Posts with the tag 'HillBama'
Sorry for no new commentary, nor responses to anyone - just a very long day with various family crisis; everyone is ok, so far, but it has been a trying time.
So, please bear with me - and us - and I’ll get back at it as soon as possible. Meanwhile, with today’s primaries there is plenty to talk about, so have at it.
UPDATE: Drudge is reporting that NC exits show a 15 point loss for Hillary - if so, then Obama comes out the moral victor tonight, even if he loses in Indiana.
Tags: HillBama, Indiana Primary, North Carolina Primary, Open Thread
May 6th, 2008
I don’t think this has ever been an important caucus:
HAGATNA, Guam - Barack Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton by seven votes in the Guam Democratic presidential caucuses Saturday. The count of more than 4,500 ballots took all night.
Neither candidate campaigned in the U.S. island territory in person, but both did long-distance media interviews and bought campaign ads for the caucuses.
Results of the count completed Sunday morning Guam time show delegates pledged to Obama with 2,264 votes to 2,257 for Clinton’s slate. That means they’ll split the pledged delegate votes. Obama’s slate won in 14 of 21 districts.
Eight pledged delegates will attend the convention, each with one-half vote.
This means that Obama has won American Samoa, US Virgin Islands and Guam - a clean sweep, so far, of overseas US territories…only Puerto Rico remains. Can Obama take it all? Will Hillary claim at least one consolation win in the battle of territories most Democrats couldn’t name with a gun pointed to their head? Also, given that the uber-left is opposed to imperialism in all forms, should Obama denounce the support of these imperially-occupied territories?
Geesh - long, long primary process, huh?
Tags: Guam Caucuses, HillBama
May 3rd, 2008
Things aren’t going, perhaps, as well as you planned:
The headline on latest national Gallup tracking poll is that Republican John McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama in a hypothetical matchup by six percentage points (48%-42%) and leads Hillary Rodham Clinton by only one (46%-45%).
Gallup writes: Although both Clinton and Obama have lost ground to McCain over the past week, the current results may be particularly troubling for Obama in trying to combat Clinton’s assertion to superdelegates that she would be the more electable of the two candidates in November.
The nomination race between the two Democrats is a statistical tie for the 9th straight day, 48%-46% with Clinton leading.
Usual Poll Disclaimer: Its a poll, people - at best, it is a snapshot of how things are today, but it can’t predict how things will be on November 4th. If you’re going to bet money on the strength of a poll done in May for an event to happen in November, then you’d be better off just saving the time and trouble and putting your cash into a shredder.
Still, it must be said that Democrats cannot be pleased by such poll results. This year the political stars have all alligned in favor of the Democrats - rocky economy (though signs are increasing that talk of recession was overblown); unpopular war; unpopular incombant; attempt at a third consecutive term for the party in power; general dissatisfaction with the way things are. Democrats who were puffing up their chests a couple months ago predicting a blow out election were, even then, fooling themselves - forgetting that a great deal of their victory in 2006 was the result of 3 million or so less GOPers showing up at the polls, rather than a general surge of pro-Democratic voting - but those Democrats who expressed the opinion that 2008 looked good for them were only dealing in cold, hard reality. Or, at least, what appeared to be such.
Its been my opinion all along that the Democrats - at the national level - have a very high hill to climb. Absent a Johnson/Goldwater sort of race (which is highly unlikely), Democrats have a very difficult time getting a majority of electoral votes. A lot of things have to go exactly right for them in order for their to be a Democrat in the White House. In 2008, it looked like everything might fall into place - and then the Democratic race disinitegrated into a battle of the political ciphers. Now, as Hillary and Obama trash each other while John McCain gets to act Presidential, things are changing in the race.
As of now, the Democrats still have the clear advantage - money, enthusiasm and the aforementioned political stars still work well for the Democrats, but not nearly as well as they worked in January. The key for Democrats is to end the primary contest immediately and set about healing the intra-party divisions; the key for we GOPers is to capitalise on Democratic dissaray by both presenting ourselves as the responsible alternative (it helps that we actually are such a thing), as well as hitting both Hillary and Obama essentially with the stuff they’ve been hitting themselves with over the past couple months (can’t blame us for using their own words against them, now can they?).
