Obama's Nomination Clinching Victory Speech

Here is Obama's amazing speech from last night. I truly thought it was one of his best.

And now onto the General Election....

A couple things about last night...

I honestly have always tried to be an alarmist about this election. I think it was my normal reaction to being an optimist the last two times and to have the excruciating experience of having both of those campaigns, campaigns for which I worked hard for, stolen away.

I don't think it's necessarily a horrible thing to play Chicken Little when the Republicans are so willing to lie, cheat and steal as necessary to retain power. It is fact that most of the electronic voting machines have strong Republican ties. It is also fact that the Corporate Media also has such ties and have been defensive of even the most horrendous Bush policies since 2001.

That being said, this time around our eyes should be open and the tinfoil hats should be ready to wear because there are going to be instances in which it will not be "conspiracy theory" to suggest off the wall insanely illegal strategies or plans that the Republicans might use.

As the movie Recount showed, Republicans just play to win, plain and simple. They have no level of ethics to stand up to. Whatever it takes.

As Democrats we have always held ourselves to a higher standard and in the past eight years, aside from the 2006 midterms that kind of thinking hurt us.

This time around I expect no less than the smearing Kerry received. They'll use every Hillary talking point against Obama (they already are by posting this video on Youtube)... dragging race, inexperience, his church into the fray and not caring one bit about it.

With that being said I happened to attend the Obama Primary Watching Party last night in Cudahy. It was without a doubt a historic night.

Historic for two reasons. One for the first time in my lifetime we have an African American General Election Nominee from one of the major parties.

WTMJ Channel 4 in Milwaukee asked me about that and I gave them this quote:

“It was something I wasn’t sure we were going to achieve in my lifetime and it’s kind of sad that we had that feeling," said Robert Poole. "But today kind of alleviates a lot of those fears.”

If you click the video button on that link above and skip past the parts of Obama and Clinton's speeches you'll see me saying that on there as well.

The other reason this is historic is that it marks the end of the DLC.

Al From's Democratic Leadership Committee as lamented and commented on here before, is the Corporate Wing of the Democratic Party. They have leaned far away from social programs in favor of Corporate Welfare. They push candidates that are considered "centrist" but mostly they just want candidates that are easy to control. They've been running candidates out there that are practically indistinguishable from our Republican opponents and in turn it helped in shifting the political spectrum to the Right. With Democrats leaning so heavily on Pro-Corporate, Pro-Republican values, the Republican party had to lean to the Right to differentiate themselves. Lucky for them Dick Cheney was around to make that transition easy.

The problem is that aside from giving away the Democratic identity of being a party for the people while Republicans were the party of the rich and corporate elite, this ran candidates unwilling to show any spine and stop corruption in Congress. It made Democrats enablers to Bush's multiple Constitutional Crimes and most certain War Crimes.

And it lost elections... lost them big.

The Clintons were at the forefront of the groups creation, the standard bearers for what the DLC wanted the party to look like. It was many of the Clinton's campaign staff and White House advisors that formed leadership in the group and provided direction for it's candidates.

They were the epitome of DLC. And now they've lost their last chance at the White House. Hillary might not be willing to concede or accept it at this point but that is reality.

So the cancer of the Democratic Party has now had it's standard bearer be defeated and a new breed of Democrat who once again wants the party to stand up for the poor and middle class and who wants to change the culture in Washington has stood up and pushed the DLC over the proverbial cliff. I wonder how they will take it.

Onto the General Election and onto John McCain. Believe me, it's about time because that guy has had a free pass for way too long.

-Rp

Even though this FL/MI mess is over Hillary has seriously damaged us (and will continue to)

We all know Florida and Michigan broke the rules when they tried to jump ahead. We also all know that Hillary and Obama knew that neither primary would count when they signed the pledge not to campaign.

So you had to know that in either case the best the DNC would do is reduce delegates or negate the results of those primaries in some way, months ago. This is not new news.

Both campaigns expected as much when they signed that pledge.

The problem is when Hillary's coronation was disrupted and it was clear they were going to lose this election her campaign went back on that pledge and decided to pull out the kitchen sink/scorched earth tactics.

They played up the Rev. Wright issue in the media and kept it going for two months. She hinted that Obama was a "muslim" with the off handed "as far as I know" comment. She hinted at McCain being better qualified to be President than Obama. And her campaign played the race card heavy and often with Pennylvania, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky by openly courting White voters and presenting themselves as the safe white choice.

All of that certainly damaged Obama no doubt and all of it will continue to be exploited by the Republicans who have none of the scruples we once thought Democrats to have (once again, thanks Hillary).

But with her constant complaining and creating controversy where there was little to be had about two states, states that were already not gimmies for the Democratic Nominee in the Fall as it is, she played the worst possible card.

Her campaign knew going in that neither primary would or should really count. She clung to them out of desperation.

And even though the RNC halved the delegations for both states, nobody really knows about it nor cares.

After all the Republicans never went on TV railing against Democrats or their National Committee in saying Democrats don't want to count your votes.

Essentially she threw the entire Democratic Party under the bus in those states. The perception she created makes it appear that the Democrats don't care about voters from those states.

The Republicans had equally damaging penalties for these states but Hillary making a case against Democrats and the Democratic Party as a whole has made it seem that the Democrats are the party who doesn't care about Florida or Michigan.

I admit getting Florida was a long shot but Michigan was a winnable swing state that now will be much harder for us to win.

And why? Because Hillary's loyalty is to herself and not to her party.

Hillary's campaign came into these meetings, knowing that she signed a non-compete pledge and that Democrats were aware that neither primary was legitimate and they still came in with the unreal expectation of full delegate seating based on those disqualified primary results. Results, that included a state where Obama and Edwards were not even on the ballot. Results where Obama could not come to the state and campaign against her name recognition and in every state thusfar he has either whittled down her support or overtaken her in primaries where they both spent time in a state.

They would not accept any less and I honestly don't think she cared how it turned out. Delegate-wise their best hopes would not have put them over the top and they knew it. Their best shot was to keep popular vote numbers (most especially problematic in Michigan where she had her name on the ballot and Obama did not) so she could take it to the Convention and argue a popular vote victory.

This was all angling and posturing for the fight they knew they were going to make in Denver.

No result today would have changed their intentions. This is not about Michigan or Florida's voting rights. This is and has always been about Hillary Clinton.

So she'll head to Denver and begin a party war on the floor. She'll have all of her big money donors call and threaten to rescind campaign financial support to Superdelegates who run in State races or House races and unlike a National Presidential candidate do not have the visibility or power to inspire thousands of $20-50 donations from constituents... certainly not enough to compete with the big Republican donor rolls.

