Clinton thread
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- Drno0
- TheBlueOne0
"An Ohio-based group of Clinton supporters has announced it will actively work against Barack Obama if he becomes the nominee for the party, saying Senator Clinton has had to fight gender discrimination from party leaders and the media...In a press release, the group said: "We have a plan to campaign against the Democratic nominee. We have the (wo)manpower and the money to make our threat real. And there are millions of supporters who will back us up in the swing states. If you don't listen to our voice now, you will hear from us later."
- that bitch needs to give it up.dbloc
- "We have the (wo)manpower"
Fuck you, Candyflashbender
- mg330
Hillary says she has KY all to herself
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/a…LOL - wish that were a CNN shirt.
- TheBlueOne0
Th writing on the wall that Hillary doesn't see:
http://www.americanprogress.org/…
A) Obama has this group, lock stock and barrel.
B) Anyhting Clinton does to steal the nomination will alienate this group not only from her, but from the Democratic party
C) This is the largest generation in history, far outnumbering the poor uneducated white "Reagan Democrats" who seem to be Hillary's constituency.
- TheBlueOne0
"AP- Clinton to Obama: There's no nominee yet
"You can declare yourself anything, but if you don't have the votes, it doesn't matter," Clinton said Monday in a satellite interview with an Oregon television station before a campaign appearance in Kentucky."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080…
WHAT FUCKING VOTES??? Scary that at this point Huckabee has proven he has more brains than Hillary. At least he knew when to stop beating a dead horse.
- sputnik20
Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John
McCain were flying to a debate.Barack looked at Hillary, chuckled and said, "You know I could
throw a $1,000 bill out of the window right now and make
somebody very happy."Hillary shrugged her shoulders and replied, "I could throw ten
$100 bills out of the window and make ten people very happy."John added, "That being the case, I could throw one hundred
$10 bills out of the window and make a hundred people very happy."Hearing their exchange, the pilot rolled his eyes and said to
his copilot, "Such big-shots back there. I could throw all three of
them out of the window and make 156 million people very happy."heehee
- Why, do they land on George Bush?"TheBlueOne
- http://www.instantri…TheBlueOne
- ********0
"One of the wonders of this primary season has been the ability of the Clinton campaign -- including Hillary herself -- and their supporters to engage in some of the most patently ridiculous and bald faced lies, knowing that everyone else knows they are engaging in patently ridiculous and bald faced lies.
Chief among those lies is the fiction that Clinton leads in the popular vote.
Aside from the idiocy of the argument itself -- 1) this is a delegate race, and 2) unlike the 2000 presidential election, you can't compare the popular vote from contest to contest since each state has different rules (caucus or primaries, open, closed, or hybrid -- the way the Clinton campaign and its supporters shamelessly stretch this argument is almost embarrassing.
Clinton is "leading" the meaningless popular vote, but only if:
You count the unsanctioned contests in Florida and Michigan, where candidates were not allowed to campaign;
You give Obama zero votes in Michigan's Soviet-style election, where Clinton was essentially the only name on the ballot; and
You don't count the caucuses in Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington.
In reality, Obama leads by over half a million votes, for whatever that's worth (not much). But don't worry, the Clinton argument is so asinine, it has gotten little traction among super delegates.In fact, it's so insulting to people's intelligence, that it's hurting the credibility of anyone stupid enough to use it."
- Drno0
- idiots. Same morons that voted for Bush twice. How'd that work out for you?TheBlueOne
- ukit0
Hillary WTF!
Hillary suggests she staying in the race because Obama might be assasinated
- ********0
full fledged nut job
- ********0
"The Field has learned that Cardoza is the first of a group of at least 40 Clinton delegates, many of them from California, that through talking among themselves came to a joint decision that all of them would vote for Obama at the convention. They have informed Senator Clinton that it’s time to unite around Obama, and that they will be coming out, one or two at a time, and announcing their switch between now and the convention if Senator Clinton doesn’t do the same.
Never fear...the end is near.
As Al points out, this is a net gain of 80 for Obama because every one that Obama gains, Clinton loses.
They will be coming out a few at a time until Clinton concedes.
Some context...Rep. Dennis Cardoza was publicly on the record supporting Clinton. Here is his statement (via an Obama campaign release) explaining his switch:
"This is the most important election of my lifetime. While I continue to greatly respect and admire Senator Clinton and feel she has made history with her campaign, I believe that Senator Obama will inevitably be our party’s nominee for President. He has proven himself to be a thoughtful, knowledgeable, and inspirational leader and will take America in a new direction, which we desperately need.
"The Bush Administration has been a huge disappointment. Mr. McCain, while certainly an American hero, represents more of the same failed Bush policies.