The GOP can win this race: and that, in and of itself, is a stunning commentary on the utter degeneration of the Democratic party all too enthralled to the political left.
Tags: HillBama, John McCain, Polls
May 3rd, 2008
Some things to think about:
Does a Hillary win in Indiana have any real effect on the race, or is the Democratic contest pretty much “done” as far as primaries go, and we’re all just waiting to see how a nominee is actually chosen?
Given Iran’s clear violations of Iraqi sovereignty and Iran’s responsibility for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, should we do anything in 2008, or should we leave any action to the next President?
Would a McCain/Obama battle pretty much alienate the base of both the Democrats and Republicans, thus leading to a surprising low turnout election?
Have at it on these subjects, or anything else you can think of.
Tags: HillBama, Iran, Iraq, John McCain, Open Thread
April 27th, 2008
Never thought I’d say that I agree with Bill Clinton, but Obama supporters do seem to be playing the race card in an attempt to bring the nomination process to an end:
Clinton’s solid win in the Pennsylvania primary exposed a quandary for the party. Her backers may be convinced that only she can win the white, working-class voters that the Democratic nominee will need in the general election, but many African American leaders say a Clinton nomination — handed to her by superdelegates — would result in a disastrous breach with black voters.
“If this party is perceived by people as having gone into a back room somewhere and brokered a nominee, that would not be good for our party,” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the highest ranking African American in Congress, warned yesterday. “I’m telling you, if this continues on its current course, [the damage] is going to be irreparable.”
That fear, plus a more general sense that Clinton’s only route to victory would be through tearing down her opponent, has led even some black Democrats who are officially neutral in the race, such as Clyburn, to speak out.”If you have any, any kind of loyalty to the Democratic Party, perhaps you need to rethink your strategy and bow out gracefully in order to save this party from a disastrous end in November,” Rep. William Lacy Clay (Mo.), an African American Obama supporter, said in an appeal to Clinton.
In other words: “Back out, Hillary, ’cause the loyalty of black voters to the Democratic party is dependent upon Obama securing the nomination.” I get the impression that, certainly among the black Democratic leadership, they feel it is “their turn” to run the show - 40 years of rock-solid support for the Democratic party, and the bill has now come due. Keep in mind that “disasterous end” has two meanings - a loss of the White House, as well as a possibility of black voters ceasing to be so loyal to the Democratic party. Too bad that support for the Democratic party is not based on shared American values - its all about getting a piece of the pie and ensuring that the swag is divvied up equitably; a little bit of concern about America over the past 40 years, and Democrats wouldn’t be in this mess.
Tags: Democratic Nomination, HillBama
April 26th, 2008
I wonder how many super delegates are starting to think along these lines?
Therefore, if the Democrats want to have their best chance to win an election in November that six months ago it looked like they couldn’t lose, they may have only one option at this point: they can turn to Al Gore.
In truth, Gore would be a stronger candidate in November than the two front-runners. He knows what it’s like to run in a tough presidential campaign, which, as we’re finding out with Obama, is a huge advantage. He is, after all, a Nobel Prize winner; he has the advantage of now running from outside Washington even though he’s as experienced as John McCain; and he might be able to pick off a Southern state or two. He’s already won once - with an asterisk. And he could put the electoral focus back on the economy and the Republican record of the past eight years - which it will rarely be as long as Clinton or Obama is the nominee.
Sure, Gore’s entry would obviously not be greeted with waves of enthusiasm by Obama supporters. Still, he is quite popular with one of the Illinois senator’s principal constituencies: the young.
If Obama is to be denied the Democratic nomination, it might be that the only way to secure their support for the Democratic nominee is to have it be someone other than Hillary - there is much bad blood between the Hillary and Obama camps, and the selection of either one of them will dispirit a large section of the Democratic electorate. Democrats, in short, need someone that all Democrats can agree on - and Al Gore might well be their man.
