I have noted a number of myths amongst the comments here as to why Hillary should stay in the race. Here are ten enduring, kudzu-like myths, with the debunking they sorely need.
Myth: This race is tied.
No, actually, it’s not. Obama has the lead in number of states won, in pledged delegates and in overall delegates. Nothing will happen in the remaining primaries to substantially change that. As to the one thing Hillary does lead in, superdelegates, her quickly shrinking margin is among DNC personnel only. When you look at the elected superdelegates, Congressman, Senators and Governors (i.e. people who actually work with both Obama and Clinton) Obama leads there, too.
Myth: Okay, the popular vote is tied.
There are people who claim that because of the 3% separation, that Obama’s lead in the popular vote is a “statistical tie.” This is a myth because, when you can actually count things, there’s no need of statistics and no such thing as a margin of error. The popular vote is not an estimate based on a sampling, like a poll. Like the general election, there are winners and losers and, so far, Obama is the winner.
Myth: Fine, but what if we count electoral votes? NOW Hillary is ahead!
Not so much. The proportions of electoral votes to population versus delegates to population are pretty comparable. So if you allocated electors proportionally in the same manner that you allocate delegates, Obama is still ahead. If you allocate them on a winner-take-all basis, then that would be the same as allocating the delegates on a winner-take-all basis, so why bring electors into it?
Myth: But if we did do it like the Electoral College, that proves Hillary is more electable than Obama, because of states like California.
This is perhaps the saddest little myth of all. It’s ridiculous to suggest that Obama will lose New York and California to McCain because Clinton won them in the primaries. No, come November, those states will join with Obama’s Illinois to provide 40% of the electors necessary for him to win.
Myth: Very well, then, Mr. Smarty-Math. But if we counted Michigan and Florida, THEN Hillary would be winning!
Nooo, she wouldn’t. The margin would depend on how you allocate the delegates, but Obama would still be ahead. And he’d still be about 100,000 ahead in the popular vote, too, despite not even being on the ballot in Michigan. However, it would enhance Hillary’s chances of catching up in the remaining races.
Myth: Ah HA! So Dean is keeping them out just to help Obama! And Obama is keeping them out.
That’s two myths, but I’ll treat it like one. The only people who can come up with a solution to this problem are the states themselves, to be presented to the Rules and Regulations Committee of the DNC for ratification. It was Rules and Regs, not Howard Dean, who ruled that Florida and Michigan were breaking the rules when they presented their original primary plans. If the two states cannot come up with a plan to reselect delegates, they can try to seat whatever delegates were chosen in the discounted primaries by appealing to the Democratic Convention’s Credentialing Committee, which includes many members from Rules and Bylaws.
Myth: If they don’t get seated until the convention but a nominee is selected before these poor people get counted then these states are disenfranchised.
There are two ways to debunk this myth: semantically and practically. The first is based on the word “disenfranchised:” these people have not been deprived of their right to vote. Through the actions of their states, their votes don’t impact the outcome. Now, you may say that that is specious semantics (Myth: I do say that!) but practically speaking, this is the usual effect of the nominating process, anyway. All of the Republican primaries since McCain clinched the nomination have been meaningless, but those voters are not disenfranchised.
Florida and Michigan tried to become more relevant in the process by breaking the rules. They risked becoming irrelevant instead.
Myth: Well, I say they are disenfranchised, and Hillary Clinton is their champion.
Only when it suits her. Last fall, when the decision was first made to flush 100% of Michigan and Florida delegates, Clinton firmly ratified it. That was because the typical punishment of only 50% representation also kept the candidates from raising money in those states. Figuring that she would wrap up the nomination handily anyway, the clear front-runner agreed with all the other candidates – including Obama – to completely “disenfranchise” those two states.
Myth: Well, never mind 2007. She’s doing more now to bring them in.
Not really. Recent stories in the St. Petersburg Times political blog said that 1) the Obama camp has reached out to the Florida Democratic party about a compromise and that 2) the Clinton camp will discuss nothing else but re-votes, which are legally, practically and politically dead.
Myth: Whatever! Hillary can still win! I know she can! She and her 37% positive rating will sweep through the remaining primaries and Michigan and Florida, winning 70% of everything and superdelegates will flock to her banner and Barack Obama will personally nominate her at the Convention and John McCain will give up and George Bush will even quit early so she can take over and… and… and… can I have a glass of water?
Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson told FOXNews.com late Sunday that Williams, a longtime Clinton ally, didn’t join Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign as a volunteer until after Delta Financial Corporation — for which Williams is a director — went bankrupt in December 2007.
That’s more than seven years after Williams joined New York-based Delta Financial in 2000. She became a director one month after a federal settlement was reached with the lender over discriminatory lending practices. More recently, Delta has been accused by consumer advocates of pursuing predatory practices throughout the housing boom and bust.
As of September 2007, Williams owned 12,500 shares of Delta’s common stock, and by 2007 had earned at least $175,000 for her board obligations, according to company filings available in the Securities & Exchange Commission online database.
…
Intently focused on the nation’s housing crisis in recent appearances, Clinton has been clear that sub-prime mortgage lenders, particularly in poor, working class urban neighborhoods shoulder much of the blame for the credit crunch.
…
But as it turns out, Clinton’s top aide is on the board of what had been — until its bankruptcy — the ninth-leading sub-prime lender in the nation, handling almost $800 million worth of sub-prime lending in the third quarter of 2007 alone, according to National Mortgage News.
Terrified that their bloody primary campaign will doom them in the November presidential elections in the US, some Democrats are floating a consolation prize for Hillary Clinton – Governor of New York State, according to a media report.
The travails of New York Governor David Paterson have opened up a new potential career path for Clinton, ‘Newsweek’ says quoting unidentified well-informed Democratic Party insiders.
They want Clinton, a New York Senator, to consider the option if she concludes after the April 22 Pennsylvania primary that she cannot overtake Barack Obama for the party’s presidential nomination.
Hillary Clinton, while fully committed to continuing her presidential campaign, was said to be open to discussing the idea, while her husband and former president Bill Clinton rejected it out of hand, the magazine says in its upcoming issue.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to see Hillary in a role where she is actually accountable for her decisions? The fact that Bill automatically opposed the idea is very telling.
There is something seriously ironic about a woman that will tell a bunch of rich people at a 2004 San Francisco fundraiser that she is going to “take things away from you on behalf of the common good”, referring to taking from the rich to give to the working class, and then proceed to stiff that same working class when she owes them monies for services rendered.
The Hillary Clinton campaign has avoided paying hundreds of bills and vendors and service providers are warning people to get paid up front before rendering any services to the Clinton campaign or they may not get paid at all.
Hillary Clinton’s determination to remain in the presidential race may spell bad news for small businesses in the states that have yet to vote.
Staff have left a trail of unpaid bills and trashed offices across America in the past three months, raising fresh doubts about the viability of her run for the Democratic nomination. A property manager who let rooms to the campaign last summer in Clinton, Iowa, said that he found rubbish, rotting food, holes drilled in the walls and permanent stains on the carpet. He did not receive unpaid rent until last month — but kept the $500 deposit to cover clean-up expenses.
In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, landlord Terry Bennett went to the media to complain about late payment from Clinton campaign tenants who, he said, “left enough trash for a small army” — but no rent. When he eventually got his cheque, he donated it to Barack Obama.
Ohio event management companies owed money by Mrs Clinton were quoted yesterday warning others to ask for money up front. Jim Phillips, the owner of Show Tyme Exhibits, said that he needed a $607 invoice settled. “I’m a small guy,” he said. “I could use that.”
The delayed payments may reflect her straitened circumstances after the most expensive battle for the Democratic nomination in history, in which she has recently been heavily outspent on advertising by Mr Obama.
Bill Clinton, in a weekend e-mail to supporters, underlined the urgent need for money before the end of March. “Our opponents and the media will scrutinise our fundraising reports and look for any sign of weakness,” he said.
