Hillary Clinton: diplomat or future head of state? (via AFP)
It’s one thing for a good presidential candidate to embrace a bad idea. It’s worse when the candidate knows it’s a bad idea. It’s worse still when the candidate attacks her rival for failing to embrace a bad idea. And it’s the worst when the candidate feels so strongly about the bad idea that she starts running television commercials about it.Of course he's talking about Hillary Clinton and her support of John McCain's incredibly stupid gas tax holiday. Now we know it's stupid because Fred Barnes thinks it's a good idea. It's so stupid that even Thomas Friedman thinks it's stupid and He's rarely right about anything. Jonathan Alter calls it what it is:
Hillary Clinton has now joined John McCain in proposing the most irresponsible policy idea of the year—an idea that actually could aid the terrorists. What's worse, both of them know that suspending the federal gas tax this summer is a terrible pander, and yet they're pushing it anyway for crass political advantage.So why is it so stupid? Alter explains:
Clinton and McCain have learned a destructive lesson from the Bush era: as Bill Clinton said in 2002, it's better politically to be "strong and wrong" than thoughtful and right. The goal is to depict Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist. By any means necessary.
I could highlight a long debate among economists on suspending the gas tax, but there is no debate. Not one respectable economist—and not one environmentalist or foreign policy expert—supports the idea, unless they are official members of the Clinton or McCain campaigns (and even some of them privately oppose it). To relieve suffering at the pump, send another rebate check or provide tax credits or something else, but not this.
* It's a direct transfer of money from motorists to oil companies, which are getting ready this week to again report record obscene profits. If the federal excise tax were lifted, oil companies would simply raise prices and pocket most of the difference. Clinton's proposal to recover the money with a windfall profits tax on oil companies sounds nice but won't happen. That tax was easily blocked by the Senate in December and would likely be blocked again.What I have heard few talk about are the reasons behind the sky rocketing fuel prices. Of course we have reached peak oil which I first discussed here almost four years ago. But that doesn't explain why the US is being hurt much more than Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The reality is that oil costs a lot more dollars because the dollar buys a lot less. A majority of Americans now realize that the occupation of Iraq is responsible for much of our economic woes. That includes the price Americans pay for gasoline. The occupation of Iraq costs about three billion dollars a week. That money is all being borrowed driving up the national debt and driving down the value of the dollar. Now an gas tax holiday won't increase the supply of oil and if anything will decrease the value of the dollar driving up prices even more.
* It offers taxpayers only peanuts. The Congressional Budget Office says the average savings to motorists this summer would be a total of $30. Did I miss something, or was that measly number somehow not included in Clinton's explanation of her support?
* It sends more hard-earned money to the Middle East, which is terrible for our national security. Remember, 15 of the 19 terrorists on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia. How did they get the terrorist training? The madrassa indoctrination? Oil money.
* It worsens global warming by encouraging gasoline consumption. When you flee your house in 2020 because of flooding, remember which politicians pandered.
* It makes it more likely you'll have a car accident or will waste even more time in traffic. The proceeds from the gas tax go for highway construction and upgrades. Because the tax (24.4 cents a gallon on diesel fuel) was last raised 15 years ago, our infrastructure is a mess, with potholes and dangerous crossings practically everywhere. Thousands of repair projects will be further delayed.
* It will cost 300,000 construction jobs, according to the Department of Transportation. Makes it kind of ironic when Clinton starts her rallies saying she wants "jobs, jobs, jobs."
* It will cost the U.S. Treasury at least $8.5 billion and probably much more, according to state highway officials. For McCain that's no money at all—merely one month in Iraq. For Clinton it's money she's already spent. She has said in the past that any proceeds from a windfall profits tax would go for renewable energy. The $8.5 billion figure assumes the tax would be reapplied after Labor Day. Fat chance. The one-year costs are probably closer to $30 billion.
* It won't happen anyway because Congress isn't usually quite that stupid, and if it is, President Bush would veto the bill.
"The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," he said. "His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."Will it be enough to halt the feeding frenzy? Probably not but Clinton may become part of the feed not the feeder if she becomes tied to this.
"They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs," he said.
"If Reverend Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either."
