The Hillary supporters who are bent out of shape about comments by anonymous posters on a political blog are just looking for excuses not to support Obama. Why humor them? The ones who go around posting inflammatory comments, then whining and pouting about how the Obama supporters on this site better treat them nicely or else they won't vote for Obama, aren't serious about the latter or else they wouldn't still be doing the former.

Some of you are trying very hard to treat them with kid gloves. But they just go seek out others from whom they can provoke abuse, and they'll always be able to provoke the response that they're trying so hard to provoke. And your sympathy (those of you who are treating them with kid gloves) only reinforces that behavior by validating the view that all those mean, mean people on those distant keyboards are keeping the Hillary supporters with hurt feelings from being able to support Obama.

It's bullshit. Posting inflammatory things in some threads to provoke the very responses that in other threads they say is keeping them from supporting Obama, is nothing but a bullshit game.

I wish them well. Some will go support McCain (or maybe Barr) because, like Lieberman, they think an aggressive foreign policy is more important than pretty much everything else. Others may go to Nader, to express support for progressive causes. Or they may write-in Hillary or vote for McCain simply as a form of protest.  

I wish them well in whatever candidate they decide they like better than Obama. If, in the end, they decide to vote for Obama that's even better, but I wish them well in whatever direction they choose.

I just refuse to participate in their pretense that their decision will depend on the distant clacking of anonymous keyboards that provide the response they work so hard to provoke. That's just stupid.

The RNC posted this memorable video clip of Hillary today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxDLKUeoJm0


It's bad enough having this GOP attack on Obama coming straight from the mouth of a prominent Democrat.

Imagine wall-to-wall ads with Obama's own running made saying that he doesn't "pass the commander in chief test."

Obama/Hillary?  No.  Fucking.  Way.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2008/05/22/2008-05-22_dc_meeting_could_bring_compromise_on_mic.html

"If Democrats send the message that we don't fully value your votes, we know Sen. [John] McCain and the Republicans will be more than happy to have them," Clinton said.

"The Republicans will make a simple and compelling argument: Why should Florida and Michigan voters trust the Democratic Party to look out for you when they won't even listen to you?" she added.

The key words there are "fully value."  She's arguing that if the DNC doesn't seat the delegates without penalty, an outcome she knows is very unlikely (and a very bad idea, according to McAuliffe in 2004) voters in Florida should be expected to vote for McCain in protest.  This is the idea she's planting.  She's not responding to an argument from McCain, she's making McCain's argument for him.

Look carefully at what she says.  She's proposing an argument on McCain's behalf, and telling voters in Florida that they should find this argument in support of McCain  compelling.  


With friends like this, who needs the GOP?

The supers have heard Hillary's arguments about electability.  Such as the one last week in which she claimed to be winning the popular vote, by which she meant that she had a lead of less than one tenth of one percent if you ignore the "uncommitted" votes in Michigan and ignore four caucuses entirely.  Not surprisingly, the superdelegates haven't found her arguments compelling.
Now she's whipping up resentment over MI and FL, and the meeting on 5/31 is going to give her another chance to hurt the party without giving her a realistic shot at winning the nomination (short of some catastrophic event or Obama mega-scandal).  
But consider what the superdelegates could do if a sufficiently large number of them were to endorse Obama before the 5/31 meeting.  Not enough to give him the nomination, so that Hillary can't say she's been forced out "early".  But enough that Obama's team could go to the 5/31 meeting and agree to seat the FL and MI delegates as-is, exactly the way Hillary wants.
The delegates were always going to be included in some fashion, but Hillary gets to claim she won the fight against disenfranchisement (when what she actually did was to hurt Democrats in November by stirring up resentment over something that was never going to happen, as she and everyone else knew).  
The race goes into the last few primaries, so Hillary doesn't get to say she was forced out early.   She gets to stay in just in case there's some sort of catastrophic event or mega-scandal for Obama, which is really her only chance at this point.  
Puerto Rico probably gives her a better claim to winning the popular vote than what she has now.  Yes, it's a claim that ignores the caucus/primary differences.  And yes, it's a claim that's based on a big block of votes from voters who don't get to vote in the general election.  But Hillary gets to make this claim as a face-saving thing, and the supers know that it really has nothing to do with electability.   Not that they've been fooled by that argument yet.
MI and FL get seated as-is.  But at the same time the risk of chaos (that McAuliffe was so concerned about in 2004) is minimized.  Other states that might want to schedule their primaries early will see that MI and FL actually ended up with less clout in the nomination process than if they'd been part of super-duper Tuesday or something soon after that, as originally endorsed by the DNC.  So the incentive for other states to challenge the January primary rule in 2012 is diminished.
It would be a nice way to wrap this thing up, tying up a lot of the loose ends in about as good a way as could possibly happen.  
How many delegates would it take?  By my back-of-the-envelope calculation, about 100 would absolutely make this work.  Even if the remaining primaries were to go badly for Obama, they would push him over the top (with the new goalposts). 
But 48 supers between now and Friday would be enough, because that puts Obama over the top for the current goalposts, and Obama can then say he had to "win it twice" after letting Hillary move the goalposts with MI and FL.   
That's a lot for one week, but the superdelegates have got to be looking for way to get as much unity out of this mess as they possibly can, and the DNC can't allow McAuliffe's chaos scenario to happen, and this is as close to a win/win scenario as we could hope for at this point.  

