Hillary Clinton and Apocalyptic Politics

"Why?"

"Because in a mano a mano Obama versus McCain contest the Republican candidate wouldn't stand a chance."

"Fear and the status quo or worse wouldn't hold up against the promise of change."

"Same thing happened in the early 1988 primaries when Reverend Jesse Jackson started scoring big with democratic voters."

"There was this sudden rush by some democrats to come to the aid of the status quo."

"Seems like whenever a populist Democrat emerges, there's always a few high placed democrats who start thinking 'Hey, if we have a government that's truly of, for and by the people, what'll become of me?'"

"Without concern for the common good."

"Which is that we end the Iraq war, make peace with Iran plus cutting military spending way, way down."

"And then what sort of world?"

"It'll be up to us."

This Democratic Primary is more democracy than we've had for a long time. Let's play it out. Let's hope it doesn't get too dirty, but dirt is part of politics. The Republicans are going to dish out
absolute filth after we choose our nominee, so maybe it's good that our choice is delayed. They
will have less time to attack. Remember people, "us" is the Democrats (Obama AND Clinton
supporters)--"them" is the Republicans. I only want a Democratic President. It's hard to tell
who can beat McCain, so let's just keep on letting the people decide.

positive. in spite of all of the negative crap both ways posted here, especially including the pm carpenter original post, the best demo ticket for the election is clinton and obama running together. likely they would be unbeatable. that said, the ticket would work better w/clinton as prez & obama as vp but could also work the other way around if obama can deal with hillary and bill being so much more well-versed in almost everything presidential than obama is.

negative. my chief fear is that if hillary wins and obama is not the vp, the obama supporters either sit home or vote for nader. really i very much doubt that hillary's supporters will fail to support obama if he wins. possibly more hispanics might vote gop if obama wins but i fear that obama's very liberal supporters would support nader over hillary and that many black obama supporters would stay home in a racist sulk because the black guy didn't win (if you don't think that's racist, wouldn't you consider it racist if it went the other way around? what's the difference?). if i am right, and we may not ever know since history can not go both ways, then who are the real democrats?

in the end, my hope for a unified ticket is stronger than my negative fear at this point.

Hillary is so obsessed with becoming president that she seems willing to do anything to secure her party's nomination, including losing the general election. Barack Obama has attracted many new voters to this race. What will they do if there is any hint that Hillary somehow "stole" the nomination? Will they come out and vote for her, or not vote at all? What has been an outflowing of voters in the primaries could decrease considerably in the general.

Hillary is an incredibly polarizing figure. She has managed to polarize the Democratic Party already. What she will do to the country generally remains to be seen, if she gets that far. She is the most focus group tested candidate I have ever known, with positions carefully picked to cobble together a coalition that will guarantee wins in states with just enough electoral votes to win the presidency. But, as Roland Martin has pointed out on CNN, if one state flips, you're toast. I always thought you were supposed to be the president of all the states, not just the politically expedient ones. Nonetheless, the inescapable fact is that she does not have enough delegates to be nominated, and is unlikely to ever win enough. She will be lucky to stay even with Obama as we move forward. If the DNC allows this to go to convention, there will be a fiasco and John McCain will probably be president.

It seems to me that Barack Obama's campaign against Hillary doesn't need to initiate day-to-day superficial negative battles because it is at its very deep roots deeply biased against her, focusing on vague nuanced code words and "common knowledge" pseudo-presumptions.

For example, all Obama needs to do is mention the "common knowledge" that Clinton can't win because she has "strong negatives" along with the unquestioning PRESUMPTION that she must have done something evil to deserve them. Why doesn't the media ever seriously investigate the roots of Ms. Clinton's negatives to see if they are based on anything truly wrong with her?

Also, whenever Obama wins he exults over having triumphed over the "status quo in Washington," "politics as usual". He cites the need to turn a new page, get rid of the same old faces in Washington. How more viciously negative can you get against her and everyone he's running against? Are they all equally responsible for the way things are?

In the case of Clinton it's especially unfair and even dishonest to imply that she is the "status quo." For six of the last eight years Republicans have been in total control of Washington; even now George W. Bush fights on with his "unitary executive" theory of government. During that time she was ONLY a junior senator and everyone says she put her nose to the grindstone and worked hard instead of using her name recognition to engage in grandstanding.

That is also close to the real reason why she "voted for the war." In claiming that he has better judgement because he gave a speech against the war, Obama is dishonestly failing to note the great differences in their political positions at the time.

