Hillary’s Voice

Electoral-Vote.com, April 29, 2008
Clinton     291        McCain     247        Tie      0
Obama     243        McCain     269        Tie     26
Click through to see the maps.

Obama denounces Rev. Wright (by Ben Smith at Politico)
Obama sharply attacks Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the substance of his remarks [Monday], a far sharper disavowal than he gave in Philadelphia… “I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” he said.
Hmmm… From crazy old uncle to I am outraged.  What he’s outraged about is Wright’s attacks on HIM, not the attacks on America.

Matt Davies

Matt Davies

But she just may do it: Electoral-Vote.com, April 28, 2008
Clinton     291        McCain     237        Tie     10
Obama     243        McCain     269        Tie     26
Click through to see the maps.

AP Poll: Clinton leads McCain by 9 points (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton now leads John McCain by 9 points in a head-to-head presidential matchup, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that bolsters her argument that she is more electable than Democratic rival Barack Obama. Obama and Republican McCain are running about even… Helped by independents, young people and seniors, Clinton gained ground this month in a hypothetical match with Sen. McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting. She now leads McCain, 50 percent to 41 percent, while Obama remains virtually tied with McCain, 46 percent to 44 percent. Both Democrats were roughly even with McCain in the previous poll about three weeks ago.

New York Times

Oh My, Darling (by Anglachel)
With Hillary currently showing herself to be highly competitive with McCain in battle ground states and wiping the floor with him in blue states, while Obama is losing ground in recent polls and showing himself to be less than appealing to many voting constituencies, it becomes harder and harder to sustain the argument that she is too divisive and polarizing to win. She is doing so quite handily in large state primaries while running a shoestring campaign, being outsepnt 4 and 5 to 1, and being pummeled unmercifully by the press and Blogger Boyz. As Hillary supporters have patiently told her detractors on the left since Day One, her negatives will not go up, they will only come down. Those record turnouts in the primaries have been just as much for her as for Obama… In short, the claim that Hillary can’t win is being overturned by the fact that she is winning big and is fully competitive in one of the biggest, most energized, most expensive, most engaging primaries ever held. Ten million viewers on the last debate! A primary turn out in Pennsylvania that rivaled the Democratic turn out in the last gneral election! This is not the campaign of someone who is hated by voters, no matter what WKJM would like to argue.

Rise Hillary, Rise! (by garychapelhill at The Confluence)
I wanted to start with some pictures I took at an event I attended last week at Wake Forest University with Hillary and Maya Angelou… This event was really a great chance to get beyond the stump speech of a campaign rally as the two women sat down and had a conversation. It lasted almost two hours and both of them were radiant throughout. Anyway, thinking about Angelou’s book [I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings] I kept thinking to myself, “I know why Hillary is running”. She’s doing it , like the caged bird, because she has to. She’s doing it because this country needs her. She’s doing it because the alternatives are shockingly inadequate for a country as great as this one. Rise Hillary, Rise!
Click through to see the photos.  I received a message recently from a doofus who told me that NO ONE is supporting Hillary Clinton any more.  I told him he should get out more.

Some bloggers are upset with Barack Obama for giving conflicting responses about the flag-pin non-issue (Little Green Footballs via Memeorandum). Aside from admiring Nancy Pelosi’s pearls, I don’t care about politicians’ jewelry.

I do care about the mainstream media’s repeated failure to cover the more substantive misleading statements that Sen. Obama has made: chiefly, those about where he gets his campaign funding.

Today, ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos offered a prime opportunity to spotlight this important issue, but George and his guests chose not to.

I will be a guest tomorrow on Shelly and Anita Drobny’s radio show, The Cutting Edge, on Nova M radio.  Listen to Shelly and Anita every Sunday morning at 11:00 AM ET.  Click here for a list of upcoming guests.