These superdelegates will face their own political mortality if they lose donors to their campaigns and possibly see these fatcats work against them for a primary opponent who will support who they want next time out or even a Republican who have proven easier to control by their financial backers.

It will be the dirtiest game ever.

And Democrats will look sleazy, to millions of viewers nationally who are sick of the culture of corruption in Washington and will have a hard time understanding how any Democrat would be a change when it appears to run so rampant in their own party.

Fatcats and lobbyists calling the shots for their old pals the Clintons.

And in the end we'll limp along severely damaged because Hillary can't just quit and go away. Doing what is best for her party isn't in her bloodstream it appears.

The convention will turn off millions of voters.

The cries of "Democrats don't care about your votes" will turn Michigan and Florida voters away from our party in November.

It's not all gloom and doom. We have the one candidate that can shine hope onto any situation. But she has continually attempted tie both hands and a leg behind his back in November.

It's not the Democratic Party that doesn't care about Michigan and Florida voters... it's Hillary Clinton.

Because if she really cared about them, she would have stopped turning them away from the party and bowed out in a way that would help our nominee win this November. Without that, none of those Michigan or Florida voters will have a chance this next four years.

Because four more years of Bush policy is enough to ruin us all.

What Bothers Me Most About West Virginia...

I know West Virginia is over so we should get over it. Honestly I thought Obama would lose by 25-30 points anyway so I carried no illusions as to how the end result of the contest would go.

What bothered me was the level of racism and ignorance these people carried. A lot of this is Hillary's fault. She has purposely had her team running the Republican racist playbook and now there are large misconceptions that Obama is a Muslim or that it is in a White person's interest to vote white. Hell even a ton of mis-spelled "Hussein" signs made it out.

In the year 2008 you should be openly shamed and looked down upon for racist views. However Clinton's supporters felt no such shame and had no problem saying they would never vote for a Black man to TV crews. You've seen the one I posted earlier but this one is FAR more disturbing.



What's worse is that by playing this card the Clintons have once again deliberately sabotaged the Democratic Nominee's chances in November. Whites told exit pollsters and the media that if Obama was the nominee they would vote against their own interests just because McCain was White.

From ABC NEWS:

Racially motivated voting ran somewhat higher than elsewhere: Two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi. Just 31 percent of those voters said they'd support Obama against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, fewer than in other primaries where the question's been asked.

Indeed, as noted, among all West Virginia primary voters, only 49 percent said they would support Obama vs. McCain, far fewer than elsewhere and one of many signs of antipathy toward Obama in the state.

It drives me nuts that White people could sit back and say "we need someone that represents us" as if we have never had ANY Whites in charge ever.

I mean who were these fucking guys?


In a way this makes me wish Bill Richardson were the VP. Obama also has problems with Latino voters (for similar reasons actually) and Richardson puts a lot of Southern states like New Mexico and Arizona a bit more in play.

It's disheartening to know that next week Hillary's racism machine will ramp up one more time to draw out the worst of the worst in Kentucky. We'll be having this nauseating discussion again and people knowing that the media is airing all of their comments without the critical eye they should have on this topic, will be further emboldened to show all the forms of racism on TV they can.

It's like Martin Luther King Jr. never lived and the Civil War never happened. All that we need these people to do now to show how disgusting some Americans are is don their KKK robes and burn crosses on Obama's front lawn.

It is a disgrace to modern day America that were are the most hateful, ignorant country in the world.

-Rp

It's finally over... although someone needs to tell Hillary that.

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I did have a couple of unpublished posts sitting on here that I released today but nothing incredibly substantive.

A couple of interesting things.

1. Clinton basically for all intensive purposes lost the nomination this week.
2. She refuses to leave the election.
3. Obama's mere presence creates World Peace.

What is that?

Oh yeah... it's true.

From Reuters:

LAGOS (Reuters) - Rebels who have stepped up attacks on Nigeria's oil industry in the last month said on Sunday they were considering a ceasefire appeal by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has launched five attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta since it resumed a campaign of violence in April, forcing Royal Dutch Shell to shut more than 164,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).

"The MEND command is seriously considering a temporary ceasefire appeal by Senator Barack Obama. Obama is someone we respect and hold in high esteem," the militant group said in an e-mailed statement.

Back to those first two... here's some fun poked at Hillary's expense... like our parting shots at her and her negative campaign.




Oh and this... over the top but Hilarious:

If you're not bitter, you're an idiot part 2

Bill Maher's New Rules run with the very theme of my post the other day.

If you're not "bitter", you're an idiot.

Barack Obama seems to get in all sorts of trouble when he treats American voters like grown ups and speaks to them with respect and tells the truth. Apparently after at least 30 years of being patronized, coddled, pandered to and hell outright lied to, some Americans don't know how to act when a Politician doesn't put some rosy spin on every subject.

So here were the comments from Obama that drew all this faux controversy:

"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 has 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."

Immediately morons everywhere were saying that he was "acting like an elitist" or "out of touch with the middle class" or they clung to the idea that he was insulting people for their faith or for their belief in the Second Amendment. It was pretty sickening just how ridiculous this got.

The wonderful Catherine Crier posted a great article titled, "Punished for the Truth" on the Huffington Post and said this about the comment:

Inartful. That is the only fair criticism of this analysis. Let's ask the voters in Pennsylvania these questions. If the 'distracting' issues of guns, gay marriage and abortion were all resolved to their liking, would their economic lives change? How about immigration? If all illegal aliens were to disappear, would those rust belt jobs return? For so many years, such issues have been used to corral blue collar workers into a party and political philosophy that serves the elites in this country. When someone speaks the truth and acknowledges that this sector of our society has been royally deceived, that issues they rally around have little to do with their ultimate welfare, it is time to banish such a person from the campaign trail.

Nobody was worse about it than Hillary Clinton was. Her entire campaign at this point is all about lobbing desperate hail marys out there hoping and praying for something to sink Obama with Superdelegates.

She tried to pander to Pennsylvania voters by claiming that she, the $100 million income candidate, somehow felt their pain more than Obama did. She went as far to accuse Obama of being so elitist that he would suffer the same fate as Gore and Kerry. Yes in one fell swoop she insulted two better Presidential Candidates than she could ever hope to be and two who won their elections but were cheated by the Clintons' new best friend, Karl Rove and his voting machine and political connections.

I forget now wasn't it Obama who used his law degree to work for poor people while Hillary used hers to defend Sam Walton's Wal-Mart empire?

Seems to me he would know more about what poor and middle class people are going through. Just because she worked for Wal-Mart doesn't mean she was the $6 an hour cashier or exit greeter.

