Sorry--no can do.

If the nutjobs that deny the nomination stay home, we still win.

It's time to for the party to evolve and shed the dead weight of politics as usual. With us or against us, we will win on the merits of our policy and our candidate.

Hillary will NOT force herself on this ticket, and should be ashamed of her actions last night.

It's time to come clean and kiss the ring (Obama's ass).

Once the shock wears off and eyes are cleared, Sen. Clinton's supporters will realize that the next president will choose one maybe two Supreme Court Justices, the economy has been shitty under the Republicans and our country has suffered internationally. Sen. McCain doesn't have the skill set to right the ship.

I know women and Hillary does not have a lock on the support of all women voters. As a matter of fact, most women I know do not support her because of her bizarre behavior. Hillary has lost and she is now trying to force her way onto the Obama ticket. Because of the tactics that she is using, if Obama chooses her now, he will be seen as being weak. Think about it. All of the other presidential candidates also were disappointed with losing the contest. They were able to show grace in defeat, but not Hillary. She is still on this entitlement crusade. You have to wonder if she has a bigger motive and pursuing the VP slot is only a smokescreen.

For the topic starter. Im not being coy and or an ass. Hillary Clinton is a Rep of the Dem Party. I know people have different opinions I suspect there are some who feel she should get yet another pass by not acknowledging that Obama won last night. Just for me though,Is there any point that Hillary Clinton should be asked to show Leadership that about more than her own ambitions?

"The amount of bitterness, hatred and venom being spit at her is going to drive her supporters to McCain."

Good. If they're dumb enough to support Hillary, they're dumb enough to support McCain. Then they can scream and cry all over again when they lose in November.

Nearly half the voting dems in the country have been voting for HRC, even when she's been "losing" for months, according to the CW on this site.

Not all are racist old women, just as not all Obama voters are innocents abroad in the adult world.

Unfortunately, Obama's supporters on this site do seem to show support by trashing his opponent. The constant excoriation of HRC's campaign tactics is hilarious. Have they not experienced a presidential campaign before?

Good try, Robby. Most of the Obama folks never really got it. It seemed as if they thought August was everything. It's too bad because it could have been a landslide year.

With all those "newcomers Obama brought to the party", it's a shame that he couldn't bring more adults.

"If we kick her and stomp her while her campaign is in its death throes"

We'll cross that bridge once her campaign enters its death throes, and not a moment sooner.

Hillary is demanding the right to keep on fighting while demanding that Obama stop; that's not how it works.

Ow, centerpunch, that hurts so baaad. He's calling me names (that's a whine).

I'm voting Obama in November. What part of my post was kooky baseless generalization whine and victimization? I specified "this site" (meaning those like you) - not Obama supporters in general.

"If we kick her and stomp her while her campaign is in its death throes...."

The problem is that she doesn't recognize death throes. There have now been multiple junctures when it looks like she should gracefully ease out of this thing, and many Obama supporters, including myself, ease up on her, and say we need to give her space, and not gloat and so on... and then?....

Nothing. She doesn't go anywhere. She isn't gracious to Obama. She ratchets up the rhetoric. She acts like somehow he's to blame for her problems, when in fact he's been bending over backwards not to alienate her supporters. His reward is a speech like the one last night.

She's been "demanding respect" for months now. But she shows him none. Fuck her. Fuck that fucking bitch. I hate her guts. She's already screwed her Party. She's a Clinton first, second and third, and a Democrat fourth.

Robby Love: "The amount of bitterness, hatred and venom being spit at her is ..."

... apparently in proportion to the bitterness, hatred and venom she encourages.

This is someone who appears to have little ability to wield power gracefully. It was evident when, as First Lady, she began acting like the Viceroy for Health Care Reform. It's been evident throughout her primary campaign, but in particular since February, which was years ago.

While her political ideology may be barely left of centre, the behaviour that seems to come most naturally to her, and with which she seems most comfortable, is that of a fascist.

The same can be said of those of her supporters who pretend to defend her by threatening anyone they deem to be a threat to her.

They seem not to have noticed, but the country, let alone the world, have a few pressing problems that require attention more than they or their leader. They've been defeated. Now if they would simply pay the rest of us the courtesy of getting the fuck out of our faces, ...

