Clinton thread
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- monkeyshine0
Bill Maher nails it for me. It's about 3 minutes in.
"If voting can destroy the Democratic party then the party isn't very democratic."
"...and that is what is so great about the internet. It enables pompous blowhards to connect with other pompous blowhards in a vast circle jerk of pomposity."
- ...FYI he is referring to the Daily Kos thread.monkeyshine
- quoting articles I agree with makes me a pompous blowhard?********
- Rand, I wasn't throwing a barb at you by posting this.monkeyshine
- thanks, monkeyshine********
- Mimio0
I think she's done now.
- TheBlueOne0
Passes along with this one quote, "it's becoming mandatory for the media to ask any random rapper what they think about this year's election. I suppose they only do this because there's a black man running."
http://www.averagebro.com/2008/0…
A Clinton supporter too.
- everyone knows rapper only vote with their guns.flashbender
- except the white ones, they vote with their library cards********
- ********0
"Another reason why despite the fun everyone is having, it's time for Hillary Clinton to recognize it's time to acknowledge that Barack Obama is our nominee:
Democratic talk of an early, hard-hitting campaign to "define" and tar Arizona Sen. John McCain appears to have fizzled for lack of money, leading to a quiet round of finger-pointing among Democratic operatives and donors as McCain assembles a campaign and a public image relatively unmolested.
Despite the millions of dollars pooling around Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, anti-McCain funds have fallen far short of the hopes set in November, when a key organizer, Tom Matzzie, reportedly told The Washington Post that the "Fund for America" would raise more than $100 million to support the activities of a range of allied groups.
The Democratic National Committee, too, is organizing an anti-McCain campaign, but a spokeswoman, Karen Finney, said fundraising to support that effort has met "mixed" results.
So while news releases and Internet ads have been launched, the largest-bore weapon in contemporary politics — a sustained television campaign — hasn't. That's because, people involved say, the soft-money groups don't have the soft money.
"Many of the people who would normally be involved in such an effort are overly focused on the primary, which is a mistake," said Michael Vachon, a spokesman for George Soros, who is the largest individual donor to the Fund for America, which in turn has passed on at least $1.4 million to what was expected to be the main attack group, an organization called the Campaign to Defend America.
"We know we're going to have a good Democratic nominee — it's time for Democrats to turn their attention to John McCain," Vachon said.
When John Kerry effectively secured the 2004 nomination at the beginning of March, he was broke. The Bush campaign and the RNC were waiting to tee off on him, and try to kill him in the crib. But it didn't happen, in part because the moment the RNC launched with something like $30 million in advertising against Kerry, the Media Fund—run by Clinton consigliere Harold Ickes—launched with a similarly powerful barrage against Bush. At the end of May or so, both sides had run a tremendous amount of early advertising, but the Media Fund had held off Bush's attacks, Kerry avoided significant damage, and he had reloaded his coffers so he could wage his own advertising assault.
This time around, nothing like that is happening. Some donors are waiting for the nomination to be settled. Others will only give if it's their preferred nominee. There are questions about who will staff some of the operations. And we have yet to arrive at the "everyone rally around the Democratic nominee, be unified and redirect our fire outward against the Republicans" stage. Until we do, independent operations against McCain will probably remain paralyzed.
By prolonging the race, Hillary Clinton is imposing Democrats a huge opportunity cost. Because she hasn't acknowledged that she won't be the nominee and it's time to support Barack Obama, John McCain is escaping early attacks by either our nominee or by independent groups operating independent of our nominees campaign but allied with our cause. "
- ********0
"Politico has an article today about how Obama's campaign will now be capitalizing on this horrible mismanagement by merely pointing it out to undecided voters and superdelegates.
In the days and weeks ahead, the Barack Obama campaign is going to pose a simple question to the undecided voters and undeclared superdelegates who will decide the Democratic nomination for president: If Hillary Clinton can’t run a good primary campaign, how is she ever going to run a good campaign against the Republicans?
In fact, I think more and more her campaign is becoming the butt of many jokes.
Mark Penn, who just got booted as her chief strategist, is only the latest problem in a campaign that has been heavy on drama and light on results.
"None of these folks have ever run anything, other than Hillary running a health care task force," David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, told me Monday. "But these campaigns are big, complicated, pressure-filled enterprises, and it is an important proving ground."