Hour One - Who arranged for for Rev Wright's appearance at the Press Club? Photo from the National Press Club's website and outed in a story by Errol Louis in today's NY Daily News, captioned: "Rev. Wright gets the inside story from Rev. Barbara A. Reynolds, the Speakers Committee member who organized the Wright breakfast. (Photo by John Metelsky)" According to Louis' article, Reynolds' website, which is now vacant of all text, had until today said that: "'My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you' to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency."This from Errol Louis:
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted.Is this just another example of dirty Rovian politics on the part of the Clinton campaign?
Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds.
A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister).
It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club "who organized" the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.
On a blog linked to her Web site- www.reynoldsnews.com- Reynolds said in a February post: "My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you" to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency.
The same post criticized Obama's "Audacity of Hope" theme: "Hope by definition is not based on facts," wrote Reynolds. It is an emotional expectation. Things hoped for may or may not come. But help based on experience trumps hope every time."
“Let’s be clear about the threat we face now,” she thundered. “A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond. The regime’s pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only underscores the urgency of the threat it poses. U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot and should not—must not—permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons.” To be sure, we need to cajole China and Russia into going along with diplomatic and economic sanctions, but “we cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran—that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.”Now it may appear that Hillary as made a move to the center but the Boston Globe reminds us that not much has changed.
AMERICANS have learned to take with a grain of salt much of the rhetoric in a campaign like the current Democratic donnybrook between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, there are some red lines that should never be crossed. Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC's "Good Morning America" that, if she were president, she would "totally obliterate" Iran if Iran attacked Israel.It was not only dangerous but she sounded more like Dick Cheney or William Kristol that someone trying to get the Democratic nomination for President. At a time when it is becoming obvious to a vast majority that neocon policy and ideology has been a dangerous failure are the Democrats really going to nominate someone who talks like Dick Cheney? If the corporate media has it's way the answer is yes but it went virtually unreported.
This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.
I'm not going to predict any individuals but I will predict that the election will be decided by at least two strong third party candidates. I'm not saying one of them will win but they will decide the election. Of course it won't be the first time, Ross Perot's race gave Bill Clinton the win in 92 and Ralph Nader gave the election to George W. Bush in 2000.I was wrong - no strong third party candidates have materialized. So who will decide? Those who simply decide not to participate. McCain's best chance is against Hillary. Many Republicans who might not vote will to keep Hillary Clinton out of the white. Hillary has managed to offend the black voters and the urban white voters. Obama will not inspire the Republicans as much and may pick up some Libertarian and even Republican votes. The only thing that Hillary's campaign has accomplished is to make her the least electable of the three.
This time it will be different there will be two strong third party candidates, one on the left and one on the right. If Hillary gets the nomination there will be a large chunk of the Democratic base will be looking for an alternative.
April 27, 2008 -- It's electability, stupid.As I said above Hillary is the least electable of the three candidates. She has alienated large portions of her own party, Independents will not vote for her and she can anticipate virtually no cross over votes. And Joe Gandelman talks about the very thing that made me go from Clinton to Obama.
That's what Hillary Clinton and her surrogates have been spinning to super-delegates and anyone else who will listen since she lost her grip on once-inevitable nomination.
There's just one problem – when it comes to independent voters, those crucial swing votes in swing states, Hillary doesn't hold the electability edge: Barack Obama does.
Independent voters favor Obama by a 2 to 1 margin over Hillary – 49% to 24% – according to a NBC/WSJ poll taken after the Jeremiah Wright scandal in late March. His approval rating among Republicans is almost twice Hillary's as well – 19% to 10%.
Crossover appeal is the key indicator of electability – especially for Democrats. Despite Democratic dominance of Congress during most of the 20th Century, no Democratic president managed to win more than 51% of the popular vote, with the exceptions of FDR and LBJ. What's the lesson? Democrats especially depend on Independent voters and even some centrist Republicans to win the White House.
That's true now more than ever: Independent voters are the fastest growing and largest segment of the American electorate, as detailed in former Clinton and Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen's new book "Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System."
Obama's Independent edge has already had an impact in key 2008 swing states like Virginia, where independents made up 22% of the February 12th open primary. Obama won their support by a 2 to 1 margin, on his way to a 64-35 blowout victory.
