hillary

Clinton Wins 2016 Democratic Primary

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I’m not one to be such a douchebag to never admit I was wrong.

In a recent heated discussion I mentioned, repeatedly, how Clinton would win the nomination after New Jersey, before California polls closed, on June 7th, 2016.

I was wrong. After the huge victory in Puerto Rico, a number of un-pledged delegates have announced their support for Clinton, giving her the necessary delegates to end this thing on the first ballot of the convention as of June 6, 2016.

So I was wrong. I thought it would be June 7. Instead it was June 6, eight years to the day she conceded the nomination to Obama. I apologize for my error.

I supported Obama in that primary, as he rose time and time again to the challenges of the campaign. From Reverend Wright to the “black” thing, Obama knocked it out the park, again and again.

This election cycle, as I’ve watched it play out, time and again it was Hillary who hit the right notes, on the beat. From her 11-hour shoulder-brush-off in front of the GOP Congress witch hunt, to the intense scrutiny of debates and campaigning, she had done everything she needed to in order to secure the nomination. Bernie missed the mark. Yes, the bird liked him, but the New York Daily News editorical board *exposed* him. When faced with adversity in the campaign, he went hugely negative, and got turned away in the red zone after an impressive drive.

For me, the support of Clinton now goes all the way *back* to 2008 and how I thought she needed more experience to really lay the claim to the Oval office. From that point she kept working as Secretary of State, and delivered again and again on the President’s foreign policy agenda…one that was face with historic external opposition at the start and unprecedented internal opposition throughout (the GOP’s “Letter to Iran”).

By the end of her service, and Obama’s term, we have done a great deal to restore our standing in the world. This is in no small part thanks to her efforts.

She will make a wonderful President, and I’m looking forward to watching the campaign unfold.

Our media faces a reality-show challenge now, and whether or not they can differentiate between a candidate who could maybe play a President on TV as a joke, and one who can step into the office ready to go with unprecedented experience on Day 1.

The choice is so easy here as to be laughable, which is why I will hold off on the real laughter until Mid-November, and she’s earned her placed in history.

The Clintons @ the DNC

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Willie

And Hillie

Of the two I have to give the nod to the former President.  Wow, that guy can work a crowd.

You can really see the, gosh I hate to say it…warmness…that Hillary was missing when you hold her up against Bill.  I know they share the same ideal and information, but he just seems to be a better communicator.

BTW, if you wonder why Obama is a better choice, Bill lays it out pretty specifically in the speech.  It’s about policy, not personality. 

Why Hillary Lost and Obama Won : A Simple Analysis

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I spent some time this evening watching the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I saw Hillary’s powerful speech and thought she did a very good job of pointing out to her supporters that the worst thing they could do with their bitterness regarding her loss is to turn it into a vote for McCain.

Those are my words, of course, but she made that point very clearly.  She made a number of other ones, and had some catchy slogans.  I might touch on that speech later, but you can look it up on YouTube if you missed it and want to check it out.

Watching her speech and the warm-up video created by the DNC (which including a testimonial from “HIllary’s husband” no name given), it became clear what had been fundamentally wrong with her campaign and why it ultimately failed.

Which brings us to the main point: This was an historic primary for the Democrats, as both of the final two candidates had demographic qualities that were unique for someone so far along in the nomination process.

One candidate ran on that demographic quality and one did not.

The one that did not won the race.

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To put it very simply, Hillary ran as a woman.  Barack ran as a person.

When things were going poorly for HIllary, she played her demographic card and claimed sexism.

When things were going poorly for Obama, he worked harder. He organized better and he inspired a wider range of people.

And he won.

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The lesson for the future is simple, don’t pigeon-hole yourself if you want broad support. Don’t put such a simple label on yourself and look at everything through that lens. It didn’t ever work for Jackson or Sharpton and it didn’t work for Clinton. Frankly I don’t think it can work, as our country is far too diverse for such a simplistic argument (“vote for me because I’m the same as you”). As always, if events prove me wrong some time down the road, I’ll be happy to eat those words. But as it stands now, the lesson is clear.

Don’t run as a demographic.

Putting a Finger on the Difference

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Op-Ed Columnist – Frank Rich – One Historic Night, Two Americas – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

All presidential candidates, Mr. Obama certainly included, are egomaniacs. But Washington’s faith in hierarchical status adds a thick layer of pomposity to politicians who linger there too long. Mrs. Clinton referred to herself by the first-person pronoun 64 times in her speech, and Mr. McCain did so 60 times in his. Mr. Obama settled for 30.

