I am so ready for this election to be over:
They wouldn’t yell if they weren’t weak. They would exhibit an air of quiet confidence.
And if they felt they could win FL and MI fair and square, they would have taken Carville’s $15 million in a heartbeat, and stomped Hillary in both states.
They didn’t, so Carville called their bluff* not only on whether they care about doing the right thing and making disenfranchised voters whole — Answer: they don’t — but on how confident the Obama campaign is that they’ve got the nomination in the bag. Answer: They’re not confident at all.
On the other hand, in Clinton land we are supposed to assume a sign of strength is losing the delegate count, losing the popular vote, trailing in the national polls, making up bogus arguments about disfranchisement, trying to get credit for two states that everyone agreed would not count (one of which Obama was not even on the ballot), running low on cash (again), and throwing every piece of dirt at Obama the NRO thinks is clever and witty while hoping late night calls to super-delegates can wrestle away the nomination. Talk about a sign of strength. Woo boy. Hillary is gonna wrap up this nomination any day now, isn’t she?
Who is it again who is yelling because they are weak?
We aren’t yelling because we think Obama is going to lose. I can’t think of a realistic scenario in which Hillary wins, and neither can her campaign staff. We are yelling because we think the Hillary campaign is gift-wrapping the November election for McCain by destroying the party in an attempt to gain that which she failed to earn through the normal voting process. This is over, and only Hillary, her campaign, and the Hillary supporters (who are beginning to resemble Red State diarists when discussing Iraq) don’t seem to get it.
Davis X. Machina
Reagan’s unsuccessful ’76 campaign set up his ’80 nomination. It’s a story every campaign operative learns at his mother’s knee.
This is all about 2012.
myiq2xu
You do realize she stack up better against McCain than Obama?
Especially considering that he has kissed off Michigan and Florida, and got his ass whipped in Ohio and will get it whipped again in Pennsylvania.
Robert Johnston
Clinton’s not gift-wrapping anything for McCain. People forget, because the campaign started so fucking early this cycle, but there’s still an awfully long time until the election, and the late winter/early spring of an election year is pretty much exactly when intraparty squabbling traditionally hits its peak. Seven-and-a-half months is forever in an electoral cycle, and it takes far, far more than squabbling that, contrary to popular hysteria, isn’t particularly nasty by historical standards to gift-wrap anything at this point.
Yes, Clinton should get out. But complaints that she’s throwing the election to McCain are much more deranged and destructive than Clinton’s decision not to withdraw yet.
MJ
John are you getting close to the point that if Hillary was some how able to win the nomination that you wouldn’t vote for her?
myiq2xu
If this is “over,” how come Obama doesn’t have enough delegates to win it yet?
Yes, Hillary will need the support of enough automatic delegates to put her over the top, BUT SO DOES OBAMA!
Why are some Democrats so scared of democracy?
crayz
What total fucking horseshit – Jerome Armstrong is a douchebag. It doesn’t matter that Hillary is likely to win a majority of votes/delegates in upcoming states. No supporter of hers can come up with a plausible way that those wins will actually translate into her, you know, WINNING THE RACE
Instead we get mealy-mouthed spin like “strong winning narrative potential for Clinton.” Can the fucks translate that into English? Let me give it a go: “Hillary will have still utterly lost the race according to the rules setup beforehand, but maybe she can twist the superdelegates arm into installing her as the nominee based on ‘momentum'”
I have not seen good evidence that the Obama camp overtly killed MI/FL redos – in fact of the hearsay I’m aware of, there seems better evidence that Hillary tacitly encouraged the two states to rebel in the hope that she could use them exactly the way she attempted to – as safe ‘wins’ she could attempt to promote to the media if something went wrong in the smaller early primaries. And the delegates would get seated anyway once Queen Hillary ‘won’ her crown. The strategy backfired and now they cry because they broke the rules and disenfranchised themselves. Boo-hoo, what babies
Seriously, fuck these people
Soylent Green
Myiq, please write 100 times on the blackboard: the Democratic Primary is not the general election.
How the Dems split in a battleground state primary has nothing to do with their showing in the GE unless they don’t show up to vote. If anything, this primary reveals the opposite: the likelihood of record Dem turnouts and support that could easily win PA and FL and OH unless we fail to band together.
It’s beyond me why the Clintonistas cannot grasp how insulting their strategy is to all those folks who identify as Democrats in whatever place they call home. I’m especially concerned about all those younger voters who in the past never showed much zeal for elections but are in the swing now.
Their zeal will be smothered by all the backroom smoke that Hillary is counting on, and a potential sea change of future support for the party will evaporate.
The states aren’t red or blue, they’re purple. If one usually has gone 59 to 41 for the GOP (a landslide, right?), you only have to turn one voter in ten to grab that state.
But hey, there’s always 2012.
The Grand Panjandrum
I wonder how Clinton will handle this obvious lie? Any thoughts? She can’t be misremembering this incident or confusing it with some other incident. She has never been shot at. Period. Why is she lying?
PeterJ
Democracy for a Hillarybot would be the superdelegates voting for the candidate that won fewer delegates, fewer states, and fewer total votes.
4tehlulz
Much
w vincentz
I certainly won’t vote for Hillary, not after her whopper about her trip to Bosnia. Didn’t she realize she’d be fact checked?
After the past seven long years, I’m tired of lies and liars. Enough already!
Tsulagi
I’d go with that. Besides, I have full faith in the power of The MUP to transcend anything said by Hillary or McCain, or even himself.
Andrew
If Richardson is Judas and Hillary is Jesus, is Obama Caiaphas or Pontius Pilate?
PeterJ
I can’t remember there being a pony anywhere in the New Testament. Especially a magic unity pony.
Perhaps the answer is in John 12:11-19?
Davis X. Machina
According to tradition, the only black guy in the story — or at least an African — is St. Simon of Cyrene….
Can’t beat a parochial-school education. Thank you Sr. Mary Olive, wherever you are.
cleek
we all know it’s going to turn out that Hillary was talking about some other landing in Bosnia, and not the one that was shown in that clip.
myiq2xu
I John 2:18
myiq2xu
Matt Yglesias:
Stupid voters. Why can’t they do as they are told?
AkaDad
I give Hillary credit for teaching Chelsea an important life lesson by exposing her to sniper fire.
borehole
No, Crayz, he’s not a douchebag, he’s an amateur astrologist.
I’m sorry, I’ve just been informed that amateur astrologists are, technically, a subset of douchebags. As you were.
Wilfred
Serpentine, Chelsea, serpentine!
cleek
will Hillary now claim she has combat experience, just like McCain, thus proving that they and not Obama, have passed yet another critical threshold ?
Ninerdave
That video is hysterical.
I’m starting a “how many replies will this post get”. I’ll start with 325.
Ninerdave
my above post is missing a keyword.
“how many replies will this post get” *pool*
Damn WordPress for having no editable comments.
El Cid
While I wouldn’t argue that there is no cause for concern, I do think that once the nomination is determined (assuming it is settled in some way which isn’t freakishly divisive), the party will effectively turn its attentions to winning against McCain, and perhaps the public will be more inclined to such a compressed general campaign than one which lasts 9,000 years.
wonkie
HRC is herself a gift to McCain because she is unpopular outside the bubble of her identity politics supporters, and is an incompetent campaigner.
She has a consistant pattern of making decsions that look good in the short term but turn out to be bad in the long term. The easiest example to exp;ain is her failure to plan for after Super Tuesday but there is more.
She has decided to use the bigstate 50% plus one strategy that worked so well for Gore and Bush instead of the fifty state strategy that failed so miserably in o6!
She decided to disresepct Obama with unfair and untrue slime attacks with the result that many AA voters now will not vote for her. And she will need every vote she can get in the few states that she considers important.
At the beginning of the primary season her disapproval rating was at 45 to 49. Now as a result of the way she has conducted her campaign her disapproval rating got up to 51%. Bty her own tactics she has re-enforced and spread her own bad reputation. Even half of tghe Democrats think she is dishonest and ruthless. She won’t get the independent or swing votes he will need to win in the few states that she thinks are important.
One of her unfair and untrue attacks against Obama was to three times! state that she and McCAi were qualified to be the C in C and Obama wasn’t. Apparently her camp was too arrogant or too maladept to consider the down side of using experience as a selling point for her. they floundered around trying to dream up some impressive experience and just made themselves look (to anyone outside the HRC identity politics bubble) silly. Then HRC dug herslef farther into the hole of her own making by telling a fib–a big fib.
So now we know that her so-called experience that qualifies her to be C in C is a lie.
There are lots of examples of this but what it amounts to is: if she gets the nom McCain will eat her alive. She can’t campaign worth shit.
Ninerdave
snicker. Mark Penn is your hero, admit it.
Dennis - SGMM
Anyone who isn’t deeply moved by the thought of Clinton, snapping off shots from her own weapon and tossing the occasional grenade as she led the Americans to safety at the Tuzla airport, is just a misogynist.
