Thank you Reed and Hagel.

[Peacetrain]

Watching Face the Nation, Reed and Hagel came roaring to Obamas defense on the troop visit, and how he did visit all the troops well and injured on the congressional part of the trip. They called it out, the new ad by McCain as inappropriate.

[sniffa]

1. Harry Reid is on FTN?

Nice!

[babylonsister]

2. No, REED. nt

[Peacetrain]

3. Thank you for the catch

I just did an edit..Sometimes I am what you call a creative speller :)..

[nc4bo]

4. Good job Senators!!! nt

[Muttocracy]

5. but it's not like they know anything about the military.. oh, wait...

[dontforgetpoland]

6. I especially liked when Hagel and Reed both debunked those silly McCain attack ads/talking points.

I wish Hagel would endorse Obama, but since he's a long time friend of McCain, he won't.

[Peacetrain]

7. He came about as close as you can come to endorsing

Obama. Especially calling out McCain on that dishonest ad. Good on you Chuck Hagel.

[Muttocracy]

8. I don't think they've been friends since the Iraq vote, have they?

article on Hagel praising Obama
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/20/chuck-hagel-takes-on-mcca_n_102775.html

[karynnj]

14. The 2007 Feingold/Reid bill that Bush vetoed?

Bafore that Hagel always spoke more reasonablly than he voted. I remember Kerry and Biden quoting Lugar and Hagel in 2004 quite often on Iraq policy though.,

[ellenfl]

9. i was VERY pleased. both senators were awesome. eom

[Peacetrain]

12. I was so pleased with how both senators took it on. NT

[TwilightGardener]

10. I didn't watch, but I'm glad to hear it. I expected Reed to stick up for Obama, but

wasn't sure if Hagel would do it--not sure where his loyalties lie. It must be hard to call out your old friend on national TV.

[Peacetrain]

11. We need to pick this up and drive it home.

The senators put it in perfect alignment.

[Olney Blue]

13. I appreciate Hagel for being honest about the circumstances.

(still don't want him to be VP, though :) )

[WillyT]

15. Big K & R !!!

:kick:

[AtomicKitten]

16. I had not heard this. Thanks for the excellent news!

[President Decider]

17. HAGEL MADE IT VERY CLEAR: "JUDGEMENT MORE IMPORTANT THAN EXPERIENCE"

Both of these guys dished out bodyslams on behalf of Obama today.

No question that Chuck Hagel is sold on OBAMA'S leadership ability.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/07/27/hagel-reed-have-praise-for-obama/

[Inuca]

18. Thanks for the link

And great quote from Hagel

“Each candidate has strengths and weaknesses, and experience does matter,” Hagel said. “But what matters more in my opinion is character and judgment. And judgment meaning who is it that you bring around, who is it that you listen to? Can you make the right decisions for the right reasons on behalf of your country and the world?”

One more thing: welcome to DU :-).

[Virginia Dare]

19. A couple of repubs out there actually have a conscience..

who knew?

[Peacetrain]

23. Yes they do... and thank GOD!

[Cha]

20. I knew sitting behind Obama in the Desert wasn't

just for show with Reed and Hagel.



Thank you Senators for being the voice of personal experience!

[Phx_Dem]

21. The thing Hagel said that I really liked --

besides his defending Obama on cancelling the visit to injured troops and the slap down of McNasty -- was when he said "my country always comes before my party." I like that. I don't want him to be VP, but I would love to see him in the Obama administration in some other capacity. He's a good man, who happens to differ with most Democrats on policy but I think he would be a great "soldier" and serve Obama with honor.

Sorry, I meant to reply to the original post. :crazy:

(Mrs Phx_Dem)

[Cha]

22. That's okay..I got to read it and

edit my spelling of "Reed":)

[kurtboss]

24. SWIFTBOAT ALERT

Where the ef is the vaunted Democratic response to this BS???? We've heard for 4 years from strategists that Dems won't let it happen again...where's the response? I'm still waiting. And no, Obama shouldn't and won't do this dirty work. There has to be someone out there ready to be vicious. Remember paying the hooker to say her baby was Clinton's??? That's what I'm talking about (at least be prepared to go that low). Here we need a response ad so mean and insulting that IT WILL CHANGE THE SUBJECT. That's the only way you combat this. If you engage, you just push the story. You need to be MORE outlandish than the GOP attack to get the switch the media's focus! Where do I send my money??? Is anyone going to do this???

