May 18, 2008
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bakossi
Recent comments by this user
Bush Compares Obama To Nazi Appeasers
Clinton Backer Weinstein Threatens Pelosi Over Revote
Another Clinton bully; wow. Seems like the whole stable full of Clinton supporters is full of bullies--what a surprise. Well the only effective way to deal with a bully that I know of is a proverbial left or right cross to the jaw. So Harvey Weinstein, go f____ yourself. And enjoy the boycott of your films to follow. posted 05/08/2008 at 22:52:09
Clinton: Obama Not Winning Over "Hard-Working Americans, White Americans"
sho'nuff everybodys knows white folk are the only hard working peoples in America. Black folks is just shiftless. [gag]
Here's the unvarnished truth. We are going to lose the white working class in the fall. We have lost the white working class every election in the fall since Ronald Reagan. Even Bill Clinton only barely won the white working class--by only 1 point in 1992 and 1 point in 1996--and then only because Ross Perot siphoned off white working class votes that otherwise would have gone to the Republican candidate.
Why do we lose the white working class? Because the Republicans run the same kind of campaign against whoever the Democratic nominee is that Hillary ran against Barack (and that Barack resolutely refused to run against her). The fact that so many Hillary voters say they will vote for McCain if Obama is the nominee, even though Hillary and Obama have positions that are almost identical (and very different from McCain), says that their support for Democrats is, at best, very soft. When McCain runs the same kind of campaign against Hillary that Hillary has run against Barack, you can expect them to defect in droves. Unless their sentiments are just a reflection of the fact that they are "bitter" that their candidate is behind, in which case Barack can still pick them up. posted 05/08/2008 at 23:13:27
Here's the unvarnished truth. We are going to lose the white working class in the fall. We have lost the white working class every election in the fall since Ronald Reagan. Even Bill Clinton only barely won the white working class--by only 1 point in 1992 and 1 point in 1996--and then only because Ross Perot siphoned off white working class votes that otherwise would have gone to the Republican candidate.
Why do we lose the white working class? Because the Republicans run the same kind of campaign against whoever the Democratic nominee is that Hillary ran against Barack (and that Barack resolutely refused to run against her). The fact that so many Hillary voters say they will vote for McCain if Obama is the nominee, even though Hillary and Obama have positions that are almost identical (and very different from McCain), says that their support for Democrats is, at best, very soft. When McCain runs the same kind of campaign against Hillary that Hillary has run against Barack, you can expect them to defect in droves. Unless their sentiments are just a reflection of the fact that they are "bitter" that their candidate is behind, in which case Barack can still pick them up. posted 05/08/2008 at 23:13:27
Ed Koch: Obama Is A Sure Loser, Clinton Should Fight On
Well, we all know Ed Koch knows what it takes to win elections for Democrats. It was his divisive and incompetent rule as New York mayor that paved the way for first David Dinkins and then Rudy Guiliani. I'm trying to remember: has Koch won an election for anything since he was mayor? I didn't think so. But he's got a finger on the pulse of the American electorate, just like fellow New Yorker Geraldine Ferraro. posted 05/08/2008 at 10:13:06
North Carolina, Indiana Primaries: Full Results, Exit Polls
I sure hope that Obama's people are going to make clear how much of whatever margin Hillary gets in Indiana are Limbaugh Republicans; it's time to stop worrying about whether this sounds like whining--it's a serious problem. And as far as the "Trouble voting. Talk to me" video is concerned, y'know what. After everything that Republicans have done to disenfranchise black voters (including in Indiana, which has one of the strictest voter ID requirements in the country), I'm sorry, but I can't begrudge Obama or any other progressive candidate for doing what his people are doing. As far as I'm concerned, Hillary can set up the same booths in white working class or Republican suburban precincts. That's an empty offer, of course, because there are no such efforts to disenfranchise those types of voters and so Hillary's people would be wasting their resources (as they know) doing that. When we get to a point when less than half the ballots thrown out every year come from minorities, then people can complain about voting assistance booths. posted 05/06/2008 at 16:29:33
Clinton Camp Tries To Redefine Delegate Math
Obama's decision to take his name off the Michigan ballot was a gamble? Have we really gotten to the point in this country where following the rules (rather than breaking them) or honoring your pledge (rather than violating it) is to be called "a gamble"? Where breaking rules and lying is to be praised as "sound political strategy?" If so, God help us all--we're the final stages of Rome. posted 05/06/2008 at 16:43:39
Here's where I stand. Let's seat them: 50% for Obama, 50% for Clinton. That is the only fair way to do it. Those two primaries were shams, especially Michigan--anyone who thinks there was a "level playing field" in either one knows absolutely nothing about politics (I won't go into all the reasons again--search on my posts and respond if you disagree). Seating them according to the primary results is clearly bogus.
But we can always count on the Clintons to pull out every lying cheating Republican tactic in the book to get their way. What I'd like to see in Denver is a vote by the delegates on whether to excommunicate the Clintons from the party. Let them start their own party like Juan and Eva Peron in Argentina. They've done nothing for ours except lose the House, lose the Senate, lose governorships, lose state legislatures, and give us President Bush. Now they are in the process of giving us President McCain as well. Who needs them? posted 05/06/2008 at 16:37:10
But we can always count on the Clintons to pull out every lying cheating Republican tactic in the book to get their way. What I'd like to see in Denver is a vote by the delegates on whether to excommunicate the Clintons from the party. Let them start their own party like Juan and Eva Peron in Argentina. They've done nothing for ours except lose the House, lose the Senate, lose governorships, lose state legislatures, and give us President Bush. Now they are in the process of giving us President McCain as well. Who needs them? posted 05/06/2008 at 16:37:10
Clinton Camp Says It Will Use The Nuclear Option
There is no "legitimate" way to seat FL and MI delegates based on the fake primaries in January. Any faithful HuffPost reader knows that if Clinton does this, there are a lot of Obama supporters out there prepared to make Chicago '68 look like the Boston Tea Party, and a non-trivial number of those supporters are Iraq War vets. Does Hillary really think people are going to accept yet another stolen election? If this is some kind of trial balloon being floated, consider it popped, with extreme prejudice. The Democratic Party really will be destroyed if this happens. When does the 'say anything, do anything' Clinton team quit? When they've succeeded in creating their own party perhaps? posted 05/05/2008 at 00:49:43
If Hillary's people do this, not only will I vote for John McCain, I will work tirelessly in the African-American community to make sure that African-Americans either do not vote or vote for McCain. It will be the major f-you from the African-American community that the Democratic Party has long deserved. What's more, after Hillary loses in November, I will work tirelessly with whoever is the most viable Republican candidate for her Senate seat to see that she is unseated there as well. The Clintons are a cancer on progressive politics and the Democratic Party--it's time to get rid of them, once and for all. posted 05/04/2008 at 19:10:06
Carville: If Hillary Gave Obama "One Of Her Cojones, They'd Both Have Two"
please...O'Reilly's interview with Hillary was a love-in between two polarizers... posted 05/04/2008 at 23:32:39
Y'know, maybe it's time someone called out James Carville. He's talked a lot of talk while hiding behind the skirts of network television about Obama--maybe it's time for one of the 1.3 million of the 1.5 million donors to Obama who could kick James' a** in a knife or any other kind of fight to call him out. Where are *your* cojones, really, James Carville? You know what they say--the bigger the talk, the smaller the d***. posted 05/04/2008 at 19:15:26
Howard Dean On Fox News Sunday: Your Coverage Is "Shockingly Biased" (VIDEO)
well, RedWolverine, I just watched the clip. Chris Wallace scores some points re: the first DNC ad (though for Fox News to complain about anyone taking little snippets of video or audio out of context is pretty laughable), but mainly only because Dean didn't make his main points more forcefully, which are: (a) there is no scenario under which Americans could be in Iraq for 100 years and not get injured or killed--to even propose that as a plausible scenario, as I guess both McCain and Factcheck.org think it is--shows a complete divorce from reality. And (b) Americans don't want to be in Iraq for 100 years under any circumstance, so the rest of what McCain said is irrelevant in terms of the point of the ad. On the second ad, I didn't think Wallace "destroyed" Dean at all--Dean held his ground and he was right. Yeah sure, McCain went on to acknowledge that times are tough now, but what he said at first--that Americans are better off now than they were in 2001--is patently false by any number of measures and, again, shows McCain is completely out of touch. posted 05/05/2008 at 01:08:31
Clinton Adviser Claims Indiana Slur Video Is Conspiracy
Me I'm LMAO. After the surreptitous taping of Obama in SF, also excerpted out of context, and all those Wright snippets, the Clintonistas are braying with outrage when it's done to one of their own. Pardon me if I don't sympathize. I grew up in Indiana; a lot of people like to talk trash about the people of Indiana. It's just one in a long string of insults to the white working class Clinton and her people have been responsible for when they aren't pandering their butts off to their faces e.g. with this ridiculous "gas tax holiday" that will cost thousands of white working class jobs this summer, give no one more than about $25 bucks (even the truckers have said thanks, but no thanks), and almost certainly just put more dollars in the hands of the oil companies in the end. posted 05/04/2008 at 00:14:25
Maggie--
Try CNN, aka the Clinton News Network. Fox is a good place to get your pro-Hillary anti-Obama jones off, too. If there's not enough Obama hate going on on those networks for your taste, you might want to check to see if there's anything with Charlie Gibson or George Stephanopoulos running on ABC. Hope this is helpful to you. posted 05/04/2008 at 00:04:42
Try CNN, aka the Clinton News Network. Fox is a good place to get your pro-Hillary anti-Obama jones off, too. If there's not enough Obama hate going on on those networks for your taste, you might want to check to see if there's anything with Charlie Gibson or George Stephanopoulos running on ABC. Hope this is helpful to you. posted 05/04/2008 at 00:04:42
Joe Trippi: I Should Have Told Edwards To Stay In Race
Joe--
Do you honestly think that if Edwards had stayed in the race (and he was my first choice), he'd be seen as any more of a "fresh face" at this point than Hillary and Obama, or that those two would have spent all this time and energy just pounding each other with no attention paid to your candidate? Seriously? posted 05/01/2008 at 20:37:08
Do you honestly think that if Edwards had stayed in the race (and he was my first choice), he'd be seen as any more of a "fresh face" at this point than Hillary and Obama, or that those two would have spent all this time and energy just pounding each other with no attention paid to your candidate? Seriously? posted 05/01/2008 at 20:37:08
Clinton: Base "Broader And Deeper" Than Obama's
PS The Obama voters who say they won't vote for Clinton are all real Democrats whom the party can't afford to lose; many of the Hillary voters who say they won't vote for Obama are either Republicans who crossed over to vote in recent primaries once their nomination was settled (and will cross back) or white working class voters who go back to the GOP every fall once the attack machine gets going (the notion that Clinton is 'vetted' and immune to this is laughable--she has 50 skeletons in her closet for every one of Obama's, and her husband has another 50; there's stuff pre-presidency that's barely been touched (her own 60's radical associations, how she got fired from her Watergate job, lots of Arkansas stuff that wasn't really focused on because she was only the First Lady), the oldies but goodies during the white house years that Republicans know are worth revisiting because the typical American voter has forgotten them (so they are 'new to them'), plus eight years of post-presidency money grubbing and late presidency stuff like the pardons that they never took a full hit on b/c Bill was presumably on his way out, never to return again.