MJ
Well there is this:
I really don’t know how good of a poll that is and there is plenty of time for the Dem to recover but that does look grim and as time goes on things between the Hillary and Obama camps will likely get uglier. For example: Bill Clinton is not a McCarthyite and Bill Richardson is not a Judas. (OT: I think Richardson would be a good pick for VP for Obama)
myiq2xu
That’s what they are referred to in the rules. They are also called “unpledged” delegates. “Superdelegate” does not appear in the rules.
Not that I would expect an Obama supporter to be familiar with the rules.
Ninerdave
As much as I despise Hillary right now, a lot of the campaign’s incompitence can be traced back to Penn. You can fault her for being too loyal (ring a bell anyone?) but I her collapse had more to do with her campaign than her herself.
ACK
There is none so deaf as he that will not hear…
John S.
This rates right up there in terms of propagandist bullshit terminology like ‘Islamofascist’ and ‘War on Terror’.
Indeed.
PK
Hillary’s lies about Bosnia will come back to bite her in Nov against McCain (if she is the nominee). Al Gore was totally portrayed as a liar by the media over stupid, inconsequential stuff. And here she is caught in an easily provable deception. Can you imagine the republicans going after her with this! As well as the Irish peace accord which she apparently helped foster! Add to it the media hatred of Hillary.
She may be making it impossible for Obama to win in Nov, but she is screwing her own chances as well!
Ninerdave
Wow, you’re so by the book! Except for when the book is against you.
They’ve been informally called super-delegates since their creation. That is until Team Hillary decided that it made then sound too important and threatening.
Soylent Green
That says it all.
myiq2xu
What is thy name? And he answered, saying, Our name is Legion: for we are many.
Sounds like a fanboi rally.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
John,
You’re not be old enough to remember the 1972 campaign, but this is exactly what the Muskie-Humphrey party establishment did to McGovern. They fought like rabid wolverines to keep the DFH’s from taking over what they considered to be “their party”. A lot of that damage spilled over into the general election and contributed to Nixon’s landslide victory that year.
This year is not identical – Obama is a better speaker than McGovern, his campaign is much better organized and funded, he is not positioned far to the ideological left on most issues, and McCain is no Nixon. But there are a lot of similarities.
The Clintonistas know that if HRC goes down they will lose control of the party – the positions of influence and patronage within the party hierarchy will no longer be theirs to dispense, and if Obama wins in 2008 and manages to get reelected in 2012 then his people will put their stamp on the party, just as the Clinton’s did during the 1990’s.
For the Clintons and their allies, it isn’t just about the POTUS – they see the whole Democratic party slipping away. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and if Obama still wins the nomination and they manage to hamstring him to the point of losing in November, so much the better – revenge is a dish best served cold. You are witnessing power politics at its most raw and basic level, practiced within the Democratic party.
It didn’t have to be this way. I and everyone else I know would be happy to see Hillary run a clean, positive campaign all the way to the convention, in which she and Obama compete to see who can do a better job of contrasting the positions of the Democratic nominee with McCain, and improve the chances of the party having success in November. Nobody sane would be calling for her to withdraw if she were running that kind of race.
That is what a true Democrat, who is committed to what the party stands for, would do. Unfortunately neither of the Clintons are true Democrats any more, if they ever were. The only party they belong to is the Clinton party, something that becomes ever more painfully clear every time they open their yaps to say something stupid.
Bill Richardson figured this out, perhaps because support for Hillary is collapsing like a cheap tent right here in his own state. For the last couple of weeks I’ve asked every Democrat and every DINO and Indy I can find what they think about this campaign, and I have not been able to find a single living person who would vote for HRC in November. Not one.
Now everyone in my sample is under the age of 50, so take that with a grain of salt, but still. A fair number of these people would have been happy to pull a level for HRC as recently as January. Now they grimace and clench their teeth at the mere mention of her name.
Clinton fans, those of you remaining that are still loyal Democrats first (and not just servants to the party of Clinton), please get it through your thick skulls – Hillary and Mark Penn and all have done a textbook job of turning HRC into somebody that people yell at when she is on the TV, almost as much as Bush.
Yes, she has also been able to drive down Obama’s popularity, but at what cost? Mission Accomplished, you twits; the insurgency is in its last throes.
smiley
HaHaHa! Good one.
zzyzx
I’m yelling because I’m tired of seeing erstwhile Democratic sites echoing Red State and Fox News in an attempt to destroy the likely candidate out of a vague hope that Clinton will emerge from the ashes.
I don’t blame Clinton, I blame MyDD (the last two weeks of my life have been spent there going, “You contradicted yourself in 7 places,” or, “That’s not a reliable source.”) and Talk Left and Hi44.org.
I want this over because McCain is getting a free pass right now.
John S.
Actually, Harold Ickes is myiq½xu’s hero:
The term isn’t propaganda, it’s in the ‘rules’ – honest!
ACK
And then the terrorists will have won.
ThymeZone
Luckily, and I mean that so sincerely, we have plenty of those people here to remind us, on every thread, every hour, in every subthread and conversation, that they don’t get it.
“We don’t get it!” they cry.
Over and over, and over again. Thinking, as near as I can figure out, that if they say that enough, then the rest of us will change our minds, or reality will change, or something.
Over and over, and over and over, and over, and over, and over, again and again and again and again and again.
Did I mention, over and over again?
Pie. There is plenty of pie, there is pie for everyone. Have some pie.
myiq2xu
Reality is for people who can’t handle kool-aid.
Seitz
Other than being a dubious datapoint, I’m not sure why polls like this are good for anyone. I’m sure as hell not going to be bullied into voting for Hillary in the primary just because she has more petulant assholes supporting her than Obama.
BH Buck
It’s alright. The more this CRAP goes on, the higher McCain’s numbers climb!
Happy Easter, From Rasmussen
Democrats: Throwing ’08 away with both hands.
John S.
CNN didn’t seem to get myiq½xu’s talking point:
NBC didn’t seem to get the memo either:
I drink myiq½xu’s milkshake! I drink it all up!
borehole
Word, Seitz. But credit where it’s due–considering how many petulant assholes support Obama, it’s really saying something that HRC leads among that particular demo.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
myiq=0, go fuck yourself with a rusty chainsaw.
ThymeZone
Where the hell do these bedwetters come from?
It’s March. The election is in November. McCain is going to lose. By the morning after election day, he will wish he were back in the middle of the Keating scandal. His ass is going to be flattened like a bug under a truck tire.
Dems who don’t have the stones to stand up thru a primary season and then get their candidate elected? Go away, join the Sucker Party.
Ninerdave
Before I go back to Warcraft let’s consider take the time to consider Hillary’s experience. In fact let’s compare her to the current occupant, since he’s most recently done the job, and has plenty of experience.
1) Excessively loyal to people leading her down the wrong path.
check! (Penn)
2) Can’t admit a mistake
check! (Iraq vote)
3) Continues down the wrong path in the face of negative public opinion.
check! (Kyl-Lieberman).
4) Smears opponents when losing.
check!
5) Lies
check! (see above video)
6) Refuses and/or hesitates to release information
check! (where’s them taxes?)
7) Thinks Democrats don’t count unless they follow her (think Lieberman).
check!
So yeah, I guess Hillary is more qualified!!
zzyzx
The one thing that I haven’t heard is how they plan to sell the SD movement to the obama supporters. Until there’s a good plan for that, the best Clinton can do (barring HUGE wins in all remaining states) is lose the general and split the party.
BH Buck
The same bedwetters that Bush in twice, you mean? Oh, they exist. Don’t fool yourself.
BH Buck
“put” Bush in twice… sheesh.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Ninerdave,
You forgot:
8) Brings a rogue behind-the-scenes power broker (hello Bill C., I’m looking at you) with her into the WH.
Doctor Jay
I gave money to Hillary and I think I’m getting good value. If you Obama supporters would take a deep breath, I think you might realize that the continued exposure in states such as PA and later is good for your candidate, who is the strong favorite to be nominated.
When do you think the last time was that voters in PA had a hand in selecting the presidential nominee? The 12th of never, I think. I think that they are probably for the most part, really charged up about it. Which will translate to higher turnout in November, guaranteed. That’s statistical, there will be the dabblers, and the stay-homers, and the party-jumpers, and they will be real loud about it, but I say to hell with them. There aren’t that many of them.
Why do you expect someone to hand it to you on a silver platter? Go out and win it. You’re in the lead. Work, donate, talk.
It’s the fourth quarter. Time to see who wants it more. Win. You, and the Obama team, have to learn to take some heat and keep your head. It’s necessary for the job.
You know what, should Obama win, I’ll support him, too. Hillary will too, she’ll even campaign for him, if he asks nicely.
Robert Johnston
I can tell you exactly how good a poll it is. It’s a poll asking people what they might conditionally do in a hypothetical scenario set 7+ months away. It’s worth about as much as used toilet paper. At this stage polls are much, much, much less predictive of how people will end up voting than things like the state of the economy, the state of the war in Iraq, the job approval of the sitting president, the degree of racism in the electorate at large, and the press’s inability to release its collective liplock on McCain’s nether regions.
You’ll make far better predictions about the election if you refuse to look at another poll until the conventions are over and in the meantime rely solely on analyzing the underlying fundamentals of the political situation.
Soylent Green
Bill and Hill have been going out of their way lately to tell us how much they are bosom buddies with John McCain, have the utmost respect for him and his service to our country, are on the same bowling league team, etc., but just happen to hold some different views toward matters of domestic and foreign policy. Except for that pesky policy stuff, they are birds of a feather.
What’s up with that? Is this admission supposed to give me a more favorable view of Hillary? I’m truly mystified.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Another unlikely endorsement for Obama, this time from former OLC head Douglas Kmiec, who served under two Republican presidents:
Kmiec goes on to explain in detail that this endorsement comes despite the fact that he disagrees with Obama on the majority of the issues of importance to him. He thinks there are more important things at stake here:
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what patriotism looks like. Sticking up for principles over party. It reminds me of somebody on this very blog.
h/t hilzoy at obsidianwings
ThymeZone
To whom do you think you are speaking?
I’m $1400 into the Obama campaign and I plan to be all the way in before the primaries are over. I don’t need any lectures from you. Nobody here is expecting “a silver platter.”
Take your lameass strawman and lecture and shove it.
AkaDad
Thanks. I appreciate the compliment. ;-)
Randolph Fritz
The public, who really like to see the Republicans lose the Presidency and fear that the Democrats can’t pull it off.
tBone
-From The War Journals of Hillary Clinton, Vol. 1
Napoleon
About 2 or 3 weeks ago I finally realized that what we are seen replayed is the 72 primary season, where the Democratic elite torpedoed the party in the fall election to destroy the liberal wing of the party. I think that is what you will see played out.
tbone – thats a classic.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Doctor Jay ,
If Hillary were campaigning in a positive way, I’d be right there with you. The problem many Democrats such as myself have with her isn’t that she is continuing to campaign, it is that she is pushing themes that hurt her and Obama both, to McCain’s benefit. The experience gap between McCain and Hillary is much wider than the gap between her and Obama, especially on national security issues, so why does she keep pushing it?
Honestly I’m not very happy with the message coming from either HRC or Obama right now. Both of them need to start talking in detail about the economy, and specifically what choices and tradeoffs do we need to make in order to get the credit market and the shadow banking system under control.
What sort of regulatory restraints should we be demanding as compensation for taxpayer financed bailouts which are looming down the road? Or do we deep six the idea of any bailout, and take our chances with a 1930-33 style systemic failure of the banking system?
They should be spending their time in the remaining primaries laying the groundwork for the hard choices which we as a nation will have to make to live within our means while we pay down our debt (both public and private), and decide what needs to be done to fairly allocate the pain of doing so across our society in an acceptable manner.
Will we reject free trade and put in place a tariff regime designed to reindustrialize this country (to the detriment of the financial sector), or will we fiddle around the margins of NAFTA without making large scale changes? If the former, how will we cope with a federal budget which will at least in the short term be consumed with exploding debt service costs (e.g., there goes health care – sorry about that but no money is left to pay for it)?
The big issue in the fall is going to be the economy, not the crap we are dealing with right now. Both HRC and Obama should be positioning themselves on this issue while McCain is busy being Joe Lieberman’s sock puppet in the Middle East.
Ninerdave
tbone. You’ve outdone yourself. Genius.
Ted
You really are on her campaign’s payroll, aren’t you? No one but her paid staffers call them “automatic delegates”. In almost 30 years they’ve never been called that by anyone.
Chris Johnson
Today I’m looking into some stuff I heard that seems to check out but is tough to interpret- I got unexpectedly blindsided by the claim “Hillary is a DOMINIONIST!” and was all WTF.
This is the closest I could find to a ‘real’ story on it, though it’s Mother Jones. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html
Again wtf? I’m not as troubled if Hil is simply playing faux fundie to ingratiate herself with somebody, but I do know that a good way to produce a genuine radical fundie is through extreme hardship and Hil qualifies, what with the rightwing attacks for so many years. It’s said she prays with the likes of Santorum etc, and that some of her triangulations are not really simple hypocrisy, but actually true to her essentially Dominionist religious beliefs. Sort of like ‘Left Behind’ as social policy.
My question is basically ‘wut?’. Basically if this is true my prefs would be ranked Obama/McCain/Clinton in that order, and if it is not true it looks more like Obama/Clinton/McCain by a small margin, or Obama/write-in-Obama/Clinton/McCain. That sort of thing…
It becomes sort of like trying to put out two fires in different houses- do we put ending the war first, or do we put heading off the continuing Dominionist takeover of the government first? Can I haz both plz?
ThymeZone- I made a bit over $11K last year and paid $1800 in taxes, roughly. I’m holding off because I need a clearer sense of what my financial obligations really are- but it is not at all unthinkable that I will end up saying the same as you, that I will throw in excess of $1000 at the Obama campaign. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time and I don’t do lil donations as a rule, have never in fact. But the stakes might be too high not to throw everything I can into the hat. I’m waiting on some financial information so I know if I have it to spend.
Anyone with better information than me about whether Hillary is in fact a Dominionist and not triangulating but acting according to her deeper beliefs, please fill in. It’s a bit important, to my mind. Worth a lot more study as people are saying WILD THINGS about this one.
BH Buck
tBone, priceless!
Laertes
Yeah, she’s a much stronger candidate in the general. She’s been thoroughly vetted and she stacks up better against McCain and she’s got combat experience (see above.)
I was certainly hoping she’d win it all. A shame she lost primary to Obama.
I’m bitter, of course, but I think I’ll choke it down and vote for him in the general anyway.
Ninerdave
Chris, I saw something like that the other day over at Huffington Post. I came away unimpressed. To buy that she’s got some hidden agenda because of her prayer buddies, you’d have to accept that Obama is anti-semitic, etc. because of Wright, or McCain is anti-catholic.
Just bullshit mudslinging.
Dennis - SGMM
tbone, It was just like being there!
It’s a damned dirty shame that there’s no Pulitzer Prize for snark.
cain
tbone,
+1 dude. That should go on the front page.
cain
Bruce Moomaw
“If Richardson is Judas and Hillary is Jesus, is Obama Caiaphas or Pontius Pilate?”
More to the point, if she loses do we get to crucify her?
cain
I’m sure we can have own award ceremony for snark. I mean nobody snarks better than this site. I vote for myiq2xu in general when he isn’t getting his ass cheeks turned into swiss cheese.
cain
smiley
tBone wins No contest.
Chris Johnson
Yeah but it reminds me of, for instance, old school John Cole being unimpressed by antiwar arguments. It hangs together for me but you have to understand what you’re looking at- like the MJ article concludes, we’re not quick to recognize fundamentalism unless it’s in a cornpone accent.
A lot of Hillary’s actions make sense if she’s an educated, intelligent Dominionist, not running about frothing and cursing people, but patiently working to bring everybody and the government to God and Jesus- specifically the Dominionist flavor, where you don’t actually carry on helping the poor or anything like that, you take pains to reward and celebrate life’s winners and the powerful as they push for a Christian nation.
It makes a lot of sense if this is her view.
I know an ex-fundie. He’s a pretty weird fellow, but on the subject of this type of religion he is compelling, and the point is that whether you are to be tolerated or exterminated, if you’re not Christian like them you’re NOT HUMAN. You’re not really a person, you’re an agent of Satan. This is the corn-pone variety where everybody but you is DAYUMNED!
It looks like the Hillary slant is to not rant and rave, but patiently and steadily work towards- the same thing. Theocracy, in this case possibly even less geared towards ‘good works’ than the Southern fundies. Think John Ashcroft, Santorum, etc.
Splitting Image
If there is any doubt about who the superdelegates, or “automatic delegates” will prefer, consider all the metrics they will need to consider:
1) pledged delegates.
2) popular vote.
3) number of states.
4) number of new voters.
5) who is the tallest on stage.
and 6) who is prefered by local Hooters waitresses.
The reason the supers are officially known as “automatic delegates” is because they will carefully consider all of these in turn, and will then “automatically” forget them when someone whispers the word “fundraising”.
That is the unspoken final metric that will decide it for the uncommitted delegates.
myiq2xu
Props to tbone – Two opposable thumbs up!
Sloppy seconds to John S. (it took you a whole week and that was the best you could do?)
zzyzx
You should so make that a diary at dkos and mydd.
myiq2xu
Holy crap:
I guess Bill R. didn’t get the memo about Obama infallibility!
BTW – The facial pube look good on him, he should have tried them earlier.
Will he be burned at the stake for heresy?
myiq2xu
That should be “pubes” since there obviously is more than one
Laertes
“Will [Richardson] be burned at the stake for heresy?”
A fine test!
