A new column from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank provides a glimpse into the reception upstart Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr can expect from the Republican party. He points out a number of the highlights of previous Barr appearances which will provide rich fodder for the candidate’s opponents, the media and late night television. These include:
- Licking whipped cream off the breasts of two women at a charity event
- Accidentally firing a .38-caliber pistol through a glass door at a fundraiser
- A humiliating appearance in the film “Borat”
These will likely be taken as major gaffes in a season when politicians are being excoriated for things such as comments made by their former pastor, “misremembering” a landing in Kosovo more than a decade earlier, or mixing up their Shiites and Sunnis during a speech on Iraq. Barr added more fuel to the comedy fire during his election announcement by performing some linguistic gymnastics fit to make George W. Bush proud.
He listed his grievances: government eavesdropping, suspending habeas corpus, runaway spending. Americans “deserve better,” he said. “I believe they deserve better. And the Libertarian Party deserves they believe better.”
Deserves they believe better?
Still, Barr has his supporters, potentially including many of the GOP faithful who feel (as does Mr. Barr) that Senator McCain simply is not a true conservative.
He ridiculed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which, he said, means McCain “cannot ever lay legitimate claim, at least with a straight face, to . . . being labeled as a conservative.”
If this makes Barr a spoiler, he doesn’t seem to mind. “I daresay that those people who would be inclined . . . to vote for Bob Barr as president would not likely fall into the category of people who would be enthused about voting for John McCain — if such exists,” he said with relish.
While jokes will doubtless be made in an attempt to portray Barr as not being a serious candidate, some Republicans have taken the threat to heart, pleading with Barr not to run.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Times yesterday that “Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion.”
Barr’s hard core, small government, fiscal conservative record, combined with his unwavering pro-life positions may well attract some disenchanted conservatives, many of whom still dismissively refer to the presumptive GOP nominee as “Juan McCain” in private. Of course, his position on the Iraq war may well scare off a number of those supporters, while attracting the more Libertarian inclined Ron Paul supporters in the fall. Will he have an impact? It may be tempting to say no, at least until we remember the effect Ross Perot had on the GOP in 1992. There is also the lesson of Ralph Nader who scored roughly 100,000 votes in Florida during the 2000 election, where George W. Bush was awarded the state with a 577 vote margin of victory.
Stay tuned. The 2008 political season has just had a bit more sauce poured on the goose.
Democratic Senator Barack Obama now shows a spike in his polling against rival Senator Hillary Clinton in his battle for the Democratic nomination — opening up a 7 percent lead, the latest Gallup Daily tracking poll shows.
Polls — particularly this tempestuous and fickle primary season — are see-saws, but this poll is significant coming as it does amid news of a steady trickle (if not stream) of news of convention superdelegates pledging their support to Obama, plus news cycles carrying stories about how Obama is now turning his campaign to focus on presumptive GOP nominee Senator John McCain.
It’s all part of a gathering consensus among Democrats — and apparently superdelegates — that barring some major event or mega toe-stubbing, Obama will be the party’s nominee. Details:
For the first time in nearly three weeks, the statistical tie between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Gallup Poll Daily tracking of national Democratic preferences has been broken, with Obama now ahead by seven percentage points, 50% to 43%.
This is based on national interviews with Democratic voters from May 9-11. Importantly, Obama has led Clinton in each individual day of polling included in today’s three-day rolling average, as well as the two days prior to that. Such stability was absent from the race for the past several weeks when Clinton and Obama often traded nightly leads in Gallup Poll Daily tracking and, as a result, neither candidate could achieve a significant leg up over the other in national preferences.
And why is this happening?
Although Obama did not achieve an immediate bounce in national Democratic support after last week’s primary elections in Indiana and North Carolina, it could be that the subsequent political punditry, proclaiming the Clinton campaign is effectively over, is affecting voters.
With Clinton continuing to campaign hard, concerns about what the protracted Clinton-Obama battle could do to the party’s chances of beating probable Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, in the fall, continue to be raised. However, according to Gallup Poll Daily tracking from May 7-11, both Democratic candidates are now beating McCain among national registered voters in Gallup Poll Daily trial heats for the fall election.
In other words: as some of the suspense as to who the Democratic nominee will be winds down, voters are taking a harder look now at McCain who has been able to sit back and watch the squabbling Democrats make him look Presidential by comparison.