Gary Varvel

Obama’s ‘Distractions’? (by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post)
[Barack] Obama understands that the real threat to his candidacy is less Hillary Clinton and John McCain than his own character and cultural attitudes. He came out of nowhere with his autobiography already written, then saw it embellished daily by the hagiographic coverage and kid-gloves questioning of a supine press. (Which is why those “Saturday Night Live” parodies were so devastatingly effective.) Then came the three amigos: Tony Rezko, the indicted fixer; Jeremiah Wright, the racist reverend; William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist. And then Obama’s own anthropological observation that “bitter” working-class whites cling to guns and religion because they misapprehend their real class interests…

Obama needs to cast out [questions about these issues] as illegitimate distractions because they are seriously damaging his candidacy. As people begin to learn about this just-arrived pretender, the magic dissipates. He spent six weeks in Pennsylvania. Outspent Hillary more than 2 to 1. Ran close to 10,000 television ads — spending more than anyone in any race in the history of the state — and lost by 10 points. And not because he insufficiently demagogued NAFTA or the other “issues.” It was because of those “distractions” — i.e., the things that most reveal character and core beliefs.
Yes, Krauthammer is a conservative columnist and a neocon, but as I’ve said before, the conservatives are doing a much better job of covering this Democratic primary than either the so-called mainstream media or the so-called progressive media.

I will be a guest on Head-On with Bob Kincaid today at 6:00 PM ET.  Listen to Bob from 6:00 to 9:00 PM ET every weekday on the Head-On Radio Network.

Survival Guide for Life in a Sexist Society (by Jill Filipovic, AlterNet.)
Amanda Marcotte, author of It’s a Jungle Out There, tells you how to fight modern-day misogyny and have fun at the same time.

New Ralph Reed novel treats women as ‘tarts who use sex to get ahead.’ (Think Progress)
Ralph Reed, formerly Christian Coalition executive director and friend of Jack Abramoff, has his first novel coming out. Publisher’s Weekly publishes a review of “Dark Horse,” a book that promises to demean both women and liberals: “For Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, politics is a man’s world to its very core—especially when it comes to the race for president, which is at the center of this first novel. Women characters are either wives with drinking problems, tarts who use sex to get ahead professionally (but not that far) or VP candidates chosen purely for show, who are belittled behind the scenes for lack of experience and ‘lightweight’ intelligence. Democrats are drunks who play dirty and bloody each other’s noses.”

MSNBC’s Shuster, Carlson discuss purported “cackle,” laugh over “Hillary laughing pen” (Media Matters)
Summary: On MSNBC Live, David Shuster presented to Tucker Carlson “a Hillary laughing pen” — a pen shaped in the likeness of Hillary Clinton’s head with a mouth that moves as the pen makes a laughing noise. In response, Carlson stated: “I can’t tell you, David, how much I appreciate this, how much I appreciate your going through Chris’ mail while he’s gone and how much I’m really going to miss that cackle. I hope it goes on forever. It’s brought light to my life.”
Why so shy?  Why didn’t they bring out the Hillary nutcracker?  That’s REALLY funny.

Olbermann Calls for Clinton’s Murder (by Anglachel)
Other blog posters have stepped around the obvious intent behind Keith Olbermann’s recent verbal assault on Hillary Clinton. I know why. It’s a hell of a step to take… What Keith Olbermann said yesterday is not symbolic. He flatly said a (male) Democratic super delegate should take Hillary Clinton into a room, and only the man should emerge. Keith Olbermann is openly advocating the murder of Hillary Clinton.

(cross-posted at Reclusive Leftist)

One of the first political facts I learned was this: winning the California primary in June 1968 meant Robert Kennedy had a serious shot at taking the nomination, even though he’d entered the race late and was behind in delegates.

But of course Bobby was murdered a few hours later, so that was the end of that.

I learned about this as a child because my parents were trying to explain to me why another Kennedy had been killed and what it meant for the election.