And — also something we have noted repeatedly in our posts here — Clinton generates another reaction among many independent voters who detest the Rovian-style negative campaigning politics of division, seeming use of code words, and personal destruction (now widely covered in news reports as the Clinton campaign seeks to drive up Obama’s negatives more than make the case for her strengths against McCain):
BAGHDAD - Muqtada al-Sadr is considering setting aside his political ambitions and restarting a full-scale fight against U.S.-led forces — a worrisome shift that may reflect Iranian influence on the young cleric and could open the way for a shadow state protected by his powerful Mahdi Army.Even the US Army has conceded that the success of the surge was due to al-Sadr's "cease fire". The right, including Condi Rice, have been quick to label Sadr and JAM cowards. Sometimes what appear to be cowardice is wisdom - why get annihilated by superior power when you can live to fight the war on your terms another day. The "cowards" of the Mahdi army are capable of taking Iraq back to pre-surge violence in short order.
A possible breakaway path — described to The Associated Press by Shiite lawmakers and politicians — would represent the ultimate backlash to the Iraqi government's pressure on al-Sadr to renounce and disband his Shiite militia.
By snubbing the give-and-take of politics, al-Sadr would have a freer hand to carve out a kind of parallel state with its own militia and social services along the lines of Hezbollah in Lebanon, a Shiite group founded with Iran's help in the 1980s.
It also would carry potentially disastrous security implications as the Pentagon trims its troops strength and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finally shows progress on national reconciliation.
I willingly concede that should we have a national crisis in which the President is faced with the threat of hundreds of reporters questioning his/her use of lapel pins, then Hillary is who I want to confront that problem.Now even John McCain realized early on that if he was to win the nomination he had to sell his soul and pander to the wingnut base. But not Hillary Clinton:
For every other crisis, I choose Obama. Hillary is turning into a Saturday Night Live routine.
In a weird mirror image of last Friday's "cling" revelation — though perhaps without the same general election implications — this Friday afternoon brings a Huffington Post tape reportedly from a closed-door Hillary fundraiser in which Clinton scorns her opponent's supporters — the liberal activists who make up a pillar of the Democratic Party:Not only was it stupid she was lying once again. MoveOn as an organization never opposed the the war in Afghanistan. If she doesn't agree with a majority of the Democrats perhaps she should be running for the nomination as something other than a Democrat."MoveOn.org endorsed [Obama] — which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down," Clinton said to a meeting of donors. "We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."
First, a negative attack has to ring true to the people you are attempting to persuade. Initial polls seem to indicate that most of the people who are receptive to the "Obama-is-a-condescending-'elitist'-argument" already supported Hillary in the primary before the attacks began. Clinton's attacks may rally some of her troops, but the argument doesn't seem to be that persuasive to actual undecided voters.If the Democrats don't win the White House in November it will be the fault of Hillary Clinton and her campaign. I supported her until January and would have voted for her in November until about a week ago. Now - my old nemesis Bob Barr is looking better all the time. We have to stop the attack on the constitution and the hegemonic neocon foreign policy before any of the other issues will really matter.
Of course one reason may have to do with the credibility of the messenger. It's tough to attack someone else for "elitism" if you've spent the last 16 years in Washington as First Lady and Senator, and your family brought in $107 million over the last seven years. Assuming an eight-hour workday, that means that Bill and Hillary made as much every two hours as Barack Obama made each full year that he organized out-of-work steelworkers for a coalition of church groups.
Second, the fact of a negative attack itself can backwash on the candidate who makes it. Making negative attacks makes people look mean and unlikable. That is a particular problem when the audience for your attacks includes Democratic primary voters and Super Delegates who really want to win the White House in November.
Clinton's negative attacks on Obama have especially begun to backfire with Super Delegates. I've talked to a number of undecided Super Delegate Members of Congress who are furious at her willingness to attack the candidate who they consider almost certain to be the Democratic nominee.
Most think that Clinton has no more than a 10% chance of winning the nomination, so the odds are great that she is doing nothing now but legitimating the Republican narrative for the general election. The story line that Democrats are "elitists" who look down on middle class people is taken right out of Karl Rove's playbook. It's been used for decades to convince everyday Americans to re-elect Republicans that outsource their jobs, destroy their unions and lower their wages. Many Democratic Super Delegates are apoplectic that Clinton would give credibility to that Republican line of attack on their likely standard-bearer.
We've already seen examples of high profile Super Delegates (like Bill Richardson) who have gone with Obama partially because of Clinton's negativism. We'll likely see many more.
