Hillary’s Voice

Last week, economist Paul Krugman made it very clear that he finds John McCain’s gas tax holiday proposal potentially harmful. Krugman also made very clear that he doesn’t like Hillary Clinton’s counter-proposal but considers it harmless.

That said, Krugman reportedly heard about (but has not seen) a negative Obama ad that falsely uses Krugman’s criticism of McCain as an attack against Hillary. At his blog, Krugman made it very clear that he would be displeased if Obama’s ad did this:

Most Americans who watch Oprah know of Dr. Maya Angelou as Oprah’s mentor, but Dr. Angelou earned acclaim years ago through her civil-rights leadership, poems and books. Dr. Angelou is a national treasure, as Bill Clinton acknowledged when he invited her to recite a poem during his 1993 inauguration.
While some Obama supporters — e.g., Rep. James Clyburn — are busy trying once again to “play the race card” in some strange hope of benefiting Obama, Dr. Maya Angelou (who turned 80 last month) has been busy positively campaigning for Hillary Clinton.

Why? Instead of paraphrasing a brilliant word smith, I’ll give it to you in Dr. Angelou’s own words:

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.

Wise people throughout the centuries have observed that what we focus on (positive or negative) becomes energized.

That said, since late January, more of my campaign-related blog posts have been Obama-negative than Hillary-positive. There’s a natural reason for that: Obama has been stealthily negative since Iowa and his campaign has made many false statements.

I will continue to point out when the Obama campaign does such things, because many media are refusing to do that basic part of their job.

To balance things out and help energize Hillary in a positive way, I’ve decided to also post AT LEAST ONE positive piece about Hillary every day.

Please join my (now small) effort for Hillary’s benefit.

It’s easy to find Hillary-positives: she has a long history of them, which I touched on in a post (with links) here.

She also has a lot of present-day positives, listed at Hillary’s site here.

Today, I did a simple post about the Maya Angelou piece — THANKS to Hillary’s Voice group for pointing it out!

At the bottom of my Angelou post are links to few other positive pieces that have links to outside sources.

Six Democratic super-delegates from North Carolina plan to endorse Barack Obama before that state’s primary. They’re afraid that prolonged contentious campaigning will reduce the yet-unnamed Dem nominee’s chances against McCain.

Translation: they want Hillary to drop out sooner.

Super-delegates’ attempts to prematurely give Obama the nomination would only further ossify the resentment many Hillary supporters already feel toward Obama and the Democratic Party.

Below, I explain why throwing the race to Obama now might make John McCain ecstatic in November — and would likely create a new wave of Independents.

Barack Obama reportedly said this at a speech yesterday:

“’My attitude is that Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants,’ Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said at a news conference in a high school gymnasium here. ‘Her name is on the ballot. She is a fierce and formidable opponent, and she obviously believes she would make the best nominee and the best president.’” (New York Times)

Contrast that statement to the strongly implied message his campaign sent out in a March 5th email, signed by Obama Campaign manager David Plouffe:

Since the Reverend Wright situation recently left splatter marks on Barack Obama, we’ve heard a lot from Obama’s campaign about how Hillary Clinton embellished the danger of her trip to Bosnia back in 1996, among other things.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on some of Obama’s own embellishments: i.e., his falsely taking credit for other U.S. senators’ legislative work. A few weeks ago, the Obama campaign sent a fund-raising email that 1) said that Hillary is attacking Obama’s supporters — a statement that’s as divisive as it is factually questionable; and 2) accused Hillary of being divisive.

Last night, I found a Time Magazine blog post called “Just Embellished Words: Senator Obama’s Record of Exaggerations & Misstatements.”

Between the media bias and some of the Obama campaign’s tactics, I’ve often found myself countering others’ statements — which often involves “negatives.” This is odd, because I’m far more pro-Hillary than I am anti-Barack.

That said, I thought I’d share some of the reasons that I like and support Hillary.

Since the 2004 Democratic convention, Barack Obama has been known for giving carefully crafted speeches. Yesterday, he gave another one.

One of the speech’s strong points was a spotlighting of modern-day racial injustices. Among the troubling aspects were a few seeming inconsistencies.

Between 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina (with help from Mr. Rove and Mr. Limbaugh), George Bush managed to get a few million Americans riled up whenever other people questioned their president — as though the questioners were calling Bush fans’ mamas “ugly.”

Brilliant strategy: getting people emotionally invested to the point that they took personally any political opposition to a guy most of them weren’t even friends with.

Six days ago, I received an email evincing that Barack Obama’s campaign staffers are using a similar tactic. In part, the email reads: