All Posts Tagged With: "hillary"

A Friday Newsmax article reports Former President Clinton complimented Sarah Palin’s political skills Thursday, but wouldn’t be drawn on whether his wife Hillary could run for the White House in 2012.

Clinton said he didn’t agree with Republican vice presidential pick Palin on politics, but warned fellow Democrats not to underestimate her calling her “…an instinctively effective candidate and with a compelling story.”

“I get why she’s done so well,” Clinton said. “It’s a mistake to underestimate her. She’s got good intuitive skills. They’re significant.”

Clinton said he thought McCain, a Vietnam War hero and veteran lawmaker, was a “great man” and that the Nov. 4 election would be close, but he predicted Democratic Sen. Barack Obama would emerge the winner.

After all is said and done I think Biden was a one-sided selection. If you have had any news on then you’ve heard how he will shore up Obama’s lack of foreign experience and it could be said help Obama’s lack of experience in total. Biden is also supposed to be a good attack dog which will allow Obama to stand above that sort of thing. Overall, he will help Obama nationally with the independent voters.

However, I am guessing that the core Democrats involved in this race are not happy. To be honest, the Clinton supporters would not be happy with anyone other than Hillary. I think they might have been more understanding if Obama had picked some outsider. Instead they go with someone who is old school, which she is, too. Why go for someone with a good resume when you could have someone with a great resume? And already PUMA is arguing that Biden had a whopping 9,500 votes during the primary vs. Hillary’s 18 million. (I know it isn’t a fair comparison as Biden dropped out early but who ever said politics is fair?)

But it is the core Obama people who are also rumbling a little bit this morning. Obama’s entire campaign is based on change. But his first important decision to select his running mate and he completely turns his back on the idea of change. Instead of an outsider he went with Biden who is yet another old white guy who has been in DC since Watergate. Or as I heard one African American reporter tell it - she wasn’t even born when Biden was first elected.

I would also think that Obama’s advisors aren’t that pleased either. There are two primary jobs for a VP candidate. The obvious one is to step in as President in case the President is unable to perform his job. The other purpose of a VP is to bring in votes that the President elect may not have been able to capture himself. I am not sure how much Biden will help Obama in this. In the past VP candidates have come from large electoral states or from swing states or from geographical areas that normally go for his opponent.

As everyone now knows - Biden is from Delaware which has a whopping 3 electoral votes. Nor is Delaware a key transitional state. Some analysts are saying that Biden may not readily have a large group of people that will now be for Obama. But he might have large corporations and big bucks behind him. And every candidate always could use more money.

Later today Obama and Biden will officially announce this in Springfield Ill. (And didn’t Obama’s idea of texting his supporters first backfire. But more on that another time.) Anyway, back to the picture of the two of them standing together, most likely with raised hands held together as you always see it. And how will that look? How will America react to this picture of a youngish good looking black man holding hands with an old grey haired white man? In spite of what the picture might indicate, is America ready for an African American President?

Now that the Olympics are wrapping up tomorrow, let the real games begin!

The fatality of egocentricity and narcissism

If you like inside www.theatlantic.com/a/green-final-pitch-6-3-08.mhtml” target=”_blank”>political baseball, check out the internal memoranda circulated by Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff as her campaign unfolded and then imploded.

Atlantic Monthly’s Josh Green has published his analysis entitled “The Front Runner’s Fall” at Josh enumerates how Hillary’s campaign was unprepared for a lengthy fight; had an insufficient delegate operation; squandered vast sums of money; and the candidate herself evinced a “paralyzing schizophrenia.” Her staff feuded and bickered, while her husband distracted.

Green describes “paranoid dysfunction breeds the impulse to hoard” and “anger and toxic obsessions overwhelmed even the most reserved Beltway wise men.” In sum her’s was a back biting bunch better at writing the play book that executing it. Major decisions, he contends, would be put off for weeks until suddenly she would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire.

