2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

hillary has done a good job of projecting the public confidence of a winner despite the fact that shes clearly fighting uphill here and i think she deserves credit for that

Yea, the 3 am phone call scare ads are the mark of a real winner and are not transparently desperate.

they are to us but to the dem voter? i think she's solidified her competitiveness

Hitchens: I'm amazed that campaigns use slogans instead of substance.

It's unfortunate for Obama that Rez trial started yesterday; that is the real reason Obama has to answer the questions again, annoying as this must be for his campaign. Hillary bringing it up again might make the electorate bored of/resolved about the issue by the time McCain becomes a factor for Candidate Obama, so possible blessing in the long run if he does well tonight.

deej in the last two months, two broadcasters have actually publicly apologized for making insulting personal remarks about hillary! one of them resigned!

helping to contribute to a fake narrative about how persecuted she is

I think no matter what the headlines are tomorrow the strategy of sitting back and taking double-digit losses week after week in order to win a couple of states by narrow margins (states you were ahead in by double digit margins just a few weeks ago) is ultimately a losing one.

Sorry, as Hitchens goes these days that's pretty good, and he's not amazed, he's heaving a sight at the dumbassery of it. Also he gets points for opening w/ the great Albert Brooks lines.

As for "We Are the People We Have Been Waiting For" (in which case, one can only suppose that now that we have arrived, we can all go home)

(btw, elmo, Obama apparently borrowed it from the hopis after Maria Shriver did)

yeah deej, they humiliated themselves in public because they just have this indefinable urge to help out hillary clinton

tracer I think that's an argument against Hill's case--O'Reilly used the term "lynch mob" in reference to Obama and he's still sitting pretty.

yeah no one is humiliating themselves in public smearing obama, no sir

like I said above, Obama's done the same shit, or Obama supporters have--they pushed the narrative that the press is pro-Hillary because after 11 straight losses they still haven't counted her out, and then a lot more "hillary is done" stories started appearing.

how about this pro-hillary column from a pulitzer-prize winning nytimes regular:

Has Hillary truly changed, and grown from her mistakes? Has she learned to be less stubborn and imperious and secretive and vindictive and entitled? Or has she merely learned to mask her off-putting and self-sabotaging qualities better? If elected, would the old Hillary pop up, dragging us back to the dysfunctional Clinton kingdom?

you all maybe be taking this "media narrative" angle a liiiiiiittle too far

should we start posting Krugman columns?

agian?

I don't mind her making the argument, I mind people thinking there's some sort of factual basis behind it. It's a campaign tactic. The press' favoritism is mood swingy.

Eppy show me the Krugman column -- or any media comment anywhere -- that lays into Obama's personality or character (i.e. says things like "imperious" and "secretive" and "dysfunctional") and i'll give that to you

uh "cult of personality"? like accusing him of being Stalin?

C-

i'm genuinely surprised that Hillary being a favorite media punching bag for years is even a controversial notion!

uh "cult of personality"? like accusing him of being Stalin?

That's not a criticism of his personality though - it's a criticism of how some people react to him.

i'm genuinely surprised that Hillary being a favorite media punching bag for years is even a controversial notion!

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, March 4, 2008 11:31 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

im surprised that you would argue this isn't in many ways her own fault!

Eppy show me the Krugman column -- or any media comment anywhere -- that lays into Obama's personality or character (i.e. says things like "imperious" and "secretive" and "dysfunctional") and i'll give that to you

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, March 4, 2008 11:26 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

maybe thats because he's, you know, likeable?

I think the idea that the media's treatment of Clinton had nothing to do with real-world conditions is similarly ludicrous though.

Again, last year the media actually declared her the nominee.

at some point you need to stop and take a look at why candidates are coming off a certain way, and realize that just because media framing is part of it doesn't mean that framing mall art is going to make it into the mona lisa

and immediately savaged her for being "imperious" and acting as if she were "entitled" to the nomination

guys seriously, have you been living on earth for the past 15 years??

I do believe there's something weird a few of our colleagues have. They tend to be Roman Catholics, actually. People like Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd. They've had it in for Bill and Hillary Clinton since Monica Lewinsky. They feel that the Clintons are trying to put one over on us all the time.