That Al Gore has plenty of his own flaws is not the point - he is neither Hillary nor Obama, has offended no one in the Democratic ranks in years, is felt by the Democratic electorate to have been cheated in 2000, is considered an intellectual titan due to his global warming documentary and Nobel Prize and, most importantly, electing Gore to replace Bush would mean a lot to a party determined to run against President Bush in 2008 (out here in Nevada we’ve already got ads running tying Republican congressmen to President Bush). And, in the end, Gore might be the most electable Democrat in 2008 - he’s almost certain to win nearly all the States he won in 2000, and would have an even money shot of poaching a State or two from the GOP ranks.
It’ll only happen if this goes to the floor of the convention - if neither Democrat in the race can be forced out before the conven tion, then it will come down a floor fight, and in can stride Al Gore to save the day, as it were. It may get very interesting in the 2008 race.
Tags: Al Gore, HillBama
April 24th, 2008
Lanny Davis neatly lays it out:
To all Super Delegates: you decide who is riskier as a general election candidate. The candidate whose negatives, driven by the right-wing hate machine in the 1990s in particular, are all out there and already taken into account. Or a candidate who is still virtually unknown to most of the electorate, with Republicans clearly looking forward to filling in the blanks with the facts about his record of which many general election voters still are not aware.
Davis pointed out some of the weaknesses of Obama in the linked article - especially the polling showing Obama even with or behind McCain, while Hillary generally leads McCain where it counts (though, even there, Democrats have some worries - Democrats always poll better than GOPers far out from the vote…and while Hillary leads, it is only a small lead…nothing like the lead held at this time of year by Gore or Dukakis during their runs).
There are sharp divisions growing in the Democratic party and while a lot of Democrats are saying Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again for the fall, the fact that Obama cannot break out of his upper-class white/black support shows that he will have a heavy handicap going into the fall…while the way the left loathes Hillary will work strongly against her in a fall campaign.
Fun, fun, fun; ain’t it?
Tags: HillBama
April 24th, 2008
In liberal-land, they are getting scared spitless over this lengthening Democratic contest:
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned…
…It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.
They want her out, Obama nominated and the whole, bloody mess of the primaries over and (hopefully) forgotten. The Times is right, I think, about the voters getting tired of it - more than one Democratic friend of mine has opined that the continual bickering between Hillary and Obama is turning them off on the whole process. This is, of course, anecdotal evidence, but I’ll bet that people around the country are saying much the same - outside of the real dyed-in-the-wool partisans for each candidate, most are probably ready for this thing to be over…and the longer it goes on, the more disinclined to vote Democrat they may end up being.
We Republicans are, of course, delighted with the whole process - Hillary we always felt we could beat but Obama worried us early on…but in the stress of the campaign, his glaring weaknesses as a candidate have come out, and we’re confident that against either one of them we’ll give a good account of ourselves. Once again we stand amazed that the battle is between two such clearly unfit candidates - and even more flabbergasted to think that one of the two dunces might be sworn in next January. But, each day has its task, and today’s task is to enjoy the show, and help McCain build up his organization for the fall.
Tags: HillBama, John McCain, Pennsylvania
April 23rd, 2008
If Hillary wins by less than 10 percentage points, will the pressure to quit become overwhelming?
If Obama loses by more than 10 percentage points, will his claim of inevitibility weaken beyond recall?
Will an Obama loss in Pennsylvania mean that Michelle Obama needs to hit more gay bars with Chelsea?
What are your answers to these burning questions?
UPDATE: Memo from Obama’s camp - to paraphrase; “nothing to see here people, just move along”
UPDATE, II: Real Clear Politics is saying that Bill Clinton will claim a lead in the popular vote for Hillary tomorrow…this is if, apparently, one includes Michigan and Florida.
Can you say “nasty floor fight at the convention”, boys and girls?
