Been a While....

Hey all, been a while since I've been posting - mostly because I felt as far as the primary goes I had reached who I was going to reach and done what I could do. But I'm thinking I will probably start back up, though probably a little less frequently, with more information, clips and articles about the general election and more specifically - John McCain.

Also, I'm posting because I wanted to share Steven Colbert's hilarious summary of the Michigan Florida situation (hopefully finally resolved this weekend):


Keep Reading (if there's more)...

The Radical Elitist

A great Op-Ed in today's Washington Post, "Wright and Ridiculous" points out the contradictions between all the attacks narratives being thrown against Obama (thanks to my dad and Teresa for forwarding it!):

First Obama was accused of anti-religious elitism. Then he was accused of identifying with the underclass anger of his spiritual mentor. Excuse me, but which is it? Am I supposed to believe that Obama is a supercilious elitist or a menacing ghetto radical? Is he contemptuous of religion or too close to a religious leader? Obama's critics don't bother to say. Meanwhile, real character issues go relatively unheeded.

And questions whether these issues honestly reflect a leader's character:

The real character issue, in this campaign as in others, comes down to one thing: Does a candidate have the guts to espouse positions that are not politically expedient? Here there are serious questions about Obama, who pledges to pull out of Iraq no matter what, and who promises both to increase spending and not to raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year, ensuring the perpetuation of crippling federal deficits. For that matter, there are serious questions about Hillary Clinton, who proposes an irresponsible gas-tax holiday, and about John McCain, who couples gas pandering with a flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts, which he once (correctly) viewed as unaffordable. But these genuine character issues have been shunted aside by the spectacle of Obama's falling-out with his preacher.

Read it! Keep Reading (if there's more)...

The Square Root of Three

Math is cool. Why? Because it involves facts, not spin. Check out the NY Times's "Democratic Delegate Calculator: What the Candidates Need to Win."

And also consider this:
- There are 264 undeclared superdelegates.
- Since the Pennsylvania primary: It's Obama +21, Clinton +11.
- Since Super Tuesday, Feb. 5: It's Obama +88, Clinton +13.
- Since Junior Super Tuesday, March 4: It's Obama +45, Clinton +20.

And here's Kumar's (Obama supporter Kai Penn) "Square Root of Three."

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

I Know You Are But What Am I?

Judge not lest thee be judged: Two articles in the New Yorker and the Nation take a look at Hillary's own past and find that it is far from having been thoroughly "vetted" for attack material and how vulnerable she would be to similar attacks as she has made on Obama's association with William Ayers or Reverend Wright.

Also, below, regarding Hillary's electability: the Boston Globe criticizes the reckless, Bush like saber rattling of her "obliterate Iran" statements (let us not forget she was a HAWK on this war before she was against it), and I do an object lesson on how difficult/impossible it is for Hillary to win this race with CNN's fun little Delegate Calculator (try it!). 

Tom Hayden of the Nation:

...She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.

Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists". Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. (All these citations can be found in Carl Bernstein's sympathetic 2007 Clinton biography, A Woman in Charge.)

All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?

It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.

From the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg,

My point is that Hillary Clinton has not, in fact, survived the worst that the Republican attack machine (and its pilotless drones online and on talk radio) can dish out. We will learn what the worst really means if she is nominated. The Commie law firm will be only the beginning. Many tempting targets—from Bill’s little-examined fund-raising and business activities during the past seven years to the prospect of his hanging around the White House in some as yet undefined role for another four or eight years to whatever leftovers from the Clinton “scandals” of the nineteen-nineties can be retrieved from the dumpster and reheated—remain to be machine-gunned. The whole Clinton marital soap opera, obviously off limits within the Democratic fold, will offer ample material for what Obama calls “distractions.” To take the most obvious example, the former President’s social life since leaving the White House will become, if not “fair game,” big game—and some of these right-wing dirtbags are already hiring bearers and trying on pith helmets for the safari. Is this a “there” where the Democratic Party really wants to go?

MORE AFTER THE LINK!
Let alone the fact that if Clinton is the nominee the Republicans will have us going over every aspect of the Clinton presidency a la Fox News (why didnt you stop Osama Bin Laden when you could?) over and over.