The late comedian Joe Besser, the second “Three Stooges” Curley replacement and also known as “Stinky” on the classic 1950s Abbott & Costello Show, used to have a catchphrase: “Not so faaaaaaast!” And that, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll is the attitude of six out of 10 Democratic voters to calls for Senator Hillary Clinton to leave the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination:
Pushing back against political punditry, more than six in 10 Democrats say there’s no rush for Hillary Clinton to leave the presidential race – even as Barack Obama consolidates his support for the nomination and scores solidly in general-election tests.
Despite Obama’s advantage in delegates and popular vote, 64 percent of Democrats in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say Clinton should remain in the race. Even among Obama’s supporters, 42 percent say so.
So this means the poll finds Democrats want to see Clinton as their nominee? Not at all. And the margin in the poll is not even close:
That’s not a majority endorsement of Clinton’s candidacy; Democrats by a 12-point margin would rather see Obama as the nominee, a lead that’s held steadily in ABC News/Washington Post polls since early March. Instead it reflects a rejection of the notion that the drawn-out contest will hurt the party’s prospects. Seventy-one percent think it’ll either make no difference in November (56 percent) or actually help the party (15 percent).
So the poll concides with Clinton’s view of letting the contest go on. It also found that the overwhelming large number of Democrats reject the idea that if the contest goes on Democrats will be unable to unite against the GOPers:
And in a related result, 85 percent of Democrats (including Democratic-leaning independents) are confident the party would come together behind Obama as the nominee — though fewer, 45 percent, are “very” confident of it. That underscores the importance of the endgame for the party’s prospects.
Meanwhile, the ongoing media-driven question about whether Clinton should be on the ticket is received rather favorably by many Democrats: Read the rest of this entry »
Now that the question is coming front and center, Barack Obama may want to turn to his backer Ted Sorensen for advice about putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket with him, as John F. Kennedy did with his chief rival for the nomination, Lyndon Johnson.
Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, reports today that she “is probably going to fight to be the vice presidential nominee on an Obama-for-president ticket.”
After a bitter campaign, it won’t be easy. Obama supporters, notably his wife Michelle, are reportedly opposed, but as Sorensen notes in his new memoirs, so was JFK’s brother Robert. Yet Kennedy offered Johnson a place on the ticket, mostly to help win Texas and other Southern states in what would turn out to be a close election.
Moreover, Sorensen could also enlighten Obama about the virtues of converting a former enemy into an ally or at least neutralizing possible opposition. If Johnson remained as Senate Majority Leader, JFK told him in 1960, he “would be just impossible…Lyndon would screw me all the time.”
Unpalatable as the idea may be to Obama’s most fervent supporters–ironically, even Ted Kennedy has publicly opposed it–this could be another time when the Democratic Party needs unity more than a balanced ticket.
True believers in both camps will offer fervent arguments about why it wouldn’t work but, in a year when so much is at stake, neatness may not count.
In the category of great ironies, I trust you’ll enjoy this one as much as I did. And I hope this particular irony helps us mitigate our national tendency to define Presidents and potential Presidents by the people they know. (H/t RCP.)
One of the comparisons-of-the-week now making the rounds via pundits, Clinton supporters, Republicans, bloggers and talking (and screaming) radio and TV heads is that Democratic Senator Barack Obama could prove to be another Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor defeated by the first George Bush in his Presidential race. A fair comparison or not? Dukakis’ former campaign manager has some thoughts.
Dukakis, in case you forget, went into the race favored to win but after the Republicans got through defining him, and he ran a boring slow-to-respond campaign where he often seemed more like he was running for Accountant In Chief than Commander in Chief — and made the huge mistake of being filmed riding in a tank. He was compared to looking like Snoopy. And he was toast. Without butter or jam.
I was there. Mike Dukakis was (and is) a friend of mine. And so I can say that, while the danger is certainly worth recognizing, Barack Obama is no Mike Dukakis. Or at least he doesn’t have to be.
There is no question that the Republicans will try to do to Obama what they did to Dukakis: paint him as a liberal, out of touch with the values of average (white) Americans, so far left that he has left America.
The ammunition is there, she writes, but Obama has to realize that negative charges can’t just be left out there to fester. They do damage and must be answered quickly.