Although February was her best month yet in fundraising, documents filed last week with the Federal Elections Commission show that at the end of that month Mrs Clinton’s total of $38 million in the bank was mostly money that can be spent only if she wins the nomination.
The Politico.com website reported that if she had paid off the $8.7 million in unpaid bills and not loaned her campaign $5 million, she would have had less than $2 million available for this month. Mr Obama would still have had $31 million cash-in-hand even if he had paid off the $625,000 owed to creditors.
Mrs Clinton’s biggest debts are to her pollsters, strategists and advertising consultants. She also has hundreds of outstanding bills for catering, security, printing and hiring venues. By the end of February, her campaign had not, for instance, reimbursed the Hy-Vee chain for making thousands of sandwiches on the night of the Iowa caucuses.
At other perilous junctures like the eve of the New Hampshire primary and the eve of Super Tuesday, the former First Lady highlighted her femininity during televised tearful moments. Now she is portraying the calls for her to quit as male chauvinism.
In comments leaked to the New York Times, Mrs Clinton is said to have told aides that she would not be “bullied out” of the White House race and in a conversation with two allies compared her plight to “big boys” trying to bully a woman.
Of course, this in no way impunes Hillary’s ability to act as Commander in Chief. As long as any international leaders aren’t bullies, too!
At a stop in rural Pennsylvania on Thursday, Bill told the gathering that McCain is a “moderate” who “has given all you can give for this country without dying for it.”
He said McCain is on the right side in opposing the torture of enemy combatants and on the global warming issue, which “just about crosses the bridge for [Republicans].”
Clinton also told the audience that the race should not about the past, but about who is going to do more for the country in the future, ABC News reported. That person, he said, is Hillary.
One week ago Clinton expressed similar sentiments at a gathering in North Carolina, calling McCain a war hero who had demonstrated his love for his country.
Clinton noted that McCain supported campaign finance reform and “he doesn’t think global warming is a myth … so it is not going to be all that easy to beat him.”
Bill is clearly setting up the stage for the inevitable democrat nominee to lose to John McCain. Bill knows that Hillary currently has a snowball’s chance in Hades, and Barack Obama will be McCain’s challenger. Bill also knows that if Obama manages to take the prize from McCain, Hillary will be shut out for 2012. BUT, if McCain wins in November, Hillary can take him on in four years, when he’ll be an even weaker opponent due to four years of media bashing by the democrat hand-holders (known as the MSM).
“Right now, among all the primary states, believe it or not, Hillary’s only 16 votes behind in pledged delegates,” said the former president, “and she’s gonna wind up with the lead in the popular vote in the primary states. She’s gonna wind up with the lead in the delegates [from primary states].”
There are 40 primary states and territories; 18 caucuses.
“It’s the caucuses that have been killing us,” Bill Clinton said. “We can still win this thing. We’re gonna have a big victory in Pennsylvania. It’s gonna change the psychology even further, but we need your help.”
Other ways Sen. Hillary Clinton could be the nominee through creative math:
* Only count Arkansas and the states that border it (except for Mississippi, Louisiana and Missouri);
* Only count the votes of people who have heard Chelsea speak in person;
* Ballots en espanol only;
* Nomination determined by who does better in NCAA pool.
“I’m indebted to Hillary Clinton for the revelation that my global wanderings when my dad was president qualify me to run for the presidency myself.
Mrs. Clinton has been insisting that her global junkets as first lady, and her meetings with foreign leaders, qualify her to be president of these United States.
I never thought of it that way, but if she is correct then I am eminently qualified to follow my father’s footsteps and take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., not merely as a member of the president’s family, but as president in my own right.
Hillary, who even the media now admit will say or do anything to win election, is using her past as first lady to attempt to sell the American people on her expertise in foreign policy, a claim largely based on her travels during her husband’s administration and the fact that she met with world leaders while junketing abroad.
Well I’ll match my global travels and meetings with world leaders against hers any time, and I’ll come out on top.
As a member of the president’s immediate family I traveled far and wide, accompanied by an entourage of Secret Service agents, as are all members of a president’s family. And because I was the son of a sitting president, my presence in their country — no matter what the reason for my visit — was treated by their leaders as an official visit and I was accorded the treatment given to such official guests.
Moreover, I was present during times of crisis when momentous decisions were made affecting foreign policy. For example, I was in a suite in the Century Plaza Hotel when my father gave Attorney General Ed Meese the authority to order our military to shoot down Moammar Gadhafi’s aircraft in the Gulf of Sidra.
Following Hillary’s reasoning, that experience qualifies me as an expert of military matters relating to foreign affairs capable of knowing what to do in a moment of crisis.
Hillary’s widely-touted experience is not at all unique. Any member of any presidential family has had similar experiences but not one of them ever even suggested that their travel and meetings with foreign leaders qualified them to be president of the United States.
Nancy Reagan, for example, had far more experience than Hillary, but she was content to be the loving wife of a president instead of crowing about the famous world leaders she met in her eight years as first lady and claiming it qualified her to be president. Unlike Hillary, Nancy tells the truth.
A State Department official in charge of the department during two of the three breaches into the passport files of Sen. Barack Obama has a direct tie to Bill and Hillary Clinton and department officials are investigating whether she furnished information to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Maura Harty was in charge of the Bureau Of Consular Affairs during the first two breaches of Obama’s passport. Former President Bill Clinton appointed her to an ambassadorship during his Presidency.
Harty retired last month from the State Department. She joined the State Department in 2002 after serving as ambassador to Paraguay for two years of Bill Clinton’s Presidential term. Sources within the State Department told Capitol Hill Blue this morning that revelations of the first two passport breaches surfaced only after Harty left her State Department job.
Hillary Clinton’s been all the news this week, after she “misspoke” about Whitewater, Travelgate, missing files, suspicious pardons, Johnny Chung and cattle futures. Oh wait, after she “misspoke” about Bosnia. Oh wait, same thing.
That’s one way to make sense of the unrelenting, unforgiving, 24/7 news coverage of Mrs. Clinton’s fictional telling of Bosnian sniper fire and the subsequent debunking of her every word. In a nasty primary battle that has already featured racial slurs and Chicago slum lords, missing tax documents, and a “monster,” you might expect this slip-up to have been yet another blip in the media cycle.
[Hillary Clinton]
But that would have been to deny the press, the pundits, Democrats, and even Barack Obama, the catharsis of finally — finally! — getting a chance to confront the Clintons’ questionable mores. Hillary’s and Bill’s scandals have been the elephant in the primary room ever since she first signaled a run. Yet up to now everyone has been too scared, or too loyal, or too weary to touch the ugly past. Her Bosnia misspeak is now serving as proxy for all the truths about the Clintons’ non-truths, allowing even liberals to break free from their Clinton dependence.
And how liberating it is! The video of Mrs. Clinton’s speech about Bosnian sniper fire, twinned with real footage of calmly strolling down the Tuzla tarmac, has been running on one continuous TV loop. Reporters have dug up every last person who accompanied her on the sedate trip to pour a little more salt in the wound. “The Audacity of Hoax,” yelled a blog posting in the liberal Nation magazine, which innocently asked: “What else is she fibbing about?” Bill Burton, Barack Obama’s spokesman, gleefully noted that Mrs. Clinton’s recent attacks on his candidate were designed to deflect attention away from her “made up” Bosnia story. Heavy emphasis on the “made up” part. No need to mention Vince Foster, Red Bone, Marc Rich or Webster Hubbell. All this will do.
A Michigan man facing federal criminal charges of illegally working for Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Intelligence Service says he met with Hillary Clinton at the White House in May 1996.
In a 1997 interview with this reporter, Muthanna Hanooti said that at the meeting, Mrs. Clinton was “very receptive” to his request for an easing of the American sanctions on Iraq that were in place at the time. He said Mrs. Clinton “passed a message to the State Department” about the need to implement the oil-for-food deal, which was intended to allow Saddam to sell billions of dollars’ worth of oil to pay for food for Iraqi citizens.
