Posts with the tag 'HillBama'
NRO got a statement from the Clinton campaign about the delegate decisions…and it ended with this:
We reserve the right to challenge this decision before the Credentials Committee and appeal for a fair allocation of Michigan’s delegates that actually reflect the votes as they were cast.
A credentials fight at the convention. As noted earlier, there are efforts in the Obama camp to ease Hillary out, but I don’t thin she wants to be eased out. They are going to have to force her out, and the only way to do that is to have Obama secure a majority of delegates as if FL and MI were fully represented at the convention…in other words, I don’t see Hillary quitting even if Obama gets to 2025…he’ll have to go 100 above that, and I don’t think he’ll be able to do it, because as long as Hillary hasn’t conceded, there will be some superdelegates who will stick with her no matter what, and others too afraid to vote against her (they don’t know what Obama will do if they don’t help him out, but anyone in politics over the past 16 years knows the sorts of things Hillary WILL do to them if she’s crossed).
I don’t see this ending on Tuesday - certainly not before late June.
UPDATE: Hillary wins Puerto Rico by a convincing margin. Obama is still acting as if he won. Does this work to Obama’s advantage? I mean this treating Hillary as a negligible quantity and all this orchestrated talk about how Hillary has to back out? Does it make Obama seem strong, or does it make him seem disrespectful of a gallant opponent? Contemptuous of Hillary’s continuingly ardent supporters? The MSM is entirley on Obama’s side here (the linked AP story calls Hillary’s win today “largely symbolic”), but I wonder if Obama is getting into an echo-chamber much as Kerry did in 2004 and doesn’t understand that outside his ardent supporters, he’s a much diminished figure?
Tags: Democratic Convention, Florida, HillBama, Michigan, Superdelegates
June 1st, 2008
This is a news story about how the Obama camp plans to get Hillary out of the race - and it is a nightmare scenario for the United States:
After today’s primary election in Puerto Rico and Tuesday’s final contests in Montana and South Dakota, the remaining super-delegates will come under huge pressure from fellow party grandees to declare their hands.
The Obama camp, however, remains nervous about Mrs Clinton’s intentions and ambitions, and is preparing a face-saving package that will allow her to continue to play a role in health care reform, which has been her signature issue for more than a decade. Despite pressure from some Clinton allies, Mr Obama and his advisers do not wish to ask her to be his vice-presidential running mate. “They will talk to her,” one Democrat strategist close to senior figures in the Obama camp told The Sunday Telegraph. “They will give her the respect she deserves. She will get something to do with health care, a cabinet post or the chance to lead the legislation through the Senate.”
Another Democrat who has discussed strategy with friends in the Obama inner circle said that Mr Obama was openly considering asking Mrs Clinton to join his cabinet, alongside two other former presidential rivals: John Edwards, who is seen as a likely attorney general; and Joe Biden, who is a leading contender to become Secretary of State.
Hillary to run health care, Edwards to run law enforcement and Biden to run State - all under an empty-suit leftist! Anyone who figures that a period of Democratic rule will work to conservatism’s benefit is a purblind idiot from this point on!
Hillary’s health care plan is a catastrophic government take over. Edwards is hack lawyer who is a complete tool of the trial lawyers. Biden is one of the Democratic Senators who introduced legislation in January of 2007 calling for no increase in US troop levels in Iraq. Hillary will bankrupt healthcare; Edwards will use the Justice Department to enrich his trial lawyer puppet-masters; the man who wanted to ensure our defeat in Iraq will orchestrate our surrender to Iran over Iraq. And you think Obama will do anything to make it better? He hasn’t the first clue about real political in-fighting and he’ll be a feather blown on the winds of these dedicated political gamesmen. This is what we’ll get if we don’t win - except, even worse, we’ll also get leftwing extremist judges and bureaucrats who will try to regulate us to death “for the children”.
Tags: HillBama, Joe Biden, John Edwards, John McCain
June 1st, 2008
And not just ’cause HillBama can’t agree who will be the nominee:
The Democratic Party is struggling to raise money for its convention in Denver on Aug. 25-28, with fund-raising by the host committee falling far short of the party’s goals and lagging behind the Republicans’ efforts for their convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
So far, the Denver host committee is about $15 million short of the $40.6 million it must raise by June 16. With only $25 million raised so far, the committee is scrambling to offer a new round of special deals for corporate underwriters, as well as to devise a backup plan should the fund-raising fall short and plans for the convention need to be scaled down.
