Hillary’s Voice

Clinton wields powerful e-mail list (Politico)
The survival of Clinton’s online operation highlights her induction into a small but growing new club of presidential losers[*] who have used the Internet to maintain some of their national profile and power. The defeated candidates use e-mail, websites and social networks to maintain contact with their supporters through legacy online campaigns that keep their coffers full, their bases intact and their political futures viable. “This is a medium that allows candidates — whether they’re successful or not — to maintain direct contact with their supporters,” said Daou, who said Clinton’s e-mail list is in the “seven figures,” though he wouldn’t give a more specific number.
*She didn’t lose.  She was shoved aside.  I wish she would use her email list more, and use it on issues.

The Honeymoon is Over (by riverdaughter at The Confluence)

[A]ll those personality quirks and shortcomings that we glossed over during the orgasms of infatuation are now clearly in evidence now that the afterglow is wearing off.  It looks like he is the “turns over and goes to sleep kind” who probably wouldn’t retrun calls if he were single.  But now that the Democratic party has married him, they are in a bit of a bind.  He swept them off their feet and it is going to feel really awkward to want to divorce him… What about an annulment?  Yeah, maybe we could scotch the whole deal in Denver.  No hard feelings, Barack, but we were both drunk in Vegas and we should just go our own ways.  Heidi Li has been gazing at the legal tea leaves and it looks like Obama is trying to force Clinton into some kind of prenup where she agrees to give up all possibility of nominating speeches and roll call votes in Denver in exchange for help paying off her campaign debts.  We can’t let this happen, guys.
Click through for information on what you can do to stop them from erasing Hillary from the history books.  Also, campskunk has more actions you can take at Alegre’s Corner.

Radio Left

If you care about democracy: Help Resurrect Radioleft Before the Democratic Convention (by Linda Starr)
Do you feel that corporate businesses have bought and paid for the presidential presumptive nominees on both sides of the aisle? Do you feel mainstream media has done it’s job in properly covering the primaries or vetting the candidates we ended up with thus far?  Are you disgusted by the Democratic Party manipulating the rules to force Obama on us?  Do you feel robbed of your votes for Senator Clinton?… Geoff Staples and I have been talking about resurrecting Radioleft.com.
But Linda and Geoff need your help.  Click through for details.

But also, please don’t forget to help Hillary retire her debt.  They may be limiting the amount of time they’ll allow her to campaign for that.  As Riverdaughter says, “Remember, it only takes 500,000 of us at $20.08 a head to retire Hillary’s outstanding campaign debt to her vendors.”  Be sure to use this link, so that the money will go to retire the debt.

Some Clinton supporters still not embracing Obama, poll says (Political Ticker, CNN)
According to a new survey from CNN and the Opinion Research Corp., the number of Clinton supporters who say they plan to vote for Obama has dropped from 60 percent to 54 percent, while the number who of them say they would stay home has risen from 22 percent to 32 percent.

Paid Pundits Pervert Puma Polls (by John: south of Melrose at Liberal Rapture)
The ongoing dip in Obama’s PUMA numbers is not about Hillary. It’s about Obama… The closer we look at Obama the less palatable he is. Conversely, and speaking for myself only, the closer I look at McCain the less he seems to be the big GOP Monster that ninnies … make him out to be. The only thing I know for sure about my vote is who is NOT getting it. The past month has shown us that Obama is not a healer. (All he had to do was acknowledge and apologize for the blatant and obvious sexism. Imagine the difference that would have made in early June.) He is less trustworthy now than he was even 2 weeks ago. He doesn’t not even agree with himself half the time. Why would anyone trust him more now - after no less than 6 major flip flops: Jerusalem, FISA, campaign finance, Iraq, gun control, abortion rights for the mentally ill.

PUMA’s Have Awakened (a very powerful video by PrincesseJen)

Wikimedia Commons

The founders’ rights stuff (by Rosa Brooks, Los Angeles Times)
This Fourth of July, celebrate by rereading the Declaration of Independence, created by more or less the same crowd who brought us the Constitution, 11 years and one war later. Remember it? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Wild stuff! To the founders, “all men” have “unalienable rights” — not just U.S. citizens in the continental United States. (If the founding fathers were around today, Rush Limbaugh and Rudy Giuliani would pillory them as limp-wristed, latte-drinking, soft-on-terror liberals.)…

[T]he people who founded this nation risked war, prison and death for the sake of unalienable human rights. Their values guided us through good times and bad, through the Civil War, two world wars and the Cold War. But today, some Americans seem happy to discard those same precious values in the name of “security.” Sometimes I wonder: If the founders could have foreseen this, would they have bothered to fight the Revolutionary War?

