Doug-at-large

An interesting (if unflattering view of Hillary) analysis from Fred Barnes in the next issue of the conservative “Weekly Standard”. Even though I don’t like his image of Hillary, I do like his analysis!

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Thwarting the Clintons won’t be easy. Hillary Clinton is nowhere near as close to losing the Democratic nomination as many in the political community believe. It’s true she doesn’t inspire. In debates, she constantly flashes a fake smile and, when unnerved, unleashes a contrived laugh–aka, the cackle. She attracts far smaller and considerably less enthusiastic crowds than Obama does. And his fundraising now dwarfs hers.

But Clinton has already survived two crushing defeats, first in Iowa, then in South Carolina, only to rise again on Super Tuesday with a string of lopsided victories in blue states the Democratic nominee must carry in November. Obama did better in red states that are less important to Democrats in a general election.

For all her unattractiveness as a candidate, Clinton has put together an impressive, and seemingly durable, coalition of women, seniors, Hispanics, and the less-than-wealthy. In the California primary last week, she lost the white vote to Obama by 49 percent to 43 percent, yet won the state in a near-landslide: 52 percent to 42 percent.

Mark Penn, Clinton’s chief strategist, has been ridiculed for his rosy analysis of her campaign. But he’s probably right in claiming that she’d “be en route to being the nominee” if Democrats had a winner-take-all system in their primaries, as Republicans do. “But the proportional delegate system keeps this contest going with two candidates who have significant support,” Penn wrote in a memo.

That system is all but certain to prevent either candidate from capturing the nomination in the remaining primaries and caucuses. Leaving aside the 796 super-delegates–chiefly elected and party officials–Clinton or Obama would need to win roughly three-fourths of the delegates in these states to wrap up the nomination. With proportional distribution of delegates, that’s practically impossible.

So the nomination, in all likelihood, will be left up to the super-delegates. About half of them have already endorsed a candidate. Of these, Clinton leads by 90 delegates–a not insubstantial number. (Obama needs to steal super-delegates who’ve endorsed her to win.)

Clinton’s strategy: a strong finishing kick. The states with primaries and caucuses over the next few weeks favor Obama, which means he’ll likely take a narrow lead in delegates.

But there are three big primaries at the end of the process–Ohio and Texas on March 4 and Pennsylvania on April 22. In all three, Clinton starts with an advantage. Governors Ted Strickland of Ohio and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania are backing Clinton, and their statewide organizations are a significant asset. In Texas, Hispanics are a major part of the Democratic electorate.

If Hillary wins all three states, it’s hard to imagine the super-delegates denying her the nomination. And a primary hat trick is not inconceivable. Just winning two of three would probably make her the hotter candidate–assuming she leads Obama in popular votes over the entire campaign.

Obama is concentrating on Texas. But he has two liabilities there. While he’s shown great skill in organizing strong turnouts in caucus states, he fared less well in primary states, where the turnout is much greater. And he’s not well organized among Hispanic voters. She is.

They are talking about Texas and Ohio being Hillary’s “firewall” and how she has to win both of those to keep the nomination from slipping away.

But why has it come to that? Why shouldn’t Hillary be winning places like the state of Washington, or Virginia, or Wisconsin?

I hope the new campaign leadership figures out how to get the message across!

I really hate the way Obama supporters have fallen head over heels to demonize Hillary. It’s right out of the Republican “hate Hillary” playbook. Why have they gone for it?

It makes Obama look like the head of a personality cult.

I feel creeped out by the whole business.

doug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cySK6q2P_Nw

I especially love the older photos, like when she was a college student, and scenes showing all that Hillary has been involved in.

It’s really well done.

doug

February 11, 2008
NY Times COLUMNIST
Hate Springs Eternal

By PAUL KRUGMAN
In 1956 Adlai Stevenson, running against Dwight Eisenhower, tried to make the political style of his opponent’s vice president, a man by the name of Richard Nixon, an issue. The nation, he warned, was in danger of becoming “a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland.”

The quote comes from “Nixonland,” a soon-to-be-published political history of the years from 1964 to 1972 written by Rick Perlstein, the author of “Before the Storm.” As Mr. Perlstein shows, Stevenson warned in vain: during those years America did indeed become the land of slander and scare, of the politics of hatred.

And it still is. In fact, these days even the Democratic Party seems to be turning into Nixonland.

The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre. Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts). Both have broad support among the party’s grass roots and are favorably viewed by Democratic voters.

Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod.

Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.

The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons’ part, yet the “scandal” became a symbol of the Clinton administration’s alleged corruption.

During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.

And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother’s campaign — as adult children of presidential aspirants often do — asked, “doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.

I call it Clinton rules, but it’s a pattern that goes well beyond the Clintons. For example, Al Gore was subjected to Clinton rules during the 2000 campaign: anything he said, and some things he didn’t say (no, he never claimed to have invented the Internet), was held up as proof of his alleged character flaws.

For now, Clinton rules are working in Mr. Obama’s favor. But his supporters should not take comfort in that fact.

For one thing, Mrs. Clinton may yet be the nominee — and if Obama supporters care about anything beyond hero worship, they should want to see her win in November.

For another, if history is any guide, if Mr. Obama wins the nomination, he will quickly find himself being subjected to Clinton rules. Democrats always do.

But most of all, progressives should realize that Nixonland is not the country we want to be. Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.

One of the most hopeful moments of this presidential campaign came last month, when a number of Jewish leaders signed a letter condemning the smear campaign claiming that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim. It’s a good guess that some of those leaders would prefer that Mr. Obama not become president; nonetheless, they understood that there are principles that matter more than short-term political advantage.

I’d like to see more moments like that, perhaps starting with strong assurances from both Democratic candidates that they respect their opponents and would support them in the general election.

