Democrats are turning on the Clintons

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

if Clinton gets 900-950 delegates tommorow, you're wrong

Really? There's an arbitrary number as to what effect it has? Can I make up some numbers as well?

Face it, her conduct and recent behavior towards Obama was appalling and it is going to carry over to elections, even if she wins, people are going to be thinking about it when they pull down the levers and decide who to vote for. It will have an effect, despite wishful thinking that it's old news.

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Really? There's an arbitrary number as to what effect it has? Can I make up some numbers as well?

Face it, her conduct and recent behavior towards Obama was appalling and it is going to carry over to elections, even if she wins, people are going to be thinking about it when they pull down the levers and decide who to vote for. It will have an effect, despite wishful thinking that it's old news.

Polls showed her national collapse happened the night she stumbled on a question of drivers license for illegals, even though Obama himself stumbled after preparing for weeks on the question

She had a huge national lead, a huge iowa/nh/sc, etc lead

Everything collapsed, over what? It was not dirty campaigning or "oy the Clintons!" it was people realizing that she too could make mistakes at critical times

The entire campaign, correctly, was based on the mood of Democrats that Hillary was a battle-tested warrior who would go through the fire dodging everything and coming out perfect, that's why while Obama and others were getting 20s, she on her lonesome capture a majority of the Democratic vote when there were at least 5 other truely gifted candidates

Also, 900s is a magic number because it would put Obama at such a disadvantage...that with proportional voting it would be nearly impossible to knock her out until April 22nd AND the support of the majority of superdelegates...in fact, such a big win would likely help her cruise to some nice pickups on Feb 14th and then lock up hundreds of superdelegates...could even win the nomination on Feb 12th

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

Polls showed her national collapse happened the night she stumbled on a question of drivers license for illegals, even though Obama himself stumbled after preparing for weeks on the question

She had a huge national lead, a huge iowa/nh/sc, etc lead

Everything collapsed, over what? It was not dirty campaigning or "oy the Clintons!" it was people realizing that she too could make mistakes at critical times

The entire campaign, correctly, was based on the mood of Democrats that Hillary was a battle-tested warrior who would go through the fire dodging everything and coming out perfect, that's why while Obama and others were getting 20s, she on her lonesome capture a majority of the Democratic vote when there were at least 5 other truely gifted candidates

Also, 900s is a magic number because it would put Obama at such a disadvantage...that with proportional voting it would be nearly impossible to knock her out until April 22nd AND the support of the majority of superdelegates...in fact, such a big win would likely help her cruise to some nice pickups on Feb 14th and then lock up hundreds of superdelegates...could even win the nomination on Feb 12th

Are you seriously insinuating that the negative reaction towards the Clinton campaign hasn't had an effect on elections? There's a reason Billy Boy has been reigned in and it wasn't because he was having a positive or neutral effect.

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by JaJae

Are you seriously insinuating that the negative reaction towards the Clinton campaign hasn't had an effect on elections? There's a reason Billy Boy has been reigned in and it wasn't because he was having a positive or neutral effect.

The entire basis of this "Obama vs. Hillary" with a tight race, is because of her verbal screwup on national television

Nixon lost votes because he looked sweaty on national television, there is precedent for this kind of...irrational...voter reaction

If people were voting "against Hillary" you wouldn't see 80%+ of Democratic voters, who actually showed up, saying they'd be satisfied with Hillary as their nominee...while I don't see McCain numbers, from what I've seen...the number would be more like 40% would be "satisfied" with McCain as their nominee

[RMNIXON]

[JaJae]

From Frank Rich:

Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War
By FRANK RICH

WHAT if a presidential candidate held what she billed as “the largest, most interactive town hall in political history” on national television, and no one noticed?

The untold story in the run-up to Super Tuesday was Hillary Clinton’s elaborate live prime-time special the night before the vote. Presiding from a studio in New York, the candidate took questions from audiences in 21 other cities. She had plugged the event four days earlier in the last gasp of her debate with Barack Obama and paid a small fortune for it: an hour of time on the Hallmark Channel plus satellite TV hookups for the assemblies of supporters stretching from coast to coast.

