All Posts Tagged With: "Bill Clinton"

I seem to recall an old saying that went something like “You leave the dance with the one that brung ya.”

This came to my mind after listening to the recent reports about how McCain and Obama are flip flopping on a variety of critical issues. Both candidates now seem to be moving towards the center in their need to acquire the largest voting base possible. But as so often happens, this is angering the far right and left supporters who elected these candidates in the first place. And any movement to the center can only hurt Obama more than it hurts McCain.

The far right has always been wary of McCain’s more centric outlook, as well they should be. He paid lip service to the basic tenants of the Christian right during the primary but now that he is the candidate he is moving back to the center again. No one is really surprised at this change, including the far right candidates. There is discussion of making this an issue during the convention but it is doubtful if much will happen. As long as McCain promises to stay the course in Iraq, continue to support the Second Amendment and be pro-life then most Republicans will continue to support him.

On the other hand, Obama cannot afford to anger the far left that elected him over Hillary this spring. Yet he did just that when he tried to sneak in during the start of the long weekend an idea of taking more time on bringing the troops home. But it backfired on him and Obama now has to spend time trying to explain that he didn’t really mean that. It is on this promise, of bringing home the troops immediately, that most differentiated Barack from Hillary and his supporters will not give him any leeway on this issue.

Yet if Barack stays true to his far left supporters then he won’t be elected. It is as simple as that. We have seen this happen time after time in the Democratic Party. Candidates who promote far left issues find themselves out of sync with the rest of the nation. Bill Clinton, the only Democratic candidate in the past 25 years to be elected, ran on a centrist theme from the start and therefore was not tied to far left extremist ideas. All the other recent Democratic candidates relied on far left supporters to win the primary and found they had very little room to move towards the center. And so they lost.

Barack Obama’s first effort to move slightly towards the center, even during a four day weekend when no one is supposed to be paying any attention, did become an issue and was met with resistance from his supporters. It will be interesting to watch over the next four months if Obama can become more centrist in order to appeal to a bigger voter block. Or perhaps I should rephrase it to read; if Obama’s supporters will allow him to move to the right from their far left stance.

Can he appeal to more centrist voters or is he stuck with the far left ones that he brung to this dance?

The Clinton’s should probably swap memos more often. Bill supports one thing, Hillary supports another. Bill says one thing, Hillary says another. Of course, we could also talk about the rest of her entourage that supposedly speak for her, but generally seem to say the opposite of what she’s declaring.

This past weekend, we had the gaffe by her Chief Campaign Strategist, Mark Penn, who went to Columbia, wearing his lobbyist hat to broker a deal with the Colombians, that, apparently, Hillary is against. Well, it turns out that Bill was all for it.

Now, it appears that Bill and Hillary are at odds about whether or not folks should boycott the Olympics in China. Hillary just came out declaring that President Bush should not go, while last summer, Bill talked Steven Spielberg out of boycotting the Olympics as their “Overseas Artistic Director”.

It seems that Hillary, the presidential candidate, should have the last word on what comes out of her campaign, but, with people who claim to speak for her, coming out and contradicting what she says, one has to wonder if her presidency will be just as incoherent.

Nothing irks me more than when my husband speaks “for me” and I have to contradict him and essentially embarrass him and presumably, myself because we aren’t of one mind on an issue or an idea. This usually happens in a business context and it’s confusing to my customers to have these contradictions floating around so we had to come to an understanding. Only I speak for my business, so hubby has to be sure that whatever he says has been green-lighted (or red-lighted, as the case may be) in prior conversations or he’s supposed to say, “I’ll have to get back to you on that one” or “Call Dizzy, she would know more about that than I do”.

Shouldn’t presidential candidate Clinton be having that same conversation with her campaign staff?

I realize that Mark Penn wears many hats and Bill, well, he’s Bill…but, during this most tumultuous of primary races in the Democratic arena, you would think that with the public and the media, all eyes and ears being on “their” campaign, that maybe, just maybe, they all could speak with one voice and maybe sound more presidential.

I hate to think what would transpire if that 3AM phone call ever came through.

crossposted: I’m Jus’ A Lil’ Dizzy