Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Please don’t feed the bears.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2008 / More Specious Bullshit

More Specious Bullshit

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Renowned Clinton fluffer Lanny Davis takes to the HuffPo to bring this important list of ten reasons why Hillary should be given (and given is the right word, as she can no longer earn it) the nomination:

2. Senator Obama tried hard to win the state, campaigned intensely throughout the state for most of the last six weeks — and was trying to win, not just lose a narrow margin.

3. He spent $11 million on media — about three times more than Senator Clinton.

And on an on and on he drones, you can see the entire piece here.

So, a question for Lanny. If Barack is such a bad candidate, and he is so unelectable, and it is such a bad idea to have him as the Democratic nominee, why can’t Hillary beat him?

Why is she behind him in every conceivable metric? Why is she behind in pledged delegates? Why is she behind in the popular vote (and don’t insult my intelligence by trying to pass that sheer nonsense the morons at certain pro-Clinton blogs are lapping up)? Why are super delegates flocking to Obama, while Hillary has picked up only a handful in the past few months. Why has she won fewer states? Why is she trumpeting her narrow delegate pickup in PA, when it is less than the number of net delegates Obama picked up in a variety of other states? Why is she behind in fund raising? Why was she unable to turn her double digit lead a year ago into any actual primary wins? Why, with her starting financial advantage and name recognition, was she held to a tie on Super Tuesday?

Why to those questions and a hundred more like them. If your candidate is so much better, why is Obama kicking her ass? Why?

Reader Interactions

160Comments

  1. 1.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    You forgot why is she so unlikeable and considered untrustworthy by a large majority of the polled? If they could answer those questions maybe they could start to make an actual case for her other than the all but spoken “but Obama is black and can’t win..”

    I didn’t check Lanny’s list. Was that one on there?

  3. 3.

    tBone

    Why to those questions and a hundred more like them. If your candidate is so much better, why is Obama kicking her ass? Why?

    Because he’s proven he can’t connect with Democratic constituencies that will be vital in the fall and he can’t win the big battleground states and shut up, that’s why.

  4. 4.

    t4toby

    I don’t know, John. Did you know you were signing up for Circular Firing Squad Duty when you left the Republicans?

    It is simply amazing. Sometimes I think that the leadership of th Ds and Rs are in cahoots with our corporate overlords.&lt/tinfoilhat&gt

    How else can you explain that the year we have not one, but two really strong candidates, that there is a real chance of Old Man ‘Get Off My Lawn’ McCain pulling it off?

    Bill and Hill have gone from respect to FAIL in my mind, but I’ll still vote for her if she gets the nomination, ’cause that fucking old man scares the bejeezus outta me.

  5. 5.

    Wilfred

    Once you enter the loop they’ll just pound you to death repeating the same things over and over again. It reminds me of one of my favorite anecdotes, about the lawyer racehorse Haynes:

    At a late 1970’s American Bar Association seminar in New York [1], Mr. Haynes explained how to plead in the alternative:

    Say you sue me because you say my dog bit you. Well, now this is my defense:

    * My dog doesn’t bite.
    * And second, in the alternative, my dog was tied up that night.
    * And third, I don’t believe you really got bit.
    * And fourth, I don’t have a dog.

    The Clintonista talking points follow a similar form, albeit with a different content.

  7. 7.

    nabalzbbfr

    Hillary may not have the votes to secure the Democatic nomination, but she has more than enough to deny Obama the nomination. She just has to play a little hardball: tell the superdelegates that if they nominate Obama, she will run as a third party candidate. Once Obama loses the first vote at the convention, he is toast.

  8. 8.

    John Cole

    Hillary may not have the votes to secure the Democatic nomination, but she has more than enough to deny Obama the nomination. She just has to play a little hardball: tell the superdelegates that if they nominate Obama, she will run as a third party candidate. Once Obama loses the first vote at the convention, he is toast.

    Say hi to president McCain. Hell, if Hillary pulled that shit, I would not only vote for him, I would have signs in my yard, do a max donation, and write pro-McCain bullshit for six months on this blog (and that would not be an easy feat).

    I don’t think I am alone.

  9. 9.

    PeterJ

    Hillary may not have the votes to secure the Democatic nomination, but she has more than enough to deny Obama the nomination. She just has to play a little hardball: tell the superdelegates that if they nominate Obama, she will run as a third party candidate. Once Obama loses the first vote at the convention, he is toast.

    Can someone please give a scenario where Clinton gets the nomination without totally ruining her chanses in the general election.

  11. 11.

    Ninerdave

    She just has to play a little hardball: tell the superdelegates that if they nominate Obama, she will run as a third party candidate.

    …and turn herself into a Joe Lieberman? No she’s not stupid. Remember she still has a nice cushy Senate gig. At least Joe can run the the GOP, where would Hillary go if she pulled a stunt like that?

  12. 12.

    Ted

    Speaking of Mr. Shut Up, That’s Why, how’re things going over at AoS HQ?

    Barack Obama’s National Security Plan Vindicated: 15 Mahdi Army Assholes Killed in Sadr City by Combined Barrage of 155mm Hope and Laser-Guided Change
    —Ace

    Oh.

    He’s in a bad mood.

  13. 13.

    Laughingriver

    You know, it seems to me that the more Clinton campaigns the more she loses support and the more Obama campaigns the more suppport he gains.

    Clinton spent the last 6 weeks losing support in Pennsylvania and Obama spent the last 6 weeks gaining support.

    And this after there was a concerted effort to disparage Obama at all costs.

    There really is no other way to spin it..

  14. 14.

    TR

    Why to those questions and a hundred more like them. If your candidate is so much better, why is Obama kicking her ass? Why?

    Jack Cafferty asked “Why can’t Obama seal the deal?” as his viewer question on CNN this afternoon, and I’d have to say 80% of the 300 or so postings basically said the same thing: “Why can’t Clinton seal the deal with all her advantages?”

  15. 15.

    marjo

    From Kos: “But he spent more money!”

    “So as far as I’m concerned, they can keep reminding the supers of that little relevant fact. Yes, Obama has more money. He’s spent more money. And he has plenty more where that came from to take on John McCain and Republicans up and down the ballot across all 50 states.”

    Actually, several good front-page posts on Obama vs. Clinton on kos today.

    reading them helped with the whole despair thing.

  18. 18.

    rob!

    Obama is kicking her ass because he’s black. And as Brave Truth Teller Geraldine Ferraro told us, blacks have had everything handed to them in this country. They have all the advantages in the world, which is why they run everything!

    Jeez, John, not that hard to figure out.

  20. 20.

    Martin

    Davis needs to shut the fuck up before the black community checks out of the party altogether:

    6. Barack Obama hasn’t won a single major industrial state that historically constitute the key “battleground” states for both parties, i.e., the states in the last three or four presidential elections have switched back and forth between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.

    7. The reason that he lost can be found in the demographic data: He lost — and Senator Clinton won — by substantial margins blue collar and middle class white voters earning under $50,000 a year, senior citizens, rural voters, Hispanic voters, and women voters — all core constituencies in the Democratic base that must be won if a Democrat is to win the White House. For example, yesterday in Pennsylvania she won Roman Catholics by 32 percent (66034), union households by 18 percent (59-41), and those most concerned about the economy by 16 points (58-42). Only 60 percent of Democratic Catholic voters said they would vote for Mr. Obama in a general election.

    In other words, white voters matter more than black voters. So even if Obama has more votes and more delegates, the black votes should be discounted. The only thing he isn’t doing is assigning the 3/5 value to them to make the math. He’s leaving that to the reader. I don’t think he’s aware of this, but this is the same sort of ‘practicality’ that kept blacks from serving in the military, in organized sports, and is currently keeping gays out of the military.

    Remember, blacks couldn’t serve in an integrated service because they would harm the overall morale and serve as a distraction. We were better off with all white units, though nobody ever bothered to measure whether it was true or not, it was simply assumed to be so.

    And people wonder why black voters are increasingly rejecting Clinton. They started out with a level playing field and with each turn the Clinton folks like myiq and p.luk are arguing that if we look at ‘states that matter’ or whatever that Clinton should be the winner. If you are a minority, you’ve been down that path before with who matters and who doesn’t matter. Clinton supporters are consistently arguing that the opinion of the majority should win over the majority opinion. That’s the civil rights fight in a nutshell and it’s being argued out of the Democratic party.

    That’s why some of us are getting so pissed off by the rule bending and shit.

  21. 21.

    jrg

    So, a question for Lanny. If Barack is such a bad candidate, and he is so unelectable, and it is such a bad idea to have him as the Democratic nominee, why can’t Hillary beat him?

    I don’t understand the “thinking” of the Clinton campaign, but Obama said something today that really struck a chord with me:
    “You don’t have to talk tough if you are tough”.

    I think that’s why I don’t like HRC. She makes too much of an effort to “talk tough”, which shows weakness. It’s the same thing we’ve been seeing from GWB for 7+ years. It’s time for more discretion and better diplomacy.

  22. 22.

    Tom Hilton

    The antidote to Lanny McBullshit is this graph of polling results from late 2006 to the present. Clinton came into 2008 with between 40% and 45%; four months later, she’s at…between 40% and 45%. Can you say ‘ceiling’, folks? The question isn’t ‘why can’t Obama close the deal?’ but ‘why couldn’t Clinton close the deal?’

    I’ve never been one of the folks claiming Clinton is ‘unelectable’, but those numbers sure don’t help her electability argument.

  23. 23.

    Wilfred

    Re: Martin’s comment. This is Alton Maddox’s comment from The Amsterdam News

    Bill Clinton’s record indicates that he speaks with a forked tongue. He spent his presidency signing on to the Republican agenda. Black mothers, for example, in dire need of a social net like the one that went to Bear Stearns, were ripped from the welfare rolls.
    Moreover, Clinton signed legislation allowing for the unbridled, unreviewable and unconscionable repression of Blacks in the criminal justice system. Racist immigration laws closed America’s doors to immigrants from the Caribbean. These laws have put them in harm’s way.
    The Clintons have been the Republican Party’s poison pill. So far, Republicans have occupied the White House for 28 successive years. If Sen. Barack Obama is bumped from the presidential sweepstakes, this country will have to choose between Republican-dark (McCain) and Republican-lite (Clinton). They are politricking under the auspices of the same K Street lobbying firm.
    In the meantime, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Clinton are playing the race card. They are promoting the notion that a Black presidential candidate will be unable to garner meaningful white support in November and that Sen. Obama is an uppity nigger. Thus, the voters should decide between the insiders: Republican-dark and Republican-lite.

    The Clintons have never fooled anyone, and they’re not now; neither are they ‘accidentally’ pissing on Black people. Props to anyone who gets the reference behind the ‘politricking’ remark.

  24. 24.

    nabalzbbfr

    Say hi to president McCain. Hell, if Hillary pulled that shit, I would not only vote for him, I would have signs in my yard, do a max donation, and write pro-McCain bullshit for six months on this blog (and that would not be an easy feat).

    Yoo miss my point. President McCain would generously reciprocate with a true government of national unity, which would put behind us the era of small-minded partisan bickering.

  25. 25.

    Pooh

    I don’t understand the “thinking” of the Clinton campaign, but Obama said something today that really struck a chord with me:
    “You don’t have to talk tough if you are tough”.

    Right. Real toughness is sitting down in a room with some DPRK asshole and trying to reach a mutually beneficial solution while not giving anything away.

    Faux tough is saying you won’t talk to said asshole because doing so would reward him. When in actuality you know you lack the understanding necessary to have any hope of reaching a good deal and are instead much more likely to get fleeced.

    Which one works better?