"I am deeply concerned about the contentious primary campaign and controversy surrounding the seating of delegates from Florida and Michigan – two states Democrats need to win in November. I will not support changing the rules in the fourth quarter of this contest through some convoluted DNC rules committee process. Yet, we must find a resolution to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates so these states’ voters are represented at the Convention. I believe we need to avoid this potentially divisive situation by uniting behind one nominee and bringing the party together immediately. Therefore, I have made the decision to support Senator Obama at the Democratic Convention in my role as a super delegate."
- ********0
"Hillary Clinton's RFK assassination remark has sparked a swift and widespread condemnation across the country, not just in the blogosphere but in the mainstream media as well. Since we can sometimes get insulated in our corner of the Net, I thought it might be helpful to compile some of the reactions from prominent bloggers, commentators and editorial pages. We're not alone in being shocked and outraged. "Reckless," "Tasteless," "Awful," "Offensive," "Faulty," "Strange" are just some of the reactions.
First, some reaction from the mainstream press. One of my hometown papers, The St. Petersburg Times, gave perhaps one of the most charitable assessments:
Her remarks stunned the political world, including many of her own supporters, and by the end of the day she expressed her regrets. But the damage has been done, and it could be the gaffe that moves the remaining unpledged superdelegates to throw their support to Obama to bring this campaign to an end. The kindest view of Clinton's comments was that she is suffering from campaign fatigue. She clearly needs some rest.
As a quick aside, I have to point out that in the same editioral the St. Pete Times also called out Hillary for her cynical and hypocritical stance on the Florida delegates issue:
Clinton's fervor to count Florida votes might be more poignant if it weren't so pitiably self-serving. She did, after all, sign a pledge supporting the sanctions. Her senior campaign adviser, Harold Ickes, voted for them as a member of the DNC rules committee. She has spent the past two months trying to persuade superdelegates around the country to disregard pledged delegates, and has even hinted that pledged delegates should disregard voters.
Her only chance is to kick up enough dust to get superdelegates to change their minds. Or, as she hinted in South Dakota on Friday, to wait for some unexpected event to change the outcome.
The New York Times (from the editorial board blog) focused its criticism on Hillary's non-apology apology:
...she issued one of those tedious non-apology apologies in which it sounds like the person who is being offended is somehow at fault: "I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive."
If?
Is it even possible that Mrs. Clinton thinks someone out there was not offended by her remark, Kennedy relative, Obama relative, or just plain folks? ...
What’s next? "Mistakes were made"?
Libby Copeland, in an essay for The Washington Post, pulls no punches:
There are taboos in presidential politics, and this is one of the biggest. To raise the specter of a rival's assassination, even unintentionally, is to make a truly terrible thing real. It sounds like one might be waiting for a terrible thing to happen, even if one isn't. It sounds almost like wishful thinking....
The fear of a president or a presidential candidate being shot or assassinated is horrifying precisely because recent history teaches us that it can happen. We don't need anybody to remind us, and we certainly don't need anybody to remind whatever suggestible wackos might be lurking in the shadows.
In the context of Obama, Clinton's words broke a double taboo, because since the beginning of his candidacy, some of Obama's supporters have feared that his race made him more of a target than other presidential hopefuls. Obama was placed under Secret Service protection early, a full year ago. To be unaware that one's words tap into a monumental fear that exists in a portion of the electorate -- a fear that Obama's race could get him killed -- is an unusual mistake for a serious and highly disciplined presidential candidate.
The blogosphere has been no less unforgiving.
I have made that point that Hillary's RFK assassination comment, coming on the heels of her comment about hard-working "white Americans," shows that -- as Hillary would say -- there's a pattern emerging here, and it ain't a pretty one. Andrew Sullivan seems to agree:
You only have to spend a few minutes talking with African-Americans about this campaign to discover that the fear that Obama could be assassinated is very much on their minds. It is in everyone's subconscious, especially Michelle Obama's. To refer to the June assassination of Bobby Kennedy in the context of reasons to stay in this interminable race against Barack Obama is therefore catastrophically inappropriate. Coming after her pitch for "white votes", it is reckless...
Yes, this season has gone on for ever. And for Senator Clinton, it has now obviously gone on too long.
She's been waiting for Obama to implode. Instead, she just has.
Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend points out that Hillary's choice of historical reference is illogical at best:
WTF? I don't understand her reference to what happened to RFK except to set off a dog whistle that nominating Obama is a risk because of a fear of some whack job taking him out...
This is awful. She clearly didn't have to make her historical point about staying in the race through the end by raising RFK's California win in the context of the assassination.
Karen Tumulty at Time magazine's Swampland blog notes that Hillary's excuse that Ted Kennedy was on her mind rings hollow once you learn that this isn't the first time she's made the remark:
Though she has now apologized for that very strange and tasteless comment to the Argus-Leader, this was not the first time she's said it...
Her excuse now is that the Kennedys have been "much on my mind these days" with the illness of Senator Edward Kennedy, but that doesn't explain what brought it to mind more than two months ago.