She claimed that she came under sniper fire when she visited in Bosnia in 1996, but was contradicted by videotape showing her sauntering off the plane and stopping on the tarmac to listen to a little girl read her a poem.
Similarly, John Kerry’s claim to heroism in Vietnam was contradicted by 264 Swift Boat Veterans who served with him. His claim to having been on a secret mission to Cambodia for President Nixon on Christmas 1968 was contradicted not only by all of his commanders — who said he would have been court-martialed if he had gone anywhere near Cambodia — but also the simple fact that Nixon wasn’t president on Christmas 1968.
In Hillary’s defense, she probably deserves a Purple Heart about as much as Kerry did for his service in Vietnam.
Also, unlike Kerry, Hillary acknowledged her error, telling the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke.” (What if she’s sleep-deprived when she gets that call on the red phone at 3 a.m., imagines a Russian nuclear attack and responds with mutual assured destruction? Oops. “It proves I’m human.”)
The reason no one claims Hillary is being “swiftboated” is that the definition of “swiftboating” is: “producing irrefutable evidence that a Democrat is lying.” And for purposes of her race against matinee idol B. Hussein Obama, Hillary has become the media’s honorary Republican.
In liberal-speak, only a Democrat can be swiftboated. Democrats are “swiftboated”; Republicans are “guilty.” So as an honorary Republican, Hillary isn’t being swiftboated; she’s just lying.
Indeed, instead of attacking the people who produced a video of Hillary’s uneventful landing in Bosnia, the mainstream media are the people who discovered that video.
I’ve always wondered how a Democrat would fare being treated like a Republican by the media. Now we know.
Hillary Clinton is sporting the lowest personal ratings of the campaign. Moreover, her 37 percent positive rating is the lowest the NBC/WSJ poll has recorded since March 2001, two months after she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York.
Back in 1992 when candidate Bill Clinton had the opportunity to tell intrusive questioners where to go when they asked about his underpants, he chickened out. And answered.
Not so, Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea.
The only child of the former president and Sen. Hillary Clinton has been out on her own impressing crowds across the country in recent weeks stumping for her mom. Presumably, the question had to come at some point. And presumably Chelsea was ready.
There she was in Indianapolis talking to a crowd of maybe 200 students at Butler University, seeking votes for the state’s May 6 primary. It was near the end of the session when some guy asked Chelsea if her mother’s credibility had been injured by the infamous sexual relationship her father had with the White House intern.
“Wow,” said Chelsea, “you’re the first person actually that’s ever asked me that question in the, I don’t know, maybe 70 college campuses I’ve now been to.”
Then, she fired: “And I do not think that is any of your business.”
So, Chelsea has been to 70 college campuses and has never been asked the most obvious question on everyone’s mind? That, in itself, points out the intellectual collusion among our institutes of higher learning. Rather than being an environment where people are encouraged to consider many sides to issues, universities use the shield of political correctness to avoid dealing with uncomfortable issues.
And you’re wrong, Chelsea. It is our business to consider how a person who is now attempting to get elected President of the United States handled an issue that caused the impeachment of our country’s commander in chief. The fact that the impeached president was her husband has no bearing on the situation. And by never admitting, to this day, that she was wrong, Hillary showed that her allegiance was, as is still, with her husband (or rather, her political future) rather than with facts and law of the land.
Also telling, is the insertion in the story that it was not the media who asked the longed for question. This being the same media who has never questioned Bill Clinton in the rape of Juanita Broaddrick.
Hillary Clinton got caught in a lie recently, a whopper about being under fire in a so-called combat zone, a well-rehearsed lie she has been telling on the campaign trail for months.
When the truth came out, as it so often does in the microscopic world of politics, she shrugged her shoulders and dismissed it by saying:
I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.
Calling her tall tales of running and ducking for a cover a “mistake” is massive understatement. Her claim about being human leaves an opening that’s ripe for comment but we won’t go there.
Clinton’s campaign for President is built on a mountain of lies. She says she brokered peace in Northern Island. The man who did broker the peace — and who won a Nobel Prize for his honest efforts — says her claims are a crock.
Ron Fournier of The Associated Press writes an excellent analysis of Clinton’s vague association with the truth:
During a speech last week on Iraq, Clinton stretched the truth to the breaking point. “I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia and … there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the first lady. That’s where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
Hogwash. The truth is:
– There was no sniper fire.
– Nobody ducked for cover.
– Bad weather, not security concerns, kept her husband from making the same trip a few months earlier.
Clinton and her aides stood behind the story — which she has told more than once — until video surfaced showing the former first lady, her daughter, Chelsea, and their entourage strolling off the plane and walking calmly across the tarmac.
What makes Clinton’s situation unique — and the Bosnia embellishments so damaging — is the fact that the New York senator has built her candidacy on the illusion of experience. Any attack on her credentials is a potential Achilles heel.
As first lady, she did not attend National Security Council meetings, did not receive the presidential daily briefing on terrorism and other threats and did not have a top level security clearance. Her foreign trips were glorified goodwill tours, a collection of photo opportunities and sightseeing trips.
Yet her lies about being under fire, used as a questionable way to justify her claim of being qualified “from day one” to be commander-in-chief are an insult to every man and woman who served their nation and actually came under fire. Anyone who has been under fire in a combat situation will tell you that it’s not something you forget and it’s certainly not something that you simply “misspeak” about.
To accept Clinton’s ludicrous claims that she “misspoke” means accepting the fact that she misspoke at least three times during the campaign. Each time, she added more embellishment to the story. When challenged with the facts, her first claim was that she was “sleep deprived” and because of lack of sleep she wasn’t in full control of her memory or faculties.
This from the woman who wants us to believe that she will be the best person to answer that ringing phone at 3 in the morning.
Perhaps it’s not so baffling that the House of Clinton is eager to demonize Barack Obama as too inexperienced to be president, and that it slyly stokes suspicions about his patriotism and allegiance to the United States, belittles his uplifting speeches as hot air and continues the ugly, destructive fight for the Democratic nomination against steepening odds.
Indisputably, the Clinton machine is providing grist for Republican John McCain to use against Obama if he’s the Democratic presidential nominee—certified charges from no less than Democrats Hillary and Bill that Obama’s too inexperienced, lacking sufficient patriotism, a man of ready talk but no solutions.
Could this be the final Clinton strategy as her chances appear bleaker every day—helping McCain win the White House so Hilary could run for president in 2012? (McCain would be too old for a second term.)
This notion would be considered unthinkable, almost the delusions of a psychotic. Would any Democrat dare purposely sabotage another Democrat to pave the way for a Republican president?
The Clintons, mind you, are not ordinary or rational Democrats. The Clintons are megalomaniacal in their hunger for power. What has long been suspected has been confirmed by a few Clinton staffers bitter about Obama’s rise in popularity—they believe Hillary is “entitled” to be president. The nation owes her. The nation cannot survive without her.
Two facts support the notion of a self-destructive last stand by Hillary and Bill.
First, their tactics haven’t increased her lead over Obama or won any superdelegate support. She’s lost 60 superdelegates in the past month, according to Politico.com.
Second, Obama was leading McCain in double digits—and now McCain is leading and approved by 67 percent of Americans, since the Clintons unleashed their wreck-and-ruin tactics.
Experts in these matters calculate Hillary Clinton has a 10 percent or less chance of the nomination. That percentage is bound to shrivel as the self-destruction continues. Her claim of visiting Bosnia under sniper fire as proof of her “experience” has been exposed as fiction. Her believability is bound to suffer, increasing doubts about her character to be commander-in-chief.
Whatever else the Clinton legacy, their most outstanding feature is a proclivity for shaming themselves and their nation.
Bill did it with his cheap peccadillo with Monica Lewinsky in an anteroom just outside the Oval Office and his lies thereafter.
Now Hillary, overcome by peevishness, would destroy her party’s chances for the presidency by sabotaging her Democratic rival to aid the fortunes of a Republican. She seems indifferent to the personal cost of being banished to the political graveyard.
The New Mexico governor made the searing remarks appearing on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace.