She tried again today to attack Obama on it and got heckled a bit for it.

Maybe that will wake her up for the crap she is pulling (I'm not holding my breath).

But what about the voters that are showing outrage over this?

Every single person who claims to be "offended" by the bitter remarks has taken what he has said and twisted the context around totally. They took it to mean that their (fanatical) love of God and Guns was under attack.

In reality he was pointing out how Republicans use those tools to sucker these people into voting against their economic wellbeing.

Bush and the Rubber Stampers had Congress and the Judiciary for 6 years. Did they try to end Abortion? Nope. How about that Gay Marriage Constitutional Amendment? Nope, didn't go anywhere. What about a serious relaxation of gun ownership laws? Well people might recall the Bush was actually in favor of retaining the laws put in place under the Clinton Administration.

Republicans blew smoke up every one's asses to divide them and make them think these were the serious issues of the day. Then once in office they destroyed the economy. They gave contract after contract and giveaway after giveaway to corporations who shipped these people's jobs overseas. They spent more than any so-called "tax and spend" Democratic Congress ever has.

They deregulated everything and allowed predatory lending to go so rampant that now everyone is losing their houses and our economy is teetering on the brink of collapse into a Great Depression-like state.

People have a right to be bitter and Obama is right to say people are.

My personal opinion though is that the people that are angry that he would say that are idiots. They are likely the ones that STILL haven't awaken to see what their hero Bush has left them. If you are not bitter or angry about how our economy is in shambles, our military is overextended and exhausted, our constitution and civil liberties have been trampled and ignored, our world standing erased and our environment getting us near the brink of extinction thanks to the last 8 years....
then you are a fool of epic proportions and deserve to be deported to a country where your blind ignorance and ridiculous defense of it does less damage. We had 8 years of Bush because of a blind, ignorant electorate and I'll be damned if those people, the people who are offended now, have any further control in who runs our country... or as they would have it, who runs our country into the ground.

Obama spoke about this and absolutely owned Hillary on this issue. He leaves no question as to who represents who and speaks very truthfully and plainly about how valid her arguments are on this.



Hopefully those people that are outraged wake up or wise up. Their slumber or ignorance has damaged our country critically already.

-Rp

Wow... the Clinton People Never Stop Spinning...

I don't know what it is with these people but they are just boldfaced liars and spin so much that sometimes I think the Clinton house has to rest on a perpetual Merry-Go-Round just so that they never have to leave their comfort zone.

After the brouhaha over Bill Clinton's angry Bill Richardson comments in the meeting with California Superdelegates, Bill Richardson wrote an Op-Ed defending his decision and maintaining his respect for the Clintons.

Although this line managed to slip in there:

I, of course, called Sen. Clinton prior to my endorsement of Sen. Obama. It was a difficult and heated discussion, the details of which I will not share here.

That line made it clear that the Clintons were pretty angry with Bill Richardson for his decision. Although ABC News would later uncover that in the conversation Hillary asserted that Obama "cannot win".

Now I have no problem with candidates saying they have a better chance of defeating the opponent from the other party. I have no problem with them believing they are more qualified and even pointing out their qualifications in commercials and stump speeches. Barack Obama has said he feels he is the candidate that stands a better chance against John McCain.

That to me is fine. It's not disqualifying Hillary's chances altogether. It's just saying he thinks he would do better than her. And statistically that statement is possible even if Hillary beat McCain head to head that Obama might have polled higher. That doesn't mean he thinks she would lose to him or at least he would never openly admit that. And it doesn't mean he's campaigning in a way that says, "if you nominate Hillary, we will lose in November".

However that's exactly what she has basically been saying by trying to imply that Obama isn't "ready from day one", is unable to answer the hypothetical 3am call, is less qualified than John McCain.

To blatantly campaign in such a fashion only shows your indifference towards doing what is best for the party. Should she lose the nomination and chances are incredibly high that this will happen, she has declared that there is no way the Democrat will win and in repeating that meme before Obama is the candidate she is helping reinforce that notion to undecided voters for the General Election.

It's rather low and despicable at the very least.

But in typical Clinton fashion they lie and spin their way out of what they said and try to blame Richardson of all people. Just like how they tried to claim that the pro-war, pro-long term bases Hillary is somehow the "peace candidate" who will actually get us out of Iraq (as opposed to Obama, who has been against the war since day one, I guess), they have taken something they are clearly guilty on and tried to lie their way out of it by claiming the exact opposite of what happened.

It makes the already completely bogus "flip-flopper" John Kerry accusations from the last presidential campaign cycle look so unbelievably pale in comparison just by the level of deception and the speed and force of how these about-faces are done by her campaign.

From Salon.com:

Time's Mark Halperin reports on the account of one unnamed "Clinton associate" who says it was Richardson, not Clinton, who suggested that Obama could not win in the general election. Halperin quotes this Clinton associate as saying, "Bill Richardson is clearly embarrassed that he broke his promise to them. He should come out and tell the truth and admit that he told both Clintons that Obama wasn't ready and can't win."

It should be noted that Mark Halperin has been anti-Obama for some time and more notably anti-liberal.

To clarify here Bill Richardson had openly questioned Obama's "inexperience" while he was wavering between Clinton and Obama for the endorsement. But after he heard the "race speech", the wavering ended and he saw the leadership Obama could provide.

Since that point there is no question Richardson supported Obama outwardly by doing the public endorsement and publicly defending Obama from attacks. In politics you don't do those things publicly and then go to the other candidate and say he can't win. When you endorse in the fashion Richardson did, you tie your horse to that candidate's wagon. If they fail, you have damaged your own political career to some degree. Al Gore suffered a good amount of political damage when he endorsed Howard Dean and Dean subsequently lost all but his home state in the primaries. It took the success of "An Inconvenient Truth" to erase that from memory.

So to say that Richardson said otherwise after the endorsement is complete and utter lies.

Just to reiterate here's the context of what was said in the conversation between Richardson and Clinton according to the ABC News Report:

Sources with direct knowledge of the conversation between Sen. Clinton and Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M., prior to the Governor's endorsement of Obama say she told him flatly, "He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win."

Richardson, who served in President Clinton's cabinet, disagreed.

If he didn't disagree then he's completely stupid for possibly damaging his own political career by endorsing someone who he believes "cannot win". Of course the reality is that the Clintons, much like their Bush friends, have no connection to reality. That connection seems to have been severed at the very latest in the mid-1990s.

-Rp

Destroying Your Image

There used to be a time just recently actually, where you could look at what a complete disaster George W. Bush has been as President and then you'd look back at the Clinton years as the "good times".