And on the all-important teevee news, Mark Shields pointed out on the NewsHour that Clinton's comparison of this race to 1968 was misleading and historically inaccurate:
MARK SHIELDS: I think it was, at the best, totally reckless. I mean, her history is absolutely faulty. Robert Kennedy's first primary, Ray, was in May 7th of 1968. He was murdered four weeks later. She's talking about a long campaign.
This campaign began the first week in January. She's still talking about June. So, I mean, it's faulty there.
Along with Keith Olbermann's scathing Special Comment, Howard Fineman astutely pointed out on Countdown that if Hillary is trying to convince the superdelegates to turn her way, she has a strange way of doing it:
She seems constitutionally incapable of just saying I screwed up and her lead footedness about this here is being observed by all the people who are still undecided about whom to back, the last 200 superdelegates here, they've got be looking at this and saying that this is a campaign that needs To Be Put Out Of Its Misery Real Soon."
The reaction of uncommitted superdelgate (and DNC Rules Committee member) Donna Brazile to Hillary's remarks perhaps says it all:
Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager Donna Brazile, an uncommitted superdelegate who has been complimentary to Obama, told Newsday: "I am numb."
UPDATE:
As always, Juan Cole offers some wise and incisive observations about the uproar over Hillary's remarks. He states that Hillary "inadvertently stumbled into a hornet's nest" by reminding people "of April 4, not June 5, of MLK along with RFK." And he seems to gently upbraid folks like us in the blogosphere who perhaps sometimes give too much significance to candidates' misstatements than is deserved, but he notes that in this case it is Hillary's own fault:
Elections should be about issues, not about this sort of hothouse speculation about personalities.
But there is one sense in which her campaign, at least, bears some responsibility for her current straits. Clinton operatives behind the scenes have been smearing Obama as a Muslim, and it was they who dug up that photo of him in Kenyan clothes. Clinton even said Obama was not a Muslim "as far as I know." The malice demonstrated in those actions laid the groundwork for people to believe that Clinton was capable of such hostility toward Obama.
The incident, it seems to me, does tell us two other things.
The first is that the strategy of the Clinton camp, of continuing to campaign even after victory at the polls became numerically impossible--in hopes that Obama might stumble and alienate sufficient numbers of superdelegates--was not crazy. I don't approve of it, but that it could work or could have worked seems clear. It could easily have been Obama who stumbled yesterday. Ironically, it was Clinton.
The second thing the incident tells us is how traumatized the nation still is by those horrible killings 40 years ago, and how much unfinished business of healing those wounds there is. Hillary didn't mean to pick at the scab. But she did. And we bled a little, all over again.
(H/T snowbird42)
UPDATE 2:
Nicweb's diary shares some excerpts from a damning column by Michael Goodwin in today's New York Daily News. Goodwin perhaps comes closest to expressing my own thoughts on the matter. It's worth reading the entire column, but here is a choice snippet:
SICK. Disgusting. And yet revealing. Hillary Clinton is staying in the race in the event some nut kills Barack Obama.
It could happen, but what definitely has happened is that Clinton has killed her own chances of being vice president. She doesn't deserve to be elected dog catcher anywhere now.
Her shocking comment to a South Dakota newspaper might qualify as the dumbest thing ever said in American politics."
- this is like telling a pregnant mom not to get too attached because she could have a miscarriage._salisae_
- ********0
I think the comment is a bit overblown.
I also believe that in todays America, if Obama was assasinated and Hilary won the nomination, Hilary would be assasinated as well.
I hope we are evolved enough to not let such barbarian-ness ensue.
- TheBlueOne0
I think the comment was a bit overblown, but in bad taste. But it's not like we expect class from the Clintons. Nonetheless, she should get out. She has no argument left. Nothing. She's in Bush never-neverland. She has lost my vote for NY senator next time around no matter what.
- ********0
in comparison to the reaction to Obama's harmless "bitter" comment, I don't think this level of reaction is overblown.
HRC os trapped in a nixonian bubble of deluded isolation
- locustsloth0
i was onboard with the whole "This is just the media hyping something up" idea. i had listened to the comment and the context it was in, which was seemingly harmless. That is until i found out that at the time of Bobby Kennedy's death, they had only run 13 primaries and had only started 3 months prior.
If she was trying to make the point that the primaries have run long in the past, hence there's no reason to cut them short now, she picked nearly the least relevant example. So then, why mention it? Raising the spector that a good portion of this country still has a problem with race differences and the other guy's gonna get whacked if you elect him? well, i suppose there's some sort of plausible deniabilty there to allow her a way out (bum research, slacker campaign worker), but the truth is that she's been in and around politics to know better than to make such an overt reference. The kicker is that when she says she regrets the comment, her primary reason is the recently bad turn Ted Kennedy's health took. Unreal!- she also said this previously, before kennedy's health problems********
- she also said this previously, before kennedy's health problems