We shall see. If the Obama supporters here viciously turn on the man, I’ll agree that they’re douchebags just like the Hillbots.
If they don’t, then you’ll agree that the Hillbots here are more emotionally and irrationally involved with their candidate than the Obama supporters.
Your challenge is accepted. Game on!
Conservatively Liberal
tbone, that is a gripping story! Almost like a Tom Clancy novel…lol! Top notch stuff!
TenguPhule
TenguPhule
I dunno. Why does Hillary want states that had only her name on it to count?
BH Buck
Just back from TalkLeft. Am I wrong, or do those people over suffer from an Obama-phobia?
VidaLoca
myiq —
You’re probably too young to realize it too, but when “LeftTurnInABQ” says this:
He hits the nail exactly on the head. And to the extent that he does so this
does not cut it.
A lot of good people with good ideas threw up their hands and walked away from electoral politics after the 1972 debacle. I was one of them. And it was a big strategic mistake because the vacuum we left was filled by the type of brain-dead hacks that today “lead” the DLC. LTinABQ is basically right: their biggest fear is not losing the presidency because win or lose they can still hold on the the party apparatus that gives them what they think is legitimacy. Lose that apparatus though and they’re just a bunch of losers. Old, lame, losers. To them this is not about the most qualified candidate to be the President or the most likely candidate to beat McCain; this is self-preservation pure and simple.
It’s all well and good for you to go along pissing in the Magical Unity Cornflakes — but this election is too important to be put in the hands of a group of people whose blind incompetence is only exceeded by their naked opportunism; you don’t want to be fronting for them.
TenguPhule
Hillary could have bumped her credibility by attacking the mutual enemy, but Nooo, she had to hand Fuckstain McCain a free pass on the wrong issue.
She picks the wrong fights at the wrong time and wonders now why she’s losing. Your fellow Democrats are not the enemy, Hillary. The Republican Traitors are.
The Other Steve
I really really hope Hillary drops out and we have a clear candidate with Obama.
I think it will be absolutely fantastic for us to have two candidates who truly love America. Wouldn’t that be great? To have such an election.
That just isn’t possible with someone like Hillary.
jen
You’re creating the perfect setup aren’t you! So, if Obama wins the nomination, when he loses the GE, BAM! it’s all Hillary’s fault! LOL!! Yes, it makes perfect since because everyone knows everything is the Clinton’s fault!
No, we’re not giving up and we’re not giving in because we’ve known all along Obama can’t/won’t win the GE.
The only Dem to win the office of the presidency in the past 28 years in this country was named “Clinton”.
The R’s never got over that. They spent the entire 8 yrs exhausting all their resources of energy and money in an effort to take them down. Yes, “them”. She had the AUDACITY to try to use her position as First Lady to better the world and provide universal health care. She was brutally derided for it when sexism was barely admonished with a wrist slap, let alone renounced… Newt Gingrich and cohorts lived and breathed to destroy her health care plan.
The Elephant Party is known for their lasting memories. It’s often said that a Republican never forgets who their enemies are… The name Clinton tops the list and has for a few decades. Because they won. They beat them at their own game. Twice. No other Dem has in most of our adult lifetimes.
Then they had the added AUDACITY to preside over peace and prosperity for 8 years (oh I know it’s all been rewritten and the rewrite shows us the 90’s actually sucked– Problem is …I have a memory too) — Clinton is not the “easy one to beat”, as the Limbaugh oft-repeated meme might suggest … (since when do we take what Rush says at face value?)
Read any thread for the past 6 months at Free Republic to see who the ground team is really organizing for to take the Dem nomination. It’s Obama. Yes, I know – Rush Rush Rush. Just go look for yourself. It’s easy to see.
Every movement organized by grassroots / netroots Repub’s is hatched over at Freeperville. See it for yourself. The Dem for a Day campaign was set up to crossover for Obama. I know it’s painful to think that Rush might be trying to spread DISINFO!!
(No, Not Rush! Would he?! Could he?!! We never thought we might have to doubt him!!)
Hillary Clinton has miles of experience– not referring to the kind of experience she touts on the campaign trail — but the electable kind. The experience of having been a living pinata for the republican party for three decades – and bouncing back up, dusting off, still standing strong. There is not a Swifter out there who hasn’t already taken a few gratuitous swings at her with a club. Still standin’… still commanding half the voters votes in the country.
That’s how you win a race across from the New Republicans.
Durability! Resilience. Toughness.
My interest in preventing McCain/Lieberbush from taking office in January ’09 is far stronger than any nebulous enticement I may feel to Hope for Change in an untested wilderness
myiq2xu
The goldberging of history continues.
Did you know that Nixon’s ratfuckers sabotaged the campaigns of Ed Muskie and Henry “Scoop” Jackson because Nixon thought McGovern would be a weaker opponent?
Back when the Watergate scandal broke, the most famous ratfucker was Donald Segretti (who now supports McCain) but Segretti had two henchmen – Lee Atwater and Karl Rove.
It didn’t help when McGovern’s choice for Veep had to be replaced when it was learned that the first one had undergone electro-shock therapy.
Also, from wiki:
Ironic, eh?
PaulB
Google search on “superdelegates” or “super delegates”: roughly 3,000,000 hits.
Google search on “automatic delegates” or “unpledged delegates”: roughly 55,000 hits.
Game, set, match.
myiq2xu
Yes – SASQ
PaulB
This is classic troll logic: “You wouldn’t be yelling at me if I hadn’t hit a nerve, if there wasn’t a ‘grain of truth’ to my comments!” It’s a classic logical fallacy that both Jerome and Lambert damn well ought to know about.
PaulB
The two narratives are not mutually exclusive.
myiq2xu
Reading comprehension is very important.
“Superdelegate” appears 3,000,000 times on the intertoobs, but how many times does it appear in the official DNC rules?
PaulB
Oh, nonsense. Both Obama and Clinton can easily take the 2008 election.
Not only is that entirely irrelevant, since that man is not running this year, but you’re overlooking Gore who did, in fact, win the popular vote and, if the votes had been counted, would have won the electoral vote, as well.
myiq2xu
Strange, I recall watching the 1972 convention (on television) and I even attended a McGovern speech.
PaulB
Since that is entirely irrelevant when it comes to deciding which term to use in a public forum, I’m afraid that you don’t have a point. The common term is “superdelegate,” which is why that term has been used over and over again, including by Clinton’s camp, for most of this process. The Clinton camp only changed its usage when they decided that the term didn’t look good in sentences like: “The Democratic superdelegates overrode the elected delegates to give Clinton the victory.”
The only people who use “automatic delegates” are the Clinton Kool-Aid drinkers.
myiq2xu
Let me guess, instead of “penis” and “vagina” you say “pee pee” and “hoo hoo” don’t you?
Proper names are never irrelevant.
PaulB
You are, as usual, quite incorrect. Both about my usage and about the common usage. Hint: Google is your friend.
Really? Then you never take a piss, you always micturate?
Please… You might as well concede now, because you’re just making yourself look even more stupid and more desperate than usual.
ACK
How many times does the word “automatic delegate” appear in the official DNC rules?
myiq2xu
More times than “superdelegate.”
Conservatively Liberal
And if it were not for Ross Perot, there never would have been a President Clinton in ’93. Clinton did not win in ’92, the Republicans lost. During the Clinton presidency, the Democrats lost ground everywhere else; at the local, state and federal levels. After 7 years of Bush, many are wistfully looking back at the Clinton years like they were some golden age for the Democratic party. They were not.
I remember those years very well, and they were not as rosy as people remember. Seven years of Bu$hshit only creates that illusion.
The Clinton/DLC are the past, Obama/DNC is the future. There are 50 states, not 16. Every American matters, not just the ones in the big states. Obama gets this, Hillary does not.
PaulB
What’s hilarious, myiq, is that a Google search shows that you didn’t switch to using the “correct” terminology until the Clinton camp started doing so. My goodness, what an interesting coincidence.
VidaLoca
In that case, my apologies for insinuating that you’re too young to remember.
It would mean that you also lived through the Carter administration; as well as the Mondale campaign, the Dukakis campaign, the Kerry campaign. You’ve watched the Democratic leadership in Congress since 2006.
In all seriousness — what lessons do you take away from this?
jen
Does that mean FL and MI count?
ACK
You’re right about that. But, I’ll answer the question that I asked anyway.
“Automatic” delegates occurs one (1) time in the DNC rules. “Unpledged” delegates sixteen (16) times. Yet, the Clinton team decided that the term “automatic” rather than “unpledged” or the commonly used term “superdelegate” was the more appropriate term to use. For innocuous reasons, I’m sure.
myiq2xu
Every election is unique
myiq2xu
Gee, wow, you googled me?
Do I have another intertoob stalker?
myiq2xu
Cool – I like “unpledged” better since it indicates that they are not obligated to vote in any particular way.
Thanks
BTW – “Unpledged” delegates include “automatic” and “add-on” delegates.
Ninerdave
Whoopsie!
