The big day is here. Tonight Obama gives his historic speech in front of over 84,000 Americans, the biggest crowd for such an event ever, and now because he is a "celebrity" or a "rockstar", but because these people are actually engaged for once, they are inspired, and they want change.
Wow. Obama's speech was absolutely phenomenal. I know he sets an incredibly high bar, as did those who came before him during the Democratic Convention, but...they were nothing like this. Words don't do it justice, every American should watch this speech before Election Day, and take it to heart.
I'm at a loss for words. It brought tears to my eyes. As cynical as I am about this country, and about politics, he has given me hope. He makes me believe anything is possible. He keeps me from giving up altogether.
If we get him to the White House, I know he will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents. We can change the course of history.
Update: Here's the video:
Watch Al Gore earlier.
Update: Obama's speech was watched by over 38 million Americans, more than watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics! This number doesn't count the people who watched it online, or on other networks such as C-SPAN and PBS, so this obviously greatly underestimates how many people watched it. Expect a bounce.
Showing posts with label Democratic Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democratic Party. Show all posts
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Democratic Convention: Day Three
Today the main focus of the Convention was Bill Clinton's speech, which mirrored Hillary's in that it was surprisingly strong and sincere. Bill has been quite childish and bitter since the primary ended, and many rightly wondered if he'd step up to the plate and support Obama, and he, like Hillary, did. I'm still very not happy with the Clintons, but they did a good job at the Convention. It's a step in the right direction. I hope they follow through. Here's Bill:
Obama was also officially confirmed as the Democratic nominee, making history yet again. Biden was confirmed as Obama's VP nominee.
Kerry kicked some serious McCain ass:
Now for Biden's speech. Biden is awesome:
Update: Letterman's top 10 tonight was "Top 10 pickup lines at the Democratic Convention", this was my favorite:
Obama was also officially confirmed as the Democratic nominee, making history yet again. Biden was confirmed as Obama's VP nominee.
Kerry kicked some serious McCain ass:
Now for Biden's speech. Biden is awesome:
Update: Letterman's top 10 tonight was "Top 10 pickup lines at the Democratic Convention", this was my favorite:
#2 "Wanna pretend we are Republicans and have gay bathroom sex?"
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Democratic Convention: Day Two
Another day, more talk about Hillary. But it's justified I suppose, since this is "her night". At least on MSNBC they are acknowledging somewhat that the supposed divisions within the Party are largely hyped up creations of the 24-hour news networks. Those divisions are only real with a tiny fringe group of fanatical Hillary supporters. With them is where things get ridiculous, which is no doubt why the media loves to put them on the air, because they are crazy. Apparently some of these supporters actually think that the primary process was setup to screw Hillary and nominate Obama, and that the DNC was stacked against Hillary. This is what they mean by post-rational. These are the kinds of idiots who want to destroy the Democratic Party to help McCain. They actually think (or argue at least) that the establishment was anti-Hillary and pro-Obama, even though Hillary was CLEARLY the "inevitable" establishment choice from the very beginning. All you had to do was look at superdelegates, and how Hillary started the thing with well over a hundred superdelegates edge over Obama, an edge that he didn't overcome until the very very end of the primary season. Yeah, and that is apparently anti-Hillary. Hillary had EVERY advantage going into the primary, most people thought Obama had no chance, and it was an epic uphill battle for Obama. Hillary even had a former president campaigning for her full time. How anyone could say with a straight face that the process was loaded against Hillary is beyond me. How pathetic. Grow up, seriously, you fringe fanatics are embarrassments. At the very least get your facts straight.
Here was Rep. Dennis Kucinich earlier today, fired up and ready to go! (sadly it probably didn't make it to the cable "news" channels):
Can I get an "Amen"?
Hillary's speech was good, I'll give her that. I think she hit all the right notes and, unlike her concession speech, her support of Obama this time around and her urging to her supporters to embrace Obama and lend him their full support are actually believable.I'll post video when it is available. Here's the video:
Here are some other highlights the media ignores so you can hear the walking airbags tell you what to think.
Here was Rep. Dennis Kucinich earlier today, fired up and ready to go! (sadly it probably didn't make it to the cable "news" channels):
Can I get an "Amen"?
Hillary's speech was good, I'll give her that. I think she hit all the right notes and, unlike her concession speech, her support of Obama this time around and her urging to her supporters to embrace Obama and lend him their full support are actually believable.
Here are some other highlights the media ignores so you can hear the walking airbags tell you what to think.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Democratic Convention: Day One
It was a good start to the Democratic Convention today in Denver. Ted Kennedy gave a great, heartfelt speech urging the country to keep hope alive and strive for greatness. I think Jimmy Carter gave a speech, which the media decided not to show, which is rather annoying. The media in particular was very annoying, because all day was nothing but hours of talking about the Clintons, and nonsense about her supporters not supporting Obama, blah blah blah ad nauseam. I felt like we were back in the middle of the primaries again, in short, hell. All this despite polling evidence that shows Obama is having no problem, and only a few fringe crazies are holding out. Rachel Maddow had a great discussion of these, where she pointed out that the "Hillary supporter" in McCain's new ad was at a press event today and didn't know McCain's policy on reproductive rights. The idiot thought he was pro-choice, how embarrassing for her. Maddow described these fringe anti-Obama holdouts as "post-rational". It was great. Hopefully a clip will surface.
Meanwhile McCain appeared on Leno and once again tried to use his time as a POW as a "get out of everything free card". Shameless. Rachel Maddow actually nailed McCain really hard on this during the Convention coverage, basically saying it cheapens his service and at some point people need to stop letting him get away with using this as a crutch, or bludgeon as it were. Kudos to Maddow for calling him on that, because unless people in the media start having the courage to call bullshit on it, it will never stop. I'm sick of this noun, verb, and POW crap.I'll also try to find the video of that. Here's the video:
In sobering news, there was an apparent foiled assassination plot against Obama by white supremacists. That kind of thing never ceases to scare me, and I can only imagine what that does to his family. People are horrible.
On a happier note, the highlight of the night was Michelle Obama's speech, which was wonderful. She will make the best First Lady, really just a great person. In fact I love their whole family, they are adorable, and as American as apple pie. They could be one of those model families that are in picture frames when you buy them. How anyone could hate Michelle Obama or not fall in love with that family is beyond me.When the video is up I'll post it. Here's the video:
Meanwhile McCain appeared on Leno and once again tried to use his time as a POW as a "get out of everything free card". Shameless. Rachel Maddow actually nailed McCain really hard on this during the Convention coverage, basically saying it cheapens his service and at some point people need to stop letting him get away with using this as a crutch, or bludgeon as it were. Kudos to Maddow for calling him on that, because unless people in the media start having the courage to call bullshit on it, it will never stop. I'm sick of this noun, verb, and POW crap.
In sobering news, there was an apparent foiled assassination plot against Obama by white supremacists. That kind of thing never ceases to scare me, and I can only imagine what that does to his family. People are horrible.
On a happier note, the highlight of the night was Michelle Obama's speech, which was wonderful. She will make the best First Lady, really just a great person. In fact I love their whole family, they are adorable, and as American as apple pie. They could be one of those model families that are in picture frames when you buy them. How anyone could hate Michelle Obama or not fall in love with that family is beyond me.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Like Salt Brings Closure To Wound
I think Colbert basically nailed it, I don't think I need to say more:
Friday, August 8, 2008
A Victory For Progressives And A Defeat For Identity Politics
Last night in southwestern Tennessee a great thing happened. An incumbent progressive Democrat with a long record of supporting civil rights won his primary. What makes this especially important is that the incumbent, Rep. Steve Cohen, is white, running in a district with a 60% black population, against Nikki Tinker, a conservative black corporate lawyer who did everything she could to make race an issue in the campaign.
To give you an idea how nasty the campaign got, Tinker actually ran an ad juxtaposing Cohen with the KKK, complete with burning cross. Her campaign also openly asserted that the district should be represented by a black person. She released another ad, this one attacking Cohen's religious affiliation (he is Jewish), making a point of highlighting how he isn't part of "our churches". This latest ad provoked a bit of backlash, and even Obama came out to condemn it:
So who are the losers in this? And there are losers. First and foremost, Tinker obviously comes out on the bottom. She ran a nasty campaign, the kind of campaign I'd expect from the Republicans, not a Democrat. This not only goes for her bigoted attacks, but also for her attacks on policy, which were also straight from the Right.
The second is DLC Chair and corporate Democrat Harold Ford Jr., who supported Tinker's nasty campaign and backwards policies against a good Democrat. We can't be certain that his support was based solely on her race, because the DLC is good at supporting crappy Republican-leaning Democrats, but regardless of his motivations, he gave Tinker his endorsement, and he put his local political machine behind her campaign, and she was still rejected by a landslide.
The third loser, and the one that really bothers me, is Emily's List. Emily's List's mission is to support female pro-choice candidates, which is fine, we need more diversity of representation in Congress, and more supporters of reproductive rights. However Emily's List bothers me because their support typically rests on one thing: does the candidate have a vagina? That is all that matters to them, and I think that mentality is the antithesis of feminism. Women didn't fight for suffrage simply to give up their independent thought to vote solely on the basis of gender. Yet that is what Emily's List stands for, and they have a history of helping female Democrats attack perfectly good pro-choice fellow Democrats all based on gender. In this case, Emily's List stood by and supported, and funded, Tinker's nasty campaign against Cohen. Cohen, is pro-choice. Tinker, does not support abortion, although she says she thinks the government should stay out of it. No one likes abortion, but Tinker is at best barely pro-choice, whereas Cohen is fully pro-choice. Yet Emily's List still endorsed Tinker, because of her gender, against someone with a BETTER record on reproductive rights. That's messed up. That's despicable.
I'd like to think that Emily's List would learn its lesson and stop making their decisions based solely on gender, and quit attacking Democrats with strong records on reproductive rights. Emily's List should be ashamed.
To give you an idea how nasty the campaign got, Tinker actually ran an ad juxtaposing Cohen with the KKK, complete with burning cross. Her campaign also openly asserted that the district should be represented by a black person. She released another ad, this one attacking Cohen's religious affiliation (he is Jewish), making a point of highlighting how he isn't part of "our churches". This latest ad provoked a bit of backlash, and even Obama came out to condemn it:
These incendiary and personal attacks have no place in our politics, and will do nothing to help the good people of Tennessee. It's time to turn the page on a politics driven by negativity and division so that we can come together to lift up our communities and our country.In the end, the people of Tennessee's 9th district voted overwhelmingly in favor of Cohen, rejecting Tinker by an incredible 60% margin. It was a great victory for post-racial politics in the face of despicable race-baiting and assorted bigotry.
So who are the losers in this? And there are losers. First and foremost, Tinker obviously comes out on the bottom. She ran a nasty campaign, the kind of campaign I'd expect from the Republicans, not a Democrat. This not only goes for her bigoted attacks, but also for her attacks on policy, which were also straight from the Right.
