So an interesting story about Bill's analysis of his wife's loss.
“She will win the general election if you nominate her. They're just trying to make sure you don't," Bill Clinton said at the Fort Thompson event. "It is just frantic the way they are trying to push and pressure and bully all these superdelegates to come out.” He then began impersonating an intimidated superdelegate: “Oh, this is so terrible: The people, they want her. Oh, this is so terrible: She is winning the general election, and he is not. Oh my goodness, we have to cover this up."
Who's they? MoveOn.org apparently.
After rattling off a series of poll numbers showing Hillary Clinton faring better than Obama against McCain, Bill Clinton told donors: “We are in the strongest conceivable position electorally and not in a good fix with the superdelegates, because they have felt all the pressure from the Obama side, from the media, from the MoveOn crowd — who they think is an automatic ATM machine for everybody for life. So, they’re reluctant to take on all that.”
But wait there's more. Not content to focus on MoveOn, Bill laid out an entire conspiracy of college educated folks.
Clinton asked the crowd to remember “every time you turn on the television and you listen to one of those people dissin’ her, they all have a college degree. They’ve all got a good job. They all got health care. And they’re having no trouble fillin’ up their gas tank.”
Tough talk from a guy who once made all kinds of todo about the fact he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford College of all places, it would seem.
Thanks Bill for showing such grace and magnamity in defeat. Doing a good job of building bridges for November there. I'm taking it he's given up on the Veep slot he was once pushing for with this latest rhetoric.
MoveOn, for their part, were a little more mature.
That means supporting the candidate with the most pledged delegates, said MoveOn spokeswoman Ilyse Hogue, who wouldn’t comment on Clinton’s charge, except to say that “we respect the president very much.”
I really, really can't wait for this thing to be over.
And it takes a toll in the polls
Article
For true poll reading geeks.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Hillary and Esau
It seems that Hillary is the Esau of our time, from the biblical story of Jacob and Esau. She was sure that the Presidency was her birthright. She made a deal (support the war) and sold her` birthright. She now wants to kill Jacob (Obama) because what she thought was hers has been snatched away. I am watching the DNC rules debate and it seems that Hillary's people will do anything to get their way, including sabotaging the Party's chances to win in November.
And it takes a toll on Obama
I'm still sorting this out but the headline is that Obama has sent the equivalent of a letter of resignation to Trinity United Church of Christ. I'm saddened and disappointed, mostly by the fact that he was basically forced to. I've complained about Wright's speech in front of the National Press Club on this blog, not from its content (aside from his tap dance around the IMO dangerous, disempowering government-sponsored HIV conspiracy) but from its gleeful opportunism at a chance to snag some media spotlight for himself. That said from everything I've read about Wright, Trinity United, and now Pfleger who is Catholic, white and not even officially affiliated with the church - the accusations of a message of "hate" is nothing but a media slur of place that preaches a fundemental belief that we are all God's children and that attracts a small but noteworthy number of white congregants. A slur that was deepened and practiced by some Clinton supporters (including sadly my favorite Philadlephia mayor) and to a lesser extent by Clinton herself.
I fear that by feeding a deliberately innacurate version of what Trinity United Church of Christ is actually about again and again that Team Clinton was an aide to one of the lowest blows ever dealt in recent American politics and that is saying a lot.
And now I sit trying to sort out reconciling this post relishing in Obama's resignation from Trintiy on Ben Smith's blog
and this:
This is a dark day for American politics.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
OK one more
There is reason why win, lose or draw I will push to make Obama the President of the United States. Basically this is it.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Its Over. Thank God.
I don't expect much in terms of a concession. I don't expect that much in enthusiasm from some of Team Clinton.
I do expect this. Constantly harping on Wright et al by some Clinton supporters - direct embrace of a rhetoric describing statements by him or Pflegger as "racist", equating Obama with the worst of Louis Farrakahn, encouragement of whispers of the man as a closet Muslim - all that really should be made right. It has never been OK. Saying the Republicans would do it is no excuse. When people like Mayor Nutter go on National TV and call Trinity a church of "hate" - thats a wholsale blurring of lines and degrees that makes it OK for Republican attack dogs to use the language as if its as undisputed as the Law of Gravity.
So this is what I think would be fair. For Clinton supporters to admit to some simple truths. Rev. Wright is not the tan skinned equivalent of David Duke and the possiblity that this moment right now would happen is why it was bad form to ever attempt to conflate the two. Some Clinton supporters supported her for reasonable purposes but others did not. You don't have talk about losing, but you are required to say "people who voted for me beacuse of these wrong impressions don't represent the message of why I ran for office". You are required as a Clinton supporter to pull your weight from here on out on the task of dispelling misinformation against the winning candidate. You are required to go the extra mile to call out real actual racist smears from erstwhile co-Clinton supporters.
You don't have to sing Barrack's praises but you are required to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of pulling out that race/religion minefeild supporters of your candidate helped lay down.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I don't usually talk about it
because there are aspects of this election that are so offensively stupid I don't want to believe they are real, but I agree with this.