Clinton Campaign is Off Balance
Feb 14, 2008 Political
The pundits are puzzled and the Clinton campaign is shocked that they are now the underdog in the Democratic primary race. Double digit (huge margin) losses, lagging in the delegate count and short on cash is not the way the campaign planned on spending the latter part of February but that is the situation that faces the once unstoppable Hillary Clinton. In a nutshell, Hillary believed the hype and did not plan past the Super Tuesday primaries.
Hillary Clinton entered the race for the presidency over a year ago just after young upstart Barack Obama. Instantly, she was the front runner and she was believed to be the inevitable winner. Hillary had it all; name recognition, a vast wealthy donor base, early Super Delegate support, and the power of a former president in her camp. Certainly she would win the nomination early and then get prepared to take on the Republican machine.
That thinking might very well cost her the nomination because by buying into the inevitability, Clinton failed to plan past Super Tuesday. She counted on early wins to build her momentum going into the February primaries and figured on delivering a knock-out blow by capturing the nomination. Her opponent had other ideas and set up offices in early states as well as those whose primaries were after Super Tuesday. His victory in Iowa shocked the Clinton camp and with the prospect of a double digit loss in New Hampshire looming large, things did not look good. She righted the ship in NH but was unable to build on that victory as one tactical misstep after another beset he campaign.
Instead of planning ahead the Clintons stuck to the idea that they would win it all on the big day. When things started to go poorly, they decided to go on the attack. Her campaign played the gender card while her husband’s rhetoric got out of hand and led to accusations of racial overtones. This is trademark Clinton but this time they did not have the MSM in their pockets and they were stunned by the response. All was not looking well for the campaign and it became obvious that the nomination would not be decided on Super Tuesday. The problem by that time was money. While she was spending like a drunken sailer on shore leave in the early states, her opponent was seeking small donations from all over the country. Clintons big name supporters had donated the maximum amount and she did not have as strong a mechanism in place to bring in smaller donations, as did her opponent. Perhaps she was being overly cautious after the Norman Hsu incident
Clinton ended up lending her own money to the campaign, a disclosure made after the Super Tuesday primaries. If it had been made any earlier, she would have been toast. Since there was little time to campaign in states that followed and since she had failed to plan for active campaigning after the big day, she was overwhelmed by Mr. Obama who planned very early on. He has won eight states since Super Tuesday while she has looked ahead to Texas and Ohio as a firewall to prevent further losses. She is taking in more money now but it might be too little, too late.
Hillary Clinton bought into the hype that she would have a cakewalk to the nomination and now she is very close to watching the nominee from the sideline. She criticized the Bush administration for failing to have a long range plan in Iraq, and yet she demonstrated the same failure in her campaign. The question now becomes, do we want a person who spends carelessly and gets minimal results running this country? Do we want a president who fails to plan for the future? This has been a big criticism of George Bush with regard to the war so will Democrats apply that standard to Hillary and move toward Barack Obama?
I do not agree with Mr. Obama’s positions on anything and I believe his claim not to support the war is irrelevant because he was not in the Senate at the time so there is no way to tell how he would have voted (especially since the vote was viewed as needed to get weapon’s inspectors back in Iraq). And while he offers a message of hope and change his speeches are long on lilt and short on substance. He talks a good game without telling anyone what he will do or how he will do it.
Regardless, people like to listen to him and the one thing he has going is that he was forward looking enough to plan well past Super Tuesday. He never bought into the hype that Hillary was the inevitable victor and he planned to fight to the end. In the short term, that strategy has paid off and in the long run it might be the single biggest factor, should he become the nominee.
Should he become President, I don’t think he will be a good one but at least he has shown that he has better planning skills than someone who claims to have 35 years of experience.
Perhaps she should have spent more time planning for the primary and less time being fitted for the crown.
Related Story:
New York Times
WSJ
Time
Imagine that, I Actually Agree with Al Sharpton
Feb 13, 2008 Political
Anyone who reads this blog knows that I do not care for Al Sharpton because he is a race baiting poverty pimp.I believe that he only takes up causes that will get him in the spotlight and when a black person is the victim. He ignores non blacks in the same situations and to top it off he incites riots where people get killed. However, he wrote a letter to the DNC with regard to the delegates from Florida and Michigan. In the letter, Sharpton stated:
Some have said that not seating delegations from Florida and Michigan disenfranchises Democratic voters — especially African American voters — from those two states. That claim, if true, should have been made many months ago before the decision was made to strip these states of their delegates, and, once the decision was made, it should have been vigorously objected to and contested by those who felt it disenfranchised voters. To raise that claim now smacks of politics in its form most raw and undercuts the moral authority behind such an argument. Drudge
I don’t know how it would particularly disenfranchise blacks in Florida but he is right in the overall assessment. They took a decision many months ago and they have to live by that decision. People who are objecting should have done so back then. Of course, Sharpton is motivated by the fact that his candidate, Barack Star Obama, is in the lead and he does not want that taken away. If Obama were behind but had won those states, Sharpton would want them seated. Hillary, for her part, is now trying to get the delegates seated because she is losing. She did not protest before because she thought she would have won it all by now.
