Obama: I will be the Democratic nominee

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/03/election.democrats/index.html

by nirmal • 18 years ago

77 112 18 years ago

rms10• 18 years ago

While this is awesome, this is covered on the TV News, so it does fall within what the rules consider off-topic. But threads like this have come up rarely enough (one previous Obama thread?), that the rules can be broken.

Go Obama.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Though I guess Obama is kind of an interesting new phenomenon, but probably not new to anyone here.

helveticaman3• 18 years ago

Yeah...however, the outcome of the presidential election would deserve to be on the front page.

rms10• 18 years ago

Agreed... but I don't make the rules. Do your worst, editors.

breily4• 18 years ago

But this isn't the outcome of a presidential election. And anyways, why should the outcome of the presidential election be on HN? Its not especially relevant to hackers, and I'm quite certain people will see the news elsewhere - it usually gets a lot of coverage.

eru• 18 years ago

No. That will be on every news source.

tonystubblebine• 18 years ago

Well, if we need to tweak it for more relevancy, I'd be interested to hear any strong public speakers pick apart what makes him such a good speaker.

menloparkbum• 18 years ago

maybe the moderators are off on a honeymoon, or something?

icey2• 18 years ago

News? Sure.

Hacker News? Not so much.

dmpayton2• 18 years ago

I was about to say, word for word, the exact same thing. Had it typed out and everything. Then I had to check on dinner, came back, and got the unknown/expired link error.

Needles to say, I'm in agreement.

notdarkyet4• 18 years ago

No it is not and you are correct in that assessment. Personally, Obama does not represent a good portion of my views in terms of policy, but what he does represent for me is a new wave in politics, a wave that is once again representative of the people rather than individual incentive and making decisions based on who is going to line their pockets. Anything to end corruption is better to me than someone who is going to promise to act within my set of views for what is best for this country and then do the opposite or what they want.

My view, personally, is that government should act as a safety net rather than a guiding father figure. I tend to float towards more libertarian policies than anything, small government and as little intervention as possible (a view that can be considered almost the complete opposite side of the spectrum than Obama). My view is that this nation has grounding and worked for so many years to be a country of opportunity, therefore, the structure of government should reflect that ideal and anyone who is willing to work hard should be rewarded for it (no free gifts).

What I do support from Obama are his values (or proposed and believed values) as a human being. Not his religious values or the garbage perpetrated by the media (ie. reverand Wright). He gives individuals a reason to believe that he is going to act on what is best for society and that enough might be what will make me forget about his views of government. Yes, he most likely will propose policy that is near opposite of what I believe and I will make that admission, but I hope that having a man with a sense of ethics will take this country down a path where someone with my sense of views and his could come to some sort of a compromise with what is best for this country. I would rather have that than the selfishness thats perpetuated this country since I have been alive. I would rather have a man who will admit when he is wrong and correct it than someone who will ride it out. Call him a flip flopper or whatever bullshit title you want to call it (I am talking to you media), a real man will admit when he is wrong or made a mistake and then go to fix it.

Back to why it is relevant, it is news to you as a hacker because he represents technical views that are in line with what most hackers view as what the internet should be; maintaining status quo and keeping the internet free. I know without a doubt Obama would insure that the internet would continue to remain free and would not be corrupted by big business and allow them to manipulate the way traffic and data flows. That, above anything, should be the most important issue to you, as is to me. To my limited knowledge, he has promised to create a new IT oriented branch of the office if elected, which is once again relative to you. I have had quite a few drinks tonight (I know it is a wednesday but I will give the fact that I am in college as an excuse) but I hope my statement is coherent; the more you think about it, someone in politics, or more specifically the president, has almost the most significant impact to any hacker as almost any individual possible and that is why it is relevant to you. Cheers!

mynameishere5• 18 years ago

Not his religious values or the garbage perpetrated by the media (ie. reverand Wright)

At the risk of being downmodded for injecting more facts into this thread, you are aware (I'm sure) that BHO considers Wright to be his spiritual mentor? The connection is not a media invention or media "garbage" by any means.

You are also aware that Wright and his church are ideologically and officially associated with views of an extremely radical nature?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_liberation_theology

Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago is the one church frequently cited by press accounts, and by Cone as the best example of a church formally founded on the vision of Black liberation of theology

This is the church that Obama spent 20 years attending. Ask yourself, everyone: What would happen if McCain had spent even one day in a church that advocated "White Liberation Theology"?