The same news media that constantly revisited the Oprah-Caroline-Maria rally in California ignored “Voices Across America: A National Town Hall.” The Clinton campaign would no doubt attribute this to press bias, but it scrupulously designed the event to avoid making news. Like the scripted “Ask President Bush” sessions during the 2004 campaign, this town hall seemed to unfold in Stepford. The anodyne questions (“What else would you do to help take care of our veterans?”) merely cued up laundry lists of talking points. Some in attendance appeared to trance out.

But I’m glad I watched every minute, right up until Mrs. Clinton was abruptly cut off in midsentence so Hallmark could resume its previously scheduled programming (a movie promising “A Season for Miracles,” aptly enough). However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come.

For a campaign that began with tightly monitored Web “chats” and then planted questions at its earlier town-hall meetings, a Bush-style pseudo-event like the Hallmark special is nothing new, of course. What’s remarkable is that instead of learning from these mistakes, Mrs. Clinton’s handlers keep doubling down.

Less than two weeks ago she was airlifted into her own, less effective version of “Mission Accomplished.” Instead of declaring faux victory in Iraq, she starred in a made-for-television rally declaring faux victory in a Florida primary that was held in defiance of party rules, involved no campaigning and awarded no delegates. As Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said, it was “the Potemkin village of victory celebrations.”

The Hallmark show, enacted on an anachronistic studio set that looked like a deliberate throwback to the good old days of 1992, was equally desperate. If the point was to generate donations or excitement, the effect was the reverse. A campaign operative, speaking on MSNBC, claimed that 250,000 viewers had seen an online incarnation of the event in addition to “who knows how many” Hallmark channel viewers. Who knows, indeed? What we do know is that by then the “Yes We Can” Obama video fronted by the hip-hop vocalist will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas had been averaging roughly a million YouTube views a day. (Cost to the Obama campaign: zero.)

Two days after her town-hall extravaganza, Mrs. Clinton revealed the $5 million loan she had made to her own campaign to survive a month in which the Obama operation had raised $32 million to her $13.5 million. That poignant confession led to a spike in contributions that Mr. Obama also topped. Though Tuesday was largely a draw in popular votes and delegates, every other indicator, from the candidates’ real and virtual crowds to hard cash, points to a steadily widening Obama-Clinton gap. The Clinton campaign might be an imploding Potemkin village itself were it not for the fungible profits from Bill Clinton’s murky post-presidency business deals. (The Clintons, unlike Mr. Obama, have not released their income-tax returns.)

The campaign’s other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards. This was all too apparent in the Hallmark show. In its carefully calibrated cross section of geographically and demographically diverse cast members — young, old, one gay man, one vet, two union members — African-Americans were reduced to also-rans. One black woman, the former TV correspondent Carole Simpson, was given the servile role of the meeting’s nominal moderator, Ed McMahon to Mrs. Clinton’s top banana. Scattered black faces could be seen in the audience. But in the entire televised hour, there was not a single African-American questioner, whether to toss a softball or ask about the Clintons’ own recent misadventures in racial politics.

The Clinton camp does not leave such matters to chance. This decision was a cold, political cost-benefit calculus. In October, seven months after the two candidates’ dueling church perorations in Selma, USA Today found Hillary Clinton leading Mr. Obama among African-American Democrats by a margin of 62 percent to 34 percent. But once black voters met Mr. Obama and started to gravitate toward him, Bill Clinton and the campaign’s other surrogates stopped caring about what African-Americans thought. In an effort to scare off white voters, Mr. Obama was ghettoized as a cocaine user (by the chief Clinton strategist, Mark Penn, among others), “the black candidate” (as Clinton strategists told the Associated Press) and Jesse Jackson redux (by Mr. Clinton himself).

The result? Black America has largely deserted the Clintons. In her California primary victory, Mrs. Clinton drew only 19 percent of the black vote. The campaign saw this coming and so saw no percentage in bestowing precious minutes of prime-time television on African-American queries.

That time went instead to the Hispanic population that was still in play in Super Tuesday’s voting in the West. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles had a cameo, and one of the satellite meetings was held in the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s smart politics, especially since Mr. Obama has been behind the curve in wooing this constituency.

