comment #1

JHRussell says ...

Jeff, I just hope you are right about a total Dem meltdown!

comment #2

Joe Leydon says ...

Of course, Jeff, you realize that it would be all over by now if your high-thread-count Blue Staters had delivered for Hillary in New York, California and Massachusetts -- like the Wal Mart-shopping Red Staters delievered in my home state of Louisiana.

comment #3

Gordie Lachance says ...

As an apolitical person, I need someone to explain to me, why, when everyone has known for the past 4 years that the White House was the Democrats for the taking this year, would they attempt to nominate an unelectable candidate?

Once Obama wins the nomination, the Rep party is going to eviscerate his character. It won't even be that difficult.

Is this an example of Demcrats 'throwing the game'? I can't think of any other explanation.

comment #4

Jay T. says ...

Man, could you be any more over-the-top when it comes to politics? To act like she's a bitch for not throwing in the towel at this point (when it's still pretty damn close) is truly absurd.

comment #5

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Jay T.: Read. The. Words. I said she'll probably lack the grace to pack it in after March 4th if the voting goes the way it looks like it'll probably go. (She takes Ohio and Texas but not by vast margins, and Obama fortifies his lead.)

comment #6

Gaydos says ...

Obama is a spectacular candidate, not just strong, but both inspiring and organized in his plans and priorities.

That said, he still faces trouble from the Clintons.

At this point, Billary can't win the race without shooting out the tires of her opponent. Don't bet against that.

She is tied in every way to her hubbie and she's suffering now because they couldn't keep Bill down on the farm. Between his loathsome campaign behavior and bad press from his current sleazy business dealings, he's wiped out her once-insurmountable lead.

It's both amusing and depressing to read the accounts in Newsweek and the NY Times, etc, all about how shocked Dems are by Bill's "new" behavior.

Hillary's been deep-sixed by her proximity to her "partner." As she should be.

The revelations about his so-called charity work overseas which has led to Kazakh uranium contracts for his pals, his hugging dictators in the Urkaine, basically blowing through all of the rules and recommendations of both the State Dept and Amnesty International, giving positive press and biz contacts to human rights abusers, are supposed to be eye-opening.

Right, if you've kept your eyes closed for the past 16 years.

This is the guy who, while he was president, cut out the legs from Secretary of State Warren Christopher and sent Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown to China to make the deals that said "Screw human rights." To make it clear, he did the required photo op in Tianemen Square, shaking hands with the guys who had killed the dissidents on the spot only a few years earlier.

Let's also look back, eyes now wide open, at the Bob Rubin-led repeal of Glass-Steagal, which opened the door for the current sub-prime catastrophe but made Rubin and Citigroup rich as rajahs. Hard to imagine, but this conflict of interest actually beat the Republicans at their own crooked game.

And remember the Clintons' protestations when confronted with wrong-doing back in the bad old days? They blamed the "conspiracy" against them.

FLASH FORWARD TO PRESENT

And when confronted with all the dirty politics, the sleaze, refusing to reveal their tax returns, the lying, playing the race card, Bill, face flaming red, finger again poking into cameras, blames "the media."

Even if Obama weren't a brilliant alternative, I wouldn't want this couple anywhere near the White House.

comment #7

Monument says ...

Gordie, it's Hillary that's the unelectable candidate. If there is one thing that is predictable about the Republican Party, it is their universal disgust of Hillary Clinton. Obama is too well respected, even by the Republicans (see McCain's campaign advisor) for an all out attack, but Hillary? If she wins the nomination you can expect the Republican Party to pull out the heavy artillery.

I really don't understand your assertion that the Republican Party will be able to eviscerate Obama's character without difficulty, I don't follow your logic.

comment #8

le corbeau says ...

So the FISA reauthorization came up.

Obama, true to his misguided principles, voted against it, that is, for letting Al-Qaeda folks in the US talk to their bosses overseas without us listening in and stopping them before they kill Americans. Well, that's one way to look at it, there might be others. Anyway, he voted against it.

Which side did Hillary come down on?

She didn't vote.

Campaigning in the same Potomac states as Obama, he managed to vote, she didn't. So she can say "I didn't vote for it before I didn't vote against it," I guess.

I think the lack of substance charge thrown at Obama is pretty on-target right now, the inspirational nothingburger speech is going to have to give way to actual positions at some point, but there's more than one way to be an empty suit running for office and at the moment, you'd have to say there's more substance to the politician who took a side on one of the key issues of the day, even if I think he's wronger than wrong, than there is to the one who ducked it entirely.

comment #9

Rich S. says ...

Imagine you have spent your entire life - every waking moment- working towards one, singular goal. I mean everything: education, career, marriage. Everything you have ever done has been in service of attaining this one thing.

You achieved some personal success, but certainly not what you were capable of. You become financially secure, but by no means wealthy. Love, to the extent you are capable of such an emotion, was sublimated for expediency's sake. You even had to swallow your self-respect, because you could not afford to jettison the partner you chose to help you achieve your goal.

