I've been thinking a lot about this issue for the past few weeks, and I'm having a very hard time understanding where the hard-core, rabid, feminist Hillary supporters are coming from. I can certainly understand their disappointment and despair over her not winning the nomination (for some of them, Hillary was their first and last best hope at electing a female President), but I don't understand their willingness to abandon their Democratic and feminist principles and either sit out the election or vote for McCain. It seems that they became so emotionally invested in Hillary the person, instead of Hillary the candidate, that they have lost all objectivity and reason. Which leads me to my main train of thought.  But before I begin, let me state that I realize there are male Hillary supporters. However, in perusing the pro-Hillary websites, it seems that the bulk of her most vociferous and outspoken supporters are woman of a certain age and experience, and it is this group of supporters about which I am writing.

OK, so here goes. We have been told time and time again over the past few months that we need to give Hillary supporters "time" to deal with their disappointment and their sorrow, and that Hillary herself needs "time" to drop out of the race. We are told that her supporters deserve "respect" and that their voices must not be silenced. It seems to me (and I consider myself to be a rather staunch feminist) that these are very condescending, paternalistic, patronizing statements and directives. The message is that her supporters are emotional, temperamental and thus have to be handled with kid gloves. I might be wrong, but aren't these the very same attitudes, misconceptions and generalizations that feminists have been fighting against all these years? Why do only Hillary supporters need to be molly-coddled and "brought along"? Were Edwards, Richardson, Biden or Kucinich supporters given the same considerations? I was originally an Edwards supporter and I don't remember anyone saying that I needed "time" to deal with my candidate's decision to drop out of the race. I was disappointed to be sure, but as an adult I dealt with it, I looked at the remaining candidates, and I made the next best choice (in my opinion). Are Hillary supporters incapable of doing that? Are they that emotionally invested that they need to be given special consideration? And if they are, doesn't that just feed into the stereotype of the "weak, nervous, emotional" female crap?

I really believe that the underlying message, which is being pushed hardest by Hillary herself, is that she is a victim, her supporters are victims, and they will need to be coddled until they can pull themselves together. Now, I'm not saying there weren't sexist elements working against her in this campaign (although, in my opinion, not as many as some others may think), but being a passive victim, in my opinion, is not feminism. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

If there is any doubt that Obama means what he says about changing Washington, this article at Politico should put an end to those doubts:

Link to full article

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is moving on two fronts to make transparency a linchpin of his campaign, opening his fundraisers to reporters and clamping down on Democratic National Committee’s fundraising from Washington insiders.

The moves, announced on his second full day as the party’s presidential nominee, are designed to drive a campaign message of change versus more of the same, aides said.

His opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) closes his fundraisers to the press. Beginning last night, Obama will open all of his fundraisers to at least a pool reporter who will share the information with the rest of the press corps.

Beginning today, the DNC will no longer accept checks from federal lobbyists or political action committees, mirroring the strict standard Obama adopted for his presidential campaign.

“This is an important step that shows Senator Obama is willing to take tough steps to change the way Washington works,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the campaign’s deputy communications director.

The policy, which will not hurt fundraising appreciably, is not retroactive.

According to ABC News, Hillary will drop out of the race on Friday:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4705151&page=1

Not too much information other than the announcement. It is long overdue and welcome news, I must say!

OK, I hesitated posting this YouTube video because of the potential disrespect to Hillary supporters (most of whom I actually do respect and like), but this spoof is too funny and clever to pass up. Now, before you view the video, I have to post a disclaimer: in no way am I agreeing that Hillary = Hitler, and I also don't agree with the homophobic statements in the video (there, I think I've covered what I need to). Anyway, enjoy! ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Lstkiexhc

Well, since TPM Election Central is unwilling to post anything this morning from the Obama camp, let me post the letter that David Plouffe sent out late last night to the superdelegates (why this is not newsworthy is a little puzzling to me):

"There are only six contests remaining in the Democratic primary calendar and only 217 pledged delegates left to be awarded. Only 7 percent of the pledged delegates remain on the table. There are 260 remaining undeclared superdelegates, for a total of 477 delegates left to be awarded.

With North Carolina and Indiana complete, Barack Obama only needs 172 total delegates to capture the Democratic nomination.  This is only 36% of the total remaining delegates.

Conversely, Senator Clinton needs 326 delegates to reach the Democratic nomination, which represents a startling 68% of the remaining delegates.

With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days. While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.

We believe it is exceedingly unlikely Senator Clinton will overtake our lead in the popular vote and in fact lost ground on that measure last night. However, the popular vote is a deeply flawed and illegitimate metric for deciding the nominee – since each campaign based their strategy on the acquisition of delegates. More importantly, the rules of the nomination are predicated on delegates, not popular vote.

Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.

If we believed the popular vote was  somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.