Like someone pointed out in an earlier diary, Obama was supposed to be the one that couldn't handle the national campaign. He had no organization to begin with, and hadn't appeared to manage anything like this other than his failed Congressional campaign and successful Senate campaign.
Axelrod told me that at a meeting in January 2007, a few weeks before Obama announced his candidacy, Obama assembled his top staff and laid down three "predicates" for the campaign.
"First, it was to be a campaign based on grass-roots politics," Axelrod said. "Second, there was to be no drama, that we were all on the same team. And third, the campaign should be joyful. That has really happened."
Axelrod is not, to put it mildly, a neutral observer. And I imagine the Obama campaign has not been all that joyful during the Jeremiah Wright controversy. (A controversy that, I believe, we have not heard the last of.)
But I remember the Time piece about the HRC not wanting to admit that Obama's campaign was having more "fun." After reading that I started paying attention, and on the whole they do seem to be enjoying themselves a lot more than her campaign, even with the Wright mess. For someone that considers the last month the "fun" part of politics, you'd think her campaign would be more joyful.
And finally they just put it out there:
"Hillary is a bad manager," a senior Obama aide told me. "Does it really look like she could deal with the Republicans?"
This is a completely legitimate question to raise seeing as how she has been touting herself as "Ready on Day One." I suppose another question would be "Ready for WHAT on Day One?"
- Amen. Clinton couldn't manage her way out of a paper box.ukit
- ********0
Clinton leadership a study in missteps
By JIM VANDEHEI & DAVID PAUL KUHNHillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to decide the nomination based on who can coolly and competently run the country. She had better hope they don’t study her recent campaign too closely for the answer.
Clinton has overseen two major staff shake-ups in two months. She has left a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy vendors and had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it afloat in January. Her campaign badly underestimated her main adversary, Barack Obama, miscalculated the importance of organizing caucus states and was caught flat-footed after failing to lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday.
It would be easy to dismiss all of this as fairly conventional political stumbling — if she hadn’t made her supreme readiness and managerial competence the central issue of her presidential campaign.
But since she has, a growing number of Democrats are comparing the Clinton and Obama campaigns — their first real exercise in executive leadership — and rendering harsh assessments of her stewardship.
In twin columns in Tuesday’s Washington Post, left-of-center columnists Peter Beinart and E.J. Dionne Jr. condemned Clinton’s overall management of the campaign and inability to build a durable message and infrastructure. It’s a common theme in Democratic circles these days.
“Any time you are involved in a long campaign, there are going to be major substantive and procedural gaffes,” says former Democratic Rep. David Bonior, an uncommitted superdelegate who served as the campaign manager to John Edwards. “The question is how a campaign handles those gaffes and how a candidate handles them. And I think it’s fair to say that Sen. Obama has handled [his] problems better than Sen. Clinton.”
Obama can rightly claim he has run a more consistent, disciplined and technologically savvy campaign. While Clinton has blown though nearly a half-dozen campaign slogans and failed to put concerns about her credibility to rest, he has clung to essentially the same leadership and governing message he outlined in his 2004 speech at the Democratic convention. There has been little drama inside his operation — or at least if there was, it has been kept largely concealed.
“In every campaign, the strategy is important and the day-to-day management is important. And in Obama’s case, it’s hard not to argue that they have run a great campaign,” said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for Kerry’s 2004 bid and a Clinton supporter. “It’s been one of the best-run presidential campaigns in the last 20 years. I think they are focused and disciplined and on message. ... The test of a good campaign is having a plan and keeping an operation on track to execute a plan.”
Put simply, Obama has shown he can offer a compelling vision, execute a complicated strategy to convey it and, all the while, keep the ledger in the black. That’s not a bad first step to becoming a strong leader.
There is no question he has stumbled in ways that will haunt him in the general election. His handling of the Tony Rezko affair was exceptionally clumsy. It’s still puzzling why he was so cozy with a known influence-peddler and why it took so long to make all of the details clear and public.
His relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — his pastor who railed against America and accused the government of purposely spreading AIDS to kill blacks — is a ticking general election time bomb. For now, though, many are praising his efforts to defuse it and move forward.
