Hillary’s Voice

Electoral-Vote.com, April 30, 2008
Clinton     291        McCain     247        Tie      0
Obama     243        McCain     269        Tie     26
Click through to see the maps.

Maya Angelou North Carolina Ad for Hillary Clinton (HillBuzz)
Click through to watch the ad.  HillBuzz also has the video and transcript of an interview Clinton gave on issues affecting Guam.  Some of the questions were about issues Hillary hasn’t addressed to a great extent before.

InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion Survey: North Carolina Democratic Primary: Hillary Clinton Takes Lead Over Obama
April 30, 2008 — A survey of 571 registered likely voters in North Carolina’s May 6 Democratic primary shows Sen. Hillary Clinton having moved from a double digit deficit in an InsiderAdvantage poll taken in mid-April to a two point lead over Sen. Barack Obama in this telephone survey, conducted April 29. The survey was weighted for age, race, gender, and political affiliation. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8%. The results were:

Hillary Clinton: 44%
Barack Obama: 42%
Undecided: 14%
Prior to his appearance on FoxNews Network’s “Hannity & Colmes,” on which the poll was released, InsiderAdvantage’s Matt Towery noted: “The shift has come almost entirely from white voters age 45 and over. There was a small drift of African-Americans back towards Clinton, but not so significant as to establish any trend. “I believe when all is said and done, Obama will likely carry North Carolina; or if he loses the race, it will be by just a few points.

Those Fickle Youth (by Tony Romm, Slate)
New numbers from Public Policy Polling and SurveyUSA signify a slight shift among younger Democratic voters in North Carolina.

BREAKING NEWS: 700 LATINOS PROTEST OUTSIDE DNC (Nuestra Voice)
THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE IS BEING PROTESTED RIGHT NOW. THE PROTEST WAS ORGANIZED BY THE LEAGUE OF UNITED LATIN AMERICAN CITIZENS (LULAC) IN BEHALF OF VOTERS IN MICHIGAN AND FLORIDA. DEVELOPING……
There’s - video.

She held her own: Clinton and O’Reilly (video)

Clinton On O’Reilly (by BDBlue at Corrente)
I don’t know if I would say she takes Fox on, since she doesn’t attack the network, but she does a good job (for the most part) of defending herself and her policies from O’Reilly. I’m not sure, but I think she got O’Reilly to admit that he’d be willing to pay more in taxes and subsidize at least some uninsured people. She did have an obvious advantage, she’s smarter than he is (and it showed). Judge for yourselves:

It’s just a flesh wound…. (by garychapelhill at The Confluence)
I just got done watching Hillary on the O’Reilly show. What a great interview. You know, I remember what all the Obama bloggers were saying before he went on Fox. His campaign promised he was going to take them on, he would be tough. So what did he do? He threw them all under the bus. Now Hillary goes on Fox, not with nice guy Chris Wallace, but straight to the belly of the beast, The Factor with Bill O. She not only was tough, she was smart, funny, and anwered everything he had without missing a beat. Her reaction to Bill’s question about Fox being fair to her was to reply with just a touch of sarcasm, “I wouldn’t expect anything but fair and balanced coverage from Fox”. She looked happy, like she’s having a good time, and most importantly, like she knows what the hell she is talking about. That is how you “take on” Fox.

‘Provocative’ Clinton angers Iran
Tehran has complained to the UN about remarks made last week by Hillary Clinton on the circumstances under which the US might attack Iran. The Democratic presidential hopeful said last week the US could “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel.
She has to be tough.  She has to be the Golda Meir, the Maggie Thatcher (aka Iron Lady) of today, considering all the sexist crap she has to overcome.  See below.

That’s Hysterical (by Linda Hirshman, Slate)
Attacks on a “hysterical” Hillary Clinton have a long literary pedigree

So now the press tells candidates when to quit? (by Eric Boehlert, Media Matters)
History continues to unfold on many levels as the protracted Democratic Party primary race marches on, featuring the first woman and the first African-American with a real shot at winning the White House. Here’s another first: the press’s unique push to get a competitive White House hopeful to drop out of the race. It’s unprecedented… “Clinton is being held to a different standard than virtually any other candidate in history,” wrote Steven Stark in the Boston Phoenix. “When Clinton is simply doing what everyone else has always done, she’s constantly attacked as an obsessed and crazed egomaniac, bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense of her party.” No longer content to be observers of the campaign, journalists now see themselves as active players in the unfolding drama, and they show no hesitation trying to dictate the basics of the contest, like who should run and who should quit. It’s as if journalists are auditioning for the role of the old party bosses.
Jeff Jarvis is also thinking along the party boss line, even when it comes to the so-called progressive new media.  See below.