My bet is that the HillBama campaigns are just sucking up all the Democratic money out there - which puts into question just how much they (and the auxiliary leftwing groups) will have for the fall campaign. I read somewhere recently that Hillary and Obama have raised (and mostly spent) half a billion dollars betweem themselves during this primary campaign. Naturally, Democrats will come up with sufficient funds to cover their convention, but a large question mark is starting to appear about Democratic finances.
Tags: Democratic Convention, fundraising, HillBama
May 29th, 2008
From USA Today:
In Idaho, about 21,000 Democrats gathered for caucuses. Obama won in a blowout by a margin of 13,000 votes. For that, he won 15 delegates to three for Clinton — a net gain of 12 delegates.
In New Jersey, Clinton won by a margin of 110,000 votes out of more than 1 million cast. For that, she won 59 delegates to Obama’s 48 — a net gain of 11 delegates.
Now under what system does it make sense for Obama to collect more net delegates for beating Clinton by 13,000 votes in one state than Clinton does for beating Obama by 110,000 in another?
That inequity, by the way, won’t be repeated in the general election, when the winner of Idaho will collect four electoral votes while the winner in New Jersey will get 15 — and the losers get nothing.
It is becoming more likely that Hillary will end up with more actual votes, while Obama has more delegates, and then gets the nomination. The fissures are starting to widen in the Democratic party as the Obama and Hillary camps grow ever more angry at each other over various slights, real or imagined. To win, Obama will need a completely united Democratic party behind him, and I’m starting to figure he won’t have it.
Tags: HillBama
May 29th, 2008
While waiting for the Mrs to finish a medical appointment this evening, I was forced - for the first time - to be in a room where the TV was tuned to Olberman without my having the ability to change the channel. He was raving on and on about something, and it occured to me it was about Hillary’s statement vis a vis long primary seasons and the assasination of Robert Kennedy. This is causing an MSM firestorm, it would seem:
Another example of the power of the Drudge Report today, as a NY Post story pointing out that Clinton brought up the assassination of Robert F Kennedy in 1968 during an editorial board meeting sent reporters traveling with Clinton into a frenzy.
Asked by South Dakota newspaper the Argus Leader why she didn’t buy the argument that the party was fracturing because of the prolonged contest, Clinton said “my husband didn’t wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June.”
“We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California,” she continued. “You know i just dont understand it.”
After the Post story was circulated to the press corps via blackberry and Drudge, the reporters here at Clinton’s town hall meeting abandoned any pretense of listening to the event, flocking around the first Clinton flak they could find for a response to the quote.
After a brief off the record defense of Clinton’s comments, Campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee gave reporters what they were looking for. “She was simply referencing her husband in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy in 1968 as historical examples of the nominating process going well into the summer,” he said. “Any reading into it beyond that would be inaccurate.”…
…After the uproar, Clinton came to the TV cameras to make a brief statement on her remarks.
“Earlier today, I was discussing the Democratic primary history, and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns that both my husband and Senator Kennedy waged in California in June in 1992 and 1968. And I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nomination, primary contests that go into June. That’s an historic fact. “
“The Kennedys have been much on my mind in the last days because of Senator Kennedy, and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. i certainly had no intention of that whatsoever.”
I’m sure she had no such intention - in fact, I wish she hadn’t apologised because there was (and is) nothing to this. Olberman was frothing at the mouth about a theory which seemed to go thusly: Hillary mentions RFK assasination; this is an invitation for some hate-crazed right wing lunatic to assasinate Obama. I’m no fan of Hillary, but this whole issue is a gigantic crock of feces unworthy of a serious mind…which, of course, means its going like wildfire in the MSM and on the left.
I’m actually starting to feel sorry for Hillary - and I mean it; she’s a leftist who’s policies would, if fully implemented, destroy the United States and, into the bargain, she has a great deal of trouble consistently telling the truth…but she’s getting a raw deal from her fellow Democrats and her once sycophantic MSM. I hate to see backstabbing, no matter who is doing it, or who it is being done to.
Tags: Bobby Kennedy, HillBama, liberal lies
May 24th, 2008
The news story:
Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is willing to take her fight to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to the convention if the two states want to go that far. In an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton was asked whether she would support the states if they continue the fight.