“In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her . What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency,”Green says.

Working with more than 400 candidates, ballot propositions and initiatives I have seen reams of such things, and while it can now be little more that pick the scab off of a festering sore it shows the fatality of egocentricity and narcissism

Edwards “Anti-Poverty PAC” and finance Chair Paid $114,000 and $15,000 or so a month to mother of Edwards alleged bastard daughter. Andrew Young and wife move into her exclusive Santa Barbara home.

Records indicate that an Edwards PAC, the One American Committee, which was set up to fight poverty, spent $114,000 for the production of several short Web-based videos. The videos were produced in 2006 by Rielle Hunter; the same woman with whom Edwards has belatedly admitted committing adultery.

A key question is, Why would Edwards direct his “anti-poverty” PAC to pay an arguably inflated price to a relatively inexperienced individual for three third rate videos?

Additionally, according to Fox News, Fred Baron, a Dallas lawyer and former campaign finance chairman for Edwards, gave money in the $15,000-a-month range to Hunter.

In addition to denying the adulterous sexual affair, the later night visit to Hunter and her bastard daughter at the Beverly Hilton Hotel Edwards is doing his best Sergeant Schultz routine claiming he had no knowledge of Baron’s payments and that he learned about the cash given to Hunter from the press. Hunter now lives in a rented multimillion dollar home in a gated section of Montecito, an exclusive area near Santa Barbara, Calif.

In a bizarre twist Andrew Young (a top Edwards aide who claimed to be the father of Hunter’s child) and his wife are reportedly roommates of Hunter at the Montecito home.

Hunter and business partner Mimi Hockman apparently set up Midline Groove Productions in 2006 to produce the Edwards Web videos. Its website has disappeared but the Edwards videos have resurfaced via an anonymous posting on YouTube.

Hillary Clinton supporters are now claiming it was Edwards who cost her the Democrat nomination, and had he emerged as the party nominee to have this scandal surface he could have eviscerated the Democratic Party. It is a bitter irony that Bill Clinton’s impeachment was for perjury over his sexual tryst with White House fellatrix Monica Lewinsky.

Hillary Clinton’s determination to remain in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination MAY REVOLVE AROUND the revelation of a shocking RACIST recording by rival Barack Obama’s wife Michelle. According to longtime conservative pundit ROGER STONE Obama’s staff and Republicans are in a race to get the recording too.

Mark Penn, Clinton’s former chief campaign strategist, has told sources that the bombshell “could come this week.”

It is about time for the quadrennial appearance of the latter-day hysterics to reemerge to rant about ending the Electoral College in favor of an array of schemes most often in the name of “fairness” or “modernity” but almost always without even the most feeble notion of its what or why. The story involves the Founders considering several approaches that contrary to popular myth and argument never included taking the selection of a President from the hands of the great unwashed masses ala “Super Delegates” as some assert. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth.

Several ways of electing President were proposed including: having Congress do it (that was rejected for fear of corruption, political pandering, and foreign interference through Congress and risking upsetting the balance-of-power among the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches.); others wanted state legislatures to do it and that was rejected for some of the same reasons; a direct vote was rejected from a fear “favorite sons” would dominate, and big states would simply overpower the smaller, and finally there was the Committee of Eleven that emerged in the Constitutional Convention proposing an indirect election of the President through a College of Electors.

That indirect election can be likened to the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals selecting the Pope. The original idea was for the most knowledgeable and informed individuals from each State to select the President based solely on merit and without regard to State of origin or political party. That was a permutation of the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their position, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. Proponents like it because after all it worked OK for over a thousand years.

In its original shape the Electoral College States were the Centurial Assembly assigned one elector per Senator (always two regardless of the state’s size) and one per member of the House of Representatives and that was parceled out based on population determined in the decennial census. By the way that was based on a compromise achieved among big and smaller states of how to apportion Congress. Each state could figure out how to select electors and that made states happy because they didn’t want the Federal government interfering in their business.