But the wholesale substitution of Hispanics for blacks on the Hallmark show is tainted by a creepy racial back story. Last month a Hispanic pollster employed by the Clinton campaign pitted the two groups against each other by telling The New Yorker that Hispanic voters have “not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.” Mrs. Clinton then seconded the motion by telling Tim Russert in a debate that her pollster was “making a historical statement.”

It wasn’t an accurate statement, historical or otherwise. It was a lie, and a bigoted lie at that, given that it branded Hispanics, a group as heterogeneous as any other, as monolithic racists. As the columnist Gregory Rodriguez pointed out in The Los Angeles Times, all three black members of Congress in that city won in heavily Latino districts; black mayors as various as David Dinkins in New York in the 1980s and Ron Kirk in Dallas in the 1990s received more than 70 percent of the Hispanic vote. The real point of the Clinton campaign’s decision to sow misinformation and racial division, Mr. Rodriguez concluded, was to “undermine one of Obama’s central selling points, that he can build bridges and unite Americans of all types.”

If that was the intent, it didn’t work. Mrs. Clinton did pile up her expected large margin among Latino voters in California. But her tight grip on that electorate is loosening. Mr. Obama, who captured only 26 percent of Hispanic voters in Nevada last month, did better than that in every state on Tuesday, reaching 41 percent in Arizona and 53 percent in Connecticut. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign’s attempt to drive white voters away from Mr. Obama by playing the race card has backfired. His white vote tally rises every week. Though Mrs. Clinton won California by almost 10 percentage points, among whites she beat Mr. Obama by only 3 points.

The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall. Clearly it will stop at little. That’s why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton’s assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn’t matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote “is not going to count for anything.”

Last month, two eminent African-American historians who have served in government, Mary Frances Berry (in the Carter and Clinton years) and Roger Wilkins (in the Johnson administration), wrote Howard Dean, the Democrats’ chairman, to warn him of the perils of that credentials fight. Last week, Mr. Dean became sufficiently alarmed to propose brokering an “arrangement” if a clear-cut victory by one candidate hasn’t rendered the issue moot by the spring. But does anyone seriously believe that Howard Dean can deter a Clinton combine so ruthless that it risked shredding three decades of mutual affection with black America to win a primary?

A race-tinged brawl at the convention, some nine weeks before Election Day, will not be a Hallmark moment. As Mr. Wilkins reiterated to me last week, it will be a flashback to the Democratic civil war of 1968, a suicide for the party no matter which victor ends up holding the rancid spoils.

These types of articles are clearly becoming more of the norm. As the Hillary campaign turns dirtier, she is losing more and more support. The gloves are coming off against Hillary and I think this trend will continue as long as she keeps running the type of campaign she has been.

[RMNIXON]

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democrat Barack Obama Sunday sought to ride a wave of weekend wins into Tuesday's "Potomac Primary" reveling in a virtual tie for delegates with rival Hillary Clinton in their epic White House battle.

Buoyed by four primary and caucus victories on Saturday, Obama was said to have narrowed the gap on Clinton in the all-important delegate tally.

A new count by RealClearPolitics.com, an independent poll-tracking website, showed Clinton had pocketed some 1,123 delegates, while Obama had raced up from behind to narrow the gap, with 1,120 delegates.

A total of 2,025 delegates are needed to be formally crowned the Democratic presidential nominee at the party's August convention.

Both candidates were out campaigning in Virginia Sunday, which holds primaries Tuesday along with its Potomac River neighbors, Maryland and the US federal capital, Washington, DC.

Obama, who seeks to become the first black US president, is considered the favorite to take Maryland and Washington, DC, which have large African-American populations.

The former first lady also looks vulnerable in Virginia as an average of opinion polls showed Obama leading by 17 percentage points.

Caucuses were also being held in Maine on Sunday, with some 24 delegates at stake.

After their Super Tuesday stalemate, Obama won big on Saturday in Washington state, Nebraska, Louisiana, and the Virgin Islands, outscoring the former first lady by 2 to 1.

"We won north, we won south, we won in between," Obama, 46, told 6,000 cheering guests in an electrifying speech at a Democratic dinner in Virginia.

