This is a great post. My reasons are pretty similar. I started off against him mainly because I am sick of politicians claiming they are new and above politics and coming to change washington. This guy gives a better speech than most, but has not shown himself to be anything more than talk.

His followers online have created a huge amount of acrimony toward Hillary (just read some of these posts), but it is his own rude and insulting comments toward her (and toward Bill Clinton) that really turned me off.

The Wright stuff is just the latest straw, but it is really the killer for me and for lots of folks I know. I know that Obama himself didn't say any of this stuff, and he claims to denounce it. But where was he when this kind of crap was spewing over the last 20 years? He doesn't care when Wright honors Farrakhan, or joins Farrakhan on a trip to Tripoli? That may be "crazy uncle" type stuff in his church, but he clearly knew that it wouldn't fly outside of that community. The claims that he didn't know this kind of stuff was happening are not even remotely believable.

Even if I wasn't appalled by his own insulting and mysogynistic statements toward his opponent, and even if I wasn't completely disheartened by his complete lack of leadership in standing up to his close friend and mentor, and even if I didn't find the Obama-worship totally creepy and unamerican, I would think he was done now. There is no way he can survive the general election with those Wright clips out there. The republicans probably have them already cued up with pictures of Farrakhan, Ghaddafi, quotes from Obama's book and his wife, and then the money shots from Wright's own videos.

Live in denial all you want, but the last week killed his general election chances. There is no speech, no denial, and no throwing of pastors under the bus that can counter the simple 30 second ads that are waiting for him on this issue. He has probably screwed the democrats for November whether he gets the nomination or not, but our only chance now (since it is doubtful his ego will allow him to drop out like Hart did) is that the remaining voters and the superdelegates rescue us from this.

Posted at March 18, 2008 12:46 AM in response to Why Clinton voters are not joining Obama

What a ridiculous comment, Allsburg. Who the hell cares how long this guy has had a username? I've been following politics since before you had an actual name. Should I dismiss you because of that?

Posted at March 18, 2008 12:13 AM in response to Why Clinton voters are not joining Obama

Yes...it must be the 3am ad. Couldn't be all the other things like seeing Obama unable to win larger elections, seeing Hillary win them, seeing Obama stutter and complain about 8 questions, hearing about the Rezko trial and Obama's home purchase, etc. Must be because people are sheep and are responding to an ad that ran in two states. If only they were as smart and as able to master their fear as you are!

Posted at March 8, 2008 11:07 AM in response to Poll: Hillary Back In National Tie With Obama; 3 A.M. Ad Might Have Helped

When can we finally give up the charade about Hillary endorsing McCain? We all know it is a phony claim. Can we let it rest along with the phony racism charges, the phony accusations of releasing photos, and the phony image-darkening? Or do we have to use the republican/goebbels tactics of repeating lies until they are considered true? (Roosevelt let the japanese bomb pearl harbor! Muskie cried! Hillary killed Vince Foster!) Get a grip.

If you can't find anything real to bitch about, then stop bitching. If you are really believe the spin about the impossible delegate math situation, then just sit back and revel in your candidate's high-minded, non-mudslinging, frontrunner campaign and enjoy his positive speeches and rallies.

(What? He is mudslinging already? Doesn't he know she can't beat him because of the math?)

Posted at March 6, 2008 3:35 PM in response to Hillary has the TRUE claim to bipartisanship

So now the Obama folks are cheering because the delegate results don't reflect the popular will?

What amazing principles!

Posted at March 5, 2008 11:57 PM in response to About Those Texas Caucus "Results" ...

You know the obamatrons are getting nervous when all of the ridiculous canards come out.

"Where are the tax returns?" is just a variation of the classic republican smear where you find one thing that the person can do beyond what is required and hammer them for not doing it. She has done every senate disclosure necessary, and nobody has any actual unanswered questions. What do you think you will find? A line item on a schedule C for bribes to kiddie porn dealers? It will just show the amounts of money they made, which are already disclosed in the senate reports. And calling for her to release her tax returns when Obama is still withholding some of his is even sillier.

"She endorsed McCain!" Everyone here knows that she was not endorsing McCain. Everyone here knows she was making the same argument she has made dozens of times: that she has the experience to counter McCain and Obama does not. If you think Obama has the experience, then just say that. But don't pretend that you actually believe she endorsed McCain. Should she lie and say that McCain has no experience? Should we just not mention that the guy was a war hero and an extremely popular senator for decades and just HOPE that nobody notices? That is just silly. He is very experienced. Hillary commented on that and argues that he can counter it. Obama thinks McCain's experience is irrelevant because he brings hope and puppies for everyone. That's all there is to this.

