Obama's Victory Speech | Hacker News Reader

Obama's Victory Speech

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50 pointschengmi86 comments

The thirty second summary:

"We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Our unification is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth. We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. We shall prevail!"

edit: My point is that the speech was complete demagoguery. It didn't contain a single concrete idea, just hollow bromides and feel-good bullshit.

U.S.A! U.S.A!

Just a point: they rest of the world considers that chant the most annoying one ever. Seriously, we do! :-)

Okay, we'll change it.

O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! ;)

Uh, it wasn't directed at you.

If it was some kind of international forum with a delegate of Americans, granted, that would be pretty annoying.

The subtext here is that Republicans have obviously tried to claim that criticism of them is criticism of your country and therefore distasteful. Some liberals, progressives, have responded by taking the bait and basically, saying "Yeah, we do suck. The world should hate us. Etc."

While you in the rest of the world may think that statement is exactly correct, for some reason it has not led to electoral success.

Obama has been clever enough to side step the whole thing. He has been withering in his criticism of the current administration. At the same time, he has made a theme of not running to be president of only the "blue" parts of this country. And he has backed this up with speeches about issues that, while not changing his more or less standard Democratic positions, express respect for people who disagree with him.

So, the spontaneous "U.S.A" chants were directed at both the current administration and its supporters, and whatever parts of the opposition that have given up on this country. It was a way of saying that we can get past partisanship and actually start thinking about doing what we need to do to fix our real problems as a country.

And, I did see your smiley. But I thought an explanation of what this means to someone living in the U.S.A. (speaking only for myself, of course) might be useful.

What would you say in a victory speech? He was basically just thanking Iowa; there's not much more to say.

It's not like he was expected to describe his policies or anything.

Which is why it's barely news-worthy, much less 'Hacker'-news-worthy.

And for people who enjoy the news of early-primary-results, and the rhetoric of candidates, the mass media is already inundated with it. Does it add value here? Can't YC-News specialize and focus where it has an advantage?

...it didn't contain a single concrete idea, just hollow bromides and feel-good bullshit.

It's called rhetoric, and judging by who is getting elected, it must mean that's what someone has to do to win elections. Would it change if everyone in the country had a higher education? I doubt it. Actually, it's pretty hard to say what would have to change...

I see a lot of complaints about "platitudes" here, but I think this glosses over the impact of the Obama campaign.

There is not really much disagreement about what the important issues are. Get out of Iraq. Stop using fossil fuels. Get everyone affordable health insurance. Inflation and stagnant wages. There is a general consensus now that these are the U.S.'s big problems and we need pragmatic solutions to them. (The other consensus is that the Republican party has collapsed and needs to be removed from power as soon as possible.)

What Obama is offering is a way out of the broken record of baby boomer liberal vs. conservative rhetoric. If Hillary wins, we're in for 4 to 8 more years of the same old partisan story line that has played out since her husband was elected. Many Americans are more than sick of that and that is what Obama is appealing to and that is why he won.

And I think his attitude is basically right. More than specific policy proposals at this moment, Americans need a new mindset.

Obama isn't mouthing platitudes because he thinks America needs a new mindset, he's doing it because by hiding his agenda he leaves us with nothing to disagree with. This is exactly the problem America is facing right now: the idea that ordinary people are too stupid to govern themselves and that we can't be trusted to know what's really going on. "Let the government take care of it, everything will be alright."

Well it's not alright.

These are the politics that got us the Iraq war. These are the politics that got us illegal wiretapping. These are the politics that make it legal for the government to kidnap you in the middle of the night and torture you until you're nothing but a shell of a man.

This isn't truth, it isn't change, it's bullshit demagoguery and it's more of the same.

The wonderful thing about the interpipes is that you can educate yourself if you choose to. Go to any of the campaign websites and they spell out what they stand for. In my opinion, a decent place to start, since we're conversing here, is: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

Where is the section on civil liberties?

Now this really is becoming a politics thread...

He has a town hall meeting on Sunday in Exeter,NH. Ask him yourself. Failing that, wait for him to come to your state. All else fails, assume he doesn't care. :)

I understand him that in pushing more transparency in government, accountability becomes more obvious. The real problem with the wiretapping is that no one was accountable because no one knew it was happening. As soon as it became public there was an extensive push to correct things.

Any case, I was simply responding to the claims that a candidate is "hiding their agenda". There are promises being made. The extent to which any politician gains or loses trust is the extent to which they're consistent with their promises - previously and in the future. All these things should absolutely influence your vote. But I think folks lose the right to complain if they don't participate in the process.

