For Obama: Good News In Purple States

Gallup's polling of 13,000 voters, released April 17, shows Barack Obama ahead of McCain in competitive so-called Purple states, as well as deep blue states. Here's the summary (link is found below).

Reading further tells you that Clinton would also better McCain in the purple states. However, it is Obama who has the larger margin in be trusty stalwart blue states. (Obama ahead of McCain by 14 points, Clinton ahead of McCain by 11.)

So all together that beats down the idea that Obama's not our electable candidate. The numbers show it's he who's the one who is more electable.

The new Gallup poll link is here.

I've also been following the Rasmussen poll numbers state-by-state for weeks now.

Turns out that in some of the states where Hillary brags she's won, Obama pulls stronger numbers against McCain than she does. Link shows graphic illustration.

Obama's general election advantage compared to Clinton shows in the paired Rasmussen polling against McCain in California [big, big prize], New Mexico, Nevada, New Hampshire, NJ.

Even in her own state, NY, Obama's margin is 1-point greater against McCain (O 51 - McC 38)than her own (C 50 - McC 38) in the Rasmussen polling. She can't claim an advantage against McCain even in the state she serves as a senator.

The numbers have changed some recently, where she now does better in Florida than Obama against McCain. And she has the edge in Missouri, a state that Obama won in the primaries.

The state-by-state summary is here at Rasmussen Reports.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Charlie Rangel, Clinton Supporter, Says Her Comments On White Voters Was Stupid

Kenneth P. VogelSat May 10, 4:35 PM ET

NEW YORK -- Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), among Hillary Rodham Clinton's top African-American supporters, was none too pleased with Clinton's comments this week to USA Today that she has broader appeal with white voters.

The statement was "the dumbest thing she could have said," Rangel told reporters before a Clinton fundraiser in a midtown hotel ballroom Saturday.

He called her statement "very poorly worded" but acknowledged there may be some truth to it.

"In any campaign, there are groups of people that you know that you have and groups of people that you don't," he said. "And I don't care what it is. White, black, Catholic, Protestant -- pollsters and newspaper reporters, that's all they know, and so they keep asking the same question over and over. I mean, this happens in campaigns."

Still, Rangel said Clinton should leave it to others to make the case that she has more appeal to white voters.

"That is rough campaign talk. That is not presidential talk. You leave that stuff to the boys in the backroom," said Rangel, the dean of New York's congressional delegation.

He insisted that Clinton can still defeat Obama for the Democratic nomination.

"Why the hell would I be here at a Clinton rally if I didn't think she could win?" he asked reporters.

Later, in his introduction of Chelsea Clinton, Rangel continued to assail the media and its characterizations that the race is over.

"There are so many reporters out there and they keep asking me the same basic questions as though they went to a school to say how do we embarrass Hillary Clinton," he said. The latest question, he said, is: "When is she going to quit?"

"When in the history of this world did winners quit?" Rangel asked, comparing Clinton to the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

"Did anyone ever ask them to quit?" he said.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Hillary Play The Dumb Ass Card

Clinton Touts White Support

By Kate Phillips

As if the divisions between race and gender in the Democratic Party hadn’t been further exposed through Tuesday night’s exit polls — and by a very heated exchange on CNN between Donna Brazile and Paul Begala — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s interview with USA Today on Wednesday is further mining those tense depths.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in the interview, citing an article by The Associated Press.

It “found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

(Right Hillary. Just what pattern is that? White Dumb-asses Vote For Hillary?

While she said her remarks weren’t meant to be divisive, they’re already whipping around the Internet. “These are the people you have to win if you’re a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that,” she said in the interview. (Hint, hint, message to the superdelegates still undeclared.)

In Indiana alone, six in 10 white voters went for Mrs. Clinton, where she narrowly won the primary.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, told the newspaper that Mr. Obama had made inroads in Tuesday’s contests. And he added that her comments “are not true and frankly disappointing.”

"Facts Are Stupid Things," Sen. Clinton.

Obama picks up superdelegates; undecideds moving his way

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press WriterThu May 8, 1:14 AM ET

Barack Obama's march toward the Democratic presidential nomination picked up support from four more superdelegates Wednesday, pushing him ever closer to victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton — even as their primary marathon staggered on.

She added two superdelegates herself in what has become the last big contest as their race winds toward a finish.

There are just 217 delegates to be chosen in the final six primaries, and neither candidate can win enough of them to claim final victory. Meanwhile, 265 additional delegates — the party elders and other "superdelegates" — have yet to be claimed, and their support will be the deciding factor.

Though Obama padded his delegate lead in Tuesday's primaries, most uncommitted superdelegates still want to remain on the sidelines. The Associated Press interviewed more than 70 undeclared superdelegates or their representatives Wednesday, and many said they don't want to get involved until the voting ends June 3.

However, the comments of some of the uncommitteds were anything but encouraging for Clinton.

"I'm just wondering about the viability of Clinton's campaign at this point," said Laurie Weahkee, an add-on delegate from New Mexico. "I really want to hear from her more about if she wants to stay in the race — if the reason remains very concrete."

Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle said Clinton's pitch to superdelegates has been that she can win the popular vote, but that was undercut when Obama netted more than 200,000 popular votes in the Tuesday contests.

"The math just got very tough for her after last night," Doyle said. "I think most of us out of respect for her are content to wait a little longer. ... The absolute best way for this to end is for the candidates to end it, not the superdelegates. That's the ending we all dream about every night."

She picked up two in the wake of Tuesday's loss in North Carolina and narrow victory in Indiana. North Carolina Rep. Heath Shuler had said he would support the winner of his district, and she won it handily. A spokeswoman for Texas labor leader Robert Martinez told the AP he is committed to Clinton, but it wasn't clear when he made the decision.

But she lost another supporter, Virginia state House member Jennifer McClellan. McClellan is one of at least nine superdelegates who have switched from Clinton to Obama since the Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5. There have been no public switches in the other direction.

"I think the time has come to support Senator Obama as the likely nominee," McClellan said in a conference call with reporters. "Given what happened last night, it's very unlikely we will have a different result, and it is time to come together as a party and prepare for victory against John McCain in November."

Obama also got the support of North Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek, North Carolina Democratic National Committee member Jeanette Council and California DNC member Inola Henry.

Clinton met with undecided superdelegates at Democratic Party headquarters Wednesday. She said, "We talked a lot about Florida and Michigan," two states that she won but don't have any delegates to count toward her total because their early primaries violated party rules. "I continue to emphasize and stress that we cannot disenfranchise those voters."

Clinton said later that she would be sending a letter to Obama and Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean expressing her belief that seating the Florida and Michigan delegations is a civil rights and voting rights issue.

