Her campaign's not dead yet, it just keeps rising from the Grave.
Where's a Vampire Slayer when you need one?
Despite the grand pronouncemnts of Timmeh this Democratic Primary Battle isn't over yet. Yes, we know Hillary can't win mathematically, I stated this elemental fact on Sunday. Tuesday didn't change the fact that Hillary would need an average of 68% of both the pledged and uncommitted Super-delegates to reach the magic number, it just made the media stop ignoring that her campaign's new pant-suite was translucent.
The question now is just how long this trail of tears death march back to a unified democratic party need to be? Just how are we going to implement our own Truth and Reconcilliation Commission?
Real reconcilliation requires more than just sweeping things under the rug and hoping that the resulting toxic lump doesn't metastasize into some kind of pungent evil mold. (Like the way we've handle Race Relations for the last 50 years...)
Now, some in the Obama camp are ready to dive into Mold City by being willing to stick the hatchet under the pool shed, and make nice nice with "The Clinton Bashing End's Tonight"
I think that's all well and good in theory, and possibly a good first step toward beginning repairs, but since Hillary's campaign hasn't actually ended, it's kind of like deciding in the 15th round to simply fight on one foot.
Plus, I don't know, I think some people in CampHill might take it as rubbing it in.
I just think that's getting ahead of ourselves.
First, we have to take out the trash, with a few hard truths about ourselves and each other and that's going to take some time. If Obamites are going to offer the hand of partnership with Clintonites, we need to own up to what we've done as much as we ask that they admit what they've done.
The primary fact we have to face is that Hillary herself hasn't been our largest and most divisive problem.
That problem has been Us.
Hillary didn't make a ton of Kossack's go on strike. We did.
To be fair I haven't been anywhere near MyDD or No Quarter for weeks, despite the deep respect I still have for Larry Johnson. I've been "on Strike" with them too, so there.
Rather than crack jokes and deride the passion of our fellow democrats by mocking their strike we should have recognized that it can be very difficult being a minority voice in a venue when the majority is so passionately going a different direction. There tends to be the Pile-On and the immediate and vicious Troll Accusations. People tend to become insensitive and abusive to those with different opinions when they've got the numbers on their side. It gets ugly and sometimes retreating to neutral corners is the wisest choice for both sides.
Hillary didn't turn Taylor Marsh into a Raging Wackadoddle, she did that on her own.
I was frankly stunned when Joe Wilson attacked Barack over his Judgement, when Joe himself had been screaming from the Hinterlands that "There's no THERE -THERE" and couldn't get anyone to listen.
Barack Obama argues that he deserves the Democratic nomination and Hillary Clinton doesn't because he possesses superior "judgment," as he calls it, on the key issues we face as a nation. As definitive proof he offers one speech he made in 2002 during a reelection campaign for an Illinois senate seat in the most liberal district in the state, so liberal that no other position would have been viable. When he made that speech, Obama was not privy to the briefings by, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in support of the Authorization of Use of Military Force as a diplomatic tool to push the international community to impose intrusive inspections on Saddam Hussein.
Joe knows damn well that the Bush adminstration went miles out of their way to hide the truth, keeping the relevent information such as the State Dept and Energy Dept's virulent dissent over the aluminum tubes and yellow cake classified. They even went so far as to blow his wife's cover and still he ignores the fact that Hillary herself didn't even read the NIE, while he's attacking Barack for being "out of the loop"?
I felt sick when I read this. Really physically ill. I love Joe. I love how he's stood up to Rove and Libby, but man.. oh man. It was going just a bridge too far IMO. Too far...
I mean, I've done my own fair share of defending Hillary's Iraq Vote, pointing out that her claims that it was intended to further diplomacy - not start a war, just as John Kerry also said - were valid.
It was just difficult for either of them to admit they were completely bamboozled by a guy from Connecticut who lives on a Horseless Ranch in Crawford. But Joe really didn't need to go there.
Even with all that, I forgive you Joe. You may not care or appreciate it, but there it is. You did what you felt you had to do.
And yes, I too was shocked and appalled not necessarily by Geraldine Ferraro's "Lucky to be a Black Man" comments, but by how brazenly she expressed them, how quickly she played the victim and how her comments were completely contradicted by her comments from a year previous that it's "easier for a woman running for office than a black man" because...
"There is a certain amount of racism that exists in the United States — whether it’s conscious or not it’s true."
No kidding. Ya think?
It's not that Geraldine was being a racist, it's that she was so willing to pander to the racists, that she knew damn well were out there and would respond to her comments.
