hillary does the job

to my mind, she did exactly what she needed to do last night. she explained why she was in the race, she hit on the themes that excited her supporters, and she pivoted all that to believably encourage her supporters to support barack obama.

it was a great speech, and to my mind laid to rest all the mindless speculation about a rift. she’s gone far beyond what any other “second-place” candidate has ever done, and for that she should be appreciated and congratulated.

the one sore point everyone keeps mentioning is this whole business of not refuting her argument that he isn’t ready to be commander in chief. you know, the 3am thing. i maintain that for her to say something like, “he’ll be ready at 3am, and 4am, and 5am” or whatever would have sounded craven and inauthentic, and would have blunted the effect of what was an outstanding effort.

it makes perfect sense for bill clinton to make that argument tonight. he should be the one to persuade people that obama is ready to be commander in chief, since he was himself, and hillary hasn’t [yet] been.

i’ll be looking for him to do exactly that tonight.

hillary clinton, veep?

andrew sullivan thinks maybe, and he’s the biggest hillary hater on the planet:

Texting the selection of Hillary at 3 am this Saturday morning would be the coolest campaign gimmick of all time.

i’d go even further, and say that given we know that obama has made his choice, if we haven’t heard the pick in time for tonight’s evening news it probably will be (in true clue-style) hillary at 3am with the text. there’s no good reason to hold on to the info at this point.

obama’s veep

my dream person? al gore.

oddly enough for me, i think that i’d be happy with hillary clinton as well. i’ve calmed down a bit over the last few weeks, and she’d be a great attack dog, which for me is the best quality a vice-president can have.

i like joe biden a lot, so i’d be very happy with him as well.

the rest? i’d need to be convinced. i’m signed up for the text message, and i’m waiting for my cell phone to beep.

could it really be true?

could tomorrow be the day that hillary clinton withdraws from the race?

i’m watching this closely. as one of her constituents, i’m looking to see how she gets out of the race, and how well and strongly and effectively she supports obama. she really needs to be graceful, and supportive, and needs to do her best to ensure his election. and she needs to do it sooner as in this week and preferably tuesday/wednesday, rather than later as in after this week. if she drags this out, i’ll be very upset.

if she doesn’t withdraw well, as i’ve said before, i’ll be looking to help her opponent in her next new york primary election, for senator or governor or whatever, should she be in a race.

oh, and a little thought butterfly to float over to mr. obama. promise her help with her debts. promise to bring her campaign workers on board with your team. promise to help the elected officials who are getting primary challenges via your supporters as a result of those officials’ support for her. promise to put lots of her supporters in white house positions.

but do not promise anything to hillary herself. the clintons need to be dispatched efficiently. i say this, not because i dislike hillary, but because i’ve come to really dislike bill, and i don’t want him anywhere near washington power again. and i don’t think that she is strong enough to keep him at bay should she be in an obama administration. she chose to keep him on her team, and use him, even after his odious behavior. that’s the price she should pay for making that choice.

and, mr. obama, you will lose more votes than you will gain if, before they actually vote for you, people know she’ll be in your administration.

time for hillary clinton to go

more accurately, it’s time for her to be made to go.

these latest remarks, citing robert kennedy’s assassination as a reason to stay in the race, are beyond the pale. you can’t tell me this was just a slip. nothing the clintons do is without purpose.

the superdelegates need to step up and end this thing officially, now. and that means i don’t want her on the ticket as vice-president. i say that partly because i don’t want her around, but mainly because i don’t want bill clinton anywhere near the white house again. my main problem with her isn’t what she does, but that she can’t seem to control what he does. he has undue influence over her. i don’t want the clintons tag-teaming and triangulating obama out of his presidency, or if he wins, out of his governance. which is exactly what they’d do, led by bill clinton. jeebus — to think i worked for his 1992 campaign.

i want them both out in the political wilderness for the duration of the presidential campaign, where they can do no harm. obama can win without her or her support. enough of her vaunted supporters will vote democratic in november anyway, with or without her. and especially without bill clinton around. and at this point, i’m not sure i want her as my senator, either. she’s frigging toxic.

peggy noonan had a great column about hillary clinton yesterday. it may be behind a paywall for you (come on, wall street journal!) so i’ll summarize: golda meir, indira gandhi, and margaret thatcher, three women who knew how to play tough politically, would be outraged at clinton’s week of claiming sexism as a principal reason for her loss. what a sorry endgame clinton has — blame society and the media. never once did you hear that from obama, even when he was far behind in the polls.

here’s my favorite quote from the noonan column:

It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.