"People want to turn the page. They want to write a new chapter in American history. And today the voters from the west coast to the Gulf coast to the heart of America stood up to say yes, we can."

Obama gains on Clinton as 'Potomac Primary' looms - Yahoo! News

[JaJae]

6abc.com: Super Tuesday makes New Jersey Super Delegates more important 2/06/08

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - February 6, 2008 -- Presidential candidates may seek our votes, but they really want our delegates. And, they covet our superdelegates.

...

According to the Democratic State Committee, Clinton has secured 59 New Jersey delegates and Obama has gotten 48.

Of the 20 Democratic superdelegates - elected officials and Democratic National Committee members - who have expressed a candidate preference, Clinton is leading Obama, 13-1.

However, superdelegates can change their minds and are not bound to reflect the popular vote.

...

Senate President Richard Codey, an Obama backer, thinks that since the Democratic race was close, superdelegates are ethically bound to split their votes proportionally.

In other words, some NJ super-delegates may end up changing their votes from Hillary to Obama.

[JaJae]

N.J. superdelegate for Clinton now undecided -- Newsday.com

NEWARK, N.J. - Recent remarks by Hillary Clinton and former President Clinton prompted one of New Jersey's superdelegates to reconsider her support of the former first lady and move to an undecided status.

Democratic superdelegate Christine "Roz" Samuels of Montclair said she changed her preference for Hillary Clinton after the former president's comments about Obama's stance on the Iraq war, and after Hillary Clinton's comments about Martin Luther King.

And so it begins... There were posts made about her speaking of MLK and there were responses that it wasn't racial politics or important. Well it just cost her at least delegate.

And she questioned how Hillary Clinton's eyes welled up before last month's New Hampshire primary. "I am female, and I know we can cry at the drop of the hat," she said, "but that was a bit much."

ouch.

[northhunter]

An AP article I just read said Hillary has replaced her campaign manager. Maggie Williams will now manage the campaign. I thought there would be somekind of fallout after Obama did so well on Saturday.

[JaJae]

Predictions are abound:

I believe that Barack Obama will defeat Hillary and win the Democratic nomination. I think that this weekend's victories in states as diverse as Washington State, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Maine illustrates his national appeal and demonstrates Hillary's inability to win in states without large immigrant and Latino populations.
Hillary's results on Super Tuesday, which amounted to a draw with Obama, will be her high water mark and will represent the closest she will ever come to the party nomination.

Right now, CBS has Obama ahead in elected delegates with 1134, while Hillary has only 1131.By the time Virginia, Maryland, DC, Wisconsin, and Hawaii vote during the next week, Obama will have a lead over Clinton of about 100 delegates, even counting the super delegates who have thus far committed themselves.
March 4th will, at worst, be a wash for Obama with his probable wins in Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont offsetting his probable defeat in Texas. (Although in Texas' open primary, Republicans and Independents may flock to the Dem primary to beat Hillary).
And then come a list of states almost all of which should go for Obama, including likely victories in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana. By the convention, he will have more than enough delegates to overcome the expected margins Hillary may rack up among super delegates.

And don't bet on all the super delegates staying hitched to Hillary. These folks are politicians, half of them public office holders who are really good at reading the handwriting on the wall and really bad at gratitude for past favors.

Since 2004, I have predicted that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee. But, given the consistently amazing performance of Obama, his superior organizational and fund-raising skills, his inspiration of young people, and the flat and completely uninspiring performance by Hillary, it looks to me like it will be Obama as the Democratic nominee.

Dick Morris, a Fox News Analyst and author of several books, is a former advisor to Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss) and President Bill Clinton.

Rasmussen Reports™: The most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a mid-term election.

The writing is on the wall...

[RMNIXON]

Originally Posted by northhunter

An AP article I just read said Hillary has replaced her campaign manager. Maggie Williams will now manage the campaign. I thought there would be somekind of fallout after Obama did so well on Saturday.

A nice payoff for the woman who removed those pesky files from dead Vince Foster's Office before the FBI could investigate.

Another world class choice in the Clinton Camp!