I have two questions for people who want Hillary as the VP, assuming Obama is the nominee.  I've posted these a number of times in various comment threads, but have yet to see a response.  (Apologies if I missed a reply.)


First, can we agree that Obama should choose, and should be entirely free to choose, the veep he believes will best help him win against McCain, whether that's Hillary or not?   
The reason I ask is that many of the arguments for Obama picking Hillary as a running mate (in sharp contrast to the arguments being made for Sebelius, Webb, etc.) aren't about making a case that she's the best choice.  Instead, those arguments are bout the need to appease her supporters (most of whom would vote for Obama anyway, although more reluctantly), or the claim that she's earned the "right of first refusal" by running such a close second, etc.  Or worse, scenarios suggesting ways that Hillary might get superdelegates to twist Obama's arm and get him to choose her even if she's not his first choice.
I'm not asking for arguments over whether or not she's the best choice.  Just asking whether, as a starting point, we can all agree on how that decision should be made, namely that Obama should pick the running mate he believes will best help him defeat McCain.  


And my second question is this: If Hillary is the veep we'll see McCain ads with video of Obama's own running mate saying that McCain is qualified to be commander in chief, and Obama isn't.  Normally Democratic candidates don't endorse the GOP opponent, so this sort of thing may not have come up before, but having that endorsement from Obama's own running mate being played over and over and over in TV ads has got to hurt Obama.  
What could she say to minimize the damage from this?  That he hadn't "crossed that threshold" a few months ago (all he had to show, she said, was a "speech he made in 2002"), but giving a bunch more speeches on the campaign trail has made him ready to be commander-in-chief?  

See my first comment below.  I'm tired of having the flakey editing system in blog posts mess up the spacing, etc., so I'm following someone else's example and doing it this way as an experiment.

There's a new poster in the Hillary store, linked from the front page of hillaryclinton.com:
http://www.hillarystore.com/store/HC0925.html
Larger, if you can handle it:http://store.hillarystore.com/i/li/HRC-2.jpg

Don't stare at it too long, I think there's a hypnotoad effect.  
More seriously, have they never seen posters of Chairman Mao before?  A common motif had rays of sun behind him:
http://www.chinabooks.com/cart/files/t_19424.jpg
http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/images/mzd04.jpg

It's common enough to show up in things like this:http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101050627,00.html
or this:http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/screen-bill.mao-newsweek.jpg

WTF?   

If only she'd run a competent campaign, that is. This article:http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=f7a4a380-c4a4-4f84-b653-f252e8569915

is on the TPM news feed and won't be there long, but you don't want to miss it.  It's Clinton campaign staffers explaining why they think she lost.  

... There was no attention to history ...

... Not learning from the mistakes of Kerry and Gore, the campaign was based in the D.C. area, rooting its perspective in the fishbowl and echo chamber nature of the capital. ...

.. There was not any plan in place from beginning to end on how to win the nomination. It was, 'Win Iowa.' There was not the experience level, and, frankly, the management ability, to create a whole plan to get to the magical delegate number. ...

... Hillary assembled a team thin on presidential campaign experience that confused discipline with insularity; they didn't know what they didn't know and were too arrogant to ask at a time early enough in the process when it could have made a difference, ...

... [Policy Director] Tanden and [Communications Director] Wolfson, the HQ's most senior department heads, had no real presidential campaign experience, and no primary experience whatsoever. Notoriously bad managers, they filled key posts with newcomers loyal to them but unknown to and unfamiliar with the candidate, her style, her history, her preferences. ...

... We would just cringe. Ugh. Such an out-of-touch corporate run kind of campaign ...

... Our message in fact was working very well through September. What we failed to do is pivot when we needed to. [...] We repackaged the old message and sent it back out. Instead of 'Ready on Day One,' we changed to 'Solutions.' It was a very IBM approach. ...

