James Carville has been one of Hillary Clinton’s most energetic defenders, but on Monday he all but declared Barack Obama will become the Democratic nominee for president.
Speaking to students at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, Carville argued Clinton should stay in through the final nominating contest in early June, but said the Democratic tide appears to be moving in Obama’s direction.
“I still hear some dogs barking,” Carville said, according to The State newspaper. “I’m for Senator Clinton, but I think the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee.”
Yesterday we ran this post about a poll indicating Democrats wanted the primary battle between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to continue — and now a second poll has come up with the same finding, and almost the same numbers:
On the eve of the West Virginia primary, most Democrats nationally say Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton should continue the campaign, but more now say that it’s time for Clinton to quit.
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, 55% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents also would like Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to choose Clinton as his running mate, although there’s notable resistance among his backers.
The poll, taken Thursday through Sunday, shows Democrats grappling with the next stage of a hard-fought primary season. Clinton leads decisively in West Virginia polls but lags Obama in pledged delegates. He’s also erased her edge among the party leaders known as superdelegates.
Now, 35% of Democrats surveyed by USA TODAY say the New York senator should drop out, a jump of 12 percentage points in a week, while 55% say both should stay in.
However, this poll found less harmony in the question as to whether Clinton should be asked to be Obama’s nominee:
There was also a contrast on the issue of the vice presidency if Obama becomes the nominee.
Three of four Clinton supporters would like to see her on Obama’s ticket. But 52% of Obama supporters would rather he “choose someone else.”
Several report suggest Clinton does want the number two spot, if she can’t head the ticket. So this could be the next bruising p.r. and behind-the-scenes battle if Clinton drops out in the next few weeks, as many believe.
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%. Read the rest of this entry »
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: Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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.
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 »
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 »
‘Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in her whole aspect, and spite of all mortal men could do - the said solid white buttress of her forehead smite the ship’s starboard bow.’
(apologies to Moby Dick)
It seems that a global consensus against Senator Hillary Clinton is forming, after her razor-thin victory in Indiana and significant defeat in North Carolina.
This editorial from Lebanon’s Daily Star not only lambastes Hillary for pandering - pointedly in regard to her threat to ‘obliterate’ Iran - but it uses her bad example as a way of pointing out a glaring deficiency in Democratic government as it is presently conducted.
“Whatever she does in the future, nothing will erase her demonstration of the worst aspects of American politics - particularly her recent statement that she would ‘obliterate’ Iran if it ever threatened Israel with nuclear weapons … The context of her threatening statement is telling, in that it exposes the weak link in America’s democratic system - or any democratic system: the inclination of candidates running for public office to pander to the basest prejudices, sentiments and fears of the voting public.”
“The United States and Iran may disagree about many things; but for one to use threats of obliteration as a policy toward the other strikes us as a rather crude and offensive strategy, especially for a world power.”
One interesting question to ponder is whether Hezbullah’s takeover on Friday of much of Beirut, will also put an end the the independence of the pro-West Daily Star.
EDITORIAL
May 8, 2008
Lebanon - The Daily Star - Original Article (English)
In the coming days or weeks, Hillary Clinton’s fate as a presidential hopeful will be decided. But whatever she does in the future, nothing will erase her demonstration of the worst aspects of American politics - particularly her recent statement that she would “obliterate” Iran if it ever threatened Israel with nuclear weapons. The substance of the New York senator’s words are hard to evaluate due to the hypothetical nature of the damage she threatens to impose. Were she ever to become president and order such an attack, many other Americans would have to agree with the decision in order for it to be implemented, particularly the top military brass.