Tags: Democratic Nomination, HillBama, Pennsylvania
April 22nd, 2008
Only in the modern Democratic party could we get this headline:
Chelsea Clinton hits the gay bars in Philadelphia
And find contained within the story, this tidbit:
While most onlookers asked for hugs or pictures, a small number asked her why or questioned her on issues such as her mother’s plans to address poverty.
“Hillary Clinton will get rid of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell…and march in gay pride parades,’” Reiner said to cheers at Sisters.
For most, including Chelsea and the governor, it was a night of fun.
“I grabbed her a**,” shouted one woman, prompting surprised looks and laughter from Chelsea and campaign staff escorting her.
“I’ve been trying to find you all night and I found you and you’re gorgeous,” Dustin Thorn, 31, of Philadelphia told her.
“I think Chelsea looks better in person and she’s got the body and a** of life,” said Christoper Murray after wrapping his arms around her and giving her a big hug.
I’m sure Middle America will find it interesting - should Hillary get the nomination - that she’ll march in gay pride parades. It’ll make a rather fun debate question. But all is not well with Obama in the gay community:
“It just points out a whole difference between the campaigns that the Clinton campaign is talking to everybody,” said Michael Howard, Philly, 47, who went to Bumps to see Chelsea.
“Obama is trying to come across as Mr. Rainbow, but he’s not,” he said. “He talks to every tiny black newspaper, every tiny Hispanic newspaper, every Asian newspaper, but not the gay press and then he says he only talks with mainstream press.”
Poor Obama - just doesn’t have the a** of life, I guess…
Tags: HillBama, homosexuality, special interests
April 22nd, 2008
Mud being flung at a rapid clip:
Capping a frenzied final weekend of campaigning in Pennsylvania, the Democratic presidential candidates escalated their attacks on each other in speeches and in a last-minute barrage of advertisements on Sunday, aiming at voters who are still undecided just two days before the state’s marathon primary battle culminates.
The Clinton campaign released an ad accused Senator Barack Obama of taking money from lobbyists over the last 10 years, while the Obama campaign fired back in its own commercial, describing the Clinton ad as misleading and complaining of “11th-hour smears.” The back and forth came as Mr. Obama on Saturday called Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton a “slash-and-burn” game player who will do anything to win.
I’m trying to figure out if Obama was dumb enough to not know Clinton is a slash and burn politician, or is he just whining now that the slashing and burning is directed at him? This is the way the Clintons’ operate, Obama - mean, nasty, knee-to-groin, pour-salt-in-the-wound politics…and that is when they’re being nice. They are also relentlessly dishonest…though, Senator, you seem to have a problem with the truth, as well.
Anyways…
The big question: can the growing divisions be healed by the eventual nominee in time for the fall campaign? Remember, the Democratic convention doesn’t start until August 25th. If this doesn’t get resolved until the convention, then the Democratic candidate will have only about 10 weeks to put humpty-dumpty back together again AND reach out enough to independents to beat McCain. I know Democrats who won’t vote for Obama and vice versa…positions are hardening; some people in Democratic ranks are viewing Obama as a wimp, others are viewing Hillary as a soul-destroying emissary of the nether regions (which isn’t strictly true). Meanwhile, except for hardened, Bush-hating, fanatic lefties, McCain comes across as a reasonable alternative.
It may get very interesting come October…
Tags: HillBama, John McCain
April 21st, 2008
The Democratic battle weakens the Democrats day by day, and Dean is worried:
An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they’re for – and “I need them to say who they’re for starting now.”
“We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We’ve got to know who our nominee is.”
After facing criticism for a mostly hands-off leadership style during much of the primary season, Dean has been steadily raising the rhetorical pressure on superdelegates. He said Thursday that roughly 65 percent of them have made their preference plain, but that more than 300 have yet to make up their minds.
Translation: “We’re burning through money like its water, our candidates are getting more and more damaged and our party more and more split…if this thing doesn’t end quickly, we’re looking at potential catastrophe.”