... There was financial mismanagement bordering on fraud. A candidate who raised more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the years had to pump in millions more of her own money to stave off bankruptcy. ...

... If you have no cash because you totally mismanaged the budget, you have no money to go up on TV; you're getting crushed on TV and in direct mail because Obama has so much more money--that is a huge problem. Who was looking at the money? The financial situation was a disaster. ...

... The Senator is as loyal as she is smart. And I think that removing Patti is where those two things came into conflict. She knew the right thing to do. At same time, she was very loyal to Patti, who had been very loyal to her. ...

... we didn't plan for a national campaign ...

... It was obvious talking to people on the ground there that they simply did not get the Iowa caucus from a field perspective. That's where the thing was lost. ... 

... The real race was the three-way. But [Penn] always focused on the eight-way when we'd start going over the numbers in Iowa. It was frustrating to the state staff and other people as well. It just showed a lack of understanding and a disconnect. ...

... We ran a press operation that lost all credibility with the press through endless and pointless memos like, 'Where's the Bounce?' and polling memos that cherry-picked only positive polls when we were up and ignored polling when we were down. ...

Remember, these are comments from Hillary's own campaign staff.  Read the whole thing, and breathe a huge sigh of relief.  


Why bring this up?   Because Hillary is still in it, but now for the veep slot.  Someone who surrounds themselves with advisors based on putting loyalty over confidence, who relies on simplistic planning and is slow to accept that it isn't working, etc., etc., shouldn't be that close to the Oval Office.   Certainly not as President, but also not as Vice President.

If any candidate without the name recognition and fundraising advantage and party support that Hillary started out with had mismanaged their campaign this badly, they'd have been out long, long ago.    


I wish her a long and successful career in the Senate.  If Obama appoints her to the Supreme Court, as some have suggested, I'll cheer (in part because it would be fun to see wingnuts tied up in knots for many years as a result).   Anything that doesn't require competence at large-scale management.  

I posted this as a comment, but buried in a long list of replies to a troll who posts in high volume it won't do any good.  I hope no one minds the repost as a blog entry, but because this particular troll is so very offensive, I want to make a record of this.   It still probably won't do any good but here goes.
The troll wrote:I do not know your educational background but most style guides traditionally suggest capitalizing Black, White, Asian, etc.
Let's check that. Google:http://www.google.com/search?ie=utf8&oe=utf8&q=capitalization+style-guide+black+white
First hit:

Capitalize the proper names of nationalities, peoples, races, tribes and so on: African American, American Indians, Arab, Asian, Jewish, Latino, Muckleshoot, Tulalip, Puyallup. Lowercase black, white, red and so on.

Second hit:

15) Names of all races and nationalities.

African American (but black), Caucasian (but white), Nigerian, Irish, Japanese

Third hit:

Do not capitalize broad racial terms (nationalities); do capitalize more specific terms

black, white

Caucasian, Filipino

Fourth hit:

In informal writing, where specific racial and ethnic identification would seem stilted, the terms black and white are sometimes preferable with reference to individuals of African American and European American ancestry. Note that these terms are used both as nouns and adjectives. In both cases, they represent distinct groups of people. However, the terms are not proper nouns and, hence, are not capitalized.

Similarly for every style guide returned on the first two pages of hits.
On the other hand, if you search for "capitalize the word White" you find a lot of revolting pages. For example:

I have tried to remember to capitalize the word 'White' out of courtesy to the White Nationalists who sponsor this forum.

And on a white supremacist bulletin board with a discussion on "Should We Capitalize Names of Races?":

This argument doesn't hold water, to me, because the people who capitalize "white" capitalize "black" too, even though they usually have very negative opinions.

and other disgusting tripe like this:

I realize I am inconsistent in this and I am aware of probably capitalizing White more than Black. Why? I suppose I am transgressing the rule but I think I am trying to compensate for the lack of respect shown to White people and the White race today. 

And that's just from the first page of ten hits.
So there you have it. I'm grateful that he's not supporting Obama, and clearly there's no danger that he ever would, but the vast majority of Hillary supporters presumably want to have nothing to do with him either.  I doubt he can be shamed into leaving, but maybe this helps to expose one of his most frequent lies.  
In case the formatting on this is atrociously bad, which is very likely, here's a link to the comment:http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/04/clinton-scores-knockout-on-ore.php#comment-2770972

Fox and NBC are both calling it for Hillary.  
As a result, Obama will go into the remaining primaries with an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, a strong lead in the popular vote, and a huge advantage in fundraising ability.
I had hoped that Obama could pull off a win here, and go into the remaining primaries with an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, a strong lead in the popular vote, and a huge advantage in fundraising ability.  

