I’m sorry, are people who belong to the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Bobby Kennedy, and John Edwards actually making the argument that because she’s rich Hillary Clinton can’t have any real connection with or concern for working people?

Dead thread I know, but actually Susie’s post here is simply saying that Barack Obama can’t have any real connection or concern for working people. (See, unlike Clinton, he hasn’t spent his entire life in public service.) So it all makes sense.

I am afraid integrity and Hillary Clinton do not go together.

I thought so too, at first, and I gave her a pass the first couple of times she said it. Then it turned out that it was her new post-TX/ OH strategy, one that she actually repeated all week long in different forms. And that’s when I started getting upset with the tenor of her campaign.

What I don’t understand is how Democrats so readily accepted the Obama-generated strategic narrative that successfully painted Bill and Hillary Clinton, of all people, as racists.

I don’t think too many people believe this, actually. (A), I don’t believe the Sean Wilentz line that the Obama camp has been race-baiting all along, and (B) I don’t think very many people see the Clintons as racists. At least, I hope not. I agree, though, that Clinton’s remark in January about LBJ (the bit about needing a president to make the civil rights movement into law) was completely legit, and that no one should have read a slight to MLK into it; and I agree that Orlando Patterson’s claim that the 3 a.m. ad was racist was, how you say, loony-tunes. This whole overreaction aspect of the race (and it’s a big aspect, especially among us low-level political junkies) depresses me no end, because I personally couldn’t care whether Obama was black, white, purple or green, and I agree that Hillary has endured some truly vile sexist nonsense from the moment she stepped into the public sphere.

Democrats didn’t.
Majorities of Democrats support Hillary, because they never bought that shit pie. I know a 21-year-old first-time voter, though, who is caught up in the excitement of sticking it to his elders, and he definitely believes it.

What I don’t understand is how Democrats so readily accepted the Obama-generated strategic narrative that successfully painted Bill and Hillary Clinton, of all people, as racists. Masterful swiftboating tactic, though - one I recognize (since I worked for his communications consultants). They accomplished what they set out to do, and no one who’s worked a major campaign will confuse it with an accident.

To me, that was really quite cynical and awful - and much, much worse than the McCain remark. MUCH worse. If Clinton is the nominee, that poisoned her support in the AA community. Talk about double standards! This kind of thing should be rejected by all Democrats, not just the ones supporting Clinton.

Imagine, Bill and Hillary are now Klansmen. The mind boggles.

Well, Susie, I just don’t buy the analogy at all– partly for the reason JonH offered in # 31, and partly because I don’t believe Obama played to a right-wing editorial board in the way you suggest (he lit into Reagan’s actual policies later in the interview, btw). But to answer your question about whether I have the same standards for Obama and Clinton: yes indeed. I never liked Obama’s concern-troll worrying about Social Security, and I was mightily pissed off by the Donnie McClurkin episode. Those two things kept me from supporting Obama until it came down to a two-person race.

Since January, I think Clinton has run one of the most foolish and destructive campaigns since Ulysses Grant ran in 1868 on the slogan, “If elected I promise to drink myself into a coma.” For all the Obama camp’s faults (and they do overreact, as when they claimed that the Clinton people released the Somali-garb picture), they have not made the outrageous claim that Obama and McCain have passed some “commander-in-chief” test. Any reasonable Democrat — man, woman, other, black, green, red, or purple — should have been stunned by that move. As I pointed out last month, it’s actually unprecedented. And it was needless: there was no reason whatsoever for Clinton to run on the claim that her national-security cred was greater than Obama’s (we trusted her mainly for her domestic policies, which are good, and not for her votes on Iraq and Kyl-Lieberman, which were bad), and that foolish decision led her into the Bosnia “misspeaking” debacle. Why? All to attack (and deflect from) the fact that Obama was right about the war in 2002 and Clinton was wrong. Or, as Hillary-Rocky put it, “I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech that he gave in 2002.”

I just don’t see anything admirable in Clinton’s tactics here. And I am genuinely surprised by them.

How come Obama wouldn’t speak with The Philly Gay News?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080403/ap_on_el_pr/clinton_gay_rights

I will never understand the feeling expressed by some about Hillary not being a feminist (or some such sentiment) because she didn’t divorce Bill over adultery. People stay together even when they feel publicly humiliated, even when they think the neighbors and their friends all know (which they do). See the movie “One True Thing” for a moving explanation. And it’s nothing like Pastor Wright because millions of people have personal experience with adultery.