  26. 26.

    nightjar

    Those are the facts. To all Super Delegates: you decide who is riskier as a general election candidate. The candidate whose negatives, driven by the right-wing hate machine in the 1990s in particular, are all out there and already taken into account

    Got to love this tactic. Playing the experience card that Hill has had high negatives much longer than her opponent.

  27. 27.

    Rick Taylor

    2. Senator Obama tried hard to win the state, campaigned intensely throughout the state for most of the last six weeks — and was trying to win, not just lose a narrow margin.

    While Clinton did everything she possibly could to loose, including acting like a complete pol who’d say anything to win, publicly posing looking silly carrying a gun and downing a shots at a local bar, and mindlessly pursuing talking point she could muster against her opponent. Sure she could have stuck to policy where she’s actually very strong, leaving the attacks to the media and pundits that were more than happy to oblige, but no, she did her damndest to throw the election and she still wound up over 9 points ahead. Imagine if she had tried to win?

    3. He spent $11 million on media — about three times more than Senator Clinton.

    And as we all know, elections are handicapped; the less you spend the more your wins count. That’s why Hillary very cleverly worked to bankrupt her campaign. The super-delegates are going to be very leery of a candidate like Obama who raises and spends so much more than his opponent; is this what we want in the general?

    5. There were no personal attack ads run by Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania.

    I’m speechless here.

    7. The reason that he lost can be found in the demographic data: He lost — and Senator Clinton won — by substantial margins blue collar and middle class white voters earning under $50,000 a year, senior citizens, rural voters, Hispanic voters, and women voters — all core constituencies in the Democratic base that must be won if a Democrat is to win the White House.

    We should not be worried that Clinton is getting utterly trounced by Obama among black voters. Clearly they are not a core constituency in the Democratic base we need to concern ourselves with. Presumably they’ll line up to vote for whoever the super-delegates choose for everyone when the time comes.

    Sorry, I’m getting sick; I can’t do this anymore.

  29. 29.

    Ted

    Yoo miss my point. President McCain would generously reciprocate with a true government of national unity, which would put behind us the era of small-minded partisan bickering.

    Ha ha! You’re silly.

  30. 30.

    Doug H. (Fausto no more)

    Why to those questions and a hundred more like them. If your candidate is so much better, why is Obama kicking her ass? Why?

    You don’t have to worry too much, John, you should go back to your vacation and relax. There are very few true undecided SDs, everyone else is undeclared. This coming from an actual SD him/herself. Davis and McAuliffe and Corzine and all the Hillbots are the usual sound and fury signifying nothing, all that’s left now is to organize a soft landing so we can unite this party to take on McSame.

  31. 31.

    jrg

    Right. Real toughness is sitting down in a room with some DPRK asshole and trying to reach a mutually beneficial solution while not giving anything away.

    I think I understand what you’re saying, and I think I agree… But what, specifically, are you referring to?

    Talking tough about the use of the U.S. military to the voting public is not the same as showing your hand or being intimidated by a third-world dictator.

    If anything, crass political pandering like that is more likely to be used against Americans: If the future president tells the world they will do something, it gives away our hand, because no president wants to look like a hypocrite.

    Why are we letting these third-world dictators invade our national discourse in order to provoke predictable military responses?

  33. 33.

    chopper

    Those are the facts. To all Super Delegates: you decide who is riskier as a general election candidate. The candidate whose negatives, driven by the right-wing hate machine in the 1990s in particular, are all out there and already taken into account

    Got to love this tactic. Playing the experience card that Hill has had high negatives much longer than her opponent.

    that and the assumption that everything that could ever damage hill happened during the 90’s and even that stuff will never, ever be brought up again. and nothing the clintons did since then could ever make her look bad. coughkazakhstancough.

  34. 34.

    skippy

    tr and tom hilton beat me to my question…when i heard hillary’s new meme, i immediately said to myself, why the hell can’t hillary close the deal? and then, i realized that hillary is picking a page out of the hardly-ever-right wing playbook: accuse your opposition of your own failings.

    as i said on my blog, “punxatawney hill sees shadow; six more weeks of infighting.”

    my post doesn’t get any funnier than that headline so i will refrain from linkage.

  35. 35.

    Chris

    “You don’t have to talk tough if you are tough”.

    I think that’s why I don’t like HRC. She makes too much of an effort to “talk tough”, which shows weakness. It’s the same thing we’ve been seeing from GWB for 7+ years. It’s time for more discretion and better diplomacy.

    This, this, a thousand times this. Hillary’s nuclear Iran threat and her Tuzla airport lie was another Dukakis-In-A-Tank/John-Kerry-Deer-Hunting moment in a long string of them. Too many Democrats have decided to swallow the Republican line about how they’re a bunch of pansies to heart, and have decided that the only conceivable way to dispel it is to both engage in the most ridiculous macho political theatre and vote for as many wars as possible.

  36. 36.

    chopper

    this whole ‘hillary is fully vetted’ shtick is enraging.

    first off, hillary’s campaign acts like the RWNM will utterly demolish obama. cause it’s just that powerful. yeah, but she’s completely immune.

    methinks she thinks she’s her husband sometimes; your average joe on the street may think bill is a scumbag, but he did pretty well during the 90’s so bill is generally okay by him.

    hillary? not so much. people don’t think as highly of her as her husband.

    she may think that bill rubs off on her (no jokes, please), but she floated that balloon with the i was a big part of my husband’s administration i brought peace to northern ireland and sniper fire! goddamn motherfucking sniper fire FFS! shit but it didn’t fly.

  37. 37.

    skippy

    sorry, just thought of some more…

    personally, i never expected obama to win penns, and neither did anybody else in the known universe. i thought her final tally would be more like 7%, but i am not amazed at 10%. what is amazing is how she was able to squander a 25 point lead from several weeks ago.

    as to the breathless “double digit” lead she wound up with, well, there are 90 numbers in the subset of “double digits,” and of all of them, hillary’s 10 point lead comes in at a whopping smallest. one less percentage point and she’d be single digits, so i don’t know what she has to brag about.

  38. 38.

    Wilfred

    5. There were no personal attack ads run by Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania.

    Fourth, I don’t have a dog.

  39. 39.

    p.lukasiak

    So, a question for Lanny. If Barack is such a bad candidate, and he is so unelectable, and it is such a bad idea to have him as the Democratic nominee, why can’t Hillary beat him?

    she does beat him — when she runs against him. when she doesn’t put effort into a state, she loses. And she loses whenever African American’s consitute at least 35% or so of the electorate.

    Now, maybe Ohio was a fluke — maybe three weeks wasn’t time enough for Obama to catch up in Ohio even with all the media in his corner, all the momentum going his way, and all the money in the world.

    But Pennsylvania wasn’t. Obama had seven weeks between Ohio and PA to get the job done. Three weeks from yesterday, he was at about -10 in the polls. And that’s just about what he lost by.

    I mean, can we get real here. Obama got 14 more delegates in Kansas, based on less than 18K more people showing up at caucuses in Kansas for Obama than Clinton. Clinton got 12 more delegates in Penssylvania, based on get 215K more votes than Obama.

    And Kansas ain’t a crucial state for Democrats — Dems aren’t going to win in Kansas unless there is a landslide, so Kansas is irrelevant either way. In other words, no one in their right mind gives a fuck what happens in the Kansas caucuses — what sane people care about is what happens in Ohio, Mew Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Missouri (which I know Obama won by 1%, okay?)

    So why isn’t Clinton winning against Obama? Because she’s running for PRESIDENT, and doesn’t give a fuck about Kansas in terms of getting to the White House. She’s smart — and her strategy has been to concentrate on states that Dems can and should win in November.

  40. 40.

    D-Chance.

    How is 49% to 48% in the total popular vote “kicking her ass”?
    How is a delegate count of roughly 100 votes out of close to 3000 “kicking her ass”?
    How is not being able to win the nomination without the superdelegates “giving” it to him (since we’re going to use that term) “kicking her ass”?

    This is a 50/50 race. Period. And with a long time to go before the convention. And the media is JUST NOW beginning to properly vet Obama and ask him the tough questions. Until now, he’s been given a free pass compared to what Hillary has had to face during the campaign.

    Let’s let this play out. Hillary still has a good shot if Obama continues stumbling the way he has the past couple of weeks.

  41. 41.

    Pooh

    Right. Real toughness is sitting down in a room with some DPRK asshole and trying to reach a mutually beneficial solution while not giving anything away.

    I think I understand what you’re saying, and I think I agree… But what, specifically, are you referring to?

    Talking tough about the use of the U.S. military to the voting public is not the same as showing your hand or being intimidated by a third-world dictator.

    If anything, crass political pandering like that is more likely to be used against Americans: If the future president tells the world they will do something, it gives away our hand, because no president wants to look like a hypocrite.

    Why are we letting these third-world dictators invade our national discourse in order to provoke predictable military responses?

    I’m not referring to anything specifically, just the general “tough guy” posturing that passes for action from out pols these days. “Tough” on crime means locking some dude up for 10 years for selling a dime bag. “Tough” on national security means rattling sabres and launching cruise missiles, and so on and so forth. HRC, for whatever reason, buys fully into this Kabuki. I have strong hopes, perhaps to be dashed that BHO is slightly more interested in making actual good decisions on these topics than he is focused on atmospherics.

  42. 42.

    Calouste

    Can we apply rule 2 retroactively to Iowa?

    2. Senator Obama Clinton tried hard to win the state, campaigned intensely throughout the state for most of the last six weeks three years —and was trying to win, not just lose come third by a narrow margin.

  43. 43.

    Pooh

    So P.Luk, she gets points for not trying her hardest? Does a President (or even a Pres. candidate) get off days and do overs?

    Spin the wheel-o-BS again please.

    Oh and the people of Alaska, and Washington, and Kansas, and every other state that just don’t count say fuck off an die. Me, I think that’s harsh, but that’s just what the people are telling you. I just want you to fuck off.

  44. 44.

    Kevin Hayden

    Why can’t Clinton seal the meal? Has she ever been in a kitchen? Why does she hate the voters in small states? If she’s such a fighter, what has she fought and won for me? For you? She’s spent more money campaigning than Kerry did so why hasn’t she locked up the nomination? Why does she think doing shots and beers on camera are more presidential than winning over the better educated people? Do better educated people make dumber choices? Obama’s been elected several times. Clinton’s been elected twice. So why does that mean he’s less electable? Why has Obama won more delegates in 16 of the last 19 primaries? Why did he win more states on Super Tuesday and more delegates that day, too? Does winning more delegates in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island count more than the more delegates won in 16 other contests in the past 11 weeks by Obama? Why do you believe Clinton can win the remaining nine contests by 32 point margins to catch up to Obama’s delegate count? Why did your husband pardon Marc Rich, a known associate of Abu Nidal? Do you renounce and reject your brother, Tony Rodham, for owing his ex-wife (Barbara Boxer’s daughter) $158,000 in back child support and alimony?

    And why can I ask ten questions as relevant for every one question asked about Obama?

  45. 45.

    Jorge

    Would it surprise anyone to know that this primary season is going exactly like Obama planned?

    You guys remember spreadsheet-gate? The leaked spreadshhet in early February from the Obama team that predicted how the coming primaries would play out?

    They predicted every primary since Super Tuesday correctly. Check it out…

    If the streak continues, Obama will win 6 of the nine remaining contests.

  46. 46.

    Krista

    when she doesn’t put effort into a state, she loses

    Right. Like when Helen Keller fell into the well and signed, “Fuck you! I meant to do that!”

  47. 47.

    slightly_peeved

    as to the breathless “double digit” lead she wound up with, well, there are 90 numbers in the subset of “double digits,” and of all of them, hillary’s 10 point lead comes in at a whopping smallest.

