Yes She Can

This was class. And a great historical moment.

What Hillary Clinton Didn't Say

For what she said she said it well. For a speech aimed at giving her supporters "catharsis" it was right on the money. As oratory intended to unite, it largely succeeded.

As for helping Barack Obama against the Republicans, it failed. It failed because she didn't say: "Barack Obama is ready to lead."

McCain seized that opening and issued a statement last night pointing that out. His new ads feature clips from her "3 a.m." ad as he continues to use her attack of inexperience against Obama. Romney was here yesterday saying, "Barack Obama is not ready to lead."

You can bet that the line "not ready to lead" will be on the lips of every GOPer leaving the Twin Cities next week. I'm not sure what line Democrats take with them from the Mile High City.

The most fatal mistake a campaign can make is work for the wrong goal. Yes, Clinton needed to unite her supporters behind Obama, which she did last night. But then, she needed to walk a step further an undo the damage her "inexperience" attacks caused him in the primary and that are and will be hurled at him from the McCain campaign -- with Clinton's implicit endorsement. Hillary may have taken the democrats to third base. But it doesn't count until they cross home plate, and she didn't get them there.

The "he's not ready" is a salient attack...one can think positively of Obama but then cluck sympathetically, "he's just not ready." People can think, "I'd like to vote for him, but he's just not ready."

Maybe Bill will deliver the "he's ready" endorsement tonight. Doubtful. But I'll be willing to eat my words.

Whining her way to Denver

Aides to Hillary whined to the media that Obama never "vetted" the former first lady.

Wasn't the fact that she was already vetted a key element of her campaign?

Hillary deserves a prominent role in the Dem convention, given her strong performance in the primary.

But I wish Team Hillary would consider a new concept: Graciousness. It could be their first step to real class.

Another Maureen Dowd Hillary Smackdown

Marueen Dowd chastises Team Obama for letting the Clintons getting away with murder at the convention, including adding language in the platform that blames Hillary's loss on sexism, thus dampening the "dreams of our daughters." MoDo says the plank should have state this:

A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar
campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of
our daughters.

The rest of the column is equally genteel.

Meanwhile, let's hope Barry comes back from Hawaii recharged and ready tobe more the candidate he was this winter.

Dana Milbank, Hillary and the Black Knight

Remember the Black Knight scene in Monty Python where King Arthur keeps hacking off the limbs of his foe the Black Knight, who insists his wounds are no more than a scratch? Until he's devoid of arms and legs?

Washington Post political columnist Dana Milbank (whom I find oddly sexy, in a political geek sort of way) likens Hillary to the Black Knight in his column today, a must read.

I loved this line:

We're here in a gym," Clinton correctly observes.

But, Milbank points out, that's about the only correct observation she has about her own chances of winning.

Obama's ahead by every measure relevant to the Democratic Party's nomination process. But, as Milbank observes:

"There is no way that this is gonna end anytime soon," vows Knight Clinton, standing her ground at the bridge.

Hillary: Waving to Imaginary Friends

Things must be getting to Hillary -- she's waving to imaginary friends. In a tick-tock piece Dana Milbank of the WashPo wrote about Hillary's day during the West Virginia primary:

2:57 p.m., Yeager Airport, Charleston, W.Va.: A steep descent brings Clinton's plane to Charleston's hilltop airport. After an appropriate wait, she steps from the plane and pretends to wave to a crowd of supporters; in fact, she is waving to 10 photographers underneath the airplane's wing. She pretends to spot an old friend in the crowd, points and gives another wave; in fact, she is waving at an aide she had been talking with on the plane minutes earlier.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. There is no man behind the curtain. But of course, Hillary's not the only one who does it. A reader in a chat on the Post asked Milbank if others do it too. He says:

Bush does it all the time, waving to the photographers as if he's greeting a campaign rally. What was unique about the Clinton arrival in West Virginia was how she singled out one woman in the crowd with a special wave, indicating how surprised and delighted she was to see her. The woman was a press aide who had just been with Clinton on the flight from Washington. She waved back, dutifully.

Leave it to Clinton to take fakery to a whole new level. Hey, can't you news media guys turn the cameras and report what's really going on? Isn't that your job?