Imagine any one of these being focused on as obsessively as we've focused on Wright and multiply that by 50, then multiply by 100. Vetted? What a joke. posted 05/01/2008 at 21:07:36
Imagine any one of these being focused on as obsessively as we've focused on Wright and multiply that by 50, then multiply by 100. Vetted? What a joke. posted 05/01/2008 at 21:07:36
It's even not uncommon for someone to come out of the woodwork in the May and June primaries representing the "anyone but [name of nominee]" crowd and pull out some late upsets (Jerry Brown comes to mind) to get some convention leverage against what the nominee has in mind. Hillary knows all this, but of course her pathological dishonesty prevents her from acknowledging it. Instead she has to tell yet another Clinton "fairy tale." posted 05/01/2008 at 21:06:28
The other thing that's completely dishonest about what Clinton is saying is that the only reason she has this polling lead on McCain is that the Republicans and the media have effectively ignored her for the last 2 months and focused on Obama because he is the presumptive nominee. There were many points after Kerry, Gore, or Bill Clinton wrapped up the Democratic nomination when you could have found other Dems who polled better against Bush than they did--that's what happens when one candidate is taking all the incoming fire. But of course in those campaigns, no such polls were taken because the loser had long since had the good grace and concern for his party to concede and unify behind the presumptive nominee instead of gleefully joining in with the media and Republicans on the traditional knee-capping of the nominee that goes on at this point in the election cycle. Go back and look at the record--Kerry, Gore, Bill all went through hard times towards the end of the primary process as the press put them under the microscope alone for the first time and the Repos started their fall campaign against them.
continued posted 05/01/2008 at 21:00:48
continued posted 05/01/2008 at 21:00:48
First of all Hillary, if you want to be a Republican--and everything in your campaign, including your coziness with Fox, and your record as a Senator says you do--why not just leave and join them? If you don't, you can be sure that a lot of your so-called base of white working class voters is going to leave you for McCain anyway in the fall. This is something that the media has totally failed to analyze. The 18% of Obama supporters who say they will not vote for Hillary are almost all true blue Dems--we can't win without them. The 26% of Hillary suppoters who say they won't vote for Obama include a lot of Republicans who crossed over once McCain was nominated and a lot of white working class voters who we lose every fall once the Republican attack machine kicks in, and anyone who thinks Clinton has been so "vetted" that machine won't be effective is delusional. Hillary has 50 skeletons in her closet to every one of Obama's, and Bill has 50 more. But Obama won't bring any of that up because he's running a campaign that depends on NOT doing it. The Republicans will have no such compunction. posted 05/01/2008 at 17:42:50
ABC Digs Into Clinton Trade Hypocrisy - Clinton Campaign Responds With More Deception
continued
Fact: Clinton did nothing about energy, nothing about health care, nothing about the environment--basically all that progressives got out of an 8 year Democratic presidency under Clinton was the Family Medical Leave Act and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Wow. And in exchange we lost the House, the Senate, a majority of governorships, and a majority of state legislatures. And got President Bush. posted 05/01/2008 at 03:09:25
Fact: Clinton did nothing about energy, nothing about health care, nothing about the environment--basically all that progressives got out of an 8 year Democratic presidency under Clinton was the Family Medical Leave Act and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Wow. And in exchange we lost the House, the Senate, a majority of governorships, and a majority of state legislatures. And got President Bush. posted 05/01/2008 at 03:09:25
This is just a small example of the REAL "fairy tale" being told in this campaign, namely what a wonderful decade the 90s were thanks to Bill Clinton
Fact: Income inequality increased just as fast under Bill Clinton as it did under Ronald Reagan
Fact: Fewer than 5% of the jobs Clinton "created" went to the 50% of Americans without college degrees (most went to Asian techs on green cards in Silicon Valley)
Fact: Much of the Clinton economy turned out to be a speculative bubble aided by irrresponsible deregulation of the financial services industry (yes, that started under Clinton, not Bush, and it was a big part of how he achieved a [temporarily] balanced budget)
Fact: Reductions in poverty were mainly "achieved" by maintaining a poverty line solely defined by the cost of food as other expenses like health care, education, housing, and energy became more important parts of peoples' budgets. The poverty line *today* is $20,000 for a family of 4--anyone who can't reduce the number of people under that low of a bar isn't trying at all.
Fact: Much of our illegal immigrant problems stem from NAFTA, another signature Clinton "achievement," because the agreement was so poorly designed that it had the effect of destroying Mexico's family farms and native industry, leaving a lot of those people with nowhere to go but north.
continued posted 05/01/2008 at 03:08:51
Fact: Income inequality increased just as fast under Bill Clinton as it did under Ronald Reagan
Fact: Fewer than 5% of the jobs Clinton "created" went to the 50% of Americans without college degrees (most went to Asian techs on green cards in Silicon Valley)
Fact: Much of the Clinton economy turned out to be a speculative bubble aided by irrresponsible deregulation of the financial services industry (yes, that started under Clinton, not Bush, and it was a big part of how he achieved a [temporarily] balanced budget)
Fact: Reductions in poverty were mainly "achieved" by maintaining a poverty line solely defined by the cost of food as other expenses like health care, education, housing, and energy became more important parts of peoples' budgets. The poverty line *today* is $20,000 for a family of 4--anyone who can't reduce the number of people under that low of a bar isn't trying at all.
Fact: Much of our illegal immigrant problems stem from NAFTA, another signature Clinton "achievement," because the agreement was so poorly designed that it had the effect of destroying Mexico's family farms and native industry, leaving a lot of those people with nowhere to go but north.
continued posted 05/01/2008 at 03:08:51
Dow Jones Committee Lashes Out Against Murdoch, News Corp For WSJ Editor Resignation
waaaaah, Rupert Murdoch broke our agreement. You people at Dow Jones literally made a deal with the devil, and you're angry that the devil reneged? You remind me of the people at Time-Warner who p*****d on the AOL merger every way they possibly could, and then blamed AOL when their stock fell. I feel your pain--not. posted 04/29/2008 at 21:31:10
Andrew Sullivan: Obama Must Disown Wright
If I were Barack, I would take the next question about Reverend Wright and go Sista Souljah on whoever asks it, except in that perfectly calm way Barack has. I would list off all the problems this country faces, and then ask the questioner again whether they still want to ask him about his former pastor. And if they say yes, I would suggest to them that they should ask Senator Clinton about her relationship to Reverend Wright. I.e. it's clear from his comments yesterday that he's not supporting *me,* and his press club appearance was organized by a Clinton supporter... oh and while you're talking to her, maybe you should ask her about the religious right-wing cult she belongs to--let me know what you find out, and about [insert the names of any three of a thousand sleazeballs the Clintons have strong ties with], and after that, maybe you'd like ask John McCain about John Hagee and Rod Parsley and the gentleman on his staff who has been working for him for eight years who thinks David Duke is "a maverick"...next question... posted 04/29/2008 at 12:44:04
Pennsylvania Expectations: Clinton, Obama Set The Bar
I hope the MSM find Hillary's "he outspent me 2 to 1" spin on why Barack has to win PA as laughable as I do. With the long and deep roots she has in PA, the backing of the PA establishment, and the demographic perfect storm for her that PA represents, it's ridiculous to say that the fact that Barack outspent her 2 to 1 for 5 weeks means anything at all.
Tell you what, Hillary. We'll let you outspend Barack 2 to 1 in Illinois, or Georgia, or South Carolina, or Wisconsin, or Oregon for five weeks, and hold a new primary there. If you don't win the revote, will you promise to get out of the race? posted 04/22/2008 at 17:22:51
Tell you what, Hillary. We'll let you outspend Barack 2 to 1 in Illinois, or Georgia, or South Carolina, or Wisconsin, or Oregon for five weeks, and hold a new primary there. If you don't win the revote, will you promise to get out of the race? posted 04/22/2008 at 17:22:51
Barack's Whining Over Debate Shows Why Hillary Is Best to Beat McCain
dude--this has been going on for more than one debate. That debate was the last straw. I don't know if you're just very young or haven't been paying attention to politics until recently, but Hillary Clinton's campaign has been by far the ugliest I've seen in 40 years of following Democratic politics. The only one comparable on the Republican side is Bush v. McCain in 2000. You see, candidates that actually care about their party don't usually spend the primary season trying to destroy an opponent who may be their party's nominee. This is the first time I've ever heard a Democratic candidate justify knee-capping a fellow Democrat for two months (or really even a Republican--Bush's take-down of McCain was nasty but short"if it hadn"t worked so quickly, he"d have been pulled back) on the grounds she needs to season him for the fall campaign. Thanks for the selflessness, Hillary--not. Larry Hirsch justifies Hillary taking pages out of the Republican playbook for similar reasons. But if Larry really wants us to model ourselves after Republicans, he should know that the Republican nominating process has always, always been a model of decorum compared to this garbage. First rule of Republican politics: thou shalt not criticize fellow Republicans (unless they"re Mitt Romney, I guess!) posted 04/21/2008 at 22:38:06
Y'know what, Larry--if Obama gets through this and gets the nomination, it's not going to matter what the Republicans throw at him. The very fact that he has come from nowhere to lead this thing shows that a large portion of the American people are finally sick and tired of the trivialization of politics and the same old games. Those questions weren't "tough," they were just plain stupid.