“Under different circumstances, that would wreck a campaign if not handled right. And so far, it’s not been a mortal wound,” said Dennis Johnson, professor of political management at George Washington University. “It seems to me it’s been a much smarter-run campaign.”
The Clinton campaign, by contrast, has been marked by strategic missteps, financial uncertainty and personnel drama. Its strengths — a supremely disciplined candidate and remarkable fundraising — have been undermined by other aspects of the enterprise, such as a headstrong, factionalized staff and a spendthrift approach. The conventional wisdom once held that it was Bill Clinton who was chronically improvisational and unable to run a tight ship. That flaw, it seems, runs in the family.
Strategist Mark Penn’s ouster was the latest staff dispute to unfold in the media, accompanied by a surplus of finger-pointing and a divulging of private details by aggrieved insiders. The pattern was a familiar one, having surfaced after Clinton’s Iowa loss and right before Clinton jettisoned Patti Solis Doyle as campaign manager.
Howard Wolfson, a top Clinton aide, acknowledges that in a campaign, blame ultimately resides at the top. But he also contends that it’s important to appreciate the value of a candidate who has the self-confidence to allow dissenting voices within the leadership structure and who accepts responsibility for tough choices — such as ousting longtime friends and advisers when they become ineffective.
“It is fair to say that every candidate is ultimately responsible for what his campaign does or doesn’t do,” said Wolfson. But, he noted, “The number of times that I’ve read [of] Sen. Obama blaming his staff for problems in his campaign, I can’t even count.”
In interviews, several veteran Democratic strategists said the business of running a campaign offers limited insight into a candidate’s performance in the White House.
And Clinton’s defenders argue that the relatively smooth-running Obama operation obscures the reality that the first-term Illinois senator is an untested, naive politician who showed little spine or genius during his unremarkable four years in the U.S. Senate. Clinton loyalists think the Obama story has a predictable conclusion: He gets torn apart by a ruthless GOP and crushed in the general election.
All of this could be true. But it is also true that a fair measurement of the candidates’ leadership skills is their management of their campaign. Easily the largest enterprise they have run in their lives — in February alone, Obama had 1,280 paid employees, at a cost of $2.61 million; Clinton had 935 employees and a monthly payroll of $1.63 million — the campaign reveals flaws and strengths that will only be magnified in the Oval Office.
- roger840
VIVA OBAMAA
- ********0
"If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say Hillary is reconstituting the toxic hierarchy of her childhood household, with her on top instead of her drill-sergeant father. All those seething beta males (as you so aptly describe them) are versions of her sad-sack brothers, who got the short end of the Rodham DNA stick.
The compulsive war-room mentality of both Clintons is neurosis writ large. The White House should not be a banging, rocking washer perpetually stuck on spin cycle. Many Democrats, including myself, have come to doubt whether Hillary has any core values or even a stable sense of identity. With her outlandish fibbing and naive self-puffery, her erratic day-to-day changes of tone and message, her glassy, fixed smiles, and her leaden and embarrassingly unpresidential jokes about pop culture, she has started to seem like one of those manic, seductively vampiric patients in trashy old Hollywood hospital flicks like "The Snake Pit." How anyone could confuse Hillary's sourly cynical, male-bashing megalomania with authentic feminism is beyond me."
- ********0
"Obama's Rezko embroglio is certainly troublesome. But the splotches on Obama's record are few and relatively minor compared to the staggeringly copious chronicle of Clinton scandals, a mud mountain that the media have shown amazingly little interest in exploring during this campaign cycle. For all their grousing about media bias, the Clintons have gotten off scot-free over the past year from any kind of serious, systematic examination of their sleaze-a-thon history from Little Rock to Foggy Bottom.
Obama has actually served longer in public office than Hillary has. It's very true that he lacks executive experience, but so does she. Her bungling of healthcare reform, along with her inability to control the financial expenditures and internal wrangling of her campaign, does not bode well for a prospective chief executive. Beyond that, I'm not sure that your analogy to professionals like doctors, accountants and teachers entirely applies to presidents. There is no fixed system of credentialing for our highest office. On the contrary, the Founders envisioned the president as a person of unpretentious common sense and good character. Hillary may spout a populist line, but with her arrogant sense of dynastic entitlement, she's a royalist who, like Napoleon, wants to crown herself.