[kurtboss]

25. We Need a To Change the Media's Subject...Get Dirty, Play Hardball

That's the only way to beat this sort of stuff. Counter with more vicious ad against McCain. And it can't come from Obama. Let him denounce it, but get the attention and retaliate with a harder attack. Make the media follow your story. Kerry played their game, and by ignoring and then engaging it he let himself be swiftboated. The solution is a 527 or something like it to hit McCain where it hurts. Rumors, innuendo, mockery...this is about a WAR and healthcare. This is too risky to let McCain get away with swiftboating Obama. So, someone tell me where to donate. Or let's make it happpen ourselves if there isn't anyone with balls enough to do it. Remember how Bush did McCain in S. Carolina? Drugs, traitor, etc. I think the traitor stuff has the most appeal here. An add saying he betrayed his own would switch the subject in a heartbeat.

[cliffordu]

26. Blah de blah de blah blah blah. We got it on to the next.

[kurtboss]

27. What?

Huh?

[cliffordu]

28. Run your traitor stuff up your ass.

[kurtboss]

29. What do you propose? Ignore it? Engage It?

You want to win honorably? So did Gore. So did Kerry. So does Obama. The idea was to have some balls for once and not get SWIFTBOATED. Obama, rightly, doesn't like this stuff. To pretend it isn't effective is just willful blindness. The press goes for the juicy story. You have to give them something with more buzz, more controversy, more juice. You do that, all the sudden they aren't talking about this BS smear job about not wanting to visit troops. And do you really think McCain deserves being treated respect after he's basically made a point of calling Obama a traitor himself? Retaliate. Lex Talionis.

[TheKentuckian]

30. I'd leave the traitor tact alone too.

It has too much backfire potential. I'm talking about hitting him on competence and command of the issues.

Let's make experience meaningless, after all the point of experience is to learn, we can flood the airwaves with plenty to introduce reasonable doubt into the equation.
It's take to make this more about McCain and less about Obama. McCain is getting a stroll through the park.

[kurtboss]

31. Incompetence is Good

Scene of McCain gaffe, cut to Bush gaffe, cut again to another McCain gaffe, cut to the picture of McCain hugging Bush and have a red stamp graphic, INCOMPETENT. That way you link in his senile dementia, his stupidity, the Bush III angle... Works for me.

[Bobbie Jo]

32. WTF are you hoping to incite.... anyway??

the sore thumb analogy seems to apply here..:think:

Welcome to DU! :popcorn:

[kurtboss]

33. Attacks Against McCain

Apparently, Dem strategists have all been talking smack about not letting the Democratic candidate get swiftboated. That, or they have no clue what they're doing. I wish the universe we lived wasn't driven by sensationalism. I wish it were about issues and substantive discussions. But that's not our universe. We live in an environment where McCain can go around spreading utter lies about Obama, painting him as unAmerican, hating the troops and media will just pass it along. Hell, they'll even amplify the story by discussing the relative merits of it...all the while knowing it's garbage. The only way any one has figured out how to kill one of these malicious stories is to counter it...that or you get lucky and a natural disaster/national emergency grabs media attention. Countering requires something more salacious and TMZish making the other guy deal with a smear. Since this has been discussed ad nauseum over the past 4 years, it should hardly surprise anyone. What is surprising is that no one seems able to point to any group that intends to defend Obama from the flank this way. It's as if all that talk was just sounding tough. Progressives haven't always been pussies you know. Saul Alinsky? You have to deal with the world as it is, not in some ideal world. In that ideal world Gore won in 2000 after he got his recount, we didn't go war and the economy is going great...gas is 1.50 a gallon. So, I don't think there's anything confusing about this. Remember, debunking merely develops the story, ignoring it leaves it out there as supposed factual truth. If you have a superior strategy, let's hear it, and you can become a top political advisor in DC. Right now, it appears Obama is vulnerable to this crap. And it's all us that have let him down. He can't touch this crap or condone it. Remember Clinton got accused of several kids out of wedlock....one was prostitute? These guys will get vicious, we know it's coming.

[davidpdx]

34. I think it's great Hagel has defended Obama in terms of

McNasty's attack ad. I watched the interview and agree with one other poster in this thread that Hagel won't endorse him, but he's done pretty much everything but endorse him.

[Peacetrain]

35. Just finished reading that the push back against the machine

is in full force. Apparently Scarborough got his hands slapped this morning for trying to mis characterize the situation. Fortunately for us, the other side does not have a very good learning curve. They set themselves up to be slapped back in the stupidest fashion. This has got to be a topper. Especially against the war hero meme. Attacking Obama as not visiting the troops with a commercial showing him with the troops, can you believe it??

Especially when he visited troops sick and healthy in the war zones, HELLO!.. He just refused to have them used in a political attack, which of course the republicans decided to do. This one is going to backfire big time. There are the dead heads who will buy it up, they still believe Obama is a Muslim, they know better, but it is all they have to cling too, their own self delusions.