Today, one Blue Dog Democrat, from the Yahoo! group by that name, which is not connected to mybarackobama.com pointed out that Dewey might have lost in 1948 because he named a Cabinet, but Dewey didn't lose that election solely because he named a Cabinet. That was 60 years ago. Times have changed. Many other factors beat Dewey...
Things are more urgent in 2008; the need for Cabinet level perspectives is paramount, and would precipitate a lot of voters to Obama's side, if he did it in a non presumptuous way, and made it clear that he was opening up the discussion in a fair and egalitarian way.
Personally, I believe we are in such an infernal mess internationally that the Secretary of State job has taken on more importance than the Vice President, and that we need a diplomat with a lot of international exposure, experience and track record. That would be New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, by a long shot....
Attorney General is another vital one: California Attorney General Jerry Brown, by a long shot, in my opinion. His record vis a vis Consumer Protection is stunning and is also sterling. Edwards is out of the picture (maybe like Eliot Spitzer is out of the picture, because of that Southern Male Brain?)
Health Secretary or FDA Commissioner? Very vital. FDA reports to Secretary of Health, and I believe strongly, if he would take the job and wouldn't see it as a step down, DR. Howard Dean III, M.D. would be the best; this is someone I trust a lot, especially at FDA to oversee fully 25% of the US Economy, which is either food or drugs. The corporate manipulation of FDA is killing America and big chunk of the rest of the world.
Even if Obama's top advisors are too scared of announcing Cabinet choices or a range of Cabinet choices, which they should not be at all, we can still talk about them, while we are not convincing fence sitters to vote for Obama.
The best tool I know of are his speeches, like the Berlin Speech, which has convinced many of my fence sitter friends, and for the devotees in Santa Fe, they in turn have printed it out and used it to convince other fence sitters. I managed over great difficulties to publish the entire Berlin Speech in the Santa Fe Sun News, of which I am the Managing Editor. When I was hunting down the precise complete text thereof, I couldn't even find it at mybarackobama.com, so I published it here a few blogs ago....
I am a member of about 70 different Obama groups, and I have noticed a tendency for the most active members to wallow in self congratulatory B.S., nitpick over what should be psychoanalytic conjecture, hairsplitting, noshing, chatting, and mere linguistic controversy, means that all doing this are entirely missing the point that we have an election to win.
All of the yukking-it-up in the world is not going to win it. It means take the time to pound the pavement, take literature that you yourself print out from various sites, and take it door-to-door in your neighborhood.
If we don't do this, we can still easily lose this election in November. Make no mistake. It is only about 90 days away, our supreme test!
Stephen Fox, Managing Editor Santa Fe Sun News
PS: There is much more meaningful dialogue about Campaing Strategies and Tactics going on in some of the groups not connected with barackobama.com, like ObamaBrigade, a Yahoo! group and SecularHumanist, another Yahoo! group. I recommend you join them to be closer to the cutting edge of the Obama Campaign.
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