Still, I forgive you Geraldine - you were just trying to win.
On the other hand we have to realize the Bill Clinton wasn't playing the race card in South Carolina.
Question: What does it say about Barack Obama's campaign that it takes two of you (Bill and Hill) to defeat him?
Bill C: (Laughs) (Unintelligible).. this debate too. Jesse Jackson won twice in 1984 and 1988, and he ran a good campaign. Senator Obama's run a good campaign, he's run a good campaign everywhere. He's a good candidate with a good organization.
Bill Clinton was not demeaning Obama in any way what so ever. He couldn't have been nicer, the fact that he mentioned Jesse Jackson wasn't racial - it was simply to say people with good campaigns tend to win everyone once in a while. (Or maybe 11 times in a row)
Therefore it's somewhat understandable that when asked about having "marginalized Obama as the Black Candidate" by his statements that he categorically denied having done that.
It was because - in the spirit of Truth and Reconcilliation - he didn't. This is why Bill was starting to get pissy about it. ("I don't think I should take any Shit on this...")
And also, there really were a set of memos from the Obama camp on this issue.
Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign has prepared a detailed memo listing various instances in which it perceived Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign to have deliberately played the race card in the Democratic primary. [See the full memo here.]
The memo, which was obtained by the Huffington Post and has been made public elsewhere, is believed to have been given to an activist and contains mostly excerpts from different media reports. It lists the contact info and name of Obama's South Carolina press secretary, Amaya Smith, and is broken down into five incidents in which either Clinton, her husband Bill, or campaign surrogates made comments that could be interpreted as racially insensitive.
Bill was not having a "senior moment", he was right on point. Bill also really did get sandbagged on the "Fairy Tale" comment. He wasn't talking about the entire idea of Barack Obama running for President as Michelle once claimed, he was saying that Obama did take his 2002 campaign speech down from his website when it was politically inconvenient for John Kerry. He was saying that Obama dropped the volume on his opposition to the war when it was problematic and turned it back up again when it wasn't.
Under any other circumstances that would be called being a "Smart Politician".
Look, nobodies perfect - some of these things are just honest mistakes, some of it is just being hard-charging advocate for your position. It can be difficult to admit that somebody on your own team really did commit a flagrant foul on the play. But we have to do it, then we can move on. Then we can forgive.
If we Obamites can forgive Obama's campaign for using every reasonable (and sometimes unreasonable) weapon in it's arsenal, such as trying to protect the Senator for biased race-based attacks and occasionally attacking an innocent offender, we also have to forgive Bill, Hill, Ms. Marsh, Ms Ferraro, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Wilson too.
We on the Obama side have to realize, as I wrote in April, that Toughness Matters. Being willing to fight on and through with every fibre of your being and every ounce of your soul is something that Democrats, particularly those of the limp-spined variety in Congress, really need to learn how to do and some of those in Hill's camp seem to have a knack for it.
Just a suggestion to Hill and Crew though, it does help quite a bit if the thing you're fighting for is something besides your own self-aggrandizement.
Yes, the Clinton camp did try to exploit the Reverend Wright situation by accusing Barack of having been in the church when he wasn't, and creating the false standard that he should leave the church, even though Rev. Wright has already left the church, but we Obamites have to realize and admit - Obama did a poor job of vetting on this one. He really did.
We on the Obama side have to realize that the Electoral Map really does look better for Hillary with the current polls indicating she defeats McCain by 291 to 236 with 11 Electoral Votes Tied in Indiana, because she is currently projected to win both Ohio and Florida.
Meanwhile Obama is in a virtual tie with McCain at 264 to 263 Electoral votes because he trails in Ohio and Florida - but only by 1 percentage point. He's also only one point behind in New Mexico and Nebraska, and only 3 points behind in South Carolina. He doesn't have to will all these states, he just has to win ONE OF THEM and he becomes the next President of the United States.
But then again, basically the same is true of John McCain.
Barack Obama CAN make up the difference, and he WILL make up the difference - the more help he gets from Hillary, Bill and all their rabid, scortch-the-earth wackadoodle (c'mon I mean that in a nice way) supporters to do that - the better.
McCain's got some freshly tilled Earth under his feet, and it needs some scortching.
Vyan
Update: Oh my God - while I was writing this Hillary was shooting off her mouth about Her White Voters. Oh man, that's gonna leave a near permanent scuff mark and take forever to buff out... Ugh, where's the pledge?