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Ashley Washington
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« on: June 04, 2008, 02:06:24 am »

HISTORIC

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Ashley Washington
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« Reply #1 on: June 04, 2008, 02:08:50 am »

Obama's Nomination Victory Speech In St. Paul



Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
Final Primary Night
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
St. Paul, Minnesota

As Prepared for Delivery


Tonight, after fifty-four hard-fought contests, our primary season has finally come to an end.

Sixteen months have passed since we first stood together on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Thousands of miles have been traveled. Millions of voices have been heard. And because of what you said - because you decided that change must come to Washington; because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest; because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another - a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.


I want to thank every American who stood with us over the course of this campaign - through the good days and the bad; from the snows of Cedar Rapids to the sunshine of Sioux Falls. And tonight I also want to thank the men and woman who took this journey with me as fellow candidates for President.


At this defining moment for our nation, we should be proud that our party put forth one of the most talented, qualified field of individuals ever to run for this office. I have not just competed with them as rivals, I have learned from them as friends, as public servants, and as patriots who love America and are willing to work tirelessly to make this country better. They are leaders of this party, and leaders that America will turn to for years to come.


That is particularly true for the candidate who has traveled further on this journey than anyone else. Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign not just because she's a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she's a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.


We've certainly had our differences over the last sixteen months. But as someone who's shared a stage with her many times, I can tell you that what gets Hillary Clinton up in the morning - even in the face of tough odds - is exactly what sent her and Bill Clinton to sign up for their first campaign in Texas all those years ago; what sent her to work at the Children's Defense Fund and made her fight for health care as First Lady; what led her to the United States Senate and fueled her barrier-breaking campaign for the presidency - an unyielding desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no matter how difficult the fight may be. And you can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country, she will be central to that victory. When we transform our energy policy and lift our children out of poverty, it will be because she worked to help make it happen. Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.


There are those who say that this primary has somehow left us weaker and more divided. Well I say that because of this primary, there are millions of Americans who have cast their ballot for the very first time. There are Independents and Republicans who understand that this election isn't just about the party in charge of Washington, it's about the need to change Washington. There are young people, and African-Americans, and Latinos, and women of all ages who have voted in numbers that have broken records and inspired a nation.


All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren't the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn't do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - we cannot afford to keep doing what we've been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say - let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.


In just a few short months, the Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda. They will come here to nominate John McCain, a man who has served this country heroically. I honor that service, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine. My differences with him are not personal; they are with the policies he has proposed in this campaign.


Because while John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign.


It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush ninety-five percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.


It's not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs, or insure our workers, or help Americans afford the skyrocketing cost of college - policies that have lowered the real incomes of the average American family, widened the gap between Wall Street and Main Street, and left our children with a mountain of debt.


And it's not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians - a policy where all we look for are reasons to stay in Iraq, while we spend billions of dollars a month on a war that isn't making the American people any safer.


So I'll say this - there are many words to describe John McCain's attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush's policies as bipartisan and new. But change is not one of them.


Change is a foreign policy that doesn't begin and end with a war that should've never been authorized and never been waged. I won't stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq, but what's not an option is leaving our troops in that country for the next hundred years - especially at a time when our military is overstretched, our nation is isolated, and nearly every other threat to America is being ignored.


We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in - but start leaving we must. It's time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future. It's time to rebuild our military and give our veterans the care they need and the benefits they deserve when they come home. It's time to refocus our efforts on al Qaeda's leadership and Afghanistan, and rally the world against the common threats of the 21st century - terrorism and nuclear weapons; climate change and poverty; genocide and disease. That's what change is.


Change is realizing that meeting today's threats requires not just our firepower, but the power of our diplomacy - tough, direct diplomacy where the President of the United States isn't afraid to let any petty dictator know where America stands and what we stand for. We must once again have the courage and conviction to lead the free world. That is the legacy of Roosevelt, and Truman, and Kennedy. That's what the American people want. That's what change is.


Change is building an economy that rewards not just wealth, but the work and workers who created it. It's understanding that the struggles facing working families can't be solved by spending billions of dollars on more tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs, but by giving a the middle-class a tax break, and investing in our crumbling infrastructure, and transforming how we use energy, and improving our schools, and renewing our commitment to science and innovation. It's understanding that fiscal responsibility and shared prosperity can go hand-in-hand, as they did when Bill Clinton was President.


John McCain has spent a lot of time talking about trips to Iraq in the last few weeks, but maybe if he spent some time taking trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy - cities in Michigan, and Ohio, and right here in Minnesota - he'd understand the kind of change that people are looking for.


Maybe if he went to Iowa and met the student who works the night shift after a full day of class and still can't pay the medical bills for a sister who's ill, he'd understand that she can't afford four more years of a health care plan that only takes care of the healthy and wealthy. She needs us to pass health care plan that guarantees insurance to every American who wants it and brings down premiums for every family who needs it. That's the change we need.