Bill Clinton may have run down his reputation by beating Republicans in Presidential races and may have angered some Republican voters by cheating on his wife (not that most of the Republicans haven't been caught doing worse now) but the majority of America looked at Bill as the way more competent President and in fact some were wishing he still were considering how Dubya has flubbed things.

Then he starts to campaign for his wife and starts to show his angry side. There's something wholly unlikeable about a politician yelling at you and telling you that you are wrong if you don't show loyal lockstep. It's damaged his legacy pretty badly, as recent polls show.

It appears he blew his top again at a meeting with California Superdelegates when it came to defending longtime Clintonite and Democratic Party Traitor, James Carville over the indefensible comments he made about Bill Richardson for endorsing Barack Obama.

From the SF Gate:

The Bill Clinton who met privately with California's superdelegates at last weekend's state convention was a far cry from the congenial former president who afterward publicly urged fellow Democrats to "chill out" over the race between his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barack Obama.

In fact, before his speech Clinton had one of his famous meltdowns Sunday, blasting away at former presidential contender Bill Richardson for having endorsed Obama, the media and the entire nomination process.

"It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended," one superdelegate said.

According to those at the meeting, Clinton - who flew in from Chicago with bags under his eyes - was classic old Bill at first, charming and making small talk with the 15 or so delegates who gathered in a room behind the convention stage.

But as the group moved together for the perfunctory photo, Rachel Binah, a former Richardson delegate who now supports Hillary Clinton, told Bill how "sorry" she was to have heard former Clinton campaign manager James Carville call Richardson a "Judas" for backing Obama.

It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade.

"Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that," a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted.

The former president then went on a tirade that ran from the media's unfair treatment of Hillary to questions about the fairness of the votes in state caucuses that voted for Obama. It ended with him asking delegates to imagine what the reaction would be if Obama was trailing by just 1 percent and people were telling him to drop out.

"It was very, very intense," said one attendee. "Not at all like the Bill of earlier campaigns."

When he finally wound down, Bill was asked what message he wanted the delegates to take away from the meeting.

At that point, a much calmer Clinton outlined his message of party unity.

"It was kind of strange later when he took the stage and told everyone to 'chill out,' " one delegate told us.

"We couldn't help but think he was also talking to himself."

Yeah because questioning James Carville is beyond reproach, especially after the crap he has pulled since 2004. Like sabotaging the Kerry Campaign on election night in 2004, or slandering Howard Dean after his 50 state strategy from the DNC helped Democrats win the 2006 mid-terms in a landslide and win in places they never win in.

Of all the people to be calling someone a "Judas". Here's the guy who stabbed his own party in the back to help Bush win. We'd be talking about the re-election of a President Kerry and would likely not be talking about economic collapse, continued participation in Iraqi Civil Wars and would have taken actions to extend our children and grandchildren's futures by helping to take real actions to curb global warming.

But no, we got four more years of the most scandalous, crime ridden Presidency of all time. Thanks very much in part to James Carville.

Defend THAT Bill.

-Rp

Hillary won't just go away....

Unfortunately for Democrats, Hillary is here to stay. Yes she has no shame about all the negative attacks her filthy dirty campaign has pulled. No shame over illegal contributions to her campaign, no shame over not releasing tax returns that would incriminate her even more. She certainly feels no shame for acting like she was some badass Rambo character who had to dodge sniper fire in Bosnia. Look, she's in Bosnia in this picture! See her RUNNING from the plane to dodge bullets? What a hero!

She'll stay in until she's destroyed the party and Barack Obama's chances of winning.

It's a sad state of affairs when you, who through political connections and your husband's past job title were assumed to be the presumptive nominee even before the primaries happened and then lied and trashed your way to being a pariah who should be lucky to even get a seat at the Convention let alone be considered a possible nominee.

The longer Hillary stays in the more Bush-like she becomes. And hey the Clintons admired Karl Rove anyway. With John Kerry and Al Gore in attendance at the dedication of the Clinton Presidential Library, Bill Clinton pulled this stunt:

The Clintons recognize the skill Rove has brought to politics and admire his craft, if not his ideology. Just days after the November 2004 election, Bill Clinton pulled Rove aside at the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Arkansas. "Hey, you did a marvelous job, it was just marvelous what you did," Clinton told Rove, according to the book "The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008," by John F. Harris and Mark Halperin. "I want to get you down to the library. I want to talk politics with you. You just did an incredible job, and I'd like to really get together with you and I think we could have a great conversation."

Obviously they decided to get playbook tips from Rove and have employed all of his dirtiest tricks in this campaign.

What's worse is, also like Bush, it is apparent the Clintons have encapsulated themselves in a bubble of yes men and yes women who only tell them what they want to hear.

From Reuters:

But Clinton, a New York senator who has flirted with disaster before in the back-and-forth nominating battle with Obama, shrugs off growing predictions of doom and still sees at least a narrow path to victory.

"I hear it in the atmosphere," Clinton said of the increasingly loud chatter about whether she should drop out and let Democrats focus on the general election campaign. "But the most common thing that people say to me ... is 'Don't give up, keep going. We're with you.' And I feel really good about that because that's what I intend to do," she told reporters on Tuesday.

The sad part is if Hillary doesn't get it about the party, then her supporters are even worse.

According to a new Gallup poll, 28% of Hillary supporters have said they will not support Obama if he is the Democratic nominee and will support John McCain in the general election.

To me that means either Hillary supporters are not Democrats (not unlike their candidate) to begin with or worse, racists. And she carries a lot of old Democratic support. Old Democrats, when it comes to race, are not much different than their Republican counterparts.

That pretty much says it all. You take that 28% and add them to the Republicans who are voting for Hillary in open primaries to try to mess with our nomination and you have exactly why Hillary is not supported by Democrats and needs to be stopped.

Owned

Random Toon Find

Hilarious. :)

Racists for Hillary

Hillary sure has a lot of surrogates doing the dirtiest of dirty work for her. Geraldine Ferraro, who was respected as the Democratic Vice-Presidential Candidate in 1984 (let us not recall how badly they were destroyed at the polls in that race) flushed the last of her credibility down the drain by claiming that Obama's campaign was "playing the race card" and that the only reason he was in this position was because he was black.

I'd expect charges like this out of the members of the old Democratic Party. After all there was a shift of huge magnitude during the civil rights movement in which liberals and civil rights activists went from Republican to Democrat and a lot of the old racist Southern Democrats became the Republicans we see today. We shouldn't see these Democrats in this day and age, this removed from that movement. Yet you still hear comments like this that come up from time to time.