BHO is probably an atheist like myself and most intelligent people, and his attendance to the church was likely somewhat cynical. But the connection between the church's official dogma, Wright's views, and Obama are meaningful.

notdarkyet4• 18 years ago

In response to all of our comments being heavily downmodded, (which I personally wish that the ability to mod was more integrated with the necessary requirement that a comment follow for the sake of conversation) I really hope that you could refute your point of view or why you so vehemently disagree rather than mod into the thread and conversation into oblivion so that no one else will see.

I really do believe that some important points were addressed in the conversation in relation to the validity and relevance to the hacker community for the conversation so I would hope that rather than mod down to where no one will see the conversation you express your opposing opinion. In the end a refutation will do more than silencing the opposition.

EDIT 1: Thanks to you all that have resurrected the comments in the thread (especially those that oppose the comments). It really would not bother me if every one in the HC community opposed those viewpoints, I am just glad to know that we could have a civilized conversation in the thread and that individuals will still be able to express their opinions in text rather than have the influence be based on votes.

EDIT 2: The conversation has obviously went from negative to positive for quite a while now (which would come with the assumption that it is quite controversial and polar topic), but once again, please establish your opinions rather than vote to where no one will read the viewpoints and comments expressed.

JesseAldridge• 18 years ago

I agree. If people want to push their political views, I suggest doing it over here: http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Who_is_going_to_be_t...

notdarkyet4• 18 years ago

At this point, my faith in this community is slowly being evaporated. Where I would normally look to this site as quite possibly the most objective source of information (from a entrepreneurial perspective) and a source of honest opinions and as a frequent internet observer (I really do place so much value on all of your comments and to my knowledge, almost all of them have had a significant impact of my life and my decisions), I am scared to what this community has become. As someone who followed digg and reddit from the early days, I transitioned to this site because I valued all of your opinions, which I believed to be honest. All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to consult the community on decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable extent. I really am just so confused as to what I said that has offended the community to result in such an extreme display of downmodding (including those that disagree with me). Please just explain yourselves and opinions rather than downmod all of the threads opinions.

EDIT: As an indicator, my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past hour or so, I just really would love to know what aspect of what I said that has made all of you to so passionately enforce such an action. Maybe I have not established relevancy to the hacker community as to why this story matters and that is fine (or maybe you all just disagree which is fine with me as well). I cannot reiterate enough, for my sake, please just let me know what I said that was so offensive. Please refute.

EDIT 2:

I just would also like to say that this comment has no relation to the one that has been associated with my comment (the one that has been placed below mine because the one it is associated with has been deleted).

That comment goes as follows: Look, I'm an Obama supporter. It's just that as far as I see it, this sort of thing is better left to other venues.

edw5193• 18 years ago

"this community is slowly being evaporated"

No it's not. Have faith in pg and the rest of us. This stuff happens all the time and we survive just fine. How could you know this after only 28 days.

"my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past hour or so, I just really would love to know"

You never will, so don't waste any mental energy worrying about it. That's just the way it goes.

"confused as to what I said that has offended the community"

You haven't "offended" the community. Some people just downvote without commenting. Once it gets going, sometimes it snowballs. Forget about it and move on.

"All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to consult the community on decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable extent."

Great! Keep it up and do your part. Forget about the other crap.

I have noticed that discussions about what is "appropriate" get lots of upvotes ot lots of downvotes or both, without much logic. Hacker content threads, OTOH, are our bread and butter and are generally well received and appreciated. Stick with the latter.

olavk• 18 years ago

FWIW I downmodded all politically partisan comments except the one specifically regarding technology policy. I did this because I like HN, and don't want it to turn into this: http://files.sharenator.com/we_know-2368.png I am sure you are a nice guy, I am downmodding your comments, not you. Don't take it personal.

LogicHoleFlaw• 18 years ago

The best thing to do is to be the HN you want to read. Submit good articles, make intelligent comments, and (possibly most significantly) vote up the articles which are really worthwhile. It still doesn't take a whole lot of votes to get something moving up the front page.

Leon• 18 years ago

It is somewhat important to hackers what the future of tech policy in the United States will be. Net neutrality? FCC regulations on different parts of the spectrum? FCC regulations on ISP's? Funding on new internet backbones or litigation against the previous telecoms on their failure to implement high speed access with previous funding? Higher education funding and research grants?

