Apropos En Passant

'with regards to the act of passing'
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Election 2008

I hate this kind of nonsense:

McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann today on a conference call noted that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said he didn't want to make Osama bin Laden a martyr.

"The last I checked, a martyr is someone who dies for a cause or someone who is killed for a cause," Scheunemann said. "It seems that Senator Obama is ruling out capital punishment."

The Obama campaign says Scheunemann's interpretation is dead wrong.

Political Punch

Let us pray Scheunemann is not this stupid.  If he isn't seriously calculating that killing Bin Laden will, indeed, make a martyr out of him in the eyes of many Muslims, then I have to seriously question McCain's judgment choosing such a fool to serve as his foreign policy advisor.

Or is he just attempting to score cheap political points?  Is that better, or worse?

I'm not impressed with the way the McCain camp has been operating.  Another example of this nitpicking is making an issue of Michelle Obama's patriotism.  I had hoped we might finally have a real campaign on real issues.  If this is the way this campaign is going to proceed, I'm going to tune out real quick.  And vote Obama.

This entry was posted on Thu, 06/19/2008 - 15:20 and is filed under .

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 .

 

The group "Women Count PAC" has a newspaper ad today that tells superdelegates "You're Still Not Listening. Our Votes Are Our Voices."

"HEAR THIS: Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. More people voted for her than any primary candidate in American history…"

This claim is only true, by the way, if you award Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-Illinois, more than 300,000 votes from Michigan and give Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, zero votes from that state.

"AND THIS: More than 21 million women voted in this primary. That's 14 million more than the 7 million who voted in 2004. That's not only a 200 percent increase -- that's a lot of women…Like Hillary, we do not back down and we do not quit…You are about to make the most important decision of your life. The future of America's children is at stake. This moment must transcend politics.

"Superdelegates, look at the facts. The voters have spoken. And remember, this is not about you. It's about us."

Political Punch

OK, so let's get this straight.  Clinton has received 17 million votes.  The ad claims "more than 21 million women voted."  By implication Clinton did not receive all the female votes.  Not even close, unless only women voted for her (and what would that say?).  So tell me why, again, supporting a candidate other than Clinton is not respecting the female vote?

This entry was posted on Tue, 06/03/2008 - 10:01 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 .

 

So while Clinton may claim she's gotten more votes than Obama this year, fact is, that's not true under any scenario unless you start excluding elections.

This post is absurd, of course -- there's no reason to count the votes of non-binding contests that had no bearing on the delegate selection process, and it's sketchy at best to double count Texas voters participating in their two binding contests. Still, this post is the logical extension of the Clinton argument.

If you're going to count every vote cast this primary cycle, even those of contests that didn't count, then you count every single vote cast, including those of every contest that didn't count.

Daily Kos: Counting all the votes, Obama still leads

This entry was posted on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 15:04 and is filed under .

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

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