Hiring Bob Johnson for this task is a sure way to insult the largest, most faithful contingent of Obama supporters. There's very few people with less credibility amongst African-Americans than Bob Johnson.

You also have to consider the fact that just 5 months ago he was calling Obama a drug dealer. He also thinks the "death tax" is unfair. If Hillary knew what was good for her, he would tell her to tell this clown to stand down. The continued use of black tokens in the media to rebut Obama is tiresome.

Posted at June 4, 2008 1:44 PM in response to Hillary Ally Says She Authorized Him To Launch Campaign To Make Her Veep

I am afraid that is exactly what that means. She is NEVER going away.

Posted at May 20, 2008 3:28 AM in response to Former Hillary Campaign Manager Considering Working For Obama

I don't know about NY, but that question was recently poll tested in CA and to no one's surprise, yes, the people of California would like to take back their votes for Hillary.

While voters in the California Democratic Presidential Primary backed Clinton by a 10-point margin, a new SurveyUSA poll shows that if given the chance to vote again, Californians would choose Barack Obama by a 6-point margin, 49%-43%.

http://cbs5.com/politics/poll.clinton.obama.2.720136.html

Posted at May 10, 2008 8:25 PM in response to West Virginia Coon Hunters Association President Speaks out Against Obama

You're kidding me right?

1. This is NOT Soviet Russia. The expectation that Hillary would get 300k votes from Michigan and Obama gets zero is a calculation bereft of logic.

2. The fact that there are multiple ways to count the "popular vote" means that it is not a real metric of anything. If this competition was solely about the popular vote, then the candidates should have just camped out in California. I love it how Hillary people talk about 50 states getting their say, but their metric of choice expressly devalues all but a handful of states.

3. I think it is incumbent on you, the Hillary supporter, to pull your head out of your ass and look around. You are creating all of these tests that Obama and we his supporters must meet in order to somehow earn your support. Well, I think you have it absolutely backwards.

Posted at May 10, 2008 3:54 PM in response to Hillary Holds Private Conference Call With Her Super-Dels: "I Know This Is Not Easy"

Actually no. They were trying to smoke him out as her campaign aide put it after SC as "the Black candidate" well before SC. The "historically accurate" statement came before SC and it seemed an obvious and blatant push to fracture the fragile black/brown coalition. The LBJ > MLK was before SC and that angered a lot of people in the Black community and it seemed to me and many that it was an attempt to turn him angry. To get him to respond with a "how dare you" moment. After she lost Iowa, even before, they were playing the dog whistle game. Remember how her Iowa campaign manager sent out emails saying Obama was a secret Muslim? Their plan from the beginning has been to ghettoize him as a candidate. Let it not be forgotten that Bill Clinton pulled that Jesse Jackon bit out of a hat totally unprompted. Shaheen and Obama the drug dealer started in New Hampshire.

This campaign has gone on so long that we have forgotten everything that has happened. Here is Michael Tomasky back on January 19th, even before South Carolina.

I don't know who on this planet has the stature to go face-to-face with Bill Clinton and look him in the eye and tell him he behaved in a discreditable fashion. His wife? His buddy Vernon Jordan? Whoever it is, someone had better stop him. He campaigned against a fellow Democrat no differently than if Obama had been Newt Gingrich. The Clinton campaign may conclude that, numerically and on balance, Bill helped. But, trust me, to the thousands of committed progressives who supported him when he really needed it, who went to the mat for him at his moment of (largely self-inflicted) crisis but who now happen to be supporting someone other than his wife, he's done himself a tremendous amount of damage.

The final price of victory is the splintering of base Democratic voters. African Americans solidified behind Obama, 79-18%. Hispanics, behind Clinton, 64-23%. Young voters went heavily for Obama. Old voters heavily for Clinton. These divisions threaten to flower into schisms. There will be plenty of time to put the pieces back together. But if Clinton becomes the nominee and black voters feel that Obama was treated unfairly ... well, let's imagine that black voter turnout in November is down by 10% in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. That could mean the difference between victory and defeat in those three states.

But that's a long way away. For tonight, she's a winner. It wasn't all Bill's negativity, of course - her campaign really got its vote out and she showed her usual doggedness. But if she's going to win the nomination and unite the party, she's going to need to show more.
Funny how we are talking about the same things now as we were 5 months ago. And if you read through the comments, it was the same vitriol brought out of entitlement that we see now. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Posted at May 6, 2008 3:05 PM in response to Hillary Clinton Has a Palmore v. Sidoti Problem, and Now We Do Too

I'm in law school at the moment, which made the post and the analogy quite rich for me. It is fascinating though how many people out there who...well, I'll just leave it there.

Posted at May 6, 2008 2:45 PM in response to Hillary Clinton Has a Palmore v. Sidoti Problem, and Now We Do Too

Wow, this is one of the most brilliant and sincere blog posts I have read in a long time. Thank you.

Posted at May 6, 2008 2:42 PM in response to Hillary Clinton Has a Palmore v. Sidoti Problem, and Now We Do Too

As everyone else has noted, after MSNBC's 100 years of Wrightness coverage, it is an impossible charge to make.

Every day the question was "Is Obama's campaign ruined?", "How can Obama recover from this?", "Is the campaign now over?".

Posted at May 6, 2008 2:33 PM in response to Chris Matthews, On Whether MSNBC Supports Obama: "Well, It's Not Official"

But I don't think that sort of attitude is necessary to win or be effective. She is only doing it now, or perhaps exaggerating it (she does have a reputation for combativeness) is because she has nothing left to lose. The fact is, she had such high negatives going into this that it was going to be difficult, if not impossible for her to win it in November, despite being the presumptive nominee.

If she had come out of the box campaigning they way she is now, she would have been sunk by Super Tuesday. There is basically only a bunch of really conservative states left and Oregon. I think if she was campaiging on "obliteration" of Iran and bad environmental policy there is no way she could have won California, just flat out no way. So the "populist" turn of her campaign is all gimmickry because of where the campaign is at the moment, pure opportunism. And repeatedly making comments to emasculate Obama, the dog whistle stuff and calling him elitist is not good for women in general.

Feminism is now back to the great divide that splits race and gender because of this campaign. Feminism as an anti-war ideology is now in conflict because of this campaign. Is it a having a woman for President no other reason than the chromosomes? What does mean? I thought this feminism and equality of rights for women was much more about gender than sex. It looks like I am wrong. Because if it is about gender, since Hillary is making Obama the woman here all women should vote for him.

There are some great women governors out there who don't put on that act and are still extremely popular: Gregoire, Napolitano, Sebelius. And then there is Granholm, hey you can't win them all.

Posted at May 5, 2008 8:12 PM in response to Women aren't fit to hold office, it seems.

And with George on Sunday, she said that she would not release the Clinton Library and Foundation donors until after she became President.

Baggage? Why not ask about how her brother earned hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to secure pardons. Why not ask shy Marc Rich was given a pardon and whether she supported it. Why not ask whether she supported the pardons for Weather Underground members by Clinton or the FALN.

She has never explained exactly how those "missing" Rose Law Firm files just happened to turn up after the statute of limitation passed. Or how she got the FBI to prosecute the poor folks at the White House travel office, who were then exonerated.

Or how she is so smart at making money in pork bellies.

Posted at May 5, 2008 7:47 PM in response to UPDATE: VETTY-VETTY-VET-VET