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?

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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.

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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%

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Ready From Day One...or Not

The LA Times asks "How did the Clinton campaign get here?" trying to understand how the candidate, who was once assumed to be the inevitable nominee, has reached the point she has. Their answer: leadership, or a lack therof.

Hillary Clinton may be one of the most disciplined figures in national politics, but she has presided over a campaign operation riven by feuding, rival fiefdoms and second-guessing of top staff members

...Already, some in Clinton's senior staff are pointing fingers over what went wrong, with some of the blame aimed at Clinton herself. As the race unfolded, neither Clinton nor anyone else resolved the internal power struggles that played out with destructive effect and continue to this day...

Joe Trippi, a senior advisor to John Edwards' now-dropped Democratic campaign, said: "At some point the candidate has to step in and bust heads and say 'Enough!' "If there's fighting internally, the candidate has to step up and make it clear what direction she wants to go and stop this stuff dead in its tracks. Otherwise there's going to be a struggle for power and control right until the end. It's crippling."

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Some of My Best Friends Are Shills

From a blogger in Texas:

I stopped at the intersection of Lovers Lane and Greenville this afternoon, and immediately noticed people standing on each corner (and on a couple of the medians) holding Hillary Clinton signs. Another thing immediately apparent, especially because of the race and gender issues in this presidential election, was that each person holding a sign was black.

I rolled down the window to ask one of the men what group the sign-holders belonged to, and he told me Southern Fried Marketing. I asked if they supported Hillary Clinton for president, and he replied: "Paid for."

Always great to have to buy visibility and support. Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Who you gonna call?

So on Friday, Hillary's campaign releases this fear mongering ad on TV in Texas and Ohio:

Her campaign describes it as a "positive" ad. Afterwards, her campaign had a conference call with reporters to discuss it, as described on the National Journal's blog (w/audio):

Responding to the release of HRC's new TX TV ad, which asserts in no subtle terms that only she has the experience to deal with a major world crisis, and, relatedly, to keep your children safe, Slate's John Dickerson asked the obvious question:

"What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" he said.

Silence on the call. You could've knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton's national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak -- that she's been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military.

Obama's campaign impressively whipped up their own response the same day:

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Ugh.

Don't think this is gonna help.

Hillary mocks obama
by dollarsandsense123
UPDATE: I should also note, magic wand excepted, special interests definitely won't disappear when they are funding and running your campaign. But I guess she's banking on people not finding that out.

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For It Before She Was Against It

As the campaign has moved to blue collar Ohio Hillary has been attacking an Obama mailer that trumpets her support for NAFTA. Admittedly, the mailer's actual "quote" regarding her support appears to be a distorted mush of a Newsday article, which is disappointing for a campaign (Obama's) that at least claims to stick to a different kind of politics.

But there is no question the actual content is accurate - she supported NAFTA and has written about it as one of Bill's major achievements. Huffington Post's David Sirota summarizes some of her other statements of support. 

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Thirsty? Want some Kool Aid?

Frank Rich's latest, worth a read as always:

Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating...

This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.

Check this earlier post for another discussion about how Obama's and Clinton's campaigns have been run as indicators of their actual leadership potential. Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Master of (Hillary's) Domain, continued...

Been doing a little more digging and reading about Mark Penn, Hillary's chief campaign strategist, and think some more of this deserves exposure. He's really like Hillary's Karl Rove. 

According to the article "Spinning Hilary Centrist" from The Nation I linked to last night, his first firm Penn, Schoen & Berland:

...defended Procter and Gamble's Olestra from charges that it caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. Penn invented the concept of "inoculation," in which corporations are shielded from scandal through clever advertising and marketing. Selling an image, companies realized, was as important as winning a legislative favor...

The company he is now CEO of, Burson-Marstellar: 

The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of massive human rights violations in Nigeria. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer organizations. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries...

...Yet despite occupying such a divisive place in the Democratic Party and outsized role in the corporate world--and despite his company's close ties to Republican political operatives and the Bush White House--Penn remains a leading figure in Hillary's campaign, pitching the inevitability of her nomination to donors and party bigwigs...Politically, his presence means that triangulation is alive and well inside the campaign and that despite her populist forays, Hillary won't stray too far from the center. "Penn has a lot of influence on her, no doubt about it," says New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked with Penn in '96. "He's not going to let her drift too far left."