    And, since the lead she ended up with is ten percent ROUNDING UP, (I believe 9.39% is the latest calculation) she doesn’t even own that dog.

  49. 49.

    ThymeZone

    And she loses whenever African American’s consitute at least 35% or so of the electorate.

    shorter lunaticiak:

    He only wins when the negroes vote for him!

    HE’S A NEGRO!

    Thanks for stopping in Paul, again your insightful analysis puts us on the right path.

    Paul Lukasiak, ladies and gentlemen, poster boy for moderated blog comments.

  50. 50.

    Bob In Pacifica

    By the math, she cannot win. She doesn’t have a chance of getting the Democratic nomination unless someone shoots Obama (hey, that’s how things were done in the sixties) or Obama is caught snorting cocaine off a 12 year-old boy’s butt. So she can’t win with normal politics.

    If she runs a third-party candidacy she can’t win. There is no groundswell in the Democratic Party to bolt and join a Hillary independent run. She has very little support among independents and Republicans, so even if she could pull a bunch of her current supporters, we’re talking what, twenty percent. Enough to deny Obama a win but not enough to come anywhere near a victory. And there are plenty of good Democrats who support Hillary but don’t worship the pantsuit she walks in, so we are really talking about something more like ten percent. Still enough to deny the Dems the White House. She will be forever despised by good Democrats for doing it. No, forget the third party thing.

    So if Clinton can’t win (sorry, lukasiak, she can’t) and she can’t win by other means (Obama’s got more protection than Vince Foster) then why does she keep running. It won’t help her in 2012. Her wounding of Obama will be seen for what it is, either he or another young Dem will be in better position for a run, and Hillary will be 64, McCain territory. Some of her support will have died off, and her negatives will be up in the 90s by then.

    So what’s the point? The point is that Clinton has more allegiance to her class than to the country. She is doing this precisely because now that she can’t win her people want her to destroy Obama’s candidacy.

  51. 51.

    myiq2xu

    So why isn’t Clinton winning against Obama? Because she’s running for PRESIDENT, and doesn’t give a fuck about Kansas in terms of getting to the White House. She’s smart—and her strategy has been to concentrate on states that Dems can and should win in November.

    Give it up Paul. This crowd would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary.

    CDS does that.

  52. 52.

    tBone

    I just want you to fuck off.

    SO SAY WE ALL!

    p.luk, remind me again – how did that “only concentrate on states that matter” bullshit work out for the Democrats in the last couple of elections?

  53. 53.

    Ted

    Let’s let this play out. Hillary still has a good shot if Obama continues stumbling the way he has the past couple of weeks.

    You Hillbots are not fucking rational. You just don’t give a shit how much damage this does to the party and its chances in November. You’re content to have Obama and Hillary fighting amongst themselves until two fucking months before the election, while McCain lobs away with his nuclear political attacks. Meanwhile, Hillary is counting on her absolutely maxed out favorability ratings (let’s face it, 48% of this country hates her, and will simply not change) to help her in the general should she be gifted the nomination.

    The difference is, while I’m an Obama supporter, if he were in her place right now, I’d be emailing him myself begging him to get out and not do any more damage to Hillary, and plenty of his supporters would as well. The party is more important than Obama.

    For you people, it’s ONLY about Hillary.

  54. 54.

    tBone

    This crowd would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary.

    If you’re not going to put any effort into it, time to hang up the trolling shoes, my friend. p.luk has turned the crazy knob up to eleven; watch him and learn.

  55. 55.

    TR

    How is a delegate count of roughly 100 votes out of close to 3000 “kicking her ass”?

    Because there’s no plausible way she can make up that deficit in delegates in the races that are left. She’d pretty much have to win 70% of the remaining votes to pull ahead.

    If you think he’s not kicking her ass in the delegate race, please use this delegate calculator to offer a way in which she could overtake him.

    Go ahead, Karl Rove — show us you have the math.

  56. 56.

    vwcat

    The republicans are openly sending around to the party faithful that Hillary needs to win this thing. Hence the Buchanan and Scarborough shilling.
    I saw on Olbermann tonight that after this is over that there will be retribution against Hillary for her behavior during the primary.
    Question: what exactly do you think will happen to her.
    I hope they pack the clintons off to a deserted isle. lol.

  57. 57.

    Josh

    The Democrats should give a shit about Kansas…especially if Obama picks Sibelius as his VP. They should also give a shit about Nevada, Montana, North Carolina, Colorado, and all the other swing states where polls show Obama ahead of McCain, whereas Hillary’s running behind. They should give a shit about a candidate who has the potential to finally break the Democratic Party out of its bi-coastal ghetto and win elections in all sorts of states across the country. But if you think they should repeat the folly of throwing millions of dollars at wheezing rust belt states while ignoring the rest of the nation, then go right ahead.

  58. 58.

    Ted

    So why isn’t Clinton winning against Obama? Because she’s running for PRESIDENT, and doesn’t give a fuck about Kansas in terms of getting to the White House. She’s smart—and her strategy has been to concentrate on states that Dems can and should win in November.

    Ah yes. The Swing State Strategy. And it’s worked so well in the past two presidential elections.

    You fucking moron. Why do you waste everyone’s time here? Go hang at Talk Left where your bullshit is already swallowed.

  59. 59.

    Tax Analyst

    Martin Says:

    In other words, white voters matter more than black voters. So even if Obama has more votes and more delegates, the black votes should be discounted. The only thing he isn’t doing is assigning the 3/5 value to them to make the math. He’s leaving that to the reader. I don’t think he’s aware of this, but this is the same sort of ‘practicality’ that kept blacks from serving in the military, in organized sports, and is currently keeping gays out of the military.

    Remember, blacks couldn’t serve in an integrated service because they would harm the overall morale and serve as a distraction. We were better off with all white units, though nobody ever bothered to measure whether it was true or not, it was simply assumed to be so.

    And don’t forget: They don’t swim well because they lack buoyancy and they lack the necessities to manage baseball teams.

    No wonder Obama can’t “Seal the Deal”.

    Hillary problems all boil down to the inherent unfair bias everyone has against women and Hillary in particular and what makes it really unfair is that this unfair bias against should by all rights belong to Black People – just like it always did in the past. But as Geraldine Ferraro so artfully stated, the Black People all have this incredible advantage these days and everything gets handed to them just for being black. Well, OK, they have to show up, too.

    On the other hand, however, we have Hillary. This woman had paid her dues to get where she is today. She scuffled from humble beginnings and started as a humble precinct volunteer. Stuffed enveloped…rang doorbells…made “Get out the Vote” calls…worked slavish hours as an underpaid council member’s aide…finally ran for that seat when he retired…lost a tough election to a well-known and well-funded adversary – uh-huh, he outspent her 25-1, you could look it up. But she came back again and although badly outspent she spoke “Truth to Power” and won over enough “just folks” type of people to squeak out a victory. From there she quietly worked behind the scenes to further effective positive change, always eschewing credit. From city council to State Legislature and after several terms a successful Congressional bid and finally achieved a crowning-glory moment when she somehow bested the much-beloved and nationally-known Mayor of New York City. A man of impeccable reputation and no enemies. So here she stands at the pinnacle of her career ready, willing and able from Day One to take the reins of our listing Ship of State and what does she find? (Sigh)Yet another stacked deck. Having to face a little-known Black Man with a strange sounding name and all the automatic advantages that being a Black Person in America has always carried. And, oh yeah…she’s also dodged sniper fire. It just isn’t fair.

    OH…Wait…that’s all bullshit. She actually MARRIED an ambitious, charismatic, politically-gifted if morally-flawed man who beat the odds and got elected President and served two fairly sucessful terms that could have been much more fruitful had his personal pecadillos not allowed the opposing political party to stifle much of his agenda, then she won a well-funded Senatorial campaign in New York over rather weak competition; her electoral margin was a respectable 12%, but the top of the party ticket won the state by about 25% and the guy she beat was a last-minute replacement and a virtual nobody.

    To give credit, for the most part she has served ably in the Senate – at least up until she started running for President and started acted like a idiot.

    You know, I actually liked the Clinton’s and could have continued to do so if she had continued to be a responsible and pragmatic Senator – or run an effective, well-oiled, organized and coherent campaign for the Presidency, win or lose. But that hasn’t happened and instead we’ve been treated with the spectacle of watching the Clinton’s trash and tarnish Bill’s accomplishment and Hillary’s respectable Senatorial stint with a poorly conceived, arrogant and finally shit-slinging desparate run at the White House. Their coupe de grace will be if they manage to trash the parties hopes of regaining the White House and expanding their Congressional numbers advantage. Both very conceivable possibilities at this stage.

    It’s sad, but beyond that, at it’s core it’s downright pathological behavior. Sick.

    She was considered the “One to beat”, yet now all her campaign has to serve up is a question of why the relatively unknown long-shot who passed her on the backstretch can’t stretch out his lead any further at this particular stage. Obama can’t “Seal the Deal”? Hmmm…Remember now, this was originally HILLARY’S DEAL. In effect, they’re questioning why he can’t seal a deal that he stole from right under their noses in the first place. Maybe Obama can’t seal the deal, but all Hillary can do at this stage is try to make the deal unpalatable by throwing shit all over it.

    With any luck she will take a sound trouncing in NC and hopefully in Indiana as well and at some point put us out of her misery and withdraw. At least one can hope.

  60. 60.

    myiq2xu

    Because there’s no plausible way she can make up that deficit in delegates in the races that are left. She’d pretty much have to win 70% of the remaining votes to pull ahead.

    Oh! bama can’t win enough delegates to win either. His current lead is due to wins in solid red states HE WILL NOT WIN in November.

    Hillary, OTOH, wins the big battleground states we need in November. Like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.

    That’s called “Electoral” math.

  61. 61.

    Martin

    first off, hillary’s campaign acts like the RWNM will utterly demolish obama. cause it’s just that powerful.

    “Hillary Clinton wants you to think that she’s the best person to answer the phone when it rings at 3 AM. But according to White House records, Hillary Clinton was in the building while her husband was having sex with Monica Lewinsky. If she can’t keep track of the threats to her own marriage, how can we trust her to keep track of the threats to America?”

    Nope. Nothing to worry about.

  62. 62.

    Conservatively Liberal

    What gets me is this meme that Hillary is THE one to win it. What in the hell makes her any more ‘special’ than Barack? I mean, take away the Clinton name and the first lady and what do you have? A woman who became a senator by moving to a state that loves Democrats and trading on her name recognition and husband’s record for the position. When she ran for the senate in NY, she had nothing to offer except the perception that she had experience via being first lady for eight years and that her husband was popular with Democrats.

    If you take away her superstar status and compare their records, Obama has far more experience at the community level (also known as the ‘people who work for a living, or at least try to’ level). He has worked his way up from the bottom, unlike Hillary who has had everything just about handed to her. Her attitude of ‘me first’ shows in the arrogance of her campaign. She should have the pledged and super delegate lead. She should have the supporters and money that Obama is bringing in. It should be all hers, yet it is not. Why?

    Can it be that some people see through the veneer, that they can see the wizard (witch?) behind the curtain? That they can see her ‘record’ for what it really is? That they can look at Barack and compare and contrast the two and see which one they believe will work harder for THEM? That they know which one will admit a mistake and take measures to correct it? That they know which one will listen to them and maybe do something about whatever the problem is?

    Hillary is an empty (pant)suit, there is no THERE there. What little substance she did offer has been pissed away in her focus on tearing Barack down to build herself up (in her eyes). She is running a scorched earth campaign and she is alienating whole segments of the party by insulting them and their intelligence.