It's Appalachia

It's my native neck of the woods that's giving Obama his problems. Josh Marshall explains how Appalachia is the common denominator in Obama's losses to She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Denied. Quote of note:

There's been a lot of talk in this campaign about Barack Obama's problem with working class white voters or rural voters. But these claims are both inaccurate because they are incomplete. You can look at states like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states and see the different numbers and they are all explained by one basic fact. Obama's problem isn't with white working class voters or rural voters. It's Appalachia. That explains why Obama had a difficult time in Ohio and Pennsylvania and why he's getting crushed in West Virginia and Kentucky.

If it were just a matter of rural voters or the white working class, the pattern would show up in other regions. But by and large it does not.

Read the whole insightful post here.

Hillary vs. the Coffee Machine

Democratic Primary and Values

Some values are more important to people than others. In the Democratic Presidential Primary we've seen a consistent story -- Hillary's negatives are high, people (in PA exit polls no less) say she has run a more unfair campaign, she's consistently caught lying, and yet she wins.

Honesty and fairness are lesser values, then...to what?

Spitzer Timing: a Ploy to Help HRC?

He could have resigned Monday. No, he waited until today, the day after Obama walks away with the Mississippi primary. His delay kept media speculation at fever pitch and his story at the top of the news, bumping Obama's latest victory to a footnote, denying the Illinois Senator a chance to show "momentum." He is a Clinton superdelegate, after all. Coincidence? Or a ploy to help Hillary?

The Clintons and the Gays

Andrew Sullivan has been posting a small series on this topic. Two things I'll direct your attention to. First, Sullivan's personal experience when fighting DOMA:

My most vivid memory was testifying against the Defense Of Marriage Act in 1996. It was the day of the hearings. We were going to lose; we always knew it. But the Clintons told the press on the morning of the hearings that they didn't believe there were any constitutional problems with DOMA, cutting us off at the knees. Yes, that was politics. I understand. All I want to remind the next generation of gays about is: don't ever expect anything more than "just politics" from the Clintons.

And if you think the Clintons "had" to do it because of the Republican-controlled Congress, I urge you to read the account posted by John Aravosis on AmericaBlog regarding Bill Clinton's advice to John Kerry to support anti-gay marriage state initiatives in 2004.

And remember...the same people that were advising him then are advising her now.

A Call at 3 A.M

My mother, as I have said earlier, is here visiting. We spent Saturday, the last day of her visit, in Old Town Alexandria, touring the sites (some I'd never been to, like the Carlye House and Gatsby's Tavern (where we were given a tour by cute-in-a-geeky-sort of way Josh) and eating too much at the Chart House. The LTR made baked pterodactyl (a.k.a. a large oven-roaster chicken) for a good send off feast. We ended the evening by watching the Bourne Identity (and all I could think of while watching it is "I'm f***ing Matt Damon").

Much later, it was 3 a.m. My mom was safe and soundly asleep in the guest bed while the LTR and I slumbered peacefully above.

The phone rang.

I sat bolt upright in bed.

It kept ringing.

"Hillary?" I cried. But she was no where in sight. Damn. I'll have to answer the phone myself.

It was my father. Mom's flight was canceled (the airline called my mom's cell phone, which, by logic only understood by my parents, was with my dad).

3 a.m. A phone call and a problem. And we were Hillary-less. We had to take matters into our own hands.

Luckily, I have experience in dealing with middle-of-the-night crisis. When I was little, I often spent the night at my grandparents and my grandpa was county engineer, which meant he was in charge of the roads. In the winter, this often meant getting phone calls at 3 a.m. as road conditions deteriorated and he would have to send the road crews out and coordinate their activities. Many times I would lay there and listen as he spent the night on the phone, in his pajamas with my grandmother wringing her hands at his side as he made the county safe.

With all that experience of nighttime phone call handling tucked under my belt, I knew I had crossed the crisis management threshold and had been ready since day one of my mom's visit, I took the phone in hand. I expertly called the airline and waited on hold for an agent. I'm vetted, I told myself as I waited, phone in hand and glasses perched on the edge of my nose, giving me an aura of Clintonesque competence to my mother.

