You gotta say this for the Clinton team's strategy: it's different. Instead of asking for votes they've been battering the electorate, telling voters that if they don't like their candidate it's their shortcoming, not hers. Idealism is for losers, and the more you dare to hope the more we'll crush your dreams with negativity. With Mark Penn's 'incumbent' strategy in ruins, last night looked like an opportunity to change her direction by unshackling herself from bad advisors and appealing to voters one-on-one.
That was then, this is now. She could have taken this opportunity to fire Penn and shake herself loose from James Carville and the other weathered barnacles clinging to the hull of her campaign. "I did it the consultants' way," she could have said, "now I'm going to be me." Instead it looks like she's sticking with the old team and their ugly ways. Penn wasted no time telling a group of reporters that their campaign's going to get even nastier as they try to rough up Obama some more.
That's not to say that the other campaigns haven't been tough on Clinton, or that they haven't hit her with criticism. Of course they have. But they don't make a fetish of negativity the way Penn did in his journalists' chat last night. Where Obama promotes optimism and Edwards pushes change, the Clintonites are taking a different approach.
"Pretty face you got there, Senator. It would be a shame if ... something happened to it."
Clinton and Penn could be talking about lessons learned in Iowa, but apparently that's not the way this team works. Too bad. She has some good people in her corner, but their voices don't seem to be loud enough to drown out the others.
She's been a good Senator, but that's a legislative job. Her career has only given us two examples of her executive abilities: the 1994 health initiative, and this year's campaign. We know what happened in '94, and her management decisions this year - on everything from hiring to human resource management (she should have insisted Penn take a leave of absence) to choice of themes and tactics - have been disappointing. That's not promising for a would-be Chief Executive.
The electorate is unimpressed by her campaign strategy, and her response seems to be to tear down the other guy so that voters will accept her because they have no other choice. This was Hillary Clinton's chance to redefine herself in a positive way. It doesn't look like she's interested. She could still eke out a nomination victory in a three-way race, but it looks like she's sticking with a negative and self-entitled strategy. Win, lose, or draw, that's bad news for the Democratic Party.
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The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog
Future-While-U-Wait
RJ Eskow at the Huffington Post
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I am seeing way too much bias in the media pushing Obama forward (such as faking the statistics in the headline of Huffpost today...read the stats, not true except by ignoring the major polls...read the original story, it is titled something like "Obama catching up to Hillary in NH". Meanwhile, poor John Edwards can't get a word on the last page. This is how the media gave us GW, playing him up, covering his astonishing gaffes (remember when in the 2000 debates, GW couldn't explain what Affirmative Action was, and Jim Lehrer cut to commercial as he stammered?? and talking about Al Gore as though he was a liar who wore khakis and flip flopped (he sure flip flopped on the environment, didn't he?). For god's sakes, don't fake Obama into the presidency...let the people decide fairly, even though it is so easy to make them think what you want.
And for weeks afterward, Clinton's "30 second" supposed mistake on Immigrant Licesnse was headline news. A Clinton supporter mentiones Obama's middle name and suddenly on every talk show, Obama and Obama lovers proclaim Hillary Clinton to be a bigot. Hillary gives back to Obama the same crap he had been feeding for weeks, i.e. her supposed pact with Bill demonstating her ambition for years. This came right out of a book penned by classic Clinton haters. Never a word from the press about Obama's negativity. Anyway, Clinton jokingly hits back with his kindergarten essay and the press and MSM go nuts over it. Clinton's a negative b*tch.
Let's face. You men are having issues. You can stand it. A woman was winning and you got scared. Now we are back to the Clinton is a negative, her team is rotten but it has nothing to do with OUR insecurities about women. Yea right, and I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
What we need right now is to break the color barrier first and Barack Obama is definitely the candidate to accomplish this goal.
Any other candidate in the race will either maintain the status quo or march us into a war with Iran.
Barack Obama for Peace, Change and finally an egalitarian government.
While I'm not a Hillary supporter, I do think she's better than her campaign has been. Her campaign reminds me of Kerry's—another strong candidate who couldn't seem to get it together.
Hillary lack of inventiveness is once again demonstrated by her inability to be herself and the once again resorting to something that her husband did in the past.
We don't need a clone of Bill Clinton. We need a real life real person capable of being themselves. Hillary really has nothing but what Bill did or didn't do. It's like this huge "Do Over" is driving them rather than an appreciation of what is necessary for the country.
Hillary could give a great gift to the country and the Democratic Party by acknowledging the moment, withdrawing and letting Edwards and Obama duke it out.
Maybe there's some drug she can take to restore her full repulsive Republican-ness. What am I talking about? Of course there is. How else could these people be Republicans except if they were all taking some bizarro-world drugs. Hallucinagenics, at a minimum, that let them believe the War is Going Well; The Economy Has Never Been Better; and Bush Is Both Heroic and Intelligent.
So today is a new day. Iowans are all poo-poo heads and who cares anyway. Today Hillary is a black man. Or a populist railing against the special interests in government. (That one, in particular, cracks me up from the Bag Lady of D.C., the biggest collector of corporate bribes in either party).