I happen to think if hrc would talk abt why she has stayed in her marriage etc would be a GREAT thing. She excels in opportunities to discuss feelings, choices and loyality. I think a lot of people have chosen to stay in a marriage/relationship and give 2nd/3rd/4th chances that would see her as a “common person” then and relate better to her. I know I would if it really was genuine… plus it would work well against the certain swell of questions likely to come from the tax returns…a lot of people are convinced she stayed married because of the wanting to keep the link to power (true or not) and addressing it to some degree would be advantageous, imo…

Courtesy of Scaife.

The Vegas paper didn’t spend 8 years smearing Obama in a personal vendetta. Scaife threw every kind of base slander at the Clintons (murdering Vince Foster, etc), and bankrolled the obsessive efforts to dig up dirt in Arkansas.

There’s simply no comparison.

When the Clintons are getting chummy with Scaife, the touchiness over Monica Lewinsky seems misplaced - without Scaife, there probably wouldn’t have been a Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Heck, at the rate the Clintons are making allies of their former demonizers, it’s only a matter of time before the Clintons seek the endorsements of Monica, Linda Tripp, and Ken Starr.

Ten years ago, when the Clintons were their age, their 1998 federal income tax return shows $89,951 in Federal Income Tax on an Adjusted Gross Income of $504,109 - of which $200,000 was the President’s salary.

Sound to me like the Obamas are doing much better than the Clintons were at that age (not to mention of course the huge legal bills they piled up, courtesy of the Republicans.)

The most revealing data point might be more “where” is the income flowing from?? who paid mr hrc for things and will some question were in an effort to garner favors in an hrc administration — or can something be tied (correctly or not) to a last minute mr hrc pardon??? The delay and resistance in releasing the tax returns are no accident or beaurocratic blip. $8 million a year average is nice swag for anyone not playing third base for the Yankees…and at the end of the day we all need to realize Rocky was just a movie…

Unfortunately Hillary flat out lied about what he actually said and her version has somehow become the “truth” for a segment of the population.

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/01/clintons_are_lying_about_obama.html

I don’t think you’re doing professor Berube any favors by telling Susie she needs to rewrite (possibly in essay form?) her pithy follow-up, so that he can better understand her point.

the margin isn’t ephemeral at all. the bottom line is that clinton cannot realistically catch up in pledged delegates, and it is highly unlikely that she can catch up in the popular vote. she has to win not just every remaining race, but overwhelmingly in every remaining race, by a larger margin that she did in her home state of NY, to pull ahead. and that’s true even if you count the FL and MI votes. you can’t call such a solid lead in both pledged delegates and popular vote as “ephemeral”, it isn’t.

oh, and party rules do bind pledged delegates on their first vote. but that’s only a technicality. because there is no penalty for delegates who break their pledge, they can break the rules without fear of any sanction. but they are still breaking the rules.

in any case, it’s foolish to believe that pledged delegates would vote for a different candidate. pledged delegates are chosen because they are the true believers among the candidate’s supporters. they are the least likely to ever change their votes, that’s why the campaigns choose them to be delegates. if that’s what you mean by “emphemeral,” it’s not every realistic.

But Michael, that isn’t what I asked. I asked if Obama playing to a right-wing editorial board bothered you as much as Clinton’s talking to Scaife’s editorial board did

actually, i think prof berube did answer what you asked. or, at least, he noted that he did not accept the premise of your question. as he pointed out above the reagan comment was not “playing to a right-wing editorial board” he was stating something about reagan that was actually true. if you want to draw a parallel with the scaife meeting, you need to find one that actually works as a parallel, or convince him that your parallel makes more sense.

i know this is your blog (with susie) but more delegates, more states, and more votes simply isn’t a metric, its several.

the central thing about the great compromise, is that it was a compromise. the virgina plan (new york, california, …) would favor clinton, the new jersy plan (vermont, wyoming, …) would favor obama, so where, if anywhere, is there common ground?

i don’t think you need to be reminded how thin (and ephemeral) either candidate’s margins are for delegates, or for the popular vote, or that party rules do not in fact bind delegates even on the first ballot.

please stay sane. there is no metric which allows a conclusion that either of the hero twins are “front runners”. leave that ephemera to the “responsible media” who have to sell ad spacing content, aka “news”.

The one where he’s won more delegates, more states, and more votes than Clinton has.