The second is DLC Chair and corporate Democrat Harold Ford Jr., who supported Tinker's nasty campaign and backwards policies against a good Democrat. We can't be certain that his support was based solely on her race, because the DLC is good at supporting crappy Republican-leaning Democrats, but regardless of his motivations, he gave Tinker his endorsement, and he put his local political machine behind her campaign, and she was still rejected by a landslide.
The third loser, and the one that really bothers me, is Emily's List. Emily's List's mission is to support female pro-choice candidates, which is fine, we need more diversity of representation in Congress, and more supporters of reproductive rights. However Emily's List bothers me because their support typically rests on one thing: does the candidate have a vagina? That is all that matters to them, and I think that mentality is the antithesis of feminism. Women didn't fight for suffrage simply to give up their independent thought to vote solely on the basis of gender. Yet that is what Emily's List stands for, and they have a history of helping female Democrats attack perfectly good pro-choice fellow Democrats all based on gender. In this case, Emily's List stood by and supported, and funded, Tinker's nasty campaign against Cohen. Cohen, is pro-choice. Tinker, does not support abortion, although she says she thinks the government should stay out of it. No one likes abortion, but Tinker is at best barely pro-choice, whereas Cohen is fully pro-choice. Yet Emily's List still endorsed Tinker, because of her gender, against someone with a BETTER record on reproductive rights. That's messed up. That's despicable.
I'd like to think that Emily's List would learn its lesson and stop making their decisions based solely on gender, and quit attacking Democrats with strong records on reproductive rights. Emily's List should be ashamed.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Why No Nightmare Ticket? Let's Count The Reasons
Now that the primary is finally over, the focus has turned to who Obama will pick to be his vice president. And, despite all logic to the contrary, people, mostly pundits and Hillary's surrogates, keep raising the prospect of an Obama-Hillary nightmare ticket (what they like to naively refer to as the "dream ticket"), ad nauseam. And I have to ask, are you people complete idiots?? The pundits no doubt raise the question to get ratings, because they don't want the primary to end, because it makes them money. Do they know better? Yes, I think most of them do. And I think most in the Democratic Party know that it is a horrible idea, yet Hillary's surrogates are pushing the nightmare ticket anyway.
It should never have come to this, because the reasons why she would make an absolutely horrible VP candidate are so plentiful and obvious, but apparently I’m going to have to spell out the reasons why this is a nightmare ticket that should never, ever, ever be.
I’ll break this into sections, starting with reasons that automatically disqualify her for VP, then moving on to major reasons she shouldn’t be VP, then I’ll go over some minor reasons, and then as a special added treat, I’ll go over a few of the other, non-VP options some people think would be good rewards for Hillary.
But first, why people say the nightmare ticket should be. There are generally two broad reasons why people say Obama should choose Hillary as a running mate. First, because Obama supposedly needs Hillary to bring in Hillary’s supporters, who might otherwise be bitter and sit out. Second, that Hillary has some sort of entitlement to the VP spot. Let’s dispense with the first right now: Obama most certainly does NOT need Hillary to bring in any votes. I heard that hack Pat Buchanan (why is he still allowed on TV?) say that Obama will need Hillary to get her 17 million voters. NO, her supporters are still Democrats, and the vast vast vast majority of them are NOT controlled by her. She does not speak for them. As Hillary supporter Hilary Rosen declared after watching Hillary’s non-concession speech,
Secondly, just a word about entitlement. Hillary and her most loyal supporters seem to have this idea that Hillary is entitled to be Obama’s VP. They seem to think she deserves it because she came in second place. I've said this before, she has no entitlement to the vice presidency (or anything else) because there is no consolation prize for losing the Democratic primary. John Kerry didn't get a consolation prize for winning over 59 million votes in 2004. And yet Hillary is under the mistaken impression that having 17-some million voters vote for her makes her special and entitled to whatever she wants in the world. She is wrong. Furthermore, she doesn't deserve a reward for the nasty, divisive campaign she ran against a fellow Democrat. The Democratic Party owes her nothing. The only people that owe Hillary anything are John McCain and the Republicans, because she helped them out early on by throwing every right-wing attack she could come up with at Obama, without any care of what impact that would have on the Democratic Party in November. No, she hasn’t done anything to deserve a reward. And the vice presidency isn’t a reward anyway, it is something that should go to the best person for the job, and that is what this blog is all about.
Reasons That Automatically Disqualify Hillary as VP. Each of these reasons by itself is reason enough to disqualify Hillary from being VP. You only need one, but there are a lot more than one
1.1: The Lieberman Threshold -- The most obvious reason that immediately disqualified Hillary for the VP position is that she endorsed John McCain over Obama, multiple times, saying that McCain was ready to lead, qualified to be Commander-in-Chief, while Obama was not. She said all that, even though by that time it was already fairly obvious that Obama was going to be the likely nominee. She said all that, despite how it would obviously be used against Obama by the Republicans in the general election. She did it anyway, because she was willing to say and do anything to win. And as predicted, McCain is already using that footage of Hillary’s comments to attack Obama, with the McCain campaign stating that "Senator Clinton articulated the fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama as well as anyone." Thanks Hillary. And now she wants to be VP? She spoke of a "threshold" that she had crossed, and she is right, she did cross a threshold, the Lieberman Threshold, the point where you stab your own party in the back and support the enemy. This is worse though, because at least Lieberman isn’t even a Democrat anymore, but Hillary is, and much more, because she was running to be president (hey, Lieberman did that too...), and now she is trying to be vice president, and yet she stabbed her party’s nominee in the back, repeatedly, and said that McCain would be more qualified. This obviously disqualifies Hillary from being chosen as Obama’s VP, you can’t come back from something like that. It was inexcusable, and he can’t very well have a VP who thinks their opponent is better than her boss. As Rachel Maddow said quite succinctly,
1.2: The Authorization of the Iraq War -- The second thing that automatically disqualifies her from being Obama’s VP is her vote to authorize the war in Iraq, and her subsequent support for the war, up until the point it became politically unpopular to support it in the Democratic Party. This is a pretty simple one. If you’ve been following the back and forth between Obama and McCain over foreign policy in the last couple of weeks, you’ll notice that Obama is tearing McCain up pretty well over his support for the war, and his flawed judgment. Obama can easily juxtapose McCain’s positions with his own, because unlike McCain, Obama had the good sense to oppose the war from the beginning. This offers Obama the ability to make very stark distinctions between him and McCain on foreign policy, and he is very effective in doing so. However, because of her support for the war, Hillary couldn’t make such a case, and thus as I’ve said before she would have been a much weaker presidential nominee. This also applies to the VP spot. Having her on the ticket with Obama would muddy his clear record of opposition, and make it easy for McCain to avoid being targeted for his support of the war, by simply pointing at Obama’s running mate. This obviously cannot be allowed. It is all made worse by the fact that she has never apologized for her support of the war, or admit she made a mistake, as Edwards has. This is important in ANY vice presidential candidate, they have to have been anti-war from the start, just like Obama.
1.3: Change Vs Status Quo -- The third reason Hillary is automatically disqualified from being VP is that she epitomizes status quo politics, or essentially everything Obama is running against. His entire campaign has been about changing the way Washington works and the way politics is played. Hillary is the quintessential Washington insider. Hillary used some of the worst of nasty Washington tactics in her campaign against Obama. Not just Washington tactics, nasty Republican tactics. She has consistently engaged in the politics of personal destruction to get ahead. She has lied to voters, she has used fearmongering, she has used race-baiting. Her campaign was incredibly negative. And while Obama and Edwards refused to take any money from federal lobbyists and special interest PACs, Hillary encouraged money from these sources. Hillary ran a campaign that was the antithesis of everything good that Obama’s represented. The core theme of Obama’s campaign is change, and there simply can’t be change with a relic of the status quo like Hillary filling up the bottom half of the ticket. It would destroy his argument of change, and he simply cannot do that. Edwards said it well:
1.4: Over His Dead Body -- The final thing that automatically disqualifies Hillary from being VP is her repeated invocation of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination when asked to explain why she is still in the race despite it being mathematically impossible for her to win. You can read my full commentary on her controversial comments here, but I’ll summarize it briefly now. She basically showed us that the possibility of Obama’s assassination was on her mind, and it was the only rationale that explained how she could still win the nomination. After Obama is elected, her chances of being president disappear, so her only way to get there is to be VP, and then for Obama to die. Now I’m not saying that she would somehow conspire to have him assassinated, but the last thing Obama needs it a VP who is waiting there for 0-8 years for him to be assassinated so she can step over his dead body and finally put on her long-coveted crown. Simply put, I never want Hillary in a position where she would benefit politically from Obama’s death. I’ll just leave it at that. Again, if you want to know more about my views of her comments, read my original post. I believe these comments disqualify Hillary from being Obama’s VP, especially in the minds of the millions of Obama supporters who really fear for the safety of the likely first black president. Rachel Maddow had a good comment on this one too:
And you may want to review Olbermann’s impassioned response to Hillary’s comments:
So we’ve already disqualified Hillary as VP four times over, and I could easily stop there and have all the justification anyone would need to rule her out as a viable pick, but there are many more reasons. Let’s move on to the major reasons:
Major Reasons Hillary Shouldn’t Be VP. None of these reasons necessarily disqualify Hillary by themselves, but they come close. These are BIG reasons why she shouldn’t be VP, just not the biggest.
2.1: The Kitchen Sink -- I already mention how Hillary epitomized the worst kind of politics in her primary battle against Obama, but aside from ruining Obama’s message of change if she were VP, the ruthless attacks themselves give us plenty of reasons why Hillary doesn’t deserve to be VP. My entire blog thus far is basically one big resource of all of Hillary’s negative attacks, you could take your pick of countless examples. Suffice to say, her tactics became appropriately known as the "Tonya Harding Strategy" (or alternatively, the kitchen sink strategy), for her desire to kneecap Obama at any cost. She lied about Obama’s positions, she lied about what Obama has said, she lied about what he has done. She (and Bill) disparaged his very real and very important opposition to the war in a cynical attempt to make them look better by comparison. She played the most cynical games with guilt-by-association attacks against Obama, including questioning his relationship with Rev. Wright and trying to connect him with terrorists. She called him out of touch and elitist (another anti-Democrat talking point). Her surrogates accused him of being "terribly sexist" (and she never said she didn’t agree). She left the door open for right-wing Obama-is-a-Muslim smears by saying that Obama wasn’t a Muslim, as far as she knew. Her campaign tried to paint Obama as anti-Israel, and perhaps even anti-Semitic. Her crazy husband even accused Obama of coordinating some vast media conspiracy to attack the them. There are many many many more examples (again, browse through my entire blog), and every single one of them gives Obama a big reason not to pick her as VP, and taken all together, well Obama has about a thousand reasons not to pick her as VP. Going back to her style of old politics, her say-and-do-anything-to-win philosophy, all of her attacks highlight her less-than-savory character, and that simply isn’t the kind of person we want as a leader, president, vice president, or anything.
