What does Hillary Clinton mean when she claims to be the most experienced? Is she sending subliminal signals to white voters regarding her race? Is she attempting to emasculate Obama, in the tradition of "boy"?

Is the rejection of McCain by conservative figureheads actually an attept to make him more palatable to the center, thus making him more electable or are they actually just being honest and, therefore, are either very very far right, disingenuous about their own politics, or confused about McCain's record?

Why did the US incarceration rate begin its precipitous increase directly following the Warren court, despite that courts general expanstion of the rights of the accused? (seems like it would take way more than 1000 words).

Is the structure of law school designed to ease one into a misrable future?

The criminal trial/criminal justice system as a means for controling radicals.

-- AdamCarlis - 07 Feb 2008

Clinton Is White

1. Her experience is weak experience. While she is older (14 years), the only real political experience she has had is her time in the Senate (4 more years than Obama) and her time as first lady of Arkansas (comparable to his time is state legislature) and of the United States (where her major policy initiative failed). Could one reasonably argue that 4 extra years in the senate somehow makes someone a better president?

Hole in argument #1: she really means "older" and using it to connect with the over 65 vote and the more conservative folks in the party

• A fair point, but youth hasn't been a detriment to democratic presidential candidates (JFK, Bill - who was the same age as Obama is now when he became president)

Hole in argument #2: Adam, I think it's worth thinking about whether it's plausible that Hillary Clinton, running against a JFK-type (i.e., a white male with JFK-like credentials) would have been able to tout her experience as a positive. You hint at this in your "Hole in argument #1," but I'm not sure that the fact that youth hasn't been a detriment to presidential candidacies necessarily means that people actually believe it is not a detriment, at lease at the beginning and middle stages of a candidacy. Perhaps Hillary wants to prevent the electorate from making the leap that it was able to make for Kennedy and Bill? Do you think Hillary is creating an issue, or emphasizing (and perhaps distorting) an issue that's already there? -- MichaelBerkovits - 08 Feb 2008

• So, the question seems to be whether experience would work as an argument if Obama was white.

2. If Obama was white, "experience" could only mean either "experience" or "old" and since old isn't a good thing in an election about change and, if reinforcing the "experience" argument wasn't so detrimental (it wouldn't be to a white Obama unburdened with the race issue), then white Obama would be able to go right at Clinton on her past failures (black Obama is doing this somewhat timidly with his "right on day one" argument).

Support for Argument:

• She has been more than willing to be underhanded about race in other ways (debate comments about immigrant voters, Bill's campaigning in South Carolina, questionable statements by her surrogates)
• Race is a deaply powerful subconscious motivator and a lot of traction comes from small hinting.
• If I, as a white guy, sense it then either (1) I am over sensitive to race issues (2) am deeply racist or (3) she is doing it on purpose
• Historically racists have infantalized black men . . . "experience" is a perfect modern codeword
• Gandhi quote