If the Democrats can overcome their fears (which are justified in the case of Hillary--given a choice between Republican and Republican lite, the people will choose Republican--how many times do we have to learn *that* lesson? 58% of Americans say she's a pathological liar, 50% say they'd never vote for her under any circumstance), there's nothing but smooth sailing ahead. People have finally learned that this isn't about who is "tougher," who can do more posturing, who plays the "gotcha" game better, who's more fun to have a beer with. Obama will be running against eight years of Bush rule with none of the baggage that Clinton brings from that period or from the eight years her husband wasted in office. Once there's any focus on the differences between Obama and McCain, it will be a landslide. Clinton can't create that kind of distance. posted 04/21/2008 at 20:20:23
If the Democrats can overcome their fears (which are justified in the case of Hillary--given a choice between Republican and Republican lite, the people will choose Republican--how many times do we have to learn *that* lesson? 58% of Americans say she's a pathological liar, 50% say they'd never vote for her under any circumstance), there's nothing but smooth sailing ahead. People have finally learned that this isn't about who is "tougher," who can do more posturing, who plays the "gotcha" game better, who's more fun to have a beer with. Obama will be running against eight years of Bush rule with none of the baggage that Clinton brings from that period or from the eight years her husband wasted in office. Once there's any focus on the differences between Obama and McCain, it will be a landslide. Clinton can't create that kind of distance. posted 04/21/2008 at 20:20:23
Bill Clinton: Hillary Would Be Winning Under GOP Primary Rules
Wow, Bill Clinton thinks Democrats should be more like Republicans--now there's a surprise. President Clinton knows why the Republicans do what they do, and it's not so as to be "more like the electoral college." A front-loaded winner-take-all system such as the Republicans have is designed to quickly annoint whoever the Republicans have decided is the establishment candidate as quickly and painlessly as possible, and to quash all possible insurgencies. I'm sure it's a wonderful system if you are a Republican, Bill (why don't you go join their party?), and it certainly would have benefited his wife. But we aren't Republicans, and Bill Clinton and his wife both knew and accepted the rules going in. posted 04/21/2008 at 17:59:17
Clinton Faces Steady Erosion Of Support
It's interesting to read how the Times, which endorsed Hillary Clinton, spins this story. The best example is their re-telling of the Richardson story. Someone not familiar with what happened would think that Richardson accused the Clintons of "gutter politics" in his speech endorsing Obama (in Times parlance "took the additional step"), and then got called "Judas" by Carville for saying this, when in fact Richardson only uttered his "gutter politics" remark in response to Carville calling him "Judas," and seemed to directly it pretty clearly at Carville and those of his ilk, not at the Clintons themselves. Throughout the story what the Clintons did for those who have "betrayed" them is given the stronger, more sympathetic telling than what those who supported them. You'd think people like Robert Reich and Bill Richardson were interns when the Clintons "discovered them" and "gave them their positions" and "made them a lot of money," rather than established figures in their own right who made plenty of sacrifices of their own to get Bill Clinton elected and stand by him through a lot of inexcusable behavior. posted 04/21/2008 at 20:34:23
Clinton Backer Distributes Essay On How GOP Would Link Obama To '70s Radicals
Rove was on Fox today pushing this angle. This time he was expressing outrage that Obama saw fit to make a "moral equivalency" between Ayers and conservative Tom Colburn, because Ayers is a "terrorist" (albeit one who bombed empty buildings) and Colburn merely tried to get doctors executed through legislation. If Rove really does push this line of attack, I'm hoping there's a 527 out there with the guts for some serious blowback. Our nation's history is full of legislators who passed unjust laws that had far more serious and negative impacts on our body politic than the Weather Underground. For that matter, Hitler and the Nazis legally passed hundreds of laws against the Jews and other groups. Going through the legislative process is no cover or grounds or excuse for injustice. At the same time groups we all revere-the patriots in the Revolutionary War, the Union army in the Civil War, even the Greatest Generation in WWII--all engaged in tactics that would be considered terrorism by any reasonable definition. So is Rove saying that Hitler was a more moral person than the patriots of the American Revolution because his concentration camps had the sanction of law? What a fat piece of fascist filth. Like I said, if Rove runs these types of ads, I hope someone has the stones to put together an ad campaign that, in effect, says Rove and McCain are calling the American revolutionaries terrorists, too. posted 04/19/2008 at 01:09:06
Clinton's Odds: Time And Delegate Math Not In Her Favor
I agree with the Clinton fundraisers. Dean should show some leadership and resolve Florida and Michigan. He should declare both primaries the shams that they were (any Clintonite who thinks there was anything like a level playing field in either one either knows nothing about politics or really did inhale, repeatedly). He should say Florida and Michigan need to be included, and at this point, the only fair way to do that is to either (a) give each candidate 50% of the delegates, or (b) assign some portion--less than half--based on the results of the primary shams (with Obama getting the "uncommitteds" in Michigan) and the rest based on results throughout the country. Everyone knows that a re-vote would result in about a 50/50 split--Obama would probably win Michigan, and come much closer in Florida than he did in January. It's time for this red herring excuse for Hillary to fight on to be removed. posted 04/18/2008 at 21:53:19
Joe Scarborough Walks Off MSNBC's "Race To The White House" After Exchange With Rachel Maddow
What's up with Fox these days? Anchors walking off the set left and right. Must be tough to be on the losing side in a medium that is hemmoraging ad dollars. LOL--poor Fox. posted 04/18/2008 at 12:22:12
Imus: Obama "Almost A Bigger Pussy" Than Hillary
Wow, I'm sure Gibson and Stephanopoulos are grateful to have Don Imus's endorsement--LOL. That a guy like Imus is defending them shows how low they went. But seriously--Obama a pussy? Skinny as he is, put Obama in a cage with Imus, McCord, and Bernie McGirk, I think I know who is going to be left standing. posted 04/18/2008 at 12:06:24
ABC's Democratic Debate: HuffPost Bloggers Respond
I saw Karl Rove today saying the really appalling thing is that Obama compared "a domestic terrorist" with Tom Colburn, "who tried to use the legislative process to achieve his means." Uh huh. Right. I guess Rove needs a history lesson, as usual. Like about the fact that the legally elected Nazis passed hundreds of laws against the Jews and others (nearly a law a dayv in the early years, as shown on the endless video scroll at the Holocaust Museum), while the founders of this country were all "domestic terrorists" like Mr. Ayers. So according to Rove, our country's founders are morally despicable while Hitler was a mere citizen using the legislative process. Uh huh. Right. We can only hope that the "bitter" working class isn't tuning in and listening to such garbage. Think on the last eight years and consider the source. posted 04/18/2008 at 13:15:33
Just How Soft has Obama's Coverage Been?
PS If you really think it's going to be any better for your candidate, you're really naive. There are hundreds of Reverend Wrights, William Ayers, and the like in the Clintons' closet (in fact the Clintons even have a relationship with both Wright and the Weathermen!)--the notion that she's been "vetted" is laughable. There's a huge cast of characters in the Clinton post-presidency alone that haven't really been introduced on the national stage yet (because Obama, unlike Clinton, doesn't believe in this approach), and it's become clear that there's even all kinds of stuff still available from their years in office ("screw the working class" being a recent example) that can/will come out (because the Clintons have burned a lot of Democratic bridges over the years in their all-consuming selfishness). Obama's right--if Hillary is the nominee, there will just be a different set of video clips, and the idea that the American people have already rummaged through the Clinton baggage is belied by the fact that 50% of the American people say they won't vote for her under any circumstance--a number that hasn't, contra Mark Penn, budged at all, and the fact that her negatives in areas like honesty and trustworthiness have gone up sharply in the course of this campaign (to the point where she trails both McCain and Obama by 20+ points in this area). There's simply no evidence her base of support is any more solid than Obama's. posted 04/18/2008 at 21:43:42
Taylor, if you really believe what you wrote I feel sorry for you. It's you, and people like you, not the working class, who are truly bitter. You claim that Obama and his supporters have been living in a substance-free zone, but if you think that what Barack--and Hillary--were asked about for the first fifty minutes in that debate were "real questions," you're the one who is living free of substance. You're suffering from a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome--you've bought into the Republican definition of how presidents should be decided, hook, line, and sinker. Let me ask you: did you think in 1988 that we should have elected Bush over Dukakis because he looked better in a tank? Did you think we should have elected Bush over Gore because Gore said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" or didn't seem like much fun to have a beer with? Has it ever occured to you that the reason that Obama has come from nowhere to where he is now is that there are a large number of us--Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--who are tired of deciding elections this way, and aren't going to feel any differently in the general election? Has it occured to you that this might be the reason why Obama's numbers have gone *up* after Reverend Wright and "bittergate?" posted 04/18/2008 at 21:39:16
Clinton emphatically says Obama can win White House
continued
He let her get away with saying she mispoke "a couple of times" on Bosnia (she retailed that story *dozens* of times), I guess in hopes that in quid pro quo it would excuse his "bitter" comments, at least that's what it sounded like he was saying (but why? HUGE difference between her lies and his truth-telling on the bitter non-issue--even small-town folk know it). Overall he looked like the Obama of the first 10-15 debates against Hillary (other than the fact that he counterpunches a lot better than that Obama did), not like the guy who did so well in the CA, OH, and TX debates.
PS If these guys ever get asked again about how they'd use W, how about wind energy czar? He's the reason TX is No.1 in wind energy production. posted 04/17/2008 at 01:42:15
He let her get away with saying she mispoke "a couple of times" on Bosnia (she retailed that story *dozens* of times), I guess in hopes that in quid pro quo it would excuse his "bitter" comments, at least that's what it sounded like he was saying (but why? HUGE difference between her lies and his truth-telling on the bitter non-issue--even small-town folk know it). Overall he looked like the Obama of the first 10-15 debates against Hillary (other than the fact that he counterpunches a lot better than that Obama did), not like the guy who did so well in the CA, OH, and TX debates.
PS If these guys ever get asked again about how they'd use W, how about wind energy czar? He's the reason TX is No.1 in wind energy production. posted 04/17/2008 at 01:42:15
Sure, ABC was awful, but what was up with Obama? He talked and sounded like he hasn't slept in weeks--whoever was charged with making sure he was tanned, rested, and ready for this shindig should be fired. He actually got off the best shots--his rejoinders on the weather underground (first to Stephanopoulos, then to Hillary), his rejoinders to Hillary on social security (teachers and policemen and firemen making 100K a year? and killed her on the social security commission thing). But so often he was a step slow like someone who hadn't had any sleep. On social security, his plan is to restore the tax for those above $200K, but the way it came out it sounded like he was thinking of exempting those who make "a bit more than [$100K]," which to the average person could mean $102,000! On capital gains, I think he was trying to say he wants to look at ways to make cap gains a progressive tax, like the income tax, but jesus, what a rat's nest of a response.
continued posted 04/17/2008 at 01:41:43
continued posted 04/17/2008 at 01:41:43
DNC Picketed Over Florida, Michigan Resolution
I agree with the picketers--the dispute should be resolved...Howard Dean should step in and say that in light of the fact that the Florida and Michigan primaries were complete shams, and there's no chance to re-run in a way that would be anything but problematic, each candidate will receive half the delegates, or each candidate will receive delegates based a combination of the primaries results and the results of the primaries and caucuses as a whole. posted 04/14/2008 at 15:39:38
Obama: No Surprise That Hard-Pressed Pennsylvanians Turn Bitter
Continued
It's time for a full Bulworth moment--it could end this thing, once and for all, if Obama has the guts to ignore his advisors (who are probably all but yelling "prevent defense! prevent defense!" in his ears as they try to run out of the clock) and go for it.
PS I hope he's been working on his bowling! With a little practice, he could kick Hillary's *** in that, too. posted 04/13/2008 at 20:30:41
It's time for a full Bulworth moment--it could end this thing, once and for all, if Obama has the guts to ignore his advisors (who are probably all but yelling "prevent defense! prevent defense!" in his ears as they try to run out of the clock) and go for it.
PS I hope he's been working on his bowling! With a little practice, he could kick Hillary's *** in that, too. posted 04/13/2008 at 20:30:41
continued
It's ridiculous for John McCain ($250 MM) and Hillary Clinton ($100 MM) to be out there claiming a deeper connection to the working class than a man who grew up in a single parent home and whose first job out of school (while Hillary was on the Wal-Mart board) was organizing out-of-work steel mill workers. And yet, because he's never been straight with this audience about how he really feels, he's the one who keeps coming off to them as phony (Hillary and McCain are so phony they don't even know how they really feel about anything anymore except power, so they can keep it a lot better hidden than he can). He can't let them get away with it anymore.
These people don't need a "pat on the head" OR a "pat on the back." What they really need is a kick in a**, gently but firmly delivered, for letting themselves get fooled by first Reagan, then Clinton, and then Bush. While Hillary is shamelessly pandering to them as usual (yeah, I'm sure you really believe these peoples' lives are "spiritually rich," Hillary), now is the time for Obama to speak directly to the working class, as adults, about what has happened over the last thirty years, and how they've been had, and frankly, how they've contributed to their being had.
Continued posted 04/13/2008 at 20:30:12
It's ridiculous for John McCain ($250 MM) and Hillary Clinton ($100 MM) to be out there claiming a deeper connection to the working class than a man who grew up in a single parent home and whose first job out of school (while Hillary was on the Wal-Mart board) was organizing out-of-work steel mill workers. And yet, because he's never been straight with this audience about how he really feels, he's the one who keeps coming off to them as phony (Hillary and McCain are so phony they don't even know how they really feel about anything anymore except power, so they can keep it a lot better hidden than he can). He can't let them get away with it anymore.
These people don't need a "pat on the head" OR a "pat on the back." What they really need is a kick in a**, gently but firmly delivered, for letting themselves get fooled by first Reagan, then Clinton, and then Bush. While Hillary is shamelessly pandering to them as usual (yeah, I'm sure you really believe these peoples' lives are "spiritually rich," Hillary), now is the time for Obama to speak directly to the working class, as adults, about what has happened over the last thirty years, and how they've been had, and frankly, how they've contributed to their being had.
Continued posted 04/13/2008 at 20:30:12
Well, first of all Mayhill, I want to give you credit for a much more even-handed and thoughtful response to what Obama said here than you had to his claim that living in Indonesia and having relatives in Africa makes him more qualified to handle foreign policy than McCain or Clinton (about which he is correct, as anyone who has served in the Peace Corps could have told you--very few of us thought Iraq would be anything but the mess it is).