2.2: The Michigan-Florida Fiasco -- The next big reason is along the same lines. Obama has a big reason not to pick her because of her incessant attempts to delegitimize him by exploiting the Michigan-Florida fiasco to her political advantage. First, she agreed to the rules, then, when political convenient for her, she switched 180 degrees and started attacking Obama in these important swing states, trying to make it look like Obama was trying to disenfranchise voters, even though his campaign kept trying to find an equitable solution to the impasse (and Hillary’s campaign shot down all of them). This episode highlights her willingness to break the rules, to say and do anything to win, and to unjustifiably attack Obama in a way that could have hurt him (or maybe was intended to hurt him) in the general election. Even after the DNC’s Rules & Bylaws Committee reached a compromise position and it was inevitable that Obama would be our nominee, Hillary’s surrogates continued their media blitz trying to say Hillary was somehow robbed by Obama and that his nomination was somehow illegitimate. Even if Obama could forgive Hillary for employing such divisive and shameless tactics, her willingness to engage in that sort of transparent political game playing and hypocrisy would reflect poorly on the ticket if Hillary was VP. Resorting to that strategy is inexcusable. Comparing Obama and the DNC to Mugabe's murderous regime in Zimbabwe is inexcusable. You can also add her ridiculous and disingenuous "popular vote" claims, or her disparaging "states that matter" claims or her "big state" claims or any other fallacious metric she invented to try to deceive voters and delegitimize Obama’s nomination. All reflect very poorly on her character, and all were direct attacks on Obama's legitimacy, which he graciously tolerated, but should not now be rewarded.
2.3: Race-Baiting -- I briefly mentioned her race-baiting before, as an example of her stooping to Rove-like tactics to take down Obama. I think it deserves its own place on the list though, because her exploitation of racism to try to paint Obama as "the black candidate" (thus scaring away white voters) has been one of the most disturbing things to come out of this campaign. You can read a detailed analysis of examples of race-baiting from the Clinton campaign here, or if you want to see the bigger picture you can check out multiple posts on the subject here. Essentially they tried to sabotage the first viable black presidential candidate in the most cynical (and conservative) way by repeatedly injecting the issue of race into the campaign. It was shameless, despicable, and unforgivable. And as I pointed out the other day, not only did it not work, it actually resulted in greatly increased unfavorable ratings for the Clintons among African Americans. Putting her on the ticket, essentially rewarding these despicable tactics, would be a huge slap in the face to African Americans who have been appalled by her campaign’s use of racism to marginalize and sabotage Obama's historical candidacy. She should definitely not be rewarded for using those kinds of tactics.
2.4: Backseat Sabotage -- Another big reason Hillary should not be VP is because she simply doesn’t have the personality of someone who would be satisfied taking on the #2 role. She wants to have power, and the vice presidency doesn’t have power (not unless you are Dick Cheney, but that is an extreme exception, not the rule). Hillary has always been fond of this "co-presidency" idea, both in the 90s when Bill was president, and in this campaign where it has been a two-for-one special the whole way. It would be hard to imagine Hillary not trying to steal the spotlight as the bottom half of an Obama ticket. I think it is pretty easy to imagine her trying to lead from the backseat, and you can surely imagine how that imagine would play out publicly, especially on shows like Saturday Night Live. It would make Obama look weak, and that might very well be the point. There can be no doubt after watching months of Hillary try to sink Obama that the Clintons are very angry and bitter that Obama "ruined" what they both thought she was entitled to by divine right. They obviously think he is inferior, they obviously think he is undeserving (interesting how they define "deserving"), and they obviously resent his success. She has clearly engaged in a scorched earth strategy for the last couple months as evidenced by her nothing-to-lose (for her) blitz of negativity. Even after it was clear he would be the nominee, she continued to try to sabotage (most recently with claiming unfair treatment and sexism, trying to embitter her supporters), and there is no indication she won’t continue even in defeat. Being the vice president would give her unparalleled ability to try to sabotage his administration, and that is obviously something that Obama shouldn’t have to deal with. Hillary supporter Gov. Rendell even spoke of the big challenges Obama would face if he had Hillary (and by extension Bill) as a running mate:
2.5: Kyl-Lieberman & Iran -- Having not learned her lesson from Iraq, Hillary cast a vote in lockstep with Bush, McCain and the Republicans in September of 2007, which recklessly identified the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an official branch of the state military of Iran, as a terrorist organization, all without evidence of any terrorism, or even killing, and all seemingly without recognition of the dangerous precedent such a declaration would make, and the fact that by the same logic of that declaration the US government represents the world’s largest terrorist organization. Let’s face it, Hillary is a foreign policy hawk, and just like the Iraq vote, her Iran vote put her on the wrong side of the Obama – McCain divide, and makes her a huge liability on the ticket. Obama has been hitting McCain very hard on Iran and foreign policy, and having Hillary on the ticket would limit Obama’s ability to draw a clear distinction between the failed policies of the status quo (Bush-McCain-Hillary), and the new smart policies of change (Obama). Add to this her comments a month or so ago when she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran, and you can start to see why this is an important reason for her not to be on the ticket.
2.6: The Electoral Typhoid Mary -- This is a big one that isn’t about what she has said or done, rather it is about what she would do to the ticket just by being part of it. She’d kill it. Let’s be honest, Hillary has incredibly high negative ratings among the general electorate. A full 50% of Americans dislike her. We didn’t have to deal with this in the general because she did fine for the most part among Democrats, but for the whole country it is another story. We have to face it, Hillary is very polarizing. She came into this race very polarizing, and she left even more polarizing, because now even many on the left, like me, who were fine with her when she began, can’t stand her now because of her negative and divisive campaign. We need to fight for the middle (and even take some disillusioned Republicans with us) in the general election, and Obama is very very good at this, and McCain is decent at it, to a lesser extent, but Hillary is very bad at it, and having her on the ticket would undoubtedly push many in the middle over to McCain. Past the independents, she would keep away disillusioned Republicans who may have otherwise crossed over to Obama. Instead, they would stay with McCain to take down Hillary, and McCain’s entire Republican base would rally and become energized by fighting Hillary. Even Republicans like Rush Limbaugh have acknowledged this upfront:
2.7: Let The Vetting Begin -- Hillary spoke a lot of vetting throughout the primary campaign, generally claiming that she had been thoroughly vetted throughout the 90s, and so she was now squeaky clean, while Obama is a big question mark. The honest truth is that while Obama was vetted up and down by Hillary and the media throughout the campaign, and actually was pretty spotless (ridiculous attempts to tie him to his former pastor’s out of context comments aside), Hillary hasn’t actually been vetted all that well. Obama was nice enough not to tear through his opponent like she tried with him, and the media was asleep at the wheel, so we actually heard very little of the possible dirt on Hillary (and by extension, Bill) during the primaries. However the general election is another story, and it is Obama’s responsibility, and right, to thoroughly vet every single vice presidential option to make sure they wouldn’t become a liability in the general election, or even after taking office. Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic gives a brief look at the VP vetting process:
Minor Reasons Hillary Shouldn’t Be VP. We’ve already seen a ton of reasons why Hillary would be a horrible choice for VP, but there are more still. This category is for the non-major reasons, but that doesn’t make them insignificant.
3.1: Excess Baggage --This goes with the vetting process above (2.7), but assuming she was chosen somehow, her (and Bill’s) baggage from the past, and present, would be a never ending issue. Most of us can recall the circus that the Clintons made of the Democratic Party in the 90s with all of their drama, and I think very few of us want to go back there (especially given how many electoral defeats the Democrats suffered during those years). Add to this Bill’s increasingly erratic and antagonistic behavior, and you have a Pandora’s box you don’t want to open. And the recent Vanity Fair article about Bill highlights that these problems aren’t going away. Leave the past in the past, and the Clintons off the ticket.
3.2: Brings Nothing To The Table -- When looking at any VP candidate, you have to ask yourself what they bring to the table. This isn’t so much something wrong with Hillary, but it is simply something that Hillary doesn’t do. It isn’t as if she just has to not have any reasons NOT to put her on the ticket, she still needs to have reasons TO put her on the ticket, and she doesn’t. This is what I alluded to at the beginning, Hillary brings nothing demographically to the ticket. Despite all her rhetoric about being the best to bring in those elusive "white, hardworking white Americans who are white, and hard working and not dark" Americans, she doesn’t actually do better among this group outside of Appalachia. In addition to that, the most recent poll out of West Virginia shows Obama not far behind McCain! And beyond that, West Virginia and Kentucky are not states that Obama has to win in November, and that is really all Hillary can claim she can do for him. Worse, she has never been able to offer any logical argument or empirical evidence to back up her claim that she can carry certain states better than Obama in the general election simply because she won among Democrats in those primaries. There is one state Hillary could possibly help in, and that is Florida, but the numbers out of Florida are deceiving because Obama has been unable to campaign there, thus his numbers are at their lowest levels, while Hillary’s are most likely at their highest. It is entirely possible that Obama will be able to carry Florida without Hillary, and there is a distinct possibility that he won’t even need Florida to beat McCain, because of how he expands the map (and remember the electoral Typhoid Mary, she is much more likely to hurt than she would be to help). The national polls already show Obama gaining huge leads over Hillary, even among her strongest demographic: women. He is even ahead in Latino votes nationally. He wins among the poorly educated now. He wins among low-income voters. He doesn't need Hillary to bring these groups, these are all Democrats, and they will vote for the Democratic nominee (and lets not forget that many of these perceived Hillary strengths were padded by Limbaugh Democrats). One last point, and this is important: even among groups she performs well in, like Latinos, that doesn’t mean she is the standard bearer of this group, and there is no reason to assume that there aren’t other VP options who would bring in that vote much better, for example Bill Richardson, who would probably help Obama win Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and possibly even Texas (some of those states Obama can win without him, but Richardson would give him an even bigger boost). Simply put, Hillary adds nothing to the ticket, she doesn’t add states, and she doesn’t add demographic advantages (nor does she add good judgment, exceptional experience, or management skills, which we will see next).
3.3: Poor Management --Again, let’s be honest, Hillary has run a terrible campaign, and I’m not talking about tactics this time, I’m talking about organization, staffing and strategy. She surrounded herself not with the best people, but with loyalists who were placed as favors, not because they were qualified. The most striking example of this was her placement of Patti Solis Doyle, someone without any campaign managing experience, as campaign manager. She also made horrible strategic decisions, like having a bad campaign message, poor grassroots organization, no long-term strategy, and basically ignoring half of the states. She also managed to take a campaign staffed with the party’s best fundraisers (that she did part right), and managed to run her campaign into debt by having absolutely no idea how much money she had, or how much money they were burning through (and spending excessive spending on luxuries). She ended up with around $30,000,000 in debt, and at times vendors were considering taking her to collection agencies to get their money. She essentially ran her campaign into the ground, which leaves you with the obvious question, who is really ready to lead on day one? The truth is, Obama, the person they so fatally underestimated, ran a well oiled and unprecedented campaign, bringing in unprecedented amounts of money from an unprecedented number of people and operated a grassroots level in 50 states with a massive number of volunteers. He ran a campaign for the history books, and all against Hillary’s establishment machine, and he won big as hers fell apart around her. She definitely doesn't bring management or organization to the table. And would you actually believe that she would run a better campaign if she were trying to win for Obama instead of herself? Not a chance.