“Why did California matter so much?” I asked them. “How could he have gotten the nomination if Humphrey already had the party behind him? And what about McCarthy?”

It was thus that I learned about the realpolitik of nominating contests. A lot has changed in the process since 1968, and all to the good. More actual voting, fewer smoke-filled rooms. But what hasn’t changed is the purpose of the whole thing: to settle on the candidate with the best chance to win in the general election.

If I had a time machine and could go back to 1968 or 1972 to chew over a thought experiment with one of those old pros, the conversation might go like this:

Randi Rhodes calls Hillary voters “white trash” (by ryeland at MyDD)
I hope Nova M Radio is happy with their new talk show host, the Left’s own Rush Limbaugh. Randi Rhodes is a disgrace and an embarrassment to Democrats, and I can’t imagine why any organization (political campaign or business) would want to be associated with her hate-filled rhetoric. In the first five minutes of her show [Wednesday], Randi let this one go: “The Clinton campaign describes Hillary’s voters as older, white, and undereducated. Or as we called them in my neighborhood: white trash.”
So Randi, was I white trash when I voted for Obama in the 2004 primary?  Was I white trash when I voted for him in the 2004 general election?  Or did I become white trash only after I was tremendously disillusioned in him as my senator?  With all due respect, Randi, I think the trash is on the other foot.

From Shakespeare’s Sister, three generations of very beautiful “white trash”:

What Pennsylvania tells us (by Joan Walsh, Salon)
I continue to think the ongoing Democratic race is good for the party whoever is the ultimate nominee… What I don’t like about the current stalemate is that so many people who are not Barack Obama supporters insist Clinton’s victories have nothing to do with the real concerns of her supporters; they argue it’s either racism, or just old machine politics, with Clinton ward heelers paying their dues and turning out votes. “They [the Clintons] believe it’s their party, to do with what they will. That is the Clinton attitude,” said Chris Matthews on MSNBC after the Clinton speech, with Keith Olbermann murmuring darkly alongside him. This is just extraordinarily silly.

CLINTON OUTSPENT 2-1, STILL WINS PA BY 10: Clinton now ahead in popular vote
What, you didn’t see that headline?  Funny, neither did I.  Instead, I saw these: “Clinton’s Pa. win still leaves her the underdog”; “Clinton stays alive with win in Pennsylvania”; “Clinton Wins. Or Does She?”; “Slender Hope Remains Alive”; “Clinton’s win in Pa. leaves Obama battered, party reeling”; “Clinton Outduels Obama in Primary: The Bruising Will Go On for the Party”

Hillary now leads in the popular vote (Hillary’s Voice)
[But of course, now that Obama no longer leads in the popular vote, the popular vote no longer counts.]

Does it drive them nuts that she’s so classy and gracious? (by Violet Socks at Hillary’s Voice)
Hillary’s victory speech … was wonderful. Pure Hillary: smart, down to earth, classy. The most moving part of the speech was when … she talked about how this Presidential race is a landmark in the two-century-long project of moving America forward. She said that when the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia 200 years ago, “neither I nor Senator Obama nor many of you” were part of their dream. But through the efforts of so many over so many years — the abolitionists, the suffragists, the progressives, the civil rights heroes, etc., the American dream has expanded. Because of them, she said, she grew up taking for granted that women could vote. Because of them, Chelsea grew up taking for granted that children of all races could attend the same schools. And now, she said, “because of you,” today’s children will grow up taking for granted that either a woman or an African-American can be President of the United States. The crowd went over the moon. I actually blubbed. I don’t know what kind of cognitive dissonance is required to watch this woman and hate her. It is beyond my understanding.

Holy fucking shit. I gotta go to bed, but — holy fucking shit.

This can’t last. Somehow the Boyz will find a way to make it disappear. I took a goddamn picture of it for posterity:

The mostly male pundits on talking-head TV just don’t get it. It appears Sen. Clinton is going to win Pennsylvania by 10 points.