In the end, after all that effort and sacrifice, you would come to believe that your goal was virtually your birthright.

Then, suddenly, just when you were on the verge of reaching your goal, it starts to slip away. An external force arrives which threatens to take everything away. You were prepared for the frontal assault; you've been weathering those your entire life. But in your singular pursuit, you were utterly unprepared for a threat that ostensibly stands for all the same core principles you're espousing, but presents them far more persuasively and seductively than you ever could.

What would you do? How far would you go? Unethical behavior? Immoral? Illegal?

And then what would remain of your quest, your very reason for being, if you somehow ultimately achieved your goal, but lost whatever humanity you still had in the process?

These are not academic, rhetorical questions. We will see the answers played out over the next two months.

comment #10

Spicer says ...

I saw her on TV at a rally in Texas yesterday, she was in full-on pander mode. I'm surprised she isn't simply trying to buy votes at this point. Does she have any credibility talking about health care? They only had 8 years to implement her plan, the first 2 years with a Democratic congress, and didn't.

She will not go quietly. She put up with Bill's shit all these years for this. This is going to be really ugly before it's all said and done.

comment #11

le corbeau says ...

"We will see the answers played out over the next two months."

I think we see them almost every four years. Maybe once in a while we get someone who's okay about not getting it (Bob Dole seemed relieved), but usually, it's dead on.

I think the party will apply increasing pressure on them not to destroy Obama. And given the Clintons' funding situation, they'll probably have to obey, mostly.

comment #12

jc says ...

Rich S,

Re: "Imagine you have spent your entire life - every waking moment- working towards one, singular goal. I mean everything: education, career, marriage. Everything you have ever done has been in service of attaining this one thing."

Nice pitch. Can't wait for the third act.

comment #13

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Rich S.: That's a very perceptive and well-written analysis.

comment #14

Gordie Lachance says ...

Monument-

All I know about Obama is that he is an inexperienced former coke dealer. I would expect the Rep party to follow those lines. I sure would.

At least Hillary's already been vetted.

comment #15

musealien says ...

Presumably, if the results go Hillary's way on March 4th, Obama should have the character and the elegance to throw in the towel too.

comment #16

Reedyb says ...

Wow. What vitriol (and I'm from the South and can hardly spell vitriol).

Obama as SoS makes no sense. That's the area he's weakest on.

I think he is electable, whether he's fully vetted or not. He opens the process to new voters who think of Hillary as the "same old politics."

The vote against warrantless wiretaps was a great example of where this country needs to be and where we regain what's best about ourselves. We don't spy on each other. We have courts to say who can and can't be spied on.

Hillary owes a lot of the same people favors that Bill owes. If elected, there will be a set of folks getting perks who are used to getting them. At least with Obama, we will have people who have to learn how to get at the perks of government from friends and neighbors. That will give us a couple of years of reprieve from the looting of our public coffers.

She's not going to give up. But she won't win.

If she does win the White House, my vote for her first act after the oath of office would be to serve Bill divorce papers. That would be something (and I'm a fan of Bill).

This is the first time in a long time (ok, ever) that I've felt good about who I voted for, not just, he's the best we've got to choose from.

I thought I had lost the feeling that there is good in government and in the presidential race. I remember being horribly disappointed after volunteering for Dukakis and then couldn't believe that Bill was stupid enough to put a cigar in a recent college graduate.

I have an Obama sticker on my car. In my town, in the reddest of the red states (ex-burban Atlanta) that is a statement.

comment #17

Dave says ...

"If there is one thing that is predictable about the Republican Party, it is their universal disgust of Hillary Clinton."

Ummm. . . so what explains all the universal disgust of Hillary Clinton by the Obamaphiles here?

Hey, give us predictable Republicans credit-- we were right about the Clintons back when you were still defending them just because they had the White House. We tried to do you a solid, but you just never listened, calling us deranged Clinton haters and all that jazz.

Who's deranged now?

comment #18

Monument says ...

Hey Dave,
I never said the Repbublicans were wrong about the Clintons. They were right then and are right now, and it seems that a few more people are have come to agree with them. Perhaps I should have said "reliable" in lieu of "predictable."

comment #19

le corbeau says ...

we regain what's best about ourselves. We don't spy on each other. We have courts to say who can and can't be spied on.

Hilarious. "We don't spy on each other, we let the courts tell us when we can spy on each other!" That's basically what you just said. What highminded humbug.

Of course we spy on each other, when one of "us" is the Gambino family, a crooked alderman, a terrorist. The point is, we have rules. FISA is a set of rules devised in a very different telecom environment. We're trying to come up with a new set of rules. Have that debate if you want, help draw the rules, but don't spout fatuities about how "we don't spy." We do, we fink on each other, we cultivate stoolies, we make deals with undeserving bad guys to get other bad guys, and in the case of Al-Qaeda terrorists, sometimes we just blow the fuckers up (as I'd like to think we just did in Syria, but more likely it was the Israelis against the wishes of our CIA and State Dept.) But your sensibilities are too delicate to listen to their phone calls? God save us from the tenderhearted in a time of war.

comment #20

Josh Massey says ...