Remarkably, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. McCain had the grace to offer a salute to Mr. Obama’s epochal political breakthrough, which reverberated so powerfully across the country and throughout the world. By being so small and ungenerous, they made him look taller. Their inability to pivot even briefly from partisan self-interest could not be a more telling symptom of the dysfunctional Washington culture Mr. Obama aspires to mend.

This is the essential difference between Obama and Hillary (and McCain).  It’s a personality thing.  I really do believe him when he says he wants to work for everyone.  He’s been doing it his whole life.  Now I might be a naive Robot Pirate Ninja, but I’ve seen a few things.

Killed a few liars.  Stolen from a number of men, both rich and poor (*coughpiratecough*), so I think I have a pretty good grasp on what an honest man and a really good liar look like.
Obama is one or the other, and his history points to the good side of that paradigm.  Whether or not he can stay there is a more difficult question that only Time can tell, but if I could still vote, I’d know where it would go.

O Brother, Obama Gets Democrat Nod

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Obama Clinches Nomination, Capping Historic, Bitter Contest – WSJ.com

The Democratic presidential nomination his, Barack Obama reached out Wednesday to mend fences with his defeated rival as Republican opponent John McCain tried to frame the fall campaign on his own terms. “I think he has exercised very bad judgment on national security issues and others,” Sen. McCain said.

Sen. Obama captured enough convention delegates Tuesday to make a historic claim to the Democratic presidential nomination, the first African-American to earn a major party’s nod.

Hillary Clinton was angling to become Sen. Obama’s running mate and her aides ramped up the speculation on that matter Wednesday. “I think a lot of her supporters would like to see her on the ticket,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said. But Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs cautioned “there is no deal in the works.”
A clip from Sen. Obama’s speech after he has secured enough delegates to win the Democratic presidential nomination. (June 3)

It’s official, Obama gets the nod. Very good work, sir. Madam, madam, please…Madam, please! Step back…

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Oh, and I think it’s hillaryious that McCain thinks saying that Obama is dumb on national security while at the same time defending the war in Iraq is going to work for him.

Still, the nomination marked a remarkable accomplishment for the son of a Kenyan immigrant who spent part of his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia.

“Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America,” Sen. Obama told an estimated 32,000 people gathered in St. Paul, Minn., late Tuesday.

The venue symbolized his start of the general-election campaign against the likely Republican nominee, Sen. McCain: In September, Republicans hold their presidential convention in the same city. And Sen. Obama’s huge audience, compared with Sen. McCain’s less than 1,000 supporters for his speech Tuesday night in New Orleans, dramatizes the Democrats’ big edge in voter excitement, evident all year in record turnout for the party’s primaries and caucuses.

Sen. McCain, his own nomination locked up months ago, defined the distinction he will draw with the less-experienced 46-year-old Sen. Obama, who is 25 years his junior: “Both Sen. Obama and I promise we will end Washington’s stagnant, unproductive partisanship,” he said. “But one of us has a record of working to do that, and one of us doesn’t.”

Yea…McCain has been working on changing Washington for what…25 years now. How’s that going for ya, buddy? What hasn’t that fixed in 25 years? How many lobbyists do you meet in 25 year in Washington, BTW? Many of the really hot ones weren’t even born when you got there, ifyouknowwhatI’msayin’…

It was the longest nomination race ever. Early returns were in keeping with the closeness of the Obama-Clinton race — a split decision, with Sen. Obama winning in Montana Tuesday and Sen. Clinton in South Dakota.

Once the polls closed Tuesday night, the Obama campaign released the names of 26.5 superdelegates — those from Michigan and Florida get half-votes, in punishment for holding their primaries too early. With others that came in through the day, and Sen. Obama’s share of Montana’s and South Dakota’s 31 pledged delegates, he could claim the 2,118-delegate majority needed for nomination.

Sen. Obama started Tuesday roughly 40 delegates shy of the number needed. But he exceeded that with the night’s final group endorsement from party leaders. In addition, 10 delegates pledged to former candidate and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards switched to him, besides the pledged delegates he’d get from Tuesday’s primaries.

So it looks like this thing was oven when I said it was, which is to say when Edwards said it was. That with the 3/5 votes from Michigan and Florida (haw-haw) and the thing was o.v.e.r.