3.4: Forced Ticket -- As Hillary’s surrogates work overtime to try to force Obama to pick her as his VP, it raises the potential of Obama looking weak if he did pick Hillary as VP in the end. This is the first big decision of the general election for Obama, and so far in everything else he has done post-primary he has been a strong leader. Now people are looking to who his VP will be, and Hillary’s surrogates are trying to force-feed him, the nominee and leader of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton as his VP. Taking her as his running mate under those conditions would make him look weak, and it would definitely give him an image problem, especially given the perils of the "backseat sabotage" I mentioned previously (2.4). As Hillary-supporter Gov. Rendell stated firmly:
If somehow all of those reasons didn't prove beyond a doubt that she would be a horrible choice for VP, you can just listen to Jimmy Carter’s opinion about the nightmare ticket:
Other Ideas For Hillary’s Non-VP Future.Unfortunately many of the people who know better than to advocate for Hillary as VP have suggested other consolation positions for her, although those ideas are also ill-advised. And again, why the sense of entitlement? Why does she need to receive any special treatment not afforded to others like Kerry, Dodd, Biden, Kucinich, Richardson, Edwards, Ted Kennedy, etc?
4.1: Cabinet Position – Team of Rivals-- This one Obama brought upon himself, and I hope he was just thinking out loud in a very not-serious way. Here is what he said not so long ago:
4.2: Supreme Court Justice-- Fine, except she isn’t a scholar, isn’t qualified, and failed the bar, even though 95% of Yale Law graduates pass the bar, she was in the bottom 5% who failed it. After failing the bar she jumped on Bill’s coattails and road them throughout his entire political career, eventually winning her a seat in the Senate in a state she didn’t belong to, not because she had any experience, but because of who she married (seriously, ask yourself if anyone who wasn't married to Bill Clinton could have done what she did). And now she is supposedly qualified to sit on the Supreme Court just because she came in second place in her party’s presidential primary? I don’t think so. Again, why are people floating the idea of putting Hillary in positions she isn’t the least bit qualified for?
4.3: Senate Majority Leader-- And then there is the position of Senate Majority Leader, currently held by Sen. Harry Reid. Well, let’s just ask Sen. Reid about what he thinks about Hillary deserving his job as a consolation prize:
4.4: Governor of New York-- Who knows. Like I said before, how she ran her campaign doesn't give me much confidence in her ability to manage, and the state of New York would be quite the management nightmare. This I’m less opposed to than other ideas though (although being Lt. Gov. first would make her more qualified), except one small problem, her supporter David Patterson happens to have the job now, and is planning on running for reelection, and he is fairly popular, and African-American, which probably wouldn’t go over well after the racial issues she stirred up against Obama. Pollster John Zogby put it well:
Here’s the bottom line: Hillary would be the worst possible pick for VP, for the many reasons listed above. Hillary isn’t entitled to anything just because she got a lot of votes but eventually came up short, it isn’t a unique occurrence, and no one else comes back from their failed bids thinking they deserve to given a special prize. I’m thankful that some people recognize the nightmare ticket for the disaster it is, but quit trying to place her in positions she isn’t qualified for or hasn't earned, just because she is Hillary Clinton. There are over 30 Democratic Senators with more seniority than her, and she is still maybe 8 years from having enough seniority to chair a committee, let alone be Majority Leader. People need to get realistic.
One last thing, for all those women who are sad because Hillary isn’t going to break the "ultimate glass ceiling":
[In conclusion, please feel free to use these reasons to push back against people who are in favor of the nightmare ticket, because people need to start being realistic, this isn't something we want to screw up. Also, if I missed anything, let me know in the comments and I'll keep adding to the list. And if you read this entire thing, you are a hardcore, gracias!]
And read this to see why Richardson would be a very good choice for VP.
It should never have come to this, because the reasons why she would make an absolutely horrible VP candidate are so plentiful and obvious, but apparently I’m going to have to spell out the reasons why this is a nightmare ticket that should never, ever, ever be.
I’ll break this into sections, starting with reasons that automatically disqualify her for VP, then moving on to major reasons she shouldn’t be VP, then I’ll go over some minor reasons, and then as a special added treat, I’ll go over a few of the other, non-VP options some people think would be good rewards for Hillary.
But first, why people say the nightmare ticket should be. There are generally two broad reasons why people say Obama should choose Hillary as a running mate. First, because Obama supposedly needs Hillary to bring in Hillary’s supporters, who might otherwise be bitter and sit out. Second, that Hillary has some sort of entitlement to the VP spot. Let’s dispense with the first right now: Obama most certainly does NOT need Hillary to bring in any votes. I heard that hack Pat Buchanan (why is he still allowed on TV?) say that Obama will need Hillary to get her 17 million voters. NO, her supporters are still Democrats, and the vast vast vast majority of them are NOT controlled by her. She does not speak for them. As Hillary supporter Hilary Rosen declared after watching Hillary’s non-concession speech,
She is waiting to figure out how she would "use" her 18 million voters.I shouldn’t even call this their rationale for including her on the ticket, it is more like a threat—-many of these people are actually threatening Obama, telling him to pick Hillary or else. These people are a minority though, and they don’t have real power. Hillary can't even hold onto her superdelegates and big donors, let alone "her" voters. The vast majority of "her" voters are smart enough to realize what is at stake in this election, and they won’t scorch the earth and spite themselves and the country just because their preferred candidate didn’t win. Her hardcore supporters also believe, mistakenly, that Obama needs Hillary to bring in certain demographics that Hillary’s campaign (with the help of the media) have pretended Obama had some kind of "problem" with. I’ll get to this in more detail later, but let me say now that that is absolutely false.
But not my vote. I will enthusiastically support Barack Obama's campaign. Because I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat.
Secondly, just a word about entitlement. Hillary and her most loyal supporters seem to have this idea that Hillary is entitled to be Obama’s VP. They seem to think she deserves it because she came in second place. I've said this before, she has no entitlement to the vice presidency (or anything else) because there is no consolation prize for losing the Democratic primary. John Kerry didn't get a consolation prize for winning over 59 million votes in 2004. And yet Hillary is under the mistaken impression that having 17-some million voters vote for her makes her special and entitled to whatever she wants in the world. She is wrong. Furthermore, she doesn't deserve a reward for the nasty, divisive campaign she ran against a fellow Democrat. The Democratic Party owes her nothing. The only people that owe Hillary anything are John McCain and the Republicans, because she helped them out early on by throwing every right-wing attack she could come up with at Obama, without any care of what impact that would have on the Democratic Party in November. No, she hasn’t done anything to deserve a reward. And the vice presidency isn’t a reward anyway, it is something that should go to the best person for the job, and that is what this blog is all about.
Reasons That Automatically Disqualify Hillary as VP. Each of these reasons by itself is reason enough to disqualify Hillary from being VP. You only need one, but there are a lot more than one
1.1: The Lieberman Threshold -- The most obvious reason that immediately disqualified Hillary for the VP position is that she endorsed John McCain over Obama, multiple times, saying that McCain was ready to lead, qualified to be Commander-in-Chief, while Obama was not. She said all that, even though by that time it was already fairly obvious that Obama was going to be the likely nominee. She said all that, despite how it would obviously be used against Obama by the Republicans in the general election. She did it anyway, because she was willing to say and do anything to win. And as predicted, McCain is already using that footage of Hillary’s comments to attack Obama, with the McCain campaign stating that "Senator Clinton articulated the fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama as well as anyone." Thanks Hillary. And now she wants to be VP? She spoke of a "threshold" that she had crossed, and she is right, she did cross a threshold, the Lieberman Threshold, the point where you stab your own party in the back and support the enemy. This is worse though, because at least Lieberman isn’t even a Democrat anymore, but Hillary is, and much more, because she was running to be president (hey, Lieberman did that too...), and now she is trying to be vice president, and yet she stabbed her party’s nominee in the back, repeatedly, and said that McCain would be more qualified. This obviously disqualifies Hillary from being chosen as Obama’s VP, you can’t come back from something like that. It was inexcusable, and he can’t very well have a VP who thinks their opponent is better than her boss. As Rachel Maddow said quite succinctly,
That's what you say when you want to be John McCain's vice presidential choice, that's not what you say when you're trying to become the Democratic nominee for president.Or, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
1.2: The Authorization of the Iraq War -- The second thing that automatically disqualifies her from being Obama’s VP is her vote to authorize the war in Iraq, and her subsequent support for the war, up until the point it became politically unpopular to support it in the Democratic Party. This is a pretty simple one. If you’ve been following the back and forth between Obama and McCain over foreign policy in the last couple of weeks, you’ll notice that Obama is tearing McCain up pretty well over his support for the war, and his flawed judgment. Obama can easily juxtapose McCain’s positions with his own, because unlike McCain, Obama had the good sense to oppose the war from the beginning. This offers Obama the ability to make very stark distinctions between him and McCain on foreign policy, and he is very effective in doing so. However, because of her support for the war, Hillary couldn’t make such a case, and thus as I’ve said before she would have been a much weaker presidential nominee. This also applies to the VP spot. Having her on the ticket with Obama would muddy his clear record of opposition, and make it easy for McCain to avoid being targeted for his support of the war, by simply pointing at Obama’s running mate. This obviously cannot be allowed. It is all made worse by the fact that she has never apologized for her support of the war, or admit she made a mistake, as Edwards has. This is important in ANY vice presidential candidate, they have to have been anti-war from the start, just like Obama.
1.3: Change Vs Status Quo -- The third reason Hillary is automatically disqualified from being VP is that she epitomizes status quo politics, or essentially everything Obama is running against. His entire campaign has been about changing the way Washington works and the way politics is played. Hillary is the quintessential Washington insider. Hillary used some of the worst of nasty Washington tactics in her campaign against Obama. Not just Washington tactics, nasty Republican tactics. She has consistently engaged in the politics of personal destruction to get ahead. She has lied to voters, she has used fearmongering, she has used race-baiting. Her campaign was incredibly negative. And while Obama and Edwards refused to take any money from federal lobbyists and special interest PACs, Hillary encouraged money from these sources. Hillary ran a campaign that was the antithesis of everything good that Obama’s represented. The core theme of Obama’s campaign is change, and there simply can’t be change with a relic of the status quo like Hillary filling up the bottom half of the ticket. It would destroy his argument of change, and he simply cannot do that. Edwards said it well:
1.4: Over His Dead Body -- The final thing that automatically disqualifies Hillary from being VP is her repeated invocation of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination when asked to explain why she is still in the race despite it being mathematically impossible for her to win. You can read my full commentary on her controversial comments here, but I’ll summarize it briefly now. She basically showed us that the possibility of Obama’s assassination was on her mind, and it was the only rationale that explained how she could still win the nomination. After Obama is elected, her chances of being president disappear, so her only way to get there is to be VP, and then for Obama to die. Now I’m not saying that she would somehow conspire to have him assassinated, but the last thing Obama needs it a VP who is waiting there for 0-8 years for him to be assassinated so she can step over his dead body and finally put on her long-coveted crown. Simply put, I never want Hillary in a position where she would benefit politically from Obama’s death. I’ll just leave it at that. Again, if you want to know more about my views of her comments, read my original post. I believe these comments disqualify Hillary from being Obama’s VP, especially in the minds of the millions of Obama supporters who really fear for the safety of the likely first black president. Rachel Maddow had a good comment on this one too:
And you may want to review Olbermann’s impassioned response to Hillary’s comments:
So we’ve already disqualified Hillary as VP four times over, and I could easily stop there and have all the justification anyone would need to rule her out as a viable pick, but there are many more reasons. Let’s move on to the major reasons:
Major Reasons Hillary Shouldn’t Be VP. None of these reasons necessarily disqualify Hillary by themselves, but they come close. These are BIG reasons why she shouldn’t be VP, just not the biggest.