An article online at Bloomberg.com inquires whether these corporate ties might be a conflict of interest:

Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson said Penn is currently working only with Microsoft Corp., a longtime client, and on the election campaign, although he's free to handle and solicit other clients. "The real question from the campaign perspective is whether Senator Clinton is comfortable with what Mark is doing, and the answer to that is yes, unequivocally,'' Wolfson said. Penn's internal blog -- several months of which were obtained by Bloomberg News -- suggests that all along he has been working with multiple clients. He downplayed his role in Clinton's presidential campaign, saying he is "not a policy adviser, I'm a communications adviser.'' Others say he's the most powerful figure in the campaign, and an April 30 Washington Post profile said he "has become involved in virtually every move that Clinton makes.''

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Master of (Hillary's) Domain

So I just read Josh Green's revealing look inside the firing of Clinton's campaign manager, and the disconcerting truth that emerges is how much Hillary values loyalty over performance, a characteristic I find disturbingly echoes our current president.

But it also led me to discover this NY Times profile, which is a key article to understand the main "strategist" who is running Hillary's campaign - Mark Penn. He's the guy out making genius comments to the press over this last week. He also is CEO of a PR firm, Burson-Marstellar, that does "perception management" - spinning positive PR for tobacco companies, Saudi Arabia after 9/11, or military contracting firm Blackwater after recent controversies. Apparently created a strategy of setting up faux grassroots organizations for corporate clients to attack environmental or consumer groups. Wonderful stuff. A Hillary loyalist, he has with her during her first Senate campaign in 2000, when this article was written (after joining the Clinton cadre during the '96 election). It is incredibly illuminating even now (especially to those who wonder what I mean when I complain everything the Clintons do is calculated and focus grouped down to the word!):

For years now, aides to the Clintons have insisted that they use polls not to decide which policies to support but to learn how to persuade others to share their positions -- not to follow, in other words, but to lead. It's not true. They use polls for both purposes, and that is why to understand the state of American politics and government you need to know about Mark Penn. For the Democrats who have used market-tested ideas and language to redefine the party, he is the man who writes the questions and interprets the answers. By adding and then dividing you, turning you into a percentage and stamping you with a label, he serves as your conduit to power. And theirs.

You should know this about Penn: For the decade before Dick Morris brought him and his partner Doug Schoen to work for the Clintons, Penn served mostly corporations like Texaco and Avis. Along with corporate marketing techniques, it was a particularly corporate view of reality that he put in the service of the Clintons. He thinks about voters not just in terms of ideology -- with the cold war over, who really has one anymore? -- but in terms of lifestyle and attitude, the sitcoms they watch and the music they listen to. He searches for the little spaces where politics and government might fit between work and trips to school and soccer games.

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Clinton Campaign Puts Foot In Mouth, Swallows Leg Whole

The Clinton campaign has been out disparaging Obama's recent string of wins:

Bill Clinton, for instance: "the caucuses aren't good for her. They disproportionately favor upper-income voters who, who, don't really need a president but feel like they need a change."

Of course, besides being on the surface absurd (upper income voters don't need a president - huh? isn't this a democracy?), its also patently untrue. The caucuses Obama won in Iowa, he won all income brackets, not just upper income, and has also won lower income brackets in contests in Virginia, Missouri, etc. Also, the Clintons aren't exactly throwing back "wins" in the Nevada or New Mexico caucuses.

Then her chief strategist, PR wonk Mark Penn, posed the question this way: “Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois?” Chief Strategist Mark Penn said. “That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”

So now the Clinton campaign is telling states like Colorado, Missouri, Washington, Minnesota, Virginia, Maryland, Maine, Delaware, Iowa, and Connecticut that they don't matter, cos they didn't vote for her. Way to ingratiate yourself for the fall election.