Asked about James Carville’s comments, as reported in the New York Times Saturday, that Richardson’s endorsement of Barack Obama was comparable to “when Judas sold out [Jesus] for 30 pieces of silver,” an angry Richardson told Wallace, “I’m not going to get in the gutter like that.”
Then he followed with a blistering attack on the Clinton’s inner circle.
“And you know, that’s typical of many of the people around Senator Clinton. They think they have a sense of entitlement to the presidency.”
There are few, if any, meetings with Cabinet members, congressional leaders, the National Security Council, the National Economic Council, leaders of the Irish peace process, players in the Bosnian crisis or representatives from Rwanda. All of her so-called experience is absent from her daily schedule. What’s there, for us all to see, is one soft event after another, a schedule far more typical of such first ladies as Mamie Eisenhower or Lady Bird Johnson than of a future presidential candidate.
This near-total paucity of participation in policy-making dovetails with our recollection of her White House role. In 1995 and 1996, she largely toured the country, speaking at ceremonial events, wrote a book (“It Takes A Village”) and toured the world. During her international travels, there was no serious diplomacy, just a virtually endless round of meetings with women, visiting arts-and-crafts centers, watching native industries and photo opportunities for the local media.
President Clinton’s memoirs reflect this absence of substance. The book contains only a handful of mentions of his wife that aren’t related to their joint travel, her health care-reform program or her ceremonial duties. The Hillary she now claims to be was nowhere evident.
Hillary Clinton was deeply involved in the White House’s inner workings only from the time of Bill’s election through the Democratic defeat in the congressional elections of 1994. She played a key role in choosing the Cabinet and staff, in crafting the health care-reform legislation and in relations with the Democratic Congress.
But Bill Clinton saw his loss of Congress as owing to Hillary’s policies and ideas. He felt that his presidency had been captured by a liberal phalanx that included the first lady and such staffers as George Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes. He realized the need to move to the center and exiled Hillary from the White House, asking her to mix the largely ceremonial duties of her “job” with writing, speaking and policy advocacy. Her key role in the White House was a thing of the past – and remained so through all of 1995, 1996 and 1997.
Only in January 1998 did Hillary come back to real power – in order to lead the defense to the Monica Lewinsky scandal and prevent Bill’s impeachment. Of course, after April 1999, she was consumed with her New York Senate race.
So Hillary’s experience, real enough in 1993-94, led to a total disaster, the first loss of the House for the Democrats in 40 years. Her experience in 1998-99 was focused almost exclusively on defending against impeachment, hardly relevant for the future. But her schedule shows the vacuity of her experience in the years in between – the key years of the Clinton presidency – when the budget was balanced, the economy turned around, welfare reformed, Bosnia transformed and Kosovo freed.
The latest delegate count posted on realclearpolitics.com shows that Hillary’s lead among superdelegates, once a comfortable 60 votes, has now been cut almost in half, to 36 delegates. The latest tally has Hillary leading among superdelegates by 247 to 211. So, with 57 percent of the superdelegates decided, Hillary’s lead is shrinking.
In fact, Barack Obama’s total delegate lead has swelled to 163 votes among elected delegates and 127 among all delegates. With 1,614 votes, he isn’t far from the 2,025 he would need, without Florida or Michigan, to win the nomination.
Of the remaining 566 delegates to be selected, Hillary should enjoy a slight edge. She’ll probably win Pennsylvania (158 delegates), Indiana (72), Kentucky (51), West Virginia (28), and Puerto Rico (55). Obama will likely win North Carolina (115), Oregon (52), Montana (16), South Dakota (15) and Guam (4). If this turns out to be so, Hillary would lead in states with 364 delegates, while Obama would prevail in states with 202. But even if we assume 10-point wins for each candidate in each state (and the margin will likely be much tighter), all Hillary would get from her states is 36 more delegates while Obama would get 20 from his — still leaving Obama with a lead of 147 in elected delegates.
At that point, Obama would have about 1,900 votes, within spitting distance of the 2,025 he’d need to win. Hillary would have to win the remaining superdelegates by a top-heavy margin of 2:1 in order to win (steal) the nomination from Obama, who will have won the most elected delegates.
Even if we factor in possible do-over primaries in Florida and Michigan, the nature of the proportional representation process is not likely to change this outcome significantly. Hillary might get an extra 20 delegates if she wins both states, but she’s not likely to get more.
Can Hillary carry the remaining super delegates by 2:1 when she is carrying the ones who have committed by only 247 to 211? Not very likely. The pressure on these delegates to vote as their states voted will be very intense and few are likely to stand up to it.
Remember that these superdelegates are either elected officials in their own right, which means that they need to get re-elected, or party officials in the various states whose ears are very close to the ground. Particularly in caucus states that Obama carried heavily, they are not about to antagonize the party activists who backed Obama by undercutting their will and switching to Hillary.
In fact, the track record of the super delegates so far indicates that they are abandoning Hillary and signing up with Obama as his delegate lead mounts.
So even if the Clintons try as hard as they can (and they will) to steal his election, their chances of doing so are getting increasingly remote.
A little more than a week ago front pages across the country joined 24-hour news networks and the World Wide Web in declaring that Sen. Hillary Clinton had forged a dramatic comeback against Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic nomination.
But how could that be? Didn’t Clinton take three of the four states voting for nominees on March 4, including the two biggies, Texas and Ohio? Well, yes and no.
Clinton did win Ohio by a significant margin and as a result received 74 delegates to Obama’s 65. But in Texas, while Clinton did indeed win the primary, Obama handily won the caucuses which that state also uses to determine allocation of delegates. They finally ended up counting the caucus votes on Tuesday. When all was said and done, Obama had captured 99 delegates in Texas to Clinton’s 95. And, as the political analysts keep telling us, it’s all about the delegates.
In the other March 4 contests the pair split the small states, Obama taking Vermont. while Clinton won in Rhode Island. Add up all the delegates from the four races and Clinton walked away with 187 to Obama’s 181. That’s right, for all the hoopla and breathless talk of a Clinton revival, she gained only six delegates, according to figures compiled by CNN.
Since then Obama has won two more states — Wyoming and Mississippi — capturing 17 of the 28 delegates up for grabs. Put it all together and you find that since Clinton began her “comeback,” Obama has increased his committed delegate lead by two. There was no comeback.
Remember when Hillary Clinton moved to New York and adopted it as her home by idiotically putting on a Yankees hat? And remember how Hillary Clinton tried to head into Illinois and claim that no, no, she’s from there too? And then remember how she implied that her Wellsley and Yale roots meant she was from Massachusetts and Connecticut in the lead up to those states’ primaries? And then remember during the Texas primary she claimed she also had deep roots in south Texas?
Well, now she’s claiming she’s actually from Pennsylvania – a convenient announcement just a few weeks ahead of Pennsylvania’s primary.
I just got this from her campaign in my email box:
Dear David,
Hillary has always had deep family roots in Pennsylvania and lifelong memories of her time spent there as a child. Her grandparents came to Pennsylvania over a century ago, and her father, Hugh Rodham, was born and raised in Scranton — and then went on to play football for the Penn State Nittany Lions. Hillary has always been connected to Pennsylvania and that’s why she has always carried with her the images and voices of the people she came to know. Coming back to Pennsylvania this week has been more like a homecoming…
Yes, she cares so much about Scranton that she spent the last decade championing the same NAFTA that has destroyed that part of Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Why do the Clintons always treat the public like we are just drop-dead stupid?
This point was apparently made to disqualify Barack Obama from the No. 2 vice president job that he says he would never want and Hillary Clinton herself brought up last week and has talked about several times along with her husband but now they’ve decided the Illinois senator hasn’t passed the commander in chief test that he’s never taken and no one knows what it is anyway.
Which got us to thinking. What do you suppose a commander in chief test looks like? What do you have to know how to do to become commander in chief? And how, by the way, do we know whether Sen. Clinton has passed or even taken the commander in chief test?