All of these are directly related to the production of new/better hackers or the ability of existing hackers/internet startups to reach people.

While, yes, any other day this would certainly be off-topic, in our two party system when one party decides on its nominee for president of the United States, it is some-what important for hackers to know what the two possible outcomes of the future of Technology policy will be.

bkovitz• 18 years ago

Articles about net neutrality and other political issues of relevance to hacker entrepreneurs are certainly relevant to HN. General political stuff of the sort that's already saturating the media everywhere else is not.

TFrancis2• 18 years ago

Democracy is the greatest hack.

chaostheory• 18 years ago

I think it's time for sites like YC News to implement an 'idea tribes/groups' feature in order to survive 'old age'. Site Moderators are only so effective as shown historically by Slashdot...

Delicious does this pretty well (though the way they do it doesn't completely map to most social news sites) and Reddit has started doing this with its topics feature... Maybe YC News needs to implement something similar? Thoughts?

All I know is even with the risk of missing some good posts, I do not want to see anything from the users that submitted and upmodded this post, and simply moderating this will only sweep the problem under the rug temporarily, and conversely the users that like this post will want to continue making posts like this in the future...

breily4• 18 years ago

How is this not dead? Politics should not be the top story - I thought there was a strict ban on politics?

andreyf4• 18 years ago

No strict ban, just caution - the reason given as politics tending to be divisive, even among intelligent groups.

antidaily• 18 years ago

how l33t of him.

mynameishere5• 18 years ago

My god, this whole comment thread is people wondering out loud if "this is hacker news" or not. Give it a rest. No it's not hacker news, and no it doesn't matter. If you're really concerned with the purity of a website, you're going to have to find out who upmodded the thing and then ban them.

As I said a long time ago: The democrats have one chance to lose this election, and that is to nominate Barack Obama. Oddly, given that McCain is basically a moderate democrat himself, a loss by Obama would probably tend to neuter the GOP and result in an overall advantage for the leftist program.

rms10• 18 years ago

The prediction markets like Obama. http://www.intrade.com

McCain has been around for a long time and has said a lot of contradictory things -- it is easy to edit videos together to make him look like a fool. A flip-flopper, if you will.

mynameishere5• 18 years ago

If I could legally bet against him I probably would. McCain is an idiot. He's old. He's ugly. He's got awful cancer scars. He's sick as a pike. He's a hypocrite. He's a criminal. He's (possibly) insane. I'm aware of his faults, but I'm also aware that none of them "stick". Obama and his various followers have consistently broken a key rule of politics: Do not insult the voters. I expect more of the same.

Obama is a pyschologically interesting person, and I can't help hoping he wins, in a way. (Only because it would be interesting, though). McCain is as interesting as Franco, which is to say: Not at all. Obama, by contrast, grew up politically as a strict identity-politician. That is, a "black" politician, who mainly tried to divert public money and favors to a particular race. Read his bio. This attitude is somewhat artificial and I'm not sure that he has the sort of natural bigotry of Jesse Jackson or Sharpton. Nonetheless, his politics are damn close.

His goal now is to divorce himself from his past: First, whatever his "real" personality is, plus the somewhat phony personality he concocted during his Chicago inner city days. He's got a lot of contradictions to cover up, and a lot of hard acting to do. I think he'll crack, frankly, before it's over.

Another thing: He's a wimp. Wimps lose. McCain is a bully. Bullies win.

MaysonL2• 18 years ago

Intrade's markets on the election are ripe for arbitrage: 4.2 the price for the Clinton nomination, and 6.0 for her winning the general. What's that, a 43% profit with very very low risk[buy the nomination, sell the general: can't win the general without the nomination]?

breily4• 18 years ago

How are we supposed to find out who voted it up and ban them? We're not mods (at least I'm not). The best we can do is express our distaste at the fact this that is on the front page.

MaysonL2• 18 years ago

One point to bring it on topic: Obama has by far the best use of the Internet any candidate has ever had. From fundraising to volunteer recruitment to local organization to event coordination, he blows the competition away.

rms10• 18 years ago

The man has his own social network to recruit volunteers.

Darmani3• 18 years ago

  Number of Obama Meetup groups: 71
  Number of Obama Meetup group members: 4,037

  Number of Ron Paul Meetup groups: 716
  Number of Ron Paul Meetup group members: 28,870

Source: http://www.ronpaulstats.org/Meetup_Groups.html

  Largest single day online Ron Paul fundraiser: $6.2 million
  Largest single day Barack Obama fundraiser: Errrrmmmm....a lot less.