    She comes right out and says that there are only certain states that matter to her, and if you are not one of them then that is just too bad for you. If you don’t pass ‘Hillary’s Threshold For Her To Give A Shit About You’ then she doesn’t. Add that to the 40%+ of the people who would not vote for her if their lives depended on it, plus the fact that she will drive the Republican vote out and there is only one conclusion.

    She can’t win it. Maybe she could have before all of the sink flinging began, but not now. Some peoples ‘hatred’ of all things Hillary is visceral. They can taste it and they don’t like it. She is so negative now that any positives she had pale in comparison. An empty (pant)suit and despised by many, she is not presidential material. Not now. She has lost in almost too many ways to count.

    After everything, Barack is still there. He has been like a rock throughout this. He has weathered shit that would have taken down almost any other politician, yet he survives., Bruised and battle worn, he still stands as the winner. He holds the high ground in comparison to Hillary, and she has devolved into a mean caricature of herself.

    While the super delegates can give this to her over Barack, if they do they deserve to lose the general. That they may be able to gloss over all of her flaws is unbelievable. You have to be an idiot or a rabid Clinton supporter to think that she is not going to be Republican cannon fodder in the general.

    While the right are going to go after either Barack or Hillary in the general, most of everything the right has on Barack is ‘guilt by association’. Almost nothing of substance that HE did, just what people he has been around at one time or another in his life have done in their past.

    Contrast that with the history of Hillary and Bill, which is rich with material directly tied to them. She is a goldmine of campaign material for the right, and they want her to win so much that Rush is running ‘Operation Chaos’. Your opponent wants to fight the weakest person they can so they stand the best chance of winning. Yet Hillary supporters ignore this fact and parrot the ‘Obama will lose to McCain because insert vapid reason here‘ lines. They are not looking for the strongest candidate, they are looking any reason to justify their belief that ‘Hillary is the one!’.

    The right are not stupid, and you can bet that Obama wasn’t even on their radar when this started. They have been loading their bunkers with material aimed at their nemesis, Hillary. They are stocked up for the wrong war if Barack wins the primary. So they are going to do everything they can to get Hillary the win.

    Reading the comments of rabid Hillary supporters, it is clear that many of these people are not Democrats. No f’ing way. Democrats do not talk like that. They do not embrace the right and Faux News. I have seen so much crap that these so-called Democrats spew that it is mind-boggling that real Hillary supporters can not see it for themselves.

    Nope, with them any ally is an ally. Never mind that these so-called allies are going to be the ones to vote against her in the fall. As long as they can use them now to win then that is fine with them. I would not be surprised to see a bunch of people come out of the woodwork to proclaim their success if Hillary ‘wins’ the primary and collect their accolades from the right.

    No matter how you slice it, Hillary has lost. She just has to admit it and move on. But she won’t. So here we are.

  63. 63.

    Martin

    Has she ever been in a kitchen

    Dude, watch her ads. She’s always in the kitchen. Even when it’s hot. It’s Obama that gets out and actually does stuff.

    (p.luk thinks she’s a self-hater.)

  64. 64.

    area man

    Would it surprise anyone to know that this primary season is going exactly like Obama planned?

    You guys remember spreadsheet-gate? The leaked spreadshhet in early February from the Obama team that predicted how the coming primaries would play out?

    They predicted every primary since Super Tuesday correctly. Check it out…

    http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/blog/2008/02/story_o_the_day_obama_spreadsh.html

    If the streak continues, Obama will win 6 of the nine remaining contests.

    Wow. That’s pretty cool, thanks. Now who do we want at the helm, that kinda strategic thinking or the lazy, hubristic and shortsighted players who ‘knew’ it would be wrapped up by Super Tuesday?

    It is to larf.

  65. 65.

    nightjar

    D-Chance. Says:

    How is 49% to 48% in the total popular vote “kicking her ass”?

    I Ran the numbers dude and it comes out 52.6 for Obama and 47.4 for Clinton.

    Of course, unlike you, I didn’t count Florida or Michigan’s votes because, well, I don’t know, THEY DON’T FUCKING COUNT!

  66. 66.

    The Other Steve

    Oh! bama can’t win enough delegates to win either. His current lead is due to wins in solid red states HE WILL NOT WIN in November.

    Yeah, much better to only win the states that Gore and Kerry won.

    You know, the 50-1 election strategy.

  68. 68.

    Tax Analyst

    Krista Says:

    when she doesn’t put effort into a state, she loses

    Right. Like when Helen Keller fell into the well and signed, “Fuck you! I meant to do that!”

    That’s FUNNY

  69. 69.

    Martin

    2. Senator Obama Clinton tried hard to win the state, campaigned intensely throughout the state for most of the last six weeks three years —and was trying to win, not just lose come third by a narrow margin.

    P.luk blames the niggers. Way too many in Iowa for a white girl and a white boy to win.

    Besides, Iowa doesn’t count, it’s not a swing state. (Except that it is – Bush won by 1%)

  70. 70.

    Ted

    Oh! bama can’t win enough delegates to win either. His current lead is due to wins in solid red states HE WILL NOT WIN in November.

    No amount of explaining it to these retards will ever get it through their skulls. But I’m sure anyone around here with Myiqis>80 will understand the giant flaw in this argument.

    So I guess the wingnut question comes into play with idiots like Myiq: Stupid or Lying?

  71. 71.

    The Other Steve

    she does beat him—when she runs against him. when she doesn’t put effort into a state, she loses. And she loses whenever African American’s consitute at least 35% or so of the electorate.

    She was up 25. Seems to me campaigning cost her 15% support.

    Maybe she should have just ignored Pennsylvania and claimed it did not count?

  72. 72.

    Some Guy Named Matt

    Damn P.luk, your right. Time to get real

    Obama 1728 Delegates (1490 Elected/238 Pledged Super)
    Clinton 1595 Delegates (1333 Elected/1595 pledged supers)

    Which number is higher ( I made it easy for you, i put the big number on top). That means more democrats would like to see Barak as the nom then Hill. That’s all there is to it. It’s that fucking simple. Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick, It’s not even algebra. and it’s about as real as you get.

  73. 73.

    J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford

    p.lukasiak Says:

    So, a question for Lanny. If Barack is such a bad candidate, and he is so unelectable, and it is such a bad idea to have him as the Democratic nominee, why can’t Hillary beat him?

    she does beat him—when she runs against him. when she doesn’t put effort into a state, she loses. And she loses whenever African American’s consitute at least 35% or so of the electorate.

    Now, maybe Ohio was a fluke—maybe three weeks wasn’t time enough for Obama to catch up in Ohio even with all the media in his corner, all the momentum going his way, and all the money in the world.

    But Pennsylvania wasn’t. Obama had seven weeks between Ohio and PA to get the job done. Three weeks from yesterday, he was at about -10 in the polls. And that’s just about what he lost by.

    I mean, can we get real here. Obama got 14 more delegates in Kansas, based on less than 18K more people showing up at caucuses in Kansas for Obama than Clinton. Clinton got 12 more delegates in Penssylvania, based on get 215K more votes than Obama.

    And Kansas ain’t a crucial state for Democrats—Dems aren’t going to win in Kansas unless there is a landslide, so Kansas is irrelevant either way. In other words, no one in their right mind gives a fuck what happens in the Kansas caucuses—what sane people care about is what happens in Ohio, Mew Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Missouri (which I know Obama won by 1%, okay?)

    So why isn’t Clinton winning against Obama? Because she’s running for PRESIDENT, and doesn’t give a fuck about Kansas in terms of getting to the White House. She’s smart—and her strategy has been to concentrate on states that Dems can and should win in November.

    April 23rd, 2008 at 7:46 pm

    This drives me nuts. Not until Hillary started losing did the rules of the election start to change. The criteria for every other candidate was winning 2,024, but for Hillary it’s whatever talking point is on the tongue of the Hillary champion closest to a live camera.

    If Obama were in the position Hillary is, where she cannot realistically win more delegates from the remaining contests combined with super delegates, he’d be forced to concede. The Clinton Camp knows this so they’re going to try to change the rules and claim it’s the popular vote a candidate needs to win, of which she still trails without changing the agreed upon rules regarding Michigan and Florida. If Clinton were truly competent at running a general election campaign her team would have made certain that there would be no conflict in her agreeing to disallow the contests in MI and FL, especially since both states are so vital chances to win the nomination.

    Clinton fucked up. She allowed herself to believe her nomination was inevitable. Clinton’s campaign focused on a few contests they figured would lock everything up by super Tuesday, going so far as blowing all their money to put it away. Obama’s campaign out hustled Clinton’s for every delegate he could capture and prevented Hillary from sealing the deal. Since then Obama has built an insurmountable lead in the original, agreed upon by all candidates, criteria for winning the nomination, delegates.

    I’ve voted for Bill Clinton twice, Al Gore and John Kerry and intend to vote for Barack Obama. Even if I have to write in his name.

  74. 74.

    The Other Steve

    Kos has some polls out that show if Obama is the nominee, he wins in states like Colorado and North Carolina.

    Clinton? Not so much. She does worse in every single contest.

    I don’t understand what these people see her. She’s the Mondale of this campaign. The old establishment candidate who inspires nobody, and irritates most everybody else.

  75. 75.

    Ted

    And now that Myiq is back around, even after the pathetic 7 hour GBCW, maybe he can explain something: Why?

    Why do you have this bizarre notion that spewing your bullshit here is going to convince anyone to do anything? I just don’t understand why you waste your time. Go send some more kisses to the Hillary-friendly Salon writers. It’s got to be more productive than taking up thread space here.

  76. 76.

    The Other Steve

    This drives me nuts. Not until Hillary started losing did the rules of the election start to change.

    Hitlery is planning on the Supreme Court handing the election to her, if she is the nominee.

    That is, despite losing 45 states… because, see, it doesn’t matter. Those states don’t count!

  77. 77.

    Ripley

    I live in Iowa and I’ll say it: Every Democratic candidate better give a shit about us. And that goes for every other state in the damned nation! We’re not fucking poll numbers here – we’re people, and we need jobs and health care and some sane environmental policies and energy policies.

    My view of Hillary went from “meh” to “screw you!” after that little prank of hers, threatening the DCCC’s fund raising. Her campaign is a disgrace and her aides need a good caning. Screw you, Lanny!

  78. 78.

    jake

    Why to those questions and a hundred more like them. If your candidate is so much better, why is Obama kicking her ass? Why?

    Um. Er. She’s being nice to him. Because she’s a nice person and … uh … because she’s afraid of enraging the AfricanAmericanElitistIslamistOJamabots.

    A more important question why can’t people figure out how to embed links or at least use tinyurl?

  79. 79.

    Pillsy

    Because she’s running for PRESIDENT, and doesn’t give a fuck about Kansas in terms of getting to the White House.

    So I’m supposed to be impressed by Clinton’s electability because she’s running a campaign to win a race she isn’t even in right now?

    Yeah. That makes lots of sense.

  80. 80.

    tjproudamerican

    John

    Please give Lanny Davis his due:

    is he a fluffer? Yes.

    But he is also a Blue Dress.

    A little Respect for the most corrupt gang of hypocrites since Boss Tweed, Please.

  81. 81.

    Ted

    Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick, It’s not even algebra. and it’s about as real as you get.

    These people shouldn’t be allowed to operate a cash register.

  82. 82.

    Martin

    when she doesn’t put effort into a state, she loses

    Nobody could have anticipated that outcome!

    You guys do realize that in November *everybody* gets to vote. All on the same day too. And other people get elected too. We’ve got senate pick up opportunities in Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, New Mexico, Nebraska, Virginia and to defend Louisiana, South Dakota, and Montana.

    Now, go look at your polls and tell me who’s more likely to hold them as well. No ‘fuck Kansas’ strategy is gonna do it. You need to fight in more than 4 states. You need to cover those above as well or else you end up like Bill did in 1994 greasing up for Gingrich.