Okay, I am wondering if we need a vent period/party where everyone goes nuts to the nth degree and vents all of their pent up emotions uncensored. We let both sides go nutz and get as disgusting and ugly and evil and nasty as they need to get all they way... make a contest of how low they and dirty they can go... everything you haven't said, you wanted to say, especially if you've been sucking it up... let it allllll outtt.No holes barred. Don't hold back. I mean really go for it... Hillary and Barack... fair game...heck me too I'm an Obama supporter... have at me... let out all of the pain and frustration and let's see how everyone feels tomorrow... or however long it takes.
Sometimes you've just got to let it out... and maybe when everyone is through we'll have a lot of energy available for something else....:)

Hillary has been very well treated, all things considered. She ran a campaign -- the second part, anyway, that she called the "kitchen sink strategy" -- that, in every way, mirrored the "politics of personal destruction" campaigns directed against the Clintons in the 1990s. And sometimes, she went even further.

And then, to add insult to insult, she had her lackey go out on stage to tell her supporters they were welcoming the next president of the United States -- on the night Obama won the nomination!

Anything that anyone says about Hillary at this point will be milder than the outrage I feel at what she did. And with McCain using video clips of her smearing Obama in his campaign ads, will continue doing, even after she's gone.

She deserves worse condemnation than she'll ever get here.

Pity her? That's not an especially kind word either, my friend.

I say, just shut up about Hillary already. She has become the bogeywoman - the object of (in my view) so much irrational hatred and scorn. Even on the day Obama won, some people just can't seem to let go.

Well, it's over. She conceded now. If you want to woo her supporters who are your natural allies, many of them smart, principled progressives, pity is not the best way to start.

I watched a few minutes of Fox News tonight (I can usually only tolerate a few minutes), and they had some young female Republican strategist in the studio debating a young female Democratic strategist in DC. The Republican was such a horrible, disgusting goofball, bitter, deranged and on the attack. It was infuriating and enough to make me forget Hillary Clinton.

After these aweful Rovian attack dogs start coming out of the woodwork and creating such spectacles, we're all going to be able to channel our negative energy where it rightfully belongs–at Republicans. Hillary mostly angered me when she moved into this territory, but seeing it for real, makes me realize that at her worst, she was nowhere near these people.

Magnaminity is reserved for those who concede. Until she does that, Sen. Clinton declares herself to be the continuing enemy of the nominee of the Democratic Party. As the enemy, it isn't appropriate to stop targeting her. One does not drop the épée while one's oponent is still in mid-lunge. Wouldn't be prudent.

"Just keep it up and see where it gets your dishonest muslim candidate!!!"

Arrogant, provocative and elitist comments like these started most of the heated arguments we have seen here, and it started just after Edwards dropped out and Obama steamrolled to the lead.

Like I posted earlier, just go back to the beginning of the trash talk, and almost without exception, it was something like this that started the hateful games of verbal leapfrog that we just can't seem top quiet, now that the deal is done.

I don't know whom you're replying to maggi, but Muslim? Seriously? I'm pretty sure that Hillary supporters who believe that garbage aren't people that Obama can win over anyway, so it really doesn't matter.

http://www.counterpunch.org/gonzalez02292008.html

February 29, 2008
Count Me Out
The Obama Craze

By MATT GONZALEZ

Part of me shares the enthusiasm for Barack Obama. After all, how could someone calling themself a progressive not sense the importance of what it means to have an African-American so close to the presidency? But as his campaign has unfolded, and I heard that we are not red states or blue states for the 6th or 7th time, I realized I knew virtually nothing about him.

Like most, I know he gave a stirring speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. I know he defeated Alan Keyes in the Illinois Senate race; although it wasn't much of a contest (Keyes was living in Maryland when he announced). Recently, I started looking into Obama's voting record, and I'm afraid to say I'm not just uninspired: I'm downright fearful. Here's why:

This is a candidate who says he's going to usher in change; that he is a different kind of politician who has the skills to get things done. He reminds us again and again that he had the foresight to oppose the war in Iraq. And he seems to have a genuine interest in lifting up the poor.

But his record suggests that he is incapable of ushering in any kind of change I'd like to see. It is one of accommodation and concession to the very political powers that we need to reign in and oppose if we are to make truly lasting advances.

THE WAR IN IRAQ

Let's start with his signature position against the Iraq war. Obama has sent mixed messages at best.

First, he opposed the war in Iraq while in the Illinois state legislature. Once he was running for US Senate though, when public opinion and support for the war was at its highest, he was quoted in the July 27, 2004 Chicago Tribune as saying, "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage.
The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute." The Tribune went on to say that Obama, "now believes US forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation ­ a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration."

Obama's campaign says he was referring to the ongoing occupation and how best to stabilize the region. But why wouldn't he have taken the opportunity to urge withdrawal if he truly opposed the war? Was he trying to signal to conservative voters that he would subjugate his anti-war position if elected to the US Senate and perhaps support a lengthy occupation? Well as it turns out, he's done just that.