Oh wait….you mean…Madam, please, please step back.. Madam!!!

And Sen. Clinton brushed aside calls for her to end her campaign last night, telling a crowd of cheering supporters in New York: “I will be making no decisions tonight.” That raised the prospects of days of wrangling and negotiating.

aaargh. And she keeps winning friends like this too. Riiight.

So it ends much the same as it dragged on, with Obama as the presumptive nominee and Clinton nipping at his heels.

It is quite a day for the the U.S. as someone who is the same color as a bunch of people we used for slaves is now, finally, one of the two people with a chance to be The President of the United States of America.

Pretty nifty, these united states (from thirteen original colonies).

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UPDATE: Longer version of the 16-month campaign.

The Media’s Campaign

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West Wing: The Media’s Mini-Truths – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News

A journalist’s twin points of references should be the real and the important. But for months the focus of the election coverage was on trivia. Every insignificant detail got blown out of proportion, with every chipmunk becoming a Godzilla. According to a report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, over 60 percent of election coverage by the US media has been focused on campaign strategies, tactics or personalities — but not on actual political content.

 

Reporters focused the most attention on such pressing questions as whether Barack Obama was wearing an American flag lapel pin, whether John McCain had a mistress eight years ago or whether former first lady Hillary Clinton was incorrectly recalling her 1996 trip to Bosnia.

Clinton claimed to recall hearing sniper fire as her plane landed in Bosnia. In fact, as archive TV footage later showed, Clinton was actually greeted by a young girl who recited a poem on the tarmac. That may have been embarrassing for Hillary Clinton, but it is insignificant for voters.

Even the eccentric pastor from Obama’s church, Jeremiah Wright, is not worth the fuss. “God damn America,” he preached. So what? The priest at my Catholic church was a reactionary, while my class teacher was a communist. Perhaps the mad and the blind to the right and the left of our path through life are there simply to show us where the middle way is.

Solid criticism from the Continent on the U.S. Presidential Campaign.  Pretty striaghtforward criticism of the media focusing on the sizzle and not the steak.  When the majority of political coverage involved how the pundits feel about the candidates, rather than what those candidates themselves stand for, it’s not a good thing, particularly.

This is more symptomatic of how the U.S. public has been trained to consume media than anythning else, IMHO.  When the sizzle gets ratings and the steak makes people change the channel, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s the sizzle that gets the coverage.

Obama Takes Over Super-D’s

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Obama takes the lead in superdelegate count – CNN.com

Sen. Barack Obama has surpassed Sen. Hillary Clinton in the race for superdelegates, according to CNN’s latest count.

Obama on Monday picked up endorsements from Maine Rep. Tom Allen and Dolly Strazar, a superdelegate from Hawaii.

“Most of the primary voters across the nation have now spoken. It is time to bring a graceful end to the primary campaign,” Allen said.

“We now need to unify the Democratic Party and focus on electing Sen. Obama and a working majority in the United States Senate. That is how we can change the direction of the country,” said Allen, who is also a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

He said Obama and Clinton are both “supremely qualified to be president.”

Good to hear these folks are finally falling in line with the front-runner.  As each super-delegate gives in, the door closes on Mrs. Clinton…and by now it should be pretty much slammed shut.

Here’s the Clinton Solution

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Facing her doubters, Clinton remains stoic – International Herald Tribune

Joanne Drewry, 47, a contractor in Shepherdstown, stood in the back of the crowd holding a pole with six Clinton posters stapled to it. She said she was disappointed in the results Tuesday and believed that it meant the end of Clinton’s presidential ambitions, at least this year.

But she said she hoped that Obama would offer Clinton the vice-presidential nomination and that she would accept it.

The money quote, as it were, comes at the end of the article.  I think this is a very equitable solution, and it’s the one I proposed a looong time ago.    From the tone of the article it looks like HIllary is finally reading the writing on the wall (and in the ballot box).   This should be over soon.

Update on the Clinton / Obama in North Carolina / Indiana

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A couple quick points. First up is that I updated my post regarding the Clinton Fortune, and what it is being used for.

Second, and I can’t believe none of the pundits I watched last night mention this yesterday/this morning.(although truth be told, they said very little and I couldn’t watch for more than a few minutes at a time)…Barack Obama got roughly 209,000 more votes than Hillary Clinton in the two primaries (Clinton won Indiana by 14,000 and Obama won North Carolina by 223,000 [source])

That is….Barack Obama got Two-Hundred and Nine THOUSAND MORE votes.