In other issues regarding Hillary's electability:

The Boston Globe slams her comments about "obliterating Iran" (they dub her "Hillary Strangelove!"):

...Rambo rhetoric like Clinton's only plays into the hands of Iranian hard-liners who want to plow ahead with efforts to attain a nuclear weapons capability. They argue that Iran must have that capability in order to deter the United States from doing what Clinton threatened to do.

While Clinton has hammered Obama for supporting military strikes in Pakistan, her comments on Iran are much more far-reaching. She seems not to realize that she undermined Iranian reformists and pragmatists. The Iranian people have been more favorable to America than any other in the Gulf region or the Middle East.

A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran - and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran - should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night

And finally, take a look at this. CNN has a fun little Delegate Calculator. I did an experiment allotting the final few races: I gave Hillary HUGE margins in states she's expected to win (Kentucky and West Virginia - turns out Appalachia is the most resistant to the idea of a black preisdent), I gave her a big victory in the current battleground of Indiana, I gave Obama a smaller than expected margin in North Carolina, and, split the remaining super delegates 50-50.

So even with all that: Obama hits the 2025 delegates needed (though the Clinton campaign is pushing to move that bar to 2200 by including MI and FL). Hard to see how she can win without Obama just dropping out.

In other words, possibly by early June this will all be moot.

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Here We Go Round & Round

After all this hype, this:
(from Congressional Quarterly, crunching the numbers):

How many delegates might each candidate win in Pennsylvania, which is the most populous of the states and territories that have yet to vote?

...a CQ Politics analysis of the political circumstances in Pennsylvania’s congressional districts, detailed below, projects an edge to Clinton — but by just 53 district-level delegates to 50 for Obama under the Democratic Party’s proportional distribution rules.

These numbers suggest that Clinton, even with a victory in Pennsylvania, would make only a small incremental gain against Obama’s overall lead in the delegate race.

Yup that's right: a net of 3 delegates for Clinton from Pennsylvania, that's it.Trimming Obama's lead by....barely nothing (especially when we hit North Carolina the next week).

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Let's Pretend

Washington Post's Eugene Robinson has a a hilarious-if-it-weren't-so-true take on Hillary's ridiculous all out push to capitalize on Obama's "bitter" comments. (poll numbers are showing the media - surprise- are blowing the significance of this whole thing out of proportion, see what Robert Reich said about that yesterday.)

The Daily Show covered the entire "controversy" last night (bits about Hillary start at 3:20 or so):



And here's a taste of Robinson's column:

Hillary "Shot-and-a-Beer" Clinton has given us the perfect illustration of what's so insane about American politics: the philosophical dictum that could be summed up (with apologies to Descartes) as "I seem, therefore I am."

Clinton spent the weekend bashing Barack Obama for not seeming to be enough of a regular guy -- not for any actual deficit of regular-guyness, mind you, but for giving the impression that such a deficit might exist.

The former first lady, whose family has made $109 million since her husband left the White House, then made a show of demonstrating that she's actually just a regular gal. The point wasn't really to convince anyone that she, Bill and Chelsea commute between their two lavish mansions in a five-year-old Ford F-150 pickup with a gun rack and a "Jesus Rocks!" bumper sticker. Her aim was to prove to the nation -- or at least to Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana -- that she's better at feigning regularness than Obama.

This is how we pick a president?

(His kicker after the link!)

Clinton's argument assumes that "regular" is a synonym for "unsophisticated" -- that to communicate with voters who have not attained a certain income or education level, a candidate has to put on an elaborate disguise and speak in words of one syllable.

So tell me: Who's being patronizing?

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Whoopsie.

It's already been revealed the Empress has no clothes, but this is just out, and video speaks so much louder than words.

When this is some of the key experience you are claiming qualifies you for office instead of your opponent, and the other claims are similarly suspect, there's clearly a credibility problem.

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Are the Democrats on the path to giving us a McCain administration? Noam Schreiber of the New Republic explores (and looks at parallels to the 1980 Democratic race):

The problem is that each day Clinton and Obama spend consumed with the other is a day that moves John McCain closer to the White House. McCain's biggest asset is his political brand, which evokes a straight-talking, party-bucking reformer. Among his biggest liabilities is the suspicion he inspires among conservatives thanks to these same attributes. McCain apparently plans to spend the next few months making nice with his base. But anything he accomplishes on this front clearly diminishes his swing-voter appeal and, therefore, his chances in November.