"Rezko? Bring it on!" The story according to Obama is that he would not have been able to buy the house without Rezko's help. His biggest donor spent lots of money (not directly to Obama) to ensure that Obama could get a house that he otherwise says he could not have afforded. How is that good for Obama? How is that anything other than cronyism? How, if your campaign is based on "judgement" do you reconcile such a "boneheaded" move with your supposed good judgement? Even if there is nothing else here (and Obama has already had to change his story several times to account for facts he keeps getting wrong: underreporting donations, collusion on the land deal, actions that he took for Rezko, etc) that is pretty bad on its own. But if nothing else bad is there, why is a Senate staffer sitting in on the trial? Wouldn't that person's (government salaried) time be better spent preparing for Obama's first hearing in his subcommittee?

"But Hillary did X, Y, and Z!" Perhaps. But other than annoying comments from her staff members about who had what title, there is nothing new on Hillary. These things are bad because, like the NAFTA story, they drip drip drip out over the course of a week and continue to show deception with every new revelation. The NAFTA thing might fade with his loss in Ohio, but now Rezko will drip drip drip over the next few weeks. Not because Hillary is making stuff up or feeding the press, but because it is there. You only know about the Hillary "scandals" because people spent tens of millions of dollars building those molehills up into mountains a decade ago. Yet she is still the most respected woman on the planet (Oprah is #2), is more popular with Democrats than Obama (he is ahead through crossover votes), and is a viable candidate for president.

"She's throwing the kitchen sink!" Maybe just part of the spout (not including that little filter you already stole to use in your bong). Or the handle. If this looks kitchen sink to you, you are extremely naive. Dukakis got hit in the primaries with the "prison furlough" issue. It was a reasonable policy question: were the prison furloughs a good idea. It wasn't some secret policy--it was part of his record. They debated it. He won the primary. In the general election, the republicans picked out one guy who had been on the furlough program and ran ads saying "be scared of the black man." They painted a white guy with "be scared of the black man" and won on it, and you are afraid that Hillary is mentioning a sleazy donor? The republican attacks on Obama won't be for Rezko or NAFTA. They are going to beat the crap out of him with some obscure policy position that he took as a state senator, or find some guy currently in Guantanamo that painted his house in Indonesia, or some business dealing or law filing in Chicago that you have never heard of. They are going to drop the whole kitchen on him.

If this is what you are expecting to head into the general election with, you might as well start printing up your "Impeach McCain" bumper stickers now.

Posted at March 4, 2008 2:13 PM in response to Hillary Spokesperson: Obama-Rezko Story Should "Set Off Alarm Bells In Newsrooms Across America"

If Hillary wins OH, TX, and RI as it looks like she is slated to do, the nuances of the pledged delegate math won't matter. Even if she just eeks by. The story will be that she stopped him cold and that he can't win big states outside of his backyard (no...not the backyard owned by the guy on trial) and that he failed three times now to knock out Hillary with a huge money advantage and strong momentum. Lacking any other evidence that he can win Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey in the general election, people will look at the current presidential polls and at his losses in all of those places and they will see images of the Mondale map with Minnesota one color and the other states different colors.

The Obama supporters on the net will never accept it, but the reality-based world will see his campaign as weak, and Hillary's campaign as ascendant and strong. Either she will make up the last 1% of the delegate count difference that will be left between them, or deals will be made regarding any combination of Florida, Michigan, undecideds, delegates from other campaigns, or anything else to technically push her over the top, and the superdelegates will follow like lemmings to whomever seems to be the winner. Since the popular vote is essentially a tie (with a percentage point swing in one direction or another), and will probably remain that way, this will be decided by the politicians. And they are all aware of the fact that right now Obama looks like a little mouse being batted around by cat. ("But I already answered 8 questions!!")

Obama may even have enough free time in the fall to hold hearings in the subcommittee he chairs!

Or she could lose big tonight. But so far it doesn't look to be headed that way.

Posted at March 4, 2008 1:39 PM in response to Clinton wins OH by 10%, TX by 5%, RI by 20%...

The only reason Obama is getting bloodied and battered is because HIS OWN ACTIONS are surfacing.

Obama's own advisor told the Canadians not to worry about NAFTA. Your argument basically amounts to "the Canadians are screwing us by telling Americans about our secret meeting that we tried to deny." Obama's relationship with Rezko, and his "boneheaded" (his own word) house purchase deal are not something Hillary did to him. And Hillary didn't hold him down and keep him from having a single hearing while he was a subcommittee chairman.