As for what he said this time, if there was ever a case of a gaffe meeting the classic definition ("when a politician tells the truth"), this was certainly it. Working class folks in places like Pennsylvania *are* bitter, they *do* cling tightly to their guns and their religion and their antipathies to people who are not like them. The question in my mind, my hope really, is whether, now that he's been caught saying it, this will be the goad to Obama to finally go the rest of the way and say what needs to be said to this group of fellow citizens, whether this will get him to speak as honestly and thoughtfully about *class* as he has about *race.*
continued posted 04/13/2008 at 20:27:53
As for what he said this time, if there was ever a case of a gaffe meeting the classic definition ("when a politician tells the truth"), this was certainly it. Working class folks in places like Pennsylvania *are* bitter, they *do* cling tightly to their guns and their religion and their antipathies to people who are not like them. The question in my mind, my hope really, is whether, now that he's been caught saying it, this will be the goad to Obama to finally go the rest of the way and say what needs to be said to this group of fellow citizens, whether this will get him to speak as honestly and thoughtfully about *class* as he has about *race.*
continued posted 04/13/2008 at 20:27:53
Clinton Camp: It's A Miracle We're Not Behind In Pennsylvania
Three weeks ago she was "unbeatable" in PA--her campaign's own words--with most of the PA establishment lined up behind her and a pitch perfect demographic mix for her and her message--a high percentage of older voters, a high percentage of blue collar workers, an above average percentage of women voters who vote Democratic, a closed primary, a low percentage of students who vote in-state, a low percentage of African-Americans--and now she's trying to persuade people she's "lucky not to be behind" because Obama has outspent her 3 to 1 for the last three weeks? Sorry Hillary, you have to win this thing by double-digits to stay in this race. And from the expectations setting you're doing, it sounds like you're no longer sure you can. posted 04/09/2008 at 17:33:17
Obama Camp Won't Pull Oil Ad That Clinton Calls Misleading
whoop-de-do. Another case of Clinton trying to call out Obama for things she and her husband are a thousand times more guilty of. Or do you really believe Bill Clinton was paid more than $50 million in speaking fees because people like the sound of his voice? What I'd like to know is why Lynn Sweet has such a thing about Obama? She writes a negative article about him almost every day in the Sun Times, which I thought had been liberated from being Conrad Black's right-wing US flagship, but I guess not. So consider the source. As for factcheck.org, let's face it--they have problems with everyone's ads. But anyone who thinks a guy whose campaign was built with 2 million-plus donors, 97% of whom have given less than the max, is going to feel beholden to special interests, has some explaining to do. posted 04/09/2008 at 17:28:54
Lanny Davis: Obama's Wright Problem
One other thing: if the heat gets turned up and all else fails, he has to start returning fire and make McCain repudiate virtually every evangelical leader, which will effectively blow up his campaign, by putting together ads that show all the things *they've* said (way beyond Wright in some cases). Or better yet, get the 527s to do it for him (b/c the fall Wright attacks are going to come from 527s, not McCain). Whose preacher is crazier and more hate-filled is not a game Republicans can play and win with swing voters. Way too many crazy uncles are locked up in *their* attics, and the evangelical right has made moderate voters uneasy for years--they've seen it in action (whereas the black church has been mostly irrelevant)--so again the shorthand is already on the wall. I don't see Obama having to go to war with Hillary on this"I think it's been made clear to her by party elders she can't plumb this well anymore if she wants to win. But if he did, my guess is that Democratic voters would be a lot more put off by the views of The Family, the right-wing cult she belongs to, than by Wright's remarks. E.g. most Dems, for example, though they won't say, believe 9/11 wasn't simply good v. evil, that to some extent chickens really did come home to roost, though the specific perpetrators *were* evil and the specific victims *were* innocent. posted 04/09/2008 at 14:47:47
Then, if it turns out what Fox has shown is really the worst there is, he can really put this to rest. He can challenge them directly--you say I sat through 20 years of this, yet you play the same 3-4 snippets repeatedly without any evidence there's more of the same calibre. Prove it or shut up. Great theatre, will get replayed ad nauseum, like Clinton dressing down Chris Wallace, but Obama can do this without looking/sounding unhinged like Bill. But to say something like this, he's got to *know* it--he can't be Gary Hart and end up in Bimini.
And he's got to be ready to jump on what will probably be this year's Swift Boaters--ex-Trinity parishioners, all black, who nurse a grudge or have been paid to say those snippets represent what went on all the time, and Obama was there soaking it in. Fortunately for Obama, most Americans now believe the Swift Boat attacks were BS, and they therefore provide Obama with useful shorthand to refute them. And unfortunately for the Repubs, white ex-soldiers are a lot more believable to most Americans than black people from the South Side, especially those most likely to be suckered into Swift Boat logic. Obama will be able to put out his own ads filled with *white* Trinity parishioners who say the others are liars, and the very people most fearful of Wright are a lot more likely to believe the whites than blacks. posted 04/09/2008 at 14:31:53
And he's got to be ready to jump on what will probably be this year's Swift Boaters--ex-Trinity parishioners, all black, who nurse a grudge or have been paid to say those snippets represent what went on all the time, and Obama was there soaking it in. Fortunately for Obama, most Americans now believe the Swift Boat attacks were BS, and they therefore provide Obama with useful shorthand to refute them. And unfortunately for the Repubs, white ex-soldiers are a lot more believable to most Americans than black people from the South Side, especially those most likely to be suckered into Swift Boat logic. Obama will be able to put out his own ads filled with *white* Trinity parishioners who say the others are liars, and the very people most fearful of Wright are a lot more likely to believe the whites than blacks. posted 04/09/2008 at 14:31:53
What Obama needs to do at this point is make sure that he has access to every Wright sermon that was ever recorded, have someone go through all of them, and find every inflammatory thing that was said. He needs to get Trinity parishioners who support him to search their own memories for things Wright may have said during the past twenty years that someone else could have videotaped, or that someone is going to claim to have witnessed. His big problem with Wright right now is that when people see these little snippets, they too easily buy into the extrapolatory canard that "Obama sat through 20 years of this and said nothing." Whereas the truth is probably we're not seeing more because Fox has run out of ammo. It's possible they are still holding back some stuff until the Dems reach a point of no return, but even so, Obama's got to be unsurprised--he needs to harness that 2MM donor horsepower to ensure he knows more than Fox possibly can about everything Wright.
Continued posted 04/09/2008 at 14:30:32
Continued posted 04/09/2008 at 14:30:32
McCain Speaker: Have Your Tiger Woods, We've Got McCain
what's really weird about this is that the last time I checked, Tiger Woods was a *Republican*--has that changed in recent years? posted 04/10/2008 at 14:30:13
Hillary Clinton's Michigan/Florida Strategy: Keep The Dispute Alive
Bravo, John--well-put. Beyond the points you made, the fact of the matter is that it is disingenuous to the point of dishonesty to claim that either vote was remotely fair or honest. It's a political axiom that if two candidates are competing for an office and neither campaigns, the one with better name recognition and more establishment support--which was clearly Clinton in the months leading up to these "primaries"--has a HUGE advantage, an advantage that only gets multiplied when the election dates are moved up so that the challenger cannot even benefit from campaigns he's run in other venues. This is one reason why incumbents win nearly every Congressional election even if people are widely discontented with Congress (and was true even before mass gerrymandering to create 'safe' seats on both sides). When you add to this the fact that Obama wasn't even on the ballot in MI, and that Clinton ran a substantial stealth campaign in FL through her union supporters (Obama didn't have significant union support back then), well, like I say, the Clintons re-write the definition of chutzpah every day. For Harold Ickes of all people (he sat on the committee that VOTED to punish FL and MI, and HE VOTED to strip their delegates!) to now say they must be seated based on the sham primary results (any other solution involves Clinton 'giving up delegates') is incredible. posted 04/07/2008 at 23:17:47
Obama: No Need For Foreign Policy Help From V.P.
Jrterrier--
That depends on your vacation...did you go somewhere for two or more years? Live among the local people, eat their food, attend their rituals, go to their schools? If not, your vacation trip probably doesn't make you an expert. But if you did, yes, you probably have a deeper and more visceral understanding of how people in dozens of countries think and believe (including the elites and leaders of those countries) than many of the people who are supposedly experts on those countries, but who have never done more than meet and greet, mingle with international elites, and stay in five star hotels. posted 04/07/2008 at 22:57:13
That depends on your vacation...did you go somewhere for two or more years? Live among the local people, eat their food, attend their rituals, go to their schools? If not, your vacation trip probably doesn't make you an expert. But if you did, yes, you probably have a deeper and more visceral understanding of how people in dozens of countries think and believe (including the elites and leaders of those countries) than many of the people who are supposedly experts on those countries, but who have never done more than meet and greet, mingle with international elites, and stay in five star hotels. posted 04/07/2008 at 22:57:13
Um, what was he doing in Pakistan? Visiting his mother, who was there as a consultant helping with microfinance projects. Do you have any other questions? posted 04/07/2008 at 22:51:05
Clearly the writer of this article doesn't have much real foreign experience herself--I'm glad to see Obama (finally) drawing this contrast. One of the reasons American foreign policy lurches from mistake to mistake and is constantly caught off-guard is that it's top practitioners *don't* have any real foreign experience. Even most of our so-called foreign policy experts only mingle with international elites and stay in luxury hotels when they visit--it's no wonder that so many of them got Iraq wrong, while Obama, who lived for years among the people of a developing nation, knew pretty much exactly what was going to happen. I was a Peace Corps volunteer myself once upon a time, and can tell you that Hillary Clinton probably learned less from all the trips she took to meet leaders (including about the leaders themselves) than she could have learned from one long evening in an off-license (that's third world lingo for unlicensed [illegal] bar). Obama's experience is simply far more honest, visceral, and useful than either Clinton's or McCain's--when you've spent significant time in a town or village in the developing world you literally become a citizen of the world, far abler to understand and connect with people--including elites--in dozens of countries than anyone who has not had this experience. The fact that some in this forum want to deride it as if it was a semester abroad in a student exchange program just shows how little they know. posted 04/07/2008 at 22:44:49
Sorry Mayhill, but Obama is right, and I'm glad to see him (finally) drawing this contrast. One of the reasons American foreign policy lurches from mistake to mistake and is continually caught off-guard is precisely the complete lack of the kind of experience at top levels of government that Obama has. I spent four years in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer--I know exactly what Senator Clinton would have seen had she visited my country, and what she would have known about my country afterwards or even about the leaders she met with: absolutely nothing. She might as well have sat by the American Club pool and eaten burgers--the average tourist learns more. Whereas having spent significant time (years, not days) among the hoi polloi in *any* country in the developing world, as Obama has, gives you substantial insight into *every* country in that sphere. I've found that my Peace Corps experience has helped me understand and interact with people of all classes from countries as diverse as Ukraine and Brazil. Meanwhile, even our revered "experts" like Thomas Friedman have suffered from the tendency to mingle with elites and spend their down-time in luxury hotels in terms of their actual understanding of the dynamics of the countries they cover. Like Senator Obama, I could have predicted from my PCV experience that Iraq would be a disaster (and did); Thomas Friedman and Hillary Clinton and many other American foreign policy "experts" couldn't, and didn't. posted 04/07/2008 at 17:10:25
DNC Donors Want Money Returned Because Of Florida
Don't let the door hit on your fat wealthy behinds on the way out. The days of two tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum corporate parties are over--the Dems don't need your blood money anymore; you can give it to the Republicans where it belongs. posted 04/04/2008 at 17:56:45
Hillary Clinton Tax Returns: See Full Details
Continuation
If you want a good example of how good the Clintons are at actually managing a real economic entity, the Hillary Clinton campaign itself is a more relevant case study than how many legalized bribes they've taken, and said campaign has spent exorbitant sums of money to little end to date--it's been rife with waste and abuse. The Obama campaign, by contrast, has used its dollars to move their candidate from a distant second or third place prospect with little establishment support to the all but certain nominee, all the while banking large quantities of the money raised.
Finally it will be interesting to see how many working class voters in PA, NC, and IN still think Hillary is "one of them" after seeing how much coin the Clintons have taken in trading on the powers these voters gave them. posted 04/04/2008 at 19:16:46
If you want a good example of how good the Clintons are at actually managing a real economic entity, the Hillary Clinton campaign itself is a more relevant case study than how many legalized bribes they've taken, and said campaign has spent exorbitant sums of money to little end to date--it's been rife with waste and abuse. The Obama campaign, by contrast, has used its dollars to move their candidate from a distant second or third place prospect with little establishment support to the all but certain nominee, all the while banking large quantities of the money raised.
