Apropos En Passant

'with regards to the act of passing'
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Hillary Clinton

E. J. Dionne offers this precise description of what Hillary did wrong:

Hillary Clinton talked her way out of the vice presidency on Tuesday night. . .

But politics is also about signals and gestures, doing the right thing at the right moment, dealing with outcomes not to your liking.

Clinton's choice was to present Obama with an implicit critique that might be seen as a set of demands. Clinton told her supporters: "We won, together, the swing states necessary to get to 270 electoral votes." Message to Obama: You failed to do that, and you need me to get it done.

She also offered an argument she made during the campaign that John McCain is certain to use, over and over, against Obama. "Who will be the strongest candidate and the strongest president? Who will be ready to take back the White House and take charge as commander in chief and lead our country to better tomorrows?" Whose purpose did she serve by repeating this? . . .

But gaining the vice presidency by invoking leverage just can't work. It makes the presidential candidate look weak. It breaks in advance the trust that running mates need. It can only presage conflicts and power struggles in a new administration.

Hillary Clinton is an enormously talented public servant. Many who ended up supporting Obama once hoped to support her. But Clinton's political future requires her to accept that Obama has prevailed, that the primary campaign is over and that graciousness in defeat can, paradoxically, be turned into the most powerful leverage of all.

This entry was posted on Thu, 06/05/2008 - 17:04 and is filed under .

Their overweening political ambitions pulverized, the parlor game du jour must be:  "Will Hill dump Bill?":

The endgame of Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination took an unexpected turn today as her husband, former President Bill Clinton, updated his status on a popular social networking site.

Visitors to Mr. Clinton's profile page at Facebook noticed that minutes after Mrs. Clinton suspended her campaign, President Clinton updated his status from "Married" to "It's Complicated."

Andy Borowitz: Bill Clinton Updates Facebook Profile

This entry was posted on Thu, 06/05/2008 - 16:44 and is filed under .

I thought this video was particularly apropos for Clinton finally recognizing reality:

Ironic considering how long it took her to do the right thing, isn't it?  Not that she did it willingly, mind you.  There had to be an intervention by her own staff and party leadership.

How sad.  Thank God that deluded wretch will not be leading the free world.

This entry was posted on Wed, 06/04/2008 - 20:44 and is filed under .

Michael Crowley has written a brilliantly metaphorical analysis of Hillary's intransigence:

This entry was posted on Wed, 06/04/2008 - 10:00 and is filed under .

Said one Democrat with close ties to the Clintons: "It was just hubris: They couldn't imagine her losing and him winning."

ABC News: What Went Wrong? How Hillary Clinton Lost

At the end of this succinct analysis of the failure of the Clinton campaign is this brilliant one sentence summation that coincidentally explains Clinton's continued refusal to concede, even a day after Obama amassed the delegates necessary to secure the nomination.

Hubris, by definition, drives one beyond reason and civility.  I can appreciate that she is hurt/stunned/confused by the loss.  I really had no problem with not conceding.  She had just won her last primary.  Let her and those who have worked so hard for her have a day or two to grieve. But what struck me, and many, many others, was how utterly graceless was her speech.

To stand up there and make the argument—after it was over, to the superdelegates who were flooding to Obama—that she was the better candidate was the epitome of gracelessness. It was as if we were watching the first moon landing and she was trumpeting her science project. Here the first African American was being nominated for the highest position in the land. How far we have come! She could have noted the moment, even observed that his opponent was a woman who—hell, I'll give her this—had just won the popular vote. Instead she chose to make a pointless appeal to the superdelegates and to grub for donations at . . . wait for it . . . HillaryClinton.com!

This entry was posted on Wed, 06/04/2008 - 06:46 and is filed under .

 

Yes, this wretch is a pathetic racist and sexist.  But ask yourself: how is what she is saying any different from what Hillary has been preaching?  This is a direct and logical consequence of Clinton's leadership.  Is this the kind of leadership we want for this country?

For all of our sakes, I hope not.

This entry was posted on Sun, 06/01/2008 - 13:47 and is filed under .

This entry was posted on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 12:15 and is filed under .

Hillary Clinton is relying on electoral maps to make her case she is the most electable.  If the election had been held in late May 2004, Kerry would have won in a landslide:

Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

This entry was posted on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 11:48 and is filed under .

In 1968 Eugene McCarthy shocked incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, not by winning the popular vote (he lost 49% to 42%), but by netting 20 of the 24 delegates. Robert Kennedy immediately announced his candidacy and LBJ dropped out of the race three weeks later. Only 13 states held primaries in 1968. By the convention, McCarthy led the popular vote. Hubert Humphrey, who did not participate in the primaries, won the nomination on the first ballot by winning the most delegates.

Shall we consider all voters in 1968 to have been "disenfranchised"? How could they have had a convention with 37 states not having voted, whereas we, according to Clinton logic, cannot possibly do without two?

The historical speciousness of the Clinton argument is stunning, even while she throws out historical references to support her argument for extending the campaign into June (those were specious too, by the way). There is no provision for parties in the Constitution, much less primary voting; hence there cannot be any constitutional disenfranchisement from primaries. The parties could throw darts if they wanted to in order to select a candidate. The White Supremacist Party could conceivably dismiss the votes of blacks. Any party, by definition, has a vested interest in absolute control over how its candidate is selected.

This entry was posted on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 11:42 and is filed under .

Harold Meyerson provides a concise and insightful analysis of the Florida/Michigan controversy and the folly of the Clinton position:

somehow, a number of Clinton supporters have come to identify the seating of Michigan and Florida not merely with Clinton's prospects but with the causes of democracy and feminism -- an equation that makes a mockery of democracy and feminism.

Clinton herself is largely responsible for this absurdity. Over the past couple of weeks, she has equated the seating of the two delegations with African Americans' struggle for suffrage in the Jim Crow South, and with the efforts of the democratic forces in Zimbabwe to get a fair count of the votes in their presidential election.

Somehow, I doubt that the activists opposing Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe would appreciate this equation.

But the Clintonistas who have called Saturday's demonstration make it sound as if they'll be marching in Selma in support of a universal right to vote. The DNC, says one of their Web sites, "must honor our core democratic principles and enfranchise the people of Michigan and Florida."

This entry was posted on Wed, 05/28/2008 - 13:55 and is filed under .

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