Her campaign has not released Clinton’s commander in chief test, which….
fits because she hasn’t released her recent years’ income taxes either or the vast volume of documents from her first lady days that she says constitute so many of those 35 years of valuable experience that qualify her to be commander in chief.
So the entire world is left to guess what exactly is on Hillary Clinton’s commander in chief test. Which may be what her campaign wants. Because, in point of fact, if you think about it, Obama and John McCain are actually a tad bit closer to being the commander in chief since Obama leads in popular votes, states and Democratic delegates and McCain has already locked up the Republican nomination, unless Ron Paul really turns it on here in the next few weeks.
I was listening to Randi Rhodes during the commute this afternoon and she mentioned an intriguing possibility.
Bill doesn’t want Hillary to win. Sure, he’ll look like he’s giving it his best, but the facts on the ground tell a different tale. A tale of an unhappy husband and a frustrated former President.
For example, these verbal gaffes he engages in from time to time while stumping for his wife — do they sound like a caring husband who really wants his wife’s dream to come true, or do they sound more like an unhappy husband doing his umpteenth penance for finding some pathetic solace outside his barren, purely convenient, marriage?
I really do not believe Bill Clinton wants Hillary to be President of the United States. I could say that this is because he is a selfish cad who wants to be the only Commander and Chief of his broken little family. But I think — no, I feel — that Bill knows the stresses of the job and at some point during this campaign it has occurred even to him that his wife is completely incapable of being the Commander in Chief of a dying superpower. He found himself out of his element on more than one occasion — one being painstakingly documented by the lurid and sadistic Kenneth Starr — and those times, while not the best in world history, certainly were not as far gone as they are now. The US Treasury has been bankrupted, the real estate market is tanking, the stock market is beginning its death rattle and every punk on every street corner throughout the world is going to introduce themselves to a beaten and abused military machine. Bill knows what he had to go through to get Reagan’s largesse under control. I think Bill clearly sees, as anyone with a head for numbers sees, that there is no way out of this mess we are in. The Bush Crime Family has all of us in a box canyon at high noon.
Bill knows, deep down, that Hillary and her temperment are not a good mix for a job that has quickly become a trip into the hottest, darkest most sulfur-smoldering parts of hell on Earth. No one in their right mind would want to become a person whose very nervous system would become the private property of the Federal Reserve system and, as such, would be tossed onto the ashheap of history when all was said and done.
And how do we know that Hillary is cratering under the pressure of this campaign and the disintegration of her marriage? I think former Senator Gary Hart captured it best in his most recent entry over at Huffington Post when he said, “She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her.” And in so doing Hillary Clinton has broken the “final rule” of politics. I couldn’t agree more.
Ladies and gentlemen, Hillary Clinton is a monster and she hasn’t even darkened the door of the Oval Office. The stimulation is too great even for a woman of Hillary’s former caliber. Like all addicts who must “shoot the Moon” every so often to capture that ultimate experience that seems to have eluded them years ago, Hillary is now spiking herself like a scorpion running out of a bonfire. She is stinging herself repeatedly to kill the pain of the burn because the numbing effect of the toxin feels better than the sting and ache of burning flesh. One sting too many, one last hit from the crack pipe, and life as it was known before is no more. Self destruction feels better than facing the reality of the facts as put before you.
Celebi is listed as a “Hillraiser” on the Clinton website, meaning he has raised more than $100,000 for her campaign.
When the New York Post first reported on the movie last month, the newspaper said a Clinton campaign official did not get back to them for comment. Renewed questions in the blogosphere, including postings on the political websites of ABC News and The Atlantic Magazine, produced this answer from Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson: “He will no longer be raising money for the campaign.”
In her efforts to establish tough foreign policy cred, Sen. Clinton has cited a harrowing flight into Bosnia during fighting there, with the “threat of sniper fire” forcing a “corkscrew” landing. “If the place was too small, too dangerous or too poor, send Hillary,” she said while describing the trip in Iowa.
The effectiveness of the Bosnia credential has been undercut a bit by disclosure that she was accompanied on her harrowing flight by Chelsea, Sheryl Crow and the entertainer Sinbad. Now, Sinbad has spoken out, and scoffed at Hillary’s claims, describing it as nothing more than a standard USO trip to entertain troops:
“What kind of president would say, ‘Hey, man, I can’t go ’cause I might get shot so I’m going to send my wife…oh, and take a guitar player and a comedian with you.’”
He apparently didn’t find it as harrowing as Hillary: “I think the only ‘red-phone’ moment was: ‘Do we eat here or at the next place.’”
And he never heard anything about sniper fire: “I never felt that I was in a dangerous position. I never felt being in a sense of peril, or ‘Oh, God, I hope I’m going to be OK when I get out of this helicopter or when I get out of his tank.’”
A team from Brazil’s Labor Ministry found “degrading” living conditions for 133 sugarcane workers employed by an ethanol company whose investors include former President Clinton and other high-profile financial players.
At five sites inspected, workers “complained they were suffering from hunger and cold, and all of the locations were overcrowded and with terrible sanitary conditions,” according to a statement issued Friday by Jaqueline Carrijo, who led the inspections last month.
The target of the probe, Brazil Renewable Energy Co., known as Brenco, apologized over the weekend and said it is fixing the problems at its rural operations, which turn sugarcane into ethanol.
Clinton’s connection is via an investment in Brenco by The Yucaipa Cos., a U.S.-based fund in which Clinton was a senior advisor until last year. His investment in Brenco is valued between $15,001 and $50,000, according to a financial dislosure report submitted last year by his wife, presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
If the story catches on, it will likely strike a decidedly sour note with many Democrats — and adds to the increasing instances in this campaign that anything will be done to get votes.
Why? Because Limbaugh is considered the quintessential demonizer of Democrats by Democrats and this means the former President was trying to help the conservative talk show host’s efforts to get Republicans to cross over in the Texas primary to vote for Hillary Clinton.
There is an irony here since Bill Clinton helped Limbaugh become quite a wealthy man over the years. But here it seems to be “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
The “crime” is made worse by the fact that the avowed purpose of Limbaugh and those talkers who joined him in this effort to get GOP crossovers was to a) throw a monkey wrench into Obama’s string of victories and break his momentum b) help force the Democratic battle for the nomination to go on longer and become more bitter in order to weaken the Democrats and help Republican chances c) get Senator Clinton as candidate because some Republicans perceived her as the weaker candidate.
Even worse: the Clinton’s have not been easily accessible to some PROGRESSIVE talk show hosts such as Ed Schultz.
But it turns out as if there apparently was a mutual overlap of interests here — the desire of Limbaugh, his fill-in host that day and other conservatives to influence the race and the former President to do whatever it took to get every single vote for Hillary Clinton, even if it meant crossover votes from Republicans who wanted to weaken the Democrats. Crossover, schmossover, weaken Obama, schmeaken Obama — as long as it’s a vote for Hillary…
“If you are a voter from Florida or Michigan, you know that we should count your vote,” Clinton said during a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington.
“The nearly 2.5 million Americans in those two states who participated in the primary elections are in danger of being excluded from our democratic process — and I think that’s wrong.”
Clinton repeated her campaign’s proposed solution: Either honor the votes as cast in the two states’ primaries, or hold new primaries.
Obama’s spokesperson was not immediately available to respond to Clinton’s remarks.
Clinton won the Michigan and Florida primaries, but the Democratic National Committee is not honoring the results because the states broke party rules and held their contests early. Neither candidate campaigned in the states and Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot.
Obama’s campaign has said that the states’ delegates should be evenly divided between the candidates because the states broke the rules.
Australian-born Greer, here to promote her new book, launched into the candidate, saying she was unappealing to feminists as her political reputation was largely due to her marriage to former US president Bill Clinton.
“I don’t like Hillary because she’s so bossy and cold and manipulative and stuff, and I don’t think having her in power is going to make any difference, basically, because she will have the same set of advisers,” Greer said.