Finally, her attacks have allowed the Obama campaign - and the media - to parody her desperate attempts to appear "working class." When Obama conjured up images of Hillary Clinton sitting in a duck blind it called to mind those unforgettable pictures of Michael Dukakis in a tank.
With three crucial Democratic primaries looming, Hillary Rodham Clinton may not be headed toward the blockbuster victories she needs to jump-start her presidential bid -- even in Pennsylvania, the state that was supposed to be her ace in the hole, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.A good performance in tommorows debate could all but sew it up for Obama.
The survey found the New York senator leading Barack Obama by just 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, which votes next Tuesday. Such a margin would not give her much of a boost in the battle for the party's nomination.
What is more, the poll found Clinton trails Obama by 5 points in Indiana, another Rust Belt state that should play to her strengths among blue-collar voters.
In North Carolina, an Obama stronghold, he is running 13 points ahead.
As a native-born, small-town Pennsylvanian, a son of native-born, small-town Pennsylvania parents - one from the coal region, one from Lancaster County - let me assure you that the so-called offensive, condescending things Barack Obama said about the people I come from are basically right on target.Yes, Obama's remarks may have been unwise because he should have known that the Rovian campaigns being run by both John McCain and Hillary Clinton would jump all over it and be aided by the corporate media and their infotainment that pretends to be news. But the reality is the politicians and the pundits reacted the way they did because it was on the money and hit a little too close to home. Baer concludes with this:
[.....]
So, despite carping from Hillary Clinton and annoying yapping from her surrogates (really, it's like turning on the lights at night in a puppy farm), I take no offense.
What's offensive to me is suggesting that small-town, working-class, gun-toting and/or religious Pennsylvanians are somehow injured by a politician's words.
[......]
They've been injured from decades of neglect by political cultures in Washington and Harrisburg driven by special interests.
They're injured by a system of isolated, insulated political leadership that protects itself and the status quo above all else.
They've been harmed by a lack of political guts to fix a health-care system that works against the poor and forces middle-class families to pay more for less, while at the same time giving politicians the best coverage taxpayer money can buy.
They've been taken for granted by political parties and candidates who stay in power by - and this was the apparent gist of Obama's remarks - forcing attention and debate on issues tied to guns, religion and race (precisely because such issues resonate) rather than real problems such as health care and the economy.
So the question is whether Obama effectively defuses this, as he did the controversy surrounding his former minister. And that remains to be seen.
Just don't tell me that he insulted a state or, given his background, that he's an out-of-touch elitist.
And I especially don't want to hear such arguments from a candidate who spent decades in the bubble of a governor's mansion, the White House and the U.S. Senate, and under the blanket of $109 million income during the last eight years.
Pennsylvanians might cling to religion and guns. I hope they don't cling to stupidity.
"Now, I am the first to admit that some of the words I chose, I chose badly," he said, "So I’m not a perfect man and the words I chose, I chose badly. They were subject to misinterpretation, they were subject to be twisted and I regret that.But he stands by what he said:
"And what really burns me up is when people suggest that me saying that folks are mad, they are angry, they are bitter after 25, 30 years of seeing jobs shipped out, pensions not fulfilled, healthcare lost, the notion that people are surprised and are suggesting that I'm out of touch because I spoke honestly about people's frustrations, that tells me there's some politics going on," he said.And he took a major swipe at Hillary's great adventures in hunting which were not unlike her adventures in Bosnia:
Obama said he was disappointed with her for her response and then launched into a new criticism of Clinton over her recent admission of being a hunter, and compared her sarcastically to Annie Oakley.Now I'm a late victim of the Hillary derangement syndrome but I have to tell my friends Jazz and Chuck - you were right, I was wrong. I was continued to defend her will into January and even when I switched sides I said I would vote for her in November. Now I'm not so sure. Her sell centered cynicism and her adoption of Rove style politics has lead me to think that she is as much a part of the problem as John McCain. I have always had a problem with her DLC corporate connections.
"She’s running around talking about how this is an insult to sportsmen, how she values the Second Amendment, she's talking like she's Annie Oakley! Hillary Clinton's out there like she's on the duck blind every Sunday, she's packin' a six shooter! C'mon! She knows better. That's some politics being played by Hillary Clinton. I want to see that picture of her out there in the duck blinds."