    You guys are so fucking narrowminded to think that it’s all about Hillary. It’s not. It’s about the whole game and Obama gets us the whole game. Yeah, he’ll have a harder time in places, but we need McCain spending money out in fucking South Dakota and going broke like, uh, well, like Clinton is.

  83. 83.

    merrinc

    (according to p. luk) Kansas is irrelevant either way. In other words, no one in their right mind gives a fuck what happens in the Kansas caucuses…

    ….she’s running for PRESIDENT, and doesn’t give a fuck about Kansas in terms of getting to the White House.

    Charming. From Scout Finch’s excellent diary, Little Caucus on the Prairie at GOS:

    The line did not end. As I was leaving, some 2.5 hours after I arrived, the line was still a solid 4+ blocks long – in the freezing rain. Given that the law says that you had to be in line by 7pm, that meant those folks had already been on line – in the freezing rain – for an hour and a half and they still had a long wait ahead. That showed some damn dogged determination by the voters in a state where it isn’t supposed to matter. It was heart-warming, to say the least.

    Folks were “fired up!” No, they weren’t chanting or singing songs on line, but they were sticking it out and the vast majority of those voters were wearing Obama stickers. Young, old, all racial lines…..they were standing in the freezing rain for Obama. In Kansas. That was inspiring.

    Volunteers. There were dozens of volunteers on-site – 100% belonging to the Obama campaign. There wasn’t a single Clinton volunteer in sight. I have been largely torn between the two candidates, but it became pretty clear that the Clinton campaign hadn’t put any effort into this district. A district where people were enduring a lot to make sure their vote counted.

    Not that She Who Must be Nominated would care.

  84. 84.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    Chris Bowers has this great post from the other day about the odd spin coming from the Clinton, i.e. Bill’s unusual and ridiculous spin.

    … both sides pursued strategies they believed would lead to victory. That Clinton is behind in delegates despite securing the popular vote victories in the large states its campaign sought is demonstrative of weakness the campaign’s weakness terms of electoral strategy. If anything, it shows that Clinton is less electable than Obama, not more.

    The Clinton campaign successfully executed its campaign strategy–it just didn’t work. While is very nice that the strategy might have worked under different rules, it is more likely that if the rules were different, then the Obama campaign would have pursued a different strategy. Further, that the Clinton campaign did not employ a strategy to work under the rules presented to the candidates at the start of the primary season is indicative of strategic myopia that would lead to another bad strategy even if the rules changed. If you can solve the problem presented to you under one set of rules, why should we have any confidence you could solve a different problem under a different set of rules? (My emphasis added)

    Bowers makes an interesting point, and that should be considered by Democrats. The Clinton campaign’s inability to defeat an alleged neophyte should scare the shit out of anyone tired of Republicans in the White House. Clinton’s stopped by Obama. How the hell would she defeat the Republicans?

    The fact that Obama was better able to exploit that system by implementing a brilliant strategy that out-maneuvered the vaunted, and deeply entrenched Clinton political machine speaks volumes. Obama is the JUNIOR senator from Illinois and he is beating the wife of an ex-President. An ex-President many Democrats were still quite fond of …

    The end of the road approaches and the Clinton campaign knows it.

  85. 85.

    TR

    Oh! bama can’t win enough delegates to win either.

    Of course not. But he’ll have the lead going into the convention if it comes to that. Do you really think that the superdelegates would overturn the primary results? Do you think they’d let an African-American candidate win it fair and square and then yank it out from under him?

    His current lead is due to wins in solid red states HE WILL NOT WIN in November.

    Like Colorado? Obama beats McCain 46-43 in the latest Rasmussen poll, while Hillary gets obliterated 36-50.

    Or North Carolina? Obama is currently tied with McCain 347-47, but Clinton is trailing badly, 51-40.

    Or Minnesota? Obama has a comfortable 49-43 lead, while Clinton’s tied.

    Hillary, OTOH, wins the big battleground states we need in November. Like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.

    Again, let’s go to the Rasmussen general election polls.

    Pennsylvania: Clinton 47, McCain 38; Obama 47, McCain 39.
    Ohio: McCain 47, Clinton 42; McCain 47, Obama 40.
    Michigan: McCain 45, Clinton 42; McCain 43, Obama 42.
    Florida: Clinton 45, McCain 44; McCain 53, Obama 38.

    Right now, they both take Penn and both lose Ohio. Both trail in Michigan, but Obama has a closer race there. Clinton is in a dead heat with McCain in Florida, but he’s beating Obama badly.

    So there’s your battleground state edge — Florida. The state has 27 electoral votes, while NC (15), Minn. (10), and Colorado (9) combine for more than that, 34.

    Obams’s plan broadens the map — helping downticket races like Udall in the Colorado Senate race, for instance — and leads to more EVs. I’d rather be fighting it out in purple states like Colorado, NC, and Minnesota rather than rehashing Florida’s stupidities, especially with another Republican governor solidly backing their boy again.

  86. 86.

    Kevin Hayden

    Btw Paul, there’s only one state that has 35% African Americans in its population: Mississippi. And Obama has won states with less than 2% AA populations.

    Clinton gets to run in a country that’s got white women as the majority demographic in all but a handful of states.And she’s lost about 60% of them.Per your logic, that shouldn’t be.

    You say Clinton made a conscious choice to focus on so few states because they count more in November. Okay, explain Texas then. And Arizona. Explain why missouri has correctly picked all but 1 president in the general election for 100 years, and it gave a primary win to Obama.

    NY, IL and CA are reliably blue for either Dem. TX is reliably red. Obama didn’t enter the fL and MI races, so the two big states he lost that matter are OH and PA. But if Clinton takes those two, then loses IA, ME, CT, WI, MO, MN, VT, HI and WA, she has enough electoral votes to win? Please explain how you do your math. It makes less sense than your non-sequitur logic.

  87. 87.

    Martin

    Oh! bama can’t win enough delegates to win either. His current lead is due to wins in solid red states HE WILL NOT WIN in November.

    Unfortunately, I keep running into supporters like this that are so sure, lacking any evidence at all, that are threatening to vote McCain, not because they think he’s better, but because they are pathologically committed to proving their prediction right that they are willing to invest in it over any sane reasons to pick a candidate. I can see the sign in his front yard:

    McCain 2008! Because I said Obama would lose!

  88. 88.

    Ted

    Hillary, OTOH, wins the big battleground states we need in November. Like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.

    God, I missed this one earlier. Myiq2xu is the biggest fucking pathological liar to hit this site since Darrell.

    Hillary didn’t “win” Michigan. And to call her results in Florida a “win” is charitable at best.

    Can you please stop repeating this lie?

  89. 89.

    tBone

    Hillary, OTOH, wins the big battleground states we need in November. Like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.

    That’s called “Electoral” math.

    I’ve heard of that kind of math. They teach it in schools where the students are delivered via short bus.

  90. 90.

    tBone

    Please explain how you do your math.

    Step 1: cook up a huge batch of meth.
    Step 2: do enough of it that you feel like insects are being hatched inside your teeth.
    Step 3: ???
    Step 4: Hillary wins!

  91. 91.

    scrutinizer

    Can you please stop repeating this lie?

    SATSQ #10^10^10: No, he can’t. It’s pathological.

  92. 92.

    Pillsy

    I love how the argument that Obama can’t win “big battleground states” depends crucially on the fact that he lost all of four states, two of which he didn’t even run in.

  93. 93.

    Conservatively Liberal

    How is 49% to 48% in the total popular vote “kicking her ass”?

    …

    This is a 50/50 race. …

    Why do Hillary supporters like to round numbers to ‘tie’ things up? Where I am from, a win is a win. Obama is winning. You can’t parse a lead into a tie unless you are willing to fool yourself into doing so. Winning is winner take all. For some illogical reason, since neither can get to 2,025 delegates without the super delegates, Hillary supporters are declaring that it is a ‘virtual tie’. They extend this illogical train of thought to include the delusion that if it is a tie, then obviously Hillary won.

    The best argument that they have is that since neither of the candidates can pull it off by themselves, then it is up to the super delegates to decide. To do this, they have to look at the facts of the situation. These facts include the BIG one; Obama is ahead of Hillary. If not for the threshold of the delegate count, he would have won.

    So they will have to decide, and in doing so there are only two obvious decisions. Give it to Hillary and piss off the Obama supporters for giving it to the ‘loser’, or give it to Obama and piss off the Hillary supporters by not giving it to her. No matter what, someone is going to be pissed. So it is a surefire lose-lose proposition for the super delegates from the get-go.

    So they have to weigh the positives and the negatives of each side and come to a conclusion that they can justify to themselves and the people they may have to answer to. But as we get closer to the finish line, they are balking at making a decision. They don’t want to be the ones who are vilified by the losing side and I can’t blame them. It sucks to be them right now.

    So they are doing little but slowly trickling to one side or the other, but not in a way that is designed to end this. The closer it gets, the hotter it is getting for the remaining supers and that ain’t gonna change any time soon.

    That is why I think some of the supers want to let this go to the convention. It takes the heat off of them and places it elsewhere. I think it is possible that this is going to end up there. If it does go there, with the current tone of Hillary’s campaign we can expect all out war.

    This situation is tailor made to the specifications of the right. We damn near have the presidency handed to us and we fuck it up to no end. Heaven!

    For them, but hell for the rest of us.

  94. 94.

    Ted

    SATSQ #101010: No, he can’t. It’s pathological.

    You’re right. I answered my own question.

  95. 95.

    Kevin Hayden

    when she doesn’t put effort into a state, she loses.

    And when she does put her efforts into states, she still loses most of them.

    As for her big state strategy, that worked well for Rudy, too.

    We’ve had 7 years of losing strategies and hundreds of thousands are dead because of them. Clinton, like Kerry and other notables, joined a minority of elected Congressional Dems and almost every Republican to help cause that losing, deadly venture.

    A majority of Dems could see through Bush’s game in October 2002. A majority of Dems still can see identify losing strategies.

  96. 96.

    Jack H.

    I don’t get how Obama raising so much more cash he can outspend Clinton 3-1 and still be left will piles of cash while she was verging on insolvency is an argument FOR her candidacy.
    If the superdelegates hand the nomination to Clinton, African Americans will abandon the party en masse. The Dems won’t just lose the Presidency, they’ll lose congress as well.

  97. 97.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Give it up Paul. This crowd would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary.

    Finally, you understand. But it has nothing to do with CDS. It has everything to do with HE FUCKING WON MORE PLEDGED DELEGATES. You don’t get to go to the final if you don’t win the semifinal, ShitForBrains. I betcha UCLA woulda beat Kansas in the final but guess what? Memphis beat UCLA! And Obama is HRC’s Memphis. He very well may lose the general but he has won the right to do that. Just like all the white dudes that went before him.

    Sorry your candidate sucks so bad she couldn’t win a gimme Democratic primary in which she was polling 40 points ahead when this thing started. How you can still claim she can win the general despite completely fubarking the primary I think reveals the underlying prejudicial attitudes behind a lot of the anti-Obama stuff. She doesn’t have any measure it all where she is a better candidate, fundraiser, politicker, etc., etc., etc., etc., than Obama but none of that matters because she is white.

  98. 98.

    scrutinizer

    Give it up Paul. This crowd would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary.

    CDS does that.

    You know, myiqisoffscalelow, when people ask me for an example of vacuous, I point them to your posts.

  99. 99.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Since I’m on the subject of race right now, let me point out what I haven’t seen anyone else address yet. The reason McCain is going to Mississippi and Selma and Memphis and courting the black vote is because he is gambling that HRC will figure out a way to steal the nomination from the clear pledged delegate leader (the black guy). If this happens, presumably black folks will be looking for another candidate to support and bless his big multicultural heart, McCain’s already laid the groundwork for many of them to come back to the party of Lincoln.