It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say “Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other’s bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it’s like that for the boys and for the girls.”

and this:

Meir and Gandhi and Mrs. Thatcher suffered through the political downside of their sex and made the most of the upside. Fair enough. As for this week’s Clinton complaints, I imagine Mrs. Thatcher would bop her on the head with her purse. Mrs. Gandhi would say “That is no way to play it.” Mrs. Meir? “They said I was the only woman in the cabinet and the only one with — well, you know. I loved it.”

got that right.

this and that catchup

it’s been a while, so here are a few short takes:

» kirk was in the hospital overnight on wednesday for some tests. he’s had dizziness, general fatigue, and chest tightness for a few weeks now, and our doctor wanted to rule out the big stuff — heart problems, blood clots, lung problems, etc. thankfully all that big stuff checked out, but the symptoms remain. next stop — the inner ear. at least we have a baseline of good health for him. our doctor is good and persistent, so i’m hopeful that we’ll sort it all out.

» happy mother’s day, to my mom, kirk’s mom, and mothers in general. i sent a neck pillow/comforter thingy to my mom in florida, via red envelope. she loves the red box and the grosgrain ribbon. good thing — i can’t stand the company. she’s the only reason i still patronize them, and the only person i use them for. i think they have terrible customer service. the latest in a long line of gripes — a month ago they sent me an email reminder to buy something for mother’s day, with a 10% discount code. but when i used the code and made a purchase, they wouldn’t delay the shipping. so i could either send my mother’s day present directly to my mother a month in advance, or have it shipped to me and pay twice to have it shipped to arrive in a timely fashion. i chose the latter. what a crock. if you are going to ask me to buy early for mother’s day, then have the back office capabilities to ship the purchase to arrive on mother’s day. idiots.

» obama seems to have wrapped things up, defeating hillary clinton for the nomination. all the talk now is to have her for vice-president, but i think that’s a bad idea and i don’t think it will happen. two “liberal senators” on one ticket? the republicans would have a field day. we need to move on from the clintons. he needs to pick someone with foreign policy experience. sam nunn? too old — he would negate the mccain age argument. gen. wesley clark or gen. jim jones? we don’t need an inexperienced admiral stockdale type. joe biden? great choice but two senators isn’t a good idea. jim webb? perfect choice, but do you want to give up the senate seat in virginia? and he isn’t the best campaigner. bill richardson? sounds good to me. what sounds even better? wait out mccain and make him pick first.

» congratulations to the writers of iron man, one of whom is the husband of a good friend and former co-worker of mine. he struggled for years, has enormous talent, and is deserving of every bit of success he’s getting.

thank goodness

the media has gotten obama to denounce the last uppity black man in his life. now maybe they’ll be satisfied and move on to things of consequence.

like, say, health care, the economy, the middle east, iraq, and iran.

obama “outraged” with wright’s comments

from the article:

In his harshest criticism yet of his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama said he was “outraged” by Wright’s comments at the National Press Club Monday, and “saddened by the spectacle.”

personally, i’m guessing that wright chose to fall on his sword to a degree — to get out there and make comments so outrageous that obama would have an opportunity to really put some distance between them. obama has been less than forthcoming about all this, i think. and i have to admit that the people who can’t understand why he stuck with the church have somewhat of a point. i know that church does not equal pastor, and there’s a new pastor now, and you should be going to church for the institution more than the personalities involved.

still. maybe this will precipitate a clean break between the two. let’s hope so.

in any case, better sooner (now) than later (october). there’ll always be a percentage of people unable to separate the two in their minds. hopefully this will mitigate the damage that’s been done.

i want that small squidgy thought floating in the back of my mind — “perhaps hillary is more electable after all” — crushed mercilessly.

update: just remembered what this was — obama’s sister souljah moment.

comment of the day

from an obama/clinton story on talking points memo:

“Blocking revotes in MI and Fla.” Lol! I just love this mindless talking point.

