obama suggests, Milt Romney has proposed electability based on the beauty of a candidate's spouse.

Obama supporters are the rudest group online these days. Being for Clinton does not mean being against Obama. But these guys just go on long-winded rants about how glorious Obama is, and call people names if you dare not to buy into the crap.

Obama has done nothing to warrant this passion, and I have followed his campaign rather closely. The bottom line is that these same people are the ones responsible for ralph nader taking votes away from Gore in 2000 by throwing their vote away to an unelectable candidate in the hopes of "voting for something." They come around every election cycle and produce nothing but noise. As a pragmatic democrat, I know this country will not vote for someone with Obama's resume to be Commander in Chief with soldiers in the field. So all of you Obama/Nader supporters should just wake up before you cost us the White House again.

To David, Baltimore.

There is no way a year ago you were for Obama. Now that he is pointing out differences with his rivals. You claim you are disappointed. That is the only way voters can make their choices. By comparing those differences. Obama should be going a lot stronger in making those points. Whenever Obama scores by comparing his record or differences. That is the only defence the Hillary campaign has to those differences. We are tired of hearing it. Why not challenge Obamas statement? Is it because Obama is telling the truth?

Obama's full of it, huh?

See the above post about what he's been up to for the last twenty or so years. He's actually out there making a difference whilst you sit on your derier and make up stupid things to say about good people that actually are tryin to better not only this country but this planet!

Whether we agree with, like or dislike Obama, he is correct. Changes in our world today dictate we cannot continue on the same path. Big Brother has been successful in "herding" us into conventional thinking only because we allowed it to happen. Americans have been treated like sheep and deprived of constitutional rights. Whether republican,democrat or independent let's not be corralled into conventional thinking which has proven not to be progressive thinking but a fear factor.

Just because I'm in IL does not mean I give my support to Obama due to proximity. But after looking at the home life, the accomplishments (in and out of politics), as well as the passion for what he believes in, I'm supporting Obama.

From what I see (according polling), Hillary maybe the front-runner but why?! Hillary's accomplishments as first lady and senator as meager. Her judgement is very questionable (for ex. Iraq War among others). Her home life for me denies explanation (i.e. married to Bill who has been accused not once but at least three times of infidelity, publicly).

Is Hillary Clinton the best that the Democrats can offer for President? C'mon people look beyond race and gender. OBAMA in 2008!

Hi there Hillary supporters-

Since she has already won the nomination, you don't have to waste your time posting comments relating to the primaries anymore.

I mean, she's already won the nomination. It's not like Hillary has anything to worry about, right?

There's not chance of her losing the nomination. No chance at all. Really.

Obama is full of it. He needs to get back to Illinois and prove himself a success here before he's ready for prime time. All he has done for Ill. is raise taxes and sit around holding "important Senatorial hearings", also known as doing not much of anything.

To SALLY in DeMoines Iowa, who above posted that she was undecided between Obama, Hillary and Edwards.

Go to barackobama.com and click on Barack TV to watch some of Obama's speeches. They'll tell you a great deal about the candidate.

When making your decision, keep in mind that Obama has more elected experience than Obama and Edwards combined, 8 years in IL Senate plus his time in U.S. Senate.

Also keep in mind that he turned down 700, that's right 700 corporate job offers out of college to take a 14 grand a year job working as a community organizer in Chicago, walking the streets to help out of work steel mill workers find new employment.

He also spoke out eloquently and vocally against the Iraq war back in 2002, when both Edwards and Mrs. Clinton were voting to give the President authority to go to war. Keep in mind, back in 2002 he was considering his Senate run and it was political suicide then to speak out against Bush, but he felt he had to discuss what he sincerely believed was right. He said, "I'm not against all wars, but I'm against a dumb war. This will be come a war of undeterminable expense and length, and it will become a civil war between Shia, Sunni and Kurds." At the same time, Bush joked when he heard the words "Sunnie and Shia", he said, "What's that? I thought they were all muslims over there."

Obama has a great knowledge of the world, having grown up part of the time abroad in Indonesia before moving back to Kansas with his mother. He has a wealth of experiences from traveling all around the world. His father was an immigrant from Kenya. All of this wealth of knowledge makes him an outstanding President that knows the ways and realities of the world.

He also is not taking federal lobby money, while Hillary is making it the basis of her financial campaign to do just that. Obama recognizes that lobbists are paying huge sums of money to politicians to curry favor and he's seen firsthand how the political process can be corrupted by this.

At the same time he doesn't take lobby money, Obama has OUT RAISED Hillary three out of four quarters by garnering more donations from individual contributors across the nation than any other candidate in history, mostly under 200 dollars. He is the first outside the establishment maverick candidate to do this, to be competitive with the establishment without taking corporate money.