I too wish that Obama had more practical experience in government. But Washington is at a stalemate and needs fresh eyes and a new start. Furthermore, at this point in American history, with an ill-conceived, wasteful war dragging on in Iraq and with the nation's world reputation in tatters, I believe that, because of his international heritage and upbringing, Obama is the right person at the right time. We need a thoughtful leader who can combine realism with conciliation in domestic as well as foreign affairs.
Full disclosure: I have contributed small sums to Obama's campaign twice this year. I was lucky enough to see him up close as he spoke at a recent rally in the Philadelphia suburbs, where he answered policy questions in great detail. I was very impressed by his easy, relaxed authority and quick humor as well as his classy elegance. I'd love to have a woman president -- but slippery Hillary, stolidly pumping and pumping her narcissistic bellows like a steam engine, just isn't it."
- mg330
I just want to smash shit!!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!! I'm fucking sick of Hilary and McCain and their minions taking things out of context. Read below. They must think that Americans are brainless - how could anyone either a) take this out of context, and b) NOT think people would be bitter about the economy and job loss? Unbelievable, yet why should I be surprised?
HRC: OBAMA SAYS PENNSYLVANIANS 'BITTER'
Posted: Friday, April 11, 2008 6:49 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: 2008, Clinton, Obama
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones and NBC's Mark Murray
PHILADELPHIA -- Hillary Clinton wanted Keystone State voters to know she doesn't look down on them, suggesting rival Barack Obama did."I've spent a lot of time traveling around this beautiful, historic state... I have a great deal of affection for the state and for the people and this campaign has been a privilege and a joy," Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd packing the same hall at Drexel University, where she took part in a fateful debate last fall. "It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who've faced hard times are bitter. Well, that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania, I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive who are rolling up their sleeves. They're working hard every day for a better future for themselves and their children. Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them."
She was responding to remarks Obama made at a recent, closed-press San Francisco fundraiser about small-town Pennsylvanians. Her campaign sent emails to reporters earlier Friday afternoon pushing the story line.
The emails cited this Huffington Post article, which quotes Obama telling backers: "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
The McCain campaign also (ironically) pounced on the report from the Huffington Post, a liberal blog. "It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking," McCain adviser Steve Schmidt told Politico. "It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor responded with this statement: "Senator Obama has said many times in this campaign that Americans are understandably upset with their leaders in Washington for saying anything to win elections while failing to stand up to the special interests and fight for an economic agenda that will bring jobs and opportunity back to struggling communities. And if John McCain wants a debate about who's out of touch with the American people, we can start by talking about the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans that he once said offended his conscience but now wants to make permanent."
*** UPDATE *** The transcript (via Huffington Post) of Obama's remarks is below....
OBAMA: So, it depends on where you are, but I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people are most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre...they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.
Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long. They feel so betrayed by government that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.
But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What is the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- to close tax loopholes, you know, roll back the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.
- americans are brainless********
- she has mastered the republican art of misinformation appealing to people's worst instincts********
- americans are brainless
- ********0
- cnn reporters respond with disgust to Hillary/McCain elitism bullshit********
- cnn reporters respond with disgust to Hillary/McCain elitism bullshit
- ********0
Why Gov. Bill Richardson didn't endorse Clinton
The New Mexico governor says he was dismayed by pressure from the Clinton camp, and impressed by Obama's optimism. Besides, 'you don't transfer loyalty to a dynasty.'
By Mark Z. Barabak
Los Angeles Times Staff WriterApril 12, 2008
SANTA FE, N.M. — Before he endorsed Barack Obama, before he drew the wrath of the Clintons and was likened to Judas, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson nearly endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for president.
But Richardson hesitated, and as the Democratic campaign turned ugly, he grew angry.
There was that "3 a.m." TV ad, in which Clinton questioned Obama's personal mettle. "That upset me," Richardson said.
There were some ham-fisted phone calls from Clinton backers, who questioned Richardson's honor and suggested that the governor, who served in President Clinton's Cabinet, owed Hillary Clinton his support. "That really ticked me off," Richardson said.
Still, even as he moved from Clinton toward Obama -- "the pursuit was pretty relentless on both sides" -- Richardson wrestled with the question of loyalty. After 14 years in Congress and a measure of fame as an international troubleshooter, Richardson was named Clinton's U.N. ambassador, then Energy secretary: "two important appointments," Richardson said.