Maybe if he went to Pennsylvania and met the man who lost his job but can't even afford the gas to drive around and look for a new one, he'd understand that we can't afford four more years of our addiction to oil from dictators. That man needs us to pass an energy policy that works with automakers to raise fuel standards, and makes corporations pay for their pollution, and oil companies invest their record profits in a clean energy future - an energy policy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced. That's the change we need.


And maybe if he spent some time in the schools of South Carolina or St. Paul or where he spoke tonight in New Orleans, he'd understand that we can't afford to leave the money behind for No Child Left Behind; that we owe it to our children to invest in early childhood education; to recruit an army of new teachers and give them better pay and more support; to finally decide that in this global economy, the chance to get a college education should not be a privilege for the wealthy few, but the birthright of every American. That's the change we need in America. That's why I'm running for President.


The other side will come here in September and offer a very different set of policies and positions, and that is a debate I look forward to. It is a debate the American people deserve. But what you don't deserve is another election that's governed by fear, and innuendo, and division. What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon - that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize. Because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first. We are always Americans first.


Despite what the good Senator from Arizona said tonight, I have seen people of differing views and opinions find common cause many times during my two decades in public life, and I have brought many together myself. I've walked arm-in-arm with community leaders on the South Side of Chicago and watched tensions fade as black, white, and Latino fought together for good jobs and good schools. I've sat across the table from law enforcement and civil rights advocates to reform a criminal justice system that sent thirteen innocent people to death row. And I've worked with friends in the other party to provide more children with health insurance and more working families with a tax break; to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and ensure that the American people know where their tax dollars are being spent; and to reduce the influence of lobbyists who have all too often set the agenda in Washington.


In our country, I have found that this cooperation happens not because we agree on everything, but because behind all the labels and false divisions and categories that define us; beyond all the petty bickering and point-scoring in Washington, Americans are a decent, generous, compassionate people, united by common challenges and common hopes. And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again.


So it was for that band of patriots who declared in a Philadelphia hall the formation of a more perfect union; and for all those who gave on the fields of Gettysburg and Antietam their last full measure of devotion to save that same union.


So it was for the Greatest Generation that conquered fear itself, and liberated a continent from tyranny, and made this country home to untold opportunity and prosperity.


So it was for the workers who stood out on the picket lines; the women who shattered glass ceilings; the children who braved a Selma bridge for freedom's cause.


So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that's better, and kinder, and more just.


And so it must be for us.


America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.


The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.


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Ashley Washington
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« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2008, 02:13:07 am »

Obama Wins Democratic Nomination: Round-Up Of Reactions



A round-up of the reaction to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary:

Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic:

Yes We Did... As we absorb the news that an African-American is now the presumptive nominee for the presidency of the United States, a few words. No one should allow the tortuous end of this primary journey to obscure the passion and insurrection that made it possible. That passion came from a simple place, the way it often does in politics. It came from the gut instinct that we have lost our way, that the United States needs to start again after the debt, depravity, and destruction of the Bush years. It came from hope that the future need not be as bleak as it seemed not too long ago. It came from a sense that the deepest divisions were not as deep as the political class needed them to be and wanted them to be. And it came from the astonishing nostrum that a liberal, black first-term senator could overturn the biggest machine, the biggest name and the biggest dynasty in Democratic party politics.
Ezra Klein:

Obama's speech tonight was powerful, but then, most all of his speeches are. This address stood out less than I expected. It took me an hour to realize how extraordinary that was. I had just watched an African-American capture the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America, and it felt...normal. Almost predictable. 50 years ago, African Americans often couldn't vote, and dozens died in the fight to ensure them the franchise. African-Americans couldn't use the same water fountains or rest rooms as white Americans. Black children often couldn't attend the same schools as white children. Employers could discriminate based on race. 50 years ago, African Americans occupied, in effect, a second, and lesser, country. Today, an African-American man may well become the president of the whole country, and it feels almost normal.

It was, to be sure, not entirely unpredicted. On March 31st, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. preached his final Sunday sermon. "We shall overcome," he said, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Four days later, he was murdered. But 40 years later, his dream is more alive than he could have ever imagined. Not only might a black man be president, but at times, many forget to even be surprised by it.


Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.:

Senator Obama personifies a uniquely American story -- born to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya. He affirms the motto included in the Great Seal of the United States: E Pluribus Unum -- Out of Many, One. He also reflects the American Dream -- 'a skinny kid with a funny name' who came to Chicago's South Side with 'no money and no connections' can run to become the President of the United States of America. ...

Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination for President on August 28th -- the 45th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 'I Have A Dream' Speech. In many ways, Senator Obama's nomination as president is a fulfillment of a dream -- a dream long deferred -- envisioning a country where people would 'not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.'