The advantage in 2008 still lies with the Democrats - but not nearly as much as it did even a month ago…and if this goes to a convention fight, then the whole playing field is completely levelled any literally anything can happen by November.
Tags: HillBama, Howard Dean, Superdelegates
April 18th, 2008
For the Democrats to win the White House, they will have to pick off two or three States President Bush won in 2004 - without, of course, losing any of the States Kerry won. One State the Democrats have high hopes for is Colorado, which has been one of the most Democrat-friendly Mountain-West States in recent years - unfortunately, things are not going too well for their prospective presidential candidates at this point, from Politico:
Brent Seaborn, late of the Giuliani campaign and now back at his consulting gig, sends over some up-ballot numbers his firm, TargetPoint, took for a third-party effort out in the Colorado Senate race.
Per their polling, McCain would defeat Hillary in Colorado 52-40 and beat Obama 51-39.
It’s one mere poll in April, but given the state’s blue-ward tilt in recent years and the hopes many Dems (especially Obama backers) have to pick it off, the numbers underscore the need for the Dems to not just come together but to also chip away at McCain’s image.
(It was taken from 604 likely general election voters the first week in April)
As the report notes, this is an April poll - and I advise strongly against reading too much into it…but, still, its gotta worry Democratic leaders to see polls like this in a year when they thought they were going to cake-walk into the White House.
Memo to Democrats: You’ve got a fight on your hands; we GOPers concede nothing.
Tags: Colordao, HillBama, John McCain, Polls
April 17th, 2008
Good take on it from Reid Wilson:
For two candidates who profess to be most concerned with bringing their country and their party together, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spent more time at last night’s debate raising issues that divide the Democratic electorate than those that unite them. Last night’s encounter, which marks nearly two dozen times the two have shared a stage, focused more on political questions than policy discussions, an indication, perhaps, that the intended audience was not Pennsylvania voters but rather the several hundred super delegates who have yet to publicly endorse a candidate.
I think Wilson’s right about that - the audience is the un-committed super delegates and both Hillary and Obama, unable to knock each other out in the primaries, are gearing up for a pre-convention scrimmage on delegates, which might end up as a nasty floor fight at the convention. While Hllary has been damaged goods from day 1 (”Clinton” has its good points and its bad points, right?), the bloom is definitely off the rose for Obama by now - Wright and “Bittergate” have utterly wrecked the squeeky-clean and “new” persona Obama had built up…while he has many gifts and strengths, he’s no longer the “un-politician”. Now, for the super delegates, it comes down to a calculus of whom they think will do best in the fall and/or whom can reward them most for their vote - both now and long, long into the future (and it isn’t necessarily a President who can be most rewarding - while our Democratic readers will hotly dispute me on this, for a lot of senior Democrats its really all about their own personal power and wealth - and if they can secure more of both for themselves, they’ll do it, even if by so doing their party suffers).
As for what, exactly, will happen over the next few weeks - well, ya got me; other than a prediction of a Hillary win in PA, I’ve got no clue about the upcoming twists and turns. It’ll be endlessly entertaining for all Republicans, it goes without saying - but what will come out of it at the end, I don’t think anyone can really predict.
Tags: HillBama
April 17th, 2008
That is what I am, according to Harris and Vandehei:
Both men (Kerry and Gore) lost control of their public images to the right-wing freak show — that network of operatives and commentators working mostly outside of the mainstream media — and ultimately lost their elections as many voters came to see them as elitist, out-of-touch, phony, and even unpatriotic.
Obama is a much less familiar figure than Kerry or Gore, with a life story that is far more exotic, who is coming out of a political milieu in Chicago politics that is far more liberal.
The freak show has already signaled its early lines of attack on Obama. Polls show a significant percentage of Americans believe — falsely — that he is a Muslim. Voter interviews reveal widespread unease with minor and seemingly irrelevant questions like why he does not favor American flag pins on his lapel. Nor have we heard the last about Wright and his fulminations.
Here will be the real kitchen sink: every damaging comment or association from Obama’s past, mixed together with innuendo and downright fiction, to portray him as an an exotic character of uncertain values and weak patriotism.
