Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Tonight’s Special Comment, A Must Watch….
Nice to see a little outrage over Clintonism at it’s peak right now. I think Keith can be both good and bad at what he does, but his first special comments arrived just in the nick of time on the national media stage, and that he became the reasonable and outraged alternative to Fox News and the like - I am forever grateful for. And tonight’s comment just about perfectly encapsulates what is wrong with the Clinton campaign, their tactics, and how it reflects on their candidate. And that he is angry enough to do it, and as articulate about that anger as he was, I hope will carry some influence and ensure that everybody get just as angry about it. People get so obsessed with the miniature wins and losses in every day that I think supporters and the media often miss what is indeed a larger, more virulent issue. What the Clintons are doing, every single day, I find just offensive - and not just as an Obama supporter, but as an intelligent member of the Democratic Party. Win at all costs might just cost more than any of us will be able to bear.
This, Senator Clinton, is your campaign, and it is your name. Grab the reins back from whoever has led you to this precipice, before it is too late. Voluntarily or inadvertently, you are still awash in this filth.
And to any Clinton supporters that agree with Gerry Ferraro on anything she has said about this, or agree with how Clinton and her team have dealt with it, I would urge you to come back from the brink yourselves. The division between the two campaign’ supporters is now approaching a sort of sub-partisanship just as potentially damaging as the national partisanship between the "left" and "right" - where people find out first what, or in this case who - you support, and that then frames the way you view them on every other issue, which unfortunately usually means no resulting attempt at conversation at all.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Don’t fire her Hillary! Let her speak! Young feminists everywhere need more alienation!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Keep em coming people!
Ridicule is always the best way to dismiss a bully.
Baseball Season:
All my beautiful babies. Yes those are Sox tickets, deal with it.
He appeared on Rush Limbaugh’s show, sans Rush Limbaugh, on MARCH 4th… Rush, of course, had encouraged Republicans to vote for Clinton to prolong the race and weaken them for the general election.
LISTEN:
Sullivan:
Now just wrap your mind around this: the Clintons were happy to support a cynical, partisan Republican campaign to wound the Democratic front-runner, and they were brazen enough to go on the Limbaugh show to do so.
I saw this a few days before it hit the blogs, thought because it was so old I figured I was behind the times, blog wise - I was wrong, its popped up a few places today, so I’ll jump on the bandwagon - it’s hilarious - go to their youtube page for more…
…
Can’t wait to hear Clinton in the next debate respond to whether she is for or against Prostitution Rings as proposed by NY Governor Elliot Spitzer.
In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.
“”This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. ”It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”
Love those Old Politics! Yikes.
Per Obama’s count (if Clinton had a similar count, I’ll happily link to it), Obama started last week with 1,203 delegates, Clinton with 1,043. Since then:
Obama Clinton
OH 66 75
RI 8 13
VT 9 6
TX 99 94
WY 7 5
Total 189 193
BUT
The final certified vote in California swung four votes Obama’s direction.
AND
there’s an "unpledged" Wyoming delegate still to be decided. He or she will be selected at Wyoming’s state convention, and is selected by the elected delegates from Saturday’s caucus. (+1)
ALSO EIGHT MORE SUPERs since last Tuesday (thru today)
So that means:
Total 202 193
Thanks Kos and Ambers
“I just want everybody to absolutely clear: I am not running for vice president. I am running to be president of the United States of America.”
Obama, rightly ridicules the latest Clintonism..
Obama: ‘If I am not ready, why do you think I would be such a great vice president?’
Because Wolfson today:
suggested that Obama could pass the "threshold" and become commander in chief material this summer.
Yglesias:
So will Obama face some national security crisis that will test him between now and August? Some protracted international negotiation? Some 3:00 am moment?
“She hasn’t managed anything as complex as this before; that’s the problem with senators,” said James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University who is an expert on presidential management. “She wasn’t as decisive as she should have been. And it’s a legitimate question to ask: Under great pressure from two different factions, can she make some hard decisions and move ahead? It seems to just fester. She doesn’t seem to know how to stop it or want to stop it.”
Mrs. Clinton showed a tendency toward an insular management style, relying on a coterie of aides who have worked for her for years, her aides and associates said. Her choice of lieutenants, and her insistence on staying with them even when friends urged her to shake things up, was blamed by some associates for the campaign’s woes. Again and again, the senator was portrayed as a manager who valued loyalty and familiarity over experience and expertise.
Sniping by Aides Hurt Clinton’s Image as Manager
From the Obama campaign, today:
Kos: coiner of Clinton’s "Insult 40 States Strategy"
"Obama has won the small caucus states with the latte-sipping crowd. They don’t need a president, they need a feeling."
- Clinton Aide, yesterday
… Obama is the far stronger national candidate. He respects the entire country, not just a select few "pre-approved" and "sanctioned" Clinton states. An assertion proven by the last SUSA poll, which proved not just a clearer path to the White House for Obama, but showed that he runs tighter even in states he loses. That matters at the presidential level, forcing Republicans to spend meager resources defending supposedly safe territory.