What is Kos? (by Jeff Jarvis)
I’m thinking that Daily Kos is not — as it wants to be and is often painted — netroots, the voice of a popular movement. No, it’s more like Tammany Hall, a would-be powerbroker and kingmaker. And Kos is the would-be party boss. Notice I say would-be.

“Why Won’t That Stupid Bitch Quit?” watch (by lambert at Corrente)
Another meme—propagated. And this one to the redoubtable Eric Boehlert: “So now the press tells candidates when to quit?” Er, yes… Why would it be, I wonder? Is there something about Hillary that’s different from Ronald, Teddy, Gary, Jesse, and Jerry? What could it be? ’Tis a puzzlement! And you know what? If we let them get away with it, they’ll keep doing it.

When Democrats Go Post-al (by James Wolcott, Vanity Fair)
The vicious Clinton-versus-Obama rupture at Daily Kos, the most activist site in the liberal blogosphere, reflects a party-wide split. What really rankles, as Democrats tear at one another, is the free pass they’ve given McCain—and the White House.
The last sentence of the article is “Democrats have pulled their punches for so long that they know only how to hit themselves in the face, earning the reputation for masochism that gives Dick Cheney a good chuckle each night at bedtime as he’s being packed in ice.”  Which brings up another reason why I’m working to ensure that Clinton is the Democratic nominee, and not Obama.  He’s just another weak-kneed Democrat.  See below.  And that’s why I’ve been stunned at the split in the blogosphere.  Many of the people who have spent all this time and energy trying to make the Bush administration accountable for its illegal and immoral actions fell in love with a guy who has never stood up for a principle in his life.  It’s just mind-boggling.

The Kos war (by Jeff Jarvis)
Jim Wolcott (fellow Hillary voter) dissects the feud — schism, actually — at Daily Kos and within the Democratic Party. Note well that the nasties in this story are the followers of Mr. Getalong. “The rancor was disproportionate in intensity and extravagant in invective, a fervor worthy of ancestral foes. Months-old grievances seethed and erupted as if they had been bubbling for centuries in a lake of bad blood…” And quoting Kos himself over the departure/boycott of Hillary voters from his shrine: “Clinton and her shrinking band of paranoid holdouts wail and scream about all those evil people who have ‘turned’ on Clinton and are no longer ‘honest power brokers’ or ‘respectable voices’ or whatnot, wearing blinders to reality, talking about silly little ‘strikes’ when in reality, Clinton is planning a far more drastic, destructive and debilitating civil war.” Obama may paint himself as Mr. Nice Guy but he certainly has a nasty bunch of friends.

So who do I have to blow to get James Wolcott to actually mention Corrente? (by lambert at Corrente)
I’m deeply, deeply hurt: “… A few cynics nicknamed Obama ‘Hopey,’ giving rise to blog items with titles such as ‘Chutzpah on Race from Mr. Hopey’…” Yes, friends, I, lambert, wrote that post. And Wolcott’s careless handling — surely unintended — bruised my tender and delicate sensibilities in several ways:
1. I’m not a cynic, though Obama calls me one; I’m a realist.
2. Worse, and there’s actually some importance to this, Wolcott ignores the work that the post is doing. The subject of the post is Obama’s deliberate smearing of the Clintons as racist.
3. Oddly, or not, Wolcott doesn’t mention either racism — whether falsely attributed to the Clintons, or not — or the OFB’s [Obama Fan Base] virulent misogyny as sources of the schism at Daily Kos, his subject. In missing misogyny, Wolcott misses the story.

User-Generated Censorship (by Annalee Newitz, AlterNet)The Web makes it easy for crowds to collaborate. But it also makes it simple for mobs to crush free expression.
Like the mobs who claim to be Obama supporters, who are EXACTLY like the Bushbots of 2000 that we fought on the message boards of the time.  Sometimes I wonder if they ARE the original Bushbots, messing with the Democratic primaries.