All you need to know about the Obama platform!

http://neighbors.webcrossing.com/obamaPlatform

doug

Say we can?

Just say yes?

Yes we are?

What was his platform again?

doug

Let me start by stating that I am a Hillary supporter (as if that wasn’t already obvious).

One of the things that irks me about Obama is his arrogant (in my opinion) assertion that if he wins, Hillary’s supporters will support him but if Hillary wins he can’t guarantee that his supporters will support her.

Not only does a claim like that strike a dangerous arrow at the heard of Democratic unity, there is no real evidence that his claim is true. In fact, there is now evidence to the contrary.

A CNN exit poll of Louisiana primary voters has come up with this interesting result. They questioned both Hillary and Obama supporters and asked if they would be satisfied if the other candidate won.

Among Hillary supporters, 67% said they would not be satisfied if the other candidate won and 23% said they would be satisfied.

Among Obama suppoers, 47% said they would not be satisfied if the other candidate won and 47% said they would be satisfied.

Those results are interesting, and are an empirical indication that Obama’s assertion is incorrect. It seems that in the end that Obama supporters would actually be more content with Hillary than Hillary supporters would be with Obama.

It’s just one more piece of the equation to consider…

doug

I was reading an online column by Larry Elder, a conservative columnist, who posed a question to Barack Obama which frankly surprised me. He asked:

“Sen. Obama, the church you attend, according to its Web site, pursues an Afrocentric agenda. Your church rejects, as part of their “Black Value System,” “middleclassness” as “classic methodology” of white “captors” to “control … subjugated” black “captives.” Your pastor, Jeremiah Wright, recently called the Nation of Islam’s Minister Louis Farrakhan — a man many consider anti-Semitic —a person of “integrity and honesty.” What would happen to a Republican candidate who attended a Caucasian-centric church, and who praised David Duke as a man of “integrity and honesty”?”

Not knowing what to make of this, or of which church he was speaking, I visited the Barack Obama web site, where in his “Meet the Obamas” profile at http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet.php it says:

“Barack Obama continues to speak out on the issues that will define America in the 21st century. But above all his accomplishments and experiences, he is most proud and grateful for his family. His wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, live on Chicago’s South Side where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ.”  

The Trinity United Church of Christ web site is at http://www.tucc.org/home.htm.From their “About Us” page at http://www.tucc.org/about.htm it says: 

“We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian… Our roots in the Black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain “true to our native land,” the mother continent, the cradle of civilization. God has superintended our pilgrimage through the days of slavery, the days of segregation, and the long night of racism. It is God who gives us the strength and courage to continuously address injustice as a people, and as a congregation. We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a Black worship service and ministries which address the Black Community.”

I really don’t know what to make of this. But I find it as disturbing as if somebody were to belong to a white church. I thought, if nothing else, that Obama’s message was something that was supposed to cross the racial divide. Up until now I never thought anything else and despised those weird emails roaming around the Internet falsely claiming Obama was a Muslim and so on just to stir up religious hatred. My gripe with Obama has been about things like issues and experience, where I feel he falls short compared to Hillary Clinton, not about race or religion.
 But I find this Trinity United Church of Christ information disturbing. It seems like just the sort of racially divisive institution that I assumed, honestly assumed, that if nothing else, Obama would never tolerate or be a part of.
I am just really surprised… 
doug

On Wednesday on “The View,” former Sen. Obama supporter Whoopi Goldberg announced that she voted for Hillary. On Thursday, the video of Whoopi’s announcement was YouTube’s single most watched news and politics clip.

More than 200,000 people watched Whoopi explain that Hillary was the first candidate to propose taking tax breaks away from companies that ship jobs overseas.

You can watch it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFtRo3RHpq8

It’s nice seeing people making decisions based on actual issues!

doug

Republican “conservatives” are tearing themselves to shreds lately. Have you seen the reports? Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter saying they would rather vote for Hillary Clinton than John McCain. James Dobson saying he would rather sit out the election than support McCain.

What is going on?

Or maybe a better question is, what is a “conservative”?

There seems to be four, largely inconsistent, very disperse ideologies that people variously call “conservative”:

(1) The government which governs best governs least group. These people are for lower taxes, less government regulation and generally support the idea of government staying as much out of people’s lives as possible. This group would also include those who think the job of the U.S. is to mind it’s own business and stay out of policing the world. Back at home they would have the government build roads and enforce contracts and that’s about it. They are the “libertarian” conservatives.

(2) The America-rules-the-world-through-projected-strength group. These people are for military buildups and strong military presence throughout the world, and even go so far as to impose the U.S. ideas of government and policy on other countries through military strength and adventurism. This group includes the “neocons” that George Bush aligned himself with.

(3) The social morality group. These people are basically far right, evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who have never been really content with a separation of church and state and want to impose their ideas of religious morality on a secular society. This group tends to also be anti-science when they feel it contradicts their religious doctrines.

(4) The club for growth group. These people are basically supporters of big business and believers in trickle-down economics. They are of the “what’s good for General Motors is good for the USA” philosophy. They are often so extreme in their views that they will disbelieve in global warming because they are afraid that taking even moderate pro-environmental action would depress the GDP. To confuse things, this group often pretends they are in group (1), but they give themselves away by hypocritically supporting government largesse and overseas adventures when it supports big business.

The problem is that these four ideological groups are not necessarily mutually consistent. In fact they don’t really co-exist with each other well at all.

And sometimes they really confuse themselves with the strangest ideas, such as when the social morality group takes positions against environmental protection or social programs. As though Jesus would be against programs for the poor?

This year the strain is particularly showing as the conservative pundits are demanding 100% orthodoxy across all four ideologies in their candidate for president. But it strains credulity to imagine a thinking person actually holding all four ideologies at the same time.

doug