Where did he acquire the power to stop the Michigan and Florida legislatures from passing laws and/or the state parties from submitting workable delegate selection plans to the DNC? Is this like a legal power granted to him by virture of his being the front runner by some previously unknown laws passed in those states? Or is it a superpower he acquired after he was bitten by a radioactive Diebold voting machine? Is it a magical power? Is he using a +4 Staff of Disenfranchisement against poor Hillary?

and even more:

He’s beaten her. He beat her fair and square. She had a flawed, inflexible, and arrogant electoral plan, he identified the flaws in that plan early on and took advantage of them. She was unable to adapt and now she can’t turn it around. The superdelegates are not going to overturn the results of the delegate race, Michigan and Florida have screwed themselves, and the voters in the ten remaining states are not going to give her the 70 – 30 victories in each and every congressional district that she has to have to pull even with him in the popular vote and delegate races.

comment of the day? hell, it’s the diatribe of the year.

obama’s new strategy?

i’ve wailed and moaned for obama to get tougher. it seems that he has.

the last couple of news cycles have seen a steady ramp-up of stories about how hillary clinton outright lied “misspoke” about her trip to bosnia with sinbad and sheryl crow.

a clinton obfuscating a prevarication? who knew?

nice to note that the obama campaign pushed this story, and the press picked up on it, and there’s no blowback to the obama campaign itself. nice to note also that hillary was at no point in any danger, despite her protestations to the contrary. we gotta keep her safe, so obama can ignore her for the v.p. slot but use her strategically to get out the fall vote.

now that’s how you get elected.

hey obama, get control of your message

way too many people are going off the reservation in the obama campaign.

we’ve had the guy talking to the canadians about nafta. hillary, of course, did the same thing, but that’s not my concern here.

then this samantha power person called hillary a monster and had to resign
.

now we find out that she told the bbc that obama might waffle on the troop withdrawals:

He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator…. You can’t make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009…

good lord.

say what you want about hillary (and most of what i say is bad), but at least she and all of her people are rigidly disciplined, on message, and on the same page. even if what they have to say is odious, at least it is coordinated.

obama himself may have pretty good message discipline, but his people are all over the map.

his campaign is starting to look like amateur hour, coinciding with the first real pressure he’s faced as a candidate.

they need to get professional, and fast.

update: mark halperin at time magazine addresses this very subject.

msnbc.com completely bites; obama shines anyway

watched the second half of the final debate last night.

didn’t watch the first half, except in stutters, with constant “buffering…please wait” messages flashing across my screen. it’s not my internet access — cnn streamed their two debates to me without a hitch. and when i finally abandoned all hope and went to wonkette.com to read a liveblog of the debate, i found that everyone else in the comment strings was having the same problem.

and the commenters recommended cleveland.com as an alternative, which worked perfectly, and i watched the second half with no hiccups whatsoever.

and as a capper, each time i reloaded msnbc.com’s feed, the prestitial commercial streamed perfectly and then the live coverage didn’t work.

good job there, people. if you are going to heavily promote accessibility to your debates, then make sure you have the bandwidth to do the job. failing that, at least make sure that the audio streams continuously, even if the video drops frames. last night’s feed just froze constantly. it’s always encouraging when the national network is outplanned by the local affiliate. but thanks for all of the commercials. i’ll run out and buy some preparation h, or whatever.

not that the msnbc debate was well-planned anyway. brian williams, and especially tim russert, asked inane and poorly formed questions, and repeatedly got in the way of the candidates and made the event about themselves, and not about the candidates and the issues. here’s how to run a debate: ask a well-thought out question, and shut up while people answer it. at some points, i thought the debate was between tim russert and hillary clinton, or tim russert and barack obama.

and, can we cue up the right video, please? jeebus. that was so unfair to hillary clinton, but both candidates handled it gracefully.

in general, i found clinton to be grating and overly aggressive to no apparent positive point. perhaps her (to me) off-key performance was prompted by the out-of-bounds questioning, but barack seemed to handle the same aggressive questioning with aplomb. that tells me whose cool demeanor i want sitting across the negotiating table from tinpot nutbag dictators.

i keep asking myself if i am watching these debates with a view askew, slanted toward the candidate i am supporting. but every time i approach her with an open mind, clinton just disappoints.

obama is just a cool customer. to me his vision and demeanor trumps purported “experience”.

last night’s debate

watched the debate last night, the same way we did last time, since we have no cable tv.

like last time, i liked hillary. she’s intelligent, measured, informed, and projects enthusiasm, power, and competence.

problem for her is, so does obama. two great candidates. and what i’m reminded of is the cycle i went through after the last debate — she impressed me then as well.

and then her campaign kicked in, with all her (to plagiarize a phrase) silly politics. obama plagiarized his speeches, and his wife michelle doesn’t love america, and we’re going to steal his pledged delegates, and what not.

silly.

i liked her a lot after the last debate, and then she (or more accurately, her minions) completely turned me off. if she can’t control her message and campaign in a disciplined and effective manner, why should i believe that her governance will be any better?