What bothers me though is this: According to his website, Obama wants (among other things) more fiscal responsibility and better education. The thing is, we ALL want more fiscal responsibility and better education.

I don't have a problem with most of Obama's opinions, but I realize that that's mostly what they are. Opinions. Not plans.

The section on fiscal responsibility basically says increase taxes on the wealthy and reduce wasteful spending. That's not a plan, it's a talking point. It tells me next to nothing about whether he even wants to balance the budget and pay off the debt, let alone how he is going to accomplish it.

Even the detailed PDFs available in some sections are rather tenuous. I just read through the one on education. It talks a lot about making improvements in certain areas and increasing funding in certain programs, but it doesn't really go into what those improvements would be or what that funding would buy. It seems to be strongly influenced by the KIP program for educating low-income minorities, but other than that I'm having trouble picking out any specific pedagogy.

This problem is true of any candidate. The closer you look the less that seems to be there. But then again, that's when you as a voter get to weight these things as you'd like when choosing a candidate you'll support. The President of the United States is such a unique job it's really hard to know what prior experiences make one truly qualified. No matter how good the opinions or plans, actual governing is a different beast.

Specifically:

"Barack Obama believes we need a business and regulatory landscape in which entrepreneurs and small businesses can thrive, start-ups can launch, and all enterprises can compete effectively while investors and consumers are protected against bad actors that cross the line."

See! Obama wants your start-up to launch! :)

This isn't truth, it isn't change, it's bullshit demagoguery and it's more of the same.

It's a shame, yes, but apparently that's what wins elections. What needs to change for that not to be the case? Is better education (better funding people's access to higher education?) the solution? Although it may have some impact if people are generally more knowledgeable, I don't think it'll be a solution.

I think it's a broad enough to be safe to say that what is required is a change in our culture - but what kind of change, and how can it come about?

"These are the politics that got us the Iraq war. These are the politics that got us illegal wiretapping. These are the politics that make it legal for the government to kidnap you in the middle of the night and torture you until you're nothing but a shell of a man."

These are things about which Obama has been pretty specific about. He was, from the start, unequivocally against the Iraq war. He has said simply that the U.S. must stop torturing people. I'm honestly not sure about the exact details of his stance towards wiretapping, however.

So my point is that Obama has been very clear and forthright about a lot of things.

Another thing that impresses me is his ability to avoid pandering. There was a woman who asked him if Social Security could be expanded to cover some specific problem her brother had (sorry for not remembering more specifics) and he simply told her "No, I don't think we can afford to cover that for everyone." Sounds like a simple thing, but politicians almost never give a straight answer to that kind of question.

Furthermore, do you think more detailed policy proposals would have done anything about the current abuses of power we are seeing? Do you think torture and wiretapping would have been in a pdf somewhere if we just demanded more policy details from Bush on his website in 2000? You can give lots of specifics, and that's not bad. But it's not realistic to expect the details of a candidate's campaign proposals will be enacted intact as legislation someday. There will be negotiation and compromise along the way.

This also seems relevant:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01...

For whatever reason, people (including me) find abstraction far more noble than details... which is why this kind of rhetoric is so widely employed.

How Obama turns out remains to be seen, but it's undeniable that he can sure play an audience. I thought that the "this is the moment..." part was particularly rousing, like a nod to Shakespeare's St Crispin's day speech in Henry V.

Hard call, but I think an occasional story related to politics may be ok if it is about some kind of major event that transcends politics-- just as a story about technology might occasionally appear in a magazine about politics if it is an important enough story.

But let's remember that Obama hasn't won anything. It's important when the US elects a president, or one dies, etc.

Obama winning a primary is only important (outside of political circles) if a plane doesn't crash on the same day.

I think every non-hacker story should be evaluated by the "plane crash beating" quality. :-)

I would vote -1 on it too. There are 50 primaries and winners from both parties in each one, for a total of 100 victories. Sure, of course this one is more important, but still, you have to put it perspective (Bhutto's assassination wasn't mentioned here, for instance, and that was a pretty important event). I'm very wary of politics rearing their ugly head on this site. I'm sure we all have an interest and opinion in them, but I think that discussions about politics are only likely to damage this community.

I really don't care for news about crashing planes, unless they crash on my city. I hope to never read a plane crashing story on news.yc (which also implies I hope that there will never crash a plane on my city).

My point is that a plane crash (killing hundreds) would be a top story around the world, even if it happened on the day Obama wins the Iowa primary, hence, Obama isn't plan crash important.

