2008 Primaries Thread 2: THE QUICKENING

that describes pretty much anyone

i hear she eats lots of hot peppers

hey you guys i've got a pretty filthy joke about two old ladies digging potatos, do you want to hear it?

who knew she too was a pepperpot all along

only if you make one of them hillary

make Madeleine Albright the other

so hillary's digging potatos with madeleine albright and she lifts one up in her hand, admires it and says "you know, this one reminds me of my bill's balls!" madeleine albright goes "they're that big??" and hillary sort of smiles and goes "no, they're that dirty though"

screaming pimp lobster served with potato gonad au gratin

So I'm kinda grumpy that the media so eagerly bought the Clinton line of "the superdelegates are up for grabs!" in the past, since without that being the fixed frame no WAY would Wolfson have been able to get away with basically conceding the election 2 weeks before the TX primary. I guess it was just a side-effect of the horse-race focus, but ugh. I hope they at least start calling him Hillary's Katherine Harris.

yah ive said this before but the fact that news organizations are including super delegates in their count is just unconscionable. they can change their minds anytime - no one has any super delegates.

yea this is gonna get really ugly with the superdelegate race

I guess Obama faced a lose-lose choice once the Clinton camp put the superdelegates thing into play--either go after the delegates too, which concedes the point, don't go after them and decry Clinton's tactics, which means they could've ended up without any superdelegates, or decry while still going after them, which would've looked bad.

On the bright side, the media's also pushing the "Obama has the momentum" frame pretty hard, so maybe that will counteract it and the superdelegates will do what they're supposed to do.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/us/politics/14senators.htm

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure more than $340 million worth of home-state projects in last year's spending bills, placing her among the top 10 Senate recipients of what are commonly known as earmarks, according to a new study by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.

Working with her New York colleagues in nearly every case, Clinton supported almost four times as much spending on earmarked projects as her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), whose $91 million total placed him in the bottom quarter of senators who seek earmarks, the study showed.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the likely GOP presidential nominee, was one of five senators to reject earmarks entirely, part of his long-standing view that such measures prompt needless spending.

Has anybody in the Clinton camp said what you'd do with all the "undeclared" delegates from Michigan, if they were seated?

xpost see, this is why I want Hillary to stay my Senator...

oops -- that's the wrong link. here's the right one:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303635.html

wow senators getting federal money for their state to spend on people, how corrupt!

the nytimes link has these great tidbits:

Examples of (Clinton and McCain's) mutual respect typically include a tale of holding a vodka-drinking contest in Estonia.

and this:

And no, (Obama's advisors) said, do not expect Mr. Obama to dust off the lyrics to a song he performed on March 11, 2006, when he appeared as a keynote speaker at the Gridiron Dinner in Washington. His words were written to the tune of “If I Only Had a Brain.”

“When a wide-eyed young idealist, confronts a seasoned realist, there’s bound to be some strain,” Mr. Obama sang perfectly on pitch. “With the game barely started, I’d be feeling less downhearted, if I only had McCain.”

ny still sends way more out than it gets back

“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn't won any of the significant states -- outside of Illinois?” Chief Strategist Mark Penn said. “That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”

guh, the reek of desperation is so fucking pungent it's making me upchuck a little

i know. it's so shortsighted, too. telling all the other states that they're not significant? it can't play well for HRC later if she happens to be the nom.

arrghh it just bothers me a lot, starting from the same "we only need the hardcore blue states + florida-or-something" mentality that won't win a general election

http://www.observer.com/files/imagecache/article/files/Horowitz-MarkPenn1V.jpg
your states sorry but they are insignificant

do you guys think voters are actually so dumb that they don't realize mark penn's talking about electoral strategy rather than any deeper significance?? (if they care at all what someone's campaign strategist said, that is)

wow senators getting federal money for their state to spend on people, how corrupt!

-- Tracer Hand

McCain opposes all earmarks, Obama is ambivalent (probably meaning he won't work to oppose), and HRC is super-gung ho about them. When we complain about Hillary's fondness for earmarks, we're not accusing her of corruption, but of being a machine politician, which she more-or-less is.