Obama was to make his pitch to the congressional fence sitters in meetings Thursday. He also planned to start traveling to swing states to signal that the general election has begun.

Superdelegates supporting Obama recently have given a number of reasons. They recognize he is the front-runner and want to end a divisive party fight. They were impressed with his handling of a crisis that confronted his campaign in the comments of his former pastor. They don't want to risk alienating black voters who are excited about Obama's chance to become the first black president. They simply think Obama would be a more attractive choice at the top of the ticket.

"I think that Senator Obama is going to be a tremendous boost for down-ballot races in North Carolina," Meek told the AP. "He's going to turn out segments of the electorate — particularly young people and African-Americans — who have historically low turnout levels. That will help candidates up and down the ballot."

Nancy Worley, Alabama's former secretary of state and the state Democratic Party's first vice chair, said she got calls Wednesday morning from Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine — both Obama supporters.

"It appears that the Obama supporters, just from my perspective, are working a little harder at getting commitments," she said. Clinton's campaign has mainly used letters and e-mails, with occasional calls from staffers, she said, while Obama has used more of a "personal touch" with direct phone calls.

Nonetheless, she said she still hasn't been convinced one way or another even though she said she would be reluctant to vote against the pledged delegate leader. That is almost certain to be Obama.

Arizona Democratic Chairman Don Bivens also appeared closer to backing Obama after receiving e-mails from both camps Wednesday.

"The Obama one was more fulsome and sort of laid out the mathematical facts," Bivens said. He said the Clinton e-mails were from multiple individuals sharing why they thought she was the best choice.

"I'm still uncommitted, but I do believe that yesterday's results put me at a decisional plateau." He said the rest of the contests' outcomes are more predictable. "I think that we're at a point where the track got shorter and you can see the finish line."

___

Associated Press writers Stephen Ohlemacher, Ann Sanner, Ben Evans, Kim Hefling and Liz Sidoti in Washington, Matt Mygatt in Albuquerque, N.M., Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C., and Bob Lewis in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Pundits Say, "It's Over." Clintons Say," No Way."

Is she planning to take this to the Convention, threaten a whole bunch of people and blow the Democratic Party To Smithereens?

By Jim Rutenberg

Very early Wednesday morning, after many voters had already gone to sleep, the conventional wisdom of the elite political pundit class that resides on television shifted hard, and possibly irretrievably, against Senator Hillary Clinton's continued viability as a presidential candidate.

The moment came shortly after midnight Eastern time, captured in a devastatingly declarative statement from Tim Russert of NBC News: "We now know who the Democratic nominee's going to be, and no one's going to dispute it," he said on MSNBC. "Those closest to her will give her a hard-headed analysis, and if they lay it all out, they'll say: 'What is the rationale? What do we say to the undeclared super delegates tomorrow? Why do we tell them you're staying in the race?' And tonight, there's no good answer for that."

It was not exactly Walter Cronkite declaring that the Vietnam War would end in stalemate. But the impact was apparent almost immediately, starting with The Drudge Report, the online news billboard that is the home page to many political reporters in Washington and news producers in New York. It had as its lead story a link to a YouTube clip of Russert's comments, accompanied by a photograph of a beaming Obama with his wife, Michelle, and the headline, "The Nominee."

The thought echoed throughout the world of instant political analysis, steamrolling the Clinton campaign's attempts to promote the idea that her victory in Indiana was nonetheless an upset in the face of Obama's heavy spending and his campaign's predictions that he would win there, or that she could still come back if delegates in Florida and Michigan are seated.

"I think there's an increasing presumption tonight that Obama's going to be the nominee," Chris Wallace, the Fox News host, said to Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's longtime political guru, who is now a Fox News analyst. The statement preceded a discussion about what a general election race would look like between Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.

A posting on the DailyKos Web site included a mock memo to Clinton titled, "To-Do List Before Dropping Out."

Speaking on CNN, David Gergen, a former adviser to several presidents, including Clinton's husband, said, "I think the Clinton people know the game is almost up."

Stating it more bluntly, Bob Franken, the political analyst, told the MSNBC host Dan Abrams shortly after 2 a.m. Eastern time, "Let's put it right on the table: It's over. It's over."

And it picked up again on the major morning news programs in a devastating cascade of sound bites for Clinton and her campaign.

Bob Schieffer on the CBS News program "Early Show": "Basically, Maggie, this race is over."

George Stephanopoulos on the ABC program "Good Morning America": "This nomination fight is over."

Matt Lauer on the NBC News program " Today": "Good morning, is it over?"

The commentary was punctuated by some brutal morning newspaper headlines: "Toast!" blared The New York Post; "Hil Needs a Miracle" declared The New York Daily News.

Of course, the political news media have not exactly showered themselves in glory this year. They have frequently made predictions that have been upended by actual votes from actual people.

But their opinions matter as much as ever in this late phase of the primary race, when Clinton and Obama are battling to sway the opinions of the uncommitted superdelegates — the party leaders and elected officials with automatic convention seats, whose support Clinton will need if she is to snatch the nomination from Obama.

The superdelegates are a largely elite group that presumably will track the conventional wisdom of Washington's class of political insiders as they weigh their decisions. And the big donors and fund-raisers whose help Clinton will need to continue her campaign are similarly tapped into the news media echo-sphere.

Clinton's campaign indicated early this morning that it would try to prove the commentariat wrong once again. "Pundits have gleefully counted Senator Clinton out before, and each time they have been wrong, because they don't decide this race — voters do," Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, wrote in an e-mail message. "And as the results in Indiana demonstrated, voters are rewarding Senator Clinton with victories, even in states Senator Obama predicted victory in."

Wolfson's statement came in quick response to a request for comment that was sent to him by e-mail after 2 a.m. Eastern time — an indication of the campaign's eagerness to undo the new conventional wisdom before it hardens.

And the campaign held a conference call with reporters this morning to send the clear signal that nothing had changed overnight.

Pointing to Clinton's victory in Indiana, and her inroads with what he called swing voters, Geoff Garin, her lead strategist, told the gathered reporters, "We think the results last night strengthen the case that she will be the strongest candidate for the Democratic Party in November."

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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Hillary Is Misleading The American Public

Craig Gregg, former counsel to Bill Clinton and now Obama supporter, sat down for an interview with National Journal. His comments reflected more strongly a memo he had penned last week, suggesting that Hillary's claims of experience were overblown. An excerpt from the interview:

Q: But was that experience, do you think, that is -- having a lot of influence with advisers, giving private advice to her husband -- was that experience that has helped prepare her to be commander in chief?