Judge Rejects Bush’s View on Wiretaps (New York Times)
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the “exclusive” means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government’s claim that the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law… Judge [Vaughn R.] Walker’s voice carries extra weight because all the lawsuits involving telephone companies that took part in the N.S.A. program have been consolidated and are being heard in his court… The ruling comes as the Senate is overhauling the foreign intelligence law. [Emphasis added.] The measure would reaffirm FISA as the exclusive means for the president to order wiretaps through court warrants, but it would also provide legal immunity to phone companies involved in the eavesdropping program. A vote could come Tuesday.

Obama’s Vote for Warrantless Wiretapping (by donpedro at Economists for Obama)
Obama’s failure to oppose the warrantless wiretapping bill … has given me some pause and made me think perhaps I should send my political contributions elsewhere. The immunity for lawbreaking telecoms is one of the events of the Bush years that has most angered me. The current FISA is perfectly capable of dealing with surveillance, and empowering the president to monitor my phone calls and e-mails is plainly a violation of the 4th Amendment… Why, after voting against the Protect [America] Act and saying he would support any filibuster of immunity for lawbreaking telecoms, is Obama now saying he will vote for the new law? I don’t understand.

Sweetie Gets Paid (by Pat Racimora at No Quarter)

Democrats and Unity Drive the Campaign Narrative: June 23 - 29, 2008 (Project for Excellence in Journalism)
Barack Obama’s efforts to heal the wounds of the primary battle and to reconcile with the Clintons were the major story lines in last week’s coverage of the Presidential campaign.

No Where Else to Go (by Anglachel)
The split of the Democratic electorate … has been followed by growing resistance to the designated nominee. This is not something I have seen before on the Democratic side… Symptomatic of the deep problem of the party as a whole is the turn by the leadership towards privatization of social risk. Health insurance is not a mandate, and thus a right, but a choice to be exercised if desired. This ignores power, especially the power of the state to defend the citizen against the encroachment of moneyed interests. The well-off [Stevensonian elite] are no longer interested in defending the material needs of those who are not a part of Whole Foods Nation, and they hide their abandonment under the guise of rejecting racism. If the problem is the state of your soul and not the condition of your medical care, then you must heal yourself, and they can smugly pat themselves on the back for having defended the right moral stance.

The message of economic justice still resonates with the majority of Democrats, as shown by Hillary’s intense support, but that message is not accepted as true. When we talk about it, we’re met by screams of “Racist! Racist!” and sneers that we have nowhere else to go. How can Obama’s content-free message make contact with the real world? There is nothing to attach his rhetoric to, no central organizing principle. He talks about the “smallness of our politics,” so what is it precisely that is to be enlarged? He has always backed away from the hard choice of throwing the power of the state behind the cause of social justice. At every point, Obama backs away from requiring these efforts, while Hillary embraced them. The Stevensonians have forced their preferred candidate on the party on their own terms, paying no mind to where they stand and what they want to accomplish. They may be centrists, but they no longer have a center to hold.

For Clinton Democrats, there is nowhere else to go with Obama because there was never anything there to begin with.

DNC protests will be behind fence (Denver Post)
The fence around the public demonstration zone outside the Democratic National Convention will be chicken wire or chain link, authorities revealed in U.S. District Court [Monday]… But the American Civil Liberties Union and several advocacy groups have filed an amended complaint to their lawsuit against the U.S. Secret Service and the city and county of Denver that says protestors and demonstrators may have their First Amendment rights violated by security restrictions.

From Steve Bradenton in 2004

Attacking” McCain’s Military Record (by Zachary Roth, Columbia Journalism Review)
The McCain camp, sensing an opportunity, complained that Clark had “attacked John McCain’s military service record.” Of course, Clark had done nothing of the kind. He had questioned the relevance of McCain’s combat experience as a qualification to be president of the United States. This is a distinction that you’d expect any reasonably intelligent nine-year old to be able to grasp. But many in the press have been unable to.