I have no dog in that fight because I am not a Democrat but as an observer I will say that they made rules that stated if a state held its primary before February 5th then that state would lose its delegates (except the two usual starter states). Florida and Michigan were warned and they did it anyway which means they should have to live by the rules. If candidates did not agree then they should have been talking about it when the decisions were taken (why were some of the others allowed to go early).
Having said that, I would not be surprised to see the DNC reverse course and allow the delegates. This would give Hillary a big lead and she might pull off the nomination. That would fracture the Democratic party and many Obama supporters would stay home or jump ship on election day. The Democrats always have inventive ways to lose elections and it would not surprise me if the party elite decided to do this to help the Queen get to the throne.
Personally, I would like to see just that take place.
I would also ask the media and all the other nitwits who said George Bush was not a legitimate president if that would make Hillary an illegitimate nominee. After all, she would be selected, not elected and that has been the cry of the left for nearly eight years.
Hillary cannot get enough delegates to win outright but she might do well in several large delegate states. If so, neither will win the required number and the convention will be brokered. That is when the bloodbath will begin and it will be quite a bit of fun to watch.
Others with interesting posts:
Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Right Truth, Stuck On Stupid, Leaning Straight Up, Cao’s Blog, Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, Pursuing Holiness, third world county, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, A Newt One, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Tags: brokered convention, Clinton, Obama, rules, sharpton
Hillary Had a Hand in Releasing Terrorists
Feb 12, 2008 Political
Before anyone buys into the bunk that Hillary Clinton will be tough on terrorists they should take a step back and look at how she helped to have a bunch of them released in order to garner the Puerto Rican vote in New York.
Bill Clinton was soft on terror and he ignored every attack on our country. His cowardice with regard to Somalia gave bin Laden the incentive he needed to attack us on 9/11.
We all know that Bill Clinton pardoned a lot of political cronies on his last day in office but he also gave clemency to a group of FALN members who were responsible for bombings in New York that killed a lot of people. Clinton, with his wife’s help, released these people at the request of three members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, local Hispanic politicians and some activist groups and it was all in order to help her win the Senate seat in New York.
When there was a public outcry Hillary distanced herself from the very decision she helped make in order to put it all on him and ensure she won. These people will take a bullet for each other so long as a win is in it for the other. Power is all they care about and they sold out the families of those killed as well as other victims in order to gain that power.
These are the kind of people that want to occupy our White House once again. They have sold their souls to Satan and are now hell bent on ruining this country. They allowed killers to go, killers that did not want to go and did not want to agree to the terms of release.
I wonder what would happen if these people killed again. One can guess what it would be if my family was the victim.
The Wall Street Journal has a great article about this. It is well worth the read.
Tags: clemency, Clinton, FALN, political favors, terrorists
Obama is Gaining Momentum
Feb 12, 2008 Political
Hillary Clinton has all but conceded the primaries up until Texas and Ohio where she hopes to do well with the large population of Latinos in Texas and the blue collar workers in Ohio. If the exit polling from Virginia is any indication, her Texas plan might just backfire. Exit polls show Obama with a 10 point lead among Latinos, a demographic that Clinton was winning handily and one she will have to win handily in Texas if she is going to compete in the process.
It is hard to tell why the turn around. Perhaps people are getting weary of her and perhaps she has looked like a loser this past week and it turned people off. It is also possible that when she fired her campaign manager, a Latino, that she ticked off the Latino community. Several prominent Latinos (here and here) have already expressed their disgust with the move and once that shock wave starts traveling it will be hard to stop it.
Obama is already the projected winner in Virginia where exits show him winning by a 2:1 margin. He should win DC and Maryland though we will have to wait 90 minutes longer for the Maryland results. A judge ordered the polling places to remain open until 2130 because of an ice storm that caused traffic tie ups all across the state.
I wonder if Hillary is throwing ashtrays and nik naks around the place about now. She has waited all her life for this moment, it is her turn and she is the rightful heir to the thrown and this upstart newbie is ruining it for her. She might still pull out the nomination but with a sweep tonight and a win in the two primaries before 4 March, Obama will have peeled off 10 wins in a row. Sure some of them were small states but the momentum has definitely moved to his camp and Hillary is gasping for breath trying to keep up. Obama looks like a winner while Hillary looks like a confused fighter wondering where the next punch will come from. She is not even in the area any longer having departed for El Paso.
Maybe she is trying to shore up the Latino/Hispanic vote before it is too late.