Finally it will be interesting to see how many working class voters in PA, NC, and IN still think Hillary is "one of them" after seeing how much coin the Clintons have taken in trading on the powers these voters gave them. posted 04/04/2008 at 19:16:46
We can only hope that the media is going over these with a fine-toothed comb. Remember the Clinton history of doing massive document dumps on Friday afternoons to get bad news out of the way, which means there's stuff in these returns they are hoping will get lost over the weekend.
To those Clintonistas who talk brightly about how the Clintons' "earning" $109 million since 2000 shows what great stewards of the economy they'd be, um, not exactly. The average person who makes $109 million makes that money by building and running a business--that might portend well for their ability to run the economy, provided the business is a real business and not a crony capitalist entity like Halliburton sucking at the federal teat. The Clintons made this money primarily by giving speeches for exorbitant sums of money, which is more akin to taking bribes or influence-peddling than it is to building and managing a business.
Continued posted 04/04/2008 at 19:16:19
To those Clintonistas who talk brightly about how the Clintons' "earning" $109 million since 2000 shows what great stewards of the economy they'd be, um, not exactly. The average person who makes $109 million makes that money by building and running a business--that might portend well for their ability to run the economy, provided the business is a real business and not a crony capitalist entity like Halliburton sucking at the federal teat. The Clintons made this money primarily by giving speeches for exorbitant sums of money, which is more akin to taking bribes or influence-peddling than it is to building and managing a business.
Continued posted 04/04/2008 at 19:16:19
Clinton-Backer Nutter: Media Covers Race With "Double Standard"
Nutter is right that Obama's race has overshadowed Clinton's gender, but who is responsible for that? The Clintons have played every racial card in the deck, from suggesting that Obama might have dealt drugs as well as used them (something that has NEVER been suggested of any white candidate who has admitted drug use) to trying to position him as a Muslim (over and over again, in ways now officially known and others that will come out) to persistently comparing his run to the only other serious black candidate in the last thirty years to darkening his face and broadening his features in their Texas ads to having surrogates stir the racial pot over and over and over again--the list goes on and on and on. I like to say of the Clintons that they create a new definition of chutzpah every day. Here they run a campaign pointedly designed to get the media and voters to focus on Obama's race, and then they complain that her gender is being overlooked. Amazing. posted 04/04/2008 at 16:07:37
Hillary Clinton Challenges Obama To Bowl Off
OK, Eddy, fair enough, but you said it yourself--a "carefully planned" ad lib...for most people an oxymoron, but for Clinton? The problem Obama people have is that these people have run such an ugly campaign that everything is loaded now. How far you sure, for example, that this cute little April Fools joke wasn't an effort to get more news outlets to run footage of Obama's bowling foibles to make him look like Kerry the goose hunter or Dukakis the tank operator in the eyes of PA voters? What if we make the deal that whoever wins the bowling match has to drop out of the race? ;) posted 04/01/2008 at 15:50:33
What Obama Owes Bill Clinton
Tough to give Bill Clinton credit for turning his party into a minority in the House, a minority in the Senate, a minority in governorships, and a minority in state legislatures. Clinton was--and is--always about one thing, and that's Clinton. I'd like to hear Clintonistas name one instance where he put either his country or his party ahead of his own personal interests. I'd name the tax hike in 1993, except that the moment this move turned out to be unpopular, he backpedaled and threw those Dems in swing districts who voted for it (as he urged) under the bus by saying it was a mistake, part of a larger pattern in which he repeatedly triangulated allies right and left, to the point where one can't think of his other arguably courageous move--Kosovo--without thinking of Wag The Dog, too; he is as responsible as anyone for the eight years we've endured under Bush. So no thanks, I won't give Bill Clinton any credit for Barack Obama's success--sorry. posted 03/31/2008 at 22:24:36
Architect Of Vast Right Wing Conspiracy "Reassesses" Hillary
This certainly wouldn't be an endorsement I was proud of, but it defintely fits with her PA surrogate calling Fox News the most fair and balanced news network, her sponorship of a punitive bankruptcy bill and Constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning, her support of the Iraq war and NAFTA (until it became politically problematic) and every free trade agreement put before her (without labor and environmental conditions), and her membership in a shadowy right-wing religious cult that has an unhealthy fascination with the Nazis. posted 04/01/2008 at 10:15:36
Could the Republicans Pick the Democratic Nominee? -- The Untold Story of How the GOP Rigged Florida and Michigan
Part 6 (last one, I promise)
(5) Finally, in the best case scanario for itself, Barrett's argument clearly only holds for one state--Florida. While he talks about the Republicans being the "difference" in the Michigan House, the fact remains that the Democrats were a majority in the Michigan house and therefore could have blocked the primary move-up. He talks about the Senate Republicans sending the primary move-up to Democratic Governor Granholm, but the fact remains that Granholm (a Clinton supporter) could have vetoed the bill--to say "all she did was sign a bill" is disingenous almost to the point of dishonesty. The Michigan Constitution requires a 2/3 majority to overturn a governor's veto. The Senate bill was passed 21-17, far from a veto-proof majority. And of course, as he mentions in passing, as if it were irrelevant, the primary move-up was backed by Michigan's senior Democratic U.S. Senator and its House member serving on the Democratic National Committee.
So what we're left with at the end of this article, for those who actually read it, as opposed to just reacting to the headline and the first paragraph, is a familiar story. Yet another Clintonista trying to use a document dump, a bunch of hocus-pocus, and the usual scare tactics to try and keep their candidate in the race. Pathetic. posted 04/02/2008 at 19:13:20
(5) Finally, in the best case scanario for itself, Barrett's argument clearly only holds for one state--Florida. While he talks about the Republicans being the "difference" in the Michigan House, the fact remains that the Democrats were a majority in the Michigan house and therefore could have blocked the primary move-up. He talks about the Senate Republicans sending the primary move-up to Democratic Governor Granholm, but the fact remains that Granholm (a Clinton supporter) could have vetoed the bill--to say "all she did was sign a bill" is disingenous almost to the point of dishonesty. The Michigan Constitution requires a 2/3 majority to overturn a governor's veto. The Senate bill was passed 21-17, far from a veto-proof majority. And of course, as he mentions in passing, as if it were irrelevant, the primary move-up was backed by Michigan's senior Democratic U.S. Senator and its House member serving on the Democratic National Committee.
So what we're left with at the end of this article, for those who actually read it, as opposed to just reacting to the headline and the first paragraph, is a familiar story. Yet another Clintonista trying to use a document dump, a bunch of hocus-pocus, and the usual scare tactics to try and keep their candidate in the race. Pathetic. posted 04/02/2008 at 19:13:20
Part 6
(5) Continued. The other explanation, put forward by Barrett, at least in his headline, is that (a) the Republicans secretly wanted Obama to beat Hillary, which flies in the face of not only most head to head polls done for the last year"in fact, at the time the primary decisions were being made, there were reputable polls showing that every Republican, even Ron Paul, had a good shot at beating Hillary--but also their actual behavior to date (in madly digging up and pushing Rev. Wright videos, for example) and (b) the Republicans somehow knew that if they moved up the primary dates, the Democrats would decide to completely disenfranchise both states and (c) the Republicans also somehow also knew that Hillary Clinton would win both of these states yet somehow not come up with enough votes in the other 48 to overcome Obama unless the votes in FL and MI were counted. That's a decidely more complicated explanation"in fact, it goes beyond even the merely conspiratorial, because it seems to require supernatural powers of prediction on the part of the Republicans (come on, Rove's not THAT good) to be true. posted 04/02/2008 at 19:12:10
(5) Continued. The other explanation, put forward by Barrett, at least in his headline, is that (a) the Republicans secretly wanted Obama to beat Hillary, which flies in the face of not only most head to head polls done for the last year"in fact, at the time the primary decisions were being made, there were reputable polls showing that every Republican, even Ron Paul, had a good shot at beating Hillary--but also their actual behavior to date (in madly digging up and pushing Rev. Wright videos, for example) and (b) the Republicans somehow knew that if they moved up the primary dates, the Democrats would decide to completely disenfranchise both states and (c) the Republicans also somehow also knew that Hillary Clinton would win both of these states yet somehow not come up with enough votes in the other 48 to overcome Obama unless the votes in FL and MI were counted. That's a decidely more complicated explanation"in fact, it goes beyond even the merely conspiratorial, because it seems to require supernatural powers of prediction on the part of the Republicans (come on, Rove's not THAT good) to be true. posted 04/02/2008 at 19:12:10
Part 5
(5) Everyone here know about Occam's Razor? It's the scientific principle that when there are two competing explanations for an event, the simpler one is usually right. In this case there are two competing explanations. One explanation for what happened in FL and MI is that the Republicans in that state wanted to move up the primary date so that they would have more of a role in choosing the Republican nominee. They knew they'd lose half their delegates, but figured that being close to the beginning of the process was worth far more in terms of influence on the process than losing half the delegates would cost (I'd argue they were probably right). Many Democrats, especially in Michigan, felt the same way. In fact the whole reason the Democrats laid out such penalties for moving up was because they knew how strong this motivation would be. That's the simple explanation for what happened.
continued posted 04/02/2008 at 19:11:21
(5) Everyone here know about Occam's Razor? It's the scientific principle that when there are two competing explanations for an event, the simpler one is usually right. In this case there are two competing explanations. One explanation for what happened in FL and MI is that the Republicans in that state wanted to move up the primary date so that they would have more of a role in choosing the Republican nominee. They knew they'd lose half their delegates, but figured that being close to the beginning of the process was worth far more in terms of influence on the process than losing half the delegates would cost (I'd argue they were probably right). Many Democrats, especially in Michigan, felt the same way. In fact the whole reason the Democrats laid out such penalties for moving up was because they knew how strong this motivation would be. That's the simple explanation for what happened.
continued posted 04/02/2008 at 19:11:21
Part 3
(4) Continued: This is one of the reasons why such high percentages of incumbents win election to Congress. The advantage to the better-known, more establishment-supported candidate only increases if states move up their dates so there is even less opportunity for the lesser known candidate to become known via campaigns in other states. And this axiom has, in fact, proven true repeatedly in this campaign"in state after state, Clinton has started with a huge name recognition/establishment advantage, then both have campaigned in the state, and Obama has significantly lowered the gap. People who look at Hillary's 10 point 'thumping' of Obama in Ohio forget she was up by more than 20 there in late Jan-early Feb before they both started campaigning there; the same is true in Texas. If Obama hadn't had the 'kitchen sink' thrown at him by Clinton during the last days of those campaigns, it's likely he would have won both coming from 20+ points down in each. Add to this that Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan and the fact that Hillary in fact ran a substantial stealth campaign in Florida through her union supporters (Obama didn't have the union support he has now) and the notion there was a level playing field being violated here becomes completely laughable. But the more stringent bottom line: there is no level playing field between candidates with different levels of name recognition and establishment support if neither can campaign.
Continued posted 04/02/2008 at 19:09:38
(4) Continued: This is one of the reasons why such high percentages of incumbents win election to Congress. The advantage to the better-known, more establishment-supported candidate only increases if states move up their dates so there is even less opportunity for the lesser known candidate to become known via campaigns in other states. And this axiom has, in fact, proven true repeatedly in this campaign"in state after state, Clinton has started with a huge name recognition/establishment advantage, then both have campaigned in the state, and Obama has significantly lowered the gap. People who look at Hillary's 10 point 'thumping' of Obama in Ohio forget she was up by more than 20 there in late Jan-early Feb before they both started campaigning there; the same is true in Texas. If Obama hadn't had the 'kitchen sink' thrown at him by Clinton during the last days of those campaigns, it's likely he would have won both coming from 20+ points down in each. Add to this that Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan and the fact that Hillary in fact ran a substantial stealth campaign in Florida through her union supporters (Obama didn't have the union support he has now) and the notion there was a level playing field being violated here becomes completely laughable. But the more stringent bottom line: there is no level playing field between candidates with different levels of name recognition and establishment support if neither can campaign.