  100. 100.

    Martin

    Bowers makes an interesting point

    It’s not an interesting point, it’s a goddamn obvious point. The Kossacks figured this shit out before super tuesday – she was running a campaign that wasn’t reflective of how to win. We were all predicting delegate spreads based on district turnout and her team was focusing on winning some states by slim margin and losing others by huge margins thinking it didn’t matter:

    Hillary Clinton had little time to turn things around before Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, and a campaign that had raised more than $100 million in 2007 suddenly found itself short of money. Ickes and Solis Doyle went to the Clintons for a loan to pay for television ads. The candidate was exasperated. “God, I’ve raised all this money,” she exclaimed, according to one person informed about the conversation. “What have you guys done with it?”

    The Clintons lent the campaign $5 million, and Solis Doyle and Henry focused resources on a dozen battleground states, mainly large ones such as California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, as well as Arizona and New Mexico, with large Hispanic populations. But they essentially did not compete in smaller states holding caucuses. Clinton, feeling burned by Iowa, had become allergic to caucuses, deeming them unfair.

    Ickes and political director Guy Cecil argued that such states were important because even if she lost, she would pick up delegates with a strong showing. That would soon become clear. Clinton racked up big wins in California, New Jersey and even Kennedy’s Massachusetts. But she lost the caucus states, and because of the party’s proportional rules, it cost her.

    “That was one of the biggest blunders we had,” a senior official said.

    That’s not a blunder. It’s rank incompetence. Not campaigning in a state because you think it’s unfair?! What the fuck was she thinking? You campaign because that’s where the goddamn voters are. And it gets worse! Her staff gave her the right answer! They told her to compete in the smaller states and she didn’t. So not only do we campaign based on fair/unfair metrics, one that pisses away money, we have one that doesn’t listen to the staff when they set you straight.

    Now, p.luk would have us believe that she would pursue the right strategy in the general when she pursued entirely the wrong one in the primary. Why should we think she’d do that? Maybe North Carolina will be declared unfair because the voting machines don’t have a paper trail or Wisconsin because the newscasters hate her. Maybe her advisors will tell her that a blowout in California doesn’t matter and she should spend time in Iowa instead for electoral votes and she won’t listen to that advise either. I can see her on CNN on November 5, desperately explaining to the world that even though John McCain won the most electoral votes, she crushed him on the popular vote by taking NY and CA by 70% and should be president. Yeah, that’ll work out great for us.

    What was that argument again? More experienced? Ready on day one? Are you fucking kidding me? She wasn’t even ready for day one of the primaries by having a winning strategy. She’s been through this system with her husband twice and she still doesn’t know how it works? Her campaign chair ran the fucking DNC and she still couldn’t get it right? Her staff designed the Texas primacaucus and they were still surprised by how it worked?

    It’s as if Brownie was running this campaign and we’re supposed to take comfort that after pissing away the best home field advantage of any candidate short of an honest-to-god incumbent and having the best team of insiders found in the party that suddenly, like lightning from fucking heaven she’s finally going to find her ass with both hands? Wake the fuck up guys. If you want to know why the GOP is excited to run against her, this is why. She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing.

  102. 102.

    Soylent Green

    Oh! bama can’t win enough delegates to win either. His current lead is due to wins in solid red states HE WILL NOT WIN in November.

    Hillary, OTOH, wins the big battleground states we need in November. Like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.

    That’s called “Electoral” math.

    Sure it is. Except that it isn’t, because the primary is not the general.

    So Hill O’ Beans got 55% of the Dems in PA. Well, BFD.

    The primary is Dems vs. Dems, not Dems vs. GOP. They are two entirely different match-ups. Turnout, fundamentals, and who America likes more will win the battleground states. Not Hillary’s bowling score in the PA primary.

    Fuck it, arguing this point with you is a colossal waste of time as usual.

  103. 103.

    mightygodking

    This crowd would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary.

    You have yet to explain how Clinton, with far and away the highest across-the-board negatives of all three major candidates remaining for president, and a near-majority of citizens willing to outright state they will not vote for her under any circumstances (even pro-Hillarites admit that her vote ceiling in a general election is probably 53%, and that’s likely an optimistic figure), has a better shot in the general than Obama.

    Saying “she won Pennsylvania and Ohio and Florida” isn’t an argument, because she won there among Democrats, and not especially overwhelmingly either. (Counting Michigan is just stupid – it was a glorified straw poll with one major name on the ballot where Democrats were encouraged to make mischief and vote for Mitt Romney to increase chaos on the Republican side, and she couldn’t even break sixty percent against “undecided.”)

    She’s not going to win Florida – it will go red. She’s also not going to win Colorado or North Carolina, both states that right now lean Democratic in the general with Obama at the top of the ticket, but not with her. And saying that Hillary won PA and OH in the primary which means Obama won’t win them in the general? We’ve just seen a Pennsylvania primary with Democratic turnout in record numbers, almost equivalent to Presidential race numbers.

    Democrats in these states are energized, and unless you think Clinton voters came out specifically to vote against Obama or Obama voters came out specifically to vote against Clinton – and Rush Limbaugh conspiracy theories aside, there’s no serious grounds for either allegation – the overall impression is of an excited, energized electorate.

    Yes, there are polls saying “no way I vote for Clinton/Obama in the general if he/she gets the nod,” but these polls always exist, and inevitably the same thing happens: most people look at the alternatives, shrug, and vote for the party they supported in the primary anyway. You’re already seeing it happen with McCain – who, you will remember, was roundly loathed not three months ago by the Republican nut-and-file, but now they’re all holding their noses while they extoll his virtues.

    That isn’t going to change this time around. John McCain is a terrible, terrible candidate; where he has leads in the general election polls right now are not where he will necessarily have leads when the Democrats have a candidate. Take a look at Obama’s numbers against McCain right now and then swing them five or six percent – that’s what happens when he’s nominated as the general election candidate. Add another one or two points’ worth of swing if he picks a good VP candidate (which he will). That should be your baseline for expectations in the general.

    And yes, the same math works for Clinton. She just has weaker numbers against McCain overall, because she’s not as well liked as Obama is. In other elections that might not make a difference, but in this one it does because the stakes are crucial.

    And finally, there’s no real basis to pick Hillary over Obama in terms of fairness even if we ignore electability. Hillary is behind in every conceivable metric; states won, popular vote, elected delegates, national preference. There is simply no basis for her candidacy grounded in rational fact.

    So explain how Clinton is a better choice for nominee than Obama.

    Seriously. Let’s see it.

  104. 104.

    Conservatively Liberal

    Hillary’s phony message that Obama is not electable is not working.

    Good! Let the cash roll in! Can Hillary claim the same increase in donors since her win in PA? I doubt it. Obama loses and he still wins, and you know that this pisses off the Clinton side.

    Even better. :D

  105. 105.

    The Other Steve

    This crowd would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary.

    Actually yes.

    I’m convinced now that p.luk is Hillary’s brother, and he is desperate for her to win so he can continue to make a fortune off pleading pardon cases.

  108. 108.

    Soylent Green

    If you want to know why the GOP is excited to run against her, this is why. She doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing.

    That’s a good reason now. But they’ve been stockpiling others for years. That’s why they are desperate to run against Hillary.

    A while back I heard they were saving up the play-by-play descriptions of just which women not his wife Bill Clinton has been “not having sexual relations with that woman” since leaving the White House.

    Wouldn’t that be a great one to drop in October?

  109. 109.

    Jon H

    Myiq wrote:

    Hillary, OTOH, wins the big battleground states we need in November. Like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.

    Unfortunately for you and Hillary, McCain will also be on the ballot in Michigan, and he’ll be allowed to campaign in Florida.

    So it seems that those two states, at least, demonstrate fuck-all about Clinton’s ability to win there.

  110. 110.

    Martin

    I’d like to see the explanation for this:

    In 2000, Clinton ran against Rick Lazio for Patrick Moynihans open seat. Moynihan was an icon of the Democratic party and had a 60% approval rating. Voters were happy with a Dem in that seat, as you would expect in NY. Moynihan and most of the name NY Dems came out for Clinton. Lazio had been a US representative and was reasonably well known and had a good approval rating himself – 57%.

    Giuliani (who NYers largely hated) dropped out of the race over that whole cheating on his wife thing and Lazio only entered the race in June.

    Clinton won the race 55/43 which isn’t bad, but remember this is New York – a solidly blue state and she was replacing hallmark Democratic senator, and her opponent had only been in the race for 5 months. And she still had the same huge name recognition that she has now and 27 of her 35 years of experience to run on. Now, if that wasn’t bad enough, Gore beat Bush 60/35 in New York on that same day. In other words, a decent number of voters who backed Gore were abandoning her for the Republican on the same day.

    I’m not denying she’d handily win New York, but in the only non-incumbent election we have of her, she hardly performed as well as would be expected. So what’s changed? How will she outperform now?

  112. 112.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    It is so amazingly sleazy and slimey to argue that Clinton “deserves” the votes or delegates or what have you from Florida. They agreed not to campaign there! Florida screwed up, so the party voided their primary. No one gets those votes.

    Michigan too.

    And what’s with this “only certain states matter” crap? Obama wins 10 times as many primaries as Clinton, so her supporters say “well, Hillary wasn’t trying to win in the states Obama won.” Well, duh! If she *had* tried, and won there, this race would be over, and no one would be talking about Clinton being millions of dollars in debt, or tossing out the desires of voters with a superdelegate end-run, or the dirty “kitchen sink” strategy, etc. All of this was completely foreseeable, too. Yet this kind of stupid strategy reflects well on Clinton’s ability to be president?!? Are you kidding me?

    Oh, but we need “certain states” to win the general election. Yeah, I forgot about that. As if a candidate who loses every state except Ohio, Florida, Pennslvania, and New York will win the election. That makes sense!

    Obama can’t win enough delegates to win either.

    Are you huffing paint fumes? That 2,025 mark isn’t a requirement, it’s just half plus 1. That is, if someone gets that amount they are mathematically guaranteed to have more than anyone else could possibly have. But Obama could still end up with more delegates than Clinton, which would make him (according to my antiquated notion of democracy) the winner. Clinton *might* end the race with more delegates, if 80% of all Democrats who have not cast a primary vote swing for her. Does anyone at all think that will happen?

  113. 113.

    MDee

    she does beat him—when she runs against him. when she doesn’t put effort into a state, she loses.

    So all those millions she blew through in Iowa that left her loaning herself money was her not putting in an effort to win the state? Wow. I had no idea.

    Oh that’s right, I completely forgot. Iowa has an unprecedented number of African American residents. Silly me.

    What kind of candidate doesn’t go into a primary election trying like mad to win as many states as they can?
    One who bought the inevitable meme hook, line and sinker even though roughly 47% of the country can’t stand her? One who pissed away millions living high on the hog and now has to beg for donations (Personally, I’m waiting for the CNN telethon)?

    Clinton is a mediocre candidate who blew every possible advantage she had through hubris and incompetence. The only thing she still has going for her is her name and she’s damn lucky that in some states that in itself is good enough for some voters. The only thing that amazes me is that her name alone doesn’t garner her better numbers.

  114. 114.

    Conservatively Liberal

    I think that Hillary’s campaign people, the ones who make and spend the cash, were expecting a cakewalk at the start of the primary. They thought this was going to be a party for them, and they paid themselves and spent accordingly. How else can you explain that they were broke after February 5th? Rather than spend wisely, they went whole hog (remember half a mil just in parking costs?!) and had a blast. Why would people spend money like there was no tomorrow? This is the biggest ‘tell’ of all.