Still, even if you take all of the things the GOP could try to run against Obama and put them together, she says, there is one factor in Obama’s favor:
There will be much talk in coming weeks, if and when Obama does secure the nomination, of how this fight against Clinton has weakened him. I see it differently. I think it has strengthened him, by preparing him for what’s to come, and teaching him to deal with the mud that is sure to be thrown in his direction.
But the most important difference between Obama and Dukakis has absolutely nothing to do with the two men, or their primary opponents, or the issues that did or did not get raised. It’s the difference between where the country was then, and where it is now.
In June 1988, a majority of Americans thought the country was on the right track. Although the wrong track numbers had been higher earlier in the year, by the summer they turned around. Americans were pleased with the direction of the country. Today, the equivalent numbers are 80% wrong track. Ask any pollster and they’ll tell you that there is no better indication of which party will win an election than the right track-wrong track numbers. This should be a Democratic year. Obama, if he is the candidate, will face a negative machine. But in the end, that machine cannot change the way people feel about the direction the country is heading, or the party that is responsible for it.
That continues to be GOP presumptive nominee John McCain’s problem — and partly explains why no matter how bleak it may seem, Hillary and Bill Clinton are hanging in there as long as they can. Unless someone tries to lose — and some could argue that as a political party the Democrat parties factions and timid superdelegates seem to be trying to do just that — they would have to work to close the huge openings they have this year to re-take the White House and both houses of Congress.
Because this year the Democratic Presidential nomination is truly worth something — if the person who gets it is willing to fight back quickly and strongly when he/she gets it.
Is Arizona Senator John McCain facing an opposition-free Republican convention where it’ll be clear, conflict-free sailing as he wins the delegate count to make him the nominee and shapes a platform to his personal liking? According to the Los Angeles Times’ Andrew Malcomb, the answer is “nope”: Rep. Ron Paul’s forces will be there and they have other ideas:
…..[Q]uietly, largely under the radar of most people, the forces of Rep. Ron Paul have been organizing across the country to stage an embarrassing public revolt against Sen. John McCain when Republicans gather for their national convention in St. Paul at the beginning of September.
Paul’s presidential candidacy has been correctly dismissed all along in terms of winning the nomination. He was even excluded as irrelevant by Fox News from a nationally-televised GOP debate in New Hampshire.
But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. As anticipated a month ago in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.
And, the Washington Times reports, Barr is notably unpersuaded by GOP establishment types calling him and pleading with him not to run. So McCain will face Republican opposition from within (Paul) and outside (Barr) his party.
But it’s what happens at the convention that could be ticklish for McCain.
Since most of the convention will be considered dullsville by most of the news media with a foregone conclusion, little drama, the Paul story could get extra focus if Paul forces come up with some great quotes, angry followers, etc that could add the beloved conflict to what was supposed to be zzzzzz-er scripted coronation.
Still, the Democrats shouldn’t be grinning. As Malcomb notes, BOTH PARTIES now face divisions within them that could hurt them at the ballot box. “Nevermind Ralph Nader…” he writes.
Malcolm details the embarrassing votes McCain did not get running unopposed in many GOP primaries in recent weeks, plus other factors as well, indicating continued resistance to the Arizona Senator among conservatives. AFP reports:
While John McCain is practically assured the Republican presidential nomination, many party members are having a hard time accepting him — and showing it with symbolic votes against him in primary contests.
The Republican nomination battle has been all but decided for over two months. Still, some Republicans used the April 22 Pennsylvania primary and last week’s votes in Indiana and North Carolina to register their unhappiness with the de facto victor.
Some vote for libertarian Texan Ron Paul, who has refused to quit the race and has racked up more than one million votes, according to his campaign.
Other Republicans keep voting for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas — both markedly more conservative than McCain — although both have long since dropped out of the race and endorsed him.
As many as 25 percent of Republican voters want a different candidate to represent their party in the November 4 presidential election. In Pennsylvania, 27 percent opted for Huckabee or Paul; in North Carolina and Indiana on May 6, McCain opponents earned 23 percent of the vote.
The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, calculated that McCain had garnered no more than 45 percent of the Republican vote since January.
The Paul forces have been giving money to their candidate and fighting local fights.