Her husband's administration supported NAFTA, and she's never publically opposed it; her voting record is distressingly hawkish and supportive of Bush's war efforts; she's presented no meaningful opposition to the Patriot Act or Bush's expansion of executive power; and (as we speak) she sat silent through the votes that might deny immunity to the companies that participated in Bush's domestic wiretapping program.

While I support Hillary on a range of domestic social issues, I don't see her providing any leadership or vision WRT the international, economic, and non-social domestic policy issues that matter to me. At the outset of the Bush admin, I would have placed more emphasis on the domestic stuff, giving her the edge, but that's no longer the case. I'm currently much more concerned with the issues she's weak on.

Plus, the "polarizing" bit really does matter. It's not her fault that so many people hate her, that Republicans loathe her, but they do. I won't waste my time fighting to nominate someone who will repel a big chunk of potential supporters while rallying the opposition. Given the alternative (Obama), it would be incredibly foolish to nominate her to run against McCain.

i mean i carry no torch for mark penn but there's this real "situation room" kind of vibe that creeps me out when people start seizing on little tidbits, snippets of quotes, and wonder how the rubes who are less sophisticated than "us" will react

contenderizer those are some good points but i disagree with you about a hillary/mccain matchup, i think she would look pretty good next to mccain -- that part's all speculation at this point though

as for "machine politics", if a senator can get the money machine to spit out money for my state i don't see what's wrong with that

If you don't count Florida and Michigan, Clinton has won 3 of the top 10 most populous states (CA, NY, NJ) and Obama has won 2 (IL, GA). Both Clinton and Obama have won 6 of the top 20 most populous states (she adds MA, TN, and AZ, he adds VA, WA, MO, and MD). It's not like he's only winning Idaho and Delaware.

even beyond begging the resentment of all the states clinton's already lost, penn's really reinforcing the idea that democrats are solely the party of coastal, cultural elites.

xpost do you guys think voters are actually so dumb that they don't realize mark penn's talking about electoral strategy rather than any deeper significance

tracer, your willingness to suffer egregious morons is only matched by your overconfidence in the average voter's bullshit detector.

wonder how the rubes who are less sophisticated than "us" will react

yea i know he's talking about electoral strategy, but if i lived in a state like virginia (which is a big fucking state and could be up for contention in the g.e.) where i voted for obama and he won by a big margin, i would be a little disappointed in the fact that clinton's campaign is brushing the state off as insignificant, unnecessary or irrelevant in the contest

part of running a campaign is knowing how not to look like you're calling a bunch of states insignificant when you speak in public.

as for "machine politics", if a senator can get the money machine to spit out money for my state i don't see what's wrong with that

-- Tracer

Agree. There's nothing wrong with it. It's the way the system works, and Hillary is very good at manipulating it to her state's advangage. But it still bothers me. I think it speaks to the kind of politician she is: not a bad politician or an ineffective politician, but a cynical, professional and compromised politician. The votes bison mentions up above are telling.

Bill was in many respects a great president and in many respects a troubling one. I came out of the Clinton era with bad feelings about NAFTA, the compromises with China, Bill's military misadventures, his immediate about-face on gays in the military, and the administration's clear preference for tactical expediency over strategic vision.

Of course, Bush makes Clinton's sins look insignificant in hindsight But they aren't. And Hillary was a big part of that. She was major policy architect and behind-the-scenes player during her husband's administration and has made no effort to distance herself from it. That missing box of Whitewater papers that the Clintons "couldn't find" when subpoena'd later turned up in her office (to say nothing of her behavior throughout that entire investigation).

Similar things could be said of McCain. Obama, on the other hand, is new, and perhaps that gives him an unfair advantage: he hasn't even had the chance to compromise himself. Still, I find it easier to support someone who hasn't yet betrayed my trust.

ok i hear that

Might have been posted already but did anyone catch this from yesterday? Mentioned via Balloon Juice:

ABC News' Teddy Davis Reports: On Wednesday, a top adviser to John McCain said more definitively than he has in the past that he will step down from the Arizona senator's presidential campaign if the presumed GOP nominee faces Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in the general election.