The problem for Ferraro is that she's gone on show after show not only defending the comment but claiming the victim from it. And she's said it before in 1988 about Jesse Jackson which proves this is a pattern of racism with her.

The problem for Hillary Clinton is after each of these racist comments from people associated with her campaign she makes a little vague comment that claims to reject it but never apologizes for it and doesn't force the people that say it out. Ferraro resigned on her own accord.

The irony of it is when Obama supporter Samantha Power made a completely valid reference to Hillary Clinton being a monster for her campaign tactics, the Clinton campaign cried foul to have her removed, which Obama did with great urgency. They also made similar cries about David Schuster at MSNBC when he commented that the Clinton Campaign was "pimping" Chelsea out to campaign all week. He was suspended.

Such accountability does not reside with Hillary's camp. Which makes sense since accountability doesn't exist to Bush either and that's who she is trying to mimic with her foreign policy stances and campaign tactics.

Hillary never apologizes for anything. She doesn't apologize for NAFTA, for the Iraq War Resolution, for saying McCain is more qualified to be President than Obama and she certainly isn't going to apologize for racists in her campaign. After all her own Husband started this and they seem eager to paint Obama as Jesse Jackson and pull him away from White voters in any way that they can.

Besides Ferraro and Bill, there was another perfect example of this in Texas when Adelfa Callejo, Hillary supporter and key latino community leader that the Clintons counted on said:

"Obama has the problem that he happens to be Black," said Callejo when asked if it was smart for Senator Barack Obama to reach out to Latino voters.

See video:


Now only after she got extreme heat for the comment did they backtrack and say they reject and denounce it, but it sure hasn't stopped others in the campaign from spreading this sort of tripe.

What's sad about this is it is bringing petty racism back into the public vernacular for this campaign. It's no longer about who is the best person for the job or the best candidate it's about the White Woman vs. the Black Muslim Man. And Muslim isn't even true!

That's how far down in the mud they have dragged Obama with them in their attempt to self destruct the party. The worrisome part is, have the Clintons, in which Bill always took pride in falsely claiming himself as "the first black president", destroyed this primary so badly that what was finally the transcendence of race in our nation, is now back to old school black and white race bait politics?

Keith Olbermann once again, hits it out of the park:



-Rp

Two Words for Hillary: Tax Returns

So Hillary, what do you say? Want to release these before the end of the decade maybe? Probably not.

Here are Obama's returns from last year: http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/files/obama_2006_tax_return.pdf

Okay Hillary, ante up.

-Rp

Is Hillary Clinton thinking about a 3rd Party Candidacy?

"Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat." - Bobby "The Brain" Heenan

In looking over the strategy of the Clinton Campaign and their unwillingness to accept defeat I started thinking about how their tactics were reminiscent of Holy Joe Lieberman's when he was soundly defeated by Ned Lamont.

Lieberman knew he was going to lose and turned to Karl Rove for advice and help to defeat Lamont in a general election bid where after spending several terms as the elected Democratic Incumbent Senator from Connecticut he was now on the outside looking in. Ousted by his own party because of his pro-war and pro-Republican views, his only chance was to declare himself an Independent and torch the party that had so graciously elected him and appointed him to important committee chairs in the Senate.

Hillary too has now been a key member of the party establishment for a very long time. Just like with Joe, going into their races they both seemed inevitable locks to win. Anointed even before the primary opponents had been named.

Also like Joe she faced someone with a comparably new face in Washington politics and it turns out her message of basically more of the same has been turned away rather clearly by enough voters to warrant her exit from the race.

I admit the night after the March 4th primary I thought there was reason for Hillary to stick around but after the delegate counts ended up becoming official her win was so negligible that there's no way for her to make up ground now. Getting out is the only honorable thing to do for the party.

Of course this isn't about the party. If it were Hillary would have stepped down on March 5th when she saw that it was clear that she would lose.

No, this is about Hillary and the sense of entitlement which surrounds the Clintons. After having two terms as President they, much like the Bush regime, seem to believe they have some linear right to the White House.

When you listen to the Clinton camp, they make it clear that they will pull out all the stops to win. Dignity is secondary to their desire to win.

For example, when you hear about the Clinton camp arguing about the unfairness in seating Michigan or Florida's delegates you don't hear them talking about redoing the primaries altogether. Other media pundits have taken that idea up but the Clintons generally steer towards one direction, seating the delegates based on the already completed primary results. Why does that matter? Because in Michigan hers was the only name on the ballot.

Fairness means nothing to her campaign.

For quite a time they decided to forego worrying too much about winning the primaries to earn pledged delegates based on the will of the voters and were openly trying to court Superdelegates to circumvent the will of the people. Once that turned out to be viewed negatively and viewing the positive momentum of the Obama campaign Superdelegates started switching allegiance to Obama, her plan to blow the competition away with party insiders was shattered.

So onto plan C, so to speak. Trying to corrupt the process by going after pledged delegates.

Now there's nothing illegal about this process technically. Pledged delegates are not locked into the campaign that won them in the primary. However they generally do not switch and it would be a rarity for them to do so in such a way as to change election results.

Still it illustrates a point that needs to be made. It's very clear that Hillary is willing to stoop to any tactic that wins this race. They've already said they will go to the convention no matter the lead Obama has at that point and in doing so seem willing to pull apart the Democratic Party at the seams to get their way.

There seems to be more to this than meets the eye.

For as inept as their campaign has been this primary season they are not stupid. They have to know they cannot win even if they swept the rest of the primaries and made it to the convention with a closer count. Obama will still have the popular vote, delegate lead and superdelegate lead. The party will clearly give the nomination to him.

So what's in it for Hillary to keep this going?

How about playing the "they were unfair to me" ploy? Once they've exhausted all possible options in the Democratic primary they could conceivably state that due to how Michigan and Florida were handled, how the superdelegates are set up (ironic since they were the team that most actively courted the superdelegate scenario) and how the convention played out showed that there was no mandate for Obama in the Democratic Party and that she will run as a third party independent.

As a third party independent she will clearly cost Obama a lot of Democratic votes and probably the Presidency. Her hope is that she can win those older Democratic Women she has currently and then maybe run to the right of McCain which might be plausible with the way Right Wing hate radio cannot stand McCain and seem eager to cozy up to Hillary. Her winning even in that scenario seems implausible but if they muddy the waters a bit they at least have a shot which is more than they have now.

Would Hillary destroy her career in the Democratic Party to become an Independent? There's no guarantee she wouldn't. She has to have seen how Joe Lieberman winning as an Independent has held the Democrats in the Senate hostage to his one vote and this is a woman who loves wielding power.