Twenty million here, twenty million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money. Close on the heels of revelations that Hillary Clinton loaned herself another six million dollars in April, her campaign noted this weekend that they are approximately twenty million dollars in the red.
Clinton aides continued to insist that she will remain in the race even while confirming that she is $20 million in debt. “The voters are going to decide this,” senior adviser Howard Wolfson said on “Fox News Sunday,” acknowledging the $20 million figure. “There is no reason for her not to continue this process.”
One of the chief points of speculation seems to be whether or not the Clintons are in back room negotiations to see if Barack Obama’s cash fat campaign might bail them out of all or part of this debt in exchange for her gracefully dropping out and possibly seeking the VP slot. Both campaigns are denying it at this point, of course, but then again it’s not the sort of thing you’d want to advertise.
There was a point in the race, not very long ago, when such a deal may have been tempting. Hilllary was still a very real threat, and getting that thorn out of his side might have been worth a lot of money to Obama. At this point, however, with Time magazine featuring the Illinois senator on its cover with the title, “The winner is..” there may be no need. Obama certainly has more appealing options out there for the VP slot and he really only has to ride this out for a few more weeks and the Clinton problem should resolve itself. There is also the general election to consider. Obama may be sitting on a lot of money, but he’s going to need it for the long fight against McCain.
Either way, the bill is coming due and somebody is going to have to pay the piper.
ABC’s Jake Trapper, in a post on his blog almost written in dismay, notes how former President Bill Clinton is on now the hustings in rural West Virginia delivering a tough message that’s essentially divide-and-rule politics — the same he has delivered throughout much of the political season.
Trapper’s intro to the quotes nails the situation that is making the Clintons a political team that seemingly has decided to continue unabated to work to polarize their own party in order to generate poll turnout and then (presumably) plans to get in power and try to govern a unified country. Bill Clinton’s present campaigning and comments will likely seized upon as “proof” those who insist the Clintons (without proof) that the Clintons are really trying to lay the groundwork for a 2012 run, after a bruised Obama (largely bruised by the Clintons) flops at the polls.
Bill Clinton has the right to say whatever he wants, of course. But he’s a smart man. Brilliant, even.
He can do the math. He must know that it’s quite improbable that his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., will be the Democratic presidential nominee.
So what purpose does it serve for him to barnstorm a state like West Virginia and tell rural voters that Obama and his elitist political/media cabal allies are mocking Appalachia?
He’s using the kind of language Democrats typically use against Republicans — as in, stuff you say when you don’t want voters to vote for the other guy under any circumstance.
President George Bush is continuing to set historic new (low) records in modern polling history — this time, in a just-released poll, setting a record for his lowest job approval rating “ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports.”
For the week ending May 9, just 32% of Americans approved of the way the George W. Bush performed his role as President. That’s down two percentage points from last week and the lowest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports. The decline in the President’s ratings come as the Rasmussen Consumer Index also hovers around record lows—72% of Americans believe that economic conditions are getting worse.
Sixty-five percent (65%) disapprove of the President’s Performance, up two points from a week ago.
The weekly figures include 13% who Strongly Approve and 47% who Strongly Disapprove.
Bush is now consistent: his poll numbers are consistently heading south.
The weekly figures also represents a two-point decline from the numbers recorded during the full month of April. During that month, 34% of Americans gave the President their approval. That too was an all-time low, the lowest full-month approval rating ever for the President measured by Rasmussen Reports. For the full month, just 14% Strongly Approved of the President’s performance while 46% Strongly Disapproved.
Prior to this month, the President’s lowest approval rating was 35%, recorded in June, 2007. In two other months, his approval has been as low as 36% (May 2007 and March 2008).
Sometimes it is difficult to keep the ratings in perspective. In February 2005, at the beginning of the President’s second term, the number who Strongly Approved (28%) was very close to the number who Strongly Disapproved (33%). Now, three years later, just 14% Strongly Approve while more than three times as many—46%–Strongly Disapprove.
So he’s helping foster consensus among Americans. He has already carved a place for his name in history books: a Newsweek poll recently found that he is the most unpopular President in modern history.
The blog Hypnosis Control has this You Tube goodie that purports to show subliminal advertising for presumptive GOP nominee John McCain on a Fox News broadcast.