And now she wants to be Rudy. Ruuuuu-deeeeeeee, Ruuuuuuuuuuu-deeeeeeeeee, she hears the chants in her dreams, imagines herself some sleazy low-life Casanova driving his various wives and girlfriends around in chauffeured city cars, screwing them in the back seat with a cheap bottle of chianti and saying "Don't worry baby, I'll probably you from Al Kada."
Poor Hillary. Hybill, like Sybill, the lady with multiple personalities. And just think, when it's all over, she gets to go back to Arkansas and live next-door to Huckabee. Her kind of people.
Obama has attracted independents and younger voters with his message of hope. Hope springs eternal but the devil is in the details. I don't think that reaching across the table to evil people who steal your money works or the cops would employ that technique with bank robbers.
Obama has applied for a patent for his "idea." Why didn't anybody ever think of this before? This just proves how stupid labor leaders and those wishing for universal coverage were. Kind of like Bush's "faith-based programs" and his beliefs and "gut reactions."
Democrats themselves were one-third, one-third, one-third.
Well, it's not over until the fat lady signs. I'm just going to reach out across the table next time I deal with recalcitrant insurers, investment bankers, and government hacks. That would be Monday morning.
Unfortunately, some of my Democratic friends have been falling for this line, saying "we have no choice but to support Clinton because she's the only Democrat the moderate and independent voters will buy."
I find this notion absurd, especially given the fact that virtually every poll show that Clinton has more negatives with independents than most of her rivals. Polls also show she fares less well in a general election against most Republican prospects than any of her rivals.
So from where comes this "conventional wisdom" that it's either Hillary or four more years of Republican troglodytes running the country?
We are now starting to see clearly that it comes from the Clinton campaign itself, from the likes of Penn and Carvelle, who seem to have no other way of selling their candidate.
Obama won in Iowa because he seems to offer a real alternative to politics as usual. Whether this actually turns out to be the case only time will tell.
She is touted as "smart" She is not smart.The way she has run her campaign, belies something less than smart.
She is touted as "accomplished" woman. What has she accomplished? A marriage to Bill and then riding along on his coatails? Her health insurance initiative, boldly declared by her, when she had little authority and certainly was not elected to do so by the people of the US. No wonder she failed.
She is touted as "strong" yet, in the closing moments of her campaign in Iowa, we saw her surrending to Bill, who appeared on various teevee shows, to mainly talk about himself, while she, during a debate, cited her solution to the problems we face today is to go back to the nineties, when she, err I mean Bill, was president. But she claims she was "co-President" She was delegated back to the kitchen making cookies by Bill, who so loved talking about himself once more on the teevee.
She is touted as "tough" and being vetted. She is not vetted yet on her records while she was first lady in the White House, and you know who has access to those records? Certainly not the measly little people of the US, who she seems to shy from, but the White House Secret Service records are available to Bush and the Republicans . She did this, to avoid telling we the people, the taxpayers who paid her room and board, what she did back then--now can claim to be a "co-President" She can claim to have been the President, for all that matters, if the records are held secret from us.
The people of New Hampshire, are down to earth people. I have visited there many times .I don't think they "do lunch" as Hillary had stated in an invitation to the winner of a random drawing from her contributor list to eat lunch with. I don't think they respond well to "let's chat" either.
http://www.theonion.com/content
news/hillary_clinton_tries_to_woo
Hillary Clinton Tries To Woo Voters By Rescinding Candidacy
Hillary Clinton officially rescinded her bid for president
"Just two months ago, I promised that I'd listen to every voice through my town hall meetings, web chats, and trips to communities across the country," said Clinton, whose opponents have accused her of being out of touch with average voters. "America, you spoke clearly and with conviction—and I listened. And so I say to you today: Let the conversation end."
Polls showed that immediately following her speech, Clinton's approval numbers skyrocketed all across the country
Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, described Clinton's decision as the "single most unifying move" the highly polarizing figure has made yet.
"Hillary's always had a hard time connecting to audiences, but these Joe Iowans lit up at her speech, For the first time, she's really speaking to the whole nation."
her campaign website posted the results of a poll showing an overwhelming majority of Republican and Democrat respondents answered "Yes" to "Don't you wish Sen. Clinton was not running?" and "Wouldn't everything be better in this country if Sen. Clinton bowed out now?"
Fox's chief political correspondent, Carl Cameron, called the announcement classic Clintonian triangulation—finding an unorthodox issue that people can agree upon across socioeconomic and party lines.
"She's cold, she's calculating, she's blind with ambition, but I'll be doggoned if she doesn't have her finger on the country's pulse, Hillary's not usually one for surprises, but this was a paradigm-shifting moment that's guaranteed to turn her campaign around."
Brian Highland. "I've been a staunch Republican all my life, but now that Hillary's dropped out of the race, she's definitely got my vote."
"I knew Hillary was willing to change her positions based on surveys and focus groups, but I assumed her presidential aspiration was her most deeply held belief, If she's going to pull out of the race just to please voters, she doesn't deserve to be president."