Plus there's little doubt in my mind that the DLCers who have long been part of the Clinton regime wouldn't appreciate a pull away from a Democratic Party that has generally been shifting more and more to the left while completely isolating and eliminating any influence the DLC once had.

This could happen and ultimately could be the larger doomsday scenario towards the Democratic Party's chances at the White House in November than the elongated primary is.

And if you think Mark Penn's clients (Hillary and McCain) are doing tandem attacks now, wait until it's the general election.

-Rp

The Evil Forces Behind Hillary McClinton

There's always someone behind the scenes of every campaign, either steering the ship into calm waters with plenty of fish to eat on a long journey or recklessly heading straight for an iceberg because of ignorance of the facts.

For John Kerry in 2004 he was stuck with longtime party moderate Bob Shrum who is noted for always guiding the campaigns he works on into icebergs. Karl Rove, using shrewd and slimy tactics always managed to find those calm, fish filled waters... until after 2004's reelection campaign when the Bush ship practically became a bumper boat that bounced continuously from one scandal to the next.

For Hillary Clinton it is certain that this captain not only is heading straight into the iceberg but he wants to tow the entire Democratic Party with it.

Generally even the most ardent supporters of a party's candidate that loses doesn't want their party to lose the general election in the fall but we're pretty certain at this point that for Hillary and for her top advisor, Mark Penn, this does not matter at all.

For Hillary it's win at all costs. She has no real admiration for Obama and if anything seems willing to get as dirty as possible to help John McCain win. As I mentioned below, scorched earth.

For Mark Penn the motivation is a bit different. He's got a pretty dubious distinction of being for everything anti-Democratic Party.

For example, we mentioned below that his PR firm represents Blackwater. They also represent United Technologies who this week tried to buy Diebold, the voting machine company that has helped Bushco steal that last two elections. Diebold's owner Warren O'Dell said infamously in August 2003 that, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president (Bush) next year."

His firm is also involved in union busting and has been very anti-labor. Of course being a part of the Democratic Leadership Council which is the supposed "moderates" of the Democratic Party who lean right and take business interests over those of workers and regular people usually means you're for busting out unions. And hey that works well with Hillary who was pro-NAFTA and worked for Wal-Mart (the biggest union busting corporation in the world).

Of course the ultimate slap in the face to Democrats is that while his firm is working for Hillary and choosing her path to go nuclear and destroy Barack Obama at all costs, they are also representing John McCain at the same time.

As Ari Berman put it for The Nation last May, there is a deep Republican connection to Penn.

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was a partner with Lee Atwater, the consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign for George H.W. Bush in 1988. In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets.

Black is only one cannon in B-M's Republican arsenal.

AmericaBlog sums it up nicely:

Penn works for Clinton.

Black works for McCain.

And Black works for Penn.

Keep this in mind as you read some of the guiding principles for Penn's and Black's firm, courtesy of the Burson-Marsteller website:

# We, the directors and employees of all companies in WPP recognize our obligations to all who have a stake in our success including shareowners, clients, employees, and suppliers;...

# We will not for personal or family gain directly or indirectly engage in any activity which competes with companies within WPP or with our obligations to any such company;

# We will not have any personal or family conflicts of interest within our businesses or with our suppliers or other third parties with whom we do business;

So, again, we have to ask: Why is Mark Penn on a mission to destroy Obama? It's clear that Penn benefits if Hillary wins -- she's his client, his firm's client. His company benefits if McCain wins -- he's the client of one of Penn's top employees. Penn has an obligation to his shareholders and clients. And his firm seems to have clients on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of this fight. If Obama wins the presidency, Penn gets nothing. He was helping the other guy, or gal. But if McCain wins, Penn's firm has one hell of a contact with the new president - heck, one of his top employees had the new president as a client and didn't even charge him! Is it a conflict of interest? Not with his clients. But how about with the Democratic party and our interests?

Blackwater, McCain, Bush/Rove, Union Busting and possibly Diebold. Are there any more anti-Democratic establishments that this guy could be connected to?

As you take that into account you have to then realize Hillary is not running as a Democrat. When you hire PR firms that represent Republicans, worked with Bush/Rove and McCain at the same time as they have worked with you and have completely opposite principles as the party you claim to be strongly in support of then you are clearly not running as a Democrat.

It then makes sense why you have Rupert Murdoch fundraisers and won't release your taxes or make public what you did while in the White House. All of these things openly would tie you to the enemy because that's the team you play for.

It's probably also why Hillary would be proud of all the Republican cross over votes she got in Texas and Ohio (as we were quick to point out in the aftermath of last Tuesday's primaries). Especially knowing most were following the lead of Rush Limbaugh and keeping you in the race just to destroy your opponents so the Republicans can win and knowing you'll never have these people in the general election.

Don't believe it? Tell that to the investigators who want to know why 16,000 Republicans voted for Hillary in Cuyahoga County or the many who seemed to tell Howard Wilkinson of the Cincinnati Enquirer that they voted for Hillary to keep the race going:

In the fall, voters like Mary Kuhl of Westwood and Ryan Poirier of Norwood will be deluged with phone calls asking them to support the Democratic presidential nominee. Their mailboxes will fill up with the same kind of pleas.

The irony is that they are Republicans.

They - and untold thousands all over Ohio - walked into their polling places Tuesday and asked for a Democratic ballot to vote for the Democratic winner, Hillary Clinton. They did it, they say, to keep the Democratic family feud between the Clintonites and supporters of Barack Obama going for a while.

"I voted for Hillary before I vote against her," Kuhl said.

It all goes hand in hand. Hire a right wing, Republican operative that represents the very worst policies and corporations that have reaped the benefit of the Bush Administration. Then under their guidance destroy the Democratic nominee at all costs while propping up his other client, McCain, and convince Republicans to fuck with the Democratic primary to keep you in it.

After all, when you lay your cards down and the best you can muster up is a pair of twos when your opponent has a straight flush, it's better to bluff like hell and pray things work out. In this case the bluffing has worked to some degree but like everything else in Hillary's life there is no substance to her hand...

And bluffing only gets you so far.

It's time to fold them. For the good of the party.

-Rp

Yet Another Reason Not to Vote For Hillary

I have to admit this one is not mine so special props go out to DUer grassfed for this info. I'll link to the post but here's an issue where Hillary's political "experience" is inexcusable.

From grassfed at DU:

Cluster bombs and landmines are particularly terrifying weapons that wreak havoc on communities trying to recover from war. They are fatal impediments to reconstruction and rehabilitation of agricultural land; they destroy valuable livestock; they disable otherwise productive members of society; they maim or kill children trying to salvage them for scrap metal.