Is it real? Imagined? Intentional sublimal? Unintentional picture placement? A doctored video put on You Tube? Who knows (and if Fox denied it some people would say don’t believe them anyway). We embed, you decide…
FOOTNOTE: I could never understand all the fuss about subliminal advertising, despite the research. If subliminal advertising (intentional or otherwise) truly worked, we’d have heard a lot of it by now and banned or otherwise the government (any government) would use it to influence and manipulate the population.
It’s like expecting that people who listen to Rush Limbaugh would ever follow Rush if he suggested, for example, that voters should vote in Democratic primaries or change their party registrations to vote in and sandbag the primaries. It’s as SILLY an idea as that! (Never mind…)
The events now unfolding in the Middle East, which have been set in motion by Hezbullah’s takeover last week of much of Beirut, do not bode well for American or Israeli interests, warns one of France’s leading historians and journalists, Alexandre Adler.
Writing for France’s Le Figaro newspaper, Adler writes that Iranian President Ahmadinidjad, hemmed in by opponents at home and abroad, has turned to one of the last cards he holds in his hand: the Lebanese Hezbullah:
“Let us first turn to Iran, which is in a fever and where the most decisive threats originate. Iran’s President and his trusted accomplices - and a pro-Iranian faction of al-Qaeda - hope to recreate unity among all people of Muslim faith for a renewed jihad against America and Israel. Voices have been heard, notably among the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, who hope for such an outcome and support Iran’s nuclear program, which many Islamists - not only in Cairo - regard as a liberating force that should be immediately employed against Israel, whatever the risks.”
“Israel cannot tolerate a military victory for Hezbullah over its [pro-West] Lebanese opponents - any more than it can allow Ahmadinejad to pursue nuclear blackmail, especially in this very strange context: There is the probability that a Democratic candidate - indeed an Obama election victory - could bring to the White House a supporter of negotiations at all costs. … Clearly, this is a distressing 60th anniversary for Israel.”
This is a seminal article about what the United States now confronts, and it should be read by anyone interested in understanding this very important and hard-to-penetrate topic. Read the rest of this entry »
Back in February, Saturday Night did a peppery parody of a CNN televised debate in which it painted the press as fawning all over Democratic Senator Barack Obama and dismissing and being hard on Senator Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s campaign and Clinton herself pointed to that parody in their argument that the press was going easy on Obama and part of “Obamanamia” and hadn’t been vetting or challenging him.
Shortly after that, what many believe was Obama’s “free” ride indeed ended — and some pundits attributed it to the SNL sketch and the Clinton campaigns use of it as an example of how it wasn’t only them that had this perception of the press’ behavior.
Obama supporters charged SNL was repeatedly biased in its parodies in favor of Clinton and skewering their candidate — and Dan Abrams on MSNBC noted in a segment that political supporters were going haywire…and that SNL was a political candidate equal offender (click on the link since he includes various excerpts).
The Clinton campaign loved SNL — but it’s likely the love affair is over now with last night’s latest parody which at times seems downright brutal.
Today John McCain is unveiling a sassy TV commercial with his 96-year-old mother to remind voters about his good genes and American values. Iffy as it may be to call attention to his age, the ad underscores the diversity of motherhood in this campaign.
Roberta McCain, who gave birth to her son at a Naval Air Station in Panama, where her husband, the son of an Admiral and a future Admiral himself, was based, radiates the aura of a strict, no-nonsense parent out of a bygone era. John McCain always knew exactly who he was.
Barack Obama’s mother was a dreamer with, in his words, a “combination of being very grounded in who she was, what she believed in…but also a certain recklessness…always searching for something. She wasn’t comfortable seeing her life confined to a certain box.” Her travels and exotic marriages produced a unique bi-racial man who has spent his life finding and creating himself.
Somewhere between these extremes of certainty and self-invention is Hillary Clinton’s biographical journey from a well-to-do suburban childhood that took her to college as a Goldwater girl, transformed her into a Eugene McCarthy protester against the Vietnam war and eventually the first woman within striking distance of the presidency.
In this post-Victorian, post-Freudian era, motherhood comes in all shapes and sizes, producing remarkable diversity in the generation that will define the 21st century.