“I can’t see that Hillary would appeal to feminists because, why is she there? She is there because she is Bill’s wife, and it’s a bit useless to pretend, ‘Oh, it’s because of her wonderful job as a senator,’” she told Australia’s Nine Network late Monday.
“I just don’t think it’s true. When she had a big job in government, she blew it,” said the British-based Greer, referring to Hillary Clinton’s work on health issues during her husband’s administration.
Greer, who has made headlines with provocative attacks on the likes of Diana, Princess of Wales and the late Australian “crocodile hunter” Steve Irwin, said she knew the Clintons personally.
She attacked the former first couple’s marital style, saying the pair enjoyed a “confederacy” or business partnership, rather than an emotional relationship.
“They give me the creeps, from that point of view,” Greer said.
Clinton herself declined to comment on the comparison, made by her chief spokesman in a conference call with reporters and also in a memo distributed by the campaign.
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said Obama’s statement that he plans to be more critical of Clinton’s record is reminiscent of the attacks the Clintons endured during the investigations in the 1990s.”
The worst insult that a Democrat can lob against a fellow Democrat is to compare him to Ken Starr, the independent counsel who was obsessed with uncovering Bill Clinton’s sex life.
Obama has waged a tenacious but circumspect campaign that is beyond reproach. Hillary has more scandals than a dog has fleas, but Obama has refrained from using any of them against her. If Obama was a sex-obsessed misfit like Starr, he would have questioned Hillary’s sexual orientation. But Obama is a gentlemen, who would never play the gay card against his opponent.
Barack is not mining the mud that the Clinton’s wallow in, he is simply asking Hillary to release her tax records.
You would think that Hillary was a paragon of virtue, but she is the opposite: A politician who will do anything to gain power. In the last few weeks she has thrown everything, including the kitchen sink, at Barack Obama.
By comparing Obama to Starr Hillary is attempting to portray herself as a victim. A bully always paints himself as a victim: Everyone hates me, that’s why I took that kid’s lunch money.
Hillary is not a victim and Obama is not Ken Starr. Hillary’s machinations are so transparent; I hope voters are not deceived. A Hillary administration will plunge this country into scandals and malaise.
“The bigger the lie, the better the chance they think they’ve got. That’s been their whole approach,” the Obama backer told The Sunday Times. “She’s going to lose a whole generation of people who got involved in politics believing it could be something different.”
Bradley, the former New Jersey whose presidential candidacy has drawn comparisons with Obama’s run, also slammed Bill Clinton on “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” Wednesday, as the Christian Science Monitor reports.
“Are there favors attached to $500,000 or $1 million contributions?” Bradley said in reference to Clinton’s decision not to disclose contributors to his presidential library. “And what do I mean by favors? I mean, pardons that are granted, investigations that are squelched, contracts that are awarded, regulations that are delayed.”
Back on public display are Hillary’s marvelous shape-shifting abilities. Since the beginning of the campaign, we have seen shifts from the Commander-in-Chief Hillary to the teary Victim Hillary. But in just the last ten days, we’ve watched:
Hillary gracious: “I am so honored to be sitting on this stage with Barack Obama.”
Hillary resigned: “And you know, whatever happens, we’ll be fine.”
Hillary school-marmish: “Shame on you, Barack Obama!”
Hillary feisty: “I am in the solution business, my opponent is in the promises business.”
And Hillary exultant: “We’re going on, we’re going strong, and we’re going all the way.”
So in just a couple of weeks she’s traversed, far and wide, the emotional and behavioral map — even flirting with the notion of a highly unlikely Clinton-Obama ticket. In her Mississippi speeches, even her accent seemed to change, as she morphed from the blue-collar Ohio worker to the wife of the kind of guy who can host a fish-fry in Tupelo. (Wonder if Big Bill did his Elvis imitation for the hometown folks.)
Obama, who leads by about 100 delegates after 45 Democratic contests, ridiculed the Hillary camp for arguing that he is not ready to be commander-in-chief, but could be her number two. “If I’m not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?” he said, drawing laughter from supporters at a rally on Monday in Columbus, Mississippi.
Obama said Hillary’s team was “trying to hoodwink you.” “With all due respect, I’ve won twice as many states as Hillary. I’ve won more of the popular vote than senator Clinton. I have more delegates than senator Clinton,” he said. “So I don’t know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who’s in first place.”
US presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s camp has called on his rival Hillary Clinton to fire history-blazing supporter Geraldine Ferraro, after she put the Illinois Senator’s stunning rise down to his race.
The latest controversy comes as primary voters in Mississippi cast their ballots in the latest instalment of the dramatic Democratic White House race, with Senator Obama tipped for another victory.
Ms Ferraro, who sits on Senator Clinton’s finance committee and has spoken at her rallies, sparked the firestorm when she was quoted by a California newspaper as saying:
“I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama’s campaign – to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against.
“For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It’s been a very sexist media. Some just don’t like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.
“And if he was a woman he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
US Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton sidestepped questions on Monday about the sex scandal engulfing Eliot Spitzer, her home state governor and political ally.
“I don’t have any comment on that. Obviously I am sending my best wishes and thoughts to the governor and to his family,” Clinton said, opening her first campaign swing through Pennsylvania, which holds its presidential primary on April 22.
Spitzer apologized on Monday after he was accused of paying for sex with a call girl. Authorities say he was caught on a federal wiretap arranging a tryst with the woman at a Washington hotel room.
It was a blow to Clinton, who recently intensified her criticism of rival Barack Obama’s relationship with Antoin Rezko, a political patron on trial in federal court in Obama’s hometown of Chicago for alleged fraud and corruption.
While not personally close, Clinton and Spitzer have been friendly colleagues ever since the former first lady first ran for a US Senate in New York in 2000.
Her aides said Clinton deeply respected Spitzer’s work during his two terms as state attorney general, during which he became a national crusader against corporate corruption and Wall Street investment excesses.
Spitzer faced pressure to resign yesterday as well as questions about whether he would be prosecuted.
A New York Times report said he hired a US$1,000-an-hour prostitute and was caught on a wiretap at least six times on Feb. 12 and Feb. 13 arranging to meet her.
Spitzer, a married 48-year-old who investigated prostitution as attorney general, apologized for what he described as a “private matter,” but said nothing about resigning.
Hmm… a high ranking politician caught having sex with another woman. Now what other politician was impeached because of the same thing? Maybe Hillary could answer that.
The Clintons have always had a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward, propelled by a bloodlust for Republicans or uppity Democrats who dare to question their supremacy. You can’t escape; you can’t hide; and you can’t win. And these days, in the kinetic pace of the YouTube campaign, they are like the new 28 Days Later zombies. They come at you really quickly, like bats out of hell. Or Ohio, anyway.
When you look at the electoral map if the Clintons run again, you also see a reversion to the old patterns of the 1990s – the patterns that cynical political strategists such as Karl Rove and Dick Morris have been exploiting for two decades. The country – scrambled by the post-baby-boomer pragmatism of Obama – snaps back into classic red-blue mode, with the blue areas denoting Democratic-leaning states around the edge and true red Republican states in the heartlands.
The Clintons are comfortable with this polarisation. They need it. Even when running against a fellow Democrat, they instinctively reach for it. Last week, in response to the Obama camp’s request that they release their tax returns, Clinton’s spokesman called Obama a new Ken Starr. For the Clintons, all Democrats who oppose them are . . . Republicans. And all Republicans are evil.
And evil means that anything the Clintons do in self-defence is excusable – even playing the race card, and the Muslim card, and the gender card, and every sleazy gambit that the politics of fear can come up with. This is how they have arrested the Obama juggernaut. It’s the only game they know how to play.
Clinton has previously described her role in the Northern Ireland peace process as meeting with women’s groups to encourage them to build a political climate for peace.
Former Sen. George Mitchell, who was the lead U.S. negotiator, said Clinton’s visits were “very helpful.”
“She was especially involved in encouraging women to get involved in the peace process,” which was a “significant factor” in the agreement, Mitchell said in an interview.