This is not some scorched earth campaign by Hillary. It is just Obama's own record haunting him.

Obama has just over a 100 delegate lead. You can argue about pledged vs. super, uncommitted vs. other-candidate delegates, and it all degrades into silliness. They need just over 2000 delegates to clinch the nomination and neither one will get that from pledged delegates alone. The difference between them right now is just a small fraction of the total number of delegates.

You might argue that the superdelegates should look only at the popular vote. But most rational folks will say that Obamas lead came primarily from pushing heavy turnout in smaller, open primaries and caucuses, in most cases with only tens of thousands of voters. If he can't win in Texas or Ohio (with millions of voters), his only larger election victories are Illinois and neighboring Wisconsin. His gaming of the system by relying on caucuses, pulling off the ballot in Michigan (before the DNC had rendered a final decision there) in order to avoid a "loss" and to help him in the early states, and his reliance on "delegate math" as the argument for his viability will all be very off-putting.

If Hillary goes to the convention with solid momentum, wins in almost all of the big states and in many regions of the country, continued broad support, continued clear advantage in key states over McCain (yes, Obama has the advantage in a few of them, too), and with the growing idea that we know her skeletons and we are just learning about Obama's, then the party will not give him the nomination. Without even having shenanigans, the convention can seat Florida and Michigan (they could even enforce the rules on campaigning and penalize Obama for his press conference in Florida during the blackout), the undecideds and Edwards delegates can turn to Hillary, the superdelegates can (and will) follow the pack to the winner.

This is not a "all of these stars must align" situation. This is a "any of these things can turn the balance to her, and many of them are likely" situation.

That is not to say she has it clinched. She doesn't, and neither does he. There are millions of folks still to vote as I write this, not just today but for the next few months. There is a process here, and there is no reason to stop it just because Obama supporters are afraid their shiny new candidate will get scratched.

Hillary supporters generally think that this contest has been good for her and has helped temper her campaign. The same is probably true of Obama's campaign, though his supporters seem genuinely afraid of seeing him face any opposition. If you think the stuff that Obama ginned up cries of racism over were bad, wait until you see the real racist stuff that the republicans do. If you think just hearing about Rezko is bad, wait until the republicans come along and tie him and Barack to everything back to the Chicago fire.

The point is, this ain't over. There is no miracle necessary for Hillary to take this. Nobody is saying that Hillary has it clinched by any measure, even if she wins big today. But pretending that Obama has it clinched is just fantasy.

Posted at March 4, 2008 10:34 AM in response to Poll: Two Thirds Say Hillary Should Stay In Even If She Loses One Big State

The last few elections have held that the winner must take 2 out of the three of Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Currently Obama loses to McCain in Ohio while Hillary beats McCain. Currently Obama loses to McCain in Florida and Hillary beats McCain--and Obama will not be able to win Florida because the nearly two million voters that he has to disenfranchise to win will not be too enthusiastic. Maybe he still has a shot at Pennsylvania.

But all of that is thrown off if he loses New Jersey, which was in play last cycle (but ended up being solidly blue). Obama will not take Texas in the general--that is a fantasy. So that leaves Michigan (where they will remember not just that he wanted to keep their votes out, but that he pulled off the ballot before the DNC decision on delegates was even final so he could kowtow to Iowa) as the last big in-play state.

Unlike the primary, the general elections states are almost all winner-take-all. There won't be any New Mexico "I was close so I get some delegates" type situations, or Nevada where he loses the popular but wins the state.

But I'm sure he will give some great speeches during the race before losing heavily to McCain.

I voted for Hillary, and I get to vote for her AGAIN at the precinct convention tomorrow. I'm looking forward to voting for her a third time in the general election.

Posted at March 4, 2008 3:05 AM in response to Bigger Problems for Obama

OK...this is just stupid. Clearly she was making the argument that she has experience to counter McCain and Obama does not. You are just being silly here to say she is choosing McCain over Obama, and you probably know it.

She has been making this comment all over the place, and here is a representative example (from the other hyperventilating dishonest post on this topic here):

“I think you'll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say,” she said. “He’s never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.”

But let's all pretend she endorsed McCain and then bitch about how awful it is that she did that.

Posted at March 4, 2008 2:50 AM in response to Disloyal Democrat: Hillary Clinton picks John McCain over Barack Obama