I am a Pennsylvania "supervoter" -- (NOT a superdelegate!) I usually even vote in the low-turnout odd-year primary AND general elections, since that's when PA voters pick our statewide judges. Makes me glad we got rid of our land phone line -- no robocalls to our cell phones! :-) But you would think I would be deluged with mail touting the two would-be presidents.
Well, so far, I've gotten two pro-Obama mailers, one from him (prominently featuring Casey throughout) and one from SEIU. Not that I WANT a ton of Clinton stuff in my mailbox, mind you -- save the paper! I just find it curious -- is it because I'm under 40 and male? (Maybe they saw my letter to the editor that the Harrisburg paper ran on Monday.) Oh, I did get one piece of mail from Clinton yesterday, finally --
-- but it was only a plea for money! The really odd thing is that I haven't given her a cent, but the letter, dated April 7, started off "I am so grateful for all you have done for our campaign. You have made calls, volunteered, voted, and contributed."
I guess her letter was a cookie-cutter 50-state letter (more on that in a minute), probably sent to the same list ex-President Clinton's library and foundation use to send me pleas (they get nothing from me, either -- I'd rather give mostly to candidates and causes that can't raise $2,300 or more with a snap of the finger). Maybe I got on that list because I donated to Casey in 2006; who knows?
Anyway, there was one thing in the Clinton I-need-money letter that still puzzles me. (boldface added below)
... While we are building up our field operations in Pennsylvania, we must be doing the same for the May contests in North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky and Oregon.
We are not running a "state" strategy campaign. We are running a national strategy campaign.
(Then it goes on about how we need more than speeches and promises, yadda yadda yadda...)
But am I missing something (no, seriously) -- I <ital>think</ital> that's implying that Team Clinton is now claiming to pursue a 50-state strategy? But that can't be. See also LSBuchanan's April 5 diary Clinton: "We're going to run a 50 state strategy!" Me: Wait, whaaaa?
I mainly posted this diary because I am seriously wondering if that "'we are not running a 'state' strategy" bit could mean anything other than what I think it does. (And also to give many of you a good laugh.)
I have been really disappointed in Sen. Clinton, and there were times in the past few months when I did think I would end up supporting her. (I didn't focus on the presidential race intensely until February, when it started to look like the PA presidential primary might matter for once.)
Here's a major reason why I say I have been disappointed in her -- I might have been able to hold my nose on stuff like her 2002 Iraq vote and even her previous support for NAFTA, if she had admitted a while back that those were mistakes and that she gets it now. There's a good chance I and many other voters would have found that credible. Instead, I think it took her, what, more than 5 years to admit the Iraq vote was a mistake (if memory serves, at the last debate, she got asked what Senate vote she would want to take back if she could, and she picked that one).
And on trade, (hat tip David Sirota), this says it pretty well -- from the Wall Street Journal:
Indiana Rep. Ryan Dvorak similarly underscored concerns about Clinton's honesty, describing her longtime opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement as an "unnecessary exaggeration." He said that voters would probably understand if she admitted to having cautiously supported Nafta but had since decided that the trade deal was flawed. But to travel across Indiana declaring that she had been an antitrade stalwart since 1992 was a farce, he said.
"A lot of [voters] have expressed to me surprise when she has come into Indiana ... saying she has been speaking out against Nafta since 1992," Dvorak said. "A lot of voters are ... frankly a little bit confused by this."
When Sen. Clinton tried to tell us she was always opposed to NAFTA, even after the White House records of her 5 pro-NAFTA meetings came out recently, to me, that did a lot more to damage her credibility than the humorous Bosnia sniper-fire bit. The fact that she WAS publicly for the 2000 China permanent trade deal further undermined her credibility. Imagine the fun the Republicans would have had with her over the NAFTA stuff. What a relief that the elected-delegate math (and most superdelegates' reluctance to overturn it) will apparently spare us that and give America the change we need in the form of Barack Obama.