Since taking office in January 2005 he has voted to approve every war appropriation the Republicans have put forward, totaling over $300 billion. He also voted to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her complicity in the Bush Administration's various false justifications for going to war in Iraq. Why would he vote to make one of the architects of "Operation Iraqi Liberation" the head of US foreign policy? Curiously, he lacked the courage of 13 of his colleagues who voted against her confirmation.

And though he often cites his background as a civil rights lawyer, Obama voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act in July 2005, easily the worse attack on civil liberties in the last half-century. It allows for wholesale eavesdropping on American citizens under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts.

And in March 2006, Obama went out of his way to travel to Connecticut to campaign for Senator Joseph Lieberman who faced a tough challenge by anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. At a Democratic Party dinner attended by Lamont, Obama called Lieberman "his mentor" and urged those in attendance to vote and give financial contributions to him. This is the same Lieberman who Alexander Cockburn called "Bush's closest Democratic ally on the Iraq War." Why would Obama have done that if he was truly against the war?

Recently, with anti-war sentiment on the rise, Obama declared he will get our combat troops out of Iraq in 2009. But Obama isn't actually saying he wants to get all of our troops out of Iraq. At a September 2007 debate before the New Hampshire primary, moderated by Tim Russert, Obama refused to commit to getting our troops out of Iraq by January 2013 and, on the campaign trail, he has repeatedly stated his desire to add 100,000 combat troops to the military.

At the same event, Obama committed to keeping enough soldiers in Iraq to "carry out our counter-terrorism activities there" which includes "striking at al Qaeda in Iraq." What he didn't say is this continued warfare will require an estimated 60,000 troops to remain in Iraq according to a May 2006 report prepared by the Center for American Progress. Moreover, it appears he intends to "redeploy" the troops he takes out of the unpopular war in Iraq and send them to Afghanistan. So it appears that under Obama's plan the US will remain heavily engaged in war.

This is hardly a position to get excited about.

CLASS ACTION REFORM:

In 2005, Obama joined Republicans in passing a law dubiously called the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) that would shut down state courts as a venue to hear many class action lawsuits. Long a desired objective of large corporations and President George Bush, Obama in effect voted to deny redress in many of the courts where these kinds of cases have the best chance of surviving corporate legal challenges. Instead, it forces them into the backlogged Republican-judge dominated federal courts.

By contrast, Senators Clinton, Edwards and Kerry joined 23 others to vote against CAFA, noting the "reform" was a thinly-veiled "special interest extravaganza" that favored banking, creditors and other corporate interests. David Sirota, the former spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, commented on CAFA in the June 26, 2006 issue of The Nation, "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop "frivolous" lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers."

Nation contributor Dan Zegart noted further: "On its face, the class-action bill is mere procedural tinkering, transferring from state to federal court actions involving more than $5 million where any plaintiff is from a different state from the defendant company. But federal courts are much more hostile to class actions than their state counterparts; such cases tend to be rooted in the finer points of state law, in which federal judges are reluctant to dabble. And even if federal judges do take on these suits, with only 678 of them on the bench (compared with 9,200 state judges), already overburdened dockets will grow. Thus, the bill will make class actions ­ most of which involve discrimination, consumer fraud and wage-and-hour violations ­ all but impossible. One example: After forty lawsuits were filed against Wal-Mart for allegedly forcing employees to work "off the clock," four state courts certified these suits as class actions. Not a single federal court did so, although the practice probably involves hundreds of thousands of employees nationwide."

Why would a civil rights lawyer knowingly make it harder for working-class people to have their day in court, in effect shutting off avenues of redress?

CREDIT CARD INTEREST RATES:

Obama has a way of ducking hard votes or explaining away his bad votes by trying to blame poorly-written statutes. Case in point: an amendment he voted on as part of a recent bankruptcy bill before the US Senate would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Inexplicably, Obama voted against it, although it would have been the beginning of setting these predatory lending rates under federal control. Even Senator Hillary Clinton supported it.

Now Obama explains his vote by saying the amendment was poorly written or set the ceiling too high. His explanation isn't credible as Obama offered no lower number as an alternative, and didn't put forward his own amendment clarifying whatever language he found objectionable.

Why wouldn't Obama have voted to create the first federal ceiling on predatory credit card interest rates, particularly as he calls himself a champion of the poor and middle classes? Perhaps he was signaling to the corporate establishment that they need not fear him. For all of his dynamic rhetoric about lifting up the masses, it seems Obama has little intention of doing anything concrete to reverse the cycle of poverty many struggle to overcome.