The Clinton campaign was very clear about their own strategy until the numbers become too ominous for them. They were like a broken record , repeating ad nauseum that this nomination race is about delegates. Now, the word delegate has disappeared from their vocabulary, in an attempt to change the rules and create an alternative reality.

We want to be clear – we believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates  According to a recent news report, by even their most optimistic estimates the Clinton Campaign expects to trail by more than 100 pledged delegates and will then ask the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.

But of course superdelegates are free to and have been utilizing their own criteria for deciding who our nominee should be. Many are deciding on the basis of electability, a favorite Clinton refrain. And if you look at the numbers, during a period where the Clinton campaign has been making an increasingly strident pitch on electability, it is clear their argument is failing miserably with superdelegates.

Since February 5, the Obama campaign has netted 107 superdelegates, and the Clinton campaign only 21. Since the Pennsylvania primary, much of it during the challenging Rev. Wright period, we have netted 24 and the Clinton campaign 17.

At some point – we would argue that time is now – this ceases to be a theoretical exercise about how superdelegates view electability. The reality of the preferences in the last several weeks offer a clear guide of how strongly superdelegates feel Senator Obama will perform in November, both in building a winning campaign for the presidency as well as providing the best electoral climate across the country for all Democratic candidates.

It is important to note that Senator Obama leads Senator Clinton in superdelegate endorsements among Governors, United States Senators and members of the House of Representatives. These elected officials all have a keen sense for who our strongest nominee will be in November.

It is only among DNC members where Senator Clinton holds a lead, which has been rapidly dwindling.

As we head into the final days of the campaign, we just wanted to be clear with you as a party leader, who will be instrumental in making the final decision of who our nominee will be, how we view the race at this point.

Senator Obama, our campaign and our supporters believe pledged delegates is the most legitimate metric for determining how this race has unfolded. It is simply the ratification of the DNC rules – your rules – which we built this campaign and our strategy around."

This article says it all about the state of the Republican party's chances in November.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26376

My favorite quote:

<blockquote>

The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.

This model has already been tested with disastrous results.

In 2006, there were six incumbent Republican Senators who had plenty of money, the advantage of incumbency, and traditionally successful consultants.

But the voters in all six states had adopted a simple position: "Not you." No matter what the GOP Senators attacked their opponents with, the voters shrugged off the attacks and returned to, "Not you."

The danger for House and Senate Republicans in 2008 is that the voters will say, "Not the Republicans."</blockquote>

Poor Newt - I think his pleas are going to fall on deaf ears, and McCain will be a serious liability to them this fall. Wonderful news!

This post by Kos is laugh-out-loud funny. McCain is having a few too many senior moments lately - I can't wait until Obama debates him! ;)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/5/6/152958/0148/373/510163

This is inspired!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=167642&title=panderers-box

Enjoy!!

I saw this last night and I nearly had an asthma attack I was laughing so hard. To use a baseball metaphor (something of which I know he would approve), he hit this one clear out of the park and out on Yawkey Way (yes, I am a Sox fan!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9xI44haWkI

Enjoy!

I don't know if this has been posted (I don't think I remember seeing anything about it here).

According to the CBC (Canada's public broadcasting network) the Obama campaign was telling the truth about the NAFTA dustup. They did NOT contact the Canadian government (it was the other way around), and they are now admitting that the infamous "memo" did not reflect accurately what they were told. You can read all about it here:

Link

This DKos diary also has the video of the CBC report linked so you can watch it for yourself.

While it it too late for Ohio, Obama can (and should) use this to push back against Clinton's meme that he is untrustworthy and dishonest. We'll also see how the media pick up on this
(I'm not hopeful it will get nearly as much air time as the ridiculous coverage the original story got).

Clever video of Clinton & McCain...

Video

OK, I really don't like to complain, but please, please tell us when all of these annoying site problems (i.e., repeated logins and logouts), posts lost, problems with finding blogs that I've written) will be corrected. We were promised that it was going to be "soon", but it seems to be as bad (or worse) than ever. I am a programmer, and so I understand the problems in resolving issues - I really do. However, if I took as long fixing errors in my software as it's taking to get these issues debugged I would be out of business or have some extremely angry clients at the very least. It is very frustrating and time-consuming to have to post a comment or blog entry multiple times before it "takes", and I'm sure it's deterring some people from participating.  Will someone please make a concerted effort to figure out what's going on and get it fixed?
Thank you.

OK, so we Obama supporters were denied a blowout last night, and Senator Clinton lives to fight another day. After my initial (profound) disappointment over this fact, I decided that, to save my sanity and health, I would trust in my preferred candidate to take these losses as a learning experience, figure out what went wrong (and what Clinton did right), and refine his strategy so that he can go on and win the nomination. After all, if our candidate is so fragile that he cannot withstand a few losses (in the popular vote), then he certainly is not going to be able to withstand the barrage and assault that the Republicans have in store for him.