And of course there are her neocon leanings that Justin Raimondo discussed in a cover story for American Conservative magazine. But until recently she still looked better than John McCain. I must admit that I am no longer so sure. Andrew Sullivan thinks that the Hillary campaign may have gone too far and that it will end up hurting her. He has some comments to prove it. Obama had been closing in on Clinton is PA - we will have to see what the racking polls have to say this week. While I never mark the box next to John McCain's name at this moment I'm not sure I would be able to mark the box next to Hillary Clinton's either.Billy Kristol assures us that Obama is a Marxist in the NY Times in yet another embarrassing editorial, and my question for you is:
Who will be the first Hillary supporter to link this as a serious reason that Obama should not win the nomination?
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.Of course he's right but it's not something you say on the campaign trail. This is what always worried me about Obama - he had never really been tested on the campaign trail. This is going to hurt him far more than Reverend Wright did. This will help Hillary now and McCain latter if Obama gets the nomination. The Rethuglicans have been trying to paint the Democrats as elitist snobs for 40 years and this just gives them ammunition.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Hillary Clinton and her asshole supporters are now perfectly aligned with the Powerline, and Jeffrey Toobin is right- Hillary Clinton is an embarrassment, and I simply can not face the prospect of four or eight years of her syrupy, two-face, condescending, smarmy bullshit.It is obvious that the Clintons don't give a damned about the Democratic party or the country. While Obama needs to watch what he says I can't imagine voting for Hillary Clinton at this point. For starters I don't believe a word she says and at this point I think the occupation of Iraq will end in 2009 even if McCain is elected.
When I was profiling her two years ago, I learned about her involvement with a secretive Christian organization called The Fellowship that has operated in the Washington shadows since the 1930s. I found the story of Clinton and The Fellowship so bizarre that I made it the lede to my piece. In light of recent events, it's worth revisiting.Little is known about the group because it is very secretive.
If you've never heard of The Fellowship (also known as The Family), it will sound like some shadowy organization in a John Grisham novel. (Indeed, as a Google search will demonstrate, critics consider it a cult.) The group was formed in the 1930s to minister to political and business leaders throughout the world, modeling itself as a kind of Christian Trilateral Commission. Several members of Congress are affiliated with the group, mostly Republicans, but some Democrats, too. To the extent The Fellowship is known beyond its members it is probably for founding the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
Like Jeremiah Wright's Trinity Baptist Church, The Fellowship is run by its own mysterious and controversial figure, Douglas Coe, although temperamentally Coe is Wright's opposite. He eschews the spotlight and has never made a controversial public utterance that I'm aware of -- mainly because he rarely speaks publicly at all. (You won't find him on YouTube.) But like Wright, Coe has ministered to a Democratic frontrunner. He personally leads a private Senate prayer group that Clinton has been a part of.
Reporters hoping to look into the group might want to think again. A few years ago, The Fellowship’s archives, which are held at Wheaton College, the evangelical school in Illinos, were reclassified as “restricted” and placed under lock and key.Is it time someone asks Hillary about her religion if she feels free to question Obama's?
The most telling point for me was when Andrea said "... clearly she is involved in a religious organization that is much more right wing that she (pause) claims to be."
Yes, Andrea, who Hillary claims to be just may not be who she really is. The answer to this question "Who is Hillary and what does she want?" is not clear to many of us. We know she has embellished her claims of foreign policy experience while First Lady. But inflating what you tell us you have done is not the same as keeping secret what it is that you have actually done... or are thinking of doing with your right wing "Family" connections if you become President of the United States.
I just talked to Jeff Sharlet, author of the forthcoming book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Although he says that Hillary Clinton's connection with the Fellowship (aka the "Family") is fairly shallow, he also thinks it's quite wrong to characterize it as merely "a collection of Bible study groups." Hillary's association with the Fellowship is no scandal, he says, but it is fair to question her about whether she accepts Doug Coe's particular brand of elite-centered, post-millennial theology.
Now we all had great fun mocking John McCain when he embraced the man that had viciously slimed him four years before. Now Hillary is embracing a man, Richard Mellon Scaife, who spent years and millions of his own dollars to slime Hillary and Bill Clinton. This was while attempting to resurrect the Obama's Rev Wright problem that had all but disappeared in order to deflect from her own lapse of memory on Bosnia. Now it gets even worse:The Clinton campaign is distributing an article in the American Spectator (!) about Obama foreign policy adviser Merrill McPeak and his penchant for.. well, the article accuses him of being an anti-Semite and a drunk. Principally, the author takes McPeak to task for supporting a Middle East map that would require Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 border. It also makes the case that McPeak supports the Walt-Mearsheimer view of the influence of the Israeli lobby on foreign policy.Of course this is not the first time that Hillary has made use of Rovian politics and right wing talking points in an attempt to knee cap Obama.