Anyhow, these ludicrous arguments have even insulted and infuriated Clinton supporters like Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall:

...good spin is clever and forward-leaning pitches of actual realities, facts. The word in the sense we use it today actually came into being in the early 90s and to a great degree around the '92 Clinton campaign, which had such mastery in its practice. But this Clinton campaign has been doing it in a weird parody mode. Not sharp 'spins' on favorable realities, but aggressive pitches of complete nonsense. So now you have Penn successively saying caucus wins don't really count, small state wins don't really count, medium state wins don't really count, states with large African-American populations don't really count, all building up to yesterday's gem [the above Penn Quote]..."

Atrios:

Like I said yesterday, all this "spin" bugs me. Not because I'm being spun, but because spin should make your candidate look good, not bad. Mark Penn's pronouncements, and others from the campaign (he's not the only one), give me that watching-an-Ari-Fleischer-press-conference feeling. It's the utter contempt for everyone not on board with the candidate, an attempt to just assume them all away.

And this isn't even broaching the "screw the voters, I'm gonna get nominated by super delegates" maneuvering currently going on.

But check Kos's "I Voted for Obama Hence I Don't Matter" post for a rundown of all of this plus the superdelegate strategizing that lies behind it.

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Been Caught Stealing?

The New Republic on Hillary's gambit for the (disqualified) delegates from Florida And Michigan:

These days, you will commonly hear Obama supporters, and even many undecided Democrats, describe the Clintons as mendacious, brutal, willing to bend (or break) any rule in pursuit of power. Not all of these criticisms are fair. A decade's worth of resentment has come rushing out, as Democrats have suddenly felt free to despise the Clintons without worrying that their venting might aid Republicans. In certain quarters, it's an old-fashioned pile-on. Looking at their plight with any detachment, it is even possible to develop a measure of sympathy for the Clintons. Or it was, anyway, right up until the point at which Hillary threatened to steal the nomination. And theft is the only way to describe the plan she has floated for certifying the Florida and Michigan delegations...Democrats need to recognize this potential gambit for what it is: a cynical, selfish hijacking of the democratic process.

Read the rest here! Keep Reading (if there's more)...

Wow.

You gotta check out this new Frank Rich op-ed to understand how the Clinton campaign tactics may be dividing and, in the end, destroying the Democratic party. The title says its all: "Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War."
It centers on the (intentionally) divisive claim by the Clinton campaign that "hispanics don't vote for black candidates":

It wasn’t an accurate statement, historical or otherwise. It was a lie, and a bigoted lie at that, given that it branded Hispanics, a group as heterogeneous as any other, as monolithic racists...The real point of the Clinton campaign’s decision to sow misinformation and racial division, Mr. Rodriguez concluded, was to “undermine one of Obama’s central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types.”

On reinforcing that (false) division for future races:

The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall. Clearly it will stop at little. That’s why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton’s assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn’t matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote “is not going to count for anything.”

And on the hope for negotiating a compromise before the convention:

But does anyone seriously believe that Howard Dean can deter a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary?

A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.

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The BS Starts Again

I was starting to dig and respect Hillary's campaign a lot more, but then they start this kinda thing all over. This from the Clinton campaign after their win in Massachusetts:

One of the biggest surprises of the night is Massachusetts. Despite the fact that Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry were actively supporting and campaigning for Obama, Hillary Clinton won the state. Despite the fact that the Governor of Massachusetts endorsed Obama, Hillary Clinton won the state. Despite the fact that Obama visited Massachusetts just last night, Hillary Clinton won the state. This is a strong victory and shows that Hillary Clinton has strength in places where Barack Obama was expected to win.

Sounds good. But its not true. Yes, Obama had the support of Kerry and Kennedy - for the last week (ok, Kerry for a week longer). But Massachusetts was a stronghold of Clinton support - if Obama had won there it would've been a HUGE upset. Look at this:

That's the poll trends over the past YEAR. She was up as much as 20 points in polls a week ago. You can see Obama closed the gap to about 10 points in the last week - pretty amazing in and of itself, but in no way was he expected to win. Again, spin is one thing, but trying to manipulate the public by hoping they are not paying close attention and spinning an expected win as a come from behind triumph? C'mon. 

NOTE: Just saw this nearly identical post at AmericaBlog "Massachusetts was not an upset."

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