Continued posted 04/02/2008 at 19:09:38
Part 2
(3) If the Republicans thought about consequences on the Democratic side at all, they would have had to assume--as most people do--that the Democrats would behave like *them,* namely that the number of delegates would be cut in half (they also could have assumed this from the DNCs own rules), rather than guessing/hoping/predicting that the Democrats would respond by disenfranchising both states. Under that calculation, the most important question for Republicans, if they thought about it at all, would not have been "who benefits most by having Democratic delegates cut in half" (especially since they knew the same thing was going to happen to their own delegates), but "who benefits most by having the primary moved up?" And the answer to that question was clearly Clinton, the better known candidate with more of the establishment at that time lined up behind her.
(4) This leads to another point--Barrett tries to slip in the notion of a "level playing field" that both candidates were playing under at the time, as a secondary argument for why Clinton should get all those delegates. But the playing field was anything but level. It is a political axiom that if you have two candidates, where one is well-known, and the other isn't, where one has the preponderance of establishment endorsements (at the time) and the other doesn't, and NEITHER candidate campaigns, the candidate who is better known and established has a strong and clear advantage.
continued posted 04/02/2008 at 19:02:03
(3) If the Republicans thought about consequences on the Democratic side at all, they would have had to assume--as most people do--that the Democrats would behave like *them,* namely that the number of delegates would be cut in half (they also could have assumed this from the DNCs own rules), rather than guessing/hoping/predicting that the Democrats would respond by disenfranchising both states. Under that calculation, the most important question for Republicans, if they thought about it at all, would not have been "who benefits most by having Democratic delegates cut in half" (especially since they knew the same thing was going to happen to their own delegates), but "who benefits most by having the primary moved up?" And the answer to that question was clearly Clinton, the better known candidate with more of the establishment at that time lined up behind her.
(4) This leads to another point--Barrett tries to slip in the notion of a "level playing field" that both candidates were playing under at the time, as a secondary argument for why Clinton should get all those delegates. But the playing field was anything but level. It is a political axiom that if you have two candidates, where one is well-known, and the other isn't, where one has the preponderance of establishment endorsements (at the time) and the other doesn't, and NEITHER candidate campaigns, the candidate who is better known and established has a strong and clear advantage.
continued posted 04/02/2008 at 19:02:03
Part 1
Very interesting article, but the conclusion it tries to put forward: we should give Clinton those delegates because doing what we're doing now is what the Republicans want us to do (the sensational headline: Could The Republicans Pick The Democratic Nominee?): is hardly supported by the article itself, let alone a number of critical facts it omits. Specifically:
(1) Nowhere in the article does Barrett present any evidence that the Republicans moved up the primaries to cause Democratic voters to be disenfranchised. Indeed, how could they? That decision was out of their hands. The Democrats made an independent decision not to count FL and MI, and Republicans knew that would be the case from the beginning.
(2) What's more, the decisions on the primary dates were made at a time when the Republicans could not possibly know who would benefit from their actions on the Democratic side, even if they knew with a certainty that the Dems would disenfranchise the voters. In fact, at the time these decisions were made, Hillary was considered all but invincible. And there's no way that anyone at the time could have been projecting that Hillary would win these two states but yet lose so many others that pushing for the early primary would benefit Barack Obama. Nobody's that prescient, not even Bush's Brain.
Continued posted 04/02/2008 at 18:56:46
Very interesting article, but the conclusion it tries to put forward: we should give Clinton those delegates because doing what we're doing now is what the Republicans want us to do (the sensational headline: Could The Republicans Pick The Democratic Nominee?): is hardly supported by the article itself, let alone a number of critical facts it omits. Specifically:
(1) Nowhere in the article does Barrett present any evidence that the Republicans moved up the primaries to cause Democratic voters to be disenfranchised. Indeed, how could they? That decision was out of their hands. The Democrats made an independent decision not to count FL and MI, and Republicans knew that would be the case from the beginning.
(2) What's more, the decisions on the primary dates were made at a time when the Republicans could not possibly know who would benefit from their actions on the Democratic side, even if they knew with a certainty that the Dems would disenfranchise the voters. In fact, at the time these decisions were made, Hillary was considered all but invincible. And there's no way that anyone at the time could have been projecting that Hillary would win these two states but yet lose so many others that pushing for the early primary would benefit Barack Obama. Nobody's that prescient, not even Bush's Brain.
Continued posted 04/02/2008 at 18:56:46
Bill Clinton Tells Democrats To "Chill Out"
Bill Clinton says to Dems: "Chill out." As usual, those thoughtless members of the media didn't include the complete Clinton quote. It was "Chill out, we haven't finished destroying the party yet. You've got to give us the full opportunity to finish the work we started in the 90s when we cost the Democrats the House, the Senate, a majority of governorships, and a majority of state legislatures. These things take time!" posted 03/30/2008 at 23:41:33
Op-Ed: Obama Was The First To Play Race Card
Check out this spin...it's not the Penn interview on Charlie Rose--I haven't been able to find that yet, but it IS the full transcript of Penn on Hardball which, shows, introntrovertibly, that contrary to James' source, Media Matters, it WAS Mark Penn, NOT Chris Matthews who introduced "cocaine" into the discussion (why Media Matters chooses to represent otherwise is beyond me--they are supposed to be a non-partisan 501 (c) (3).) It's not even Matthews who reacts to it--that honor goes to Joe Trippi, then Edwards campaign manager, who completely understands what is going on and why--there's a BIG political difference between vague references to "youthful drug use" and "cocaine" and everyone in politics knows it, which is why Penn's dropping it into the conversation was newsworthy. Tell me he would have done this if Obama was white--nobody was really willing to go there with GWB in 2000...
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1207/Hardball_fun.html
And of course, remember how this thing blew up, as referenced in the transcript it was because of repeated attempts by the Clinton campaign to suggest that Obama was not only a user but a dealer, too. You name me the white candidate who admitted drug use whose opponents tried to use that admission to insinuate that he "shared or sold drugs." I'll help you out with your research: said white candidate doesn't exist. posted 03/31/2008 at 22:45:51
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1207/Hardball_fun.html
And of course, remember how this thing blew up, as referenced in the transcript it was because of repeated attempts by the Clinton campaign to suggest that Obama was not only a user but a dealer, too. You name me the white candidate who admitted drug use whose opponents tried to use that admission to insinuate that he "shared or sold drugs." I'll help you out with your research: said white candidate doesn't exist. posted 03/31/2008 at 22:45:51
Chris--
Obama is a year older (46) than Bill Clinton was (45) when he first ran for president....do you remember any of his opponents regularly calling him "kid"? I don't, and there were others in the race (George Bush--68, Ross Perot--67), at least as old as Clinton is now (61). This is the man who parses the meaning of the word "is;" you tell me he didn't know exactly what he was saying and hoped to achieve by saying it. Just like it's not racism that everyone worries about black basketball players turning pro "too early" at the age of 18, but curiously noone seems to have the same problems with 14 year old white tennis pros. posted 03/31/2008 at 21:51:18
Obama is a year older (46) than Bill Clinton was (45) when he first ran for president....do you remember any of his opponents regularly calling him "kid"? I don't, and there were others in the race (George Bush--68, Ross Perot--67), at least as old as Clinton is now (61). This is the man who parses the meaning of the word "is;" you tell me he didn't know exactly what he was saying and hoped to achieve by saying it. Just like it's not racism that everyone worries about black basketball players turning pro "too early" at the age of 18, but curiously noone seems to have the same problems with 14 year old white tennis pros. posted 03/31/2008 at 21:51:18
You're right ntmessage--there's no need for Obama supporters to talk about the number of times Bill Clinton has called Obama (who is the same age, give or take a year, that Clinton was when he ran for president) a "kid," not when there are so many more overt examples of the Clinton campaign playing the race card to choose from. posted 03/31/2008 at 21:39:50
YellerDawg-- If your candidate would stop giving me so much material to work with, it would be easier to cut things. As it is, I have to deal with the fact that your candidate and her husband rely on the fact that most people will forget everything they said and did the previous week except to have a sense that it made them vaguely more uneasy about Obama. So from time to time it's necessary to bring forward the entire record, to remind everyone as to what the full record is, especially when confronted with an esteemed professor from Princeton University as a rhetorical adversary, who chooses, against all true academic tradition, to cherry pick what he likes in order to make a ridiculous case that Obama is actually the one who chose to inject race into this campaign. posted 03/31/2008 at 21:05:47
Chris-- The reason why you aren't "bothering" to pick apart everything in my "long-winded falseness" is because you can't. It's all on the record, it's all documented, it's all true. One of the difficulties Clintonistas have is that when your candidate says things that to, well, the entire press corps actually present, are racially charged, or impugn Obama's patriotism, you actually believe your candidate (or her husband) when they feign complete innocence. A lot of us who have followed the Clintons (I have since 1988) stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt several hundred lies and parsed sentences ago. The Clintons even parse the definition of the word "is;" they know exactly what they are saying and why they say it.
But for your beneift, here is the exact quote from Clinton on the campaign trail--you tell me where she credits MLK for anything more than a dream...
I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.
Good luck rebutting the rest of my examples. posted 03/31/2008 at 21:00:40
But for your beneift, here is the exact quote from Clinton on the campaign trail--you tell me where she credits MLK for anything more than a dream...
I would point to the fact that that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became a real in peoples lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished.
Good luck rebutting the rest of my examples. posted 03/31/2008 at 21:00:40
Good point, LeftLeanWing--thanks posted 03/31/2008 at 20:50:09
You're right, Talexis, Philly, at least establishment Philly, isn't Obama-friendly; this is definitely the kind of article I'd expect out of a city with one of the worst reputations for racism in the country, black mayors notwithstanding.. Are you old enough to remember Phil Rizzo? How about the blackface minstrels in the Mummers Day parade (officially banned since 1964, but still in it every year to the present day)?
David Axelrod is not a race-meister; he is is a consultant who has managed the campaigns of many black candidates who have had to compete in majority-white elections. As a result, he has seen virtually every racist tactic white candidates and their campaigns use to keep black candidates from winning. And there is no way the Clinton campaign can possibly credibly claim that they didn't start this. Their best hope for beating Obama, they realized early on, was to marginalize him as "the black candidate," and there has been a steady stream of attempts by the Clinton campaign and surrogates--all thoroughly documented--to do this. What can you possibly see in our political history that suggests it is any kind of advantage for Obama to "play the race card?" The long history of viable black presidential candidates, black senators, and black governors we've had? There is no percentage for him in talking about race, period, and he didn't, until the Wright videos forced him to. posted 03/31/2008 at 01:58:28
David Axelrod is not a race-meister; he is is a consultant who has managed the campaigns of many black candidates who have had to compete in majority-white elections. As a result, he has seen virtually every racist tactic white candidates and their campaigns use to keep black candidates from winning. And there is no way the Clinton campaign can possibly credibly claim that they didn't start this. Their best hope for beating Obama, they realized early on, was to marginalize him as "the black candidate," and there has been a steady stream of attempts by the Clinton campaign and surrogates--all thoroughly documented--to do this. What can you possibly see in our political history that suggests it is any kind of advantage for Obama to "play the race card?" The long history of viable black presidential candidates, black senators, and black governors we've had? There is no percentage for him in talking about race, period, and he didn't, until the Wright videos forced him to. posted 03/31/2008 at 01:58:28
Does Media Matters also say Charlie Rose pushed Mark Penn to suggest that Obama is a drug dealer? You see the problem here, James, is that there's a pattern--*many* people in Clinton's campaign insinuated on *many* occasions that Obama's "youthful drug use" might have included actually selling drugs, and I defy you to say that this would ever be suggested of any white candidate on the basis of his admission to have used drugs. Bill Clinton, George Bush, and many other white politicians have come clean about their "youthful indiscretions," not one of these politicians has had their opponent suggest--based on no evidence whatsoever--that we need to be sure that all they did is *use* drugs, not deal them. That insinuation was made for one reason and one reason only: because Barack Obama is black. And that was the first playing of the race card. The good professor is either a willful idiot or an out-and-out fraud; it is incredible to me that a university like Princeton could have tenured and chaired someone who is so obviously ignorant. And unfortunate that the Philadelphia Inquirer is too behind the times to allow people to comment on their Op Eds the way other 21st century newspapers do. posted 03/31/2008 at 01:34:00
(continued)
And everyone knows that Geraldine Ferraro secretly supports Obama, just like she secretly supported Jesse Jackson twenty years ago, and that's why she made, and made, and made the stupid, racist remarks she made. Obama playing the race card again.