2.1: The Kitchen Sink -- I already mention how Hillary epitomized the worst kind of politics in her primary battle against Obama, but aside from ruining Obama’s message of change if she were VP, the ruthless attacks themselves give us plenty of reasons why Hillary doesn’t deserve to be VP. My entire blog thus far is basically one big resource of all of Hillary’s negative attacks, you could take your pick of countless examples. Suffice to say, her tactics became appropriately known as the "Tonya Harding Strategy" (or alternatively, the kitchen sink strategy), for her desire to kneecap Obama at any cost. She lied about Obama’s positions, she lied about what Obama has said, she lied about what he has done. She (and Bill) disparaged his very real and very important opposition to the war in a cynical attempt to make them look better by comparison. She played the most cynical games with guilt-by-association attacks against Obama, including questioning his relationship with Rev. Wright and trying to connect him with terrorists. She called him out of touch and elitist (another anti-Democrat talking point). Her surrogates accused him of being "terribly sexist" (and she never said she didn’t agree). She left the door open for right-wing Obama-is-a-Muslim smears by saying that Obama wasn’t a Muslim, as far as she knew. Her campaign tried to paint Obama as anti-Israel, and perhaps even anti-Semitic. Her crazy husband even accused Obama of coordinating some vast media conspiracy to attack the them. There are many many many more examples (again, browse through my entire blog), and every single one of them gives Obama a big reason not to pick her as VP, and taken all together, well Obama has about a thousand reasons not to pick her as VP. Going back to her style of old politics, her say-and-do-anything-to-win philosophy, all of her attacks highlight her less-than-savory character, and that simply isn’t the kind of person we want as a leader, president, vice president, or anything.
2.2: The Michigan-Florida Fiasco -- The next big reason is along the same lines. Obama has a big reason not to pick her because of her incessant attempts to delegitimize him by exploiting the Michigan-Florida fiasco to her political advantage. First, she agreed to the rules, then, when political convenient for her, she switched 180 degrees and started attacking Obama in these important swing states, trying to make it look like Obama was trying to disenfranchise voters, even though his campaign kept trying to find an equitable solution to the impasse (and Hillary’s campaign shot down all of them). This episode highlights her willingness to break the rules, to say and do anything to win, and to unjustifiably attack Obama in a way that could have hurt him (or maybe was intended to hurt him) in the general election. Even after the DNC’s Rules & Bylaws Committee reached a compromise position and it was inevitable that Obama would be our nominee, Hillary’s surrogates continued their media blitz trying to say Hillary was somehow robbed by Obama and that his nomination was somehow illegitimate. Even if Obama could forgive Hillary for employing such divisive and shameless tactics, her willingness to engage in that sort of transparent political game playing and hypocrisy would reflect poorly on the ticket if Hillary was VP. Resorting to that strategy is inexcusable. Comparing Obama and the DNC to Mugabe's murderous regime in Zimbabwe is inexcusable. You can also add her ridiculous and disingenuous "popular vote" claims, or her disparaging "states that matter" claims or her "big state" claims or any other fallacious metric she invented to try to deceive voters and delegitimize Obama’s nomination. All reflect very poorly on her character, and all were direct attacks on Obama's legitimacy, which he graciously tolerated, but should not now be rewarded.
2.3: Race-Baiting -- I briefly mentioned her race-baiting before, as an example of her stooping to Rove-like tactics to take down Obama. I think it deserves its own place on the list though, because her exploitation of racism to try to paint Obama as "the black candidate" (thus scaring away white voters) has been one of the most disturbing things to come out of this campaign. You can read a detailed analysis of examples of race-baiting from the Clinton campaign here, or if you want to see the bigger picture you can check out multiple posts on the subject here. Essentially they tried to sabotage the first viable black presidential candidate in the most cynical (and conservative) way by repeatedly injecting the issue of race into the campaign. It was shameless, despicable, and unforgivable. And as I pointed out the other day, not only did it not work, it actually resulted in greatly increased unfavorable ratings for the Clintons among African Americans. Putting her on the ticket, essentially rewarding these despicable tactics, would be a huge slap in the face to African Americans who have been appalled by her campaign’s use of racism to marginalize and sabotage Obama's historical candidacy. She should definitely not be rewarded for using those kinds of tactics.
2.4: Backseat Sabotage -- Another big reason Hillary should not be VP is because she simply doesn’t have the personality of someone who would be satisfied taking on the #2 role. She wants to have power, and the vice presidency doesn’t have power (not unless you are Dick Cheney, but that is an extreme exception, not the rule). Hillary has always been fond of this "co-presidency" idea, both in the 90s when Bill was president, and in this campaign where it has been a two-for-one special the whole way. It would be hard to imagine Hillary not trying to steal the spotlight as the bottom half of an Obama ticket. I think it is pretty easy to imagine her trying to lead from the backseat, and you can surely imagine how that imagine would play out publicly, especially on shows like Saturday Night Live. It would make Obama look weak, and that might very well be the point. There can be no doubt after watching months of Hillary try to sink Obama that the Clintons are very angry and bitter that Obama "ruined" what they both thought she was entitled to by divine right. They obviously think he is inferior, they obviously think he is undeserving (interesting how they define "deserving"), and they obviously resent his success. She has clearly engaged in a scorched earth strategy for the last couple months as evidenced by her nothing-to-lose (for her) blitz of negativity. Even after it was clear he would be the nominee, she continued to try to sabotage (most recently with claiming unfair treatment and sexism, trying to embitter her supporters), and there is no indication she won’t continue even in defeat. Being the vice president would give her unparalleled ability to try to sabotage his administration, and that is obviously something that Obama shouldn’t have to deal with. Hillary supporter Gov. Rendell even spoke of the big challenges Obama would face if he had Hillary (and by extension Bill) as a running mate:
"The Obama campaign would have to make strict rules, you know, about what President Clinton could and could not do during the campaign... For example, the Obama campaign would have to control his schedule; where he would go into, what states," Rendell told Carter.I believe this is also an important factor to take into account for any potential VP choice, they have to be able to defer to Obama. This is one of the reasons I think Jim Webb would be a poor choice, he is a fine senator, but he has a strong personality, not the personality of a follower.
"You know, normally politicians don't want to be outshone. Well you know you've got Bill Clinton lurking in the background. But Hillary Clinton, a very charismatic figure for many Americans -- generally a lot of politicians don't like to put somebody like that on the ticket," continued Rendell. "You know rule one for the vice president is make sure you never upstage the president, right? It’s rule one. You know, Hillary Clinton in some ways couldn't help but upstage, even if she was trying not to"
2.5: Kyl-Lieberman & Iran -- Having not learned her lesson from Iraq, Hillary cast a vote in lockstep with Bush, McCain and the Republicans in September of 2007, which recklessly identified the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an official branch of the state military of Iran, as a terrorist organization, all without evidence of any terrorism, or even killing, and all seemingly without recognition of the dangerous precedent such a declaration would make, and the fact that by the same logic of that declaration the US government represents the world’s largest terrorist organization. Let’s face it, Hillary is a foreign policy hawk, and just like the Iraq vote, her Iran vote put her on the wrong side of the Obama – McCain divide, and makes her a huge liability on the ticket. Obama has been hitting McCain very hard on Iran and foreign policy, and having Hillary on the ticket would limit Obama’s ability to draw a clear distinction between the failed policies of the status quo (Bush-McCain-Hillary), and the new smart policies of change (Obama). Add to this her comments a month or so ago when she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran, and you can start to see why this is an important reason for her not to be on the ticket.
2.6: The Electoral Typhoid Mary -- This is a big one that isn’t about what she has said or done, rather it is about what she would do to the ticket just by being part of it. She’d kill it. Let’s be honest, Hillary has incredibly high negative ratings among the general electorate. A full 50% of Americans dislike her. We didn’t have to deal with this in the general because she did fine for the most part among Democrats, but for the whole country it is another story. We have to face it, Hillary is very polarizing. She came into this race very polarizing, and she left even more polarizing, because now even many on the left, like me, who were fine with her when she began, can’t stand her now because of her negative and divisive campaign. We need to fight for the middle (and even take some disillusioned Republicans with us) in the general election, and Obama is very very good at this, and McCain is decent at it, to a lesser extent, but Hillary is very bad at it, and having her on the ticket would undoubtedly push many in the middle over to McCain. Past the independents, she would keep away disillusioned Republicans who may have otherwise crossed over to Obama. Instead, they would stay with McCain to take down Hillary, and McCain’s entire Republican base would rally and become energized by fighting Hillary. Even Republicans like Rush Limbaugh have acknowledged this upfront:
The Republicans do not seem to be relying on leadership in their party to unite the party. They seem to be relying on all these external things, nobody is going to vote for Hillary, negative turnout factor. What if she's not the nominee? We've got make sure she's the nominee if the Republican Party is to be unified.That is the best articulation of it, straight from the fat bastard’s mouth. Having Hillary on the ticket, even as vice president, would be the best possible thing for the Republicans, and it would most likely completely negate the amazing gains Obama is making in the electorate. Having Hillary on the ticket would be the best way to slam the breaks on the massive victory we are heading for in November, from the White House to Congress to local races all the way down the ballot (this is known as the Hillary Effect).
[…]
She just polarizes people. I think she's going to gin up enough anti-Hillary turnout out there to perhaps be a boon to whoever the Republican nominee is.
Now, if Obama is the nominee, we are doomed, and you should get ready and prepared for it now.