Can Obama show real anger? (by Frank James at The Swamp, Tribune’s Washington Bureau)
Does Sen. Barack Obama ever cut loose and let his anger and, more broadly, his emotions show?… [A] man the candidate once counted as important to his life, his former pastor, essentially calls Obama an opportunistic, say-anything-to-win politician and appears intent on doing everything he can to sink his former congregant’s chances… But while Obama seemed sad [Tuesday], there was little fire… Perhaps Obama doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, which would justify Maureen Dowd’s name for him, “Obambi.” Or perhaps he intellectuallizes away his anger to the point where it’s highly diluted… If that’s the case, he may be in real trouble.  Because I’m guessing many Americans want to see some fight in their presidential candidates…

Democrats are especially looking for that in their candidate after eight years of President Bush in the White House. That’s why Clinton has shaped her campaign message the way she has. She’s the fighter who will trade blows, toe-to-toe with McCain and the vast right-wing conspiracy she believes in… One of things that got Sen. John Kerry in trouble four years ago as the Democratic nominee was his unwillingness, until it was too late, to get in the trenches against President Bush’s campaign and against the Swiftboaters… [Democrats] want to see anger when it should be there, a popping vein on the forehead, and a well-aimed “How dare he!” They want to know the man or woman they choose to be president has not just the head for a fight, but the heart for it.
He could stop all the hatefulness propagated in his name, on the internet.  The fact that he doesn’t shows me more than anything else that the unity talk is just crap.

Obama’s problem (by Jeff Jarvis)
I was told that I didn’t understand the history of the black church, I didn’t understand black liberation theology, I didn’t listen to the whole context of what [Wright] said. Bull. But now Obama repudiates Wright. And all Wright did was repeat the exact same crackpot crap that some of us had complained about before. So before, I was as good as called racist or at least clueless for criticizing the not-so-good reverend. But now when Obama finally criticizes him, the New York Times editorial page — in a classic of doublespeak soft-headed mush from wimps — praises him for “the most forthright repudiation of an out-of-control supporter that we can remember.” Jesus.

You see, this is the problem I have with Obama. I’m still not sure what I think he is: a cynical politician who throws out empty rhetoric and makes these grand statements only when he needs to (that is, like every other cynical politician) or a mushy wimp who can’t make tough decisions because he thinks he can get along with everybody (Jimmy Carter).

Is Barack Obama in Danger of Being Outmanned? (by Steven Stark at Real Clear Politics)
Look at the recent poses Clinton has adopted: she downs drinks at a bar, wields baseball bats at rallies, and constantly uses the combative metaphors of sports. She demands more debates, while Obama ducks them. Her most successful negative ad (the “3 am” commercial) accuses Obama of not being able to keep us safe, which is, after all, the traditional male role. In contrast, while Clinton wants to keep fighting, Obama speaks of a politics of peace - both literally in Iraq and at home with an end to partisanship. He’s never had any relationship with the military and, when it comes to sports, er, even though he’s claimed he could dunk in high school, and he did work out with the University of North Carolina men’s hoops team this week, he bowled that disastrous, gutter-ball-plagued 37.

Given the history of American politics, this is not a helpful trend for Obama, especially since, in his autumn effort to become our next commander in chief, he’ll be going up against a war hero… So doubts about a candidate’s masculinity would spell trouble regardless of the opponent. But it’s especially problematic when, well, it’s a woman who’s pointing out what a wimp you’ve become. There is a well-accepted role in American life for the “tomboy” - a role, say, inhabited in pop culture by Seinfeld’s Elaine - the girl who loves hanging out in the boy’s gang. Clinton has more than willingly stepped into it.
Or maybe he’s just bored.  See below.