Once the agent got on the phone I fought for my mother to get her on another flight. I took on the vast flight wing conspiracy to keep my mom in DC for another day. We need solutions, not excuses I told the agent. After all "Your flight is canceled" are just words. Thanks to my experience, the agent came through and we booked my mom on another flight. I have the scars to prove it.

Yes, thanks to my experience in handling middle of the night crisis from those years I spent at my grandparent's house, my mom is on her way to rejoin my dad.

I think I should be county engineer. Hell, make that a pilot.

The Morning After

I got most of my depression about the primary in Ohio and the Caucamary in Texas out of my system yesterday. It was a gloomy day here and it matched my mood perfectly.

Today the sun is out and I'm actually feeling optimistic. About what, I'm not sure.

So, Hillary won the vote, if not the delegate count. Multiple analysts say it's highly unlikely she can win the delegate count. Of course, that also depends on Michigan and Florida. My guess is some way or other those states will send delegates to Denver. That could make the outcome very, very ugly.

My man Obama had a bad week. He botched NAFTA. He botched handling a tough presser. Every candidate stumbles. Let's hope Obama learns and moves on. He can do better. Yes, he can.

Two possible silver linings in a protracted battle with Hillary:

1) it will continue to toughen Obama up for the general
2) maybe, as has already started to happen, Hillary supporters will come to recognize the say anything/do anything to win at any cost machine that so many on the right have seen.

I'm not sanguine that will mean anything if the party tears itself apart in Denver, but hey -- I said I was feeling optimistic.

A Prediction

Hillary wins Ohio decisively, Texas narrowly.

I hope I'm wrong.

Pregnant Pause

From Hotline:

It was, in this reporter's opinion, the most interesting moment in today's Clinton campaign phoner with reporters. Responding to the release of HRC's new TX TV ad, which asserts in no subtle terms that only she has the experience to deal with a major world crisis, and, relatedly, to keep your children safe, Slate's John Dickerson asked the obvious question:

"What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary's career where she's been tested by crisis?" he said.

Silence on the call. You could've knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton's national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak -- that she's been endorsed by many high ranking members of the uniformed military.

Listen to the painful silence.

We've Seen this Before

That Was Then.

Bill Clinton in 2004. Before the "3 a.m." ad.

Ohio

I spent the week in Ohio, including several days in Cleveland a couple in the southeast part of the state (incidentally, where I grew up).

If I had to make a call on the primary, I would call it for Hillary.

She seemed to have more visible support in the state, she, her family and surrogates are everywhere and her groundtroops seem more numerous.

And Obama is spending more time in Texas than he is in the Buckeye state.

Hillary and the Lies

At the risk of totally alienating Scottstake Reader number 3 who loves Hillary, I have to say, yes, I keep criticizing her but she keeps giving me reasons to do so!

First, let me relay a conversation I had with a friend yesterday. My friend is a married mother of two with her own business. In a long conversation I asked her who she was supporting for president. McCain, as it turns out. I asked why not Obama? He'll raise my taxes, she said. We talked about this for a while. Then I said, well, what about Hillary?

She went off. First on what she called Hillary's lying, saying anything to anyone if it would get her power. Then on betraying every feminist principle she had. I wish I could relay every word as it was artful, but it boiled down to first saying she wasn't the "stand by your man" kind of wife then doing precisely that when her husband publicly humiliated her and her daughter for the sole purpose of power. My friend said it much better.

Fast forward to an interview the Hillster gave to Judy Woodruff in which she said:

JUDY WOODRUFF: People look at what's happened in your campaign, Senator Clinton,
and they say, what has happened? All of last year you were the front runner, you
were the presumed, you were headed for that nomination and then January comes
along, boom, Senator Obama starts winning primaries. He has now won eleven in a
row. How do you explain what's happened?

MRS. CLINTON: None of this is
surprising to me. You know, last spring when I looked at how the race was
shaping up, I knew that it would be a close contest and I assumed it would be
with Senator Obama and at that time I said we have got to start thinking about
Texas, we have to start thinking ahead.

But that's not what she said last December:






But these are just words. And as she has been saying recently, words don't matter.

But is She More Laverne or Shirley?

I think Shirley.