PaulB
Just to check your usage of “superdelegates,” dear heart. A really complex task that took all of 15 seconds. Isn’t it funny how you had no problem with the term until the Clinton team decided that it didn’t fit their spin?
No, dear; I don’t take you seriously enough for that. Nice try at ducking the issue, though.
PeterJ
Ross Perot’s voters would have split 50-50 between Clinton and Bush. Perot wasn’t a spoiler candidate like Nader in 2000.
VidaLoca
True, but you’re being disingenuous. What they have in common is that they were all produced and directed by the same group of wizards that took Sen. Clinton from being the presumptive nominee when this whole charade started, to hanging on by her fingernails to the #2 spot!
Putting aside their dismal record for the last 28 years –doesn’t that fact alone tell you anything?
ACK
I don’t see that type of delineation when I read the actual rules. I do see the term “unpledged add-on” delegate repeatedy, with “unpledged” looking as though it is just a shortened term for “unpledged add-on.” And then there is an obscure reference to “automatic” at a later point.
And, I am not going to pretend that I am any type of great authority on the DNC rules. If you have further information or a link, I would be happy to take a look. Thanks.
myiq2xu
Who is that group of wizards? The ones from the Harry Potter books?
Seriously, the “same group” you are referring to are also represented in the Obama campaign.
It’s called the Democratic party. Obama is a member of that party, and has lots of establishment support.
He came up through the system, he didn’t descend from Heaven.
Laertes
You win the thread, sir.
Conservatively Liberal
They would have if their leaders had not played chicken with the DNC. Hell, they would have played an even bigger role had they did the right thing. They blew it, and the people of those states should hold them accountable for it. I do have to say that I do not like the way it was handled (on both sides), but the rules are the rules. That is pretty much the end of it.
The DNC should have cut their delegate strength in half and allowed them to participate. That made more sense, but then again I did not make the rules. Hillary (and the other candidates) agreed to the terms. Harold Ickes was one of the people to approve the decision to strike their delegates. But now they are all for counting every vote because they are very important.
Anyone with half a brain can see that the Clinton game plan was to win Super Tuesday, gain control of the convention and then seat the Michigan and Florida delegates. They put all of their chips on one number, and they lost. Now they are singing a new tune and trying to save their asses using sappy lines about counting all voters (while dissing those in caucus or primary states that she did not win) and trying to dump it all on Obama that their votes are not being counted.
So yes, all 50 states count. Even if Obama does not win in Florida or Michigan in the general, I have a feeling that he will respect them like any other state in the nation. I do not think Hillary (or Bill) have that capacity in them.
myiq2xu
If that happens he’ll be respecting them from the Senate, not the White House.
myiq2xu
Typical Obamanational.
Declare victory as if your opinion is all that matters.
PeterJ
Do you actually have an opinion of your own, or do you just repeat the latest talking points from the Clinton campaign?
Laertes
It’s so funny that people think voters in FL and MI are even going to remember this silliness with the primary, much less remain bitter about it.
This is inside baseball. The sort of hardcore election freaks who, for instance, hang around on web boards and argue about whose candidate is teh roxx0rs will remember, but we’ll all buck up and vote for the nominee anyway. Joe Swing Voter hasn’t even STARTED paying attention to this shit yet, and won’t make up his mind until the end of October anyway.
It’s real easy to imagine that the world revolves around you–that everyone else cares about the things you care about, and is outraged by the things you’re outraged about, and will react the way you’d like to imagine they’ll react.
The simple fact is that all this silly shit is forgotten about a week after the nomination is settled. We’ll close ranks behind our nominee just like the Republicans have closed ranks behind theirs.
Then they’ll trot out their misogyny or bigotry, depending, and we’ll wrap Bush and Iraq around McCain’s neck. And no matter who our nominee is, November is going to be a landslide.
Quit crying already. Sack up and demonstrate a sense of perspective.
myiq2xu
Who do you think writes their talking points?
VidaLoca
This is true — and I think one of the positive contributions you’ve made to the discussion here over the past months is pointing this out (ad nauseum but there’s no question, you’re pointing it out ;) ). Obama is a center-right Democrat, he came up through the system, in a lot of ways his policies are not that different from Clinton’s. Part of his appeal is it’s easy for people on the left to conflate our desire for something new with his ability (not to mention commitment) to deliver it and that kind of mistake can result in a lot of embarrassment. He’s not doing much to dispel that aspect of his appeal, either.
So, right: Obama is certainly no radical and he has lots of the kind of establishment support that non-radicalism can bring to the table. Anybody who’s expecting big changes in the wake of his election in November is likely to be disappointed.
However, the one thing he does offer is putting an end to the Clintons and their coterie of wonkish compromisers and collaborators in the DLC. Yeah the DLC will still be around and yeah a new group of hacks will move in and yeah the chance exists that they’ll be no better than the old group of hacks. But they’ll at least be a different group of hacks — this much we can take as a certainty. There is also the possibility that there will be some conflict within the party between the hacks and the small minority of people who want the see the Democratic party be something more than a sinecure for old farts.
The latter would be interesting — it’s something that hasn’t happened since 1972 when the old farts won. They might win again too — but under Hillary the old farts win hands down, the fight never happens.
Ninerdave
Penn and Ickes last I looked.
PeterJ
Considering the quality of the talking points… 10 monkeys with typewriters?
Laertes
Speaking of Penn, that’s gotta be complicating her fundraising right about now.
Her campaign is broke, and owes $2.5m to Penn. So yeah, donate to her and you’re essentially just donating to Mark Fucking Penn.
I pity the poor campaign drone who has to make THAT pitch.
tBone
Any rumors you hear about them ghostwriting adrenaline-filled tales of the battlefield are pure rubbish, though. Honest.
El Cid
I sternly oppose that we use the term driveway for where we park and the term parkway for where we drive.
I looked in up in the rulebook and I will answer you 9,000 times because I am completely not obsessive compulsive.
Conservatively Liberal
This is something that I have thought about for some time now. Why is Obama so popular among young people? Why, of all times, are young people getting involved? When I was young and a Democrat, one thing I did not like was the limitations that were imposed on our society due to the limited ability to freely communicate.
I had my disagreements with the party, which eventually led me to quit it in ’92 and become an independent. But there was no way to really voice them, to find others of a like mind to talk with. Well, the internet is that place. I think that it is a way for progressives to network and chat, and in doing so it helps to build the movement. It also helps that the internet is basically a progressive type of environment, and the young are very involved in computers and their use.
Young people are generally progressive, and society has always kept them bottled up by controlling the media, and thus the narrative. Basically, the old people ran the show while the young looked on. When I was young, the main reason for voter apathy was a lack of ‘connection’ to the party or cause. You really did not feel like your vote really made any difference, and since everyone else controlled the narrative, why even bother voting?
The internet has changed that once and for all. As the internet matures, the progressive movement that uses it gets stronger and stronger. Young people now feel they have a say, and they are speaking out.
The old people are trying to ignore it.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Party history time:
Each campaign is unique, but they also share common elements. Going from my memory Democratic primaries have featured an insurgent grassroots left vs. centrist establishment contest most years since 1968.
1968 Eugene McCarthy & later RFK vs. LBJ and later Humphrey
1972 George McGovern vs. everybody else
1980 John Anderson (RINO / 3rd party) vs. both Carter and Reagan in the general election
1984 Gary Hart vs. Walter Mondale
1988 Jesse Jackson vs. everybody else
1992 Jerry Brown vs. Bill Clinton
2004 Dean vs. everybody else
That leaves 1976, 1996, 2000 as the only presidential primary years out of the last 4 decades not to feature a strong grassroots vs. centrist contest. 1996 and 2000 both featured an incumbent Pres. and Vice Pres. who were not strongly challenged for party unity reasons. 1976 is the only “open” year (no incumbent as the potential nominee) which has not featured this pattern.
John Anderson in 1980 is a special case, because he ran within the GOP during the primaries but with strong crossover support from grassroots Dems, which continued into his run as a 3rd party candidate during the general election. The reason I included him as an example is that the Obama 2008 campaign resembles the Anderson 1980 campaign in ideological positioning more than a little bit. Both of them ran (are running) as ideological centrist national unity campaigns using grassroots tactics.
Counting Obama 2008 as a grassroots insurgency campaign, by my count that makes 8 out of the last 11 (or 7 out of 11 if you leave out Anderson 1980). These individual contests have all differed in their details, but have shared a common theme.
The DLC/centrist establishment candidate normally wins these things. McGovern 1972 was the last time a grassroots campaign beat the centrist establishment.
Of the 5 times the DLC/centrist candidate won the nomination when this pattern was in effect (excluding 1980), they went on to lose in the general election 4 out of 5 times. Bill Clinton in 1992 was the only DLC/centrist candidate in the last four decades to overcome a grassroots challenge and go on to win in the general election. Ross Perot did have something to do with this despite the vote splits, because Perot spent much of his campaign attacking the political establishment in DC, of which GHB was the exemplar.