A “Bored” Obama Is Distracted and Not Listening (by SusanUnPC at No Quarter)
Huffington Post’s Mayhill Fowler may support Obama but — as she showed in her now-legendary sneak-taping and reporting of Obama’s remarks about “clingy” smalltown folk at his fundraiser for the elite of San Francisco — she is not afraid to tell the truth, and her observations and insights about Obama’s disconnect from his audiences are disturbing… Here’s what a highly observant Mayhill Fowler reports in today’s Huffington Post: “Did Senator Obama know to whom he was speaking? Likely not. That’s been his problem lately on the campaign trail–not knowing exactly where he was…”

But it’s worth noting that Senator Clinton always knows exactly where she is and to whom she is speaking. On Sunday in Wilmington, for example, her opening remarks touched in quick succession on several important things about the town: the glorious setting on the Cape Fear River, its connection to the military, the upcoming commissioning of the new submarine North Carolina there next weekend, and the fact that ‘this country has been very good to me and to many of you,’ for people who are lucky enough to live in Wilmington are lucky indeed…”

Joe Wilson extends Obama’s disconnect from “bedrock” Americans to his disconnect from our nation’s foreign policy professionals:… Ambassador Wilson also points out that one of the main reasons for Obama’s “disconnect” is that he simply hasn’t put in the time, the effort or the hard work necessary to KNOW these people or to KNOW the issues:… In short: He has contempt for and indifference towards the people for whom he would be elected to work… Barack Obama is running for the title, not the job.

And, in clear-as-day contrast, Hillary Clinton is running for the job, not the title.

CLINTON DOES IT AGAIN: (by Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler)
Hillary Clinton has done it again, provoking yet another scandal. Yesterday, she was endorsed by North Carolina governor Mike Easley. In the process, Easley said this, at Clinton’s direction: “EASLEY (4/29/08): There’s nothing I love more than a strong, powerful woman. So, I’ve been in hog heaven today. This lady right here makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy.” Easley made his unfortunate comment because he’d been told to by Clinton. How do we know that Clinton told Easley to say what he did? We base our judgment on a well-known fact: In January, Clinton told billionaire Robert Johnson to make another unfortunate introduction, the one Johnson authored in South Carolina. Johnson made a foolish (apparent) reference to Obama’s youthful drug use; he then compared Obama to Sidney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Johnson’s introduction was deeply foolish. But sooth-sayers widely informed us that it was part of the Clinton campaign’s racial strategy. Translation: A person like Johnson never makes dumb remarks—unless told to by “The Man.” So too, we can only assume that Easley made his remark at Clinton’s direction. Ain’t life grand when you get to type the stories you very much like?

Obama’s politics: Sort of the usual (Hot off the Trail, McClatchy)
“Obama Responds to Misleading Clinton Attack Ad with ‘Truth,’” said the headline on the e-mail from Obama’s spokesman Wednesday, as the candidate launched a new ad explaining his position on gasoline tax moratoriums. Obama’s against it, Clinton’s for it. But wait–a few hours later, Obama told an Indianapolis crowd that he does things differently–he doesn’t practice the old, attack style politics. Except when he has to. “We try to respond,” he explained. “We haven’t been perfect. You get hit over the head enough times, you look around and say, ‘Who’s doing that?”’

Obama’s ‘Truth Squad’ debuts (South Bend Tribune
Sen. Barack Obama’s new “Truth Squad” might sound a bit like the A-Team, but there’s no cigar chomping and definitely no theme song. It’s a group of six notable Indiana Democrats dedicated, the campaign says, to responding quickly to “misleading attacks” against Obama. It also will “work to hold Sen. Hillary Clinton accountable for her record,” the Obama campaign said in a news release… The Clinton campaign said it will have surrogates defending her record as well, but it questioned the need for Obama’s Truth Squad. “It did seem awfully strange that they were rolling out a ‘Truth Squad’ when as far as I can tell it’s not like anyone’s launched attacks against Barack Obama here in Indiana,” said Jonathan Swain, spokesman for Hoosiers for Hillary.

Obama Joins McCain in Whining to the FEC about Unfair 527 Ads (by BDBlue at Corrente)
Obama has filed a complaint with the FEC over a 527 ad airing in Indiana… Now it might be a bit unfair, but illegal? C’mon. All it accuses him of is not having specifics in his economic plans. That’s hardly some sort of swiftboating. I’ve seen harder ads than this for insurance commissioner. And does this mean he thinks McCain was right to complain to the FEC about the DNC ad? Of course, there is a way for Obama to show he has specific plans, he could debate Hillary.
Click through to watch the ad.

Obama No (by Adolph Reed Jr., The Progressive - Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and an African American)
I’ve never been an Obama supporter. I’ve known him since the very beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope and change and new directions, is neoliberal…

It may be instructive to look at the outfit where he did his “community organizing,” the invocation of which makes so many lefties go weak in the knees. My understanding of the group, Developing Communities Project, at the time was that it was simply a church-based social service agency. What he pushed as his main political credential then, to an audience generally familiar with that organization, was his role in a youth-oriented voter registration drive.