I'm still holding out some hope that the results will be close enough that Obama will go into the remaining primaries with an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, a strong lead in the popular vote, and a huge advantage in fundraising ability.  
I think that if Hillary wins by less than ten points then Obama will go into the remaining primaries with an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, a strong lead in the popular vote, and a huge advantage in fundraising ability.
But if Hillary wins by more than ten points, then Obama go into the remaining primaries with an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, a strong lead in the popular vote, and a huge advantage in fundraising ability.
It's white-knuckle time to be sure.

Obama said some true things but said them in a very clumsy fashion, and it's hurting him.   In the end I think he'll probably pull out of it, but it will probably cost him a bit.  The Hillary supporters have little else to cling to, so they're whooping it up, of course.

But when was the last time you heard a Hillary supporter suggest a scenario in which Hillary could win?  Other than some sort of huge scandal and total meltdown of the Obama campaign, I mean.  Obviously that's a scenario, however unlikely, in which Hillary (or perhaps even someone like Gore chosen to try to unify the party) could win.

When was the last time you heard a Hillary supporter suggest any other scenario, and back it up with numbers?

The numbers are the catch.  Here's some analysis to get them started:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/04/11/the-deal-with-add-ons.aspx

 if the two candidates hypothetically split the remaining pledged delegates 50-50, then, given the likely allocation of add-ons, Clinton would need to win a whopping 90 percent of the remaining 230 or so superdelegates to get the nomination.

The "add-ons" haven't gotten much attention, but that's part of the math.  

Hand-waving about the popular vote won't get her the nomination.  Ultimately, like it or not, it's a race for delegates.  So let's see the math, Hillary fans.  State-by-state, pledged delegates and superdelegates and add-ons.  

Does she get 90% of the remaining 230 superdelegates?  Is that your scenario?  Keep in mind that since Feb 5 Hillary has had a net loss of superdelegates, while Obama has gained more than 70.  

If not that, then what?  With numbers, please, showing a scenario (other than a major Obama meltdown) in which she comes up with enough delegates.

On the other hand, if you realize that the remaining primaries and the add-ons and so on don't add up to a Hillary victory UNLESS Obama has a major setback far worse than the Wright thing, then fine.  Just say so.  

I hope I don't get kicked out of the echo chamber for admitting this, but Obama made a mistake.
The word "bitter" may be accurate, but it was a poor choice of words.  When you say someone is "bitter" you're criticizing their character.  There may be justifiable reasons to be angry, but "bitter" implies that someone is nursing a grudge, etc.  
Yes, many people are angry, but "angry" doesn't have the same connotations as "bitter."  The way he put it just sounds bad.  Hillary's response of praising the people's resilience is simply taking advantage of his mistake.  People would rather be praised than insulted, even if the insult is more accurate than the praise.
"Cling" was also a poor choice of words.  And to top it off, who uses the word "antipathy" outside of grad school?   When trying to connect with lower-middle-class voters, using words that most people would have to look up in a dictionary isn't a smooth move.  
In any case, Obama has now said that his choice of words was poor, and he's made the same point in a better fashion.  It's a minor mistake, but a mistake nonetheless and saying that it was a brilliant maneuver to trip up the Hillary and McCain show is just daft.
Will a mistake like this ultimately matter?  It may cost him a few points in PA, or he may recover just fine.  He's got time.  But keep the big picture in mind:href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/trailhead/archive/2008/04/11/the-deal-with-add-ons.aspx

... if the two candidates hypothetically split the remaining pledged delegates 50-50, then, given the likely allocation of add-ons, Clinton would need to win a whopping 90 percent of the remaining 230 or so superdelegates to get the nomination.

In a move likely to demoralize even his most devoted supporters, Barack Obama today vowed that he would "stay in the race until the convention."   He cited his lead in the pledged delegate count and his superior fundraising ability, along with numerous other factors, to explain his reasons.  

R. Smorgasbord, a long-time supporter of Senator Obama, was quoted as saying, "Oh crap, anything but a vow to stay in the race to the end!  Damn, and I thought he was serious about finishing this thing.  But nobody vows to stay in the race to the end unless the campaign is in its death throes."

Highly-placed sources in the Hillary campaign suggested that in light of this development, Hillary was likely to retract her recent vow to stay in the race until the convention.  "If Obama is vowing to stay in the race until the convention then that opens up an opportunity we didn't expect.  I mean, we were basically dead in the water, but now that it looks like Obama will be dropping out soon, we may have a chance after all," said one aide on condition of anonymity.   