I know that the Obama camp is in spin mode (as is the Clinton camp), and they are correct - it is about delegates, and Clinton did little to cut into Obama's relatively substantial lead in pledged delegates. But we also have to give credit to Clinton for winning both Ohio and Texas - yes, she went negative; yes, she was unfair; yes, she engaged in fear-mongering; yes, Rush Limbaugh may have had something to do with her win in Texas . However, whatever the reasons, she achieved what she wanted (had) to and has no plans to drop out of the race. So, we're on to Pennsylvania (and, of course Wyoming and Mississippi before that). Congratulations to Senator Clinton for her victories and congratulations to all Clinton supporters.  It's been a long time between wins for her and I'm sure you are much relieved and happy for your candidate.

This was the first real test of Obama as frontrunner, and I think he did admirably - he cut deeply into her lead in both Ohio and Texas (both states where, only a couple of weeks ago, she was predicted to win by double digits), and he maintained his comfortable delegate margin. He also responded to the negative ads, false innuendo, and "NAFTA-gate" forcefully but with dignity and without getting down into the dirt with her. I respect and admire him for that. His spokeperson (I think it was Axelrod) stated last night on MSNBC that they will respond to Clinton's "kitchen sink" in their own way, and I have no doubt that they will be revamping and retooling their campaign going forward so that they are not caught off-guard by anything her campaign chooses to throw at him. In some ways, these losses, and the continued campaign, will toughen him up and make him a stronger candidate.

I do have a few things to say, however, about Mrs. Clinton's victory speech last night and the implications for the next seven or so weeks. Given the tone and timbre of her speech, this campaign is going to get dirtier and more negative. She did not even have the grace and class to congratulate Senator Obama on his win in Vermont (whereas, he was very careful to congratulate her, both for Rhode Island and for Ohio, which hadn't even been called yet). However, she made a point of congratulating Senator McCain (again aligning herself with a Republican against a fellow Democrat).  In my opinion, over the past couple of weeks she has shown her true colors - she is a ruthless politician who will stop at nothing to achieve her objective, even if it means falsely maligning and betraying another Democrat and perhaps doing lasting damage to the party. That may be an admirable quality to some people, but that's not the kind of Democrat I want leading my party.  It seems that the Democratic voters do not want this primary season to end yet, and that is wonderful on many levels, because it means that we are listening and really thinking hard about who we want to represent us. However, I do NOT believe that most Democratic voters want the Clinton campaign to continue falsely maligning and smearing her rival, either. Those millions of new voters that Obama is bringing into the party are not going to stick around if she persists with this tactic, and she will find herself in big trouble in November, if she wins the nomination, without the ability to count on these new voters (to say nothing of independents, who will simply vote for McCain).

So, here's hoping that the Clinton campaign and its supporters show a little dignity and respect going forward. Let's try to elevate the dialog, focus on the issues, and not resort to name-calling, insults and smears. It is fine to be passionate about your candidate (I know I am). However, we're losing our perspective (and, most of all, our sense of humor), and we're doing what we've always accused the right wing of doing - sniping, in-fighting, nastiness. Can we all pull back now, take a deep breath, and gain a little objectivity after last night? I hope so for the future of our party and our country.

Can someone please enlighten me as to the purpose of this article?

NY Times Article

What earthly reason would the NY Times have for publishing an article about people's worries that Obama will go the way of MLK Jr. and Bobby Kennedy? Is this newsworthy?  My first thought after reading the article is "Oh, God, now some looney tunes is actually going to try it".  It doesn't seem to me to serve any purpose - maybe I'm missing something important but they could have written this article about security for the presidential candidates (they didn't even talk about the problems with his security detail, which have come to light in some of our blogs) without resorting to these kinds of sensational speculations.  What do you think?

Do we really need this idiot to wreak havoc again?

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/02/22/nader-considering-another-white-house-run/#more-5508

While I don't necessarily blame Nader for Gore's loss in 2000 (after all, if Gore had carried either his home state or Clinton's, Florida would not have been an issue), I do blame him for diverting attention from the race and making a general pain in the neck of himself.  I really don't think this is about the democratic process for him; This man is an egomaniac and he needs to just go away.

On the positive side (if he gets into the race), he only got 0.3% of the vote in 2004 (down from 2.7% in 2000), so hopefully the voters are on to him and he will get an even lower percentage in 2008. Interestingly, in 2004 Nader got practically all of his votes from the 30-44 age group, and mostly from non-white men and women (looking at breakdown by gender), all of whom are strongly in Obama's corner.  Anyway, he's going to be on Meet the Press tomorrow morning so we'll see what he has to say.