Craig: Oh, I don't doubt that. The point that I am making is that her claims of the nature of that experience are overstated. The fact is she did not sit in on national security meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the situation room. She conducted no negotiations. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy. She did not have her own national security staff. That's the fact. Now the experience that she did have -- watching and sometimes sitting in the room where discussions were going on and also meeting heads of state and foreign ministers -- that is good experience, and it's invaluable to understanding how the world works when it comes to international organizations as well as international negotiations.

Read the whole interview here.

The Clintons responded quickly, noting a contradiction between this statement and other statements. Only last week Gregg claimed:

When your entire campaign is based upon a claim of experience, it is important that you have evidence to support that claim. Hillary Clinton's argument that she has passed "the Commander- in-Chief test" is simply not supported by her record.

The comments by Gregg come at a time when the Clinton camp is facing increasing scrutiny over the former First Lady's record.

The Boston Globe reported this morning that Sen. Clinton had less to do with the passage of the SCHIP program in the early 90s, and cites Republican Orrin Hatch who, with Sen. Ted Kennedy, helped spear the legislation:

"The White House wasn't for it. We really roughed them up" in trying to get it approved over the Clinton administration's objections, Hatch said in an interview. "She may have done some advocacy [privately] over at the White House, but I'm not aware of it."

"I do like her," Hatch said of Hillary Clinton. "We all care about children. But does she deserve credit for SCHIP? No - Teddy does, but she doesn't."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Hello, Racist America

Hey Hillary and Bill,

It's easy to fight for the rights of Black people and be their heroes, always riding to their defense, just so long as one black man doesn't come along who doesn't need you and who is beating the pants off you because he sees the truth; it's no longer a matter of black v.white, but rather the haves v.the have nots. Most of us have seen this for a long time. Just remember the O.J. trial. If you have the bucks you can literally get away with murder.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Eliot Spitzer would be one of those exceptions. Then, of course, he had all of Wall Street against him and most of the Rethugs in New York. He went after the thieves on Wall Street. He was, as MSNBC reported, on a high horse. That will get you done in every time.

The Democrats ran from him like rats leaving a sinking ship. No one stood by him except his wife, who actually wanted him to fight the charges. Does anyone else think there's something very odd about the Spitzer thing; like wiretapping and the use of post-9/11 laws, for example. Officials from NY to D.C are wondering how much the Rethugs have on them. Hillary is probably in a bomb shelter wondering what Bill has been up to lately...wondering what Old Karl has in his files by now.

I read that Mulkasey, the Bush AG, OKed by the Senate, was all for busting the prostitution ring as soon as he saw that Spitzer was caught in the wiretapping/ bank reporting web; the same man that refuses to enforce congressional subpoenas. Does he really expect the people to respect him, or the law for that matter?

Another week, another diversionary flap over some slithering surrogate's depraved words, and another few delegates added to Barack Obama's unbeatable lead. This spectacle is down to a battle of the surrealists vs. the sure realists, but perhaps the latter should start reflecting the confidence of insurmountability.

Another six weeks -- and heaven forfend even the thought of four or five more months -- of this mindless, he-said, she-said drivel and John McCain and his neocon shock troops can start measuring the drapes.

Merely the latest staged surprise was, as the entire universe knows, racial historian Geraldine Ferraro's suggestion of Obama as merely elected dog catcher had he not been black. Any other pigmentation and he "would not be in this [winning] position," said Geraldine, blithely neglecting her own candidate's (to some) advantageous coloration and gender.

Obama's riposte was that Ms. Ferraro's words were "patently absurd," as is the notion that she simply and suddenly struck out on her own as an off-reservation freelancer. Such a notion was at least passable, until, that is, Ms. Ferraro, having plenty of time to reconsider and consult with the friendly powers that be, then reinforced her message in a subsequent defense every bit as offensive.

So round and round they went, with Mrs. Clinton, grinning like a Cheshire cat, musing on how "regrettable" it all is and how "We ought to keep this on the issues," just as her campaign manager was thunderously arriving at the striking conclusion that you, the multitudes, should reject Obama's "false, personal and politically calculated attacks on the eve of [the Mississippi] primary."

Say what? Mr. Obama could have further responded that what he rejects is politically calculated table-turning couched in denied desperation, and that surely there's a White Citizens' Council convening somewhere eager to hear more of Maggie, Hillary and Geraldine's insights into the vastly unfair advantages of being black in America.

Well, OK, maybe not that second part. But that even the thought of such a crack is now thinkable shows just how miserably far down the cracking lines of the progressive coalition we've traveled.

All it took was some internal competition and one side's willingness to win at any cost, not knowing at first if its constituency would buy into that willingness. But it did. So it now peddles a less than subtle undertone for which it would have excoriated the contemptibly racist right as typical, just typical -- and the real opposition these days has every right to laugh its self-satisfied ass off.

The Democratic Party once asked itself if Barack Obama was black enough. In short order came the answer from those who "wish to keep this on the issues": Even partial blackness is too black, permitting as it does an unfair affirmative-action candidacy that white folk should think once, twice, three times about before he steps and fetches his way to the nomination and predictably bungles early-morning emergency calls.

You know how those people are; always demanding a seat at the table and then always getting in over their undeserving, uppity and unschooled heads.

Those who protest that that's a disallowable stretch -- those who would cry outrageous, unfair foul at these words -- know as little about the insidious undertow of racism in America as Geraldine Ferraro. Then again that statement is a profound contradiction, for Ms. Ferraro obviously understands quite a bit about racism's undertow, and that's precisely why she went swimming in it.

I don't hold any candidate responsible for the occasional ravings of his or her surrogates, except when those ravings flow seamlessly into the candidate's already carefully constructed sewer.

Just to top it off, Ms. Ferraro received but the slightest of scoldings at a distance -- Now, Geraldine, one really shouldn't say those "overzealous" things, thank you very much. "Monster" may be out of bounds and worthy of summary exile, but let's do try to keep our unremitting message of his shiftless blackness within tasteful boundaries.

The he, of course, is pretty much screwed whichever way he turns. If he dismisses the scurrility without pointed comment, then he's weak. If he confronts it, he's a whiner.

But Americans detest whining a wee bit more than good old-fashioned racial politics. Hence it would seem, as getting screwed goes, that simply dismissing the opposing camp's malignancy is the better and wiser part of political valor. Every time he reacts it but reinforces that which begs for an ethically superior nonchalance.

It is, after all, just desperation talking; of more helpful interest -- if any comment there need be -- is how having tea and crumpets with Irishmen can resolve a bloody civil war.

Because he has already won this thing, perhaps Obama should act like it.

For personal questions or comments you can contact P.M. at
fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Hillary And John

Mark Penn's lobbying shop is headed by John McCain's top adviser

by JedReport

Sun Feb 24, 2008 at 08:14:08 PM PST

Let's say that the Democratic nomination battle had been winnowed down to two candidates, and that one of those two candidates (let's call him Barack Obama) was a huge favorite to win. Meanwhile, the GOP nominee has been all but decided. (We'll call him John McCain.)