What Rich said (very succinctly) is what Republicans have been saying about Hillary for years. But up until about two months ago, we were greeted with accusations of being hateful, immoral sexists for suggesting such things. Now that Democrats agree, apparently its Gospel.

I love this election so far.

comment #21

Dave says ...

What Mgmax said.

It's a WAR, people.

Charlie Rangel says we're not serious unless we draft people. Well, we don't need to draft anyone (yet)-- but we do need to adapt our wiretapping laws to new technologies, and new international arrangments.

Everyone talks about whether we need to make sacrifices in wartime. The oppononets of this war think it's all phony because we're not being asked to plant victory gardens or recycle our cooking fat. Well, *this* war, in the 21st century, HERE'S your sacrifice-- your international calls to suspected Al Qaeda terrorists may be monitored.

Lot less of a sacrifice than getting a draft lottery number, no?

comment #22

Gaydos says ...

Karen Tumulty elegantly ties together Hillary's past and present in this excerpt from today's Time magazine:

"Gone is campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, the former scheduler whose primary qualification seemed to be her long history with the candidate.
Some of Clinton's closest advisers had argued against putting Doyle in such a high-wire role, but it was a characteristic move for a candidate who, like Bush, is known to value personal trust and loyalty above all other virtues...

"Doyle has now been replaced by another loyalist, Maggie Williams, who served as Hillary Clinton's chief of staff in the White House. Williams is someone to whom Clinton has turned in her moments of greatest peril. Former White House aides recall how in 1994 Williams planned and executed — without telling the press office — the famous soft-focus pink-sweater news conference, in which the First Lady talked about Whitewater and her cattle-futures trading for 66 min.

"Williams left the White House at the start of Bill Clinton's second term, saddled with more than $300,000 in legal bills, after having been called to testify before the Senate Banking Committee about her role in the Whitewater damage-control effort.

"On the night of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster's suicide, Williams and counsel Bernie Nussbaum combed Foster's office for personal papers, and she was later criticized for allegedly removing a sheaf of documents that were locked away before eventually turning them over to attorneys."

comment #23

christian says ...

"Lot less of a sacrifice than getting a draft lottery number, no?"

Trusting the crooks in charge is too much sacrifice seeing how they've fucked this country over by invading a country over false reasons.

But I long for a draft just to see you war-pushers have to back up all your tough talk.
But typically, you'd rather have others do the dirty work.

comment #24

le corbeau says ...

Christian, that's so 2004.

comment #25

Dave Polands Gut says ...

Hillary can't even say congrats after losing and she's going to be so diplomatic as to be Sec of State??

Liberals are wacky.

Tell Barry Obama not to start filling that Cabinet yet.

comment #26

Dave Polands Gut says ...

I'm still waiting for anyone to say what Obama believes in besides higher taxes and less military.

Crickets...

comment #27

Reedyb says ...

God save us from those who want a perpetual time of war to deprive the rest of us freedom from their ideas.

comment #28

Abbey Normal says ...

There's no longer any doubt about Hillary's intentions, and it saddens me. I have defended her here and elsewhere, but I'm done with it.

The reason why is that her communications director today baldly stated that she's going to take it all the way to the convention no matter how the pledged delegate count works out. Apparently, she and her team have no qualms at all about letting a bunch of party poobahs decide this thing, as long as it's in their favor. The will of the people, such as it is, matters not a whip to her, nor does the prospect of a deeply splintered party heading into the general election.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/02/clinton_counts.html

There's only one word for it: Shameful. She should abide by how the actual earned delegates work out. The notion that delegates from elected officals, decided in smoky backrooms, should count just as much as delegates won in primaries and caucuses is bullshit. Anyone with even a base understanding and affection for true democracy intuitively gets that.

Also, just so you know, the Quinnipiac poll was taken before the Potomac primaries, and doesn't contain whatever bump you would presume Obama would get out of those huge victories.

comment #29

Gaydos says ...

dave polands gut: Obama is for troops in Afghanistan, out of Iraq. He spelled out every detail of his for universal health care in the debates. He's proposing higher education grants that require community service and he's advocating charter school support. His tax plan rolls back the relief Bush gave the upper one per cent in order to make a more equitable system for the middle class. Almost everything mentioned is controversial in some quarter of his own party.

Those are just a few specifics, but to focus only on specifics is to miss the great opportunity he presents; leadership that communicates with power, candor and principles.

And also, no more Billary.

If you weren't sickened by the sight of red-faced Bill on the stump, lying, race-baiting, finger-pointing, while flying around the world on "charity" work enriching cronies and benefitting dictators, you can find the silver lining in darkest stream of sewage.