Congressmen and federal employees were specifically forbidden from being electors and electors were required to meet in their own states and not together. They had to vote for two one who could not be from their state. Those votes were sealed and send to the President of the Senate who open and read the totals out loud and whoever got a majority plus one was the President and the next highest became Vice President. If nobody got a majority the House of Representatives voted on the top five candidates with each state’s delegation getting only one vote. If that failed the Senate voted to break a tie among the top two again with the second place becoming vice President.

It worked for four elections and until political parties formed – something the founders hope to avoid. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr (both Democratic-Republicans) took 36 votes in Congress to pick Jefferson President, and a lot of backroom horse trading and bad blood. The 12^th Amendment was hastily passed in 1804 requiring each elector cast one vote for President and one for Vice President. There have been myriad statutory changes since. But, it was the excesses, chaos, and paralysis of direct democracy during the French Revolution that solidified the Electoral College system as a workable compromise to see the nation deteriorate into such chaos.

It is imperfect

• 1824: John Quincy Adams received more than 38,000 fewer votes than Andrew Jackson, but neither candidate won a majority of the Electoral College. Adams was awarded the presidency when the election was thrown to the House of Representatives.
• 1876: Nearly unanimous support from small states gave Rutherford B. Hayes a one-vote margin in the Electoral College, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden by 264,000 votes. Hayes carried five out of the six smallest states (excluding Delaware).
• 1888: Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote by 95,713 votes to Grover Cleveland, but won the electoral vote by 65.
• 2000: Al Gore had over half a million votes more than George W. Bush, with 50,992,335 votes to Bush’s 50,455,156. But after recount controversy in Florida and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Bush was awarded the state by 537 popular votes. Like most states, Florida has a “winner takes all” rule. This means that the candidate who wins the state by popular vote also gets all of the state’s electoral votes. Bush became president with 271 electoral votes.

The Electoral College is therefore a barrier, or a weighed, voting system that is designed to give more power to the states with more votes, but allows for small states to swing an election thereby ensuring the absolute fairness for all Americans the Founders craved and quested to achieve. It is interesting that that this flies in the face of the so-called landed class and gave rise to the aphorism “you can’t vote by acre.”

Democrats continue to lead in states with 200 Electoral Votes while the GOP has the advantage in states with 189. States with 111 Votes are “leaners,” and states with 38 Votes are Toss-Ups. When “leaners” are added, the Democrats lead 260 to 240 A total of 270 electoral votes are needed to win the White House. Twelve states with 149 Electoral Votes are either a pure Toss-Up or just slightly leaning to one party or the other. These are likely to be the early battleground states of Election 2008: Florida (27), Pennsylvania (21), Ohio (20), Michigan (17), Virginia (13), Missouri (11), Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (7), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), and New Hampshire (4). To see state-by-state results (Click here) .

Everywhere on the radio, TV and internet people are saying that it is time for Hillary to step aside. For once I am in agreement with Hillary and feel she should stay in the race until the convention. I don’t say this because I think she can win, she can’t. Not unless something so outside of the pale is found out about Obama that it forces him to stand aside and I definitely don’t see that happening. I also don’t think Clinton is staying in the hopes that Obama will pick her as his VP. That isn’t going to happen either.

So why should she continue to stay in the Presidential Race? If she should get out now it would look like she is admitting failure. That Obama is the winner and has beaten her. Admitting defeat or even admit the softer sounding idea of being pushed out is not something either of the Clintons can easily say. Not when she can walk out of this looking like a winner, even though Obama becomes the Democratic candidate for president.

Imagine this…. It is the convention and Clinton stands before all of the delegates, party big wigs and the whole nation via the TV coverage she would be sure to capture. Then Hillary delivers the speech of her life in which she graciously “gives” Obama all of her committed delegates. She then asks all who voted for her to help out Obama for the sake of party unity. Now instead of looking like a loser as she would if she dropped out before the convention she instead appears to be a “kingmaker”. She turns defeat into victory by giving the nation the illusion that Obama becomes the nominee only because of Hillary and her delegates.