The Obama campaign has even put out a misleading bio of Michelle Obama, representing her as having grown up in poverty on the South Side, when, in fact, her parents were city workers, and her father was a Daley machine precinct captain. This fabrication, along with those embroideries of the candidate’s own biography, may be standard fare, the typical log cabin narrative. However, in Obama’s case, the license taken not only underscores Obama’s more complex relationship to insider politics in Daley’s Chicago; it also underscores how much this campaign depends on selling an image rather than substance.

I’m hardly a Clinton fan. I’m on record in last November’s issue as saying that I’d rather sit out the election entirely than vote for either her or Obama. At this point, though, I’ve decided that she’s the lesser evil in the Democratic race, for the following reasons: 1) Obama’s empty claims to being a candidate of progressive change and to embodying a “movement” that exists only as a brand will dissolve into disillusionment in either a failed campaign against McCain or an Obama Presidency that continues the politics he’s practiced his entire career; 2) his horribly opportunistic approach to the issues bearing on inequality—in which he tosses behaviorist rhetoric to the right and little more than calls to celebrate his success to blacks—stands to pollute debate about racial injustice whether he wins or loses the Presidency; 3) he can’t beat McCain in November.
ExACTly what I’ve been telling you.

FOX News Poll: Obama’s Favorable Rating Drops
FNC Poll: FOX News Poll: Obama’s Favorable Rating Drops , Nearly half of Democrats (48 percent) think Hillary Clinton has a better chance of beating McCain in November 10 percentage points higher than the 38 percent who think Barack Obama can win.

Pastor vs The Pol: Did Wright Mean To Hurt Obama?
CHICAGO (CBS) ? Chicago friends of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Sen. Barack Obama say both men are simply sad following a controversy and eventual falling out that came to a head Tuesday. Just how did the battle of wills play out behind the scenes? CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports Obama felt betrayed and Wright felt sand-bagged. Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church said he has been speaking to both men as the events of the past 24 hours unfolded.
Yes, well, Father Pfleger happens to be ANOTHER one of Obama’s problem associations.  All these guys are just dying to get their names in the news.

The Democrats’ God problem (by Walter Shapiro at Salon)
Obama and Clinton have trumpeted their religious credentials — but is it really more secularism that they need?

More Superdelegates Decide (Political Wire)
Five more Democratic superdelegates have made their choices so far [Wednesday], with Sen. Barack Obama getting three and Sen. Hillary Clinton getting two. By our count — and it’s not always easy to count — Obama snagged 41 since the Ohio and Texas primaries, while Clinton won the support of 10.
Even since losing the Pennsylvania primary, Obama leads the superdelegate battle by picking up 10, while Clinton picked up 6. The latest count from NBC News gives Clinton the overall superdelegate lead over Obama, 268 to 247, with 280 still uncommitted.

McCain introduced at health care event by health care lobbyist. (Think Progress)
At his health care policy event yesterday at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Florida, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was introduced by the institute’s chairman, former Republican senator Connie Mack. But, as Hotline reports, Mack is more than just a chairman. He’s also a registered state lobbyist “advocating for health insurance companies”… According to Hotline’s Jennifer Skalka, “the McCain campaign lobbied On Call feverishly to tank” its reporting on Mack’s role as a lobbyist, calling the story “ludicrous, absurd and ridiculous.”

McCain Dumps Known Convict From Campaign - Wingnut Blogs Heap Praise (by Logan Murphy at Crooks and Liars)
This is not going to sit well with the party elders. According to right wing “blogger,” Debbie Schlussel, Senator John McCain has removed Ali Jawad, a businessman who was convicted of mail and insurance fraud, from the Finance Committee of his Michigan campaign.

Jon Stewart challenges Newt Gingrich on Wright double standard (by SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars)
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on the Daily Show Tuesday and was grilled by Jon Stewart about the media double standard when it comes to left-wing and right-wing religious figures, and the free pass given to McCain.
Click through to watch the video.  I thought Gingrich had a good point—that McCain hadn’t sat in a pew for 20 years listening to hate speech.

Lots more really good stuff at MakeThemAccountable.com.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com