ready on day one, indeed. she’s not even ready now to run an organized campaign, after two years of running for this office.

it’s too bad that the discourse of her campaign doesn’t match the level of her personal discourse.

quick question

if the republicans have any real nasty, smoking gun-type dirt on barack obama, why would they save it for a general election? why wouldn’t they get it out there now in hopes of knocking out obama in favor of hillary?

hillary, about whom they have warehouses of dirt to unload. and you know they’d rather run mccain against hillary, who they can (and would) beat, rather than run mccain against obama.

i don’t think there’s a lot of real dirt out there to be had. i think that obama smartly has gotten out ahead of any real nasty revelations. the drugs, the rezko thing, and all.

at least i hope so.

obama: looking back, looking forward

from kos, a great snapshot of where obama stands, how he got there, where the race is probably going, and why we should take a deep breath and appreciate the race lasting a bit longer.

from the article:

Now I know people will be calling for her to quit the race, but I hope she rides it out through Ohio and Texas. I think Ohio needs a good dose of infrastructure building, and this primary will help make that happen. Same with Texas, where a solid ground operation can pave the way for some serious people-powered action in the Senate race with our man Rick Noriega.

It would be great if this thing went to Pennsylvania for the same reason, but I doubt it’ll get that far. I’ll call it right now — baring a major gaffe or disaster, Obama will win both Texas and Ohio and that will be that.

from his lips to god’s ears.

please…make…her…stop

is this hillary’s attempt at mobilizing young voters via viral video?

if so, it’s hard to imagine a more tone-deaf attempt.

if not, the campaign should have had the foresight to not let a camera anywhere near this spectacle. or, indeed, not produce the spectacle in the first place.

i can live with that

so mitt romney is out, which means that john mccain is the republican nominee.

I’ll probably still vote for whoever the democratic nominee is, although if hillary is the nominee i will give mccain a good hard look. if obama is the nominee then there’s no question — he’s my man.

(and to all that vice-presidential talk floated by the clintons to lessen obama’s perceived stature: don’t do it. i don’t want him tainted by them in any way, and anyway, he’d be #3 behind bill)

as someone said to me last night, it’s nice to know all your choices are decent candidates and you are choosing the best from among them, when usually you are holding your nose and picking the best of a bad lot.

there are few issues with which i am in complete agreement with john mccain, but most are moderate enough that i would not drive off a cliff if he were elected. we need a different direction in this country, and he would be different enough for me. he’s certainly a different republican than most we’ve been seeing, and his fical conservatism is right up my alley. god knows that just the fact that he drives right-wingers crazy is enough for me.

for me to actively vote for him, hillary would have to be the nominee, and i’d have to consider whether that fiscal conservatism was enough of a mitigating factor to outweigh his negatives. versus whether hillary’s positives on the issues are enough of a mitigating factor to outweigh what would be four/eight more years of slash-and-burn politics.

still, today, with these particular three little indians remaining standing, i’m pretty optimistic about the future of my country. each of the three has at least something i can like.

not bad after the last eight years of nonsense, i’d say.

listening to hillary

kirk and i don’t have cable tv, and our tv doesn’t have a tuner, so no television for us. but we have wanted to see one of the debates, so we tuned in to last night’s debate between hillary clinton and barack obama. tuned in via cnn.com, which provides a live feed.

a very tiny live feed, in a window that can’t be made full screen on the computer. a computer which is maybe 10 feet away from the couch. so, rather than crowding around the computer to watch micro-hillary and mini-obama, we just turned up the sound and listened.

and, i have to admit, hillary didn’t bug me as much when i wasn’t looking at her. kirk said the same thing. i’m sure it’s my prejudgment of her that i need to get past. but she sounded strong, effective, wise, informed, and remarkably relaxed. and she had the best line of the night:

“It did take a Clinton to clean after the first Bush and I think it might take another one to clean up after the second Bush.”

a bit too pat and rehearsed and poll-tested, but still, there’s a point there.

i’m still supporting obama. hillary still exhausts me. and, i never thought i’d say this, but after bill clinton’s recent antics i’d prefer to keep him away from the oval office in any capacity.

but.

i think i could live with her being president.

i think i could live with john mccain as well, though that bears further investigation.

obama would be a dream.

morning in america, indeed.

update: on the other hand, ann coulter said yesterday that if mccain is nominated, she will actively support hillary. maybe i need to rethink all this.