Someday we'll get to the bottom of all those emails, too; you know the ones, the ones that offer proof that Obama is a Muslim, that he doesn't know the Star Spangled Banner or the Pledge--and we'll discover that it was really the Obama campaign circulating them. Especially in southern Ohio in the days before the primary where, curiously, everyone seemed to get them, while people like me, who don't live in Ohio and who get tons of political spam, never saw a copy.
One can only hope that the good people of Philadelphia are smart and informed enough to see through this "professor." If not, god help us all. And people wonder why non-academics (people in business, particularly) don't understand the merits of the tenure system. posted 03/30/2008 at 23:22:33
And everyone knows that Geraldine Ferraro secretly supports Obama, just like she secretly supported Jesse Jackson twenty years ago, and that's why she made, and made, and made the stupid, racist remarks she made. Obama playing the race card again.
Someday we'll get to the bottom of all those emails, too; you know the ones, the ones that offer proof that Obama is a Muslim, that he doesn't know the Star Spangled Banner or the Pledge--and we'll discover that it was really the Obama campaign circulating them. Especially in southern Ohio in the days before the primary where, curiously, everyone seemed to get them, while people like me, who don't live in Ohio and who get tons of political spam, never saw a copy.
One can only hope that the good people of Philadelphia are smart and informed enough to see through this "professor." If not, god help us all. And people wonder why non-academics (people in business, particularly) don't understand the merits of the tenure system. posted 03/30/2008 at 23:22:33
(continued)
When Clinton surrogate Bob Kerrey praised Obama for "growing up in a 'secular madrassa,' that was Obama playing the race card again. OK.
When Hillary couldn't bring herself to rule out the possibility that Obama was secretly a Muslim on 60 Minutes, there again, that was that pesky Obama playing the race card again. Do I need to explain that saying he grew up in a 'secular madrassa' (no such thing exists, by the way) or suggesting he might be a Muslim are tactics that one would never bother to try on a white politician?
And everyone knows the Obama campaign were the ones who gave that photo of Obama in Somali garb to Matt Drudge and told him to lie about it and say her campaign was responsible, because we all know from the way conservative outlets like Fox have covered the Wright affair that the right-wingers are a lot more worried about facing Hillary in the fall than Barack.
Those Texas ads where Obama's face was darkened and his features were broadened to make him look more black. The Hillary Clinton campaign never made those ads--it was the Obama campaign, playing the race card again.
(continued) posted 03/30/2008 at 23:21:55
When Clinton surrogate Bob Kerrey praised Obama for "growing up in a 'secular madrassa,' that was Obama playing the race card again. OK.
When Hillary couldn't bring herself to rule out the possibility that Obama was secretly a Muslim on 60 Minutes, there again, that was that pesky Obama playing the race card again. Do I need to explain that saying he grew up in a 'secular madrassa' (no such thing exists, by the way) or suggesting he might be a Muslim are tactics that one would never bother to try on a white politician?
And everyone knows the Obama campaign were the ones who gave that photo of Obama in Somali garb to Matt Drudge and told him to lie about it and say her campaign was responsible, because we all know from the way conservative outlets like Fox have covered the Wright affair that the right-wingers are a lot more worried about facing Hillary in the fall than Barack.
Those Texas ads where Obama's face was darkened and his features were broadened to make him look more black. The Hillary Clinton campaign never made those ads--it was the Obama campaign, playing the race card again.
(continued) posted 03/30/2008 at 23:21:55
So let me get this straight...
When Clinton supporters speculate repeatedly about Obama's drug use, suggesting repeatedly that it might be that he not only used drugs but sold them to others (including their chief strategist, Mark Penn, on Charlie Rose), knowing--I repeat, *knowing,* that this would be far more likely to be believed of a black man than a white man, that was Obama playing the race card. OK.
And when Clinton said that MLK made a lot of great speeches, but it took Lyndon Johnson to get civil rights legislation passed, with the clear implication that she, Clinton, the white, was Johnson, and Barack, the black, was MLK, that was Obama playing the race card again. OK.
And when Bill Clinton compared Obama's win in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson's--why Jesse Jackson? Is he the only person ever to have won the South Carolina primary?--that was Obama playing the race card. And of course it was the Obama campaign who convinced all the reporters not to mention the fact that Clinton also said Obama had done well "everywhere." It couldn't have struck all those reporters independently what Clinton was really saying, that Obama was "just the black candidate," which is what they reported. OK.
When Clinton surrogate Andrew Young (yes, I know he's black, but he's a Clinton supporter) told reporters that Bill Clinton had "probably been with more black women than Barack," there again, that was Obama playing the race card. OK. posted 03/30/2008 at 23:20:35
When Clinton supporters speculate repeatedly about Obama's drug use, suggesting repeatedly that it might be that he not only used drugs but sold them to others (including their chief strategist, Mark Penn, on Charlie Rose), knowing--I repeat, *knowing,* that this would be far more likely to be believed of a black man than a white man, that was Obama playing the race card. OK.
And when Clinton said that MLK made a lot of great speeches, but it took Lyndon Johnson to get civil rights legislation passed, with the clear implication that she, Clinton, the white, was Johnson, and Barack, the black, was MLK, that was Obama playing the race card again. OK.
And when Bill Clinton compared Obama's win in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson's--why Jesse Jackson? Is he the only person ever to have won the South Carolina primary?--that was Obama playing the race card. And of course it was the Obama campaign who convinced all the reporters not to mention the fact that Clinton also said Obama had done well "everywhere." It couldn't have struck all those reporters independently what Clinton was really saying, that Obama was "just the black candidate," which is what they reported. OK.
When Clinton surrogate Andrew Young (yes, I know he's black, but he's a Clinton supporter) told reporters that Bill Clinton had "probably been with more black women than Barack," there again, that was Obama playing the race card. OK. posted 03/30/2008 at 23:20:35
Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role In Helping His Father
PS If you're like me, there are all kinds of things in your family history that you were told by your parents or grandparents--or *thought* you were told by your family about its history--that turned out to be embellished or exaggerated. That's far different than being 50 years old, in the moment, and making up sniper fire that never happened, denying a greeting ceremony that did, and all the lies--in virtually every detail--that Clinton was guilty of. Only a brainwashed Clintonista could fail to be able to tell the difference. posted 03/30/2008 at 22:44:15
This is the same Washington Post--newspaper of record for the Washington political establishment--that recently titled an article "Both Obama and Clinton Exaggerate," juxtaposing Hillary's Bosnia whopper with Barack appearing on a dias as a champion of the immigration compromise bill at a single press conference a year ago, as if there were some equivalence between the two. Anyone who has bought into Hillary's crying over how the media is against her should bear in mind that there are establishment outlets--like CNN and the Washington Post--that are clearly slanted in her favor.
Once again, here is the problem with these Washington Post stories. Hillary made Bosnia a central plank in her proof that she had the experience to "answer that 3 AM call." She repeated the story over and over again, reiterated it even when it started to get challenged, right up until the bloody end. Raise your hand if you've ever heard Barack Obama tout his involvement in the immigration bill a year ago as a reason why he should be elected president or indeed, as proof of anything. Raise your hand if you've ever heard him suggest that the fact--or non-fact--that a Kennedy-era program was responsible for his father coming here somehow related to his qualifications to be president (the way that, for example, the Bill Clinton Boys State photo shaking hands with Kennedy was an icon for his '92 campaign). posted 03/30/2008 at 22:43:58
Once again, here is the problem with these Washington Post stories. Hillary made Bosnia a central plank in her proof that she had the experience to "answer that 3 AM call." She repeated the story over and over again, reiterated it even when it started to get challenged, right up until the bloody end. Raise your hand if you've ever heard Barack Obama tout his involvement in the immigration bill a year ago as a reason why he should be elected president or indeed, as proof of anything. Raise your hand if you've ever heard him suggest that the fact--or non-fact--that a Kennedy-era program was responsible for his father coming here somehow related to his qualifications to be president (the way that, for example, the Bill Clinton Boys State photo shaking hands with Kennedy was an icon for his '92 campaign). posted 03/30/2008 at 22:43:58
Hillary Clinton Deluged With Calls For Her Withdrawal
Um, she's waiting until there is a definitive resolution to Florida and Michigan? Maybe I can help her out there. There will be no re-vote in either state. The delegates will not be apportioned according to the sham primaries she won. In the best case scenario, she will get half of the delegates from each state. Now can she withdraw? Or does this need to continue until she can be quite certain that her attacks on Obama for not honoring her phony victories or supporting the highly questionable and corruptible (just the way she likes them) revote scenarios her campaign put forward have done enough damage to him in Florida and Michigan to ensure both states vote Republican in the fall, thus costing him the presidency so she can run again in 2012? posted 03/30/2008 at 23:43:23
Rice: Race Still Issue Because Of U.S. "Birth Defect"
Have we really reached the point where everything anyone says has to be parsed for ulterior motives? C'mon people, Karl Rove is in Texas, waiting, in his words, to be indicted. I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but I really don't think that's what's going on here. It took many years, but I read this as Condoleeza Rice finally stepping up for her race. Maybe she read or heard Obama's speech and was inspired. Maybe she read or heard the racist kitchen sink that the Clinton campaign has thrown at Obama and was disgusted. Who knows? I've never been a fan of 'ol helmet-head, but can we allow for the possibility that she's just a human being like the rest of us, and has finally been compelled to speak out? posted 03/28/2008 at 15:32:32
Bill Clinton To Obama Campaign: "Let's Just Saddle Up And Have An Argument"
Yes, Bill, let's have an argument. Let's see how much of a man you really are. Get ready for a kitchen sink and a whole lot else thrown in your general direction. You are a cancer on the Democratic Party and progressive politics. posted 03/26/2008 at 20:22:17
Clinton Donors Object to Pelosi Comment
PPS The twenty leading donors to the Clintons can take their corporate money and start donating it to the Republican Party--they are no longer wanted or needed here. Barack Obama has 2 million small donors who have only begun to contribute--the days of two tweedle-dee/tweedle-dum corporate parties in America are numbered--don't let the door slam you on your wealthy fat a***es on the way out. posted 03/26/2008 at 20:33:22
PS Contrary to Bill Burton's claims, NOBODY has done more to DESTROY the Democratic Party than Bill and Hillary Clinton. In what way have they helped build the Democratic Party?? Name one way, Bill Burton, just one... Under their "leadership," the Democrats lost the House, the Senate, a majority of governerships, and a majority of state legislatures. The only winners in the 90s were the Clintons themselves. Oh yes, but I forget--the Clintons ARE the Democratic Party--no one else need apply. The reality is that the Clintons are a cancer on the Democratic Party and progressive politics that needs to be excised. I am not some Obamanaut who think Obama walks on water. But I am enough of an idealist to believe we can do better in this country than the Bushes and the Clintons and that, yes, there are politicians out there (Obama is not the only one) who, whatever their imperfections, are a distinct cut above the lying, sleaze, corporatism, greed, and corruption that both the Clintons and the Bushes represent. There had better be, or we will be a banana republic by the time my son grows up. posted 03/26/2008 at 20:30:32
Hang tough, Nancy--don't let the rough crowd and bullies and general a**holes who support the Clintons to sway you. posted 03/26/2008 at 20:24:47
Obama & Co. Stop Taking the Bait
Trey-- This is well put. I think the biggest thing missing from Obama's arsenal right now is a compelling economic vision. I know people in his campaign who have been screaming for him to give a big chunky speech on the economy. Yes, Iraq is a drag on our economy (despite the pathetic attempts by Paul Krugman-et, tu, Paul?--to claim otherwise), but it's hardly the only reason the economy is such a mess. Also I think from now on Obama should act like he's the nominee by addressing only Republican attacks, not hers anymore. Unfortunately, McCain is intelligently hiding out in the weeds right now, probably precisely to prevent Obama from focusing on him, but Obama should be looking for anything and everything McCain says and going over and above Hillary to address McCain directly. posted 03/26/2008 at 16:15:06
Smears and Tears: How Obama's National Security Week Turned Into the Mendacity of Hype
PS To claim that Bill Clinton wasn't impugning Obama's patriotism is laughable. Bill Clinton is an individual who has been parsing every word he utters down to the last "is" since he was 21 trying to figure out what to say to his local draft board in order to preserve his "political viability" thirty years down the road. He knew exactly what he was saying, he knew exactly how it would be interpreted, there was no misunderstanding at all. I guess he fooled you, Joe--what a big surprise--but he didn't fool many of us. posted 03/26/2008 at 15:51:49
By the way, Barack Obama gave a speech on national security lasty week, too, a very good one that finally defines national security the way it should be defined, which you fail to mention or debate. And the bottom line is this, as Obama says, when it comes to withdrawing from Iraq: who are you going to believe, someone who was against the war from the start, when it was decidedly unpopular to be so, or someone who decided to be against it when she decided to run for president. Especially someone who has been exposed as a liar about Bosnia, a liar about Northern Ireland, a liar about NAFTA, and the list goes on and on and on. More than half the country doesn't think your candidate is honest and trustworthy, Joe, and that pre-dates the Bosnia fiasco or anything else you claim Obama is responsible for--do you think that happened by accident? posted 03/26/2008 at 15:41:28
Well Joe, given that you engaged in grotesque smear tactics against Obama on national security the last time you posted here, lying through your teeth about Obama's anti-war position (we know you were lying because some of us actually lived in Chicago in 2002 and 2003 and know that Obama was taking a courageous stand against the war at that time, especially if he had any national aspirations, which you Clintonistas claim he's had since kindergarten), trying to denigrate everything he did because unlike you, and Hillary, and John McCain, Obama was not in Washington at the time and therefore his opinion wasn't serious and didn't count, it's pretty amazing for you to come on here when your candidate gets the same kind of blowback. Payback is a b*****, isn't it?