He was a young unknown but up-and-coming future Senate candidate in super-blue state Illinois where giving a rousing anti-war speech would have gotten press attention; she was a new Senator, believed by everyone to be a likely future Presidential contendor, and the extremely well-known wife of a President less than two years out of office. 9/11 had SHOCKED America to its roots and there was a strong desire to be 100% behind the still new President. Presidents typically back off of rendering judgement when a new one takes over; think of the chaos in government if that happened! A negative vote from Hillary would have been perceived as also Bill Clinton's judgement.

So she voted "for the war" to HELP UNITE THE COUNTRY...YOU KNOW...TO BRING RED STATES AND BLUE STATES TOGETHER AS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Oops, sorry, that's plagiarizing.

OMG. How can we ever decide what to do? Letting the campaign play out and letting ALL OF THE VOTERS in every state have a say in choosing who the Democratic nominee will be . . . How can the Democratic party survive if we don't just let the pundits call the race now and try to prevent the primary voters from having a say. Surely democracy never intended for the race to be well-fought, and surely not to be decided by the delegates at the National Convention. Isn't the convention supposed to just be a coronation of the candidate that was chosen in advance by the news media? OMG, will we ever survive by letting democracy take its course?

Why don't you guys just clam up. Obama has won many of the RED states that will continue to be RED states in November because Obama is a Republican. Hillary is winning all of the big BLUE states that will be necessary for the Democrats to take the White House in November. Remember how John Kerry (Bush's fraternity brother in Skull and Bone) just laid down on the campaign trail and then conceded to Bush before all the votes were even counted in Ohio? Look for this to happen again with Obama as the nominee. If Obama is the nominee, then John McCain is the next president . . . probably with Jeb Bush playing the Cheney role as vice president-controller.

another fair and balanced article from buzz. Too bad she isn't a quiter like Kerry.

It is unfortunate that many supporters of Hillary Clinton fail to recognize that she and her husband are right of center political apparatchiks who only called themselves Democrats to take advantage of the name. In point of fact, they have always bent with the political winds, making survival more relevant than ideals or programs. This is why Obama seems so attractive: he does not represent the "same old, same old" of American politics. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, as there is no doubt in Hillary's case that she stands for nothing new or uplifting in American politics.I'd rather roll the dice on change than just see the first woman elected president turn out to be one of the boys. Bill Clinton succeeded by usurping the programs of the Republicans and packaging them as his own. Why expect Hilary to be any different, with him whispering in her ear in between checking out the interns? On the subject of "experience," I would note that Cheney and Rumsfeld had lots of it, as does McCain, so I fail to see that experience is an automatic qualifier for anything.

If you guys would treat Hillary as a much loved Democrat what a difference it would make.But from the start you have treated her like the enemy.So don't expect her to do what you want now. We who support Hillary expected to be recognized as democrats not as lice or vermin to be beaten out of the house with poison pen and dirt brushes. This is our house, the house that Roosevelt, Johnson and Clinton built.We live here and intend to put Hillary in the White House.

The political in-fighting of the Democratic party has been going on for years if not decades. It faces off against the rethuglican party's unity and loses every time.

I know if I wasn't a progressive who strives to keep informed, but instead just a 'regular Joe' who on one hand listens to the MSM's 'liberal' bias (where's the reality there?), and who's watching the battle between Obama and Billary, I might very well think "Why should I vote for a Democratic candidate when from what I can see all they do is fight amongst themselves?"

Now we're seeing the true colors of Billary, "Win at ANY cost, to hell with party unity, to hell with keeping things civil and focusing on the issues." With the release of the infamous 3AM ad, and the whole "Kitchen sink" plan, she's shown that there's only one thing that's important to her, winning at any cost. Even if that means adopting the same campaign tactics as the Rethugs.

Thank doG Obama has as of yet not resorted to the usual mud slinging. I hope he can maintain his position on this, because it's one of the main things I see that puts him far above the norm when it comes to campaigning.

In Ann Davidow's column this morning she reminds us of the politics of personal destruction and Mrs. Clinton's praise for Sen. McCain as the other candidate with experience. She certainly has experience in personal destruction. Obama is a young, fresh face who brings the possibility of moving beyond the nastiness of the last twenty years. Darlenem is right to bemoan the fact that these few primaries seem to suggest we have not gotten past that, but the Clinton slime machine is nothing if not effective. Obama goes negative and those stories which are already appearing in what is laughingly called the "press" about how he has failed to show her respect would only increase. They have done everything to discredit his popularity, calling his style a "feminine" one while Hillary supposedly is the tough one, by calling his following a cult, while the sappy, octogenarians who see her as the feminist hope are called her "base," by identifying him by race and then criticizing him for making race an issue. Billary is not accomplishing this alone. They have a great deal of assistance from the mainstream press which is a press no longer but merely the public relations arm of America, Inc. They depend on the gullibility of the average person who can be frightened, cajoled and badgered into almost anything. And the crowd said, "Give us Barrabas!"