If he won the presidency, that would possibly be plane crash important.

I suppose that win made top news in a lot of countries, though. It did in Germany, I know as much.

The news item was actually interesting for me, because it was the first time I watched a video of Obama. Also, I think he is under special scrutiny, and his speech seems to refer a lot to that, doesn't it? At least I thought the "change" meant that there might be a black president of the US after all?

Not trying to argue that it belongs on news.yc, but so far news.yc did a fine job filtering out the most interesting mainstream news (including the best xkcd cartoons, apparently).

I agree, but this story doesn't transcend politics. The candidate who was leading in the polls in Iowa won Iowa. This is his victory speech, and its content is typical political victory speech content. The only thing remotely interesting here is the color of the candidate's skin, which shows we still have a problem with racism.

Ah, so this is why YNews wants to avoid political points, the horrible comments.

Obama's race is irrelevant, he is a very charismatic and thoughtful candidate. He seems to have the spark of greatness to him which I think is what makes this good enough to cross to hacker news. A lot of successful entrepreneurs also have great charisma.

Obama's race may be irrelevant to you, but it certainly mattered to him: he claims that his drug use was an effort to avoid thinking about race, he became a 'community organizer' working in low-income areas (in a neighborhood that is 97.8% black), his legal career focused on "community organizers, discrimination claims, and voting rights cases," and the subtitle of his autobiography is A Story of Race and Inheritance.

If Obama matters to you, you'd better start thinking about his race, since it's been his obsession for decades.

Edit: and don't forget his scary church: http://www.tucc.org/about.htm . It's as bad as Romney's church was thirty years ago.

I think you have the makings of a good red state email forward .

Digressing, I'm not big on politics on this site either, but the mere idea of the absurdity of the last 8 years coming to a close is enough for me to be ok with this post.

I wouldn't bother sending this to any Republicans, since we already have good reasons not to vote for Obama. But I do think it's interesting that I summarize his background to correct a misconception, and suddenly it's partisan.

For me, it is the tone of the comment (warning me about this information) that makes it partisan.

You're trying to bash the guy because he tries to help low-income blacks? I still don't see where you're getting the fact that he's "obsessed with race."

Meanwhile, intelligent black people have to think about their race in no small part because some douchebags (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=88082) still hold discriminatory viewpoints against people due to their race. It's a shame it's that way, but there's documentary evidence that this sort of discrimination still exists.

I'm not bashing him -- I'm just explaining that, without talking about race, Obama's history doesn't make sense. Since race is the only constant in his work as a writer, lawyer, and activist, it isn't hard to extrapolate from there to think that his career as a president will be focused on it, tii.

Those 'douchebags' have been pretty well marginalized. Nobody talks about those data when creating race-sensitive laws or corporate policies. I mean, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist got fired over mentioning that information offhand. It's hardly mainstream if one of the preeminent scientists of the last century can't even afford to speculate about whether or not it might be true.

I think "obsession" is a bit hyperbolic.

Have you ever been a minority anywhere? I only lived in Japan for about a year, but I was very aware of how differently I was perceived as the tall white guy. I don't see how you can grow up black in the U.S.A. and not have that be a fundamental part of shaping your experience, especially when you consider the racial history here. Add to that his white mother and time living outside the U.S., that is a lot of influences to assimilate.

I'm not sure what your point about the church is. Yes, it is very pro-black and pro-African, but I don't see anything that is explicitly "anti" anyone else.

Would be interested to see the welcome for a white person walking in on Sunday, though. :) Having said that, I did go to a church once where ours was the only white family among black Haitian immigrants. And that was a pretty cool experience.

I think "obsession" is a bit hyperbolic.

It's the sole constant. When he was a lawyer, he was a race lawyer. When he was a writer, he was a race-writer. When he was an activist, he was a race-activist.

I think it would be fair to say that Obama's ethnic background means a lot to him -- look at his senate race against Alan Keyes. Keyes seems to define himself as a rhetorically brilliant ultra-conservative, not as a black man. Even though he's ethnically and culturally much blacker than Obama, and his political career has been with the Republican party, which is notoriously clumsy about racial issues.

Have you ever been a minority anywhere?

I lived in Bedford-Stuyvessant for a while. It wasn't exactly pleasant, but I don't plan on spending my entire professional career getting over strangers referring to me as "White boy!" or jumping me for my iPod.

Yes, it is very pro-black and pro-African, but I don't see anything that is explicitly "anti" anyone else.