But Tim Pat Coogan, an Irish historian who has written extensively on the conflict in Northern Ireland, said the first lady’s visits were not decisive in the negotiating breakthroughs in Northern Ireland.
“It was a nice thing to see her there, with the women’s groups. It helped, I suppose,” Coogan said. “But it was ancillary to the main thing. It was part of the stage effects, the optics.
“There were all kinds of peace movements, women’s movements throughout the ‘Troubles.’ But it was more about the clout of Bill Clinton,” added Coogan, who said Clinton administration decisions to grant visas to leaders of the Irish Republican Army’s political wing and appoint a U.S. negotiator were the keys to changing the political climate.
Beijing speech
One of Clinton’s most noteworthy forays onto the foreign stage came in 1995, when she delivered a speech at the United Nations’ women’s conference in Beijing. That speech was widely noted and hailed as a bold call for women’s rights, especially because Clinton explicitly spoke out against forced abortion and other practices of the host country.
“In the years since, I have met many women from many places who tell me they were at Beijing, or had friends who were, or who were inspired by the conference to launch initiatives,” Albright wrote in her 2003 memoir.
The speech might never have happened if the first lady had not pressed for it, said one former Clinton administration official sympathetic to her candidacy who traveled with her and Albright to Beijing. The administration was conflicted about whether Hillary Clinton should go to Beijing at all because of the regime’s record on human rights.
“Yet she was determined to go and was convinced that her going would send a very strong signal of support for human rights,” said the official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named. “Everyone at the end of the process almost certainly would have said, ‘How could we be so foolish to question the wisdom of the trip?’”
Still, Rice questioned whether that trip amounted to the kind of preparation for a global crisis that Clinton has claimed.
“How does going to Beijing and giving a speech show crisis management? There was no crisis. And there was nothing to manage,” Rice said.
Clinton herself declined to comment on the comparison, made by her chief spokesman in a conference call with reporters and also in a memo distributed by the campaign.
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said Obama’s statement that he plans to be more critical of Clinton’s record is reminiscent of the attacks the Clintons endured during the investigations in the 1990s.”
The worst insult that a Democrat can lob against a fellow Democrat is to compare him to Ken Starr, the independent counsel who was obsessed with uncovering Bill Clinton’s sex life.
Obama has waged a tenacious but circumspect campaign that is beyond reproach. Hillary has more scandals than a dog has fleas, but Obama has refrained from using any of them against her. If Obama was a sex-obsessed misfit like Starr, he would have questioned Hillary’s sexual orientation. But Obama is a gentlemen, who would never play the gay card against his opponent.
Barack is not mining the mud that the Clinton’s wallow in, he is simply asking Hillary to release her tax records.
You would think that Hillary was a paragon of virtue, but she is the opposite: A politician who will do anything to gain power. In the last few weeks she has thrown everything, including the kitchen sink, at Barack Obama.
By comparing Obama to Starr Hillary is attempting to portray herself as a victim. A bully always paints himself as a victim: Everyone hates me, that’s why I took that kid’s lunch money.
Hillary is not a victim and Obama is not Ken Starr. Hillary’s machinations are so transparent; I hope voters are not deceived. A Hillary administration will plunge this country into scandals and malaise.
“You won’t see me as a vice presidential candidate — you know, I’m running for president,” the Illinois Senator said in an interview with CBS. “We have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton, and have a higher popular vote, and I think we can maintain our delegate count.”
Former President Bill Clinton echoed his wife on Saturday in a campaign rally in Mississippi whose primary is set on Tuesday, saying a joint ticket pairing the two would be “almost unstoppable.”
“I know that she has always been open to it, because she believes that if you can unite the energy and the new people that he’s brought in and the people in these vast swaths of small town and rural America that she’s carried overwhelmingly, if had those two things together she thinks it’d be hard to beat,” he said.
So far, Obama has won 28 Democratic primaries and caucuses while Clinton won 17, including Florida and Michigan primaries that have been stripped all delegates who would vote at the nomination convention for violating the party’s rule.
Fortunately for the American people, Obama is smart enough to know that he can do much better for himself and our country than to drape around his neck the corrupt political machine of Hillary Clinton that is about to become a massive boat anchor.
Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to backpedal Friday from comments she made in October suggesting Mississippi was a backward place for women’s progress.
Speaking to radio station WJZD-FM in Gulfport, Miss., the former first lady said the comments she made about the state in the run up to the Iowa caucuses “were not exactly what I said,” even though they came directly from an interview she gave to the Des Moines Register in October.
“I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around,” he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely “the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets” during elections. “She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.”
The archivists’ decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.
Clinton’s legal agent declined the option of reviewing and releasing the documents that were withheld, said the archivists, who work for the federal government, not the Clintons.
The decision to withhold the records could provide fodder for critics who say that the former president and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, have been unwilling to fully release documents to public scrutiny.
Officials with the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., criticized Hillary Clinton this week for not doing more to see that records from her husband’s administration are made public. “She’s been reluctant to disclose information,” Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, told reporters in a conference call in which he specifically cited the slow release records from the Clinton library. “If she’s not willing to be open with (voters) on these issues now, why would she be open as president?”
While Obama has seen a dip in his popularity due to the recent news surrounding the Tony Rezko scandal, let’s not forget about Hillbilly and Peter Paul.
At the conclusion of a hearing tomorrow morning before California Superior Court Judge Aurelio N. Munoz, lawyers for Hollywood mogul Peter F. Paul will begin seeking sworn testimony from all three Clintons – Bill, Hillary and Chelsea – along with top Democratic Party leaders and A-list celebrities, including Barbra Streisand, John Travolta, Brad Pitt and Cher.
Paul’s team hopes for a trial in October. The Clintons’ longtime lawyer David Kendall, who will attend the hearing, has declined comment on the suit.
The Clintons have tried to dismiss the case, but the California Supreme Court, in 2004, upheld a lower-court decision to deny the motion.
Bill Clinton, according to the complaint, promised to promote Paul’s Internet entertainment company, Stan Lee Media, in exchange for stock, cash options and massive contributions to his wife’s 2000 Senate campaign. Paul contends he was directed by the Clintons and Democratic Party leaders to produce, pay for and then join them in lying about footing the bill for a Hollywood gala and fundraiser.
The Clintons’ legal counsel has denied the former president made any deal with Paul. But Paul attorney Colette Wilson told WND there are witnesses who say it was common knowledge at Stan Lee Media that Bill Clinton was preparing to be a rainmaker for the company after he left office.
Paul claims former Vice President Al Gore, former Democratic Party chairman Ed Rendell and Clinton presidential campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe also are among the people who can confirm Paul engaged in the deal.
“I was shocked when I learned Iowa and Mississippi have never elected a woman governor, senator or member of Congress. There has got to be something at work here,” she said.
“How can Iowa be ranked with Mississippi?” she asked, suggesting that Iowa is too good for that. “That’s not the quality. That’s not the communitarianism, that’s not the openness I see in Iowa.”
How do the politicos in Mississippi feel about what she had to say?
“Our official comment is, we decline to comment,’’ said Terry Cassreino, spokesman for the Mississippi Democratic Party.
The state Republican chairman, however, was not nearly as reticent.
“I think that her statements about Mississippi are probably an acknowledgement that she has no chance of carrying this state in a general election,’’ said Jim Herring, the Republican chairman.
Herring was echoing a common refrain from the John Edwards’ campaign – that Clinton would not do well in the South in November of 2008. Of course, few Democratic candidates for president have performed well in Mississippi in recent history. In 2004, President Bush beat Sen. John Kerry by 20 percentage points.
And Herring pointed out that Mississippi currently employs a woman lieutenant governor, Amy Tuck. Tuck, who is the second woman to serve as Mississippi’s lieutenant governor, has held that office since she was first elected as a Democrat in 1999 before changing parties.
“I don’t know if she doesn’t think that’s not a high-ranking office, but it’s the second highest-ranking office in Mississippi,’’ he said.
Mississippi will be holding their primary vote on Tuesday, March 11th.