Now let's imagine that Obama's opponent (we'll call her Hillary Clinton) was desperately slinging every piece of mud she could at him without regard to whether or not her attacks would help John McCain.

Finally, imagine that you found out that Clinton's chief strategist was not only her campaign's leading advocate for these attacks -- but was also the CEO of a public affairs firm whose DC-based lobbying subsidiary was headed up by John McCain's top adviser.

Would you say this posed at least the appearance of a conflict of interest for the strategist in question?

What would you think if you found out that it's all true?

• JedReport's diary :: ::
• 
  

Well, it is true.

Hillary Clinton's chief strategist is Mark Penn, and Charlie Black, John McCain's top adviser, is chairman of BKSH, the DC-based lobbying subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller -- of which Mark Penn is CEO.

Yes, this is the same lobbyist Barack Obama was referring to when he criticized John McCain for allowing lobbyists to conduct their business on board his bus.

BKSH is a bipartisan lobbying firm. Black, the chairman is the top Republican. The top Democrat is R. Scott Pastrick, who like Penn, supports Hillary Clinton.

Mark Penn's personal interests would clearly be best served by a Hillary Clinton victory.

A McCain presidency wouldn't be a bad consolation prize, however. It would be far better to have the head of his lobbying be tight with the president than to have a president like Obama who sought to impose new restrictions on his lobbyist operation.

Burson-Marsteller's work is primarily for corporations, ranging from Blackwater to Microsoft to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the government of Abu Dhabi that recently purchased a 5% stake in Citigroup.

As Ari Berman's Hillary, Inc. details, there's every reason to be skeptical of Mark Penn's willingness to help Democrats. He's criticized Al Gore for running to far to the left in 2000 and when he was brought into the Clinton's orbit by Dick Morris, he wasn't even a political operative.

::

As the New York Times has reported, Mark Penn is the leading advocate within the Hillary Clinton campaign for her decision to go nuclear on Barack Obama. Mandy Grunwald, a Democratic political consultant, recommended against the Penn strategy, but Thursday night's debate closing notwithstanding, Grunwald seems to have lost the battle to Penn.

In the past ten days or so, Hillary Clinton has gone nuclear on Barack Obama too many times to count.

On at least four of those occasions, her attacks have echoed a nearly identical attack from John McCain's campaign (or is it vice versa?).

1. Plagiarism-gate: Before the Deval Patrick brouhaha, the McCain and Clinton camps both accused Obama of "stealing" policy proposals from Clinton in Wisconsin.

2. Both Clinton and McCain have challenged Obama's readiness to be commander in chief.

3. After Thursday's debate, both Clinton and McCain attacked Obama on Cuba.

4. Clinton's mocking attack today was very similar in tone to McCain's mocking attack after the Potomac Primary.

::

These are all tough attacks but the worst of the bunch is Clinton's decision to join McCain in challenging Obama's fitness to be commander in chief.

This kind of attack has such power because if it is successful, it effectively disqualifies Obama from winning the election. Fortunately, Obama is plenty tough and can stand up to Hillary's attacks, but she is still running the risk of causing serious damage to Obama because when Democrats attack Democrats it's different than when Republicans attack Democrats. Voters expect members of either party to attack one another -- but when someone directs a significant attack inwards, it does real damage. This is why we needed to expell Joe Lieberman from the party.

Republicans are eating up Clinton's attacks:

If it is any consolation to Mrs. Clinton, the Republican National Committee and Senator John McCain of Arizona, his party’s likely nominee, are trying much the same lines of attack as the ones she has used. The committee issued a series of talking points to party leaders, first reported on the political Web site Politico.com, that contended Mr. Obama’s "greatest weakness is inexperience. He is not ready to be commander in chief. He is not ready to be president."

Republican Party officials and aides to Mr. McCain cautioned it would be a mistake to assume that what did not work for Mrs. Clinton would not work for Mr. McCain either. Mr. McCain is a different messenger — a war hero whose foreign policy credentials are well-established — and the audience for him is a general electorate, which could be quite different than the Democratic primary voters who are now the audience for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama.

"I think it’s the difference between their party and our party," said Robert M. Duncan, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. "They have a more liberal constituency. And the country is center-right."

Making things worse, Clinton's campaign is making the case that McCain would be a stronger President than Obama.

Both Sen. Hillary Clinton, his rival in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, are arguing that Mr. Obama, who has no military background and few foreign-policy credentials, is ill-equipped to serve as commander in chief. Both say he would stack up poorly next to Mr. McCain, a Vietnam War hero who has been involved in many foreign-policy debates during his Senate career.

::

The "fitness" attack is tough enough when it comes from just the Republicans. Now that we're so close to having a nominee, there's just no reason for Hillary Clinton to be leveling the same charge.

And it stinks to high heaven when the two sources quoted by the Wall Street Journal about the parallel attacks are -- you guessed it -- Mark Penn and Charlie Black.

Should Mr. Obama win the Democratic nomination, Mr. McCain plans to press the issue throughout the year. "It will be one of our major themes, certainly," said Charlie Black, a senior McCain adviser. On Tuesday night, in a thinly veiled reference to Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain asked if the nation is prepared to risk "the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate."

(snip)

Chief Clinton strategist Mark Penn said yesterday that she is the only Democrat in the race "ready to be commander in chief." And he argued that Mr. McCain would be able to exploit Mr. Obama's weakness in a general election.

Mr. Penn told reporters that there was a "very stark choice" between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, who he said had little experience in national security and had been in the Senate for only a short time.

It's tag-teaming Burson-Marsteller style.

::

In recent days, Hillary Clinton's actions have challenged my faith in her dedication to the Democratic Party as opposed to her own self-interest. Worse, she has seriously eroded my confidence in her judgment.

Even if her current scorched earth strategy is the correct one, she must realize how bad it looks to have her chief strategist taking the lead on an attack strategy that will benefit his financial self-interest even if Clinton loses the nomination.

For obvious reasons, the right wing isn't attacking Charlie Black's relationship with Mark Penn -- it seems to be working in their favor.

Can you imagine what would happen if it were the other way around?

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

SHAME ON YOU!

Having been at the hospital almost all day for an outpatient procedure, I flopped on the couch and flipped on the TeeVee, my usual response to those all-day-at-the-hospital days; the old flop and flip. The procedure did not require chemistry-altering medications, so I feel free to do a little commentary on the first thing I witnessed when Wolfe Blitzer appeared with a video of Hillary Clinton waving a piece paper, screaming "Shame on you Barack Obama, shame on you....blah, blah...you need to start running the campaign you said you would run (or something like that) that is what I expect from you...blah...blah," all in the most aggravating voice I have heard since I was subjected to nasty old school-marms, who believed that shame was right up there with fear in convincing the class clown to behave in an appropriate way.