LIMITING NON-ECONOMIC DAMAGES:

These seemingly unusual votes wherein Obama aligns himself with Republican Party interests aren't new. While in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted to limit the recovery that victims of medical malpractice could obtain through the courts. Capping non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases means a victim cannot fully recover for pain and suffering or for punitive damages. Moreover, it ignored that courts were already empowered to adjust awards when appropriate, and that the Illinois Supreme Court had previously ruled such limits on tort reform violated the state constitution.

In the US Senate, Obama continued interfering with patients' full recovery for tortious conduct. He was a sponsor of the National Medical Error Disclosure and Compensation Act of 2005. The bill requires hospitals to disclose errors to patients and has a mechanism whereby disclosure, coupled with apologies, is rewarded by limiting patients' economic recovery. Rather than simply mandating disclosure, Obama's solution is to trade what should be mandated for something that should never be given away: namely, full recovery for the injured patient.

MINING LAW OF 1872:

In November 2007, Obama came out against a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. The current statute, signed into law by Ulysses Grant, allows mining companies to pay a nominal fee, as little as $2.50 an acre, to mine for hardrock minerals like gold, silver, and copper without paying royalties. Yearly profits for mining hardrock on public lands is estimated to be in excess of $1 billion a year according to Earthworks, a group that monitors the industry. Not surprisingly, the industry spends freely when it comes to lobbying: an estimated $60 million between 1998-2004 according to The Center on Public Integrity. And it appears to be paying off, yet again.

The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007 would have finally overhauled the law and allowed American taxpayers to reap part of the royalties (4 percent of gross revenue on existing mining operations and 8 percent on new ones). The bill provided a revenue source to cleanup abandoned hardrock mines, which is likely to cost taxpayers over $50 million, and addressed health and safety concerns in the 11 affected western states.

Later it came to light that one of Obama's key advisors in Nevada is a Nevada-based lobbyist in the employ of various mining companies (CBS News "Obama's Position On Mining Law Questioned. Democrat Shares Position with Mining Executives Who Employ Lobbyist Advising Him," November 14, 2007).

REGULATING NUCLEAR INDUSTRY:

The New York Times reported that, while campaigning in Iowa in December 2007, Obama boasted that he had passed a bill requiring nuclear plants to promptly report radioactive leaks. This came after residents of his home state of Illinois complained they were not told of leaks that occurred at a nuclear plant operated by Exelon Corporation.

The truth, however, was that Obama allowed the bill to be amended in Committee by Senate Republicans, replacing language mandating reporting with verbiage that merely offered guidance to regulators on how to address unreported leaks. The story noted that even this version of Obama's bill failed to pass the Senate, so it was unclear why Obama was claiming to have passed the legislation. The February 3, 2008 The New York Times article titled "Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate" by Mike McIntire also noted the opinion of one of Obama's constituents, which was hardly enthusiastic about Obama's legislative efforts:

"Senator Obama's staff was sending us copies of the bill to review, and we could see it weakening with each successive draft," said Joe Cosgrove, a park district director in Will County, Ill., where low-level radioactive runoff had turned up in groundwater. "The teeth were just taken out of it."

As it turns out, the New York Times story noted: "Since 2003, executives and employees of Exelon, which is based in Illinois, have contributed at least $227,000 to Mr. Obama's campaigns for the United States Senate and for president. Two top Exelon officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among his largest fund-raisers."

ENERGY POLICY:

On energy policy, it turns out Obama is a big supporter of corn-based ethanol which is well known for being an energy-intensive crop to grow. It is estimated that seven barrels of oil are required to produce eight barrels of corn ethanol, according to research by the Cato Institute. Ethanol's impact on climate change is nominal and isn't "green" according to Alisa Gravitz, Co-op America executive director. "It simply isn't a major improvement over gasoline when it comes to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions." A 2006 University of Minnesota study by Jason Hill and David Tilman, and an earlier study published in BioScience in 2005, concur. (There's even concern that a reliance on corn-based ethanol would lead to higher food prices.)

So why would Obama be touting this as a solution to our oil dependency? Could it have something to do with the fact that the first presidential primary is located in Iowa, corn capital of the country? In legislative terms this means Obama voted in favor of $8 billion worth of corn subsidies in 2006 alone, when most of that money should have been committed to alternative energy sources such as solar, tidal and wind.

SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE:

Obama opposed single-payer bill HR676, sponsored by Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers in 2006, although at least 75 members of Congress supported it. Single-payer works by trying to diminish the administrative costs that comprise somewhere around one-third of every health care dollar spent, by eliminating the duplicative nature of these services. The expected $300 billion in annual savings such a system would produce would go directly to cover the uninsured and expand coverage to those who already have insurance, according to Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Obama's own plan has been widely criticized for leaving health care industry administrative costs in place and for allowing millions of people to remain uninsured. "Sicko" filmmaker Michael Moore ridiculed it saying, "Obama wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan-the same companies who have created the mess in the first place."

NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT:

Regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama recently boasted, "I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have." Yet, Calvin Woodward reviewed Obama's record on NAFTA in a February 26, 2008 Associated Press article and found that comment to be misleading: "In his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama said the US should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for US workers."

Putting aside campaign rhetoric, when actually given an opportunity to protect workers from unfair trade agreements, Obama cast the deciding vote against an amendment to a September 2005 Commerce Appropriations Bill, proposed by North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, that would have prohibited US trade negotiators from weakening US laws that provide safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices. The bill would have been a vital tool to combat the outsourcing of jobs to foreign workers and would have ended a common corporate practice known as "pole-vaulting" over regulations, which allows companies doing foreign business to avoid "right to organize," "minimum wage," and other worker protections.

SOME FINAL EXAMPLES:

On March 2, 2007 Obama gave a speech at AIPAC, America's pro-Israeli government lobby, wherein he disavowed his previous support for the plight of the Palestinians. In what appears to be a troubling pattern, Obama told his audience what they wanted to hear. He recounted a one-sided history of the region and called for continued military support for Israel, rather than taking the opportunity to promote the various peace movements in and outside of Israel.

Why should we believe Obama has courage to bring about change? He wouldn't have his picture taken with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom when visiting San Francisco for a fundraiser in his honor because Obama was scared voters might think he supports gay marriage (Newsom acknowledged this to Reuters on January 26, 2007 and former Mayor Willie Brown admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle on February 5, 2008 that Obama told him he wanted to avoid Newsom for that reason.)

Obama acknowledges the disproportionate impact the death penalty has on blacks, but still supports it, while other politicians are fighting to stop it. (On December 17, 2007 New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine signed a bill banning the death penalty after it was passed by the New Jersey Assembly.)

On September 29, 2006, Obama joined Republicans in voting to build 700 miles of double fencing on the Mexican border (The Secure Fence Act of 2006), abandoning 19 of his colleagues who had the courage to oppose it. But now that he's campaigning in Texas and eager to win over Mexican-American voters, he says he'd employ a different border solution.

It is shocking how frequently and consistently Obama is willing to subjugate good decision making for his personal and political benefit.

Obama aggressively opposed initiating impeachment proceedings against the president ("Obama: Impeachment is not acceptable," USA Today, June 28, 2007) and he wouldn't even support Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's effort to censure the Bush administration for illegally wiretapping American citizens in violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In Feingold's words "I'm amazed at Democrats cowering with this president's number's so low." Once again, it's troubling that Obama would take these positions and miss the opportunity to document the abuses of the Bush regime.

CONCLUSION:

Once I started looking at the votes Obama actually cast, I began to hear his rhetoric differently. The principal conclusion I draw about "change" and Barack Obama is that Obama needs to change his voting habits and stop pandering to win votes. If he does this he might someday make a decent candidate who could earn my support. For now Obama has fallen into a dangerous pattern of capitulation that he cannot reconcile with his growing popularity as an agent of change.

I remain impressed by the enthusiasm generated by Obama's style and skill as an orator. But I remain more loyal to my values, and I'm glad to say that I want no part in the Obama craze sweeping our country.

Matt Gonzalez is a former president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and is running on Nader's ticket as a vice presidential candidate.

The amount of bitterness, hatred and venom being spit at her is going to drive her supporters to McCain...

There is nobody more intolerant than a liberal poser filled with his or her own righteous indignation. That's why we always lose; that's why we have so difficult a time persuading the moderate swing voters. We are always lecturing everybody to show how superior and progressive and intelligent we are, while they are so god-awful inbred and corrupt and backwards.

Get ready for two or three McCain Supreme Court nominees.

For the love of Pete - who's spitting on Hillary?

*sigh*

...and told Droopy just exactly how the cow ate the cabbage.

Wonderful imagery!

The next thing to do is to find someone to run against Hillary in my home state of New York when she comes up for re-election to the Senate. We can do without another Senator from the Democratic Party who supports wars and votes for the interests of the rich Wall Street crowd. As to those who supported her candidacy for President: What possible excuse could there have been except for the possibility of breaking new ground for women? The problem was that she was an atrociously wrong woman. Should one support Maggie Thatcher solely because she is a woman? Enough of this narrow self-interest support for candidates solely because they are from one's own tribe.