Scenarios assuming the race goes to the convention:

Scenario 1:  Status Quo.  Hillary wins the races she's expected to win, Obama wins the ones he's expected to win.  Obama is still ahead in pledged delgates.  Obama is still ahead in the popular vote (even counting FL and MI).  The polls continue to show Obama ahead of Hillary nationally.  Hillary's approval numbers remain down around the seven-year low she's currently at.  Obama continues to stay way ahead of Hillary in fundraising.  

Obama wins, obviously.

Scenario 2:  Hillary has the Mo.  She wins PA, and some of the states Obama was expected to win.  Obama still has the lead in pledged delegates.  Obama has the lead in the popular vote or perhaps Hillary has the lead with FL and MI included.  Hillary pulls even with Obama or slightly ahead in the national polls.  Hillary's approval numbers are low, but off the current seven-year low.  Obama continues to stay far ahead in fundraising.

It's hard to get Hillary supporters to look seriously at this sort of scenario, but the key question is what here would motivate the super-dels to overrule the pledged delegates.  In this sort of scenario Obama and his supporters still have good reasons to believe that he's in good shape to win the general election.  Overriding the pledged delegates will cause a deep rift in the party just a few months before the general election.  The super-dels understand this and will need a deeply compelling reason to overrule the pledged delegates.   That sort of reason isn't created in this sort of scenario, and giving the nomination to Hillary under such circumstances would kill any chances she'd have of winning the general.  No way they do it.

Obama wins this scenario, too.  

Scenario 3:  Obama, oh no!   In this scenario Obama's campaign craters.   Hillary and her supporters hoped that Wright would do this to Obama, but that didn't work out the way they'd hoped.  It would take some new and big scandal to do this.   But let's suppose such a thing happens.

As Team Hillary is fond of saying lately, even the pledged delegates can break their pledge and vote for anyone they wish.  There's no rule that says they can't.  And this is the sort of scenario in which the pledged delegates and super-delegates would, justifiably, change their votes.

They might change their votes to Hillary.  But they aren't obligated to do that, either.  Let's review the scenario.  We're imagining a scenario in which the party is in deep trouble. It's the end of August, and the election isn't that far away.  Feelings are raw over a lot of things.  

So now which is more likely?  Option A: the pledged and super-delegates, all still free to vote for anyone they want, give the nomination to Hillary.  But there's a lot of tension between Obama and Hillary supporters, especially if the scandal story (whatever it was) was heavily pushed by the Hillary team.  And memories of Hillary endorsing McCain over Obama are still fresh.  
Or Option B:  they pledged and super-delegates, all still free to vote for anyone they want, give the nomination to Gore, or Edwards, or someone else who can unify the party.
I'd suggest that in the desperate circumstances that are the only sort of scenario that could get the super-delegates to overrule the pledged delegates, it's not at all obvious that they go with Hillary.  Under such circumstances, coming out of some ugly campaigning with lots of hurt feelings on either side, there's no good solution (and this is also the best scenario for McCain, obviously) but someone like Gore would have the ability to unify the party.  

Summary:  if you accept the premise that the super-dels aren't going to overrule the pledged dels unless there is an absolutely compelling reason to do so, because otherwise doing so would rip the party apart, then the sort of scenario that is Hillary's last hope isn't even obviously a win for Hillary.  Hillary's argument that (correctly) points out that pledges can be broken doesn't imply that they'll be broken in her favor.   She's burned a lot of bridges to get to this point, and that's not going to be easily forgotten.

Apologies in advance for whatever ways the posting software has managed to mangle the html tags I tried to use in this article.

Just what the title says.  Gore steps in to heal the rift in the Democratic party, and Obama agrees to take the Veep position.  Gore agrees to appoint Hillary to the Supreme Court, giving Hillary a lifetime appointment where she can make a real difference (and as a bonus, piss off wingnuts for decades to come).  Both Hillary and Obama direct their delegates to nominate Gore. 

Yes, this gives Hillary a partial victory in her scorched-earth, serial-lying, McCain-endorsing campaign, because she succeeds in keeping Obama from getting the Presidential nomination right away.  But on the other hand, we don't have to take a chance on the continuation of the Bush/Clinton dynasties by a candidate who has yet to find a neo-con foreign policy she can vote against, and who apparently can't keep herself from telling stupid lies even when it's obvious that the lie will be easily unmasked.  That's a bullet worth dodging, and a tradeoff I could live with.