He finally concluded that he had settled his debt to the former president: He had worked for Clinton's election in 1992, helped pass the North American Free Trade Agreement as part of his administration, stood by him during the Monica S. Lewinsky sex scandal, and rounded up votes to fight impeachment.
"I was loyal," Richardson said during an extended conversation over breakfast this week at the governor's mansion in Santa Fe. "But I don't think that loyalty is transferable to his wife. . . . You don't transfer loyalty to a dynasty."
He was impressed by the mostly positive tone of Obama's campaign, and grew to appreciate the substance and depth of their private conversations. The more Richardson heard from the Washington heavyweights backing Clinton, the more convinced he became of the need for a change inside the Beltway.
It has been three weeks since Richardson embraced the Illinois senator, an endorsement that continues to rankle and resonate -- the significance, it would seem, going far beyond the preference of a governor from a poor, rural state.
But this is a family fight, between kin of the Clinton years, so perhaps the raw emotions shouldn't be surprising. "They're very similar in personality," said Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party and a friend of both Bill Clinton and Richardson. "There was a bond established, and I think [the former president] feels a little hurt."
Attention to the endorsement might have quickly passed but for the strenuous protest of Bill Clinton and others. Speaking for the campaign, advisor Mark Penn suggested Richardson's endorsement came too late to be much help to Obama. "Everyone has their endorsers," he said.
But then James Carville, the pundit, strategist and Clinton loyalist, hurled a lightning bolt by comparing Richardson to Judas and his surrender of Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
Soon after came an odd back-and-forth concerning a private conversation in which, supposedly, either Hillary Clinton or Richardson dismissed Obama as unelectable. (Neither party will discuss particulars, but Richardson said he never made that statement.)
Days later, just when interest in the endorsement seemed to wane, former President Clinton exploded in a rant about Richardson at the California Democratic Party convention. He later apologized, but his tirade in a closed-door session with superdelegates rekindled the story for several more days.
People close to Clinton said he views the governor's action as a personal betrayal. "I think [Richardson] really owes a big chunk of his success and his career to the Clintons," said an associate who has discussed the matter with the former president and requested anonymity to speak candidly.
"Look," Richardson responded, "I was a successful congressman rescuing hostages before I was appointed. I was a governor afterward, elected on my own."
Even more than the endorsement, Clinton's associate said, the former president was angry because he thought Richardson broke his word. The two men watched the Super Bowl together at the governor's mansion -- Clinton made a special trip from California in bad weather -- and the former president walked away convinced that Richardson would endorse his wife or, at least, stay neutral.
Richardson was, in fact, close to backing the New York senator that day, though his advisors -- many of whom backed Obama -- urged him to wait. "I remember talking to the president and saying, 'I'm leaning. But I'm not there yet.' He denied pledging neutrality if he changed his mind. "Sometimes people hear what they want to hear," Richardson said.
Normally the most gregarious of politicians, the governor during the interview this week was subdued as he slowly worked his way through a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon and green chiles. His voice was soft, and he rarely smiled.
His endorsement had been highly coveted, due largely to his stature as one of the country's most prominent Latino leaders. The pursuit began soon after Richardson quit the presidential race on Jan. 10.
He retreated to New Mexico and the governor's adobe mansion. He sulked a bit, grew a beard, rode his quarter horse and tended to state business. "I didn't want anything to do with national politics," Richardson said, figuring he would keep out of the nominating fight until it was over. But slowly he reengaged, watching the debates and fielding calls from Clinton, Obama and their surrogates.
Their manner of courtship -- one wooing, the other arm-twisting -- seemed to reflect the candidates' different personalities and campaign styles, he said.
Obama preferred the soft sell, calling Richardson every three days or so -- "dialing the phone himself, no operator" -- for long discussions about policy and campaign issues. The two developed a bantering relationship, building on the camaraderie they shared off-camera during debates, when they would roll their eyes at some of their rivals' statements.
Clinton was more persistent and tactical. There were eight or more phone calls a day, Richardson said: "Bill calling, Hillary calling, friends of mine that were in the Clinton administration, Clinton operatives, Clinton Hispanic operatives, New Mexico Clinton Hispanic operatives."