And it matters at the state level, making it easier for federal and state candidates to overcome the disadvantages at the top of the ticket. So looking at states with Senate races this fall, in Idaho, for example, it’s the difference between overcoming a 13-point Obama deficit and a 36-point Clinton deficit. In Colorado, it’s the difference between overcoming a 6-point Clinton loss, and riding a 9-point Obama victory. In Alaska, it’s the difference between overcoming a 5-point Obama loss, and a 22-point Clinton loss. In Nebraska, it’s the difference between a 3-point Obama loss, and a 27-point Clinton loss. In New Hampshire, it’s the difference between an 8-point Clinton loss and 2-point Obama victory. In Oregon it’s the difference between a 5-point Clinton loss, and a 8-point Obama victory. In Texas it’s the difference between a seven-point Clinton loss, and a 1-point Obama loss. In Wyoming, where we have a hot House at-large race, it’s the difference between a 33-point Clinton loss and a 19-point Obama loss, and same thing in Montana, it’s the difference between a 20-point Clinton loss and an 8-point Obama loss.
We have more at stake this fall than the presidency, and we have a candidate that is running nationwide and showing proper deference and respect for our great United States of America, and we have another that has given the middle finger to much of the country.
The crowning hour of a presidential inauguration comes in the evening after the parade up Pennsylvania Avenue, when the city is hit by limousine gridlock. As the sun goes down, the millionaires and billionaires with their lackeys and the lobbyists fill the streets on their way to the dozen or more inauguration night balls that the President comes, and by so doing affirms his bond to the enduring power of moneyed special interests.
Alinsky would advise Obama to skip the balls. That in and of itself would be a new-page statement, but Alinsky would add that such a symbolic act will not mean much unless it is not backed up. He would suggest inviting all the people who worked on the campaign to Washington. Students and others who can’t afford such a trip would merit some kind of stipend or scholarship, something the campaign organization with its astonishing fundraising abilities ought to be able to handle.
The arrival of these thousands of non-professional politicians would hit Washington much as the arrival of the western farm people’s arrival at Andrew Jackson’s inaugural did in 1828. Their raucous presence ended the Federalist-aristocratic era and announced a new time of popular democracy.
There should be people’s parties as opposed to the lobbyist balls, but there should be more–organizational meetings, seminars on important issues, opportunities to visit the city’s marvelous museums and so forth. The inauguration could be turned into an opportunity to convert Obama’s campaign organization into a permanent, democratically self-governing, political-social organizational entity of a new and unique character. It would be outside the Democratic Party so that the breadth and enthusiasm brought to the Obama effort by independents and Republicans would not be lost.
This organization would afford a new kind of communication system for politics and government. It would free the White House from dependence on polls and focus groups and keep it informed on the mind of the nation, as ideas and news could make its way back and forth from top to bottom and bottom to top. Such an organization would provide millions of people around the country as well as Washington office holders with an information system outside of commercial media.
Surely someone would call this Socialist, like the GOPers in TX called our phone bankers, but I would call it "Representative Democracy"
The People’s Ball - Must Read advice to Obama from beyond the grave in Saul Alinsky
But Power ruined the impact
Former Sen. Tom Daschle on Friday suggested that top Clinton advisor Howard Wolfson should resign for comparing Barack Obama’s tactics to those of Ken Starr.
"It’s comments like [Wolfson’s] that make me question whether we do have the same standards," said the former Senate Majority Leader. "I don’t think that you can make a statement like that and consider yourself within the bounds of civility. I mean, this shouldn’t be tolerated. It’s not acceptable, and it’s unfortunate."
Daschle, an Obama supporter and mentor, said he believed it was correct for campaign advisor Samantha Power to step down after calling Hillary Clinton a "monster." He called Power’s comment regretful and said "the campaign had little choice but to do what was done."
And while Daschle would not directly call for a similar fate for Wolfson, he suggested that would be an appropriate move.
Daschle Suggests Clinton Aide Should Resign For Starr Comparison
I hope there is an echo in this room.
Kitchen Sink tactic #72:
I read this somewhere this week and don’t remember where, but its right on. What the Clintons are doing in continuing to suggest what a great ticket it would be with them at the Top and Obama at the Bottom, where incidentally - he has never been for a single day in delegate count in this process - they are trying to get Obama leaners to assume this will happen and head over to their side, intoxicated by some unbeatable dream-ticket snakeoil. This is of course, yet another shrewd Clinton way of belittling their opponent and feigning some kind of long view sensibility. In addition, if Obama doesn’t take the bait, or spits it out entirely and says flat out, "I will not be her VP - end of story." then they can paint him, or just let the press paint him, as anti-unity and only concerned with his own power, which is of course what the case really is with the Clintons.
Bottom line is this, Obama will not be Clinton’s VP. With absolutely no information beyond my own gut feeling, I am virtually positive that Obama and his people dislike Clinton just as much as we do. This is not like Derek Jeter and Nomar Garciapparra being friends off the field - this is a real issue of personal offense - and it should be. Playing politics by attempting to denigrate someone in every way you or your reptilian advisors can dream up should be taken personally. I have taken being called "delusional" personally, as have I taken personally - for the campaign - most of the bullshit strategy the Clintons have used. I think Obama has enough integrity to tell Clinton that under no circumstances would he have her as his VP or vice versa. And don’t let the Clintons try to sneak into power promising something he would never accept.
That dream ticket is exactly that, a (pipe) dream. No. Thank You.
But while Hillary Clinton represented the U.S. on the world stage at important moments while she was first lady, there is scant evidence that she played a pivotal role in major foreign policy decisions or in managing global crises.
Chicago Tribune: Clinton’s experience claim under scrutiny