Over 150 nations have signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. In the autumn of 2006, there was a chance to take a step in the right direction: Senate Amendment No. 4882, an amendment to a Pentagon appropriations bill that would have banned the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. Amendment No. 4882 was an easy one to vote against: Who'd want to risk accusation of "tying the hands of the Pentagon" during a never-ending, global War on Terror? As is so often the case, there was no political cost to doing the wrong thing. And there was no political reward for doing the right thing.

But Senator Obama did the right thing.

Senator Obama of Illinois voted IN FAVOR of the ban.

Senator Clinton of New York voted AGAINST the ban.

Analysts say Clinton did not want to risk appearing "soft on terror," as it would have harmed her electability. Amendment Rejected.

Cluster Bombs are just another horrific way that we slaughter people. I have yet to see a real reason why voting against such a ban is 'good for america'.

The problem warmongers have is that we need every weapon of destruction available at our fingertips to annihilate anybody who disagrees with us and take whatever we desire (oil, land, money, control, etc).

This creates a dilemma for those who claim to be Democrats and believe they need to be "hawkish" to stay elected. Democratic principles are not ones of aggression and violence. Progressives and Liberals constitute the majority of the party. This creates a quagmire for these incumbents who face angry electorates in primaries who don't want to continue to support non-Democratic principled candidates.

Stir all of that up and you've just explained why Hillary has basically lost the Democratic nomination.

Besides, dropping bombs on innocent people doesn't "protect" America. It creates numerous new enemies who network and unify in the cause to destroy us later. War begets war.

The sad part is there is no personal accountability in the souls of these people. They seem perfectly fine with sanctioning murder. They also seem perfectly fine with enflaming regions to rise against us and with permanant war with enemies of our own making.

Hillary never apologized for the Iraq War Resolution. She doesn't apologize for the Kyl/Lieberman Iran Amendment pushing aggression towards them either. She doesn't apologize for either Patriot Act and she won't apologize for this vote either.

Sympathy is for the weak, right?

Thankfully it's her campaign that has been clusterbombed by her own arrogance and ignorance.

Go to the site below and sign the petition to end Cluster Bombing Worldwide. It's horrific and needs to stop.

http://www.stopclustermunitions.org

Right Wingers for Hillary

So after all the hoopla about how Hillary had a big comeback last night let's try to keep this in perspective. According to Daily Kos this morning, the delegate wins from last night were Hillary 185, Obama 184. That's a net of +1 Delegates for Hillary. Plus Obama's campaign last night was touting how they had about 40 or 50 Superdelegates they were going to roll out that would pretty much even up the Superdelegate score.

That pretty much means for Hillary to pull this out she's going to need to win Pennsylvania and get Florida and Michigan to have new primaries. If she does and wins those by 10-15 points each, she has a good chance to be close to the delegate lead come Convention time in August and that's what will matter most. Superdelegates are not static support and can leave at any time. If it looks as if Obama has a sizeable enough lead they will go for Obama at the Convention because they don't want to face their electorate as going against the will of the people.

If it's close they don't feel any overriding obligation to the "will of the people" and can vote with their loyalty over their constituency.

The problem I see for Obama is this. The Republican primaries are now a formality. McCain has won and clinched enough delegates to become the nominee. Republicans in the states that are still left to vote will have nothing to vote for on their side so they may want to interject themselves into the Democratic race in hopes of helping their party.

It happened yesterday and might be the reason Hillary won Ohio and Texas.

Obama has been really good at drawing crossover Republicans who are tired of their party and the politics of George W. Bush. Hillary however has no such appeal to them.

They see her as an extension of Bill and his Sex Scandals. They hate the Clintons for beating them in the 1990s in the face of those scandals being so openly presented to destroy them. They believe her being the nominee will galvanize the Republican base and get them to vote when McCain by himself is not an energizing enough candidate to draw the right wing base (especially evangelicals) in.

They also see voting for Hillary in the Democratic Primary as a way to as Fox News put it this morning, "bloody up" Obama before a General Election. Not to mention spend another 7 weeks spending money and attacking one another while they can sit back and fundraise for McCain.

On the flip side there is no motivation to vote for Obama for this reason. They know Obama does not bring out the polarizing hatred that Hillary does and that his calm demeanor and appeal to across the aisle togetherness is attractive to moderate Republicans who are tired of the same old politics in Washington. They also know McCain's only real strength is his appeal to moderates and he would lose that battle to Obama in a major way come the general election.

So when I see that Republicans in Texas voted for Obama 52-47 it's not the 52 that alarms me. Like I said earlier he's getting crossovers who will stay with him in the general election. It's that 47 percent of Republicans who hate the Clintons, voted for her.

Especially when you consider that Rush Limbaugh openly campaigned for Republicans to vote for Hillary in the primaries. They truly feel this will put Democrats in a weak position and get all of the evangelicals out that hate her but would stay home if Obama ran.

In Ohio this number of Republicans voting for each candidate was 49-49. There's no way that this many Republicans would vote for Hillary if they were not trying to screw with the election in some way.

One only needs to look at how Republicans came out and voted for Joe Lieberman in Connecticut after spending years of trying to defeat him. They saw that Democrats had voted for an anti-war liberal to take Holy Joe's seat and they wanted to make sure that Democrats were stuck with a war mongering enemy of the party.

Obviously that was different in terms that it was a general election in Connecticut but similar in that they had nobody to vote for themselves so they came out and voted for whomever would weaken the Democrats the most. In doing so Lieberman became a huge thorn in the side of liberals and Democrats alike. In a one vote majority in the Senate, Lieberman was able to keep chairmanships of committees (if they stripped him he would declare himself a Republican which would give majority rule and leadership of ALL committees to the GOP) and has granted Bushco a pass by not conducting a single oversight hearing.

Republicans knew this going into that election and only voted for Joe because they knew it would hurt their enemies.

Last night was more of the same.

Fox News was bragging this morning about Republicans purposely following Limbaugh's plan and voting for Hillary and said they had over 1,200 responses from Republican emailers who took credit for doing such a thing.

Expect more of this for the rest of the primaries. Republicans have nothing better to do and voting for Hillary is voting for a better chance that they win in November.

But hey with Hillary's tactics of late she might as well be a Republican anyway.

Take for example this fun note from last night:

ABC News' Kate Snow and Eloise Harper report: A controversial party guest was spotted at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's election night party in Columbus, Ohio Tuesday.

He was hard to miss. He was the one wearing the "Osama for Obama" t-shirt.

Columbus resident Todd Elbaum told ABC News his friend makes the t-shirts.

