Let's get real, almost all of the remaining Hillary Clinton supporters who have not committed to backing Barack Obama are women. And their decision has absolutely nothing to do with politics or policy. There is nothing left to gain for Hillary Clinton politically by having her supporters hold out. And from a policy perspective Hillary Clinton and John McCain are diametrically opposed to one another.
So, why are a lot of these women still saying that they might support John McCain over Barack Obama? Because for them, it's personal. Notice they never, ever talk about how McCain has policy positions closer to Hillary. Because that would be insane and completely indefensible. They always say how Obama hasn't shown enough respect to Hillary or that he he hasn't done enough to reach out to her voters and win them over.
What they're really saying is my husband/boyfriend/father doesn't show me enough respect. The men in my life haven't done enough to reach out to me and win me over.
I've just read a Financial Times review of Deer Hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant. In the vein of What's the matter with Kansas, Bageant returns to his boyhood home in Winchester Virginia.
that used to have a textile mill and a middle class who once proclaimed, “We may be poor but we ain’t coloureds.”...
Bageant finds it hard to love his roots even as he sympathises with those he once left behind. These Nascar-loving, $8-an-hour-earning, strip-bar-frequenting, Dollar-store-shoppers may be his, mostly Scots-Irish, stock. But they also voted overwhelmingly for Bush.
So maybe Obama's biggest problem with these people isn't his race.
It was Saturday morning and Hillary Clinton was on the verge of finally conceding the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama. I was mindlessly tuned into CNN’s compelling video coverage of Hillary’s immovable Georgetown front door as an unstoppable spray of the word “BITTER” gushed from the mouths of learned journalists and ex-learned journalists - like that Watergate reporter from the Washington Post who played the role of Dustin Hoffman in the movie version of Bittergate.
If the word “BITTER” had an equivalent value in distance, one could have traveled to the far side of the Moon by Noon (but unfortunately missed the speech, which I gather was the real Money Shot even though Hillary’s stationary front door was featured longer than the actual speech).
The questions were endless – and so… thought-provoking.
For a moment I assumed that one of my dachshunds had sat on my remote and switched the channel to “E” Entertainment.
"This may be the last day I'm ever involved in a campaign of this kind"
That was Bill Clinton this morning. At first I thought "wow they finally see the light". All morning this statement kept bugging me for some reason. Finally it hit me. Did not the DNC say they were counting on Hillary and Bill to help mend the damage they did to the party? Am I to think he won't truly be campaigning for Obama now, let alone backing him?
The dream of cruising white house interns in his skivvies has quickly evaporated, and all he's left with is his ball, and his home. Seems he will take it, and go there. Wow.
I keep expecting to hear Obama come out and say "Hah, not only am I as good as in, but i'm picking Kathleen Sebelius as my VP. Your broke ass better hope nothing happens to me, or she will not only be the first female US VP..." Unfortunately for me Obama is above that pettiness.
For this shallow, bitter, ex-Clinton supporting, democrat having to swallow the fact the DNC is currently being torn apart due to a hilly fit, I can say for a fact, that I wouldn't be as magnanamous as Senator Obama.
I would be turning the screw...just like Big Dog Bill
Hillary and her supporters have an awfully short memory about Democratic candidates experience with the MSM after mis-speaking. Clinton and her supporters claim that the media is in bed with Obama. The truth couldn't be more far from her claims (wouldn't be the first time) Here are two examples that everyone should remember.
Hillary Clinton and John McCain have fed the media a diet of scandal and innuendo and kept feeding it to the point where it has become a monster that will consume them both.
Because I believe that who leads in the "popular vote" is relevant (neither dispositive nor irrelevant). In fact, it is obviously so. Because it's all about delegates. According to a recent diary, though, the consideration of the popular vote (I'll leave off the quotes the rest of the way, because I don't feel like typing them, but I do know that we are a bit like the 7 blind men trying to figure out the elephant, if there is an elephant, when trying to discern the popular vote) is so asinine, so insulting to people's intelligence, that it hurts the credibility of anyone stupid enough to use it.
One of the wonders of this primary season has been the ability of the Clinton campaign -- including Hillary herself -- and their supporters to engage in some of the most patently ridiculous and bald faced lies, knowing that everyone else knows they are engaging in patently ridiculous and bald faced lies.
Chief among those lies is the fiction that Clinton leads in the popular vote.
Ferraro, who clashed with the Obama campaign about whether she made a racially offensive remark, said she might not either. "I think Obama was terribly sexist," she said.
Obama characterized "bitter" Pennsylvanians. In the most famous sound byte of that speech he said they "cling to guns or religion."
Never mind that he was spot on about those whose jobs have been shipped overseas being bitter. Or those who can't even provide health care for their families being angry maybe even bitter.
If you look at the electoral college map then Texas looks like the largest,
not the smallest, of these 4 states, and Pennsylvania is 2nd largest.