Many hate groups are not explicitly 'anti' anyone. You don't have to hear much about how someone "Favors preserving the White culture, and the White people as a race..." to know that you're hearing about the Klan.

I've attended the "Rock Church" in St. Louis (http://www.stalphonsusrock.org/), which is quite an experience. But they don't have to push a black power message to follow a Christian message as blacks.

"The only thing remotely interesting here is the color of the candidate's skin, which shows we still have a problem with racism."

The fact that a black presidential candidate won with a substantial margin in an almost entirely white state shows that "we still have a problem with racism"?

No - but the fact that it is still interesting.

It's also a great example of public speaking. If it had been any other candidate most people would have found the speech boring.

Politics is so polarizing and so destructive for a community (since it involves hard divisions into camps) so I think that this is a wrong forum to consume and promote stories such as this.

I do agree that political theory/philosophy articles are pertinent and good reads... if they offer some insight. But this video is blatant demagogy. Is that really worth wasting your time on?

PS: This is exactly the type of stuff that caused reddit to degenerate so quickly.

Politics is so polarizing and so destructive for a community

That really depends on the community. I hate sounding un-democratic, but I sense there is a very clear division between people consumed by nationalism or screaming over rhetoric, and the people who want to understand the political process with the same motivation as understanding any complex system.

I have a sense news.YC has much more of the latter.

I'm surprised to see this at No. 1, too.

"President Obama" (if that happens) is perhaps a transcendent enough event to make it here, but not a caucus victory speech.

FWIW, a better synthesis of politics & technology is Michael Bloomberg's take on the results http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/bloomberg-parse... particularly this comment about all the major candidates:

"I don't want to disparage anything, but let me say this: If you have complex problems, there probably are no simple cost-free solutions to them, because if there were, somebody would have solved them ... You know, the people running for office always say: 'I don't want to bring that up now. If I do, I won't get elected. But if I don't mention it and get elected, then I can do the difficult stuff.'"

I love how Bloomberg is setting up his campaign ahead of time by teasing the news about maybe running. I'm really hoping he jumps in as a third candidate after the primaries and puts his personal fortune to use.

Not sure why, I just kind of like the guy. He seems like a problem solver and not a publicity solver.

We'll know soon enough: by law, he has to file in February if he runs.

Based on his performance in NYC, I think he'd make a great President: he's willing to tackle problems, and he's got a rare combination of intelligence, pragmatism, and competence.

As I read it (here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22445078/), he can't even file as an independent until March 5, when Texas starts it's independent nomination process. He has to basically petition each state to be on the ballot.

If that is the case, he has a whole month after Super Tuesday (Feb 5, 2008, when 20 states have primaries and the winners will most likely become inevitable on both sides) to decide whether to run.

Last night's victories are actually good for him. His dream situation would be any of the top three dems vs Huckabee... since this would leave a very wide middle ground for him to vacuum up.

Generally I'd be upset at an article like this being on news.yc, but this was a really great speech that didn't focus too much on politics. It had much more to do with hope, success and fighting for what you believe in. That's a pretty universal message, and one that could easily be applied to startup life.

My biggest concern is the "slippery slope" and the "tragedy of the commons" that befell reddit.

It seems that in user-submitted and -voted content, moderation (in both senses of the word) is a problem.

haha, democracy isn't always pretty. Meanwhile I accidentally hit the down arrow on your comment.. sorry

Beware of slippery-slope arguments. Once you accept one slippery-slope argument, you have to accept them all.

The people you're worried about are all happily typing away, posting juvenile comments on the story I submitted to politics.reddit.com yesterday. They have no motivation to come here. I think news.yc is safe regardless of what the editors decide about political stories.

P.S. My second sentence is a recursive joke. I didn't mean it.

P.S. My second sentence is a recursive joke. I didn't mean it.

I was about to say that, myself. I'm glad you didn't actually fall into that hypocritical trap. Nice joke, though :-)

Carpal, agreed. I don't like to see politics on YC, but you'd have to agree that this community generally feels the same and does a good job "policing".

Did he remind anyone else of Martin Luther King?

One reason this video belongs here: President Obama would appoint the nation's first CTO among other initiatives that are highly relevant to the things we care about.

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/

I'll venture to say: President Obama would be very good for hackers. It's one reason I'll be trudging through the snow tomorrow in NH to knock on doors.

Obama will appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.

I nominate Bruce Schneier.

On economics, Obama will be bad for technology and start-ups. The Bush tax cuts and the Reagan tax cuts before have freed up tremendous amounts of venture capital that sparked economic growth. The venture capital market didn't exist in America when the top income tax rate was 70% under Jimmy Carter. Vote Democrat and the only way you'll be able to get funding is through government grants, and the government will seize your income if you are a success.