Anyone with a dimes worth of common sense, let alone one semester of developmental psychology knows better than that. But that's neither here nor there with Hillary and her full-grown "student," who happens to be a Junior Senator in the U.S. Senate, just as she is.

Suddenly, I knew for sure why so many people can't stand her and why she would cause a right-wing white man (and probably quite a few on the left) to climb out of the grave to vote against her, plus a surprising number of other people; people who normally show more signs of mental health than to even consider voting for John McCain.

I've had my theories from time to time, when the subject comes up but I've never been sure. What is it about Hillary?

She's too smart? Uh uh, I don't think so. The woman has major, muscular neuronal networks, but that's not the problem, at least it isn't the main problem. No one wants a stupid president. Not now. We've seen what happens when that happens (or what happens when one has an agenda; an agenda the American don't know about and if they did, could not force themselves to believe a President (or Vice president and half the cabinet, for that matter, could possibly have.)

She's a woman, period. No way. Perhaps some blood-red-necks and, yes, black men do feel that way, and even some women, but the majority of white guys and black guys and women I know, do not feel that way, and I live in the deep south. (Admittedly I don't have many politically intimate conversations with white male conservatives)

Frankly, I couldn't understand why anyone hated her as pathologically as....say...Tucker Carlson, Karl Rove and others. I know now! Why? Because I just felt what they must feel, if even for a second. FURIOUS!!!!

People don't like being shamed.

It is a deeply hurtful thing and such an important feeling that if it occurs during a certain time period and over a period of time in a child's life; a child's psycho-social development, it can cause life-long problems for the child and, unfortunately, others who may come into contact with him.

Of course, no one has to worry about Barack's state of mind. He is a grown man and had wonderful women around him as he grew to be an awesome man.

What Hillary attempted to do today, publicly, to Obama was done to her husband by some really ugly Republicans (several of whom were guilty of the same kind of behavior and/or worse than he was guilty of) and that is exactly why he had the poll numbers he had at the height of his impeachment trial. It wasn't just the hypocrisy of his tormentors, it was their attempts to shame him.

Did Clinton have it coming to him, for lying in American faces, shaking his finger and stating, in no uncertain terms, that he did not have sexual relations with "that woman?" No, he did not.
He deserved what he got from Hillary and I feel sure that was comparable to the fires of hell. That should have been the end of it.

I never believed him in the first place. The guy had a history. He was under major pressure in his political game of chicken with Newt. The government was not open for business. Shit was happening.

If she honestly believed him innocent of the Monica accusation, again her judgment needs to be questioned. He was her husband, not mine and not the spouse of any of those pathetic House Managers as they ceremoniously marched across to the Senate, appearing so ridiculous to the world, to publicly shame a president of the United States and more importantly, a human being, for all of us, human beings, to see.

We saw it. We didn't like it. We still don't. Whether we had believed him or not, we didn't much care by that time. That's where the Rethugs made their big mistake. We might have all bene ready to toss our cookies about what he did but, nevertheless, the constitution was not about to be the victim of spontaneous combustion. The flag wasn't gonna fall.

Oh well, it did distract us all from the possibly...probably unpleasantness of Osama's war on America. I can barely remember that time now, when all we had to be concerned about was Bill Clinton's sex life.

I'm not a Clinton fan, anymore, (I voted for him in 1992 but not again.) However, I would have voted him in 2000, for a third term, just to cram him down the collective throat of those self-righteous, womanizing, hypocritical creeps who persecuted, prosecuted and, yes, attempted to shame Bill Clinton from almost the day he took office.

I would have far rather had Clinton/Gore in the W.H. on 9/11/01. What makes me really nauseous is that I don't think there would have ever been "a 9/11" if Gore had won.

(If Blitzer says one more word about that freakin' photo of Obama in Africa, wearing African garb, I think I may scream. Shut the hell up, Wolfe. You've asked every reporter east of the Mississippi River what they think about it. Now we know. Does anyone really care? You only show your own ignorance, Wolf, when you don't seem to understand that most African-Americans wear native garb if they are fortunate to make the trip back to their native land)

When will Hillary Clinton learn that the "school marm thing" doesn't work with any of us. It not only doesn't work, it makes me cringe and I'm not alone!

With those three words, you lost this election for sure: "Shame on you."

"I'm so honored to be on this stage with Barack Obama...."

"Shame on you, Barack Obama."

Which is it, Hillary?

Maybe we will all find out in Ohio; isn't that the place for high noon, at the debate? Didn't you call him out? Something tells me you're going to regret that, but it won't matter, because you've already lost the election.

Shame on you, Hillary Clinton.

As I have said to friends many times; yes, I would love to see a woman in the White House in my lifetime. But not this one.



The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Is Obama really McCain's favored Opponent?

The only way for any of us to know, for sure, if it possible for outsiders to know at all is to observe, closely, McCain and his peoples' behavior. What they say, on or off the record, cannot be trusted.

John McCain's Strategy to Influence the Democratic Race

Posted February 18, 2008 | 06:55 AM (EST)

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Read More: Barack Obama, Breaking Off The Bus News, Breaking Politics News, Campaign Finance, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Money In Politics, Offthebus, Polls, Breaking Off The Bus News

Let's say you're John McCain's chief advisor, and your candidate has made an improbable comeback to all but sew up the Republican presidential nomination. While reflecting on your good fortune (or dumb luck of facing a hapless slate of Republican contenders), you may also ask yourself, "Now that we've got this baby in the bag, what's next?" Attacking your only remaining rival, Mike Huckabee, would do little more than legitimize his stubbornly clinging campaign. Of course, there's the need to shore up support among the conservative wing of the Republican Party and prove your bona fides, but that's easily enough done with a quick hypocritical vote against an anti-torture bill. The other thing you might do is wonder whom your eventual candidate will be, whom you want it to be, and most importantly, what you can do in the coming weeks to keep the Democratic race in a state of unsettled disarray and help ensure that the weaker candidate gets the nod.

So, given a chance to affect the Democratic race in his favor, what's McCain's best bet? All the current indicators suggest that McCain is already working from a position of strength against Hillary Clinton, whereas he lags nationally and in key state races against Barack Obama. Senator Clinton's polling disadvantage--whether due to her high negatives or Obama's ability to attract the independents who would otherwise swing for McCain--may be undeserved, given the policy similarities between her and Obama, but it should give all Democrats cause for concern if she is the nominee. It seems that McCain has figured this out, and he's decided to do whatever possible to tilt the remaining Democratic contests in Senator Clinton's favor and to thwart Senator Obama, McCain's greater general-election threat.