2.7: Let The Vetting Begin -- Hillary spoke a lot of vetting throughout the primary campaign, generally claiming that she had been thoroughly vetted throughout the 90s, and so she was now squeaky clean, while Obama is a big question mark. The honest truth is that while Obama was vetted up and down by Hillary and the media throughout the campaign, and actually was pretty spotless (ridiculous attempts to tie him to his former pastor’s out of context comments aside), Hillary hasn’t actually been vetted all that well. Obama was nice enough not to tear through his opponent like she tried with him, and the media was asleep at the wheel, so we actually heard very little of the possible dirt on Hillary (and by extension, Bill) during the primaries. However the general election is another story, and it is Obama’s responsibility, and right, to thoroughly vet every single vice presidential option to make sure they wouldn’t become a liability in the general election, or even after taking office. Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic gives a brief look at the VP vetting process:
The vetting process entails a rigorous schedule of interviews focusing on everything from politics to potential embarrassments -- Did they ever employ a nanny on whose behalf they did not pay Social Security taxes, for example; did they experiment with drugs or people in college? -- and potential candidates are required to give the search team access to their tax returns and other financial records.I emphasized that last point for a reason. While the media didn’t make an issue out of Bill’s numerous shady business dealings and conflicts of interest, the Republicans surely would (you can be certain that they are sitting on a fat file cabinet of dirt just in case Hillary finds her way onto the ticket). There is a lot of dirt there, and the Clintons have been very secretive about disclosing that information. They didn’t come anywhere close to coming completely clean during the primaries, and there is little indication that they would submit to giving all that information up to Obama now for thorough vetting. Hendrik Hertzberg from the New Yorker gives us a look at what other problems Hillary might run into during the vetting process:
Hillary has her own vulnerability in this general area, and it is larger than the fact, mentioned by Obama in his riposte to her, that her husband, on his last day in office, commuted the sentences of a couple of old Weather Underground jailbirds. ...It wouldn’t be pretty, assuming they Clintons actually submitted to it (which is unlikely), and there is little chance she would come out the other side with a clean bill of health. The vetting process is actually the most likely explanation for why she won’t be chosen as Obama’s running mate, because she is a walking liability, her refusal to be vetted with disqualify her, and no one can fault Obama (and all Democrats) for wanting the strongest ticket possible. It could be his best friend in the world but if they have unsavory scandals in the closet they shouldn’t get anywhere close to being VP, period. It is nothing personal, it has nothing to do with Hillary or any other reasons on this list, it is simply business, and common sense. Hillary must be vetted.
My point is that Hillary Clinton has not, in fact, survived the worst that the Republican attack machine (and its pilotless drones online and on talk radio) can dish out. We will learn what the worst really means if she is nominated. The Commie law firm will be only the beginning. Many tempting targets—from Bill’s little-examined fund-raising and business activities during the past seven years to the prospect of his hanging around the White House in some as yet undefined role for another four or eight years to whatever leftovers from the Clinton "scandals" of the nineteen-nineties can be retrieved from the dumpster and reheated—remain to be machine-gunned. The whole Clinton marital soap opera, obviously off limits within the Democratic fold, will offer ample material for what Obama calls "distractions." To take the most obvious example, the former President’s social life since leaving the White House will become, if not "fair game," big game—and some of these right-wing dirtbags are already hiring bearers and trying on pith helmets for the safari. Is this a "there" where the Democratic Party really wants to go?
Minor Reasons Hillary Shouldn’t Be VP. We’ve already seen a ton of reasons why Hillary would be a horrible choice for VP, but there are more still. This category is for the non-major reasons, but that doesn’t make them insignificant.
3.1: Excess Baggage --This goes with the vetting process above (2.7), but assuming she was chosen somehow, her (and Bill’s) baggage from the past, and present, would be a never ending issue. Most of us can recall the circus that the Clintons made of the Democratic Party in the 90s with all of their drama, and I think very few of us want to go back there (especially given how many electoral defeats the Democrats suffered during those years). Add to this Bill’s increasingly erratic and antagonistic behavior, and you have a Pandora’s box you don’t want to open. And the recent Vanity Fair article about Bill highlights that these problems aren’t going away. Leave the past in the past, and the Clintons off the ticket.
3.2: Brings Nothing To The Table -- When looking at any VP candidate, you have to ask yourself what they bring to the table. This isn’t so much something wrong with Hillary, but it is simply something that Hillary doesn’t do. It isn’t as if she just has to not have any reasons NOT to put her on the ticket, she still needs to have reasons TO put her on the ticket, and she doesn’t. This is what I alluded to at the beginning, Hillary brings nothing demographically to the ticket. Despite all her rhetoric about being the best to bring in those elusive "white, hardworking white Americans who are white, and hard working and not dark" Americans, she doesn’t actually do better among this group outside of Appalachia. In addition to that, the most recent poll out of West Virginia shows Obama not far behind McCain! And beyond that, West Virginia and Kentucky are not states that Obama has to win in November, and that is really all Hillary can claim she can do for him. Worse, she has never been able to offer any logical argument or empirical evidence to back up her claim that she can carry certain states better than Obama in the general election simply because she won among Democrats in those primaries. There is one state Hillary could possibly help in, and that is Florida, but the numbers out of Florida are deceiving because Obama has been unable to campaign there, thus his numbers are at their lowest levels, while Hillary’s are most likely at their highest. It is entirely possible that Obama will be able to carry Florida without Hillary, and there is a distinct possibility that he won’t even need Florida to beat McCain, because of how he expands the map (and remember the electoral Typhoid Mary, she is much more likely to hurt than she would be to help). The national polls already show Obama gaining huge leads over Hillary, even among her strongest demographic: women. He is even ahead in Latino votes nationally. He wins among the poorly educated now. He wins among low-income voters. He doesn't need Hillary to bring these groups, these are all Democrats, and they will vote for the Democratic nominee (and lets not forget that many of these perceived Hillary strengths were padded by Limbaugh Democrats). One last point, and this is important: even among groups she performs well in, like Latinos, that doesn’t mean she is the standard bearer of this group, and there is no reason to assume that there aren’t other VP options who would bring in that vote much better, for example Bill Richardson, who would probably help Obama win Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and possibly even Texas (some of those states Obama can win without him, but Richardson would give him an even bigger boost). Simply put, Hillary adds nothing to the ticket, she doesn’t add states, and she doesn’t add demographic advantages (nor does she add good judgment, exceptional experience, or management skills, which we will see next).
3.3: Poor Management --Again, let’s be honest, Hillary has run a terrible campaign, and I’m not talking about tactics this time, I’m talking about organization, staffing and strategy. She surrounded herself not with the best people, but with loyalists who were placed as favors, not because they were qualified. The most striking example of this was her placement of Patti Solis Doyle, someone without any campaign managing experience, as campaign manager. She also made horrible strategic decisions, like having a bad campaign message, poor grassroots organization, no long-term strategy, and basically ignoring half of the states. She also managed to take a campaign staffed with the party’s best fundraisers (that she did part right), and managed to run her campaign into debt by having absolutely no idea how much money she had, or how much money they were burning through (and spending excessive spending on luxuries). She ended up with around $30,000,000 in debt, and at times vendors were considering taking her to collection agencies to get their money. She essentially ran her campaign into the ground, which leaves you with the obvious question, who is really ready to lead on day one? The truth is, Obama, the person they so fatally underestimated, ran a well oiled and unprecedented campaign, bringing in unprecedented amounts of money from an unprecedented number of people and operated a grassroots level in 50 states with a massive number of volunteers. He ran a campaign for the history books, and all against Hillary’s establishment machine, and he won big as hers fell apart around her. She definitely doesn't bring management or organization to the table. And would you actually believe that she would run a better campaign if she were trying to win for Obama instead of herself? Not a chance.
3.4: Forced Ticket -- As Hillary’s surrogates work overtime to try to force Obama to pick her as his VP, it raises the potential of Obama looking weak if he did pick Hillary as VP in the end. This is the first big decision of the general election for Obama, and so far in everything else he has done post-primary he has been a strong leader. Now people are looking to who his VP will be, and Hillary’s surrogates are trying to force-feed him, the nominee and leader of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton as his VP. Taking her as his running mate under those conditions would make him look weak, and it would definitely give him an image problem, especially given the perils of the "backseat sabotage" I mentioned previously (2.4). As Hillary-supporter Gov. Rendell stated firmly:
There's no bargaining. You don't bargain with the Presidential nominee. Even if you're Hillary Clinton and you have 18 million votes, you don't bargain.And frankly Obama isn’t weak. He was the proverbial David standing up to the doubleteaming Goliath, and he knocked them down against all odds. He won’t be threatened or forced into anything. He has always picked the best people for the job (not a single shakeup in his campaign for incompetence, compare that to Hillary’s record), as we just saw with his decision to keep Dean as DNC Chairman, and the VP position is no different. In fact, if Obama were to pick Hillary as VP, that would be the first time I ever had reason to doubt his judgment.
If somehow all of those reasons didn't prove beyond a doubt that she would be a horrible choice for VP, you can just listen to Jimmy Carter’s opinion about the nightmare ticket:
I think it would be the worst mistake that could be made.Well said Carter, well said.
Other Ideas For Hillary’s Non-VP Future.Unfortunately many of the people who know better than to advocate for Hillary as VP have suggested other consolation positions for her, although those ideas are also ill-advised. And again, why the sense of entitlement? Why does she need to receive any special treatment not afforded to others like Kerry, Dodd, Biden, Kucinich, Richardson, Edwards, Ted Kennedy, etc?
4.1: Cabinet Position – Team of Rivals-- This one Obama brought upon himself, and I hope he was just thinking out loud in a very not-serious way. Here is what he said not so long ago:
One of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his cabinet because whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was 'how can we get this country through this time of crisis?’ And I think that has to be the approach that one takes.Now there has been much (legitimate) talk about the possibility of appointing some of his "rivals" to important positions, like John Edwards as Attorney General (he is a lawyer, and the social justice issues he advocates would make it a good fit), and perhaps Senator Biden as Secretary of State (he has a ton of experience in foreign policy), and perhaps Wes Clark (okay, not an '08 candidate, but he did support Hillary) for National Security Advisor (if there isn't anyone better. I would say Secretary of Defense, but military personnel must be at least 10 years removed from active duty before they can assume that role, and Clark retired in 2000). Those I understand, because these people are qualified, and they aren’t "rivals" to the extent that they are on opposite sides of the issues or hate each other. Hillary though, is another story entirely. Obviously it would be hard for Hillary and Obama to work closely together again, especially with Obama as Hillary's boss, it just wouldn't work. Also, I think it is a safe assumption that anyone who brings up the idea of a cabinet position for Hillary has the Department of Health & Human Services in mind for her. This sounds reasonable because she is all about health care right? Wrong. She has tried to brand herself as a expert on health care, but in reality she is far from an expert. She has no educational background in medicine or public health policy. She has never held a job in any field related to health care. The closest thing she has to experience in health care is a failed pet project in the 90s, and her current assignment on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions. But does that make her an expert? Not even close. Does that qualify her to be Secretary of Health & Human Services? Most definitely not. Is she equipped to manage "one of the largest civilian departments in the federal government, with a budget that accounts for almost one out of every four federal dollars and more than 67,000 employees"? From the looks of how she ran her campaign, not a chance. Listen, with all due respect to Hillary, she just isn’t qualified. You know what? I’m not either, that’s why I’m not going to get put in charge of health policy for the entire United States. The cabinet is meant for EXPERTS, the best of the best, so the president can have the very best advice and so the federal government can run as smoothly as possible. Bush didn’t understand this, or didn’t care, so he put his corporate cronies in charge of everything, no matter how unqualified they were, and we’ve seen disastrous results across the board. Obama is not an idiot, he wants the best people supporting him, and so there is no room to be handing out Cabinet positions as consolation gifts for people who are bitter about losing the presidential nomination.
