When is enough enough?
The writing is on the wall. In fact, it's in 3-foot-high letters. But Hillary Clinton can't see it. Here's the deal: Unless Barack Obama gets caught having unnatural relations with a farm animal, he's the Democratic nominee for president. But Clinton is vowing to continue with her campaign, even though there's no reasonable way for her to come out on top. A lot of people were of the opinion heading into the North Carolina and Indiana primaries that there was no reason Clinton shouldn't continue. If she could pull off the upset in North Carolina and score a resounding victory in Indiana, she could continue making a case that she, not Obama, was the more electable candidate. But Clinton ran more poorly than expected in Indiana, barely squeeking out a victory in a state that set up well for her demographically. And she was crushed in North Carolina. It's over. There are a few small primaries left that she and Obama will most likely split. Her campaign is running on fumes. She just disclosed that she (or Bill) has lent her campaign another $6.4 million. The movement of superdelegates toward Obama continues and is likely to pick up steam. Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, who once supported Clinton, has now thrown his support to Obama and suggests that Hillary quit the race. Clinton's next move is probably to press party leaders to seat the delegates from the disputed Florida and Michigan contests. She won both handily, but they were hardly exercises in American democracy. Nobody campaigned in Florida, and Clinton was the only candidate on the ballot in Michigan. And, it should be remembered, she was among those who once said those delegates should not be seated. Of course, she didn't think then that she would need those delegates. She planned to sweep everyone aside and schedule her coronation right around Super Tuesday. It didn't work out that way, and now she needs those delegates in order to make any sort of argument that she's been Obama's equal during the primary season. If Clinton continues with her scorched-earth approach, she will succeed only in tearing apart the party. And if she somehow persuaded the superdelegates to ignore the votes thus far and give her the nomination, she not only would destroy the party for 2008, but for many election cycles to come. The Republican Party has to be loving this, a lot.
Labels: Politics
posted by Brant at
3:58 PM
9 Comments:
I wonder how long it will take us to label Hillary a "loser" if/when she decides to withdraw, or how many will point out that she didn't have the guts to handle the pressure?
I don't think it's a case of her being a "loser" or not having the "right stuff" to be a viable candidate. There are several factors that have landed her in her current, unenviable position. One is that her campaign seemed to have no real plan once it became clear that their vision of sweeping to the nomination in short order wouldn't come to pass. Second, after decades of either a Bush or Clinton in the White House, a lot of voters want something else, even if it's a first-term senator with a whack-nut preacher. Third, a lot of people simply don't like Hillary Clinton. Even within her own party, about half the electorate dislikes her, and a great many of them don't trust her (see the Bosnia sniper incident and the residue of her husband's time in office). At her best, Hillary is a very good candidate, but I think she has been ill-served by those around her and by her own hubris in thinking it would be a waltz to the nomination. And, despite what her supporters might think, adding her to the Obama ticket would be an unmitigated disaster. Way too many negatives and baggage, and she brings no geographic bonus to the ticket. The Democratic nominee is going to win New York, with or without her.
Unfortunately, it seems that the handwriting is on the wall re. how many Americans are willing to vote for an African-American...if Hillary isn't the candidate I'm afraid McCain will win this election...I'm voting for the Democratic nominee, no matter who it is, but how many others feel the same?
I guess the operative question here is could an inexperienced black senator be any worse than the inexperienced white governor he's replacing? He'd have to try pretty hard. And how many people would really be willing to vote for a woman of any color? Either Obama or Clinton could pull a third-party run after they lose the nomination.
Even if Barack HUSSEIN Obama is declared the candidate, I will vote McCain. Following are reasons:
- National hero POW
- Works with both sides of the aisle
- Conservative socially IE: Pro-life, pro-gun etc.
- Strong on National security.
- Experienced by far more then the others
- Wants to end illegal immigration
- Wants to build the fence that he originally did not agree with because the people asked for it.
- Wants to keep the Bush tax cuts
- Wants to end "pork barrel" spending
- Wants to reduce entitlements (government give-aways)
- Is probably the best representative of what main stream America wants.
- Will responsibly end the war in Iraq. He is committed to staying so that there is not a civil war like the one in Darfur.
- He is for affordable health care, not Socialized medicine
He is but a far cry better then what I feel the Democrats stand for.
What if McCain's middle name were HUSSEIN? Or ADOLF?
What if his mother were Vietnamese?
Being a war hero takes more than being captured.
Bush inherited a budget surplus. We're into the trillion-dollar debt area now.
What did the Bush tax cuts do for the average American? What did they do for McCain and his ultra-rich wife?
How much did the two Bush $1200 tax rebates do for your family?
Pro-gun AND pro-life? A curious combo.
Build the "people's fence?" Maybe he can use the oil companies' profits to underwrite it.Do they sell ladders in Mexico?
We were committed to staying in Vietnam, weren't we? It's hard to look honorable when withdrawing when you're clinging to a helicopter departing from the roof an the American embassy.