Before the polls closed they all said if she didn’t win she should quit. Then, as the results starting coming in, they said if she didn’t win by more than 7 points she should quit. Then, when she was ahead by 8 points they said if she didn’t win by double digits she should quit.

When are they going to ‘get it’ that it’s the PEOPLE who don’t want Sen. Clinton to quit.

Clearly Democrats are not ready for this contest to end.

Sen. Obama outspent Sen. Clinton at least 3 to 1, running literally THOUSANDS of television ads. Hey, I worked in advertising for a decade. I was sure his ad budget alone would make this a very close contest. I was wrong.

Sen. Clinton is connecting with working Americans. The blue collar voters who are concerned about the economy. They see her as someone who can fix the problem. Clearly they don’t have that same opinion of Obama. This is the audience Democrats MUST have to win in November.

I certainly hope superdelegates are paying attention.

Neither candidate can secure enough pledged delegates to win the election, so it’s going to be up to superdelegates. I hope they recognize that Clinton has won all the key states Democrats must win to wrap up the November election. I hope they recognize that core Democrats have consistently supported Clinton from the start. I hope they recognize that it’s going to take a fighter to win against John McCain, and Obama has consistently demonstrated that when the going gets tough he folds.

The Obamabots I mean. The Hillary haters.

I wish I had a full transcript of Hillary’s victory speech tonight. It was wonderful. Pure Hillary: smart, down to earth, classy.

The most moving part of the speech was when — and I wish I had the transcript — she talked about how this Presidential race is a landmark in the two-century-long project of moving America forward. She said that when the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia 200 years ago, “neither I nor Senator Obama nor many of you” were part of their dream. But through the efforts of so many over so many years — the abolitionists, the suffragists, the progressives, the civil rights heroes, etc., the American dream has expanded. Because of them, she said, she grew up taking for granted that women could vote. Because of them, Chelsea grew up taking for granted that children of all races could attend the same schools.

And now, she said, “because of you,” today’s children will grow up taking for granted that either a woman or an African-American can be President of the United States.

The crowd went over the moon. I actually blubbed.

I don’t know what kind of cognitive dissonance is required to watch this woman and hate her. It is beyond my understanding.

(cross-posted at Reclusive Leftist)

I guess they couldn’t get the audio of a scream.
Feministe

Jill: This is really beyond the pale. And really, if the “What election sexism?” Democrats can’t see how over-the-top this is, I don’t really know what to say. Progressives should be better than this. I haven’t been a Clinton supporter, but the misogynist crap she’s gotten throughout the election has made me a whole lot more sympathetic towards her. There are a lot of questions to raise and a lot of skepticism to be had about both Democratic candidates — we can do that without resorting to sexist and racist crutches. And we can cut the whole “She’s tearing the party apart!” nonsense. You know what tears the party apart? Insulting and attacking the party’s base by launching racist and sexist attacks… Contact the TNR editors (letters@tnr.com) and tell them to stick to the issues — not sexist caricatures.The seeds of the new progressive blogosphere (by Violet Socks at Hillary’s Voice)
A list is taking shape of those political bloggers who are either pro-Hillary or at least fair in their coverage of the candidates — in other words, bloggers who aren’t raving Clinton-hating Obamabots. Versions of this emerging blogroll are popping up here and there… Why does this list matter? It’s not merely a question of knowing where to go for misogyny-free political commentary. These are the seeds of a new progressive blogosphere in the making. The Obamabots are poisoning the original netroots, transforming what used to be an arena for progressive politics into nothing more than a rabid, mindless He-Man Woman-Haters club.
Click through for a list of  Clinton friendly websites.

(cross-posted at Reclusive Leftist)

I’ve been watching politics since 1972. And this is the first campaign I’ve ever seen where winning wasn’t enough. I’m using, of course, the quaintly old-fashioned definition of winning, which means “getting more votes than your opponent.”