I submit that since: (A) Hillary’s campaign team is not as strong as Bill’s in 1992 (hello Mark Penn!), and (B) there is no Ross Perot this year, that if Hillary takes the nomination she will lose in the general election to McCain.
Her negative ratings are already higher than any successful presidential candidate since Richard Nixon, the press will savage her ruthlessly, Indys will go to McCain in decisive numbers, and Democratic turnout will be depressed compared with expectations created during the primaries as an unavoidable consequence of the methods she would need to use to get the nomination.
If she does pull off a miracle and win, we can expect her to start with near historic low approval ratings and strong potential for a fortress mentality administration featuring Nixonian levels of political paranoia, during a large scale economic downturn. Anything that goes wrong during her administration will be blamed solely and entirely on the Democratic party, by virtue of controlling both Congress and a WH gained without significant Indy or RINO support.
Caveat emptor.
priscianus jr
Quite honestly, VidaLoca, do you really get the impression that Obama and the people running his campaign are a bunch of hacks, albeit of a different flavor? I sure don’t. This is incomparably the least hackneyed campaign I’ve ever seen — and I was born when Truman was president. I think all Democrats who are NOT hacks are drawn to Obama precisely for that reason (among others). LeftTurninABQ is absolutely right.
Another corollary of his point is this. The polarization you see between the Clintonistas and the Obama supporters is something that first broke out into the open in 2004, when millions of Democrats finally woke up to the fact that there was something fundamentally wrong with the party, that Dems would never win or at least never be a strong, effetive party as long as these hacks were running it. One major result was Howard Dean’s ascendancy to the party chairmanship, and the promulgation of the 50 State Strategy. Obama was by no means created by Dean, but he is the first presidential candidate in a long time to run a campaing on these principles. This split in the party, though it seems so unfortunate, absolutely HAD to happen — and it took the drama of an election year to bring it to a head. Hillary represents everything wrong with the party, Obama represents the future not only of the party but of the country. Just think of how is breaking through the absolutely putrid stinking mess that has been american politics for the last how many years…
priscianus jr
oops — I meant “effective party” — they HAVE been an “effetive” party, I’m afraid.
Pb
Dear impostor jen,
We already have a jen here, thanks, and she’s an Obama supporter. Also, the unhinged hillaryis44 style campaign talking points won’t score points with anyone here, except perhaps myiqis40, who surely wants to bone you already — watch out for him at the rallies.
Brachiator
You got it. The Clintons are fighting for their political lives. Perhaps they honestly believe that fighting for the nomination is so important that the damage they might cause the Democratic Party is acceptable. But their calculation here is as short-sighted as their ambition is enormous.
Where do you get these wonderful toys that let you see the future?
NPR’s Saturday Weekend Edition had an interesting segment that indicated how rigid some Pennsylvania voters were in their sentiments, which can be listened to here, The Condemned of Altoona.
Obama didn’t even register on their radar. The Republican voters were loyal to the party even if they themselves did poorly under a GOP administration. Some McCain supporters didn’t even care about his stand on Iraq; they just “hoped” he would do something different when he was elected.
A couple supporting Senator Clinton were sexist in a way that is unsurprising but unacknowledged. They look on Senator Clinton’s candidacy as a way to return Bill Clinton to power.
A small group of social conservatives claim that they would not vote for any of the current crop of candidates. These people, if told that the only people who could figure out how to prevent an approaching asteroid from destroying the Earth was a homosexual and a woman who had undergone an abortion, would reply, “Bring on the Rapture!”
But this is simply the challenge facing the candidates. It is a long time until the next primary, and a longer time until the general election.
You have unwittingly stumbled into the heart of the problem. The health care plan was HERS, selfishly and secretly crafted with no attempt at all to enlist any broader support. By her own words, her presidency promises more of the same, a solo act in which Hillary Clinton works hard in her little self-contained bubble — in between 3 am phone calls, while every one else just stands back and applauds.
Then there is the matter of trying to re-invent the honorary title of First Lady, a position which doesn’t even exist constitutionally, into a position of authority and power, with no checks and balances other than her husband’s approval.
Senator Clinton may have been opposed in part because of her gender when she tried to push health care as First Lady, but the conflict in the role does not disappear because of her gender and would come up again if she tried to empower a First Gentleman Bill Clinton to craft legislation independent of the Executive Branch or the Congress.
Even the Victorians had enough sense to make sure that Albert, as Prince Consort, would never be seen as a mini-me co-ruler with the Queen, or as some shadowy independent power standing somewhere between monarch and prime minister.
This is no reason to turn the office of the president into some kind of quasi-hereditary office which must see the restoration of a Clinton.
It’s too bad that she lacks honor, judgment, and a demonstrable ability to govern.
The best Democratic leaders have always understood that the courage to embrace change is what separates them from the worst of the GOP. Senator Clinton’s implied promise of a return to a safe and happy past is just another reminder that she is turning her back on the legacy of those who did not fear an untested wilderness, who were willing to inspire the country with hopes of a New Deal, and who invited the nation to look to a New Frontier.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I agree with this.
Obama is running an updated riff on Bill Clinton’s 1992 centrist “new Democrat” campaign. That has to be driving them crazy – it makes me wonder if much of the negativity and take-no-prisoners attitude demonstrated by the HRC campagin of late is coming from Bill.
I’m guessing that Obama’s remarks during the Nevada contest contrasting Bill’s legacy vs. Reagan’s really got under his skin, and now it isn’t just business, it has become personal.
If Obama is elected, we are going to have to push on him and his people to make sure that they do not devolve into a just another personal clique interested in nothing but power for its own sake. What happened with the Clintons during the 1990’s can happen again.
nathan
There is one point that should matter to all democrats, Hillary and Obama supporters both:
The only way hillary can win is to tear apart the democratic party with what will be seen by most democrats as a backroom deal, rightly or wrongly. And it won’t be over until August.
That is a fact. Open your eyes. Maybe things worked out unfairly for Hillary. Maybe she’s gotten a raw deal with the caucus system, media backlash, etc. Maybe you can make an argument that she’s the stronger general election candidate (though I’d disagree). Hey, life is unfair sometimes. But if you are willing to risk the nuclear option in order for Hillary to get the nomination, YOU are the one who is choosing a cult of personality over party strength at this point in time. That is the reality right now. Deal with reality or reality will deal with you.
KT
I voted for Hillary but have to acknowledge she can’t win this without winning the remaining delegates by an extremely unlikely 65/35 margin. If she could somehow pull that off, she would beat Obama fair and square, but I just don’t see that happening.
I think the thing that will ultimately end Hillary’s run will be the fizzling out of campaign contributions. I’ve stopped donating to her as have several other Hillary supporters I know.
I was psyched about Hillary when I voted for her in NH, but in the intervening months, that enthusiasm has pretty much fizzled and I now see her as a sort of political Tonya Harding.
Conservatively Liberal
With statements like this, I can see how difficult it must have been for our forefathers to convince people some people that we had to take the chance and become our own nation. The ‘untested wilderness’ is not to be feared, especially when the path you are on has been an unmitigated disaster. Leaders lead, and the Democrats have not been leading for years now. You go ahead and stick to that path you view as safe, I have had enough of it.
We need a leader, and Obama is leading in every possible way right now.
Damn straight. If Obama wins and does so decisively, he will be able to claim a mandate for change. It will be up to the public to keep him on the right track.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
One of the big differences that I see between the two candidates is that Obama is not afraid of the Republicans.
This is a generational thing, I think. Older democrats spent the 1980’s and a good part of the 1990’s in a defensive crouch and it shows. Even the best years of the Bill Clinton administration were spent engaged in what were essentially tactical victories obtained during a strategic retreat (w/ respect to ideology), conceding ground to the GOP in order to hang on to what shreds of power were still left.
The younger generation of democrats senses that the ideological mood of the nation has shifted against the GOP, thanks to W. The concessions that Obama makes to conservatives and libertarians are the concessions of a victor in the ideological wars, not the tactics of a weaker side. Obama sees the ideological rifts within the GOP and is seeking to exploit them, much as Reagan did to the Democrats during the 1980’s. Thus the 50-state strategy vs. Big States only.
Red state and purple state democrats know that the GOP is weaker than it has been in a generation and is primed to be pushed back, if the right approach is taken to peal away some of their support. The HRC campaign seems determined to ignore this because it does not benefit them personally during this primary contest, and ironically running against Hillary is what the GOP most needs to revive itself.
John S.
Translation: You drank all my milkshake! YOU DRANK IT ALL UP!
ThymeZone
Damn if that isn’t about the best analogy I’ve seen in a long time.
ThymeZone
You know, this is the CW but I find it nonsensical.
One of the Clintons is a two-term ex-president. The other one is a US Senator with an untouchable seat in the Senate.
They have tons of money, Secret Service protection, and ceebrity status.
What the fuck are they fighting for? What’s the big deal? Are they so addicted to power that nothing short of a third term for them in the White House will satisfy it?