There was no civil war in Iraq till we got there.
Once we have troops in every country that could erupt into civil war, who's going to prevent civil war in America? The Iraqi police force?
If McCain represents what mainstream American wants, the stream must have carried away our ability to think rationally.
If Obama was squirming about this early stuff that came out about him, wait until the GE gets closer and more of his skeletons jump out of the closet.
I have serious doubts he can win.
If Obama can't win it will be because a majority of Americans are fearful -- of blacks,change of the spectre of terror -- and are blind to what has been happening in this country since 911. Bin Laden has been successful beyond his wildest dreams-- one well-planned attack and we're on our knees. The real terror is just beginning -- not being able to afford food, gas, housing and health care.
To me, Obama sounds like a time traveler from an alternate universe where Fascism and Communism rule and Democracy is just a memory.
Speaking of memories, as a high school freshman during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. I remember vividly how everyone in my school were frozen with fear as we listened to the coming showdown with Russian ships on the high seas. Never has our country come closer to extinction than on that day. The way that we coped with that fear was to make light of it, as aptly depicted in "Dr. Strangelove," and the catch-phrase, "One nuclear bomb can ruin your entire day."
Fast-forward forty years and the thought of a terrorist group like Al-Qaeda, or a terrorist nation like Iran, armed with nukes, would do more than just "ruin our day." In the Cold War, MAD or "Mutually Assured Destruction" was our protection against annihilation. There are too many jihadists right now who live only for the day when they can destroy America. There are also too many terrorist-supporting nations, like Iran and Syria, for whom MAD only serves to describe their agendas.
You think that Obama would turn out to be a good President, but I see Obama as being more of a "Clear and present danger" than Osama ever was.
Obama who wants us to forget about 9/11, to "put it behind us," and simply sit down and "talk" to terrorists who won't listen to logic or reason. Obama is totally convinced that his silver-tongued rhetoric can sway terrorists as easily as he sway voters. It is the height of hubris and chutzpah to think that the most pernicious and persistent enemy to human freedom can be won over with dialogue.
The "Change" that Obama preaches will be one from democracy to demagogery. This election is not a choice between the lesser of two evils, but the choice between someone who will resist evil and someone who will capitulate to it.
You may hate Hillary Clinton. You may feel jilted by John McCain. You may even hold out hope for a 3rd party candidate to save the day. Yet, if it does comes down to a Obama/McCain election, the only, sane decision a voter can make is to keep Obama out of the White House. For all of McCain's faults, at least I know that America and Israel would survive his Presidency.
The same cannot be said for Obama -- not with the assemblage of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel advisors who would throw Israel to the Middle Eastern wolves.
Obama has talked a lot about "protecting Israel and making it strong," but he's never said that he would ensure Israel's continuation as a Jewish state.
Even if he did say that Israel should continue as a Jewish state, how can anyone trust what he says?
He denied being a Muslim. That was false. He denied ever being in church when Rev. Wright's was spewing hateful, racial and anti-American, anti-Israel sermons. That, too, was false as a few days later, he reversed himself and said that he had heard about them from fellow church members Then, he disinvites Rev. Wright to a rally for no stated reason. Finally, he admitted to hearing "a few, fiery sermons," but continued to defend Wright as "if he were my uncle." At the same time, he threw his grandmother under a bus (figuratively speaking) by calling her a "typical white person," who expresses her fear of being approached by suspicious-looking black men.
He told us all kinds of great things about his father, and how much influence he had on him. But, thanks to the Daily Mail we learned that:
"...for all Mr. Obama's reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth." Obama's own relatives and family friends paint a different picture of Obama's father. He was an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption, but by his own moral failings.
Obama has lots of indirect ties to Hamas. He frequently spoke at fundraisers for Palestinians living in United Nations "refugee camps."
OBama made Robert Malley his foreign policy advisor. Malley wrote numerous opinion articles, many co-written with a former adviser to Yasser Arafat, petitioning for dialogue with Hamas and blasting Israel for numerous policies he says harm the Palestinian cause.
Malley also previously wrote a New York Review of Books piece largely blaming Israel for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David in 2000 when Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern sections of Jerusalem and instead returned to the Middle East to launch an intifada, or terrorist campaign, against the Jewish state.
When Obama first ran for the Senate in 2004, the Chicago Jewish News interviewed him on his stance regarding Israel's security fence. He accused the Bush administration of neglecting the "Israeli-Palestinian" situation and criticized the security fence built by Israel to prevent terror attacks:
"The creation of a wall dividing the two nations is yet another example of the neglect of this Administration in brokering peace," Obama was quoted as saying.
OBama would be a bad Presidential choice from a whole host of reasons, beginning with the lack of experience, the lack of any substantive voting record (voting "Present" is not one of them), the lack of any cogent programs that will not throw our country deeper in debt, the lack of understanding how the military operates, and lastly, the lack of any real understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict.
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