Ideally, the Democrats would be exploiting this tension like mad. They would highlight the anti-Catholic, anti-gay ravings of John Hagee, the evangelical minister whose endorsement McCain recently accepted. They would ridicule his chumminess with supply-side Neanderthals like Jack Kemp and his flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts. They'd dwell on McCain's less-noticed association with crony-capitalists during his tenure as Commerce Committee chairman.

Instead, something close to the opposite is happening. McCain's courtship of the lunatic right and his ties to K Street have largely been hidden from view, while the Democrats' dirty laundry has been aired for swing voters. The upshot for Democrats has not been good. In late February, a Gallup poll showed Obama leading McCain among independents by 15 points. By March 6, a Newsweek poll put McCain up ten points among this group--and that was before Jeremiah Wright weighed in. Hillary went from down five to down 15 among independents during the same time.

And here is the rest of it. Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Si, Se Puede!

Bill Richardson, '08 presidential candidate, Bill Clinton's Ambassador to the UN and later Secretary of Energy, and current Governor of New Mexico endorsed Obama today in a speech far more rousing than any I saw from him during the campaign (hey Bill - I like the beard too!) He was clearly inspired by Obama's speech earlier this week.


In a statement released earlier today, he said:

My affection and admiration for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver. It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall...Barack Obama will be a historic and a great President, who can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad.

Also - significantly from the '08 Democratic candidate with some of the most extensive foreign policy - he takes on Hillary's "commander-in-chief" threshold argument:

"There is no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama has the judgment and courage we need in a commander in chief when our nation's security is on the line," Richardson said. "He showed this judgment by opposing the Iraq war from the start, and he has shown it during this campaign by standing up for a new era in American leadership internationally."

Full transcript of his speech here, and reporting on his endorsements here and here Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Punch/Counter-Punch

In a speech today on Iraq, Hillary Clinton said the following:
"Senator Obama holds up his original opposition to the war on the campaign trail, but he didn't start working aggressively to end the war until he started running for president. So when he had a chance to act on his speech, he chose silence instead." And implied that Obama would be dependent on advisors, and won't match "words with actions."

Obama's campaign produced a video response:



Whether the vote was a vote for war or not I recapped in this post, along with headlines from that day.

I myself would add: Hillary herself not only was originally for the war, but only came out strongly for withdrawal in the midst of democratic primary, when it was necessary to do so.
Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Big State BS

In the interest of debunking the bogus Clinton campaign's "Big State" talking point, the first in a continuing look at some general election "big state" polls:

In Florida, both Clinton and Obama right now would lose to McCain, Obama by less:
FL-Pres
Mar 16 Rasmussen McCain (R) 47%, Clinton (D) 40%
FL-Pres
Mar 16 Rasmussen McCain (R) 47%, Obama (D) 43%

In NY, both Obama and Clinton would win, though interestingly Obama would outperform Clinton (a wee bit) in her home state.
NY-Pres
Mar 16 Rasmussen Clinton (D) 50%, McCain (R) 38%
NY-Pres
Mar 16 Rasmussen Obama (D) 51%, McCain (R) 38%

In CA, both Obama and Clinton would win, Obama by more.
CA-Pres
Mar 14 Rasmussen Obama (D) 53%, McCain (R) 38%
CA-Pres
Mar 14 Rasmussen Clinton (D) 46%, McCain (R) 39%

In OH, both would lose to McCain by the same amount.
OH-Pres
Mar 14 Rasmussen McCain (R) 46%, Obama (D) 40%
OH-Pres
Mar 14 Rasmussen McCain (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 40%

In PA, both lose to McCain right now - Obama though is almost even
PA-Pres
Mar 13 Rasmussen McCain (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 44%
PA-Pres
Mar 13 Rasmussen McCain (R) 44%, Obama (D) 43%

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Olbermann to Clinton: "You are campaigning as if Barack Obama is the Democrat and you were the Republican."

If you've never seen an Olbermann Special Comment, they usually call to light hypocrisies of the Bush Administration. This is the first time he's said anything about the Democrats, in this case regarding the Clinton campaign and Geraldine Ferraro's comments and its a MUST SEE

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

It's a Trap!