4.2: Supreme Court Justice-- Fine, except she isn’t a scholar, isn’t qualified, and failed the bar, even though 95% of Yale Law graduates pass the bar, she was in the bottom 5% who failed it. After failing the bar she jumped on Bill’s coattails and road them throughout his entire political career, eventually winning her a seat in the Senate in a state she didn’t belong to, not because she had any experience, but because of who she married (seriously, ask yourself if anyone who wasn't married to Bill Clinton could have done what she did). And now she is supposedly qualified to sit on the Supreme Court just because she came in second place in her party’s presidential primary? I don’t think so. Again, why are people floating the idea of putting Hillary in positions she isn’t the least bit qualified for?
4.3: Senate Majority Leader-- And then there is the position of Senate Majority Leader, currently held by Sen. Harry Reid. Well, let’s just ask Sen. Reid about what he thinks about Hillary deserving his job as a consolation prize:
I do this job the best I can, with the full support of my senators. I feel very comfortable with where I've gotten.Hm, good point Harry, why is Hillary owed your job just because she ran a horrible campaign and spent months attacking her own party? Is it because she is more qualified than you? Let’s see, what did Harry Reid have to do to get to where he is now? He was the governor of Nevada for four years. Then, he spent two terms in the US House of Representatives. Then he served in the Senate for 20 years, including two years as Majority Whip. But apparently Hillary deserves to be Senate Majority Leader because she was married to a president, got elected to the Senate after carpetbagging her way into New York with no legitimate experience, then served a term in the Senate and ran a failed campaign for her party’s presidential nomination. Yeah, I guess that is more important than 24 years in the US Congress and four years of executive experience. Step aside Reid, people seem to think Hillary is entitled to your job.
Keep in mind also, a senator coming back who's run for president is not a very unique one. Senator John Kerry ran, he's back. Chris Dodd ran, he's back. Joe Biden ran, he's back.
Those senators have been plenty busy since returning from the campaign trail. … Senator Clinton has some very fine committee assignments.
4.4: Governor of New York-- Who knows. Like I said before, how she ran her campaign doesn't give me much confidence in her ability to manage, and the state of New York would be quite the management nightmare. This I’m less opposed to than other ideas though (although being Lt. Gov. first would make her more qualified), except one small problem, her supporter David Patterson happens to have the job now, and is planning on running for reelection, and he is fairly popular, and African-American, which probably wouldn’t go over well after the racial issues she stirred up against Obama. Pollster John Zogby put it well:
She'd be nuts to take on a sitting governor, an African-American governor, and let's assume a somewhat popular governor. It would be viewed, to say the least, as a hostile act.Which means she’d probably try to take him on.
Here’s the bottom line: Hillary would be the worst possible pick for VP, for the many reasons listed above. Hillary isn’t entitled to anything just because she got a lot of votes but eventually came up short, it isn’t a unique occurrence, and no one else comes back from their failed bids thinking they deserve to given a special prize. I’m thankful that some people recognize the nightmare ticket for the disaster it is, but quit trying to place her in positions she isn’t qualified for or hasn't earned, just because she is Hillary Clinton. There are over 30 Democratic Senators with more seniority than her, and she is still maybe 8 years from having enough seniority to chair a committee, let alone be Majority Leader. People need to get realistic.
One last thing, for all those women who are sad because Hillary isn’t going to break the "ultimate glass ceiling":
Newsweek's Howard Fineman just said on MSNBC at 8:35pm Eastern that the Clinton campaign is demanding that Hillary be offered the VP position, which she will then decline, and then Fineman quotes the Clinton campaign as saying "don't you dare offer it to another woman." Isn't that special. Apparently, Hillary was only planning on breaking her own personal glass ceiling. For the rest of you, you can break you own.I hope her supporters didn’t think she was doing this for all women, because she is doing it for her own political gain and fame, women are just a sympathetic tool at her disposal.
[In conclusion, please feel free to use these reasons to push back against people who are in favor of the nightmare ticket, because people need to start being realistic, this isn't something we want to screw up. Also, if I missed anything, let me know in the comments and I'll keep adding to the list. And if you read this entire thing, you are a hardcore, gracias!]
And read this to see why Richardson would be a very good choice for VP.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Obama, As The New Leader Of The Democratic Party, Calls The Shots
One of the things it was widely known that the Clintons wanted to do as soon as they won the nomination was to kick Howard Dean out of the DNC and load it with their DLC establishment cronies that share their same views of how the Democratic Party should be. For me this would have been one of many big negatives of Hillary winning the nomination. The DLCers have always pursued a narrow-minded, short-sighted, triangulating vision of Democratic strategy, and we can see what that got us: 8 years of Bill Clinton playing the role of Reagan-lite (in terms of corporations, deregulation, budget and gutting social services), we lost 12 Senate seats while Bill was running the show, we lost 47 House seats, we lost 11 governorships, we lost control of 13 state legislatures, we lost well over a thousand state legislative seats, and hundreds of elected officials nationwide switched parties to the Republicans. That was the state of the Democratic Party after the mismanagement of the Clintons and the DLC.
So Hillary didn't win, the Clintons were unable to take control of the Party and kick out Dean, but the question of Dean's future was still unknown, as the DNC Chair's tenure is usually an open question after a nominee is chosen, because the nominee will usually install a loyalist at the helm. Today Obama gave us a look at what he has in mind for the future of the DNC:
I, for one, can't wait to see who Obama picks for his cabinet, because his judgment is impeccable, and unlike Bush, he surrounds himself with the best qualified people, not loyalists he is rewarding for political favors. I'm confident he will assemble a great team, and the times are gonna be a-changin' when he gets into the White House.
Oh, and I think it is time to bring Samantha Power back.
| And it is no secret they were very much against Dean when he took control of the DNC. They were against his 50-state strategy, instead preferring the narrow 50%+1 strategy that had failed the Party for many elections. Since then we've seen that Dean really knew what he was doing, and has presided over huge victories for Democrats in every corner of the country. Dean has done a great job, shown great leadership, and left an indelible mark on this country. |  |
So Hillary didn't win, the Clintons were unable to take control of the Party and kick out Dean, but the question of Dean's future was still unknown, as the DNC Chair's tenure is usually an open question after a nominee is chosen, because the nominee will usually install a loyalist at the helm. Today Obama gave us a look at what he has in mind for the future of the DNC:
Senator Obama appreciates the hard work that Chairman Dean has done to grow our party at the grassroots level and looks forward to working with him as the chairman of the Democratic Party as we go forward.That's right, Dean stays. Obama, once again, showed exceptional judgment. He has always embraced the 50-state strategy and he recognizes that Dean has done a terrific job. Now we go on strong, with proven leadership both in the DNC and Obama, and we are going to unleash an electoral tsunami on the Republicans, essentially the exact opposite of what the Clintons and the DLC did in the 90s, and for the second election in a row.
I, for one, can't wait to see who Obama picks for his cabinet, because his judgment is impeccable, and unlike Bush, he surrounds himself with the best qualified people, not loyalists he is rewarding for political favors. I'm confident he will assemble a great team, and the times are gonna be a-changin' when he gets into the White House.
Oh, and I think it is time to bring Samantha Power back.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Democratic Nominee: Barack Obama
It is official, Senator Barack Obama is the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, an outstanding triumph, a truly historic moment in American history, words can't do it justice.
Obama is speaking now. I wish I was there!!
I probably won't write much about his speech, because only the real thing does him justice, I'll be posting that as soon as it is available. One thing I can say is that Obama is about a thousand times more eloquent and inspiring than Hillary, and about a billion times more eloquent and inspiring than John McCain. The differences are amazing, and I think that is going to have an important impact on the general election.
One thing to note: Obama actually congratulated her on her victory in South Dakota. He congratulated her even though he is the winner overall, yet she couldn't find it in herself to congratulate him for winning the nomination. There is no doubt who is the bigger person, who has the best character, who is more presidential.
It is also amazing that he so stoic even as he makes history and wins the Democratic nomination, with no sign of self-congratulation, no sign of arrogance, he is the ultimate gracious winner to say the least. He is serious about the challenges ahead, and barely even lets a smile out on one of the biggest days of his life. Contrast that with Hillary's masturbatory "Me Me Me" speech and McCain's "I'm going to smile like a toddler who finally learned how to use the potty every time I think I make a good point" speech. As they say on Sesame Street, one of these is not like the other, and I'll give you one guess at who stands out.
Here is some reaction to Obama's winning of the Democratic nomination:
Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic:
Obama is speaking now. I wish I was there!!
I probably won't write much about his speech, because only the real thing does him justice, I'll be posting that as soon as it is available. One thing I can say is that Obama is about a thousand times more eloquent and inspiring than Hillary, and about a billion times more eloquent and inspiring than John McCain. The differences are amazing, and I think that is going to have an important impact on the general election.
One thing to note: Obama actually congratulated her on her victory in South Dakota. He congratulated her even though he is the winner overall, yet she couldn't find it in herself to congratulate him for winning the nomination. There is no doubt who is the bigger person, who has the best character, who is more presidential.
It is also amazing that he so stoic even as he makes history and wins the Democratic nomination, with no sign of self-congratulation, no sign of arrogance, he is the ultimate gracious winner to say the least. He is serious about the challenges ahead, and barely even lets a smile out on one of the biggest days of his life. Contrast that with Hillary's masturbatory "Me Me Me" speech and McCain's "I'm going to smile like a toddler who finally learned how to use the potty every time I think I make a good point" speech. As they say on Sesame Street, one of these is not like the other, and I'll give you one guess at who stands out.
Here is some reaction to Obama's winning of the Democratic nomination:
Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic:
Yes We Did... As we absorb the news that an African-American is now the presumptive nominee for the presidency of the United States, a few words. No one should allow the tortuous end of this primary journey to obscure the passion and insurrection that made it possible. That passion came from a simple place, the way it often does in politics. It came from the gut instinct that we have lost our way, that the United States needs to start again after the debt, depravity, and destruction of the Bush years. It came from hope that the future need not be as bleak as it seemed not too long ago. It came from a sense that the deepest divisions were not as deep as the political class needed them to be and wanted them to be. And it came from the astonishing nostrum that a liberal, black first-term senator could overturn the biggest machine, the biggest name and the biggest dynasty in Democratic party politics.Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.:
Senator Obama personifies a uniquely American story -- born to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya. He affirms the motto included in the Great Seal of the United States: E Pluribus Unum -- Out of Many, One. He also reflects the American Dream -- 'a skinny kid with a funny name' who came to Chicago's South Side with 'no money and no connections' can run to become the President of the United States of America. ...Rich Lowry, National Review:
Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination for President on August 28th -- the 45th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 'I Have A Dream' Speech. In many ways, Senator Obama's nomination as president is a fulfillment of a dream -- a dream long deferred -- envisioning a country where people would 'not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.'