    They thought that they could spend freely because after February 5th the cash would roll in due to her huge primary wins. She was inevitable, she had it in the bag! She put all of her eggs in one basket.

    And lost. She has been trying to play catchup ever since, and she can’t do it. They partied like there was no tomorrow and tomorrow came. Hillary has surrounded herself with faithful sycophants and greedy bootlickers, and they have performed accordingly. They thought they were going to ride Hillary to fame and big bucks, and they hardly had to do anything at all!

    Or so they thought. Does anyone think that she is going to do a better job in the White House?

    No way.

  115. 115.

    Notorious P.A.T.

    Now, p.luk would have us believe that she would pursue the right strategy in the general when she pursued entirely the wrong one in the primary.

    I don’t know, the impression I get from Clinton boosters is not “darn it, we really messed up this primary!” but rather “so what if we lost 40 states? we won the 10 that ‘matter’ so White House here we come!” In other words, they would do in the general just what they did in the primary.

  116. 116.

    Fledermaus

    Oh! bama can’t win enough delegates to win either. His current lead is due to wins in solid red states HE WILL NOT WIN in November.

    Fuck Ohio, HRC isn’t going even to win Washington and Oregon in the general. The rural areas can’t stand her and the lefties will just stay home or vote nader. She’s just going to get slaughtered in the western states.

  117. 117.

    Cain

    CL,

    Well said, I am very interested in this. Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?

    cain

  118. 118.

    John Cole

    Hillary has surrounded herself with faithful sycophants and greedy bootlickers, and they have performed accordingly.

    This.

    I look at the people around Hillary, and I see the same dynamics that led to our government heads sitting around discussing the best way to torture someone.

  119. 119.

    TR

    John Stewart just ripped the campaign a new one. Try to catch the replay, or the inevitable post on C&L.

  120. 120.

    Jon H

    Hey John,

    It might be good to put a sidebar link thingy to the actblue page, so it sticks around and doesn’t disappear, forgotten and sad.

  121. 121.

    Fledermaus

    Oh that’s right, I completely forgot. Iowa has an unprecedented number of African American residents.

    Plus, there’s that large underground homosexual population in Des Moines.

  122. 122.

    theturtlemoves

    when she doesn’t put effort into a state, she loses.

    So, the argument is, essentially, she was just letting him win? Wow, that’s pretty noble. We should definitely nominate such a selfless individual. Letting the poor black guy win a few pissant states so he doesn’t feel bad about himself. She is a scholar and a gentlewoman.

  123. 123.

    Josh E.

    Plus, there’s that large underground homosexual population in Des Moines.

    They’re too busy building landing strips to care about the primary.

  124. 124.

    Brachiator

    nabalzbbfr Says:

    Hillary may not have the votes to secure the Democatic nomination, but she has more than enough to deny Obama the nomination. She just has to play a little hardball: tell the superdelegates that if they nominate Obama, she will run as a third party candidate.

    I would love to see Senator Clinton try this little tantrum threat. The Democratic Party leadership might have to be hospitalized from laughing so hard, with a laugh that would make Howard Dean’s famous yell seem like a polite yawn.

    Senator Clinton is already relatively thin with respect to financing (it’s funny how a sniveling press talks about her recent intake of $10 million, but omits the fact that she is still leaving a trail of unpaid vendors). Nobody in their right mind, except maybe Richard Scaife would fund this folly, and no one, not even Ralph Nader would follow Clinton. I don’t even think that her hubby would follow her, even if he agreed to name it the Bill Moose Party. By the way, what happened in the election of 1912 after Teddy Roosevelt formed the Bull Moose Party of One?

    Roosevelt had the satisfaction of outpolling Taft in the popular vote and by a large margin of 88–8 in the electoral vote, but the split engendered in the Republican vote allowed Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency.

    The Clintons would be committing political suicide if they tried to form a third party, and their egos would never allow them to become political pariahs. They would also probably say goodbye to that speaker engagement thing that allowed them to join the $100 million dollar club.

    p.lukasiak Says:

    And Kansas ain’t a crucial state for Democrats—Dems aren’t going to win in Kansas unless there is a landslide, so Kansas is irrelevant either way. In other words, no one in their right mind gives a fuck what happens in the Kansas caucuses—what sane people care about is what happens in Ohio, Mew Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Missouri (which I know Obama won by 1%, okay?)

    This “analysis” alone is why the super delegates should flush Clinton down the electoral toilet right now and rally the party for a November contest with Obama at the head of the ticket. New voters and independents are trying to tell the country that they want something different, and are willing to throw out all the old rules. But Clinton supporters are busy insisting that the old way that they look at the world is an absolute dead cinch certainty. However, I don’t see how conceding some states, and presuming that wins are guaranteed in designated big states does anything except play into the Republican’s hands.

    All the blog twaddle so far is working from the perspective of the present contentious battle between Obama and Clinton. No one can predict the outcome of the general election if the entire Democratic Party, from Howard Dean to Al Gore to Bill and Hillary go all “full strength” in supporting Obama.

  125. 125.

    Martin

    I think that Hillary’s campaign people, the ones who make and spend the cash, were expecting a cakewalk at the start of the primary. They thought this was going to be a party for them, and they paid themselves and spent accordingly.

    That was pretty apparent even before Super Tuesday. Obama’s approach:

    As the primary calendar fell into place, it became clear that February 5 wouldn’t much resemble the Super Tuesdays of old. Instead, it would be a de facto national primary that sprawled across two dozen states. The conventional wisdom was that mechanical strength would get you nowhere in such a contest, since you couldn’t organize half the country. What would be decisive was local establishment support and name recognition, which Hillary Clinton had in droves.

    Plouffe disagreed. Back in April 2007, he’d hired a former Gephardt strategist named Jeff Berman, probably the party’s most respected authority on the dark art of delegate math. When Plouffe and Berman sized up the states in play on February 5, they realized they could at least secure a draw, sending the race into a two-week period that strongly favored Obama. The idea was to build a sturdy base by targeting key primaries and relentlessly organizing the caucus states. By fall, Plouffe and his field staff, led by a lieutenant named Jon Carson, were already setting up ground operations in places like Idaho, Kansas, and Colorado. Carson’s teams had cased these states for months when the Clintonites finally arrived. In effect, Plouffe wanted to turn the entire campaign into Iowa.

    …

    Over the course of the next two weeks, Obama piled up eleven straight victories and an ever-widening delegate-lead. (Plouffe had shrewdly conserved money for a mid-February blitzkrieg, while the Clinton campaign blew its cash coming up short on Super Tuesday.)

    So essentially Clinton never planned past day one. Never bothered to plan out the whole race. Didn’t manage spending. Made bad decisions. Meanwhile, Obama is good on cash and still basically hitting his numbers. 2 months ago he projected losing PA by 8 delegates. It’s looking like he’ll lose by no more than 12 with some things still getting settled. That’s his worst projection so far. He projected to have 1493 pledged delegates at this point and CNN shows 1487 with some of PA still to sort out. He’s less than half a percent off. I do these kinds of projections in my job, and while I’ve been lucky to knock out some stunning predictions, I’m amazed at how accurate this thing is.

    If I were in the Clinton campaign seeing that spreadsheet play out almost number for number, I’d be demoralized beyond belief. It’s almost as though nothing that happens – Wright, Snipergate, money, you name it can affect the outcome. No wonder she’s frustrated. It’s like someone came back in time and dared her to change a result that was already a foregone conclusion.

  126. 126.

    Conservatively Liberal

    This.

    Of everything that I wrote in that post, that line stood out the most for me. It is that glaring.

    Well said, I am very interested in this. Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?

    Thanks for the compliment? ;) My only other internet ‘enterprise’ is a small game server I run for an old game that gets little traffic but we love it. No politics there…lol! I am just getting fed up with all of the meme Clinton and her supporters are out there, and when I get pissed off I start to get my ducks in a row so I can start blasting and hit every single damn one of them. When I pull the trigger, I am off.

    Right now, I am ‘royally’ pissed. Maybe pissed at ‘royalty’? Obama does not have to fire me up, Hillary and her supporters are doing that all on their own. I am not going to sit by and let the Clintonistas come in and spew the crap they do without holding a mirror up to their candidate for them to stare at. It is the least I can do for them since they are too lazy to do it themselves.

    I am not rooting for Obama to beat Hillary, I am rooting for Obama to win. That is the kind of campaign he has been trying to run, to win. She is campaigning to beat him, and that is that. He is in this for us, and she is in this for herself.

    I am for America, and I am for Obama. In that order. Because he is for us.

    /rant mode off ;)

  129. 129.

    Conservatively Liberal

    He’s Buddy Rich when he flies off the handle…

    Me? More like Groucho Marx. :)

    I just thought of something about my post above regarding the way her campaign partied away the money by February 5th.

    They partied like it was 1999.

  130. 130.

    Martin

    Damn, just saw the Carville/Richardson setup on Larry King. Carville is interesting insight on the Clintons – he can barely look at Richardson in the monitor. Richardson should be glad he doesn’t own a horse.

  132. 132.

    The Populist

    The fact that Hillary can’t raise money and Obama can tells me all I need to know. Those talking heads like Buchanan and Scarborough who are such whores they’d support Hillary for personal gain aren’t changing minds.

    People may be waking up. Just because a bunch of old, stubborn white people in Pennsylvania can’t get past the color of one’s skin and lame stereotypes doesn’t mean he can’t win if he’s the nominee.

    If McLame beats Obama in the General Election, then I feel any of the rust belt states that go for race over common sense deserve the mess they are in. Sorry, I believe it and I am willing to stop caring about those who vote against their own economic interests for some stupid old way of thinking.

  133. 133.

    The Populist

    BTW – when I say the rust belt, for example, I mean that I see people saying they like McCain when he’s up on stage lecturing these folks that he can’t stop NAFTA and it’s their fault that they can’t adapt. Maybe there is some truth to that, but why would these maroons vote for this guy when we all know he has no clue how an economy works AND he is all for elitist special interests who will continue to fuck these folks over until they have nothing left.

  134. 134.

    Tax Analyst

    I am not rooting for Obama to beat Hillary, I am rooting for Obama to win. That is the kind of campaign he has been trying to run, to win. She is campaigning to beat him, and that is that. He is in this for us, and she is in this for herself.

    I am for America, and I am for Obama. In that order. Because he is for us.

    Exactly, CL…and this is what strikes me most about the Clinton candidacy and “strategy”, if you can flatter it with that term, is that it appears that HRC’s primary and nearly exclusive motivation is a sense of personal entitlement. What’s more this sentiment seems to be what’s holding together the core of her support. Beyond that she’s just throwing wild punches at an ignorant caricature of Barack Obama that’s really just the sum total of all the weird, lame, sick, outdated prejudices and fears that too many Americans still have in their saddlebags.

    But you are exactly right. What we should want is to put forth the person that will try to do what is best for the type of country we want America to be. So like you, I am not rooting for Hillary to lose, but rather for Obama, and by extension, all of us to win. Everything else that the “pundits” tell us is so fucking important is just window-dressing. To the Chris Matthews’ types the candidates are just something to talk about so that people will pay attention to Chris Matthews. And what happens to the American people isn’t really all that fucking important, as long as people still pay attention and listen to Chris Matthews. Obama’s preacher…lapel pins…Bill Ayres and Bernadette Dorn and what they did or didn’t do when Barack Obama was about 8-years old …”bitter” comments…Does any of that shit matter in the least? No, it’s just the shit that Hillary has closest at hand to fling in the futile hope of destroying Barack’s candidacy. Even if ALL of it were true and relevant, which is a joke to even consider, why should we want Hillary Clinton to be President? The only reason I can come up with is to prevent John McCain from holding the office. It will get me to the polls if that’s my choice. Don’t we deserve a shot at more than that?

