Here’s Hillary Clinton, explaining why it makes sense for her to still be in the race:
My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.
The analogy to 1968 actually is somewhat accurate, in the sense that in June, 1968 Hubert Humphrey was far more likely than Robert Kennedy to get the nomination. And I’m sure that’s what Clinton had in mind; i.e., that she, not Obama, is playing the role of Kennedy here.
This morning, I was all set to link to a post over at The Carpetbagger Report, noting that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has taken the high road lately and that Obama supporters would be better off chilling out and letting Hillary step aside on her own terms. Then I saw that Clinton compared her cynical and self-serving crusade to get the Florida and Michigan votes counted to the struggles of the civil rights era and I remember why I’ve found her campaign so damned infuriating.
It’s stunning to me that Hillary Clinton supporters would have the audacity to claim that the popular vote is a metric that we should be using to determine who should get the Democratic nomination while at the same time insisting that Obama shouldn’t receive a single vote for Michigan. I’m ambivalent about whether or how the MI and FL delegates should be seated, but if you’re going to hold yourself up as a champion of voting rights and insist that the popular vote is a more legitimate way to gauge voter intent, then it’s pretty craven to chase a strategy whose only purpose is to cut into Obama’s lead with the implicit conclusion that not a single person in Michigan supports Barack OBama.
But, you might argue, Obama chose to take his name off the ballot and therefore his lack of support is just the result of his own choices. Well, if we’re going to follow the rules to the letter and punish candidates for their choices, then it bears repeating that the rules state that Michigan and Florida don’t count and that the Clinton campaign made the choice to agree to the DNC sanctions against these states. If you’re only going to recognize the rules that help Hillary Clinton win, just drop the self-righteous bullshit about your sterling commitment to democracy and be honest enough to admit that you’re only interested in Florida and Michigan because you think Clinton is a better candidate.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and all of the other Democratic candidates competed under the same rules and Clinton lost. Now she’s trying to work the refs and is trying to change any rules that might keep her from winning. That’s understandable, but when you wrap your attempts to move the goalposts in a veneer of moral superiority and question the values of your opponents (specifically, questioning whether or not Obama supporters believe in voting rights), don’t be surprised if you piss a lot of people off.
So for all the talk about how much work the Obama campaign has ahead of itself trying to court alienated Clinton supporters, it’s worth pointing out the alienation works both ways.
When someone at UPS screws up and routes your delivery to some other city than the one you actually live in, this is the message that shows up on the tracking page:
Here. I find it strange that Barack Obama is excoriated for weeks on end for suggesting that rural Americans are “bitter” — but no one seems to bat an eye when Clinton surrogates are all over cable tv portraying those same voters as uneducated backwoods racists who would never consider voting for a black candidate. Which, when you think about it, is far more contemptuous than suggesting that people who have received the short end of the economic stick are “bitter.”
Rumsfeld Told His Media Committee Our Enemies Are So Dastardly That They Have Media Committees
Among the documents the New York Times pried loose from the Defense Department for their story on TV military analysts are the records from a December 12, 2006 meeting some of the analysts had with Donald Rumsfeld. It includes this Rumsfeld complaint:
RUMSFELD: [Iraqi militias] know the center of gravity of the thing is here in the United States. It isn’t out there. And they’re designing their attacks to have maximum effect politically, to weaken the will of the American people. Doing a pretty good job. Hell of a lot more skillful at it than we are. Have a lot greater flexibility. They can lie. Don’t have bureaucracy. They have media committees that they operate to manipulate the media. And they do it very skillfully.
It would be wonderful enough for Rumsfeld to say this publicly, but it’s truly beautiful that he did so to his own media committee. The only thing missing is Rumsfeld angrily denouncing Iraqis for being named Donald Rumsfeld.
(The entire hour-long briefing is available as a wav sound file or a pdf transcript. This section is on page 3, and starts at about 5:50.)
PREVIOUSLY IN WORLD-WITHOUT-IRONY NEWS: Dick Cheney tells Larry King:
CHENEY: I think there’s a special obligation on major news organizations, when they’re dealing with what can sometimes be life-and-death matters, to get it right.
If John McCain was hoping to use his speech at the Republican convention in September to try to woo working class voters away from Obama, he might have hit a snag. It seems that McCain’s speech (which traditionally happens on the final night of the convention) will be happening at the same time of the NFL season opener between the Superbowl champs NY Giants and the Washington Redskins. Whoops. I wonder how many people are going to want to skip the big game just to hear an old man give a patronizing speech about war?