The fact is that your candidate did indeed lie about what happened in Bosnia, and no amount of "I was there, I was in Washington, I've been on these trips" BS will deny the incontrovertible evidence that is now shown on videotape--there was no sniper fire, there was a greeting ceremony, etc. It's typical of the Clintons to call this bald-faced lie a "misstatement"--after all, it is a pretty small fib compared to many others they've told, even if it would be a king-sized whopper coming out of most of our mouths. posted 03/26/2008 at 15:40:59
The fact is that your candidate did indeed lie about what happened in Bosnia, and no amount of "I was there, I was in Washington, I've been on these trips" BS will deny the incontrovertible evidence that is now shown on videotape--there was no sniper fire, there was a greeting ceremony, etc. It's typical of the Clintons to call this bald-faced lie a "misstatement"--after all, it is a pretty small fib compared to many others they've told, even if it would be a king-sized whopper coming out of most of our mouths. posted 03/26/2008 at 15:40:59
AP: Why Wasn't The Truth Good Enough For Hillary?
I take issue with the ridiculous claim in the article that Hillary is held to a higher standard than Obama. The truth is that we've become so used to lying and corruption by the Clintons that we--and especially the press--are basically impervious to it At the same time, Obama has positioned himself as a different kind of politician, and the press has therefore reacted by pouncing on every little misstep. The Rezko affair, for example, *pales* by comparison with all the shady characters the Clintons have been/continue to be involved with, yet far more ink has been spilled about it than any Clinton-related scandal this year. Obama claiming credit for work on the immigration and housing bills is another good example--the Washington Post created this equivalence--"Both Obama and Clinton Exaggerate" was their headline when Bosnia-gate broke, yet I have never once heard Obama tout his role in the immigration bill during this campaign (nor have I heard him claiming to have solved the housing crisis), whereas Hillary's Bosnia claims she trumpeted loudly and widely as proof she is ready on day one (ditto her similarly debunked claims to have made peace in Northern Ireland). Then there are their pastors: Obama has been widely for his association with Reverend Wright, while no one except Mother Jones is talking about The Family, the right-wing religious cult fascinated with Hitler that Hillary belongs to...and the beat goes on and on and on... posted 03/26/2008 at 00:57:10
Obama Posts Six Years Of Tax Returns
So Obama releases his past six years of tax returns, all covering years that Hillary has refused to release (and won't release until three days before the PA primary--what does that tell you?) and her response is to say, yeah, but he still hasn't released the returns from before 2000? Who the f*** cares about his returns from before 2000, or hers for that matter, which included eight years in the White House when she basically had to release them whether she wanted to or not. The point is his seven most recent years of tax returns are now all available, and hers aren't.
Obama releases all his Senate earmarks, Hillary refuses, and then points out that he hasn't released all his *state* Senate earmarks? Apart from the brazen chutzpah to begin with (he releases something she refuses to release, she responds by criticizing him for not releasing even more), whatever happened to the Clinton theory that only Washington experience matters, that what Obama did in Illinois didn't count
Obama gives out details on his relationship with Rezko that even the Chicago Tribune, a *Republican* paper calls "unusually forthcoming" for a politician, and Clinton, who has been involved in too many shady dealings to count that we know little or nothing about, criticizes him for not revealing even more.
Another day, another definition of chuzpah created by the Clintons. posted 03/26/2008 at 01:08:16
Obama releases all his Senate earmarks, Hillary refuses, and then points out that he hasn't released all his *state* Senate earmarks? Apart from the brazen chutzpah to begin with (he releases something she refuses to release, she responds by criticizing him for not releasing even more), whatever happened to the Clinton theory that only Washington experience matters, that what Obama did in Illinois didn't count
Obama gives out details on his relationship with Rezko that even the Chicago Tribune, a *Republican* paper calls "unusually forthcoming" for a politician, and Clinton, who has been involved in too many shady dealings to count that we know little or nothing about, criticizes him for not revealing even more.
Another day, another definition of chuzpah created by the Clintons. posted 03/26/2008 at 01:08:16
Watch: Anderson Cooper Asks James Carville, "Dude, Aren't You Mr. Washington?"
Or The Family, in Hillary's case, as in the far-right wing religious cult (with a ghoulish fascination for Hitler and the Nazis) she belongs to. Funny how, after all the ink spilled about Reverend Wright, nobody in the mainstream media is talking about that, or really talking about all of John McCain's unsavory religious connections which, again, are at least as offensive as anything Wright has had to say. Or is it OK to say America was created to destroy the Muslim religion, that Catholism is "the great whore," and that Katrina was god's punishment for homosexuality? posted 03/25/2008 at 02:57:54
Brilliant point, 964kid--this looks like it is backfiring big-time. And who cares what James Carville thinks, anyway? He basically caught lightning in a bottle in 92; before then he had lost nearly every race he managed, and he's basically done nothing since '92 except punditize. Thanks to his great example, we've spent the last sixteen years stooping to the same level as the Repos, with predictable results--lost the House and Senate, then the White House (OK, so we actually won the White House the last two times, but still, for the election to have been close enough to be stolen, under the circumstances on the ground in 2000 and 2004, has to be considered a double loss). Did we win in 2006 because we emulated the Clinton/Carville/Emmanuel slash-and-burn approach? Sorry, I don't buy it--the facts say Howard Dean deserves a lot more credit than that crowd for the 2006 revival, as does the incredible self-destruction of the Republicans. So for my money, Carville is almost as big a loser as Shrum, and he's not even entertaining anymore, either. If we need a Biblical analogy for *him*, how about the snake in the Garden of Eden? posted 03/25/2008 at 02:52:31
James Carville Compares Bill Richardson To Judas
Each day the Clinton's redefine chutzpah. Who are they, of all, people to talk about loyalty? Have any two people in the last hundred years of politics thrown more people under the bus than Bill and Hillary Clinton? Can anyone name ONE person (other than their own daughter) that the Clintons have shown ANY loyalty to when the political heat was anything higher than luke-warn, if that? These people routinely blame subordinates for their own mistakes (I always thought it was supposed to work the other way around, but for the Clintons the buck stops anywhere but here), triangulated their own party into minority status in the 1990s, and they think they have the right to call someone who defects from their camp "Judas?" Do they, at long last, have any shame at all? I think the answer is no. They're so used to lying that they seriously believe that an absolute bald-faced whopper, inaccurate in every particular, like Hillary's account of her trip to Bosnia can be dismissed as a mere "mistatement," a "minor blip." Incredible. posted 03/25/2008 at 14:14:41
Carville Compares Richardson Endorsement To Biblical Betrayal
Well, what a surprise. Another day, another Clinton hypocrisy. One of the things the Clintonistas were making hay over was Reverend Wright's comparing Obama to Jesus. Yet here is one of their own surrogates, making the same comparison in real time (if Richardson is Judas, Hillary by definition is Jesus). Back in 1992, I liked James Carville--I thought he was fiercely partisan, but I thought that the only way we Democrats were ever going to win was to fight fire with fire. Sixteen years later, it's clear we need a new approach, that when we role in the mud with Republicans, and use their tactics, we end up no better than they are. If Bill Richardson is Judas, what's the appropriate Biblical analogy for Bill and Hillary Clinton? Sodom and Gomorrah, perhaps? posted 03/23/2008 at 14:34:12
Empress Tina Fey Has No Clothes
Anyone who thinks Bill Clinton didn't mean to say what everyone seems to be very clear that he said knows nothing of the history of the man. This is someone who was considering his 'political viability' 30 years down the road in the wording of his letter to his local draft board at the age of 21. Someone who even parses the meaning of the word "is." The most gaffe-free politician in our lifetimes. Now either you believe he's increasingly having 'senior moments' at the ripe old age of 60, or you accept that he knows exactly what he's saying and how it will be interpreted every time he says it. First, a race baiter, now a Red baiter--I wish I'd voted for Perot in 1992;. posted 03/23/2008 at 14:54:40
amen...I enjoyed Tina on Weekend Update, I like 30 Rock a lot, and even enjoyed her recent pro-Hillary 'bitch is the new black', but sorry, Weekend Update is not in the same league as the Daily Show, and wasn't when she was on it as a regular, either. Her comment sounds completely catty (and yes, I call men catty, too, when I hear it) and jealous. Too bad. If she's comparing 30 Rock to the Daily Show, the comparison's not fair or appropriate (why not compare Seinfeld with the Daily Show while you're at it, Tina?), and she should know better. posted 03/23/2008 at 14:40:38
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As for Bush, well, let's just say it's interesting how the Republicans, time and time again, have criticized Democrats for speaking out against Bush administration foreign policy while on foreign soil (hell, they even attacked the Dixie Chicks over this), yet it's perfectly OK for them to do it. I know Democrats are hypocrites sometimes, too, but no one tops a good Republican these days for chutzpah and rank hypocrisy. posted 05/15/2008 at 15:13:15