The context of her threatening statement is telling, in that it exposes the weak link in America’s democratic system - or any democratic system: the inclination of candidates running for public office to pander to the basest prejudices, sentiments and fears of the voting public. Clinton has been a particularly dynamic panderer this year, jumping on every opportunity to make her appear to be a woman of the people, whether drinking shots of whisky or calling for gas-tax holidays. In this case, she chose to play on widespread American opposition to Iran, which is in turn a function of several factors. In American politics these days, Iran is the bad guy par excellence, whether for its role in Iraq, its strategic ambitions in the Middle East, its nuclear policy, its rhetorical threats against Israel, or to its a general assertion of Islamist identity and politics. Americans also remain angry at Iranians for overthrowing the Shah in 1979 and then taking and holding Americans hostages for many months.
It’s as though anxiety around the world over the ongoing battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is just as strong as it is among U.S. Democrats.
“There are moments in life in which a person must make a decision, even if you don’t know what decision is the right one. You can weigh the pros and cons, draw on the council of friends or see a fortune-teller. But calculating the probabilities only gets you so far since no one can know all the variables. All of which is why one must act on the basis of the information available at the time.”
“If Hillary Clinton can’t recognize when its time to concede, then the remaining undecided superdelegates should offer a helping hand: with a swift vote in favor of the candidate who has emerged as the winner of primaries held so far: Barack Obama.”
By Sabine Muscat
Translated By Ulf Behncke
May 7, 2008
Germany - Financial Times Deutschland - Original Article (German)
Philadelphia: It’s about time that the superdelegates put an end to the clash between presidential candidates Clinton and Obama - even if Clinton doesn’t realize that it’s time to stop.
There are moments in life in which a person must make a decision, even if you don’t know what decision is the right one. You can weigh the pros and cons, draw on the council of friends or see a fortune-teller. Calculating the probabilities can only get you so far since no one can know all the variables. All of which is why one must act on the basis of the information available at the time.
That should be exactly the course of action now taken by the U.S. Democratic superdelegates, in whose hands lies the power to bring the clash of rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to an end. The information we now have is this: Obama’s has the balance of superdelegates needed to obtain the Party’s nomination.
With his huge victory in North Carolina, he neutralized Clinton’s win in Pennsylvania the week before. Clinton was unable to catch up to and overcome him. And the enthusiasm that a clear victory in Indiana would have generated is missing as well.
U.S. Democrats had half a year to compare presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and to verify that both uphold the same core Democratic values. At present, which of the two stands a better chance against Republican John McCain on November 4 is anybody’s guess. What’s clear right now, however, is that the margin between both candidates and John McCain is shrinking. The Democrats should worry less about …
This was quite a week — and not just because of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. It was a week when there were two TV moments when you could seemingly watch and hear the Democratic party starting to split.
First, brace yourself for Clinton supporter and strategist Paul Begala clashing with uncommitted superdelegate and former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile. In her devastating recent Wall Street Journal column on Hillary Clinton titled Damsel of Distress, Peggy Noonan wrote of this piece of video:
The Democratic Party can’t celebrate the triumph of Barack Obama because the Democratic Party is busy having a breakdown. You could call it a breakdown over the issues of race and gender, but its real source is simply Hillary Clinton. Whose entire campaign at this point is about exploiting race and gender.
Here’s the first place an outsider could see the tensions that have taken hold: on CNN Tuesday night, in the famous Brazile-Begala smackdown. Paul Begala wore the smile of the 1990s, the one in which there is no connection between the shape of the mouth and what the mouth says. All is mask. Donna Brazile was having none of it.
Next, there was Clinton backer (and occasional Huffington Post contributor) Lanny Davis, who felt he was treated shabbily by a CNN panel that he felt was stacked with people who favored Obama (you’ll see Brazile again). Details about his side of the behind-the-scenes story are HERE.
But you could again hear the riiiiiiiiiip. Watch this TPM montage and judge for yourself:
My take on it? I think Noonan’s piece, which contains some original reporting, sounds right on the dime.
She explains a lot of what is going on, and what is NOT going on and why. What seems clear from this is that the same attitude George Bush has shown in trying to impose his will on the legislative and executive branches, is what the Clinton campaign is now showing in its attitude towards the Democratic party and its long range goals — not just of winning an election but of burnishing its Big Tent, keeping that Big Tent stable, and opening it up, so more more people can pour in.
