Why Hillary's argument is flawed and winning is meaningless

I have been thinking about Hillary's absurd claim about the road to Pennsylvania Avenue leads through Pennsylvania. I am not as clued in as many Kossacks, but if the following questions have occured to me I am sure they are playing ok the mind of some of them.

Ok, let's take Hillary's argument seriously. Barack cannot win because he is somehow out of touch with the needs of ordinary (meaning white, working class and old) people. That she is the most qualified and experienced to run the country. She beats him on foriegn policy experience, the ability to be bright and perky at 3AM, and the only one who knows that the only way to Pennsylvania Avenue is through Pennsylvania. Yadda, yadda you know the variations of this spin and can most likely recite variations in your sleep.

Couple of questions come to mind regarding Hillary's chances

• First, and this is not really serious, however given the Clinton campaigns blowing gaffes and slips of the tongue to illustrate her psychic, moral and spiritual superiority, I  want to be shown a map where any road in Pennsylvania actually goes to Washington DC. I would agree that going from Michigan to DC, but you can drive down 295 to 95 avoiding Pennsylvania altogether. That does not include getting to Washington from the South, the Mid West or the Western States. I am not sure about who should be cooking in the kitchen at 3 oclock in the morning, what I do know is I do not want someone at the healm of the ship of state who cannot read a fucking map.
• More seriously, it may be the case that Hillary has won the working class white vote. However, the only instance that I can think of where these voters were asked if they would be voting for her in the fall and a sizeable minority of them said they would never vote for Hillary for President. They do not like her and certainly do not trust her.
  

  In the most recent ABC/Washington Post poll, the concerns of the voters in Mississippi were not out of line with the rest of the country. If as has been predicted that many of the new voting blocks mobilized by Obama, will simply stay home on election day can you rely on these blue collar voters to actually support you. I doubt most of them will.

• The republicans may be ready on day one to challenge Obama with a slew of bogus issues, most notably the resurection and rehabilitation  of the Weathermen into the retro folk-devil de joyce; does Hillary really believe they will not make hay with her thirty five year plus association with someone who was a draft dodger,burned the flag abroad and was invited to Russia as a guest if the Communist Party. I realize these are all false claims, but the same groups that brought us the Swift Boats have never really cared for factual bases for their claims.
  

  In a similar these same groups, most especially those connected with The American Spectator and Scaife are going to whack you with the most hellacious Right Wing Cpnspiracy. Hillary will be making a huge error if she thinks the architects of the Arkansas project are going to support her in the fall and the irony will not be lost on the Party elites.  To much time was wasted and too many opportunities lost with the fallout from its earlier incarnation.
  
  Hillary should remember that the tools utilized by the foot soldiers of the Arkansas project have been perfected over the last ten years. What Neil Postman referred to the phenomena of amusing ourselves to death, and Guy Debord as the Society of the Spectacle has been marked, in the wake of Fox News' rise  by a massive shift to the right. This can be seen most clearly in the differences inj responses to the debate last Wednesday by main stream and non-mainstream journalists. For the talking heads who are passed off as journalists on Sunday Morning as well as thedir extended network of conservative commentators, the debate raised serious issues and concerns that they felt were on the minds of everyday folks here in Pennsylvaina. For most who work in new and alternative media as well as a great number of bloggers the debate was an exercuse in McCarthyism.
  
  It is not hard to imagine the parade of scandals that will be trotted out. Whitewater, carpetbagging, enabling Bill. As Barack likes to point out so long as scandal drives our national debate nothing will change. A second Clinton presidency will be hampered by the same set of problems that beset the first. In four years we will not have health care reform, a living wage and trade pacts that serve the needs of workers instead of hedge fund managers.

• The largest of Hillary's problems grow out of the fact that of the two democratic candidates she has the shallowest base of support. It is true that she is winning Pennsylvania by between 6 and 8 points, but not meaning to belabor the point here, when given a choice between Clinton and McCain the bulk of these supporters will vote for McCain. The softness of her support is best illustrated by her fundraising problems.
  

  For super delegates to ignore Barack Obama's fund raising base, which is as broad as it is deep and to treat Clinton's fundraising failures would be an error of historic proprtions. It is nice to see Hillary paying lip-service to the will of the voters is a farce. Clinton chose to follow a model that was first utilized by Nixon with the Southern Strategy then perfected by Roger Ailes, Lee Atwater, James Carville, Dick Morris, Frank Luntz,  Terry McAuliffe and most recently by Karl Rove and Mark Penn. At its heart, this strategy involves cleaving the population into manageable subsets, focus group them to death till you can identify political tipping points which then pander the hell out of them.<by>
  Consequently, you got elections that revolved around soccer moms and church going dads, school uniforms and gay marriage. Irrelevant issues designed to appeal to the target groups fears and lack of relevant aspirations.
  
  What these strategies share in common is exclusion, not inclusion. It is not coincidental that James Carville described Pennsylvania as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in the middle. To view politics through a lens that divides the country up into red and blue and decide there are swaths of the country that are not worth contesting means that the goal of a campaign is to win the Presidency and screw the party. What Dean first understood and Obama put into action was the Democratic Party could win in parts of the country where no Democrat has gone before. <be>
  Hillary never cared for anything except getting herself anointed. Just as the Clinton's misread why the voters rejected Democrats on 1994 because they failed to deliver meaningful reform for the Democratic party to select a candidate without coat tails means the party faces a similar fate in 2010.
  
  What Barack brings with his fundraising base is the enthusiasm of two central communities that will ensure that not only will the Democratic party maximize its gains in the Senate where a working coalition of 60 is needed to get anything done. Even more important is the election of progressives at every level of government.

In closing I would like to comment on Hillary's appearance on Good Morning America. While she did not say Iraq is included under the umbrella, it us hard to imagine of is not. Consequently it is easy to imagine that the way she will withdraw a brigade a month by marching them through a nuclear wasteland toward Tehran. Bat shit crazy fucking idea

•  I'm with you

  Can we stop now?

  by Leftcenterlibertarian on Tue Apr 22, 2008 at 09:58:17 PM PDT