As I've said before Hillary Clinton might very well be a cast iron b*tch and the things you are condemning her on have to do mostly with personality rather than issues. I would say it is personal dislike that you are expressing far more than issues. Yes you are probably right but I don't begrudge her continuing to try where as Obama supporters like yourself seem to consider that an affront. I agree that the odds are heavily on Obama's side but I think this will make him a much better candidate. Do you believe that the general election will not be more negative than primary campaign? And I would still say you will be voting against your interest if you refuse to vote for Clinton in the general. I think you and Major are greatly discounting the power of the Presidency. While McCain is more moderate than many Republicans he still holds some very conservative beliefs on social issues and on civil liberties. To Major's point that a Democratic Congress will check him but then again we haven't seen a Democratic Congress lead to the withdrawl of troops from Iraq or even a roll back on GW Bush's tax cuts. As far as USSC nominees consider that GH Bush got Clarence Thomas onto the bench facing a larger Democractic majority in the Senate and while Reagan famously lost on Bork still managed to get Anotin Scalia onto the bench and Rhenquist as Chief Justice. This also still is ignoring the extensive power of the executive branch to appoint cabinet offices and issue executive directives. If you don't think that makes a big difference consider the differences between having James Lee Witt as head of FEMA vs. Michael Brown and also a Clinton Admin. directive restricting mining in national monuments vs a GW Bush directive to allow mining.
So you're the victim here? I can understand you're upset with Clinton's tactics. I agree they're not nice but as I've said before I'm cynical enough that I expect this. At the same time I think you're caught up in they hype of both campaigns. If you see her comments in context she is making the argument that she is the most qualified to take on McCain as McCain will argue his experience and not directly saying that Obama is less qualified than McCain. The bottom line though is that you aren't a robot but are choosing to make a decision. Neither Clinton, Obama, McCain or Nader are forcing you into your decision.
Even in that context she loses. She's showing poor judgment. By framing experience the way she is, McCain trumps her. And since her nomination is unlikely, why damage the party's nominee? I think judgment is much more important than experience since there really is no experience the same as being a President, and her judgement as a first lady, in the senate, and now on the campaign are showing to be suspect(IMO). She has a pattern of not only ugly campaigning, but poor judgment.
I think that's a pretty good analysis. That is a qualitative difference between Republicans and Democrats and personally I think is a strength of Democrats. The reason why Romney dropped out was because there was clearly a way for McCain to outrightly win the Republican nomination because their state contests are winner take all. For all of Romney's rhetoric he won very few states and no states with a huge amount of delegates. He was behind Huckabee let alone McCain. If the Democrats did that then things would be much difference but the Democrats don't. This brings up one of the main thing that I think Obama supporters are missing. Obama hasn't won the race outright and can't If he did then we wouldn't have this debate. For all of the Obama hype and momentum Clinton is still there and has to be reckoned with. As I've said though this shouldn't be considered something bad as it has already started to make Obama a tougher and more incisive candidate. Everyone has known what Obama's weakness is, his relative lack of experience, and for his supporters to blame Hillary Clinton for exploiting it now belies that it likely will be attacked much harder in the general. IMO if Obama does win he will be much better prepared for the general than if Clinton had just dropped out after TX. I'm not sure about that. Much of Obama's support is insurgent and my guess is things would be reversed we would see a repeat of the 1984 Obama add rallying his supporters to not just accept what the establishment wants.
The flipside of all of this is: 1. Romney had a clear path to the nomination also. 2. Hillary doesn't have a clear path to the nomination. 3. Romney had a better chance to the nomination than Hillary does now. Romney won Michigan; he lost FL and CA by just a few percentage points. McCain was struggling to get above 40% and was really just winning pluralities. Because of the winner-take-all nature of it, all Romney had to do was start winning states by 2% instead of losing them by 2%. A harsh, negative attack campaign could very well have achieved that. If so, he's the nominee now. But he realized that obliterating McCain was harmful to the party. Hillary, on the other hand, has no clear path to the nomination. While Obama doesn't either, every scenario that doesn't have Hillary winning has Obama winning. So if give Hillary her 2% chance at the nomination, the other 98% of the scenarios have him winning. That's better odds than McCain had when Romney dropped out. Except that there's a fundamental difference between attacks from within the party and outside of it. There's a reason why it's an unwritten rule. When Republicans call Obama not qualified, it's easy to just say that's the opposing party. When McCain can now say "even Democrats don't think he's qualified," you have a much bigger problem. There's a reason that, after Super Tuesday, the vast majority of Clinton and Obama supporters would be happy with the other. And now, less than a third of Clinton supporters say they'd support Obama or think he's qualified. That's because their candidate has told them he's not qualified. That number will obviously go up once the nominee is picked, but it's still long-term damage that is inflicted. If Hillary's concern is getting health insurance for the poor and things like that, she's making that less and less likely with her type of attacks. Because she's not going to win, and she's only making it less likely that he will. This is why people say her goal is her own ambition and she'll destroy whatever is necessary to satisfy her personal ambitions. And no, not all politicians are like that. As noted above, Romney could have gone on a destructive campaign and didn't. Huckabee, even though he continued his campaign, did it in a respectful way. Edwards, seeing the inevitable, didn't go on a slash and burn campaign. etc.