The tough talk underscored not only the negative shift in tone of the Obama campaign in the past 24 hours, but just how contentious this fight for the nomination is becoming.
Part of what the Obama campaign would like the focus to be on is ethics — something adviser David Axelrod said they would be glad to have a debate over. But the Obama campaign may be a victim of time, since an argument on ethics could be tough to steer with the ongoing Rezko trial.
“I think that you know Sen. Clinton has talked a lot about disclosure in the last few days,” Plouffe told reporters. “Sen. Clinton is the most secretive politician in America today. This has been a pattern throughout her career of the lack of disclosure.”
Echoing Axelrod, Plouffe said the campaign would be more than willing to tangle with the Clintons, appearing to suggest that if needed they would raise issues like Whitewater that plagued the Clintons in the 90s.
“As it relates to ethics and transparency,” Plouffe said, “we’re surprised that they would want to have an extended conversation about contributors and land deals and ethics issues. I don’t think that’s a lengthy conversation that’s probably going to work out very well for them.
“So we are obviously not going to allow these attacks to go unanswered, and we think things like who has the strongest ethics, who has the chance to really bring about reform, who’s going to be the most open with the American people that that’s a real distinction,” he said.
He added that because the Clinton campaign couldn’t win on pledged delegates, it would try to devise “alternative nomination strategies.” He added that the Obama campaign would fight back and “raise questions on things like disclosure, like ethics, like foreign policy.”
He added that Clinton “exaggerated her experience and can’t name anything she’s done.”
“The only thing she talks about, by the way, is a speech she gave in China,” Plouffe said. “She criticizes us for giving a speech. There’s an exaggeration there. Her experience, they believe, is just conferred on her; we have to prove ours somehow. She is not a candidate with deep experience on these matters.”
The mainstream media said she was finished, but our brave Hillary soldiered on to wallop B. Hussein Obama in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island Tuesday night. I don’t know what the MSM is so upset about– we let them pick the Republican nominee. Did they want to pick the Democratic nominee, too?
Not only that, but after some toothsome appearances on various madcap comedy shows this past week — “Saturday Night Live,” “Late Night With David Letterman,” “Hardball With Chris Matthews” — Hillary’s “likability” quotient is soaring! According to the latest CNN/CBS News poll, she’s just been upgraded from “Utterly Loathsome” to “Execrable.”
The percentage of registered voters who would rather disembowel themselves with a wooden spoon than vote for Hillary has just slipped below the magical 50 percent mark. We’re surging, Hillary! If you want to be even more likable, you should go on “The View.” Next to those four harpies, you seem almost agreeable.
On the heels of three victories in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., turned back a surging Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who came into Tuesday with 11 straight victories and picked up another win in Vermont.
1. If Clinton and Obama basically tie in the remaining 12 contests, Obama would need 164 superdelegates to come his way to put him over the magic number of 2,024
2. Assuming no currently committed superdelegates switched and no uncommitted superdelegates jumped off the fence. . .
Clinton would need to win 59% of the delegates in the remaining 12 contests in order to overtake Sen. Obama’s delegate lede.
If the upcoming 611 delegates at stake split 59/41 for Clinton — 360 would go to Clinton and 251 would go to Obama — netting Sen. Clinton 109 delegates. . . which would be enough to overcome Obama’s current 106 delegate lead.
3. There are 611 delegates up for grabs in the remaining 12 contests.
ABC News’ current delegate estimate has Obama at 1,555.
That means he would need to win 77% of all the remaining pledged delegates to hit the magic number of 2,024 to secure the nomination. That is highly unlikely due to the proportional delegate allocation rules in the Democratic Party.
Clinton would need to win 94% of all the remaining pledged delegates to hit the magic number of 2,024. (ABC News currently has her at 1449.)
So, clearly they both are going to be relying on superdelegates to secure the nomination.
The morning after reviving her candidacy with two big primary wins, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) hinted Wednesday that she and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) may wind up as ticket mates.
“That may, you know, be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who’s on the top of ticket,” Clinton said with a laugh on the CBS’s “The Early Show.” “I think that the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me.”
And people in the other 40-plus states have other thoughts.
Clinton has little chance of closing the gap because Democrats allocate most of their delegates proportionally, meaning the loser of a close contest earns nearly as many delegates as the winner. Even as she declared victory in Ohio, Clinton knew that Tuesday’s results were unlikely to draw her much closer to Obama.
It doesn’t get any better for Clinton after Tuesday. Just for kicks, pencil the New York senator in for landslide victories in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky plus narrow victories in Guam, Indiana, North Carolina, Montana and South Dakota — scenarios that give her a hefty benefit of the doubt and then some. And what happens?
The magazine says Clinton is being backed some some major Wall Street names, such as Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and Steve Rattner, managing principal of the Quadrangle Group. She also:
Has more maxed-out, executive-level donors than any other candidate.
Has received $3.9 million infrom donors associated with the health-care industry, the most of any candidate.
Has attracted large support from donors affiliated with Goldman Sachs, and they are her top contributors.
The media coverage of the Clinton campaign will be, for years to come, a textbook case of how the coverage of female candidates differs from that of males. Women have to walk a very thin line when they run for high office. On the one hand, they have to appear tough, nothing at all like a sniveling female, and when they do talk tough, they are called “shrill.”
The media loved Hillary when she put her hand on Obama’s and said it was a privilege to be on the same podium; they hated her when she slammed him for giving out what she called misleading information on her healthcare plan. (After googling “shrill” and “Hillary” after that encounter, I stopped at 20 pages.)
At the same time, the news media have gone into a deep swoon over Barack. Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz said, “Look, I haven’t seen a politician get this kind of walk-on-water coverage since Colin Powell a dozen years ago flirted with making a run for the White House. I mean, it is amazing.”
I guess the moral there is that the media can’t give Obama any sort of preference.. after all, he’s a man! (Notice how Caryl dodges the race issue, tho.. after all, he’s black!)
Then there is the Elinor Lipman, also at the Boston Globe. She seems to think that Hillary might not be the perfect candidate.. even though she’s a woman.. but because her personality throws up huge red flags.
Questioning a woman’s tone and delivery evokes charges of sexism, of biased preoccupations with niceness – as if no one ever complained about the Bob Dole snarl or the Dick Cheney sneer. How many times do we have to hear that when women get forceful, they are called shrill and angry, while bellicose males are lauded as strong and presidential? We get it. No one has questioned Senator Clinton’s toughness, or her readiness to be commander in chief. I hope “hectoring” isn’t a word that is more feminine than masculine, because I would like to employ it now.
My e-mailing friends took great and irretrievable offense when Senator Clinton rapped on our candidate’s knuckles with “So shame on you, Barack Obama!” for campaign mailers criticizing her healthcare plan. Paired up with her Providence soliloquy (“The sky will open. The light will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing. Then everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect!”), she crossed some line in our maternal hearts. “Hillary off the deep end?” two friends wrote in near-simultaneous e-mails. “Off her meds?” wrote another. I wondered if these double rhetorical whammies might be a paler version of Howard Dean’s unintentional valedictory in Iowa in 2004.
en. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is poised to release her tax returns “on or around April 15,” Clinton’s communications director Howard Wolfson said in an exclusive “This Week” debate Sunday morning with David Axelrod, senior campaign adviser to her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.
When pressed by Axelrod as to why “Clinton continues to refuse to release her tax returns, as all the other candidates have,” Wolfson asserted that “the tax returns are going to be released around tax time.”
It was, in this reporter's opinion, the most interesting moment in today's Clinton campaign phoner with reporters. Responding to the release of HRC's new TX TV ad, which asserts in no subtle terms that only she has the experience to deal with a major world crisis, and, relatedly, to keep your children safe, Slate's John Dickerson asked the obvious question:
"What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" he said.
Silence on the call. You could've knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton's national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak -- that she's been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military.
Posted by hillaryclinton 
Posted by hillaryclinton 
Posted by hillaryclinton 
Hillary busy rewriting history again
March 9, 2008