Um, well, based on their behvavior, yes, I guess they are. What else would explain their zeal for this nomination? I mean, WTF? Fuck them.
Ted
Hey Myiq2xu? Who are you going to vote for in the general election if Hillary fails to get the nomination? You know, since you wouldn’t be able to vote for Obama. Will it be McCain or Nader? Or will you sit it out?
Soylent Green
I’ve been getting a sinking feeling about what will happen to a significant chunk of Hillary’s current backers when the election finally rolls around. These are the DINOs, for want of a better term, who will not experience any cognitive dissonance in voting for McCain once Hillary is out of the picture. They are comfortable in the middle, and tracked with it during the middle’s slide toward the right. They were once called the silent majority, but now the internet has given them a voice. The do not want change they can believe in, or any other kind of change. They do not want to see the emergence of a national dialogue on race or any other subject. They like things just the way they are, the status quo, as long as nothing threatens their sense of security.
They feel that they know Hillary. She’s familiar, a known quantity, while Obama is a stranger, therefore risky. They remember that things were pretty good when the Clintons were on top, and assume that putting them back is all that is needed to restore that era. A larger number of them than Hillary wants to acknowledge see her candidacy mainly as a way of putting Bill back in charge.
They aren’t unhappy with the war, exactly, only with not winning it. After 9-11, the middle wanted vengeance, so Hillary helped them get it. And the war is now part of the status quo, so it doesn’t upset them. It isn’t hard to coax these folks into going along with whatever lame argument is made for giving it another Friedman unit. Although our troops are still getting killed, they are dying at an acceptable rate. As long as we are “winding down” or otherwise shuffling management of the war, that’s good enough. It worked for Nixon and can work again.
These are Hillary’s people and she knows it. She has played to them throughout her run, which started the day she moved out of the White House. The 3:00 a.m. ad was designed for their benefit. Who do want picking up the phone? Somebody you know.
So with Hillary not on the ticket, voting for McCain won’t be that much of a stretch. He’s familiar, he’s a moderate, he crosses the aisle, he will protect us from danger, he isn’t Bush. And his team knows for damn sure that these folks are up for grabs.
BH Buck
My guess is that MyIQ already has his write-in pencil sharpened.
BH Buck
It simply amazes me, with everything this country has gone through in the last 7+ years, that there’s a remote possibility for a McCain presidency.
What does that say about who we are???
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Safe yes, untouchable, no.
If this campaign gets even uglier than it already has, expect to see a Ned Lamont style challenge in the next election cycle. That Senate seat isn’t as safe as it used to be. That is another message Hillary needs to get – if she tries to burn the party down to stop Obama, her own seat in Congress may catch on fire.
KT
“Addiction to power” is a little too glib and it’s doubtful it has anything to do with why Hillary is running.
Despite her glaring flaws, I still think she has some really good ideas and believe she cares deeply about trying to make the country a better place. The tar pit that is Congress sucks the life out of even the best intentioned, whereas the Presidency offers much more freedom of movement. I believe it’s this freedom and the ability to steer the boat rather than pulling on an oar is her prime motivation.
Her greatest weakness in my mind is that her campaign has shown that she isn’t a particularly good strategist. The more negative she gets the less likely it will become that she gets the strong mandate needed to realize her policy goals. Arm twisting and negativity might get her the nomination, but she would start her presidency with almost no political capital.
Brachiator
Let me be blunt. The fairy tale that Senator Clinton is offering, and that her supporters are eagerly lapping up, is a vision of Hillary Clinton in the White House working hard doing … something, while Bill functions as soulmate, chief counsellor and roving ambassador, flitting around the world doling out charm and wisdom.
Meanwhile, a segment of the old guard Democratic Party elite, having been consigned to the wilderness by Dubya’s low rent Republican Christian family values cornpone, dream of a return to sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom, and a triumphant return to the glittering Washington D.C. social whirl.
All this shit comes to a crashing halt when Obama is elected. He doesn’t owe the Clintons a thing, and does not have to guarantee them a seat at table, even if Bill and Hillary campaign their asses off for him. Hillary becomes just another junior senator, and while she may go on to a distinguished career, she would go down in history as another in a long line of senators whose presidential ambitions went unfulfilled. And in 2012, Senator Clinton may be past her sell-by date, having only her own accomplishments to run on, not the lingering wisps of her prior White House “experience.”
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton may find that being an older rogue, unless you are Hugh Hefner, begins to wear thin. He has already begun to be eclipsed by Al Gore, whose Oscar and Nobel prize easily trumps Clinton’s frayed Rhodes Scholar status, especially if you throw in Gore’s legitimate claim to the presidency.
Where does Bill Clinton go in an Obama Administration? Yes, he can continue to make money in appearances, but even if Hillary Clinton were offered the vice-presidency, Bill would be an also-ran to an also ran. The vice-president’s wife isn’t even the Second Lady. Bill Clinton, as spouse of a VP wouldn’t even rate a second-tier joke on the Tonight Show.
We have already seen that the Clintons’ egos and ambition are enormous. The press and international attention that an Obama presidency would generate would push the Clintons to the back pages. And anything less than center stage would eat at their souls.
And for some strange reason, Bill and Hillary have both decided to deplete the reservoir of goodwill that they have built up with various Democratic Party factions. And just as Bill once brazenly lied to the American people about “not having sex with that woman,” Senator Clinton’s campaign team have no problem with lying to the country about the details of her “experience,” and then have the nerve to protest, “Who, me?” when caught. And then they proceed to tell another lie.
If Senator Clinton finds a way to win the nomination, she and her supporters can furiously spin the story that the lies, distortions, and deceptions were for the greater good. Otherwise, as they say about the reality TV shows, the media will give her and her husband the loser edit.
Soylent Green
She wouldn’t take it. It’s her way or the highway.
TenguPhule
Nothing fit to print.
ThymeZone
Glib? Your response is glib. And your post does nothing to support the blockquoted assertion, it changes the subject. What does “having ideas” have to do with addiction to power? I don’t see the connection.
The fact is, these people have spent most of their adult lives living in public buildings and being celebrity politicians. Neither they, nor we, need any more of this. To what end? To support the idea that out of 300 million people we can only find two families with presidential material in a span of 24 – 28 years?
Fuck me. Seriously, get these awful people off my tv set.
myiq2xu
Dude, that wasn’t a milkshake. That was left over from a movie we made last night called Spring Break Bukkake 2008.
But don’t worry, protein is good for you.
Splitting Image
“I’ve been getting a sinking feeling about what will happen to a significant chunk of Hillary’s current backers when the election finally rolls around.”
That is actually a very good question. In my mind’s eye I picture them flocking to McCain and merging with the Limbaugh/Coulter/Hannity Republicans, whom some of Clinton’s supporters are starting to greatly resemble, and the Huckabee/Paul Republicans bolting the party in disgust.
Probably won’t happen, but this election has become so strange already that the word “probable” is starting to lose its meaning. The most likely possibility is in fact the most mundane one: regardless of who wins the Democratic primary, the loser won’t lose too many votes to McCain. The people threatening to vote for him the most (or saying that other people will) seem to be the least informed about the state of McCain’s actual campaign.
He won’t get as many crossover votes as people think, but a Democratic disaster might depress turnout enough to let him eke out a win.
Randolph Fritz
I’m worried more about the women’s vote; Obama really isn’t doing very well on women’s issues, which is a big part of why Clinton is so successful. If Obama is the candidate, I think a lot of Democratic women may just…stay home.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Howzabout Kazahkstan? I’m sure we’ll need to send a new ambassador. Bill would be perfect.
KT
I’m a former Hillary supporter, but this kind of dismissive crap still pisses me off.
The election is about the person, but the Presidency is about the policy. Once Obama sits in the big chair, the fairy tale is over and he’ll have to “work hard doing … something.” What will that something be? It won’t be magical “Obama things,” it will be formulating policy followed by Congressional cajoling/arm twisting to try and get some of it passed.
I’ve come around to believing that Obama will be a better president than Hillary, but when you cut through the mystique, his policies aren’t particularly inspired. They’re pretty much what Hillary would try to do if she were to get the job. The main difference is that he’ll probably be able to do it because he doesn’t have Hillary’s baggage.
TenguPhule
I seriously doubt it.
Because if they do, there’s a good chance the Republicans will make them stay there. Cook, clean and make babies. That is the Republican way for women.
Richard
What I find amusing about all the hysterics emanating from both camps is that all the true believers will allow McCain to win – and probably with a strong right winger as his VP.
I’m willing to bet that not many of those posting were either born or old enough to understand 1968. I am and voted for Humphrey because my candidate died on the kitchen floor in LA. I voted for the Democrat because I knew about Nixon. We lost and then SCOTUS began its long decent to Rehnquist. I also worked for, and lost again, for McGovern – who was also not my first choice. Dirty tricks and an outright attempt to destroy the Constitution sealed what would have been a normal election victory for Nixon because he got the candidate he wanted to run against. Muskie was toasted. Do any of the posters remember Nixon. Cambodia? Laos? Vietnam? More than enough blood – just like today. And SCOTUS got worse.