"I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama," said McCain adviser Mark McKinnon in an interview with NPR's "All Things Considered." "I think it would be uncomfortable for me, and I think it would be bad for the McCain campaign."

McKinnon, who was a Democrat before serving as President Bush's ad maker in 2000 and 2004, said that he plans to be behind McCain "100 percent" no matter who the Democratic nominee is. He explained, however, that if the Democrats nominate Obama, he will be supporting McCain "from the sidelines."

...huh.

he <3 obama

on the penn remarks -- on the other side, hypothetically, obama's advisors could have easily dismissed clinton's wins in new york and california by saying they are solid blue states that he'll carry them in the general election anyhow, but they haven't made that argument. instead they've said that NY and CA are vast states where he had less opportunity to meet with voters face to face, and where clinton enjoys high name recognition and a generally good reputation; they recognized that they have to make up those delegates elsewhere and worked hard to make up that deficit, and they did it without shitting on any state's value in a general election.

ned, that is indeed veddy veddy interestink!

Like I said upthread, it's not over yet. Now, mind you, I know Obama does better when he introduces himself to a state, but these polls were taken after HRC's recent losing streak, at a time when -- indirectly, if not directly -- Obama has been introducing himself to the Ohio/Texas/Penn. electorate. Despite all that, HRC seems to have leads that, if they hold, not only would be momentum-changing wins, but the kind of wins that could make this such a razon-thin race in terms of pledged delegates that the so-called Super Delegates could, in fact, swing the nomination one way or the other.

I hope it doesn't come to that. It would be an ugly fight that would show the party at its worst before a GE fight against a very tough GOP nominee.

Correction: These polls were taken before the Potomic primaries, so they were taken during (not at the end of) HRC's losing streak. My apologies.

lol her losing streaks not over yet

Close in Wisconsin, too.

19 days until OH / TX / VT / RI -- if the vote was today it would be a different story, but that's a long time! certainly long enough for voters to change their minds.

i got yer poll right here

Now that there's talk of an impending Edwards endorsement (probably of Clinton, apparently), it occurred to me that endorsements have probably been the non-story story of the campaign - Obama's success had less to do with Ted Kennedy's supposedly earth-shattering endorsement than his broad appeal and great speeches, and Clinton secured tons of state-level endorsements (as well as early endorsement from the NY Times) and those have had little to no effect.

Obama, on the other hand, is new, and perhaps that gives him an unfair advantage: he hasn't even had the chance to compromise himself

Oh, bullshit. From The Nation's endorsement of Obama, by Christopher Hayes:

Had you told me a few years ago that the left of the Democratic Party would be split between Obama and Clinton, I'd have dismissed you as crazy: Barack Obama has been a community organizer, a civil rights attorney, a loyal and reliable ally in the State Senate of progressive groups. For the Chicago left, his primary campaign and his subsequent election to the US Senate was a collective rallying cry. ...We thought we'd elected our own Paul Wellstone.

That's not, alas, how things turned out. Almost immediately Obama--likely with an eye on national office--shaded himself toward the center. His rhetoric was cool, often timid, not the zealous advocacy on behalf of peace, justice and the dispossessed that had characterized Wellstone's tenure. His record places him squarely in the middle of Democratic senators, just slightly to Clinton's left on domestic issues (he voted against the bankruptcy bill, for example). As a presidential candidate, his domestic policy (with some notable exceptions on voting rights and technology policy) has been very close to that of his chief rivals, though sometimes, notably on healthcare, marginally less progressive.

And before Tracer and everyone comes in with natural-moving-to-the-center-blahblah -- it's still compromising yourself.

Edwards endorsing HRC would be significant. More than anything else, it would make the endorsements of the remaining players who haven't yet endorsed -- especially Al Gore -- even more significant. If Obama can get Gore's endorsement, that trumps Edwards endorsing HRC.

i got yer poll right here

O Rly?

dr morbius, sorry but bullshit.

under the morbius administration, legislation will be passed via gladitorial combat. no bill passed without partisan bloodshed!

I don't think Gore will endorse.

Edwards endorsing HRC just proves what a fake-ass faux populist liberal he is

Lincoln Chafee endorses obama btw