    What McCain represents is more of the GOP cluelessness and corruption, fronted once again by someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about 95% of the time. What Hillary represents has a lot of symbolic weight for many folks, but in practice I see a lot of ego and very little in the way of planning and next to nothing in the way of a “vision” that appeals to me. It didn’t have to be that way, but HRC really does not seem to have any ground-level political instincts to work with. She’s never campaigned in the way most politicians have to campaign to gain office. Going up the elective ladder one step at a time and appealing face-to-face, day-to-day with the community they are going to represent. No, she started out by running for a U.S. Senate seat representing the huge state of New York and now she’s running for the Presidency of the entire country. And she doesn’t have a clue how to really connect with anyone. Her support from women who are around her age bracket is more about what they project onto Hillary than anything Hillary has done to connect with them. So her campaign was wholly dependent on the people she brought in to run it, and I have to say that I have rarely seen a more poorly run enterprise. They really should all be terribly embarrassed, but arrogant pricks like Mark Penn just don’t have that human trait in their repertoire. All her other support seems to be from folks who are hurting and are wishing and hoping for the 90’s to happen again…or those willing to be swayed by fear or prejudice. Again, don’t we deserve something better than that? Even if we don’t, doesn’t the next generation deserve that much? Whoever is going to be President is going to be walking into a buzz-saw of pending calamities on almost every front. We have been pulled into a deep and nasty hole by a silly dilettante faux-Texan whose main guidance was provided by that sick, old, malignant tumor of a human being named Dick Cheney.

    Well, rant over, I guess.

    Goodnight.

  136. 136.

    Martin

    Jon Stewart laid it out pretty clear tonight. I smell another mydd boycott. I think they’re down to Fox being the only acceptable channel.

  137. 137.

    Pooh

    Fixt

    Facts are stubborn things

    Not nearly as stubborn as a demoralized Hillbot.

    For someone who is (self)purportedly so damn smart, you do make it pretty easy…

  138. 138.

    PeterJ

    So essentially Clinton never planned past day one. Never bothered to plan out the whole race. Didn’t manage spending. Made bad decisions.

    Reminds me of someone’s plan for invading Iraq…

  139. 139.

    Conservatively Liberal

    myiq2xu GoatBoy Says:

    I love the smell of hot goat sex in the morning. You know, one time I was loose in a goat pen, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I looked up. I couldn’t find one standing, not one stinkin’ goat. The smell, you know that hot goat sex smell, the whole pen. Smelled like… victory.

    Some day I’m gonna to have my teeth pulled to make blowing goats easier…

    You really like that ‘glazed donut’ look on your face, eh? Well it does match the glazed look in your eyes.

  140. 140.

    Conservatively Liberal

    Great rant TA, and I agree with your assessment. I think Hillary was basically handed the senate in NY, and she is angry that the voters across the country are not following the script they had written in their minds. NY would elect a corpse as long as it was a Democrat, but not the country. We had a role in this coronation until we decided that we would not just crown her because she was inevitable, and now she wants our voices negated because her campaign drove off a cliff.

    It is almost like Bush in 2000 all over again, except they had (criminally) competent people greasing the skids for an incompetent candidate. Her people just thought all they had to do was lay back and rake in the rewards of an cakewalk of a campaign under the name of Clinton. Their arrogance has been exposed and now they are thrashing around, trying to gain any traction by throwing everything they can at Obama.

    They are using Rove’s playbook, but only out of desperation borne from the knowledge that they have fucked up and they have to find something, anything, to keep the HMS Clinton from sinking. Because if she goes down, they go down with it.

    Fucked up ‘royally’. Keep an eye out for ‘rats’ abandoning ship. They are always the first to jump off, and we don’t want them on our ship.

  141. 141.

    TR

    The more I hear it, the dumber the Hillary argument seems to be.

    I keep hearing that they’re really making a pitch to the superdelegates lately, but an argument that says (1) the other guy raises and spends more money, (2) the other guy is more inspirational, and (3) the odds are 2-1 we’ve dismissed your own state as meaningless and won’t campaign there … that doesn’t seem to be the best pitch to the supers.

  142. 142.

    TR

    I smell another mydd boycott. I think they’re down to Fox being the only acceptable channel.

    Why not? Terry McAullife says they’re doing a great job!

  143. 143.

    Pug

    So why isn’t Clinton winning against Obama? Because she’s running for PRESIDENT, and doesn’t give a fuck about Kansas in terms of getting to the White House. She’s smart—and her strategy has been to concentrate on states that Dems can and should win in November.

    She’s smart? Actually, I would consider her strategy downright stupid. It’s too bad for her campaign they didn’t get ahold of Obama’s spreadsheet.

    Who gives a fuck about Kansas? That sounds a little elitist, doesn’t it? I’m not sure our down home, salt of the earth, whiskey shot swilling Wellesley and Yale grad would like that. She’s all about the common man with calluses on his hands and a pick up truck in the driveway. If she showed up in Kansas, she would wear bib overalls.

    Also, who gives a fuck about Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Virginia and New Hampshire. Only Pennsylvania matters and only white, blue collar voters matter. After all, they are the Holy Grail.

  144. 144.

    chopper

    Who gives a fuck about Kansas? That sounds a little elitist, doesn’t it?

    no, obama’s the elitist for wanting to bring the campaign to the states the rest of the dems don’t care about,like kansas. cause shut up, that’s why.

    that and he wants to be able to eat a waffle without being bothered.

  145. 145.

    Sasha

    Hillary, OTOH, wins the big battleground states we need in November. Like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Florida.

    So Hillary is guaranteed to win the general so long as McCain and his supporters decide not to campaign in Florida and McCain’s name does not appear on the ballot in Michigan?

    Sounds like a winning strategy to me. All we need to do is convince the legislatures of the two states in question to move their general election to October 28th and Clinton has the election in the bag.

    How could we not win in November with such visionary thinking lighting the way?

  146. 146.

    exhuming mccarthy

    Just a fact I thought I should point out after seeing Clinton supporters’ comments:

    Whether it is Obama in Missouri or Colorado, or Clinton in Ohio and Pennslyvania, winning a primary says absolutely nothing about your chances of winning that state in the general election. It is an incredibly stupid arguement to make. It just means you are more popular with the population that can vote in that primary relative to your opponent. It says nothing about how you would fare with the voting population as a whole, or how you would fare matched up with John McCain.

    Can we get more rational lines of arguement please?

  147. 147.

    The Populist

    You have to care about places like Kansas because Kerry and Gore did not.

    Winning the big states alone will not guarantee you victory in November. There is this pesky little thing called the Electoral College that will give the victory to McCain if he were to take all those “annoying” fly over states.

  148. 148.

    Rick Taylor

    Why to those questions and a hundred more like them. If your candidate is so much better, why is Obama kicking her ass? Why?

    O.O
    Wow. Looks like the great orange satan himself answered your question, John.

    Because IF Obama wasn’t black, and IF millions of people weren’t supporting him, and IF he didn’t raise all that money, and IF his campaign hadn’t been run better than hers, and IF Red states hadn’t had the gall to vote, and IF those damn activists didn’t disagree with her on war in Iraq and nuking Iran, and IF MoveOn wasn’t so effective, and IF latte sippers didn’t vote, and IF we had the same system as Republicans, and IF the news networks weren’t more like Fox News, and IF small states that don’t matter didn’t count, and IF Keith Olbermann didn’t have it out for her, and IF Pennsylvania was the only state that mattered — then Clinton would be the nominee.

    You know, simple answers to simple questions.

  149. 149.

    Admiral Komack

    “Can someone please give a scenario where Clinton gets the nomination without totally ruining her chanses in the general election.”

    -Only on Bizarro-World.

  150. 150.

    Scott Mercer

    Clinton did not “win by substantial margins.”

    When she won a primary, it was by 5%, 10%, 15%. (With the following exceptions: New York, Arkansas (her “home states”), and Oklahoma.)

    When Obama won a primary, he won by 10%, 20%, 30%. (With a few exceptions.) And he won more states.

    This is why Obama is ahead. This is why he will STAY ahead.

    Check the figures if you don’t get it.

  152. 152.

    mere mortal

    And on an on and on he drones, you can see the entire piece here.

    I went and saw the whole piece. One intro sentence, 10 points with brief explanations, and a very short closing paragraph.

    Your caricature is, much like the rest of your piece, a combination of hateful bile, inaccuracy, and framing that puts Clinton in the worst light.

    You have fallen back very close to your Republican roots.

    So, if Clinton has lost in every possible way, what’s wrong with playing it out to the convention? I guess it makes sense that once a person has voted, he should want the primary over, so as to maximize the effect of his vote. But are you that afraid of what will happen in Indiana and North Carolina?

  153. 153.

    Bill (not clinton)

    Because in the end she will win and he will lose. You and the other Obama supporter talk about playing by the rules. You say stuff like; Michigan and Florida do not count because those states did not play by the rules. (I very much disagree with that conclusion. I live and vote in Florida, so this personal. We as Democrats did not have a choice in he matter. The Republican Legislature knew what it was doing and made us vote in January. We had a choice of voting or not voting and I always choose to vote.) Well if is okay to deny a couple of million people in Florida and Michigan the right to vote because of some party rule, then if we are playing by the rules it is okay for Super Delegates to vote in favor of making Hillary the nominee. The Super Delegates were devised as a safety net in the event the primary system was not decisive. In this case, neither Hillary or Obama will win enough votes from the primaries to win; the Super Delegates will have to vote and make a choice. If as a Super delegate you were to see that you have two fantastic candidates, but one has a better chance of winning in the general election, then as a Super Delegate your charge is to vote for the person you think will win in November.

    In all your “Why questions” you did not ask: If Obama is the best candidate to win, why then have not the Super Delegates decided to support him. Regardless of how the rest of the primaries turn out, if the Super Delegates were to side with Obama, the race is over.

    But they have not. Why? Because they are concerned he cannot win in November and if Hillary wins in Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Puerto Rico and makes it close in NC and Oregon, then the Supers are going to have to realize that there has been a major sea change. That the majority of Americans will not support Obama either because he lacks experience, his association with Wright and others, or just because he is black. Democrats have to win this time and the risks are too high to wish on star and have it turn into a super nova.

    For what ever reason you hate Hillary, and for the life of me I can not understand why that is so, you must understand that for the good of the country, as you have said in the past, we can not allow McCain or Bush III to win in November. Let’s make Obama VP, let him get some on the job training and then elect him in 8 years. Given that, I think he will become one of if not the best President we have ever had. Lets not turn him to the wolves and destroy his chance of becoming the great president he would surely be by not understanding where we truly are as a country today.

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  3. […] Taking off from the springboard of the John Cole post that’s making the rounds, J&J Politics invokes the vivid and unflattering image of Tonya Harding to describe Hillary Clinton. Funny! Really, it is. Made me smile. This meme has also been – unsurprisingly making the rounds for a while. […]

  7. […] I watched the results trickle in on CNN after the Pennsylvania primary, and throughout the entire time I was reminded of when I was a boy and played on a merry-go-round for too long. I got quite violently sick from being spun around and around. I’m sick of all of the spin, from both groups, but especially from the Clinton camp. The Clinton party has been spinning where the goalposts are sitting for 2 months now. So, no matter what the results are, somehow they are ahead in the game. Sometimes, it’s the number of delegates that matters, then it’s only certain states that matter, then it’s the fact that she won a state in the single digits even though she should have had a 2 figure lead. No matter what the results are, they are endlessly spun spun spun, lied about and spun some more. […]