I didn’t realise that we freaks out here had convinced a lot of Americans to hold the view that Obama is Moslem…couldn’t possibly be the mere name - Barack Hussein Obama - having anything to do with this misconception, now could it? Lots of people have all sorts of misconceptions about things without some nefarious freak show convincing people to believe…but according to Harris and Vandehei, we freaks have done this.
And I also didn’t realise that we freaks had done all that to Gore and Kerry. If we were out there convincing people that Kerry and Gore were both phony, out of touch elites, then we were must being redundant. I tend to think that anyone listening to either man for more than five minutes figures this out without any help from the freak show.
What this is about - and what is the point of the linked article - is that Obama is vulnerable to GOP attacks, especially from we freaks who are likely to get so far down and dirty that we’ll point out that Obama’s pastor is an anti-American, anti-Semitic kook…well, guess that has already been done, but you get the picture; there’s nothing we won’t do to derail Obama. Its a freak thing, and you wouldn’t understand. But as to the general thrust of the article - less the nonsense about a freak show derailing Gore and Kerry - is correct: Obama is the weaker of the two candidates for the fall. Only by a little bit, as Hillary isn’t exactly an FDR out there, but he is the man who is less tested, has more kooky personal associations and is far more liberal than Hillary (which is not an easy thing to do). The Clinton people are playing this up as if Obama will turn near certain victory into near certain defeat, but I think we past the point of “near certain” anything a couple months ago - while the Democrats do have the wind at their backs in 2008, my contention is that the November outcome is up in the air, with a slight edge to the Democrats. But in a narrow sense, they are correct that Democrats should be asking themselves some serious questions about Obama.
That won’t happen - black Americans are justifiably proud to have a black American a step or two away from being President; upper class white liberals will not be able to bring themselves to oppose Obama; these two groups - who make up the bulk of Obama’s supporters - will not rethink their support of Obama. Certainly not enough of them prior to settling on the nomination. Hillary’s only hope of getting the nomination is to convince the superdelegates that she’s right about Obama (and she is)…but gaining the nomination that way might also ensure Democratic defeat in the fall.
It all makes for a very interesting and colorful political drama - heck, its like watching a freak show; such is not out here in the blogosphere, but within the Democratic party, where gender and race politics have been the name of the game for 30 years, and now Democrats are at a loss with what to do with the first woman and the first black man to have a real shot at the White House. Anything is possible - from HillBama in a loving embrace leading a united party to victory in November, to a walk out by part of the Democratic delegates to the convention and a split party going down to massive defeat in November. Time will tell - but this freak is just going to enjoy watching it all happen.
UPDATE: Listening to Obama today one would get the impression that people are mad at him for claiming that some are bitter - but, Senator, that is not it, and you’re being rather mendacious in making that claim. You know full well that the outrage is over your claim that people cling to religion, etc due to their bitterness. In other words, if we weren’t bitter, we wouldn’t hold to our faith. Sorry, Senator, that was a stupid, elitist statement to make - and I believe you will go on paying a quite justified political price for making it.
Tags: HillBama, Rightwing Freak Show
April 14th, 2008
Well, really, on the McCain peoples’ mind - from Reid Wilson over at Real Clear Politics:
McCain’s team is pleased, they maintain, that the map appears to be more open than in any other recent years. “Bush-Kerry, Bush-Gore, I mean they had like ten states that were in play, maybe twelve, that the entire campaign was waged in. I mean we’re talking more than twenty,” he said, pointing to Democratic-leaning states from Wisconsin and Minnesota, which hasn’t voted Republican since 1952, to “everything west of the Mississippi Valley” as a targeted state.
“The big question marks are the West Coast. I mean, is California going to be in play? And obviously, Washington and Oregon have been swing states,” he added. Democrats would disagree that any of the three states would be in serious jeopardy, especially as John Kerry had virtually no trouble keeping each in the Democratic fold in 2004.