Actually yes, I did read your post, but read further and conprehended what Hillary was up to. Hillary's claim was she was 'Instrumental' to peace, her campaign chairman claimed "We would not have peace today had it not for Hillary's hard work in Northern Ireland". Exagerration? Hmmm... Well what did she do exactly? Was she involved in the gruelling neogtiations? Nope. What are the specifics her involvement? She called lots of people? Coordinated some women's groups? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/13/whillary113.xml http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/tobyharnden/mar08/hillaryiamirish.htm I can spot many perpetual liars and connivers. Did I overlook it, or have you argued she isn't one? You're implying I have a hang-up with her 'personailty' traits since she's a fake and a liar? Sorry, but if I decide to exclude perpetual liars from my consideration (when given a choice) it's my right, amd d*mn logical.
At the same time, Clinton is making the conscious decision to alienate potential voters. Nobody is forcing her to do that.
Never ever ever ever never. http://thepage.time.com/halperins-take-painful-things-hillary-clinton-knows-—-or-should-know/ HALPERIN’S TAKE: Painful Things Hillary Clinton Knows — Or Should Know 1. She can’t win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats. 2. She can’t win the nomination without a bloody convention battle — after which, even if she won, history and many Democrats would cast her as a villain. 3. Catching up in the popular vote is not out of the question — but without re-votes in Florida and Michigan it will be almost as impossible as catching up in elected delegates. 4. Nancy Pelosi and other leading members of Congress don’t think she can win and want her to give up. Same with superdelegate-to-the-stars Donna Brazile. 5. Obama’s skilled, close-knit staff can do things like silently kill re-votes in Florida and Michigan and not pay a political price. 6. Many of her supporters — and even some of her staffers — would be relieved (and even delighted) if she quit the race; none of his supporters or staff feel that way. Some think she just might throw in the towel in June if it appears efforts to fight on would hurt Obama’s general election chances. 7. The Rev. Wright story notwithstanding, the media still wants Obama to be the nominee — and that has an impact every day. 8. Obama might not be able to talk that well about the new global economy, but she (and McCain) can’t either. 9. Many of the remaining prominent superdelegates want to be for Obama and she (and Harold Ickes) are just barely keeping them from making public commitments to him. 10. She can’t publicly say more than 2% of all the things she would like to say about race, electability, beating McCain and experience. 11. If she somehow found a way to win the nomination, she would have to offer Obama the veep slot, and she doesn’t want to do that. 12. This is a change election, and Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton can never truly be change. 13. Obama is having fun most days, and she isn’t. 14. Even though her campaign staff is having more fun than it has for a long time, there’s hardly anyone there who, given half a chance, wouldn’t slit Mark Penn’s throat — and such internal dissension won’t help her in the home stretch.