Even if we're going to hear it over and over, it's true--this is a historic moment. That an African-American has a better than even chance to be the next president of the United States is an amazing thing--and heartening about this country's capacity for progress. Also, on a more mundane level, Obama out-campaigned, out-fundraised, out-strategized, out-classed, and--yes--out-spun the Clintons. What a campaign. He and his team should be very proud.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
McCainocrats?
As you may recall, yesterday I provided you with a sampling of some of the vitriol coming from hardcore Hillary supporters are the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee, these included claims that Obama is gay, a murderer, a misogynist, a Nazi, a socialist and many frenzied vows that they will vote for McCain in November. Some even chanted that Fox News is "fair and balanced". Now you tell me, are these Democrats? If I just heard these comments out of context, I would assume they were coming straight out of the mouthes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, even too vile for the scum on Fox News. Yet no, the come from supposed Democrats, supposed Democrats who are now vowing to scorch the earth and vote for a third term of Bush. Meteor Blades over at Daily Kos had some good analysis of who these small and petty specimens really are:
I’m not prescient or plugged-in enough to have any special window on how many of you Clinton supporters who are saying you will vote for John McCain in November will come to your senses by then. Many people I respect think that most of you will. I suspect they’re right. I hope they are. But it’s obvious that more than a handful of you are serious in your vindicativeness and will join Joe Lieberman to support the Senator from Arizona over Obama. That would be the anti-choice, hundred-year-war, two-faced, Republican Senator from Arizona.Here Meteor Blades goes on to explain past species of traitors to the Democratic Party, the "George Wallace Democrats", the "Nixon Democrats" and the oft-mentioned "Reagan Democrats", but these people weren't so much traitors as simply belonging to the wrong party. They were really Republicans, who just hadn't officially switched over to the party of racism and corporate greed, yet. Meteor Blades goes on to explain how these "McCainocrats" aren't threatening to leave for any ideological reasons, which may be excusable, they are threatening to leave out of revenge, showing the true shallowness of their characters:
Thus is born a new subspecies, McCain Democrats, McCainocrats.
If your shrieking can be believed, you McCainocrats are premeditating ballot support for an exclusive club of racist, union-busting, woman-suppressing, bedroom-peering, rights-scoffing, warmongering, torture-backing, buccaneering, global warming-denying, privatizing, public land-grabbing, Supreme Court stuffing, empire-building, Constitution-shredding raptors. All for self-indulgent revenge. You’re unhappy that your candidate has not won the nomination. I understand that. Mine didn’t win either. But you’re not just unhappy, you're also willing to contribute to the election of someone who stands against most of what your candidate has been promoted as standing for. That, I don’t comprehend at all. Emotionally, intellectually or morally. I get the feeling you would vote for George W. Bush in 2008 if the 22nd Amendment weren’t in the way.
You McCainocrats might recall that you have ancestors.
You McCainocrats don’t run in a direct lineage from all these ancestors. For one thing, they had issues, many of them unlikable, even detestable, but understandable. You, however, clearly have no guiding philosophy beyond surly revenge. John McCain can’t possibly give you what you want if what you really want is what you say Senator Clinton has been in the running for this year. Only on the margins does he contravene the rightwing cabal that over time seized the party and has now left it in disarray. His discernible stances on almost everything of note are, or should be, anathema to any Democrat who is a Democrat. Much of the rest of his views are just contradictory meandering. When he opens his mouth, you never know which side he will speak from.He hit the nail on the head. Unlike the Republican-Democrats of the past, most of these people really are Democrats, but they have gotten so out of touch with reality and perspective, so fanatical in their blind support of Hillary, that they are actually willing to betray everything they say they stand for. They say they are doing this because they are pro-women (as if we aren't all pro-women) yet they are vowing to go out of their way to support John McCain, an anti-women, anti-choice candidate, who wants to, and would likely have it in his power to, roll back decades of progress for reproductive rights. A candidate who called his wife a "cunt". All this against a candidate who has been very committed to defending reproductive rights, just as much as Hillary, if not more. It isn't about the issues, it isn't about women or feminism, it is about a disgusting fanatical allegiance to a candidate just because she has a vagina, and maybe because she was married to Bill Clinton. It is the height of insanity. It is disgusting. I'd much rather these hardcore loyalists just officially switch over to the Republican Party, because if they are willing to sabotage the Democrats out of bitterness that their candidate didn't win, they are Republicans as far as I'm concerned, and I'd rather them make it official, because I'm extremely embarrassed to be in the same party as these people.
I’m no fan of third parties because history shows only one making the leap to even the lower rungs of national power. But I can at least understand voters who jump ship to a third party based on principle and symbolism and hope for a breakthrough in a direction amicable to their beliefs. You McCainocrats, on the other hand, are incomprehensible. Is the idea that voting for another four years of rightwing Republican rule would be worth it as long as you could say: "See? We told you Obama couldn’t win." Does the McCainocrat lunacy embrace the idea that four more years of a Republican in the White House would make Clinton a shoo-in for 2012?
If that’s what your telling me, if you’re willing to force the American people to suffer for your chance to say nah-nah-nah ...
Oh, and you overestimate your strength, because you are a fanatical few, and you can hold hands with the Republicans and John McCain, and you can try to stab the Democrats in the back out of sheer vindictiveness, but you will not succeed, you will not ruin this election for us, you will not get your "I told you so" moment, because the vast majority of Hillary's supporters are not insane, fanatical and vindictive, and they will support Obama. Indeed many, even many of her biggest supporters, are already embracing Obama. So you can try all you want, but your hate won't go away, because you'll never find the relief you are looking for, and all you do is give Hillary and yourselves, and perhaps women in general a bad name. In the end you are only hurting yourself.
Update: And read this.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Dem Leaders Tired Of BS, Say It Is Time To End The Primary Battle (Hillary, This Means You)
It looks like Party leaders are finally reaching the end of their patience with Hillary and this primary season. Today Speaker Pelosi warned Hillary's supporters (and essentially Hillary's campaign, although she wouldn't say it) who are threatening to divide the Party by taking the fight all the way to the Convention that they are pursuing "a scorched earth philosophy" (as if they didn't already know that) that would seriously damage the chances of electing a Democratic president in November, and she vowed to step in to prevent that from happening. She continued:
It sounds like the Party leadership is about tired of bullshit from every source.
And I like it.
Oh, and I shouldn't have to point this out, but I probably do: Pelosi isn't saying this because she hates women. Oh, and Ferraro, Pelosi isn't saying this because you are white either. Sometimes you are just wrong, grow up and deal with it, you are giving women everywhere a bad name.
"There is too much at stake in our country for us to be thinking that we can afford the luxury of intra-party battles eight weeks before the election," said Pelosi, in her strongest words yet on the battle over seating delegates from Florida and Michigan. "We've had many months to have a debate, to come to a conclusion. And one way or another ... we have to come together."She also hit back at Hillary about trying to break the rules for her political gain:
The American people have to know the Democratic Party can run its own delegate selection process ... if they want to govern America. The rules are what the rules are.And she addressed the failure of the media:
"Instead of talking about process," Democrats now need to "talk about how we have a progressive economic agenda. ... That's what the American people want to hear about," she said. "That's how we can take America in a new direction."And she also mapped out how she envisions this primary process ending:
"This is the democratic process ... we take it one step at a time. This weekend the (party's) rules committee will act," followed by the final three primaries - Puerto Rico on Sunday, Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Then, she predicted, "there will be some movement of the superdelegates after that ... and we'll make a judgment at that time on what is needed."All indications are that this time will be soon, as Reid made clear on Wednesday:
There are only three places to go for superdelegates, the Senate the House and the DNC," Reid told the Writers Bloc at Town Hall Los Angeles on Wednesday. "I have talked to Governor [Howard] Dean. I talk to [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi. We are pretty much in tune. We are going to tell our folks there are only a couple days to make a decision for those who haven't made a decision."You can't get much clearer than that. He also took aim at Bush, calling him the worst president "we have ever had in the history of this country." And he went after Greenspan as well too, who he called a "fraud", the "J. Edgar Hoover of the financial world", and "the biggest political hack in Washington."
"We are not going to choose a candidate at the convention. We are going to choose the candidate a week from today."
It sounds like the Party leadership is about tired of bullshit from every source.
And I like it.
Oh, and I shouldn't have to point this out, but I probably do: Pelosi isn't saying this because she hates women. Oh, and Ferraro, Pelosi isn't saying this because you are white either. Sometimes you are just wrong, grow up and deal with it, you are giving women everywhere a bad name.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Hillary's Tangle Of Distortions Over Michigan And Florida
The Jed Report keeps doing what it does best, putting together another great video exposing Hillary's hypocrisy and political games:
The Jed Report breaks it down:
Earlier today in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Hillary Clinton endorsed the Republican Party's decision to cut in half the voting power of the Florida delegation to the RNC.And here is a closer look at how the DNC's decision was made, and how Hillary's group fully supported it, and could have changed the decision if they had really cared:
Why should they have been cut in half? "Because it was a Republican decision" to change the primary date, she said.
The problem? Democrats also supported the decision. In fact, it passed the state senate by a 37-2 margin and it passed the state house by a 118-0 margin. Moreover, the state party leadership steadfastly stuck with the January 29 date even though they knew the DNC would not seat the Florida delegations.
Clinton herself supported the DNC's punishment when she signed a pledge to honor the DNC's rules. The key line in that pledge: "the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will strip states of 100% of their delegates and super delegates to the DNC National Convention if they violate the nomination calendar."
And now, even though Clinton is conceding that the Republican Party was correct to penalize its delegation, she is refusing to agree to a compromise that would apply the same exact penalty to the Democratic delegation. The basis of her refusal is a demonstrably false claim.
And that of course leads us right back where we started: for Hillary Clinton, Florida has nothing to do with principle.
It's just another power play.
On Aug. 25, when the DNC's rules panel declared Florida's primary date out of order, it agreed by a near-unanimous majority to exceed the 50 percent penalty called for under party rules. Instead, the group stripped Florida of all 210 delegates to underscore its displeasure with Florida's defiance and to discourage other states from following suit. In doing so, the DNC essentially committed itself, for fairness' sake, to strip the similarly defiant Michigan of all 156 of its delegates three months later. Clinton held tremendous potential leverage over this decision, and not only because she was then widely judged the likely nominee. Of the committee's 30 members, a near-majority of 12 were Clinton supporters. All of them—most notably strategist Harold Ickes—voted for Florida's full disenfranchisement. (The only dissenting vote was cast by a Tallahassee, Fla., city commissioner who supported Obama.)And a reporter recently raised this very fact, that Hillary could have influenced the rules if she had actually cared at the time, check out Hillary's response:
Reporter: Some people might say, where were you when we needed you? When the rules and bylaws committee was stripping away our delegates, you were silent, and some of your top advisors, Harold Ickes, Tina Flournoy, were voting for that penalty.She totally avoids the question. She doesn't answer it, which is quite typical of how she responds to reporters when they ask something dif
Clinton: Well, I don’t agree with that decision of the Democratic party, and I’ve been pushing for them to rectify that decision, and I hope that they will do so...