The author's sudden conclusion: "Obama has a Jewish problem and McPeak's bigoted views are emblematic of what they are. Obama can issue all the boilerplate statements supporting Israel's right to defend itself he wants. But until he accepts responsibility for allowing people like McPeak so close to his quest for the presidency, Obama's sincerity and judgment will remain open questions."
As one keen observer pointed out to me, if advocating the pre '67 border map makes one an anti-Semite, just about every iteration of the U.S. government since 1967 would qualify. Tony McPeak's verbal gymnastics do not make a "Jewish problem" for Obama.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a wide-ranging interview today with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporters and editors, said she would have left her church if her pastor made the sort of inflammatory remarks Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor made.But Obama was coming back and once again was leading in North Carolina by 21 points. This can only be described as a Tonya Harding attack which can only hurt the Democratic Party in November and the country for years.
"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."
Obama's lead in national polls had slipped since clips of the retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright began being played on national news programs, but he has since rebounded, according to a Gallup poll. The uproar prompted Obama to give a major speech on race in America last week.
U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, whose district includes much of Martin and St. Lucie counties, is hoping he won't have to attend the Democratic Party national convention in Denver in August.Now I don't know if Gore is the guy - he's got some baggage of his own, and I certainly can't imagine a Gore/Clinton ticket. I don't know how the Clinton and Obama supporters would react - would it unify or further divide?
If he does go, that will mean the Democrats still haven't decided a nominee for the presidential election. And if neither Sen. Hillary Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama has clinched the nomination by August, Mahoney says we may see a brokered convention, meaning the nominee could emerge from a negotiated settlement.
"If it (the nomination process) goes into the convention, don't be surprised if someone different is at the top of the ticket," Mahoney said.
A compromise candidate could be someone such as former vice president Al Gore, Mahoney said last week during a meeting with this news organization's editorial board.
If either Clinton or Obama suggested to a deadlocked convention a ticket of Gore-Clinton or Gore-Obama, the Democratic Party would accept it, Mahoney said.
As we can see according to the latest from the Pew Research Center There are fewer Republicans and Republican leaning Independents than at any time since 2000. The balance of party identification in the American electorate now favors the Democratic Party by a decidedly larger margin than in either of the two previous presidential election cycles.
In 5,566 interviews with registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, 36% identify themselves as Democrats, and just 27% as Republicans.
The share of voters who call themselves Republicans has declined by six points since 2004, and represents, on an annualized basis, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.
The Democratic Party has also built a substantial edge among independent voters. Of the 37% who claim no party identification, 15% lean Democratic, 10% lean Republican, and 12% have no leaning either way.
By comparison, in 2004 about equal numbers of independents leaned toward both parties. When "leaners" are combined with partisans, however, the Democratic Party now holds a 14-point advantage among voters nationwide (51% Dem/lean-Dem to 37% Rep/lean-Rep), up from a three-point advantage four years ago.
So how can we explain the fact that John McCain is in a virtual tie with both Democratic candidates in spite of the fact he is little more than a clone of a president with a 32 percent approval rating? The economy is most voters primary concern and McCain has admitted he knows little about economics and in fact about the only thing he has said is that the Bush tax cuts should be continued. While approval of the Iraq war is up a little a majority still want the US out - McCain wants to be there for a hundred years. A majority of voters oppose military action against Iran - McCain wants to "bomb - bomb - bomb Iran". So how can he be doing so well? Is it because of race and gender? The gender issue is complicated because we are dealing with Hillary Clinton who has baggage that is not entirely gender related. The race issue is clearer. Obama has been unable to get a majority of white male voters in any primary, a sure sign that race is still an issue. John Cole pointed out that there is no way Obama could carry his state of West Virginia.Probably the most remarkable aspect of the recent feeding frenzy about Barack Obama's so-called "pastor problem" -- besides the agility and smarts that Obama has displayed in handling it -- is not as much what it reveals about the state of race in America as what it reveals about the state of the American media.Is the media dumping gasoline on the race fire? David thinks the answer is yes.