Elbaum did not hold back on his views of Obama when he was interviewed by ABC within full view of a Clinton staffer.

"The truth is he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim, his mother married a Muslim after divorcing his father. His grandfather was a Muslim. It doesn't matter. But what does matter is when Obama said he was never a Muslim. He was a Muslim. He was born a Muslim. He was a Muslim for six years of his life," Elbaum said.

Nice. Hillary for Right Wingers.... and Right Wingers for Hillary.

-Rp

And the fight continues...

Well Hillary managed to stave off defeat with wins in Ohio and Rhode Island as well as a very close squeaker in Texas. The delegates will end up practically the same as they were going into the day and while Hillary has reason to hang on for at least another seven weeks you can start to see the beginning of the tuning of the Republican Machine's engine today when Bush has a ceremony endorsing McCain as the nominee in the Rose Garden at the White House.

There's now a very good chance that neither will even approach the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch and that this will end up a battle that was decided by Superdelegates which is a concept that should have never been conceived. It gives power to party hacks and not the voters and to me that is a treacherous way to run a Democracy.

Now unlike my guest blogging friend Samer who is young, probably a bit overconfident about the guarantee of victory that Obama has in either primary contests or the general election and who sees Hillary as worse than McCain (a point I disagree with) I think things are still cloudy for Obama.

Don't get me wrong my support for Obama is not wavering in the least but working on other campaigns in both official and volunteer capacities has given me the foresight to see the challenges ahead.

Hillary managed to show what I had worried about and what John Edwards had privately worried about... that Barack Obama's positive message can be countered by uber-negative campaigning and that it's hard to overcome the appearance of naivety that is imposed on him by older, more experienced candidates.

It's not a positive that Hillary Clinton has nothing positive to offer herself in that she has to resort to such low and dirty tactics. It's even worse that she is so willing to torch the party and its nominees for her own self interests. The problem though was that her fear mongering worked. It worked in Ohio where her support for NAFTA that killed so many of their careers by destroying manufacturing jobs with outsourcing was overshadowed by fear. It worked in Texas where older hispanics rose up in large numbers to vote for Hillary rather than hope.

That doesn't bode well for the last truly big prize left... Pennsylvania. It could be even worse if Florida (practically a retirement home) and Michigan (suffering from auto industry death and a place where Obama gave a tough speech on going green, getting better MPG and emissions reduction) get new primaries in June.

If you look at it from that perspective and even give Obama the Mississippi, Wyoming and Indiana primaries (which are not gimmies) she could make up ground and be in this thing until the Convention in Denver. And if you're looking at this from Hillary's perspective it would be foolish to leave if you think you have that great of a shot.

When I was asked personally how I thought last night would go I pretty much predicted the outcome. I thought She'd win Ohio and Rhode Island, he'd win Vermont and Texas would be a negligible split that wouldn't do any serious delegate damage to either candidate.

The problem for Obama is now that Hillary has chosen to go negative she has exposed how soft his campaign has been at times. Sure they put out a rebuttal ad but they never strike first and while he's able to parry most of her attacks, some are sticking and will begin to become more of the dialogue that is included when people speak of Obama. The media will listen to two campaigns slamming Obama in unison and they will start to repeat the memes and challenge the Obama campaign more often.

This is where it gets really tough.

We haven't had a brokered convention since 1984 and only two other times prior to that. In all three occasions we lost by landslides.

Now we have much stronger candidates and stronger personalities running than we did when it was Hubert Humphrey or Walter Mondale but spending another 7 weeks having to fundraise and attack other Democrats while McCain has 7 weeks to fundraise and build up a war chest while being able to sit back as these two destroy each other is a ridiculous advantage that hurts our nominee in November.

I dislike Hillary Clinton. I hate her tactics. I disagree with her on practically every policy. I will continue to post reasons why not to vote for her.

But it is her right to continue on considering the circumstances and when you look at her position, as much as I'd prefer her to go so my candidate can win, it would be foolish for her to do so.

And frankly Obama needs this fight. He needs to learn to sharpen his claws and fight back against Hillary. The Clinton Machine is well oiled and sleazy for sure but they don't even compare to the Republican Attack Dogs and the 527s they will use to smear Obama every second of the general election.

They had Americans questioning the heroic nature of John Kerry's distinguished military career and even questioning his patriotism altogether while George W. Bush who went AWOL was considered a better judge of military and wartime affairs.

If they can do that to a genuine hero, think what they can do to a relative national stage political novice.

He can continue to play the good guy who is above the fray and lose ground in tough battleground states or he can, to steal a phrase from the Basketball game he loves so much, post up on Hillary and bang down low until he tires her out and he can take it to the hoop at will.

The longer he plays the nice guy game, the worse his chances at being the nominee or the winner of the general election.

That's the problem with us progressives. We're thinkers and think our ideas will win the day. Unfortunately too many Americans loathe thinking. It's too hard for them. So they want a fight.

And that's what we have now.

-Rp

More Reasons Not to Vote For Hillary: Scorched Earth Edition

In case you were still thinking about voting for Hillary Clinton today in the Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island or Vermont primaries, please allow me to toss a few extra reasons why Hillary is the worst possible choice for Democrat in there.

Namely the Scorched Earth theory.

Basically that works in the following way. If Democrats don't want me to be their nominee then I will get so dirty with my tactics that the Republicans can use it to destroy Obama. If it's not me it's nobody from this party essentially.

She has nothing positive to run on. She's got, "I'm a woman" and "My husband was a popular President". Wow. Those are such substantiative reasons to vote for someone.

But as she's learning quickly, women that pay attention to issues over gender are not voting for her and her husband's pandering to Republicans (see: NAFTA) is killing her across states where manufacturing jobs have rapidly disappeared over the past 15 years.

So this week, sensing a desperation not before seen by the Clinton Machine, they went as negative as they possibly could.

First releasing the Republican-esque "Red Phone" Ad. It looks like an ad straight out of the 1980s Reagan playbook.




Then she went out and slyly tried to cloud whether or not Obama was a Muslim. He's not and has clearly stated such but in doing so she basically made a discriminatory slur. Being Muslim should not disqualify you from being President no more than being a Christian, being Black or Hispanic or yes in your case Hillary, being a WOMAN should. Still in this post-9/11 paranoia world, Muslims are the bad guys to many of the non-thinking in America.



Finally she closed the week off with concrete proof of her willingness to destroy her own party's nominee at all costs... by endorsing JOHN MCCAIN over Obama!

"I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know that Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

Sometimes it smarter to bow out gracefully rather than put yourself ahead of your party and your life long friends and allies. For Hillary, she could give a fuck about those friends.

It's all about her.

-Rp