If you didn't know the way lobbys and PACs work, what happens is that a corporation, like EXXON, will give all their executives the maximum 2300 dollars to contribute and then direct them to give it to Hillary Clinton or whatever candidate they endorse.

Of course this makes politicians beholden to their corporate donors.

For the first time in history, a politician is only beholden to the American people, as Obama is.

Obama also just two weeks ago spoke out against the vote in the Senate that declared Iran's army a terrorist group, an act that gives Bush the authority to wage undeclared war against Iran. Hillary Clinton, as she did with her 2002 vote on invading Iraq, voted two weeks ago to give Bush the same authority to now attack Iran.

In the 90's, Hillary made a health care proposal but did not consult key industry members, taking a complicated and arrogant approach, combined with a lack of communication skills on her part, that allowed her ideas to get trounced by the media.

Obama, on the other hand, has released a better plan that is available at barackobama.com. Not only does he have the communication skills to cross partisan divides and get his plan through, his own mother died of cancer while between jobs and without health care. As a result, he's made it a mission of his life to provide everyone with affordable healthcare.

Obama also has passed the first meaningful ethics reform in a generation and is known in the Senate as the "go to" guy when it comes to ethics. His recent bill that was passed is the reason that other candidates can no longer use corporate jets or recieve other corporate perks.

This fact about Obama, as well as so man others, seem to go unreported in the media.

Every vote in this coming election is crucial, especially where you're at in Iowa. I hope that I've managed to add some food for thought when it comes to making your decision.

Again, feel free to check out barackobama.com to see Obama's speeches and learn more about the issues and his stances on them.

One last thing, one something harder to quantify and identify, is the inspirational value difference between Obama and the other candidates.

I myself have never bothered to ge truly involved in politics before but Obama has brought this out in me. If he hadn't been running, I may have been as apathetic as usual but I am not and he's the only reason.

We need to be inspired in this country to accomplish the hard work to keep us on track and restore our place in the world. I have been to volunteer meetings in Nevada and California where there have been entire rooms full of people, 50 at a meeting, all of which have never, ever gone to such a meeting before. They've come out for Obama. They're knocking on doors for him. They're writing about him. They're talking about him.

If they can get us to put on our walking shoes and go out into the world to make a difference, think what Barack Obama can do to inspire this whole nation?

I'm excited at the prospect of it and I hope you soon will be too.

Best,

Lance

Obama 08!

To Karen, nj:

What better proof that we need to end conventional approaches to solving national and world problems– and that Obama's candidacy is our only viable hope - than that Hillary-bloggers don't even know what he means!

If you did, you would be seeing this campaign in a different light.

I'm so disappointed in Mr. Obama.
He says he wants to lead us all in a new kind of politics, but he engages in, and is being positioned by people schooled in, the same old "conventional" political name-branding, which eventually devolves into trying to identify something in your opponents that is not likable. Whatever happened to running on your own merits, your own ideas? I'm tired of Mr. Obama trying to denigrate Ms. Clinton in oblique ways. Stand on your own two feet. I'm sorry to say that a year ago, I was all for Mr. Obama, but now that I see he's totally trying to package himself, and is not really putting out any new ideas, just the idea of "anti-Hillaryness", I have to look elsewhere. The American Left needs to stop making Mr. Obama into the image it wants him to be–and he needs to stop letting them.

Blah-blah, yada-yada, politics of hope, lack of experience, maybe unconventional, still unelectable.
Posted By Jeff Spangler, Arlington, VA : October 22, 2007 11:57 am

-Jeff, it's obvious that you prefer the same old Blah-blah, yada-yada politics of the past. Dude, you live too close to Washington, DC.

Obama has the best ads! They are great, to the point and show his great leadership abilities! Obama 08 I say!

Here is a question: Black Women/The sisters. So you would rather have your sons and daughters look up to the Office of The Presidency of the United States. With a first Husband that got his pee pee done IN (The Oval Office). With a President, then the wife that put up with it. You would not choose a great roll model for your sons and daughters such as Barack Obama. A strong, intelligent, faithful to his lovely wife Michelle, and kids, good judgment ready to lead. I am confused then. Cause you complain about one thing, no good men, no good roll models in your Community and then you do another. You should be leading by example to your children. So what are you telling them? It’s ok to be unfaithful to your wife? I like and respect both Clintons. But I would like to hear your reasoning.

It has come time to ask ourselves serious questions about who we want to lead this country.

Never before has more been at stake. We are at war in an endless and irresponsible fashion. Our planet is growing hotter and drier faster than any of the scientists have predicted and wihin 20 years our ice caps may be things of the past.

We have gone from being the most beloved place in the world to the most hated.

Our government seems mired in an endless partisan debate.