The presidential candidate said Wednesday, “Yes I will. I will, because I feel very strongly about this.”
Clinton is calling for delegates from both states to be seated at the convention based on the primaries. Both states were stripped of their delegates because they voted early, violating national party rules. Clinton won both states; Barack Obama’s name wasn’t on the Michigan ballot.
The DNC’s rules committee will hear an appeal on May 31.
Rich Lowry over at NRO points out that at the end of the day, Hillary may well end up with more popular votes, but still lose the nomination, in a bizarre repeat of 2000, but this time Democrats and MSMers not at all worried about the loser ending up winning…which demonstrates that their heartache in 2000 wasn’t over the man with less popular votes winning the White House, but the man not backed by the left winning the White House under any circumstances.
I actually feel a bit sorry for Hillary - she’s clearly the more qualified Democrat (though that isn’t saying too much), and it looks as though she’ll have won where it will matter most in November…but she’s still going to be tossed under the bus by a Democratic party deathly afraid of not nominating the first credible black candidate for President. Craftiness and cowardice are the hallmarks of Democratic politics these days, and it is a sad sight to see.
Tags: HillBama
May 22nd, 2008
Really can’t see why - either of HillBama will work for the maximum number of abortions, as NARAL desires:
With the clock running down on a long-fought primary, NARAL Pro-Choice America leaders sent state affiliates reeling this week by endorsing Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. It was seen as a gratuitous slap in the face to a longtime ally, and it sparked a fear even closer to home: that the move will alienate donors loyal to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Many on this week’s conference call were stunned on learning the news, making urgent pleas for the group to remain neutral until after the June 3 Democratic primaries.
“It’s created a firestorm,” said NARAL Pro-Choice New York President Kelli Conlin, who was on the conference call. “Everyone was mystified … saying, ‘What is the upside for the organization? And, frankly, [there was] a lot of concern about the donor base. … There was real concern there would be a backlash.”
There was a backlash, and it was swift, starting with NARAL’s own website. At last count, there were more than 3,300 comments in an electronic chat about the endorsement, the overwhelming majority of them negative. “Shame shame shame!” read one, with many correspondents threatening never to support NARAL financially again. “No more donations from me!!!” wrote another.
In Washington, two dozen women members of Congress who support Clinton held a quickly organized press conference to tout her abortion-rights record Wednesday night. Ellen Malcolm, founder of the abortion-rights women’s fundraising group EMILY’s List, sharply rebuked NARAL for its endorsement. Two former members of Congress (and Clinton supporters) — Geraldine Ferraro and Pat Schroeder — jabbed at NARAL for endorsing before the general election. “Looks like some higher ups at NARAL are trying to get jobs in the new administration … nothing else makes sense to us,” they wrote in a joint letter.
I don’t think its anything like that - its just clear that no matter what Hillary does, the Democratic powers-that-be have determined that Obama will be the nominee, in order to ensure that down-ballot Democrats don’t have any difficulties going into the fall. NARAL just saw the writing on the wall and got in line with the rest of the liberal leadership. I guess no one reckoned on the wrath of a feminist scorned.
Meanwhile, Operation Chaos is continuing to show why it was worthwhile doing…
Tags: abortion, Feminism, HillBama, NARAL
May 20th, 2008
A review of Michael Yon’s new book by Michael Totten:
Iraq is where ideologies go to die. Arab nationalism, Baathism, anti-Americanism, al-Qaidism, Donald Rumsfeldism, and Moqtada al-Sadrism have either died there or are dying. Conventional liberal opinion, more or less correct about the foundering American war effort from 2004 to 2006, has been severely bloodied—along with Iraq’s worst insurgent groups and militias—by General David Petraeus’s leadership of the American troop surge. Even post-9/11 fear of Islam has proven unsustainable for those who regularly interact with ordinary Iraqis. Independent journalist Michael Yon, who has spent more time embedded with combat soldiers in Iraq than any other reporter, is a refreshingly unideological analyst of the war. His self-published dispatches have earned him a loyal following around the world, and he has set out to reach even more people with the publication of a terrific new book, Moment of Truth in Iraq…
…Yon’s book isn’t just about explosions and carnage. It’s also about the new counterinsurgency strategy and, more important, the Americans and Iraqis who risk their lives to make it work. When Iraq was degenerating into its worst levels of violence, American soldiers spent too much time behind their bases’ walls, hoping to keep casualties to a minimum and to avoid being seen as occupiers by the Iraqis. Today, they live and work inside Iraq’s cities and neighborhoods, where they tend to be welcomed, if not as liberators then as protectors. Counterinsurgency is as much about nation building and community policing as it is about war making.