Bats, here is what your list doesn't contemlate: the fluidity of this race. Wild swings in the democratic voters preferences have occurred since Iowa. Nothing has rocked this election cycle more than the Jeremiah Wright expose. If you were to take 'the will of the people' today, their will would point to Hillary. So the 'will of the people' argument rings hollow. Obama was able to make the most of his momentum and accumulate votes before the American liberal public identified who he was. Very clever deception on the part of his team, no doubt. Would you as a democrat rather nominate someone who is unelectable in the General and who the will of the democratic voting populace doesn't prefer in the end? Because that's what will likely happen unless the superdelegates swing hard for Hillary. Team obama is trying to call 'game over' asap, so that they can stop the bleeding. It's a real insult to the states that haven't voted and the superdelegates. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Pennsylvania was a landslide win for Hillary. What does that do to the momentum of the race? The superdelegates mindsets? Lot of variables still in play here, and it's cowardly of the obama camp to try to take their ball and go home.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9149.html Story behind the story: The Clinton myth By JIM VANDEHEI & MIKE ALLEN | 3/21/08 1:32 PM EST Clinton's campaign rests increasingly on a game of make-believe. One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning. Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency. Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else. People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet. As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives. In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe. Politico’s top editors draw on their experience at the nation's largest news organizations to pull back the curtain on coverage decisions and the media mindset. The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics. Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver. One reason is fear of embarrassment. In its zeal to avoid predictive reporting of the sort that embarrassed journalists in New Hampshire, the media — including Politico — have tended to avoid zeroing in on the tough math Clinton faces. Avoiding predictions based on polls even before voters cast their ballots is wise policy. But that's not the same as drawing sober and well-grounded conclusions about the current state of a race after millions of voters have registered their preferences. The antidote to last winter's flawed predictions is not to promote a misleading narrative based on the desired but unlikely story line of one candidate. There are other forces also working to preserve the notion of a contest that is still up for grabs. One important, if subliminal, reason is self-interest. Reporters and editors love a close race — it’s more fun and it’s good for business. The media are also enamored of the almost mystical ability of the Clintons to work their way out of tight jams, as they have done for 16 years at the national level. That explains why some reporters are inclined to believe the Clinton campaign when it talks about how she’s going to win on the third ballot at the Democratic National Convention in August. That’s certainly possible — and, to be clear, we’d love to see the race last that long — but it’s folly to write about this as if it is likely. It’s also hard to overstate the role the talented Clinton camp plays in shaping the campaign narrative, first by subtly lowering the bar for the performance necessary to remain in the race, and then by keeping the focus on Obama’s relationships with a political fixer and a controversial pastor in Illinois.
That's such an excellent and seldom stated point. The media has a real stake in extending the nomination process, and it makes their jobs much more easy. Reporting, background research? Ugh, I hate it when I have to do that. Hey wait, here's another press conference or some You-tube videos of an old preacher! Yes!
So Hillary's running out of money and donations are drying up, super delegates are breaking towards Obama, endorsements of major Democratic party members are coming out for Obama, the FL & MI re-vote plans are falling through. doesn't look good for her
I call BS on that one. I think the reason she is still in this is to help McCain beat Obama in 2008, so she can run again in 2012.
That may be taking it a bit far. I would say she despises Obama intensely for disrupting her coronation but if it's perceived at all she wants him to lose the general election, Hillary's career is over. Before the campaign started in earnest, Obama's money machine was fueled in 2007 partly by anti-Hillary sentiment within the party and it will erupt on her like a volcano if she doesn't fall in line after losing. If she really is completely selfish as you say, the country better breathe a major sigh of relief when she isn't elected president.
It's not about the popular vote, it's not about who won the most states, it's not about flipping pledged delegates, it's not about super delegates. No! It's about FL and MI. Two states Hillary agreed to abide by the rules and now wants to change. -- Clinton Vows To Stay in Race To Convention She Stresses Finding Solution On Michigan, Florida Votes http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/29/AR2008032901909.html
It won't happen. My guess is the way it plays out is that all the Superdelegates jump on board with Obama during the week of June 4th-10th and it's settled unofficially at that point. Then Obama happily seats the current MI/FL delegations to get some goodwill and resolve that problem. And then it's officially over by mid-June.
Even if Obama had a 500 delegate lead by June, it would not surprise me to see Clinton take it all the way to the convention just out of spite. This is the type of people the Clintons are. At that point, it wouldn't surprise me to see Clinton show up at the Republican convention to whisper sweet attacks against Obama into Karl Rove's ear.
That part, I agree with. I just think Obama will at least be able to start focusing on the general election and the party will basically be out there backing him at that point. She may continue to be a mess, but ultimately, she'll come to the convention, there will be a vote, he'll win it, and they'll move on. I don't think it will actually be a legitimate fight all the way until the convention. Too many of the party powers (Dean, Reid, etc) have all come out now and said this will be done in June - I suspect they'll do what's needed to make it happen. The Supers have no reason not to commit to someone in June - there's no new votes to be counted or anything like that at that point. But yeah, Clinton could potentially just be a nuisance. Hopefully she'll see, at that point, that she's alienating her party even more and completely eliminating her chance in 2012 or 2016 or whenever. But she's so delusional, you never know.
