Blue Majority supports Barack Obama for President

Chris Bowers @ OpenLeft:

Ever since the Blue Majority page was launched nearly one year ago, we at Blue Majority knew that we would add the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to the page. In my opinion, Barack Obama has now emerged as the presumptive nominee. With a pledged delegate lead of 162, a popular vote lead of more than 800,000, barring a spectacular collapse and / or a highly unlikely thwarting of the popular vote, Barack Obama will become the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. When he reaches 2,024 delegates, which at this point requires only 42.7% of the remaining delegates to be decided, he will control both the credentials committee and the majority of the non-disputed delegates at the floor of the convention. At that point, the only way that Barack Obama loses the nomination is if he decides that Hillary Clinton should be the nominee instead. In other words, Barack Obama has become the presumptive Democratic nominee, and it is time to start supporting him.

Importantly, my rationale for endorsing Barack Obama goes beyond his status as the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination. As a progressive, there are two key ideological markers that I believe make Barack Obama a better choice than Hillary Clinton: the Iraq war and the DLC. First, Barack Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start, and rejected the neoconservative principle of pre-emptive warfare as one of his main reasons for opposing the war. Being able to identify the invasion of Iraq as a colossal mistake makes Barack Obama far more qualified to lead our country than candidates who both were, and still are, unable to recognize why the war was such a bad idea. Comparing Obama’s and Clinton’s statements on the death of 4,000 American soldiers in Iraq, it seems clear that Hillary Clinton still believes in the neoconservative vision for Iraq, while Barack Obama does not. The second ideological marker is the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization formed to push the Democratic Party and the national political debate to the right on a variety of issues. While Hillary Clinton is a member of the DLC’s leadership, Barack Obama has repeated refuses to be associated with the group.

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Nonviolence

Chris Dashiell:

The Chinese government has accused the Dalai Lama of trying to undermine the Olympics. The Dalai Lama replied that he has always supported the right of Beijing to host the Olympics.

The Chinese government also says that the Dalai Lama is “masterminding” Tibetan unrest, and is in league with terrorists.

Let’s take a look at the antagonists here. On one side you have China, a nuclear superpower with the fastest-growing economy in the world and a population of about 1.3 billion people.

On the other side you have the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist wearing a robe. He has no weapons, no party apparatus, no secret police, and no territory. He lives in exile in northern India.

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