[motivez]

Obama as the nominee bodes well for the Democrats I think. Despite my concerns about some of his policies, the Republicans have spent years gearing up for a fight against Hillary..

She has high negatives, and will turn out the Republican base.

Obama does not, and since it appears Republicans are presented with what many see as a non-conservative nominee in McCain, many of them may actually stay home if they don't see Obama as the same type of threat they would see in Hillary

[kinggovernor]

Originally Posted by motivez

Obama as the nominee bodes well for the Democrats I think. Despite my concerns about some of his policies, the Republicans have spent years gearing up for a fight against Hillary..

She has high negatives, and will turn out the Republican base.

Obama does not, and since it appears Republicans are presented with what many see as a non-conservative nominee in McCain, many of them may actually stay home if they don't see Obama as the same type of threat they would see in Hillary

I have been saying this for awhile:

I wish it was McCain - Billary for Republican's sake

McCain - Obama for the country' sake

[RMNIXON]

"If I drive her home can I be the Vice President?"

[JaJae]

Getting tired of the excuses?

Analysis: Facing losses, Clinton recasts - Yahoo! News
Analysis: Facing losses, Clinton recasts

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press WriterTue Feb 12, 3:02 PM ET

Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has found a lot of ways to explain her string of losses to Sen. Barack Obama.

Caucus states, the former first lady says, are undemocratic and cater only to party activists. Southern states, like Louisiana, have "a very strong and very proud African-American electorate" naturally predisposed to favor a black candidate. And so-called "red" states like North Dakota, Idaho and Kansas — all of which Obama won on Super Tuesday — will never choose a Democrat in the general election anyway.

By this logic, only certain states really matter, such as New Hampshire and New Jersey, states that Clinton has won. Or Texas and Ohio, states she must capture to stay in the race.

The list of excuses is long, but the justifications are wearing thin as Obama was expected to win primaries in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia on Tuesday after a four-state sweep last weekend plus the Virgin Islands. All the contests Clinton has suggested don't count are proving in size and scope that they do.

"Every day the numbers show the true state of the race," Democratic strategist Jenny Backus said. "Obama is moving and gathering a bigger coalition, and Hillary's coalition is diminishing."

In the face of so many losses, the Clinton campaign has tried gamely to recalibrate expectations — signaling loudly that February would not be a good month for the New York senator. Her strategists even are discounting the power of Obama's momentum and are instead framing the contest as a drawn-out hunt for delegates that might not conclude until the party's national convention in Denver this August.

But to do so is to ignore all the other measures of campaign success — all of which now favor Obama. His campaign has brought in more than $1 million per day from more than 650,000 contributors, allowing him to flood the primary states with television ads and staff. Clinton, meanwhile, is still climbing out of a financial hole that forced her to make a $5 million personal loan to the campaign.

Obama also continues to draw arena-sized crowds to his rallies, dwarfing Clinton's smaller but still enthusiastic gatherings.

In the face of such numbers, Clinton strategists have taken a risk — all but pinning her candidacy to the outcome of primaries in Texas and Ohio on March 4. The two states are large and delegate-rich, and their demographics — working-class white voters in Ohio, a large Hispanic population in Texas — have so far favored her candidacy.

Clinton was traveling to Texas Tuesday while Obama was heading to Wisconsin, whose primary is Feb. 19.

To be sure, Clinton's strength among traditional Democratic constituencies has proven durable and has effectively prevented Obama from running away with the contest so far. And Clinton has rightly said that a Democrat would be hard pressed to win a general election without the support of the party's base.

But Obama has begun to make inroads in those voting blocs — winning a caucus in Maine on Sunday that was dominated by white, working-class voters. He has prevailed with blacks, another cornerstone of the Democratic base, while creating a new alliance of voters not always associated with the party, including independents, affluent voters, young people and men.

Obama's major challenge is attracting working-class women — loyal Democrats who form the base of Clinton's constituency.

Those voters and the economic anxiety they face are what could allow Clinton to remain viable, Backus said.

"The Clinton campaign can't have it be about states won or lost or delegates won," she said. "It needs to be about electability in the fall, strength against John McCain, and the key issues voters are facing."