If she did this it would totally belittle Obama’s wins. She would effectively have him cornered where he would have to now thank Hillary even though he and most of the world knows that he would have been the candidate even without her help. And if he tries to say as much or complain he would now be the one accused of tearing the party apart and even of being rude to Clinton. Plus if Hillary’s supporters who are angry at Obama end up voting for McCain this would not be Hillary’s fault for she could point to this speech and say she told them to go with Obama. It would then be Obama’s problem for not being able to keep them….

I have no idea if Hillary has envisioned this kind of end but I wouldn’t be surprised if the thought has crossed her mind. But I just don’t know if she can withstand the growing pressure from all sides to step down now. I am not fond of any of the Clintons but a part of me is rooting for her to hang in there and then go out like a winner at the convention.

Last minute deciders gave Hillary Clinton a big 55-45% win in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Primary than looked possible a week ago. But it still leaves her short of enough delegates to overtake Barack Obama. It does raise and will be argued that Obama can not defeat McCain because of his weakness in key states. He must win in Indiana – where Clinton is gaining momentum and North Carolina with its big black voter populations and where is has a significant lead.

The biggest arguments for Hillary may be e that if Obama can’t knock her out now how can he prevail over McCain? Obama’s biggest problem is that with the 200,000 popular vote gain in Pennsylvania and if Florida and Michigan are counted she now leads him in the popular vote. Pennsylvania black vote 90% for Obama while women and gun-totting God nuts sided with Hillary.

Obama raised $40 million in March compared to Clinton’s $20 million and although he outspent her two to one in Pennsylvania he could not overtake her. Obama brags about having 1.3 million contributors shelling out an average of $94 on their credit cards at a projected 22.5% annual interest rate. Nevertheless Obama has $40 in the bank and Hillary $9 million but with $10 million in unpaid debts.

Pinocchiobama – in 1996, Barack Obama’s campaign answered a questionnaire saying he favored bans on manufacturing and selling of guns, opposed parental notification of abortions for minors, and opposed the death penalty. When asked about that, Obama threw his campaign staff under the bus, claiming the staff had sent in the questionnaire. He issued a blanket denial that he had ever held those positions. Except that is not true. As Human Events RedState noted, a review of the actual document shows “that [Obama] reviewed the answers closely revising some of the answers in his own handwriting.” Obama claims to be the only one willing to re-engage the Taliban. He faults the Bush Administration for depleting the number of military personnel in Afghanistan and claims we need to increase the number of ground forces to 92,000 troops, something Obama says the Bush administration is opposed to. Funny how Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered the exact same policy prescription and number of troops back in 2007. Obama said, “John McCain got upset today apparently because I had repeated exactly what he said, which is that we might be there [Iraq] for 100 years if he had his way.” Only, that is another lie. As RedState documented, the Washington Post’s FactCheck, the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s nonpartisan FactCheck.org, and the Columbia Journalism Review all report Obama’s words were grossly misleading. The Annenberg Public Policy Center called Obama’s statement a “serious distortion to the point of rank falsehood.” In Pennsylvania, Obama is running a television ad saying, “I’m Barack Obama. I don’t take money from oil companies or Washingtonlobbyists, and I won’t let them block change anymore.” No federal candidate can accept money from a corporation – no one. But, Obama has cashed $213,000.00 from oil company employees.

CH: Mrs Clinton, before we begin, let me say how impressed I am of your political career ever since you plugged into politics as a young Republican from Illinois.

HRC: That is kind of you to say, and thanks for pointing out that while I did start out on the dark side, I very early on discovered a better way, and the voters can benefit from my good judgment. Speaking of good judgment did your parents name you Chief Hypocrite?