Chuck Todd, NBC News:

This is the greatest political upset maybe in the history of American politics.

Atrios:

It was at the first Yearly Kos in Las Vegas that a prominent Dem staffer told me, "Obama's running." I don't think I quite believed it at the time, though I understood it would be game changing to some degree if true. I think that due to the extended primary season we've lost sight to some extent just how game changing this is.

Being at an Obama party with a substantial African-American presence, it really sunk in how much this is a "holy ****" moment. Whatever happens next, it is an historic moment.


Christine Pelosi:

It's a new day in America.

Barack Obama has captured the imagination of the American people and majority of the popular delegates from caucuses and primaries from sea to shining sea. Barack Obama has the vision, ideas and values needed to bring positive change to our lives, from economic justice to energy independence to an end to the Iraq war and care for our veterans.


Rich Lowry, National Review:

Even if we're going to hear it over and over, it's true--this is a historic moment. That an African-American has a better than even chance to be the next president of the United States is an amazing thing--and heartening about this country's capacity for progress. Also, on a more mundane level, Obama out-campaigned, out-fundraised, out-strategized, out-classed, and--yes--out-spun the Clintons. What a campaign. He and his team should be very proud.
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Monique Faulkner
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« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2008, 10:48:16 am »



HISTORIC
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« Reply #4 on: June 04, 2008, 11:01:32 am »

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Cheered by a roaring crowd, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois laid claim to the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, taking a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation's first black president. Hillary Rodham Clinton maneuvered for the vice presidential spot on his fall ticket without conceding her own defeat.

"America, this is our moment," the 46-year-old senator and one-time community organizer said in his first appearance as the Democratic nominee-in-waiting. "This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past."

Clinton praised Obama warmly in an appearance before supporters in New York, although she neither acknowledged his victory in their grueling marathon nor offered a concession of any sort.

Instead, she said she was committed to a unified party and would spend the next few days determining "how to move forward with the best interests of our country and our party guiding my way."

Obama's victory set up a five-month campaign with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a race between a first-term Senate opponent of the Iraq War and a 71-year-old former Vietnam prisoner of war and staunch supporter of the current U.S. military mission.

And both men seemed eager to begin.

McCain spoke first, in New Orleans, and he accused his younger rival of voting "to deny funds to the soldiers who have done a brilliant and brave job" in Iraq." Americans, he added, should be concerned about the judgment of a presidential candidate who has not traveled to Iraq yet "says he's ready to talk, in person and without conditions, with tyrants from Havana to Pyongyang."

McCain agreed with Obama that the presidential race would focus on change. "But the choice is between the right change and the wrong change, between going forward and going backward," he said.

Obama responded quickly, pausing in his own speech long enough to praise Clinton for "her strength, her courage and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight."

As for his general election rival, he said, "It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year. It's not change when he offers four more years of Bush economic policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs. ... And it's not change when he promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave young men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians."

In a symbolic move, Obama spoke in the same hall where McCain will accept the Republican nomination at his party's convention in September. Campaign officials, citing the local fire marshal, put the crowd at 17,000 inside the eXcel Energy Center, plus another 15,000 outside.

McCain addressed a smaller crowd by design, an estimated 600 in his audience and another 600 outside.

One campaign began as another was ending.

Clinton won South Dakota on the final night of the primary season; Obama took Montana.

As is his custom, he placed a call to the former first lady to congratulate her on her victory. He left a message on her voicemail asking for a call back, said Linda Douglass a senior campaign adviser.

Only 31 delegates were at stake in the two states on the night's ballot, the final few among the thousands that once drew Obama, Clinton and six other Democratic candidates into the campaign to replace Bush and become the nation's 44th president.

Obama sealed his nomination, according to The Associated Press tally, based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and support from party "superdelegates." It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination at the convention in Denver this summer, and Obama had 2,151 by the AP count.

Obama, a first-term senator who was virtually unknown on the national stage four years ago, defeated Clinton, the former first lady and one-time campaign front-runner, in a 17-month marathon for the Democratic nomination.

His victory had been widely assumed for weeks. But Clinton's declaration of interest in becoming his ticketmate was wholly unexpected.

She expressed it in a conference call with her state's congressional delegation after Rep. Nydia Velazquez, predicted Obama would have great difficulty winning the support of Hispanics and other voting blocs unless the former first lady was on the ticket.

"I am open to it" if it would help the party's prospects in November, Clinton replied, according to participants who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was private.

Clinton's comments raised anew the prospect of what many Democrats have called a "Dream Ticket" that would put a black man and a woman on the same ballot, but Obama's aides were noncommittal. "We're not in the presidential phase here. We're going to close out the nominating fight and then we'll consider that," David Axelrod, Obama's top strategist, told reporters aboard the candidate's plane en route to Minnesota.

McCain's criticism of Obama referred to a vote last year in which the Illinois senator came out against legislation paying for the Iraq war because it did not include a timetable for withdrawing troops. At the time, Obama said the funding would give President Bush "a blank check to continue down this same, disastrous path."

Obama previously had opposed a deadline for troop withdrawal, but shifted position under pressure from the Democratic Party's liberal wing as he maneuvered for support in advance of the primaries.

The young Illinois senator's success in winning the nomination amounted to a victory of hope over experience, earned across an enervating 56 primaries and caucuses that tested the political skills and human endurance of all involved.

Obama stood for change. Clinton was the candidate of experience, ready, she said, to serve in the Oval Office from Day One.

Together, they drew record turnouts in primary after primary _ more than 34 million voters in all, independents and Republicans as well as Democrats.

Yet the race between a black man and a woman exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.

Obama drew strength from blacks, and from the younger, more liberal and wealthier voters in many states. Clinton was preferred by older, more downscale voters, and women, of course.

Personality issues rose and receded through the campaign:

Clinton's husband, the former president, campaigned tirelessly for her but sometimes became an issue himself, to her detriment.

And Obama struggled to minimize the damage caused by the incendiary rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an issue likely to be raised anew by Republicans in the fall campaign.

Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy _ all harnessed to his own gifts as an inspirational speaker.

With her husband's two White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former first lady and second-term senator ready to be commander in chief.

But after a year on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became a political phenomenon.

"We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come," he said that night of victory in Des Moines.

As the strongest female presidential candidate in history, Clinton drew large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama's were bigger. One audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when he blew his nose on stage; a crowd of 75,000 turned out in Portland, Ore., the weekend before the state's May 20 primary.

The former first lady countered Obama's Iowa victory with an upset five days later in New Hampshire that set the stage for a campaign marathon as competitive as any in the past generation.

"Over the last week I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice," she told supporters who had saved her candidacy from an early demise.

In defeat, Obama's aides concluded they had committed a cardinal sin of New Hampshire politics, forsaking small, intimate events in favor of speeches to large audiences inviting them to ratify Iowa's choice.

It was not a mistake they made again _ which helped explain Obama's later outings to bowling alleys, backyard basketball courts and American Legion halls in the heartland.

Clinton conceded nothing, memorably knocking back a shot of Crown Royal whiskey at a bar in Indiana, recalling that her grandfather had taught her to use a shotgun, and driving in a pickup to a gas station in South Bend, Ind., to emphasize her support for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax.

As other rivals fell away in winter, Obama and Clinton traded victories on Super Tuesday, the Feb. 5 series of primaries and caucuses across 21 states and American Samoa that once seemed likely to settle the nomination.

But Clinton had a problem that Obama exploited, and he scored a coup she could not answer.

Pressed for cash, the former first lady ran noncompetitive campaigns in several Super Tuesday caucus states, allowing her rival to run up his delegate totals.

Merely by surviving Super Tuesday, Obama exceeded expectations. But he did more than survive, emerging with a lead in delegates that he never relinquished, and he proceeded to run off a string of 11 straight victories.
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Rage Against the Machine
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« Reply #5 on: June 04, 2008, 11:52:35 am »

Congratulations to Barack Obama on getting the nomination.
Given a choice between him and McCain, I certainly hope that it's him as the next President!  Smiley
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Tom Hebert
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« Reply #6 on: June 04, 2008, 12:13:09 pm »

I watched the speech live and got goosebumps, a truly historic moment!  I don't know how Obama managed to keep from shedding tears.  I felt like I was listening to a MLK and JFK rolled into one.


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Volitzer
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« Reply #7 on: June 04, 2008, 12:26:08 pm »

 Roll Eyes

Another Globalist.  Ho-hum.

Pardon me if I don't get too excited.

I'll write you in the FEMA Camps.
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Aristotle
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« Reply #8 on: June 04, 2008, 01:11:23 pm »

There is no proof he is a "globalist."  We know that McCain and Hillary are.

America should be proud of itself for this accomplishment.  No African-American in the western world has been made the nominee of a major political party.  What better message could America send other than to elect Barack Obama to prove what kind of country we really are?
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"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
- Aristotle
Volitzer
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« Reply #9 on: June 04, 2008, 02:27:35 pm »

There is no proof he is a "globalist."  We know that McCain and Hillary are.

America should be proud of itself for this accomplishment.  No African-American in the western world has been made the nominee of a major political party.  What better message could America send other than to elect Barack Obama to prove what kind of country we really are?

Yeah stupid and easily tricked.
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Gwen Parker
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« Reply #10 on: June 04, 2008, 03:21:37 pm »

Congrats to Barack, I hope he makes it in there.  And Volitzer, the last third party candidate we had that was even remotely successful was Teddy Roosevelt, 1912 (even he lost), so don't expect this campaigning you are doing for Chuck Baldwin to pay off.
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