While in New Mexico, Davis and his staff held one-hour meetings with about twenty of those targeted states, listening to state officials’ pitches for help and assessments of local conditions and the campaign’s chances. Davis’ staff has also worked in recent weeks to integrate campaign operations with the RNC itself, as well as its fundraising arm, the Victory Committee, run by McCain ally and former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina.
Beyond planning for states to target in November, Davis is beginning to consider how to frame the contrast with Barack Obama, and how to beat back attacks from national Democrats. McCain can make the claim that he is the more experienced candidate, Davis said, because his is an experience of bringing change, offering the best of both worlds. “We’re not going to concede change to a guy who’s not changed anything in his career. John McCain’s been the change agent in the United States Senate for 20 years. Nobody’s fought for more change in the place, nobody’s spent more political blood than he has to get things to happen differently,” Davis said. “Barack wants to talk about the future, let’s prove it by looking at who’s actually made change in the present.”
A long, hard road ahead, to be sure - but I concede nothing to the Democrats. Other than a few spots like San Francisco and Manhattan, I’d like to see the GOP fight it out tooth and nail over every square inch of the United States (and, for good measure, fund some goofy Commie-Green alternative in aforementioned San Francisco, etc). We’ve got the better candidate, we’ve got the better plan and we’ve also got the interests of America at heart - meanwhile, the Democrats are set to nominate one or the other grossly unprepared candidate, their plan is recycled McGovernism and their only interest is their own power and wealth. I think we can win this - and win it pretty big, if we stay on offense from now until November. And, hey, if we fight hard and end up losing, then at least we’ll have the pride of knowing that were defeated after giving it our all.
I feel in good spirits about the future and, unlike our Democrats, am not consumed neither by hatred (rather than hate the Democrats, I pity them their self-destructive folly) nor by despair (how can any Christian be other than massively positive about the long-term prospects?). Hard as it will be and as trying to the heart as it is, we will have a lot of fun over the next six months - and the payoff just might be GOP victory.
Tags: HillBama, John McCain
April 9th, 2008
Interesting:
Former Montana senator John Melcher said he hadn’t felt any urgency to take sides in the race between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama until late last month, when Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called on superdelegates to make up their minds by July 1.
“So after two days of that, I agreed with him that maybe I should, so I did,” said Melcher, who announced Wednesday that he will support Obama, based on the candidate’s early opposition to the Iraq war.
Though Melcher and a handful of high-profile Democrats have recently chosen sides in the presidential nominating contest, few others of the party’s uncommitted superdelegates appear likely to budge before Pennsylvania’s primary on April 22 — and many have indicated that they will wait until the primaries end in June before picking a candidate.
Many of the 320 or so party leaders and elected officials who have yet to commit cite a number of reasons: They can’t choose between two good candidates, they don’t want to interfere with the will of voters, and they think the extended contest will strengthen the party.
There’s a word for what “strengthen the party” actually means, but I’ve banned it from the blog…think of what bulls do after dinner.
My view? They’re scared - scared to death that if they don’t vote for the black candidate, they’ll never be able to live it down…and terrified that if they don’t vote for Hillary, and she ends up winning, that she’ll be merciless to them once in office. They are caught between the rockiest of rocks and the hardest of hard places - and I can’t help but laugh at them. This is a huge “we told you so” moment for the right - we told you liberals that if you kowtowed to leftwing ideas on race and gender that it would just mess things up…and now it has. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving political party.
How it will come out will be determined by a calculation - as superdelegates move to commit, whom do they think likely to win the nomination? In this, of course, their biggest problem will be the fact that they believe polls and MSM punditry and this could result in a lot of really mistaken choices. The other factor in the calculation is how effectively Hillary can offer bribes and hint of threats behind rejection. How ever it is, we GOPers will have a ball watching it…
Tags: HillBama, Superdelegates
April 6th, 2008
For the Democrats, that is - as Victor Davis Hanson notes:
The Republicans have done something unimaginable in making Sen. John McCain the presumptive nominee. And so have the Democrats in allowing their primary season to drag on.