So is it Okay to play hardball? Clinton is just throwing the kitchen sink. “I have to take him at his word that he’s not a Muslim,” as if there were something wrong with being a Muslim. Wink, wink: Muslim is code for being what? Like maybe being, you know, a terrorist. That’s the innuendo. And all this playing right into the Us versus Them hysteria. Then there are the unfounded claims around Obama’s house deal. The attacks on his patriotism over whether he wears a pin or where he places his hand during the anthem. His rhetoric being elegant but hollow – like all those ministers who have that special color – wink, wink. You know, black. Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran-McCain and Clinton are “experienced.” Also, we’re not wink, wink – you know, that special color. Black. And the NAFTA/Canada scandal. Is it likely that Obama would have said something that two-faced, being the thoughtful man he is, just before Ohio? Not very likely. And all this like an unexpected meteor shower, all happening miraculously on the eve of Ohio and Texas. What an extraordinary coincidence. And the sudden not so subtle shift in the Main Stream Media: charming pictures of Clinton. Her remarkable appearances on Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart – all part of the media, I mean, meteor shower, all miraculously on the eve of Ohio and Texas. All joining together, turning like birds wheeling in flight, to keep the man of color from taking the prize.

When does it end then? What's going on? Will Obama go negative? It seems that he has to at least try. The high road is noble but the negative stuff seemed to work. If Obama goes negative, I'll understand.

I've got a bad feeling about this.

So Hillary and Obama will continue slugging each other right up and into the convention while McCain looks on making them look like children who don't know how to get along.

He'll sweep up the indies, moderates and some dems who forget the hadnshake with Falwell, don't know who hagee is, and don't realize what he will do to the Supreme Court.

Snatching defeat right out of the jaws of victory.

God save us all.

truthisall.net

Update: Mar.5, 10am
Hillary won Ohio by 54-44% (99% reporting)
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/

Ohio just did for HRC what it did for Bush in 2004.

Bush's vote share exceeded his "pristine" exit poll share by 5% (from 46% to 51%).

Hillary's vote share exceeded the exit poll by 3% (from 51% to 54%).

The Final Zogby poll had the race DEAD EVEN...

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1461

Once again, just like in the 2008 New Hampshire primary and the 2004 stolen election, Zogby's projection was confirmed by the exit poll. It should be obvious by now as to what is happening - elections are being stolen right before our eyes. But the media keeps those blinders on the masses as it catapults the propaganda, never once mentioning the probability of Election Fraud as the cause of the skew in pre-election and exit polls.

Hillary led the vote count by 56-42% at 9pm on Election Day - a 5% discrepancy from her 51% exit poll share. I used this differential to calculate the probability that the discrepancy was due to chance alone.

Now that we have the final recorded numbers, I have re-calculated the probability of the 3% vote shift.

Assuming a 2% exit poll margin of error, it's 1 in 553.

Tommy Heinrich was a NY Yankee baseball player. His nickname was "Old Reliable".
Know this: Ohio will be "Old Reliable" for John McCain.

It's not who votes.
It's who counts.

Calculate the probability of a 3% shift from the exit poll to the vote. Assume a 2% MoE. Using the Excel normal distribution function:

0.18% = normdist (0.51, 0.54, .02/1.96, true)

OHIO EXIT POLL -9PM Gender

.............Clinton Obama
Male 41% 47% 52%
Female 59% 54% 45%
Total 100% 51.1% 47.9%

P.M. thanks for this excellent analysis. It's time to "unleash the dogs of war" and bear the shame later. That's what the authors of our Constitution did. That's what we need to do to defend it now.

What disappointed me this morning more than Clinton's use of the GOP tactic of fearmongering was that the public -- after all these years of GW Bush -- has fallen for it! I really thought we were over that, sick and tired of it even. My other great disappointment is that this brutal gory crap isn't over. I thought I'd wake up this morning and the party would be on its way to healing and unity. Instead, we're preparing for more bloody battle and I'm so over it. I want the party to start focusing on McCain. Despite his longevity, despite his credentials, McCain should be easy to beat. But not if the Dem party tears itself apart, not if Clinton keeps giving McCain ammunition, and most certainly not if Clinton keeps aligning herself with McCain -- against another Dem -- as she has done in the past week. That blew my mind more than anything. It's one thing for primary candidates to knock each other, but to cozy up with the other side against your own party is despicable. I don't like the word "hate" and I can't say that I hate Clinton and I will not be called a "Hillary-Hater," but I do strongly dislike her style of politics and do not want her as my president.