“The American soldier is the most dangerous man in the world,” Yon writes, “and the Iraqis had to learn that before they would trust or respect us. But it was when they understood that these great-hearted warriors, who so enjoyed killing the enemy, are even happier helping to build a school or to make a neighborhood safe that we really got their attention.” Images of the despicable abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib have become iconic for many around the world. But anyone who has spent significant time with American troops in Iraq, as I have, will recognize the truth in Yon’s descriptions of U.S. soldiers as usually decent and caring. “There are lots of kitchen accidents in Iraq,” he points out. “Kids get burned. American soldiers can’t take it when they see a kid get burned. If they are in the neighborhood on a mission and they see a burned kid, they will cancel the mission to get the kid to an American aid station, which, technically they shouldn’t be doing.”…
…Yon convincingly argues that the U.S. is winning in Iraq, at least for the moment. “The enemy learned that our people and the Iraqi forces would close in and kill them if they dared stand their ground. This is important: an enemy forced to choose between dying or hiding inevitably loses legitimacy. Legitimacy is essential. Men who must always either run or die are no longer an army and are not going to found a caliphate.” The outcome, though, is still in doubt. If Petraeus’s surge strategy fails or is prematurely short-circuited by Congress, the American and Iraqi forces will almost certainly lose. “Maybe creating a powerful democracy in the Middle East was a foolish reason to go to war,” Yon concludes. “Maybe it was never the reason we went to war. But it is within our grasp now and nearly all the hardest work has been done.” Which makes the present moment the moment of truth in Iraq.
Rumsfeld does get a lot of flack these days for how things went from 2003 until 2006, but he never uttered a truer statement when he opined that you go to war with the army you’ve got, not with the army you wished you had. This has been put down to cruel indifference on Rumsfeld’s part, but the meaning of it is that war comes, some times, very suddenly and you can’t ask the enemy to wait until you’ve constituted your forces for the sort of battle they want to engage in. Not only do we go to war with the army we’ve got, but we also go to war with the generals we’ve got - we went to war in Vietnam with Westmoreland, who made a “body count” hash of it; Abrams took over and very nearly won that war in spite of all efforts to cause defeat on the American political front; we went to war in the Pacific with Kimmel, he was caught with his pants down at Pearl Harbor; Nimitz took over and forged the most splendid naval force in human history. Its like that in war - its a bit of the luck of the draw as to whether your general or admiral will be a man of rare genius…and given that genius is rare, you’re more than likely going to have a man of lesser gifts in charge when the guns go off. The defeated commanders weren’t cowards, and they weren’t fools - they were just men overmatched by their awesome responsibilities; command in war is a function requiring intense mental ability, an gigantic sense of detachment, moral courage of a high order.
The generals we went into Iraq with were all fine men - brave commanders of great skill, but for one reason or another, they were unable to put together the winning combination that Petraeus has developed. The upshot of all this was that there were failures - tactical, political, economic - in the early going (some of these, of course, initiated by the civilian authorities, who were also brave and skilled…but also lacked that rare genius which is often the difference between success and failure during war)…this, in turn, gave grist to a leftwing political mill which was determined that Iraq be a failure prior to the campaign beginning. Coupled with a Democratic party establishment which just wanted something - anything - they could use to hammer President Bush with in the 2004 election, we had the perfect storm of opposition which brought us to our situation today…a war being won, but a public disgusted with the whole thing after 5 years of relentless anti-American and defeatist propaganda about the war.
It is the moment of truth about Iraq - victory is ours, if we just grasp it firmly and refuse to let it go. Obama is pledged to lose. Hillary is, too, but she won’t be the Democratic nominee and, at any rate, it would be completely characteristic of her to break her word and go ahead and allow us to win the war. McCain is pledged to victory. We Americans have fought for years at great cost - and our Iraqi allies have also fought at great price - and only our own action can cause our defeat. We have mastered the enemy; the Iraqis have mastered their internal differences to the point where peace is possible, if not brotherhood; our military has proven itself the most magnificent instrument of war ever forged; the American people are willing to see this thing through, at least for a long enough period of time to secure our gains…
What will we choose?