Some callers, who suggested Richardson had an obligation to back Clinton, did more harm than good. "I think the Clintons have a feeling of entitlement . . . that the presidency was theirs," Richardson said, and the persistent lobbying from "Washington establishment types" convinced him of a need for some fresher faces on the scene.
He began admiring Obama back when they were rivals, and the sentiment grew the more they talked about foreign affairs, the environment and other issues. "I saw real growth in the guy," Richardson said, "a tremendous growth in policy and expression and experience."
And no, Richardson said, there was never talk of the vice presidency, or any other job in an Obama administration. "I never say never in politics, but I'm not pining for it," he said. (Nor, he suggested, would he settle for just any Cabinet post, having served before.)
With his mind made up, and dreading the conversation, Richardson called Sen. Clinton a few hours before his endorsement of the Illinois senator was announced. He sat in his den, smoking a cigar with ESPN in the background. Their discussion, Richardson said, "was proper but heated."
The two have not spoken since. Nor has he heard from Bill Clinton, who told people he was upset that Richardson did not call him as well. (The governor said he tried but never got through.)
The response from the Clinton camp -- "the ferocity, the intensity" -- has surprised him, Richardson said, though he knew he risked fracturing his relationship with the couple. His wife, Barbara, had warned him, he said: Richardson moved his hands apart, as if to signify a break.
"She also has great affection for the Clintons," the governor said -- she decorated their home with photos of the two couples together.
"He's very much a part of my life," Richardson said of the former president. The pictures are still hanging in the mansion's private quarters.
- ********0
i find it exceedingly difficult to take american politics seriously. i can't beleive you people think about it so much...or at least in the way you do think about it
- ********0
- ********0
Obama is being attacked by Hillary and McCain for speaking the truth. I have news for Hillary and McCain, neither of whom has lived outside of Washington DC since the Reagan/Bush era. People in states like Pennsylvania are bitter. They have lost their jobs, their livelihoods, their health insurance, and their chance to send their kids to college. Their local economies have collapsed, while insular politicians like McCain and Hillary have been touting the wonders of the "free market" and "free trade". What is insulting is the suggestion that Obama, the son of a single mother and a goat herder, is the elitist. And yet, McCain (the son and grandson of two admirals) and Hillary (who earned $110 million over the last 7 years) are the average Joes. But this has proven why Obama is going to be the next president. McCain and Hillary say that voters are "optimistic" despite losing their jobs and livelihoods. Voters have been seeing through this poll-tested faux reality for 20 years. It is McCain and Hillary, not Obama, who are out of touch.
See my update below. It looks like we know about this because of a Hillary supporter who tried to pull a 'macaca'.
In response to Obama's statement of the obvious, Hillary adopted her focus group-tested tone of "humanity" and "compassion" (which was as insincere and fake as were her claims to have taken sniper fire). She said that after losing their livelihoods, Pennsylvania voters were "resilient, optimistic and hardworking" rather than bitter. She also said that they "don't need a president who looks down on them". I am sure McCain will use footage of that in his own attack ads in the fall. McCain's campaign called Obama's comments "condescending" and "out of touch".
Hillary and McCain are running a classic optimism (regardless of any reality) campaign. Of course, they have both had stable jobs for the last 30 years. Therefore, they have no problem believing their insular pollsters, who tell them how "optimistic" and "forward looking" the American voters are.
According to some reports on MSNBC, Hillary's campaign has been absolutely furious about the fact that Obama got through the Rev. Wright scandal unharmed. They believed that Obama's nuance about the issue of race (imagine that) shouldn't have stopped a 10 second sound bite that was repeated over and over. Of course, they also thought that saying that she "misspoke" about her Bosnia comments would end the scandal that her comments created. Instead, her campaign is now blaming her declining support in Pennsylvania on her inability to stop the Bosnia scandal. The fact that they are oblivious to how different the two scandals were demonstrates one reason why she has already lost the nomination.
So she believes that white voters can't comprehend a logical reason why some blacks are angry. And yet, she believes that she can lawyer her way out of a pretty obvious lie. Hell, her husband did that over and over when he was president.
It all plays to a pattern. Both McCain and Hillary think voters are stupid. They think that feeding voters poll-tested crap is going to win them elections. And what is the result? Hillary has already lost the nomination. And polls show that McCain only gets within the margin of error against Obama when 30% of Obama's base defects.