The new-fashioned definition of winning, as applied exclusively to Hillary Clinton, means something like “getting n more votes than Obama, where n represents an unattainably high number extracted from the asses of the media/Blogger Boyz in order to make sure that Barry is never seen to be losing.”

This morning the LA Times did its bit with an article helpfully entitled, “What to look for in the Pennsylvania primary.” (A pony?) Bottom line: unless Hillary wins by at least 10%, she will have lost!

How did they come up with 10%? It’s simply the biggest number they think they can get away with. In the past n for Pennsylvania has been much higher — I’ve seen 20, 30% bandied about — but that figure’s been reduced by the fact that everybody knows Barry’s spending something like a quadrillion dollars a day on campaign ads. The ass-extractors have got to at least give a nod in that direction in order to maintain credibility with the other ass-extractors. So now we’re down to 10%.

Gallup Daily: Clinton 46%, Obama 45%
PRINCETON, NJ — Gallup Poll Daily tracking shows that Hillary Clinton now receives 46% of the support of Democrats nationally, compared to 45% for Barack Obama, marking the first time Obama has not led in Gallup’s daily tracking since March 18-20.

AP-Yahoo poll: Economy top worry, but barely affecting votes
WASHINGTON - The economy has soared past Iraq as the top problem on the minds of voters. But do the growing economic worries give a particular edge to any presidential candidate? Not so far, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Monday.

Pat Racimora, posting at No Quarter

(cross-posted at Reclusive Leftist)

A list is taking shape of those political bloggers who are either pro-Hillary or at least fair in their coverage of the candidates — in other words, bloggers who aren’t raving Clinton-hating Obamabots. Versions of this emerging blogroll are popping up here and there; the one below is cobbled together from lists at Tennessee Guerilla Women, The Hillary 1000, and a couple of other places.

Why does this list matter? It’s not merely a question of knowing where to go for misogyny-free political commentary. These are the seeds of a new progressive blogosphere in the making. The Obamabots are poisoning the original netroots, transforming what used to be an arena for progressive politics into nothing more than a rabid, mindless He-Man Woman-Haters club. The Democratic Party — or at least the high-visibility Obamabot segment — is morphing into the Young Republicans: all the misogyny and callowness and ignorance and blind hero-worship of the old GOP, but with a self-congratulatory aura of imaginary cool to make the YouTube generation feel at home.

And where does that leave the women of America?

I’m going to have more to say about that in the coming days. But right now I just want to get a start on that list. It’s very much a work in progress, so feel free to help me out with suggestions. Who else should be here? Who doesn’t belong?

I don’t think you need to raise the possibility of “suble racism” as a reason why people do not trust Obama. There are many reasons why people should support Hillary, and all have to do with the fact that she is better qualified, more experienced, harder working, and smarter about putting plans together that would help people. 

Google: “Hillary’s accomplishments.”

Hillary helped create the SCHIP Children’s Health Insurance program, which now covers six million children; she has sponsored over 350 bills—everything from added protection for children in vehicles to protection of a watershed to added benefits for public safety officers. 

She has traveled to over 80 countries. 

Hillary’s healthcare plan is truly universal, it would cover everyone, Obama’s would not. 

She supports using the best environmental technology to do oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while we develop green energy so as to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Obama does not. 

Obama supports nuclear energy, which is a disaster. How many of his supporters are even aware of this? Few, and that is the problem with the media bias against Hillary. 

Meanwhile, Obama has lied many times on issues that are a lot more significant than Hillary embellishing her trip to Bosnia. 

Obama lied about how his father came to the US, saying the Kennedy family program helped him when in fact his father came before the program started. See the Washington Post article, “Obama Overstates Kennedys’ Role in Helping His Father” by Michael Dobbs.

It’s better than being an emotionally-arrested under-educated Cheeto-stained dweeb.