On the Republican side, McCain was running far behind in the primaries not too long ago, and his maverick positions enraged influential conservatives. Yet he proved to be the only Republican candidate who had any chance of capturing moderate and independent voters. And for all their bluster, most die-hard conservatives now seem like they’re going to hold their noses and vote Republican.
On the Democratic side, Clinton was stopped cold — but still has yet to be finished off by Obama. Now we can expect months more of infighting. As the Democrats raise tens of millions to destroy themselves, McCain can only sit back and smile.
With Obama the likely nominee, we can also expect to hear more from, and about, his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Reporters no doubt are scanning Rev. Wright’s massive corpus of texts and DVDs for more hate speech.
Even before the Wright controversy, the Democratic vote had been split heavily along racial lines — whites for Clinton, blacks for Obama — in certain states, including the all-important Ohio. That’s not a good sign for a party that’s supposed to be a model of racial transcendence.
In reality, of course, the GOP still has a very steep hill to climb if we’re to win in November, but if we do win it will because of two things:
1. John McCain being the far better man and
2. Democrats having wrecked themselves on those very racial and gender political issues they’ve used for decades to divide Americans into hate-filled camps, each clamoring for a bigger piece of the government pie.
Obama wins black voters plus upper class whites. Hillary wins women and blue collar whites. Obama, who hasn’t shown much appeal for Hillary’s core supporters, will have to try and convince them to vote for him, when they feel a much greater affinity for the story and personality of John McCain. If Hillary is the nominee, she’ll have an embittered left (ie, those upper class white Obama voters) and black electorate, sure she only won by nefarious, backroom political gamesmanship. Either one of them can square the circle (after all, Democrats of all stripes are very hungry for Presidential power), but it won’t be easy - especially as McCain and the GOP will drive right into the Democratic divisions to exploit them for GOP victory.
If the Democrats do end up winning, it will be entirely their just reward for the lies, hate and corruption they’ve used as a means of retaining and gaining power for so long now. The defeat of the Democrats in 2008 will be a defeat of the very worst elements in American politics, and we can hope that it will signal the end of that political poison brought into the Democratic party in the wake of 1968.
Tags: HillBama, John McCain
April 3rd, 2008
Who better to help Hillary solve our home lending crisis than a person who sits on the board of a bankrupt lender?
WASHINGTON – Hillary Clinton spends considerable time on the campaign trail bemoaning unscrupulous lenders who have left millions of Americans scrambling to keep their homes but all the while her campaign manager, Margaret “Maggie” Williams, has sat on the board of one of the nation’s once-largest and now-bankrupt sub-prime mortgage lenders.
Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson told FOXNews.com late Sunday that Williams, a longtime Clinton ally, didn’t join Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign as a volunteer until after Delta Financial Corporation — for which Williams is a director — went bankrupt in December 2007.
That’s more than seven years after Williams joined New York-based Delta Financial in 2000. She became a director one month after a federal settlement was reached with the lender over discriminatory lending practices. More recently, Delta has been accused by consumer advocates of pursuing predatory practices throughout the housing boom and bust.
As of September 2007, Williams owned 12,500 shares of Delta’s common stock, and by 2007 had earned at least $175,000 for her board obligations, according to company filings available in the Securities & Exchange Commission online database.
I guess nobody at Clinton, Inc thought to ask, huh?
In Obama’s failure to anticipate that Wright might be a problem and Hillary’s hiring Maggie Williams away from a bankrupt lender we can see a certain pattern emerging about both Democratic candidates - they’re both incompetant managers. No surprise, really - neither of them has ever had to produce an actual result in a day’s work. All they have are words - poll-tested, focus-grouped highly polished words which are designed to prevent the communication of actual information. Given their absolute lack of real world experience, we can expect that either of them - installed in the White House - will just make one after another management mistakes. This is not a supposition - its a promise; they don’t know what they are doing, and will be playthings in the hands of those in their Administration who do know what they are doing.
And the really scary thing? One of them might very well win in November.