Of course, if you want to get semantic, I suppose you could say Barack Obama's done a better job using the Internet; the Internet has done more in the way of using Ron Paul.

dgabriel• 18 years ago

Not to bag on RP, who is a very interesting candidate, but those fundraising numbers are pretty misleading.

Let's look at the totals (http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/)

Barak Obama - $265,439,277 Ron Paul - $34,442,643

rms10• 18 years ago

If anyone wants to read his tech policy, here it is. This election is a battle for net neutrality.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

The education policy is also good, it basically comes down to "spend more money on education."

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/

Darmani3• 18 years ago

If throwing money at problems worked well, startups would be screwed.

rms10• 18 years ago

If education could be solved by the government it would be well worth eliminating many potential startups in the education space. It would make more opportunities for startups, because everyone would be more educated, producing more wealth to spend.

_h4xr15• 18 years ago

Is there even a positive correlation between throwing more money at education and having better-educated kids? It looks like at some point over the last thirty years, we got to the point that the administrative cost of distributing the next dollar for education exceeds one dollar, so the extra money gets soaked up by bureaucratic inefficiencies.

But whatever! It's only billions and billions of taxpayer dollars spent by a monopolist that buys its product from a cartel! Clearly, the important thing is to give more money to this completely deranged system, rather than fixing it.

TFrancis2• 18 years ago

Right, let's reduce education! Ignore the order of magnitude more funding provided to the Department of Defense.

This never made any sense to me. I target my voting like I optimize my code. Look for the biggest inefficiencies and start there.

mwmanning4• 18 years ago

I've never understood this mindset. Don't conservative types like you believe in market influences? How could spending more money NOT improve education levels?

Just a couple of examples off the top of my head: 1) Spending more means higher teacher salaries. Higher salaries attract better talent, which means better education. 2) Spending more means better facilities and supplies. Decent materials and supplies lead to a better classroom experience.

I went to a dirt-poor high school in south Georgia. My chem teacher was senile, our textbooks were 14 years old and falling apart, and the sinks leaked chemicals onto the floor. I know this is anecdotal evidence, but more money would have helped my school a TON.

This whole "bureaucratic inefficiency" argument it a catch-all that greedy rich people like to use as an excuse to not help out the less-fortunate.

andreyf4• 18 years ago

This sucks for the Democratic campaign in '08 - Obama/AP/CNN says he will be nominee, Hillary campaign says they are mistaken, Democratic party can't say much until the convention. Doesn't seem like much of a time of unity... hopefully, we'll all come together by November.

rms10• 18 years ago

She actually said they were mistaken? From what I watched of her speech she completely ignored the issue.

andreyf4• 18 years ago

The AP story is incorrect. Senator Clinton will not concede the nomination this evening.

From: http://blog.hillaryclinton.com/blog/main/2008/06/03/163233

That's pretty fishy wording, and her newer posts seem to be very close to conceding...

jobeirne2• 18 years ago

Let's hear it for a crippling capital gains taxes!

jobeirne2• 18 years ago

Whoops, I meant 'Go Barry!'

hugh3• 18 years ago

I hate Obama as much as anyone, especially for tax reasons, but I modded you down anyway just for trying to start a political argument.

trekker7• 18 years ago

I half-agree that this isn't HN material. Half, because I'd really like to hear about HN users' views and opinions about politics.

davidw3• 18 years ago

I can sum it up for you: they pretty much represent the normal political spectrum, but there are a lot more libertarians, and probably fewer Bush style conservatives. If you want to see the results of such a discussion: libertarians vs more left-leaning (a lot more in some cases) vs a few lonely moderates, have a look at reddit. It's generally not that entertaining, and I'd much rather talk about things we all have in common rather than those that divide us.

khafra• 18 years ago

> things we have in common

Right, like the undeniable facts that vim is better than emacs, Macs are fundamentally more secure than Linux, the gphone will be better than the iPhone, 37signals is overrated, ruby is better than python...

flipbrad• 18 years ago

Ithink the Dems have the right man fr the job - Obama is a wonderfuly intelligent man who will bring all the requisite nuance and intelligence to the presidency (his choice of favourite films, for example, reveals a man very sensitive to different aspects of culture within America, and indeed the world) - but unlike Kerry, he's got the charisma and power to not have that come off as 'flip flopping' (the most ridiculous branding to ever decide an election on - a shameful year for the USA, that was). Internationally, he comes off as a sensitive and reasonable American patriot - I think this is a very good combination for international relations.

tokipin3• 18 years ago

awww. i wanted hillary to win, because she has bill

axod• 18 years ago

There has to be a better, quicker way to choose a new president. This is worse than big brother (the tv show).