Obama's Not Going to Win Pennsylvania: That according to the calculations of website "The Field." But he will still win the nomination without it - she can't catch up in delegate, he just can't play into the Clinton narrative that it is the last stand:

The press will try to make a race of it. There will surely be polls showing the race tightening, perhaps even suggesting that Obama could win it. But that’s just part of the predictable song-and-dance to sell newspapers and up ratings (and hit counts, for the political blogs and news sites that sell ads). The way the odd-numbered delegate districts break down, the demographics, the fact that it’s a closed primary (no Independent voters allowed), and its long border with the senator’s New York state make it a lead-pipe cinch for Clinton; to the extent that Obama supporters enter the “no, but yes, we can win it” narrative they’ll be walking into a trap.

Clinton has now moved 250 staffers (about 13 for each of Pennsylvania’s 19 Congressional districts) into the Keystone state and is opening two dozen field offices. She has the support of Governor Ed Rendell and his considerable machine, not to mention a phalanx of mayors including Michael Nutter of Philadelphia. They’re carrying a straight flush and they’re betting everything on it. That makes it tempting for Obama fans to seek a knockout punch, but all their candidate really needs to do is survive to the next round – North Carolina, two weeks later – without having fallen into a rigged expectations game to clinch the nomination.

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Big States

Colbert on Hillary's Bogus "Big State" Talking Point

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Heckuva Job, Hillary!

Have discussed this before here and here, but the NY Times looks at how Hillary has managed her campaign organization as an indicator of what kind of leader she is, finding some frightening parallels:

“She hasn’t managed anything as complex as this before; that’s the problem with senators,” said James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University who is an expert on presidential management. “She wasn’t as decisive as she should have been. And it’s a legitimate question to ask: Under great pressure from two different factions, can she make some hard decisions and move ahead? It seems to just fester. She doesn’t seem to know how to stop it or want to stop it.”

Even more troubling, however, is how her own tendencies toward loyalty, sound horrifyingly similar to our current president's management:

Still, interviews with campaign aides, associates and friends suggest that Mrs. Clinton, at least until February, was a detached manager. Juggling the demands of being a candidate, she paid little attention to detail, delegated decisions large and small and deferred to advisers on critical questions. Mrs. Clinton accepted or seemed unaware of the intense factionalism and feuding that often paralyzed her campaign and that prevented her aides from reaching consensus on basic questions like what states to fight in and how to go after Mr. Obama, of Illinois.

Mrs. Clinton showed a tendency toward an insular management style, relying on a coterie of aides who have worked for her for years, her aides and associates said. Her choice of lieutenants, and her insistence on staying with them even when friends urged her to shake things up, was blamed by some associates for the campaign’s woes. Again and again, the senator was portrayed as a manager who valued loyalty and familiarity over experience and expertise.

Yikes.
Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Trail of Tears

Jonathan Chait at the New Republic looks at how Clinton is trying to win:

The morning after Tuesday's primaries, Hillary Clinton's campaign released a memo titled "The Path to the Presidency." I eagerly dug into the paper, figuring it would explain how Clinton would obtain the Democratic nomination despite an enormous deficit in delegates. Instead, the memo offered a series of arguments as to why Clinton should run against John McCain--i.e., "Hillary is seen as the one who can get the job done"--but nothing about how she actually could. Is she planning a third-party run? Does she think Obama is going to die? The memo does not say.

The reason it doesn't say is that Clinton's path to the nomination is pretty repulsive. She isn't going to win at the polls. Barack Obama has a lead of 144 pledged delegates. That may not sound like a lot in a 4,000-delegate race, but it is. Clinton's Ohio win reduced that total by only nine. She would need 15 more Ohios to pull even with Obama. She isn't going to do much to dent, let alone eliminate, his lead.

That means, as we all have grown tired of hearing, that she would need to win with superdelegates. But, with most superdelegates already committed, Clinton would need to capture the remaining ones by a margin of better than two to one. And superdelegates are going to be extremely reluctant to overturn an elected delegate lead the size of Obama's. The only way to lessen that reluctance would be to destroy Obama's general election viability, so that superdelegates had no choice but to hand the nomination to her. Hence her flurry of attacks, her oddly qualified response as to whether Obama is a Muslim ("not as far as I know"), her repeated suggestions that John McCain is more qualified. And here is the rest of it.

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Stakes.