Via Corrente, here’s one Obamabot’s reaction to Our Lord’s gesturally enhanced speech the other day:

Dude, I nearly swooned — SWOONED, I tell you — when I saw that. That’s one of my fave Jay-Z joints of all time. HUGE SWIRLING VORTEX OF LOVE. I could not pink-fuzzy-heart Barack one iota more.

Save us.

(cross-posted at Reclusive Leftist)

David Horsey

Obama Flips off Hillary (video)
Different locale, same speech, same gesture, same crowd reaction.  Don’t tell me he didn’t mean it.  Fox News is reporting it..—Caro

Can we say “imaginary hip black friend” now? Since the Boiz just did? (by lambert at Corrente)
Of Barry’s latest awsum speech, full of “pretty cool” “dogwhistles” — one of which was giving Hillary the finger — Spencer burbles: “Starting at 2:20, bear witness to perhaps the coolest subliminal cultural reference [to this extremely presidential Jay Z tune] in the history of American politics.” I’ll just quote one comment, from reader weakervessel, who I think deserves a Unity Pony if anyone does: “Dude, I nearly swooned — SWOONED, I tell you — when I saw that. That’s one of my fave Jay-Z joints of all time. HUGE SWIRLING VORTEX OF LOVE. I could not pink-fuzzy-heart Barack one iota more.”… Great. Just what I want from a President.

The ..|.. Finger of Hope, Change and Unity (by eriposte at the Left Coaster)
[A]fter Sen. Obama performed underwhelmingly in the ABC debate…, some of [his] supporters have taken to rending their garments about Sen. Clinton using Republican style talking-points against Sen. Obama… [Being troubled] by his opponent for behaviors that have long been the defining characteristic of his own campaign is pretty silly.

[Examples:] 1. Attacks on President Clinton’s sex life (a longtime staple of Republican politics and the corporate media) and attempts to tie that to Sen. Clinton’s electability… 2. Attacks on Sen. Clinton for the crookedness of a fundraiser (who also happened to be Sen. Obama’s fundraiser)… 3. Caricaturing and Attacking Sen. Clinton using the standard right-wing attack memes: Her “Negatives”, “Divisiveness”, Alleged Inability to Work with Republicans… 4. Attacks on Sen. Clinton Using False or Unsubstantiated Stories from Right Wing Fraudsters Matt Drudge and Robert Novak… 5. Borderline Racist Attack Against Sen. Clinton… 6. Borderline Sexist Attacks Against Sen. Clinton.
Click through for more.  Personally, I’d go beyond “borderline” on the racist and sexist attacks.  They’ve been covert, but they’ve been full blown.

Cross posted at: TexasDarlin Blog

Barack Obama wants you to believe that there is nothing sinister to him hanging around American terrorists. It is as if he thinks that we all have our closet terrorist friends, being the dumb small town bitter hicks that we are. But contrary to Obama’s completely out of touch misinformed viewpoint, most Americans have no respect for or patience with members of groups that declare war on the United States of America. And some of us believe strongly that an American that declares war on this country is a traitor and should be punished as a traitor. But not Barack Obama. He believes that it is cool to go over to their house to have a political fundraiser. He thinks that we should accept paid positions serving on the same boards with them. And he believes that it is ok if his children associate with these unrepentant American terrorists.

Of course Obama thinks that he has a perfectly good excuse for not having his associations with these people mean anything. As he stated during the last debate:

Transcript: Obama and Clinton Debate

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense, George.

8 years old? Isn’t that when he said he was in the process of formulating his superior foreign policy skills? When he was an 8 year old child in Indonesia? Should we take Senator Obama at his word that he was a child prodigy who somehow managed to develop vastly superior foreign policy experience at that age? If so, then it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to suppose that he also formed his political morals at that age as well. Wasn’t the Autobiography of Malcolm X his favorite book? I know I heard him say that on more than one occasion. Whitey = The Devil.