Is it any wonder so few vote when they have to endure years of this before hand?

dmpayton2• 18 years ago

The rampant down-modding for differing political views on this thread (which has no business being on Hacker News in the first place) is ridiculous.

technoguyrob2• 18 years ago

It is not ridiculous, since people aren't downmodding to express a difference of opinion about what the person said. They are downmodding to assert they do not want to hear any political opinion on Hacker News, because--as has been said--there are countless other venues for hackers to express and debate political opinion; Hacker News is not one of them.

Notice therefore we see something interesting regarding the HN system. In essence, this is exactly what pg had in mind. Karma is taken away for comments and not just submissions, so that users will adapt to the Hacker News atmosphere. As we have seen from this thread, politics (even "news" like the first ever black general election presidential candidate) is simply not something people are interested in seeing on HN, and if people keep discussing it, they will be downmodded into oblivion, effectively maintaining the current HN mindset (since, presumably, people with negative, or quickly decreasing karma, will not want to continue posting on HN).

The only thing that could break such a system is a vast shift in the mentality of the community (which is not a bad thing since it would still keep the community happy, although it's very unlikely to happen), or a massive influx of new people into the community (which is why pg wants to keep the number of new signups per day low).

rms10• 18 years ago

Correct analysis, but the downmodders are acting uselessly.

tokipin3• 18 years ago

it feels to me that more assholery has resulted from "HN-vs-not HN" than what would have from a political discussion

_h4xr15• 18 years ago

If people don't want to hear political opinions, won't they downmod everything else equally?

Do you really expect that there will be no correlation between bad-mouthing Barack and getting more downvotes?

rms10• 18 years ago

Warning: Posting in the thread for Obama winning the presidency will get you downmodded uselessly.

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

Hi guys.

I love discussing politics. Talking about your philosophy of life, government, and moral obligations to your fellow man (or not). Even the idea that political choices are mostly emotional and then justified by logic is a way cool topic.

Just let's not do that here, okay? I like you guys, and I'm not interested in pissing off half the crowd with my political views. Nor am I interested in reading a bunch of "heck yeah!" posts about any party or candidate -- I find them pedantic. I've got plenty of other places on the net for that stuff.

Now a story about opportunities for how startups are making big bucks with new technology in the campaigns? -- love to see some of that stuff.

edw5193• 18 years ago

I'm just the opposite. I hate discussing politics. When I'm with family or friends and stuff like this comes up, I go in the other room.

Oddly, political discussions here don't bother me so much, just as long as they are "occasional", not regular. I like to hear what people here have to say.

And it's easier to click the back button than to go in the other room.

nkohari• 18 years ago

Why is it that every time a political link is posted on here, it gets up-modded like crazy, while at the same time collecting dozens of comments full of meta-discussion about what types of links should and should not be on HN? Seems to me that if you don't like a link, you should just not up-mod it, and certainly not waste your own time by commenting.

Harkins• 18 years ago

Because ignoring them doesn't work. If you don't fight to keep things on-topic, you'll just end up with another Reddit in a few months.

hugh3• 18 years ago

Agreed. Without a downmod arrow, bitching about upmodding is part of the system. The idea is that if every political article degenerates into a bunch of people bitching that political articles shouldn't be posted, then eventually people will learn not to post political articles.

icey2• 18 years ago

Say 100 people really liked it, and 1,000 people did not.

Well, you'd have an article that had 100 upmods and far more comments inside saying that the article sucked and should not have been upmodded.

lst• 18 years ago

I'm so happy this happened, because this will finally save the world! (Not)

(To all non-US folks, like me: if the US were really so important as they think to be, it would suffice to save them, and all of the world would be safe and happy.

There's only one big problem here: the progress of US is often based on regress of too many other countries, and especially very poor ones...)

bkmrkr• 18 years ago

PLEASE DONT MAKE THIS REDDIT V2

Obama: I will be the Democratic nominee

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