As I've mentioned before, Obama continues to top McCain in poll after poll, whereas Clinton faces serious and troubling polling deficits against McCain. As of February 17th, the Rasmussen national Presidential Tracking Report shows Obama leading McCain 46%-44%, while Clinton trails McCain 42%-49%. And, interestingly, in Pennsylvania (a supposed Clinton firewall against Obama), she trails McCain 42%-44%, while Obama leads McCain 49%-39%. In Oregon, the other state with a February 17th head-to-head poll, Obama beats McCain 49%-40%, whereas Clinton trails McCain, 42%-45%. Now, I want universal health coverage, incentives for green industry, and a common-sense economic policies as much as the next guy, but if we don't win in November, the marginal differences between our candidates are going to seem a lot more irrelevant.

Since sweeping last Tuesday's Potomac Primaries, McCain has trained his focus on Obama, attacking him in his victory speech and continuing on in the days following. Almost entirely ignoring Clinton, McCain has gone after Obama on earmarks, inexperience, style, and public financing. In fact, the McCain and Clinton campaigns have been adopting each other's anti-Obama talking points. McCain has taken up the meme that Obama is all style, no substance, and Clinton has happily joined McCain's attack on Obama for hedging on whether he'd accept public financing in the general election, notwithstanding that such an argument is entirely premature since Obama is not yet the nominee. But if you're McCain, and you anticipate that Obama will be your opponent, why not save your best material until Obama has the nomination locked up? Simple: McCain wants to see Obama defeated in the Democratic primary and will attack him in ways that resonate most with Democrats.

The public financing angle is particularly interesting. Although Obama only talked of accepting public financing if he is the nominee, McCain has raised the issue long before the nominee has been chosen. The likely reason: Democratic voters have long bemoaned the undue influence of money in politics, and Obama's initial indications that he'd accept public financing have now run up against the fact that he has been so unexpectedly successful in translating grassroots support into dollars--harnessing the power of the internet and aggregating small donors to create a formidable war chest. Obama's good fortune that his message has attracted voters' money has put him in an unanticipated quandary: should he take the McCain-advocated moral high ground and commit to public financing (leveling the playing field with a less moneyed GOP opponent) or should he embrace the groundswell of financial support that his constituents have provided him? Clinton, on the other hand, never the underdog, always anticipated having such a money advantage that even raising the possibility of accepting public financing would have been unthinkable (although her earlier endorser, the New York Times, has recently called for her to do so).

Of course, regardless of which position Obama would eventually adopt, he would still be on the cleaner side of campaign finance than Clinton: he does not accept money from federal lobbyists, whereas Senator Clinton has maintained her position that she accepts lobbyist money but states that "I'm [not] going to be influenced by a lobbyist or a particular interest group." Even so, she has taken in the most lobbyist money of any candidate, Republican or Democrat. Given these facts, progressives should be more sympathetic to Obama's stance on campaign money--even John Edwards gives Obama the moral advantage--yet McCain's attacks are made with the goal of undermining Obama's campaign finance credibility with progressives. The intended audience of McCain's attacks isn't Republicans or Independents, it's Democrats. McCain is seeing his dream match-up against Clinton slipping away, and is taking action to help resurrect her campaign. Democratic voters should do well to recognize this strategic sleight of hand for what it is, an effort to undermine Senator Obama in order to benefit John McCain's preferred opponent, Senator Clinton.

More in Off The Bus...

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

John Lewis has second, or is that third, thoughts

John Lewis, D. GA was torn between Hillary and Barack when guess who, Bill Clinton, put the pressure on, and Lewis publicly endorsed Hillary, giving her one of the most important Black endorsements.

Now, it appears circumstances have pushed Lewis in the other direction.

Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention.

“In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last fall. “Something is happening in America, and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”

Mr. Lewis, who carries great influence among other members of Congress, disclosed his decision in an interview in which he said that as a superdelegate he could “never, ever do anything to reverse the action” of the voters of his district, who overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama.

“I’ve been very impressed with the campaign of Senator Obama,” Mr. Lewis said. “He’s getting better and better every single day.”

Time’s Mark Halperin argued that Clinton’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination, in light of Lewis’ announcement, have been cut in half. That strikes me as a bit of an exaggeration, but I think it’s certainly fair to say this is a major development.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Are Campaign Finance Laws About To Be Broken

Published on The Smirking Chimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com)

Will Clinton Money Bosses Break Campaign Finance Laws?

By Brent Budowsky

Created Feb 13 2008 - 2:18pm

Word is spreading behind the scenes that some of the largest Clinton campaign donors, with long relationships with Hillary and Bill and inter-locking relationships with the Clinton campaign, are considering massive “independent” spending campaigns.

Bad plan. As word becomes public, there will be a huge backlash and extremely grave potential legal implications.

If these folks are truly independent as defined by federal law, I will be selected by the College of Cardinals as the next Pope. Both are equally plausible.

The last thing the Clintons should be doing is anything that smacks of skirting the law, breaking the rules or manipulating the process.

I will argue to the death that the candidate who receives the most elected delegates in the primaries and caucuses should be nominated. This is true whether the winner of most elected delegates is Barack Obama or Hillary, because it is the integrity of the process and the integrity of our democracy that is on the line.

AMEN!!!!

Fixing the game, gaming the system, violating commitments of honor — these are the old tactics of the old politics that the nation rejects. The incredible outpouring from Democrats and independents is a precious gift that presages a potential landslide.

America does not need old bosses, new bosses or money bosses who disrespect the people as they disrespect the rules.

It is a tale of two cities: the revolutionary and gigantic surge of small donors that Barack brings to the system and the party, versus those tempted to try to buy another election by breaking another rule and violating another trust, which will inflame a majority of Democrats and help elect a Republican president.

This is the year when the people are right, the politicians are wrong, the rules should be honored and the bosses are yesterday’s news using yesterday’s schemes.

[Brent asks that you crosspost your comments to The Hill, where this blog post appears [1]. -- JT]
_______

About author

Brent Budowsky served as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, responsible for commerce and intelligence matters, including one of the core drafters of the CIA Identities Law. Served as Legislative Director to Congressman Bill Alexander, then Chief Deputy Whip, House of Representatives. Currently a member of the International Advisory Council of the Intelligence Summit. Left goverment in 1990 for marketing and public affairs business including major corporate entertainment and talent management. He can be reached at brentbbi@webtv.net [2].

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Obamania Continues and takes the Women's Vote

Obama Makes His Case as He Surges

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON — The lopsided nature of Senator Barack Obama’s parade of victories on Tuesday gives him an opening to make the case that Democratic voters have broken in his favor and that the party should coalesce around his candidacy.