In one day.

This thing is so over. I just wish Clinton could be as big a man as Al Gore was, and admit a close but final defeat.

Please, please, let this be true. From what Dean said the other day on the Daily Show, I’m thinking it very well might be.

A senior campaign official and Clinton confidante has told me that there will be a Democratic nominee by June 15. He could not bring himself to say the words “Hillary will drop out by June 15,” but that is clearly what he meant. I kept saying, “So, Hillary will drop out by June 15,” and he kept saying, “We will have a nominee by June 15.” He stressed what a reasonable person Hillary is.

Everything about our conversation implied that he had already had this reality-based discussion with Hillary. He said the Clinton campaign plan is to collect as many votes and delegates as they can right through June 3, then take no more than a week or so to make their case to the superdelegates. Nothing he said indicated that he actually expected the superdelegates to move to Hillary in the week after the final election. The Clinton campaign has not lost its grip on reality. Yes, Clinton spokespersons publicly seem to be lost on gravity-free planet Clinton, but privately they know the end is near.

[full post]

U.S. Health Official Visits the Right Wing “Think” Tanks

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Medicare drifting towards disaster: U.S. official | Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Medicare is lurching toward disaster and it is too late for the Bush Administration and Congress to do anything about it, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said on Tuesday.

He said the next administration will have to act to stop rising costs and get control of the $400 billion federal health insurance plan for the elderly, which now covers 44 million people.

“Higher and higher costs are being borne by fewer and fewer people. Sooner or later, this formula implodes,” Leavitt said in a speech to the right-leaning Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute think-tanks.

“There is serious danger here,” he added. “Medicare is drifting towards disaster.”

This is very true, and it needs to be addressed.  It would be much easier to address if we weren’t spending a couple billion a day blowing shit up, but that would never occur to Heritage or AEI, as they believe some war now and again is absolutely essential to their donors.

The funniest part is the partisan dig at the end.

“It troubles me that this matter is not receiving more attention in the presidential candidates’ discussions. The next president will have to deal with this in significant part,” he said.

Yea, I mean…no one is talking about health care at all as an issue…no one…no one at all…

BTW, those are the “health care” pages for the three Presidential possibilities.

One of the first things to do when in a hole is to stop digging.  Stop digging now. 

 

Dean to Put Donkey Foot Down

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Dean says either Clinton or Obama must drop out in June – Yahoo News

WASHINGTON – Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama must drop out of the Democratic presidential race after the June primaries in order to unify the party by the convention and win the election in November.

But Dean didn’t say which candidate should drop out, only that it should happen after primary voters have been to the polls.

“We want the voters to have their say. That’s over on June 3,” Dean said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

I would love to see Clinton end up being as big a man as Gore was during the 2000 election (debacle), and step down for the good of the party, but I seriously doubt she has the balls to do so.

Dean makes some obvious points in the statement.

Dean also said that while the party rules say Democratic superdelegates can wait until the party’s August 25 convention to make up their minds, that would be too late to unify the party and defeat the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain.

“We really can’t have a divided convention. If we do it’s going to be very hard to heal the party afterwards,” Dean said. “So we’ll know who the nominee is and that’ll give us an extra 2 1/2 months to get our party together, heal the wounds of having a very closely divided race and take on Senator McCain.”

C’mon HIll-dog, do the right thing.

Oh, wait, it’s Hill-rod, who needs to do the right thing.

Clinton Clinging to Straws, Media Helps

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Clinton revisits Wright’s role – – Breaking News, Political News & National Security News – The Washington Times

PHILADELPHIA — Sen. Barack Obama was treated like the Democratic front-runner for the first time in a debate last night — fielding hard questions about his ties to a 1970s domestic terrorist, his racially divisive church and his electability.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton charged her rival has failed to fully explain his longtime ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., calling it deplorable that Mr. Obama didn’t leave the church after his pastor made disparaging remarks about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

You know, it’s pretty sad that HRC can’t sit through this whole video.  It’s a pretty awesome speech, even touched by clockwork heart.

Personally I thought his speech put the matter to rest and raised some substantive issues regarding race and U.S. citizenship.  The fact that Clinton totally missed that part and went right back to square one was rather disingenuous of her, IMHO.    Much like her recent rallying cries and newfound love for guns and god.