But Hillary Clinton only got 10 more pledged delegates than Barack Obama from Pennsylvania.
Obama got 17 more delegates from North Carolina,
so even though it is smaller in terms of overall population,
NC is bigger in terms of its effect on this race.
One of the biggest states of all, TEXAS, was reduced to mattering almost not at all
after its caucus canceled out its primary -- Obama netted 5 delegates from Texas.
Some polls have Obama losing West Virginia as badly as 5-23, which means
Hillary Clinton would net fully 18 delegates from it! Seriously,
18 > 17 > 10 > 5 ??
This is an opinion piece, not a satire like my other entries here so far. I'm posting the links here on top because I don't yet know how to hyperlink (yes,I feel like a dork)so my apologies for the inconvenience.
Already up on Specious Report but it was edited for brevity (that's my interpretation of that, anyway). I think it works better with the Garrison Keillor paragraph. The good part of all of that is that I misspelled Keillor(just caught it), and effin' Spellcheck got it right!
Obama Makes Appeal For Bitter White Midwesterners: "Let ‘em Drive Drunk!"
It’s no secret that this country’s news media swallowed a big fat stupid pill at some point in the past. But Christ almighty... I’ve about had it. We must be at the point where "the press" is jumping the proverbial shark. I’m an avowed news junkie... have been since I can remember. But I don’t watch TV news much anymore. I can’t stand it. Why...? Because...
I started this long campaign as a staunch Edwards supporter. Alas, he is gone from the scene. Completely gone. I mean...you couldn't find him with a geiger counter. He has simply vanished....as if he never existed.
It pains me to say this. But it is true. Why did he run? What did he stand for? I thought I knew...but maybe I was wrong. Because once it became clear to him that the nomination wasn't going to go to him, he dropped out, which was an appropriate response...but he also dropped out of political society...which is NOT an appropriate response.
I naturally gravitated towards Obama. His message wasn't as clear cut on the class divide issues, but one can't help but sense that he "get's it", nonetheless.
Edwards' failure to keep up the fight, if not for the presidency at least his vision, and his no-show during the whole "Bittergate" episode, has really made me question why I supported him from the beginning.
Once upon a time, Obama's oratory sent tingles of Chris Mathew's leg(s). Like many of us, his inner democrat was deeply moved by the refreshingly different approach Obama brings to our sully politics. This guy could be another Kennedy, he would chime.
Recently, though, his adoration has evaporated. Usually a minimally thoughtful, if commercial-driven boob, he’s devolved, as he’s been seemingly swept by the mob-like media hysteria known as "bittergate." Even more than the rest of the MSM, for Mathews, it seems deeply personal. Although 99% percent of Americans were unimpressed by the alleged offensiveness of those remarks (taken out of context or not), Chris Mathews is tenaciously gripping his bitterness. Today, while most of the roaring mob has slithered back to FOX, he even expanded his hurt to cover "G-d damn America Gate."
Loose paraphrase:
How dare Reverend Wright explain his side to Bill Moyers?! Who gave him permission to speak? And to his uppity friend, Barack, who once lit my proverbial fire: shame on you, Barack Obama!
denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Anger ... I think Obama ran a piss-poor campaign in Pennsylvania. I am really angry that he didn’t take my advice. I am convinced that he could have done much better here and that his campaign organization wasn’t. Living here, I kept thinking that his campaign just didn’t get off the ground. Where is that amazing Obama ground game? Why isn’t he here? This is what he has won so many states with?
I have been saying for over two months that Pittsburgh is the key to Pennsylvania. I got there by being a politics junkie, by reading, watching, and observing. I go the whole gamut from conservative to liberal. I want to see what both sides are thinking. I dismiss the views that don’t fit the puzzle I work to assemble. Don’t we all do this? “Clinton will dominate in the conservative “Alabama” region of Pennsylvania”. That fits with what I have seen. That is her demographic, or at least the one she is pandering to. “Obama will dominate Philadelphia”. That fits. Obama’s main demographic is the large black population.
In a strange turn of events, a short video recorded at a Marin County California (northern S.F. Bay area) fundraiser on the 6th of April was removed from YouTube less than 24 hours later and after being viewed less than 1500 times. It was posted on Daily Kos and Democratic Underground, and was seen by the few who actually got the chance to study it as essential context to the "Bitter Flap" that dogged the Obama campaign in the final week of the Pennsylvania Primary.
The short video clip, recorded on a "point and shoot" camera, was captured on the same day Huffington Post contributor Mayhill Fowler recorded the now infamous snippet in which Senator Barack Obama pointed out the "bitter" feelings held by many small town Pennsylvanians due to declining financial situations and lack of trust in there government.
It must be pointed out that this video, though it may not be from the same event, was recorded during one of a number of fundraisers held that day throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