Mr. Obama’s triumphs capped a week in which he went undefeated in states across the country, in many cases by big margins, over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

And his strength on Tuesday sliced across nearly every major demographic line, with one element standing out: in Virginia and Maryland, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls, he beat Mrs. Clinton among women.

The sheer consistency of Mr. Obama’s victories over the last few days certainly suggests that many Democratic voters have gotten past whatever reservations they might have had about his electability or his qualifications to be president.

Mr. Obama, in his victory speech in Madison, Wis., acted almost as the primaries were behind him, offering a case against the probable Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, as he spoke disparagingly of “Bush-McCain Republicans.” It amounted to a preview of what an Obama-McCain race might be like, and it reduced Mrs. Clinton, at least for one night, to the role of bystander.

“John McCain is an American hero,” Mr. Obama said before a huge, cheering crowd. “We honor his service to our nation. But his priorities don’t address the real problems of the American people, because they are bound to the failed policies of the past.”

Mr. McCain picked up the challenge. While not mentioning Mr. Obama by name, he offered an unmistakable put-down of the theme that has become so closely identified with Mr. Obama.

“To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope,” he said. “It is a platitude.”

To make sure no one had missed the message, Mr. McCain appropriated Mr. Obama’s signature line with a sly farewell to his own audience in Alexandria, Va. “My friends,” he said. “I promise you, I am fired up and ready to go.”

If I hear John McCain call anyone "My Friends," again I think I might pull my hair out I doubt seriously doubt that he has more than one or two friends in that audience last night. Does he not know what a friend is? A friend is not someone who comes to your rallies, votes for you or even works for you. Friendship is far more personal and intimate than that. When he does that it really bugs me for some reason. Maybe it's because I think it disingenuous and I just don't think this country can stand much more of that.

Even before his latest victories, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, had whittled away at the advantages amassed last year by Mrs. Clinton.

He now enjoys a big financial advantage. Her big lead in national polls is gone. By most counts, Mr. Obama can now claim more delegates pledged to him. He has won far more states than Mrs. Clinton, although she won some of the big prizes, like California and New Jersey.

For weeks, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had approached this race the same way: as state-by-state trench warfare, in the belief that the nomination would go to whoever got the most delegates.

But the latest results suggest that the race might be tilting back to a more normal form, where the goal is achieving a series of splashing victories and thus momentum. That has provided Mr. Obama with the opportunity, which he plans to seize in a more full-throated way starting on Wednesday, to argue that voters across a wide cross-section of the country have embraced his candidacy, and that the time has come for the group that could hold the balance of power, those 796 unpledged superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials who have an automatic seat at the national convention — to follow suit.

“We are in a momentum phase of the process now,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant.

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers dispute that, noting that his victories have come in relatively small states and that she has invested most of her attention in two big contests coming up on March 4: Ohio and Texas. Her aides have long argued that by the end of the voting, the difference between the two candidates in delegate count would be minimal, leaving the final decision to superdelegates, who in their view would favor Mrs. Clinton.

But if party leaders begin to think this is no longer simply a mathematical race to the 2,025-delegate line, that could have big consequences for Mrs. Clinton.

For one thing, if this is an election where a candidate wins by virtue of being seen as winning — a definition of momentum — that would mean that voters in coming states would be influenced by the outcome of earlier races. And Mr. Obama might then be in a position to encroach on Mrs. Clinton’s firewall of Texas and Ohio.

Perhaps most problematically, the delegate selection process — in which delegates are allocated to the candidates in proportion to how many votes they win — could now begin to work against Mrs. Clinton. Both candidates get a share of the delegates, even if one wins by a margin of 20 points. That is a reason Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had stayed so close on delegate numbers, and why it becomes harder for her to reclaim a lead.

But whatever challenges Mrs. Clinton faces, she has repeatedly proved to be a resourceful candidate with a sharp campaign organization and a passionate base of supporters. Should she win in Ohio and Texas, she could halt Mr. Obama’s claim to momentum and keep the race for pledged delegates from breaking against her. And there has been a history in this campaign of Mr. Obama winning, only to have Mrs. Clinton return and win.

“You can’t make a judgment until Ohio and Texas,” said Jonathan Prince, who was a senior adviser to John Edwards of North Carolina, who quit the race two weeks ago. “In this campaign, every time he has surged ahead, voters take a pause. If momentum keeps slamming into a wall, than you do have to come down to the numbers.”

Still, in the end, those two things are not unrelated. The next contest is Tuesday in Wisconsin, where some polls suggest that Mrs. Clinton is trailing, meaning it may be two weeks after that before she has a potential to put herself in a favorable light again.

At a time when Mr. Obama will be announcing that his train is leaving the station — and pointing to the relatively clear field that Mr. McCain has on the Republican side in urging Democrats to unite behind him — that could prove to be an awfully long two weeks for the Clinton campaign.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Dem. Meltdown?

Maybe I'm the only voter in America who loves nastiness in every election year, but I really do hate it and would vow to vote for anyone who said they were not going to be nasty, little mudslingers, especially within their own party, and kept that promise, unless, of course, another candidate said something so hideous that it had to be answered. Still, it doesn't have to be answered in-kind.

We have been watching what we call the American cold-civil war for a long time. Maybe the Dems are gonna heat it up faster than we thought.

This might be interesting, if so much didn't depend on it.

Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War

By FRANK RICH

WHAT if a presidential candidate held what she billed as “the largest, most interactive town hall in political history” on national television, and no one noticed?

The untold story in the run-up to Super Tuesday was Hillary Clinton’s elaborate live prime-time special the night before the vote. Presiding from a studio in New York, the candidate took questions from audiences in 21 other cities. She had plugged the event four days earlier in the last gasp of her debate with Barack Obama and paid a small fortune for it: an hour of time on the Hallmark Channel plus satellite TV hookups for the assemblies of supporters stretching from coast to coast.

The same news media that constantly revisited the Oprah-Caroline-Maria rally in California ignored “Voices Across America: A National Town Hall.” The Clinton campaign would no doubt attribute this to press bias, but it scrupulously designed the event to avoid making news. Like the scripted “Ask President Bush” sessions during the 2004 campaign, this town hall seemed to unfold in Stepford. The anodyne questions (“What else would you do to help take care of our veterans?”) merely cued up laundry lists of talking points. Some in attendance appeared to trance out.

But I’m glad I watched every minute, right up until Mrs. Clinton was abruptly cut off in midsentence so Hallmark could resume its previously scheduled programming (a movie promising “A Season for Miracles,” aptly enough). However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.

For a campaign that began with tightly monitored Web “chats” and then planted questions at its earlier town-hall meetings, a Bush-style pseudo-event like the Hallmark special is nothing new, of course. What’s remarkable is that instead of learning from these mistakes, Mrs. Clinton’s handlers keep doubling down.