Then I worked for Carter – pounding the streets in NJ (and if you want tough politics and internal knife fights, that was the place). But we all came in to support the eventual winner. But a thoughtful president was savaged by the press, a botched military rescue attempt in another desert, staggering oil costs (for that time)and a winning smile. How many of the posters remember what we got with 8 years of Reagan? What? Still too young to remember – or maybe don’t care?
Dems didn’t come out for Dukakis either – who blew a 30 point lead. Then the truist of the true voted for an ignorant self-appointed egotist savior in Florida and we got this. 4000 dead today. A SCOTUS that can’t get much more right wing – but just give McCain the chance to prove his loyalty to the far-right. (A note to the person above who labeled McCain a liberal Republican – it’s the voting record that counts, or do you work for the MSM?)
So, true-believers, what’s better – a Democrat as POTUS or McCain? A bigger Dem majority – or wafer thin? Fortunately, for me, I am old enough and have sufficient funds NOT to have to live in the country you are creating by hysterically pointing out that you will sit out the election or vote for McCain if your purest of pure candidate doesn’t win the nomination. If you can’t fight for Obama or Hillary without your infantile whining, then you will get exactly what you deserve. I’ll vote for any Democrat from the top position down. If McCain wins, I’m safe – because unlike those who are not old enough to remember and learn – I don’t need to come back and can watch as you wring your hands and wonder how the debacle occurred. But then – you’ll all have mirrors, right?
myiq2xu
Let’s try a day-after Easter prayer:
Dear Jeebus, please help our lame brother from afar, ted.
You healed the sick and raised the dead, please Lord heal afar ted.
Dear Jeebus, you cast out . . . what’s that Lord? Afar ted is too lame for you to help?
Well can you heal afar ted’s halitosis? His breath makes his farts smell good by comparison.
Well, thanks anyway Jeebus.
PeterJ
And before you hear it from myiq2xu, here is the latest from the Clinton campaign about why the superdelegates should vote for Clinton.
The number of electoral votes from the states Obama and Clinton won. I’m guessing it got very important since that’s the only metric where Clinton is in the lead.
Also interesting, seems like Evan Bayh and Howard Wolfson haven’t gotten the message about not using the term superdelates.
John S.
Poor, poor myiq½xu…
We’ll have to watch him descend further into madness over the next few weeks as Clinton goes down kicking and screaming.
It should be very amusing!
myiq2xu
Brachiator
It should piss you off. I was using the same language that the Clinton campaign has continually used to belittle and to dismiss Obama’s candidacy.
The crassness, the cynicism, the destructiveness of the Clintons’ tactics is best seen when you turn it back on them.
In addition, I am dismissing the fantasy that the Clintons’ encourage that a general election win for Senator Clinton would not be a victory for the Democratic Party, but the Restoration of the House of Clinton, and the return of the co-presidency of Bill and Hillary.
By the way, I would laugh my ass off if, having won the general election, Senator Clinton divorced bill and subsequently took the oath of office as Hillary Rodham. Some people’s heads would never stop spinning (and please, no one take this as any speculation about the Clinton marriage).
The irony of it all that, for me, Senator Clinton lost her appeal when she decided not to sell herself based on her own best assets, but instead chose a pointless path of over-hyping her “experience,” coming up with torturous and non-sensical definitions of presidential “thresholds,” and needlessly alienating large blocs of Democrats. She doesn’t just HAVE baggage, she has become her own baggage.
By the way, the most partisan Clinton supporters always claim that Team Clinton is innocent of any dirty tricks, that they are misinterpreted, or that it is really Obama who is playing dirty. But then we have this (Richardson: Clinton aides in the ‘gutter’):
One of the things I like about Richardson is that he is an honorable man who just recently scolded the Obama campaign for going overboard in responding to Bill Clinton’s VFW remarks. So one cannot dismiss him as just another Obama cheerleader.
And yet, both James Carville and Mark Penn have gone out of their way to attack a man whose support the Clinton campaign previously sought.
I hear you. And there was a time when I said that I would vote for the Democratic Party candidate no matter who was on the ticket. I will probably still do so.
But there is something about Senator Clinton’s tactics and persona that remind me of Nixon. And I think that she, her husband and her campaign advisors have damaged the Democratic Party even though they had absolutely no reason to do so.
And so it is not a matter of purity or being a true believer. It’s a question of whether I want to reward one group of scoundrels in order to prevent another group of scoundrels from taking power.
Some choice, huh?
By the way, good stuff!
cleek
nevermind, Hillary simply “misspoke”.
oh, and Obama’s being too “negative” for Team Hillary.
4jkb4ia
Lambert didn’t define “they”, but otherwise I may actually agree with him. I think the riffing off of Jerome may have created this near-zero probability event.
It is very difficult for HRC to win the nomination, but both candidates are depending on the Supers. HRC has opportunities to impress the Supers such as winning Pennsylvania by 20 points and being competitive in Obama-friendly states such as Indiana and North Carolina. Michigan and Florida were other opportunities to impress the Supers. The Obama campaign cannot afford to think they have the nomination. They must still scrap for every superdelegate and every vote.
I will add the sage emptywheel’s comments that HRC does not care about franchising Michigan as much as she cares about getting the superdelegates from that state to count. EW also said that Obama people were more likely to vote than HRC people in the Republican primary. So if those who voted in the Republican primary do not get to vote, HRC gets the advantage unfairly and some labor groups in Michigan are POd. Obama could not win Michigan “fair and square” under the current conditions.
Chuck Butcher
Disregarding foreign policy the differences between Hillary and Obama are slight at best. If foreign policy slips off the voter’s radar, as it seems to have, Hillary’s campaign is left with little to disagree with Obama on.
As for jen’s assertions about the Right attack on Hillary being a problem for her, the reality is that they made Hillary the right’s victim hero. You wind up with 3) bullet points, Name is Clinton, She, Right victim hero. I can’t argue her name is Clinton, it is, what that amounts to with me is, so what? “She,” makes about as much sense as “He” or “Black” or “White,” but it carries a certain cache. “Victim” is a real asset for her, the Right Bullshit buried the actual facts, and that is a huge advantage. The facts are smelly, just that, but the “Victim” voters would bolt if they couldn’t bury the whole thing as “Victim.”
Hillary’s core support isn’t McCain material, she has to fight to look centrist domestically and she isn’t winning that one. She is not black and her name is Clinton, can work with “right” Democrats and independents.
The Dean DNC bears little resemblence to the McAuliff DNC, the Clinton/McAuliff machinery cannot allow that and hope to stay influential. A Clinton primary win means the end of the Dean DNC. Bear this in mind when talking about superdelegates, depending on the electoral break down each State Democratic Party will have at least 4 DNC people in attendence and these people will be to a large extent post Dean and quite possibly a part of Dean’s election.
A Hillary loss in the Primary will have littl real effect on the DNC, a win will change it for the foreseeable future, not to the better in my opinion. I do not have a clear idea whether Hillary can beat McCain, her negatives are not a good sign.
I will vote and I will not cast a vote that helps John McCain. If it has to be for Hillary, then it has to be, but it will mark the end of my organized activity with DNC. I will not spend 8 years fighting against a McAuliff machine, regardless of the loss to my State Party. This has nothing to do with the concept of superdelegates, simply a Clinton/McAuliff DNC.
4jkb4ia
Bowers! (from a few days ago)
priscianus jr
Chuck Butcher and ThatLeftTurnin ABQ (especially 3/23 at 3:08 pm) are making the key points of the thread, in my opinion. Hillary’s tactics can be explained by her real goal, which is that the Clintonistas retain control of the party at all costs. Under Obama they lose, bigtime. Under McCain they lose (from their narcissistic point of view) nothing. And this is how it’s been for years. This is why the Dem strategists since Carter haven’t seemed to give a rat’s ass whether they win or not, and why the partyso rarely functions as a genuine opposition: That would be risky, this way they are at least still running the Democratic Party. Reading the blogs these days, I get the impression that few understand this, perhaps because they cannot impute that degree of cynicism to the Clintons and their allies, and yet — it explains so much, not only about this campaign fight, but about past campaigns and party behavior. It also explains why, if the Democratic Party is ever going to stop acting like a bunch of zombies and fucking DO something, the Clintons and their henchpeople will have to go. It may be that Hillary has some good ideas, but she’s fucking useless as a politician, and so is her husband.
Since Carter, the Republicans have not been the only problem faced by this country. The other problem is the Democrats. This fight to revive the soul of the Democratic Party began in 2004 under the leadership of Howard Dean. The culmination of that fight is looming in the results of this campaign battle.
misc
It’s a bit ironic that myiq2xu appears to have the emotional intelligence of a spoiled teenager, but yet insists he/she is twice as intelligent as anyone else who posts here.