We are scared and we feel that we are alone. We grasp at anything that even remotely resembles a life raft.

I ask all of you, out there reading this now, to not grasp out of fear. Do not look backward, look forward instead.

The conventional Washington thinking of past government administrations has devastated our country and our planet. The politics of fear has driven us into hiding, forcing us to temper our beliefs and our hopes in the face of an enemy both within and without.

This is the way countries throughout history has fallen, when they lose their sense of common sense and logic, and start grasping at shadowy enemies and propaganda of the past.

Barack Obama represents a fundemental sea change from that past thinking.

We complain that nothing gets done in Washington. Why? Because Washington politics is controlled by greed and the big money provided by corporate lobbies that it takes to get elected.

Here we have Barack Obama, who ha single handledly reformed that money system, drawing instead on the single biggest foundation of small political donors, most under a hundred dollars, IN HISTORY, to go toe to toe with the Washington establishment.

Here is a man that has devoted his life to bettering the lives of others at the expense of his own monetary advancement. Here is a man who does not lead blindly and dictate answers, but instead LISTENS, and learns, and uses common sense again and again to solve problems.

Barack Obama's record shows this. He has sponsored more bipartisan bills than any other Senator in his time in both IL and the Senate. He speaks more often about the environment and real solutions to our climate issues than any other candidate.

Obama has single handedly reinvented the conventions of the political system. He can make the fundemental changes that are needed to save this planet and pull this country up by the boot straps to make us respected again.

To save ourselves and save our planet we need to think out of the box, and Obama has proven, by his very candidacy and the viability of it, that he's the one to lead the way.

he cannot do it alone. He needs our help. You cannot merely exist as a digital shadow, typing "Obama 08" and leaving it at that. We must GET INVOLVED in the real world. Go out and start knockin on doors. Go out and put up some Obama fliers or buy bumper stickers and give them to your friends.

Engage People.

Make it happen. If you've never done it before, do it anyway. If you've never believed in anything before, believe that we can do this, that we, the people, can elect a true leader for a change instead of settling for the lesser of two evils as we usually do.

Put on an Obama button and don't take it off. Learn about the issues that are affecting your life and start teaching others about them.

Go to a school or a church group or a tennis club or the local Elks Club and speak. Overcome your fear of crowds to talk about the greatest hope this country has for true and meaningful change. Talk about Obama and convince others to do the same.

Its all about the real world and affecting change in it. The time for apathy and for allowing others to pull your weight is long over with.

We control this world, not others who would like nothing better than for good people to stand by and do nothing.

True evil is not the acts of evil people, it is when good people stand by and do nothing while evil people act.

Do not be part of the problem, be part of the solution.

Support Barack Obama, in the real world.

What are you waiting for, get your butt off the internet and go into the world as a real human being.

It's now or its never.

Obama 08

"Conventional Thinking"... Mr Obama, whoever is leading your ad campaigns should be fired. This "soft" academic approach to distinguishing yourself from Hillary does not and will not resonate with voters.

How about, "Time for a REAL change. Instead of Special Interest and Won-Ton-Campaign Scandals... vote this time for an honest, authentic canidate ~ Obama"

Until you start REALLY going after Hillary and show her to be the unelectable candidate she IS – you won't move up in the polls and she won't move down. Republican attacks are expected. Democrats calling Hillary out – is simply telling the truth.

Be COURAGEOUS enough, Mr Obama, to state and STAND for the truth!

New Rasmussen national poll featuring Obama today has Barack leading Romney, trailing McCain - in what is a remarkable shift towards the Republican. Read why here.

Blah-blah, yada-yada, politics of hope, lack of experience, maybe unconventional, still unelectable.

Here, allow me to do your job for you:

http://nh.barackobama.com/page/content/nhhome

Mr. Obama, of Illinois, received a lift Wednesday with word that Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, a former Clinton administration aide, would endorse him. In a letter saying he would announce his intention next week, Mr. Patrick said, “I believe the importance of this election transcends friendships and party.”

He couldn't have said that better. This election is extremely important. That's why I've been following it very closely and have just recently decided to back Obama 100%.

Never in my life have I seen a potential president as refreshing, as strong, and as compassionate as Barack Obama. He tells it like it is, he doesn't mince words or speak to the choir. He is a force to be reckoned with and will do an amazing job as our next President.

Thomas Jefferson. Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Barack Obama.

if it cant be al gore/john edwards, i hope it's barack.

no hillary! and certainly none of the lying buffoons on the "dark side" (as our scary, creepy, loser VP likes to call it. it's probably the only truthful thing he's ever said as VP)

Well, I hope the rest of you understand what this character is talking about. End conventional thinking? What is that suppose to mean? Hillary is the only candidate that makes any sense and is down to earth.