Less than two weeks ago she was airlifted into her own, less effective version of “Mission Accomplished.” Instead of declaring faux victory in Iraq, she starred in a made-for-television rally declaring faux victory in a Florida primary that was held in defiance of party rules, involved no campaigning and awarded no delegates. As Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said, it was “the Potemkin village of victory celebrations.”

The Hallmark show, enacted on an anachronistic studio set that looked like a deliberate throwback to the good old days of 1992, was equally desperate. If the point was to generate donations or excitement, the effect was the reverse. A campaign operative, speaking on MSNBC, claimed that 250,000 viewers had seen an online incarnation of the event in addition to “who knows how many” Hallmark channel viewers. Who knows, indeed? What we do know is that by then the “Yes We Can” Obama video fronted by the hip-hop vocalist will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas had been averaging roughly a million YouTube views a day. (Cost to the Obama campaign: zero.)

Two days after her town-hall extravaganza, Mrs. Clinton revealed the $5 million loan she had made to her own campaign to survive a month in which the Obama operation had raised $32 million to her $13.5 million. That poignant confession led to a spike in contributions that Mr. Obama also topped. Though Tuesday was largely a draw in popular votes and delegates, every other indicator, from the candidates’ real and virtual crowds to hard cash, points to a steadily widening Obama-Clinton gap. The Clinton campaign might be an imploding Potemkin village itself were it not for the fungible profits from Bill Clinton’s murky post-presidency business deals. (The Clintons, unlike Mr. Obama, have not released their income-tax returns.)

The campaign’s other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards. This was all too apparent in the Hallmark show. In its carefully calibrated cross section of geographically and demographically diverse cast members — young, old, one gay man, one vet, two union members — African-Americans were reduced to also-rans. One black woman, the former TV correspondent Carole Simpson, was given the servile role of the meeting’s nominal moderator, Ed McMahon to Mrs. Clinton’s top banana. Scattered black faces could be seen in the audience. But in the entire televised hour, there was not a single African-American questioner, whether to toss a softball or ask about the Clintons’ own recent misadventures in racial politics.

The Clinton camp does not leave such matters to chance. This decision was a cold, political cost-benefit calculus. In October, seven months after the two candidates’ dueling church perorations in Selma, USA Today found Hillary Clinton leading Mr. Obama among African-American Democrats by a margin of 62 percent to 34 percent. But once black voters met Mr. Obama and started to gravitate toward him, Bill Clinton and the campaign’s other surrogates stopped caring about what African-Americans thought. In an effort to scare off white voters, Mr. Obama was ghettoized as a cocaine user (by the chief Clinton strategist, Mark Penn, among others), “the black candidate” (as Clinton strategists told the Associated Press) and Jesse Jackson redux (by Mr. Clinton himself).

The result? Black America has largely deserted the Clintons. In her California primary victory, Mrs. Clinton drew only 19 percent of the black vote. The campaign saw this coming and so saw no percentage in bestowing precious minutes of prime-time television on African-American queries.

That time went instead to the Hispanic population that was still in play in Super Tuesday’s voting in the West. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles had a cameo, and one of the satellite meetings was held in the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s smart politics, especially since Mr. Obama has been behind the curve in wooing this constituency.

But the wholesale substitution of Hispanics for blacks on the Hallmark show is tainted by a creepy racial back story. Last month a Hispanic pollster employed by the Clinton campaign pitted the two groups against each other by telling The New Yorker that Hispanic voters have “not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” Mrs. Clinton then seconded the motion by telling Tim Russert in a debate that her pollster was “making a historical statement.”

It wasn’t an accurate statement, historical or otherwise. It was a lie, and a bigoted lie at that, given that it branded Hispanics, a group as heterogeneous as any other, as monolithic racists. As the columnist Gregory Rodriguez pointed out in The Los Angeles Times, all three black members of Congress in that city won in heavily Latino districts; black mayors as various as David Dinkins in New York in the 1980s and Ron Kirk in Dallas in the 1990s received more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote. The real point of the Clinton campaign’s decision to sow misinformation and racial division, Mr. Rodriguez concluded, was to “undermine one of Obama’s central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types.”

If that was the intent, it didn’t work. Mrs. Clinton did pile up her expected large margin among Latino voters in California. But her tight grip on that electorate is loosening. Mr. Obama, who captured only 26 percent of Hispanic voters in Nevada last month, did better than that in every state on Tuesday, reaching 41 percent in Arizona and 53 percent in Connecticut. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign’s attempt to drive white voters away from Mr. Obama by playing the race card has backfired. His white vote tally rises every week. Though Mrs. Clinton won California by almost 10 percentage points, among whites she beat Mr. Obama by only 3 points.

The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall. Clearly it will stop at little. That’s why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton’s assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn’t matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote “is not going to count for anything.”

Last month, two eminent African-American historians who have served in government, Mary Frances Berry (in the Carter and Clinton years) and Roger Wilkins (in the Johnson administration), wrote Howard Dean, the Democrats’ chairman, to warn him of the perils of that credentials fight. Last week, Mr. Dean became sufficiently alarmed to propose brokering an “arrangement” if a clear-cut victory by one candidate hasn’t rendered the issue moot by the spring. But does anyone seriously believe that Howard Dean can deter a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary?

A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.

Are the Dem-bulbs going to give the rethugs another 4 years of mental instability in the W.H. so they can blow themselves to smithereens? Do they know that they do this at all our peril?

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Clinton Associates Obama With McCain!

Does anyone else out there in cyberspace see any reason for this? To associate Obama with McCain is like associating a toad frog with a platypus. There just ain't no there, there.

Clinton, meanwhile, didn’t congratulate Obama in her speech to the Richmond gathering earlier in the evening. Instead, she continued to draw sharp contrasts with her rival, and associated him with the likely Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.


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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Obama Rakes In The Cash, While Hillary Borrows From Herself

Maybe it's just that I will never see $5 mill, but there is something highly suspicious to me about someone who uses their own money to get into office (so one can well imagine how I feel about the Mittster.)

It gives me the creeps; the thought of out-right buying power with their own money. They must want it pretty bad. The question then becomes, WHY?

This is nutso. The Obama campaign's response to the news that Hillary lent her campaign $5 million last month is to highlight the fact that they raised nearly that sum in the brief period that's passed ... since the polls closed yesterday!

In that time span, the Obama camp has raised: $4, 252, 184.

This highlights, yet again, a key emerging factor in the race: The Hillary camp faces the prospect of a weeks-long contest, perhaps leading all the way to the convention, during which they could find themselves dramatically outspent by their rivals.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.