Tags: Defeaticrats, HillBama, Iraq, John McCain, Michael Yon
May 19th, 2008
Actually makes Hillary the more reasonable Democrat in the race - and given her own leftist extremism, that says something about NARAL and Obama:
A national pro-abortion advocacy group has endorsed Illinois Senator Barack Obama over rival New York Senator Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.
NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion “rights” organization, announced its political action committee’s endorsement on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports. The group has supported Clinton throughout her career.
“Pro-choice Americans have been fortunate to have two strong pro-choice candidates in Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, both of whom have inspired millions of new voters to participate in this historic presidential race,” NARAL president Nancy Keenan said in a statement. “Today, we are proud to put our organization’s grass-roots and political support behind the pro-choice candidate whom we believe will secure the Democratic nomination and advance to the general election. That candidate is Senator Obama.”
In addition to its support for legalized abortion, NARAL often opposes conscience protection laws for pharmacists and emergency room doctors who object to dispensing the so-called “Plan B” emergency contraception on the ground it could endanger a newly conceived child.
Ah, liberalism - vote Obama and ensure that more children are butchered…and all with the prospect of more liberal judges to ensure that no matter what the people want, the leftist agenda of federally funded abortion on demand advances. More change we can believe in, right?
Tags: abortion, HillBama, NARAL
May 18th, 2008
Michael Barone takes note:
What makes this presidential election different from all other presidential elections? And different from what we expected when the year began?
First, neither party’s presumptive nominee was chosen by massive support from primary voters, as John Kerry was in 2004, George W. Bush in 2000, or Bill Clinton in 1992.
That may not seem obvious in the case of John McCain, who effectively clinched the Republican nomination on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. But look at the numbers: In January, McCain won New Hampshire 37 percent to 32 percent, South Carolina 33 to 30 percent, and Florida 36 to 31 percent. On Super Tuesday, he won more than 50 percent only in states that were essentially uncontested: Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. He won Missouri by only 33 percent to 32 percent and California by only 42 percent to 35 percent, but won big delegate margins because of Republicans’ winner-take-all rules…
…As for Barack Obama, at this writing he leads Hillary Clinton by 153 in “pledged delegates,” those chosen in primaries and caucuses. But about 90 percent of this lead — between 130 and 140 delegates — came in caucuses, where the enthusiasm of his followers and the inexplicable failure of the Clinton campaign to mobilize hers gave him big victories.
We know from the nonbinding “beauty contest” primaries in Washington in February and in Nebraska on May 13 that Obama would have won much smaller margins in primaries in those states — and much smaller delegate margins, thanks to the Democrats’ proportional representation rules.
While either man may end up being the choice of the people in November, neither of them are really the enthusiastic choice of their respective political parties - both have problems with the base, as it were. The trouble for Obama is that his strength is on the left, which makes it harder for him to pull in the center, while McCain’s strength (to the dismay of many on the right) is in the center, thus making it easier for McCain to cobble together the requisite 270 electoral votes. Now, don’t get me wrong, McCain still has the much more uphill fight to win than Obama, but Obama isn’t going to coast downhill to the White House…he’s going to have to fight very, very hard if he wants to win.
Barone also notes that money has been nearly worthless in 2008 as far as moving votes - Romney vastly outspent McCain, and still lost; Obama vastly outspent Hillary, and still came up short in such states as Ohio and Pennsylvania. What this means for the fall is unknown - but it could be that the yapping of political ads has gone on so long that people tune them out…on the other hand, if Obama or McCain can come up with a really good, very different sort of ad, it might carry far more weight than any ad in the past ever did. It could also be that ideological affinities have hardened, the unaffiliated voters are shrinking in number and the ads are really just preaching to the respective choirs.
As I’ve been saying since before the election cycle started, its going to be a strange election year - and it may end up being as watershed as the 1860 or 1932 elections were. Remain buckled in and enjoy what will likely be an increasingly wild ride.
Tags: HillBama, John McCain, Michael Barone, Mitt Romney
May 17th, 2008
Older Posts