A great and poignant little ditty from Andrew Sullivan, I recommend reading the whole thing (its short but good!):

The reason so many people have re-engaged with politics this year is because many sense their country is in a desperate state and because only one candidate has articulated a vision and a politics big enough to address it without dividing the country down the middle again. For the first time in decades, a candidate has emerged who seems able to address the country's and the world's needs with a message that does not rely on Clintonian parsing or Rovian sleaze. For the first time since the 1960s, we have a potential president able to transcend the victim-mongering identity politics so skillfully used by the Clintons. If this promise is eclipsed because the old political system conspires to strangle it at birth, the reaction from the new influx of voters will be severe.

And here is the rest of it. Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Floater

The "Dream Ticket." Today, Bill Clinton was out promoting the idea of a Clinton-Obama ticket, following Hillary's floating the idea over the past few days. As Greg Sargent at Talking Points Memo states, "Hillary floated this yesterday, and, now, Bill today -- and it's hard to imagine that both Clintons would be talking this up in tandem by accident. " I also doubt they are, and to me this is one of the most crassly cynical, desperate, condescending and devious ploys their campaign has tried yet. Why?

First, this discussion neglects the most relevant fact at hand: OBAMA IS WINNING. After their resurgence in Ohio, and their popular vote win in Texas (they actually got less delegates because Obama won the caucuses), they are trying to relaunch their campaign with a massive PR pitch. But most of all they are trying to make people forget these pesky facts:

-Obama is beating them in delegates (1366 to 1227 according to MSNBC)
-Obama is beating them in states won (28 to 14 with Wisconsin today)
-Obama is beating them in the popular vote (13,000,655 to 12,411,705 according to Real Clear Politics)

They are still losing, and there is no mathematical way for them to catch up. But they are trusting people aren't paying attention, that they are just catching an occasional headline or two - and now think she is winning. And if you're undecided - you don't love Hillary, you kind of like this new "hope and change" guy, well this way you can get both! C'mon, though he's run a more efficient, effective and successful campaign against the largest name in Democratic politics and outplayed and out-earned them, you can't actually be SERIOUS about this guy right? But we can give him a place on the team. As a friend stated, its almost as if saying Obama "should know his place."

This is her ploy to steal undecided votes from Obama by implying you get two for one - clear and simple. And if you don't think that's so, or think I am being too cynical about the Clinton's, think about the guy they have running their campaign, and how he does things.

Think about how they are using fear ads, but can't come up with an example of an actual crisis Hillary has handled, or how she is touting foreign policy achievements that turn out to be nonexistent.

Think about how Rush Limbaugh wants Hillary to stay in the campaign because he believes she will do a better job attacking Obama then "timid" Republicans will.

Or think about this: Bill was out talking up the idea to Mississippi voters today because they are voting on Tuesday. The only thing is, Obama said this - THE DAY BEFORE: "You won’t see me as a vice presidential candidate -- you know, I’m running for president."

Of course that only matters if you know that Obama said that. Otherwise maybe it sounds like a great idea.

Please, float that shit someplace else.

UPDATE (3/10): Obama discusses the rumor, saying the Clintons are trying to "hoodwink" voters.

Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Maher & McAuliffe

Its already been shown the empress has no clothes, and pointed out that this is an argument she probably shouldn't start, as its one that McCain will win. Yet:


All the talk of "post-9/11" world, and how the Republicans will attack on national security: the Clinton campaign seems to think their role is to act like Republicans? Rush Limbaugh sure thinks they'll do a better job on it then his guys will.

Argh. Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Can You Call Back At Say, 4 AM?

The Chicago Tribune looks at Hillary's claims of experience handling foreign crises one by one, and doesn't find too much there:

But while Hillary Clinton represented the U.S. on the world stage at important moments while she was first lady, there is scant evidence that she played a pivotal role in major foreign policy decisions or in managing global crises...

"How does going to Beijing and giving a speech show crisis management? There was no crisis. And there was nothing to manage," Rice said.

I won't point out the irony around the fact that one of her "acts" of crisis management was a speech.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo (somewhat of a Clinton supporter!) questions Hillary "using" this issue:

But what's most needed is temperament, maturity and judgment. Detailed expertise can come from advisors...Others think it's precisely the expertise that's needed...Hillary Clinton seems to think she's a strong contender in this latter category. But that's a joke. She's starting her second term in the US senate, where, yes, she serves on the Armed Services committee. Beside that she's never held elective office and she has little executive experience. I think she can argue that she'd make and would make a strong commander-in-chief. But she's pushing a metric by which she's little distinguishable from Barack Obama. I'm honestly surprised she's not drawing chuckles on this one.

Keep Reading (if there's more)...