Obama has actually gotten voters to understand nuanced explanations about complex issues like race. The nuance of the Clintons amounts to crap like "the definition of 'is'" or "I forgot that I wasn't under sniper fire". McCain's nuance, on the other hand is, "if it calls itself Al Qaeda in Iraq, then it is Al Qaeda".
Hillary is a smart and talented politician, make no mistake. She has the skills to have gotten where she has gotten, even without Bill. But let’s be real here. If it weren't for Bill, she would not be where she is. Bill himself said that she never had any aspirations for political office until the end of his 2nd term as president. And if it weren't for the infatuated media, McCain wouldn't be where he is. Obama defeated the most powerful democratic machine ever assembled, and he did it just 3 years out of the Illinois state senate.
Obama seems to be turning this "scandal" around, even though it broke only a couple of hours ago. He is doing it the same way he turned the Wright scandal around, and the attacks about his statements on Al Qaeda in Iraq. He has done all of this simply by repeating what he said the first time, thus illustrating the obviousness of what he said, and the insanity of his attackers. On the other hand, not only did the Bosnia "misstatement" cost Hillary much of her lead in Pennsylvania, but Bill was reckless enough to give the scandal new life.
So tell me again, who is more electable?
- Drno0
when cnn starts bitching, that means you are starting to lose msm
- ********0
"You know, I just spent seven and a half years disagreeing with the administration that has given us an unprecedented military and economic mess. I saw it coming, it came, and in some ways it was worse, and promises to get worse, than I foresaw. I the course of these seven years, I have had my patriotism questioned and demeaned fairly often. I was even put in a book, as one of a hundred people who were hurting America. When I got into this book, my relatives worried that I would get shot by some rightwing nut, even though several of them were and are rightwing nuts themselves (and they carry guns). All this time, though, I considered myself a patriot and a loyal American because I was able to see the destruction that was being wreaked upon the nation, and in particular, upon the middle and working classes, by the Republican liars and war criminals and job outsourcers and health care destroyers and army wreckers and infrastructure ignorers and media whores and agriculture blackmailers (see this month's Vanity
Fair).So now, Barack Obama tells the truth about conditions as we know them--that the countryside and the small towns are dying in many places in our country, and that the corporatocracy doesn't care enough to do a thing about it. He points out that immigrant-baiting, gay-baiting, gun-baiting, and religious pandering have helped to destroy those towns and that countryside, that those being destroyed have been cynically enlisted by their very own destroyers to provide the votes that help accomplish the destruction. And this is what Senator Hillary Clinton says about it: "Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans."
From Senator Clinton's remarks, I infer that to actually see what has gone on in the US in the last 20 years is unAmerican. It doesn't matter who you are, where you were born, what you pay in taxes, what else you might have contributed to the culture, how you vote, who you support. If you don't support fundamentalist religion, job outsourcing, and free access to guns, then you are not even American.
I cannot believe how angry this makes me. I cannot believe that after the last seven and a half years, I can even get this angry. Yes, I know she is pandering to her audience. Yes, I know she will do anything to get elected. Yes, I know that she and Bill Clinton are corrupt to the core, and that I should have never expected anything better of her. But, please, any of you angry white women who still support this craven shill, don't mention it to me. Do me the following favor -- apologize to your children for not stopping the war that HIllary voted for, the war that is going to impoverish them. Then apologize to them for the effects of global warming that are going to make their lives hell. Then apologize to them for the school shooting they may someday see, the one where the kid gets the guns out of his father's gun case, or buys at a gunshow. Apologize to them for the meaningless wars they are going to fight and pay for. Then tell them that "American values" killed their hopes and maybe killed them. And ask them if they think it's going to be worth it."
- ukit0
I am sick of politics. Just give the presidency to Obama and let's be done with it already.
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CUMULATIVE TOTAL(GROSS) INCOME: $109,175,175
Including, among other items:
Senator Clinton's Senate Salary: $1,051,606
President Clinton's Presidential Pension: $1,217,250
Senator Clinton's Book Income: $10,457,083
President Clinton's Book Income: $29,580,525
President Clinton's Speech Income: $51,855,599
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books and speeches