Is the situation far more grim for the GOP than presumptive GOP Presidential nominee Senator John McCain and the Republican Party think and are they deluding themselves on the mega-grim picture the party faces in 2008? The Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman writes:
Richard Norton Smith, a historian who has run the presidential libraries of Republicans Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, is pessimistic about the party’s prospects. He thinks the correct analogy is not 1988 but 1920 or 1952 — when an unpopular war and an equally unpopular president spelled doom for the party in the White House. He thinks 2008 is shaping up not only as a narrow defeat for the GOP but a decisive “repudiation.” Read the rest of this entry »
Over at Newshoggers, Ron Beasley examines the fact that, prior to the invasion of Iraq, some observers - including Juan Cole - predicted that Iran would be one of the greatest benefactors of the Iraq war. In a previous Newshoggers post, Cernig noted that two consecutive standoffs between Maliki and Sadr have now been resolved only after being brokered by Iran. This, in Cernig’s opinion, makes the Iranians the undisputed “Big Brother” of the neighborhood for Iran. Beasley reads this as as closure of the Iraq situation, though perhaps not what America had been hoping for.
Yes the war is over and we have a winner - Iran. Iran is calling all the shots in Iraq and the US is propping up and supporting Iran’s proxy government there. Perhaps it’s time to let Iran prop up their government with their blood and treasure. So the US toppled Iran’s chief nemesis in the area, Saddam, and then placed in power and continue to prop up an Iranian friendly junta. It would appear the Bush administration is a pretty good enemy to have.
Perhaps too pat of an answer, but it does raise some interesting questions which the candidates will need to address for voters this fall. With the image of Iran’s president taking a sunlit stroll alongside Maliki through the streets of Baghdad combined with Iran’s brokerage of problems which we might expect America to resolve, has Iraq’s old enemy secured a position of increased influence in the region? Also, should the United States and/or her allies choose to strike any targets inside of Iran, will this complicate the situation on the ground for our troops, surrounded by Iran’s Shiite friends who whole the majority there?
The age of clear cut winners and losers in modern warfare seems to have come to a close. It would be ironic indeed if the winner of a present day war turned out to be someone who wasn’t even one of the combatants.
It is heartbreaking when those who know better and have worked their entire lives for change fade in the clutch. It shows the almost insurmountable power of self interest to veto what everyone knows in their heart is reasonable, fair and necessary. This saga also illustrates why even though I am in sympathy with much of the liberal agenda I can’t bring my self to commit to the Democratic Party. It is just as likely to lose site of the reason for power as the GOP. (promoting excessive farm subsidies, resisting redistricting reform in states they have an advantage, giving Hedge funds a pass on taxes…)
Before he suddenly became New York’s governor, David Paterson was a committed reformer. In his years as a state senator (and leader of the Democratic minority), he called for limiting special-interest money, public financing of elections, and sweeping out as much muck as possible from the State Legislature. Read the rest of this entry »
Senator Barack Obama got mired in the controversy over his former pastor. Senator Hillary Clinton got bogged down on her comments about dodging dangerous fire in Bosnia. And both of them took political hits that lasted a while and did some damage.
Now, Clinton is clearly — and truly — bogged down in her comments about white voters liking her more than Obama, even though her aides now insist that she regrets the comments.
The damage to Clinton’s image seems profound. And what better evidence of THAT then the once-unimaginable development that one of her most ardent African-American supporters Rep. Charles Rangle would bluntly denounce her remark?
One of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most important supporters, Charles Rangel, repudiated her claims she has broader support among “white Americans,” calling the comments “the dumbest thing she could ever have said.”
The Harlem congressman’s criticism of Clinton came as rival Barack Obama Saturday took the lead among superdelegates, the group that will decide the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Speaking to reporters before introducing Clinton at a Manhattan fundraiser Saturday, Rangel chastised the remarks as “very poorly worded.”
But the barrage doesn’t end just there. On newspaper op-ed pages from the U.S. to Great Britain Clinton is being denounced, usually on several key points: (a) her comments make her a more polarizing figure than ever, (b) her comments are unlikely to help her achieve her goals of winning the nomination and unifying the party and (c) her comments damage the Clinton’s legacy of good ties with black voters — a legacy already greatly strained by some of Bill Clinton’s race-raising comments.
A look at some of articles and recent columns indicates that if getting “good ink” and “good air time” is a goal, the Clinton campaign has been derailed even more than the 2000 original version of Republican Senator John McCain’s Straight Talk Express. Here’s a sampling: Read the rest of this entry »