Davis? He tried making his case and clearly felt outnumbered.
And Begala? He talked about inclusion at the end, but his words meshed with the controversy later in the week centering on Clinton’s comments about her getting more white votes.
Begala was old-school divide and rule politics delivered with a pasted-on smile.
Here are four cartoons from abroad looking at the battle between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. Note that the cartoonists abroad see it in the same way as American cartoons do (there are still a lot of great American cartoons on the primary battle and we’ll run the backlog throughout the day).
The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein reports that supporters of Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton who comment on the pro-Clinton blog Taylor Marsh got ahold of an email list and have been emailing demanding, even angry, emails to superdelegates — and there are signs that some superdelegates are now very unhappy campers:
As the Democratic primary nears its long-awaited conclusion, undecided superdelegates have been drowned under a sudden deluge of angry, sometimes vicious emails from Hillary Clinton supporters urging them to not fall in line behind Barack Obama.
The letter writing campaign picked up steam late Thursday evening when several superdelegates confirmed that a coordinated effort had been launched, apparently independent of Clinton’s campaign, to raise last-minute concerns about Obama’s candidacy and present the specter of voter defections should the Illinois Democrat become the nominee.
[UPDATE: Marsh has responded to the HP piece with a long post of her own blasting the report and stressing that she had nothing to do with what her readers decided to do. It begins:
I in no way have anything whatsoever to do with the narrative being pushed in Sam Stein’s post over at Huffington Post. Stop.
Whatever my readers are doing is their business. I am in no way involved. Stop.
Read it in its entirety. FOOTNOTE: Marsh has been a contributor to the Huffington Post herself.]
Back to the Huffington Post:
In more than dozen messages sent yesterday evening and shared with The Huffington Post, supporters of Clinton emailed a laundry list of political and exceedingly personal attacks on Obama’s candidacy, including criticisms of his prior associations and claims that he, not Clinton, had played the race card. The letters underscore the high emotional pitch of the late stage Democratic primary as well as the utter conviction among many supporters of both campaigns that their candidate is solely worthy of the nomination.
So have the letters made many superdelegates see the light and decide to announce that they’ll support Clinton — even though Clinton at this point isn’t ahead in the number of pledged delegates, the popular vote, campaign funding collections or even (by ABC’s recent claim) superdelegates?
Not quite:
Such campaigns targeting superdelegates have mostly been avoided out of fear that the party officials would react negatively to outside pressure. And at least four superdelegates on the receiving end of yesterday’s emails suggested that they did more harm to Clinton’s cause than good.
In one exchange, Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager and a stalwart of the Democratic Party, responded with frustration to a writer’s threats of defection. “Honestly, this is the 9th email today,” she wrote before 8:00 pm. “So I believe you’re ready to not only destroy Roe versus Wade, voting rights, civil liberties and civil rights. Perhaps adding trillions more to the deficits through non-stop tax cuts to the wealthy and 100 more years in Iraq. Yes, please join Rush and McCain asap. The train has left. Catch it.”
The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment as to whether it was behind the email campaign.
That last sentence means the Clinton campaign (a) is trying to figure out how to defuse this without alienating its committed supporters (whom students of politics could consider need to be committed for sending less than respectful emails to superdelegates who are their last hope), (b) doesn’t want to give this more publicity, (c) tacitly supports the effort.