-- Jeff Bercovici, March 3, 2008

(that sounds mean and i dont think hillary is the political equivalent of 'mall art' but regardless we're not electing media frames and the idea that everyone's been looking at obama and saying 'what a pretty frame' is absurd) xxp

So like the bad stuff about Obama the media should have been covering is a secret meeting with Canada? For real?

let me get this straight guys. you're saying that when journalists are unfair to hillary clinton -- for instance, micro-analyzing an off-hand comment ("baking cookies"), or inventing scandals that end up being completely untrue (whitewater) -- this is her fault?

I'm saying that the media has been unfair to Hillary, but this does not mean that there are things they should be doing with Obama that they are not doing.

a non-secret meeting which the canadian consulate in chicago (via a right wing canadian politician) asked goolsbee (independent of and without the knowledge of obama's campaign) to clarify obama's position on trade and goolsbee reiterated obama's stances while specifying that obama was talking about what direction he wanted to go, not specific articulations of policy

let me get this straight guys. you're saying that when journalists are unfair to hillary clinton -- for instance, micro-analyzing an off-hand comment ("baking cookies"), or inventing scandals that end up being completely untrue (whitewater) -- this is her fault?

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, March 4, 2008 11:42 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

once again ... obama has not been the victim of this???

to the extent that he has it's completely unfair! you don't see me going around telling people it's his fault!!

i didn't blame hillary for whitewater! you're reading too far into my position here

But NONE of it is her fault?

Obama thinks the Rezko thing is his fault!

I think that what Hillary needs is a firm smack on the bottom and to be sent back to the kitchen, where Barack will be waiting to take her orders on what groceries he needs to pick up from the store after washing the car and trimming the lawn.

/ pffft hahahahahaha

Is McCain the slapper?

inventing scandals that end up being completely untrue (whitewater)

lol

morbs if you've got some evidence, ken starr is desperate to add an appendix to his hardcover smut story

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2211/2279374690_a7a434ff39.jpg

whoa awesome

why did obama steal giulianis mouth

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karen-russell/whitewater-v-rezko-the-_b_83040.html

Investigators have examined the Rose billing records not only to determine the role Hillary Clinton may have played in the Castle Grande transactions, but more significantly to ascertain her role in their mysterious disappearance and subsequent reappearance. If someone had knowledge or possession of the billing records and knew that they were the subject of Federal investigative subpoenas, their failure to divulge or turn over the records could be the basis for criminal charges -- the obstruction of justice. The billing records found in Hillary Clinton's book room were a copy of an original version printed out from the Rose Firm computer in 1992, when the computer file itself was deleted. Webb Hubbell has testified that he recalls reviewing a copy of the billing records in response to press inquiries during the 1992 Presidential campaign. Hubbell says that he then passed the records on to Vince Foster who was, as far as Hubbell knows, the last person to have the records. Investigators believe the book room copy was indeed Vince Foster's. The copy contains notations, in red ink, that are Vince Foster's handwriting. These notations appear to be directed toward Hillary Clinton, including questions about some of the individual billings. Investigators believe this suggests that, at some point, this copy was passed from Vince Foster to Hillary Clinton for her review. In addition, investigators had the FBI conduct fingerprint analysis of the billing records. Of significance, the prints of Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton were found. The Senate Whitewater Committee concluded that Hillary Clinton was the person most likely to have put the billing records in her book room, or know how they got there. The Independent Counsel continues to investigate Ms. Clinton's involvement in handling the records. For her part, Hillary Clinton has said that she has no idea how the billing records came to be in her book room.

I agree that the anti-Clinton media bias doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not part of a vast conspiracy - it has antecedents in various "objective" realities:

- Lingering anti-Bill resentment for various embarrassing scandals (Lewinsky, Marc Rich, etc) from his time in office.
- The Clintons have been in politics much longer than Obama has, and naturally have accrued more brushes with ethical grey-areas. Almost any politician who's been around that long has.
- There is a strong dislike of Bill & Hillary among a certain, not inconsequential segment of the population. Media personalities - the talking heads that populate CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc - need audience love and affection to survive. One way to get it is by sharing and catering to the prejudices of the audience. In this light, bashing Hillary is a relatively low-risk, high-return strategy.

well that sounds like $60m well spent

xpost