Standard platitudes. He's a decent speaker though. I hope the latter isn't confusing the former.

Personally, I like Edward's rhetoric better:

http://www.johnedwards.com/media/video/iowa-caucuses-thank-y...

Nothing like "corporate greed", "corporate democrats", and "an epic fight for the future of the middle class". His dad worked at a mill, you know... ;)

Yum.

I'm really really sad to see this story here.

This is Hacker News. We come here for hacker news. If we want political news, we go to reddit.

Yes, because the internet does not exist in the real world! Why should we care what's happening around us? Eyes back to your monitors!

Every site has a focus.

I'm not suggesting we become the politics subreddit. Just saying that it's important to know what's going on IRL too. :)

You can visit other sites you know. I'm pretty sure Paul won't mind. :-)

I don't agree with nkohari, but he shouldn't be voted down this much. A 0 or a -1 is enough to say "no, we don't agree". It's not as if he said something horribly offensive.

Thanks for the support. I guess I didn't realize that this was an opinion-free zone. Honestly I think it's ridiculous that I would get down-voted for supporting an article that's now at number one. Clearly people care about the topic, and it's not like I contributed "less" to the discussion than the original comment I replied to, which was up-voted like wildfire. It's not like I'm on here spouting support for Ron Paul or linking to leftist blogs.

I too disagreed with you, but voted you up (from -8 to -7) because I think it's ridiculous that you can bury someone that much.

If you think about it, the only people that deserve to be buried are true trolls posting viagra ads and those terrible scat porn stories on slashdot... and those people don't care about their karma anyway, so you might as well just delete their accounts.

Why don't we just have some kind of floor on comments. Really -1 is enough to say "this comment is crap" without resulting in a situation where someone is dogpiled.

I agree with davidw, but he shouldn't be voted up this much. A 3 or a 4 is enough to say "we agree". It's not as if he said something horribly insightful.

See how short the path is from politics to meta-meta discussions? A slippery slope indeed;-)

I wouldn't vote me up that much either, but there is a difference between voting up and voting someone way down.

How did this get negative points? I can only upvote!

You need a certain level of karma to downvote.

I've been hacking since last night, and I found this interesting. My point is, news doesn't have to be about technology, business, or startups to be interesting to hackers.

Of course it doesn't, however once this site starts getting diluted with information that I consider to be off-topic then I leave and so will others. The GREAT thing about Hacker News is that it covers startup and programming news and is a wonderful resource without me having to go through loads of stuff I'm not interested in, or (more importantly) that I can find elsewhere

Point taken.

Anyway, its sparked debate :) We've a great community on here, so whats good is we can do so intelligently. I'm not from the US, so not only was this off-topic (for me) but also not even politics I'm interested in :P

having to go through loads of stuff I'm not interested in

Anyone interested in making an open version of reddit? One where people can write their own "favorites" algorithm, and/or one where user's votes are available via API?

Personally, I agree. If I want news like this then I go to other websites. I come to Hacker news because its focused

Really? You're interested in Ron Paul and George W. Bush alarmism?

He should be able to submit whatever he wants. People who vote this stuff up should lose karma. Call it a "user obviously doesn't grasp the point of the site" penalty.

We come here for hacker news. If we want political news, we go to reddit.

I come here for intelligent analysis of news which I take notice of. Although I'm very curious about software, I still take notice of political current events in the US... as, I think, do most intelligent people.

Although it's questionable that some universities have departments dedicated to it (http://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/), I think political rhetoric like this speech is very interesting for hackers, especially so from mass psychology and CogSci perspectives.

I don't understand why this comment got down-voted as it has. Steve Jobs is a closer example of the charisma and rhetoric needed to lead, but the example linked to here is another fine data point. If you aspire to leading a company, don't you want to inspire as well as perspire?

I think there's some reflexive downvoting going on here, because people are terrified of what happened to reddit happening here. But we won't let that happen.

Obama is a 1337 h4x0r.

I believe if Obama becomes President his wife is really going to run things. It will be her and Oprah running the White House, Obama seems fine but his wife looks really controlling.

Even though your comment is childish:

Given how well Oprah has handled her personal business, I for one would have no problem with her running the most powerful nation on the planet.

Umm, "The secret"?

Things go wrong even for the successful. Like Oprah's school for children, where some of the children were sent out to do sexual favors by the 'house mom'.

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