Stein gives readers a bit of feedback on how some superdelegates are reacting to this new form of abusive political spam:
At least two other party insiders wrote the Huffington Post expressing concern over the scope (”I’ve received emails like this for weeks but tonight it started in mass) and negativity of some of the Obama attacks, including one red-state Democrat:
“I spent my entire life in the two reddest states in the entire U.S. so please excuse me if I fail to discern the nuances of the arguments sent my way this evening in what appears to be an orchestrated campaign to intimidate the remaining unpledged delegates by threatening to leave the party and vote for a third Bush term if I and others like me don’t vote for Sen. Clinton,” wrote the exasperated superdelegate. “I have been uncommitted throughout this campaign because I wanted to see how the candidates performed in a variety of settings. I am proud of them both. But I am horrified by this effort to threaten votes for McCain if super delegates don’t vote for Sen. Clinton. I have received hundreds of emails from both sides - but I can say without exception that I have not received a single email from an Obama supporter that threatened a vote for McCain if I didn’t support Sen. Obama. You really ought to be ashamed.”
–Paul Begala raised eyebrows by saying “”Obama can’t win with just the eggheads and African-Americans…” (OOPS! There goes the Humpty Dumpty vote..)
–Clinton supporters are flooding superdelegates with threatening emails. They seem to forget that politics also involves trying to persuade, not just intimidate.
Bill Clinton often talked about wanting to build a “bridge to the 21st century.”
But, increasingly, the Clinton camp seems as if in terms of common sense political coalition building, it’s trying to burn its bridges in the 21st century.
They must have run out of duct tape at Home Depot — or Hillary Clinton’s advisers must believe that an angry Bill Clinton arguing with a female voter who interrupted him in West Virginia is going to win over people who don’t already support Hillary Clinton. For a veteran politician, he can’t turn a lemon (being interrupted) into lemonade (handling it with skill to win over doubters).
Because here he goes again. Watch the clip below. Here he is arguing with a voter who disputed an assertion he made about Hillary Clinton’s claim that she improved health care under his administration. This IS red meat for those who already love Hillary and want her to fight and denounce Barack Obama all the way to the convention.
But to many independent voters, Republicans, Democrats — and probably superdelegates — when they watch this clip they will think: Do we REALLY want to allow this man to take virtual center stage for four — or EIGHT — more years? Oh, please, Mommy, make him go away…
Some Presidents become more endearing and their political skills actually blossom once when they leave office. They grow on people.
Bill Clinton is growing on many people like a fungus.
Make sure you watch the voter’s comment at the end. Presumably, the Clintons want to win over more than their current supporters, but you’d never know that from Bill Clinton’s defensive and angry response.
UPDATE: In fact, Hillary Clinton DOES deserve some credit for improving health care under Bill Clinton. READ THIS. But rather than rattle-off specifics, Clinton became angry and turned it on the voter, turning himself into a kind of radio talk show host. (At least you can TURN OFF the radio and not listen to talk show hosts.)
On the 492nd day of Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the first woman president, one inevitability was rudely replaced by another.
That was the number of days that elapsed from January 20, 2007 when Clinton (photo) announced that “I’m in. And I’m in it to win,” something that few observers could seriously doubt, and Tuesday past when voters in North Carolina and Indiana delivered another message: Her defeat at the hands of Barack Obama in the political cage match of the young millennium was no longer a probability but an inevitability.
Sure signs of this seismic shift are the uproar from the hardest of Clinton’s hardcore supporters and flurry of kamikazee analogies from pundits shaking their heads over her stubborn refusal to bow to that inevitability.
These supporters declare that Obama is unelectable although more Americans may vote for him in November than any presidential candidate in history. And that Clinton should be gifted the Democratic nomination although she trails Obama in popular votes, pledged delegate votes, opinion-poll positives, contributions and endorsements, and any second in superdelegates, as well.
The hardcore ranges from big-time bloggers like Taylor Marsh, who will now have to return that lovely dress she bought months ago to wear to the inaugural balls (but at least is making noises about possibly embracing Obama) to some really pissed-off feminists (who are demonizing Marsh for seeing the light).
I’m going to focus on the Hell Hath No Fury Like a Feminist Scorned crowd, which is shaping up to be a bunch of especially poor losers.
On the 492nd day of Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the first woman president, one inevitability was rudely replaced by another.