Chelsea, The Pimped Out Spoiled Brat
Feb 11, 2008 Political
There are those who believe that Chelsea Clinton is somehow off limits because she is not running for office. I do not happen to be one of them. I believe that if you put your self in front of a crowd and you talk about your feelings or ideas then you are fair game. She is no different than a celebrity who endorses a candidate and campaigns for that person. The celebrity status, in this case the celebrity of being the former first daughter, is supposed to lend some sort of credibility to a campaign which means that what is said or done is open to scrutiny.
This past weekend Hillary Clinton effectively pimped put her daughter over remarks about her daughter being pimped out. Hillary took the opportunity of David Shuster’s pimped out remark to take attention away from the clean sweep Barack Obama made in the four states that held a primary or caucus. It was a classic Clinton move of media manipulation and it allowed the airwaves to be filled with talk of the remark and Hillary’s “ire” rather than the talk of yet more overwhelmingly convincing wins by the Senator from Illinois.
Chelsea Clinton has been sheltered from the limelight as mommy and Bill worked to keep her from being part of American politics, which can be quite ugly. However, the Clintons want it both ways in that they want Chelsea left alone and they want her out in front giving credibility to her mother’s ambitions. Chelsea, who is not being pimped out, had breakfast with a 21 year old college student, who for some strange reason, is a Super Delegate. Chelsea had breakfast with this guy much as a salesperson does in order to gain confidence and create a sale. Much like the salesperson, Chelsea is being pimped out in order to close the deal. One has to wonder how the mommy can get so angry at a pimped out remark and then have her daughter go out with a young college man in order to buy the vote. This guy gets to brag to his friends that he had breakfast with Chelsea Clinton (a big deal to a hormonally challenged young man) and to me that is no different than the young lady who shows attention to a guy in a bar in order to get free drinks.
Today though, we found out that Chelsea is nothing more than a spoiled brat who does not realize just how good she has it. She graduated college and got a $100,000 a year job as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. One of her jobs was to research health care. There is no doubt that the company provides great benefits and that she has health care coverage that is more than adequate. Even if she did not, her parents have an estimated wealth of 25-50 million dollars so, if she could not afford it on her salary, they certainly could. She works for a hedge fund company now and the benefits are certainly just as good and the other benefits seem to be great as well. How many of us could take off from work in order to campaign for one of our parents? Her boss gave her the time off. The fact that her boss is a big Clinton backer (the source of the job) certainly helped her and how did she repay the company?
Today Chelsea said that she was not satisfied with her health care benefits.
“If you have health care and you’re not happy with it — like me who has employer provided health care, but I’m not happy with it — and if you are one of the 100 million who are uninsured at some point throughout the year… you’ll be able to buy into a Congressional health plan.” The Politico
Another source indicates that she actually said; “… you’ll be FORCED UNDER PENALTY OF THE LAW to buy into a Congressional health plan.” [emphasis in original]
Here is a 27 year old woman who attended some of the most prestigious schools and who went to work out of college making six figures. She has always been protected and her parents have enough money to buy her anything she wants. This girl might not have been born with the silver spoon in her mouth but she had one to eat her first solid foods and yet she is not satisfied. She has health care coverage and she does not like it. Aww, poor little rich kid. I am sure there are plenty of people who would just like to have health care coverage. While I disagree with the 47 million as the number of uninsured, I know there are people who would just love to have the benefit package little miss rich kid has, and she is not satisfied.
I also want to know what she means by saying; “If you have health care and you’re not happy with it.” I thought her mother’s plan would leave people who already have health care coverage alone. According to Chelsea, people who are unhappy can ditch their coverage and have the taxpayers foot the bill. Is Chelsea telling us something that is in the works?
Regardless, it is a crying shame that nothing satisfies this spoiled kid. She cannot be happy with what she has and, true to liberal form, she will look to the government to provide the happiness. Now I know there will be the usual band of Clinton apologists who say I am being too rough on the kid and that she is only helping out her mother’s campaign. There might even be a belief that she is happy with what she has but is trying to make a point about her mother’s plan. Some might call that campaigning.
I call it pimping one’s self out.
Those Clintons will stop at nothing. Chelsea insults her employer about the great plan she has. Bill tells us he has always dreamed of being able to vote for a black and a woman for president, and Hillary says that it is good for the party that they have a black and a woman running and that she is happy about it. Anyone who believes any of this should not be allowed to vote.
Sadly though, there are people out there who lack a sufficient quantity of brain matter to see through this and realize what the Clintons really are.
With any luck, these people will lose and slither back under a rock in Arkansas and we will never hear from them again.
Others with interesting posts:
Outside the Beltway, Is It Just Me?, A Blog For All, 123beta, Right Truth, Shadowscope, the so called me, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Allie is Wired, third world county, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Wake Up America, CORSARI D’ITALIA, A Newt One, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Tags: chelsea, Clinton, health care coverage, pimped out, spoiled