Tag: Hillary Clinton

Hard positions have been staked out regarding what the Democratic superdelegates should do if they are mathematically able to determine who wins the nomination for President.  Obama supporters argue that if the popular will — presumably such a will that supports Obama, and putting aside for now the question of how clearly it can be ascertained — is overturned by superdelegates, they will leave the party forever.  More credibly and more importantly, they argue that the large number of new voters who appear to be energized by the Obama candidacy — young Democrats, independents, etc. — will not come out for Hillary.  Clinton supporters argue — here, if not as regards Florida and Michigan — that rules is rules, and that the superdelegates’ untrammeled right to choose the President they prefer cannot be taken away at this late date.

Full disclosure: I’ve been an Obama supporter since shortly after Edwards was held to 5% in Nevada.  I try to be fair about it when it comes to superdelegate voting ethics, though, and I think that there is some room for agreement between these sides.  While many argue that it simply won’t come to this, that superdelegates will not overturn the popular will, it certainly seems possible to me that it might.  I expect Clinton to pull back ahead in the delegate count, with the help of Ohio even without the help of Texas, by the time Pennsylvania’s votes are counted on April 22.  While I believe that Obama should do well enough in the primaries in May and June to finish with a delegate lead, it’s possible that it won’t happen, or certainly possible that that lead will be slight.

By considering what the different possibilities are, I think that we can at least narrow the debate.  We won’t find completely common ground, but we should find more than one would expect after watching this week’s news.  More below.

The topic below was originally posted February 14th, on my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal and crossposted today at The Wild Wild Left, Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree and Worldwide Sawdust.

American politics typically reflects our cultural ethos of the moment. Just consider these questions:

1. Has our culture promoted community or celebrated greed?
2. Is our foreign policy based upon cooperation with the community of nations or the imperatives of empire?
3. Can individuals live in dignity regardless of their profession, economic class, ethnicity, gender, religion and sexual orientation or is gentrified wealth valued above character?
   

(Olberman in normal, Satan in italics)

And the Number two story on tonight’s Countdown, an in-studio interview with the Lord of Flies himslf, Satan, on the presidential race. Good evening sir and welcome to the show.

It’s good to be here, Keith

As I’ve previously noted, the Bush Administration has recently made clear that they have no intention of leaving Iraq, that they’re doing their best to ensure that the next president will have trouble doing so, and that Defense Secretary Robert Gates just announced that he wants to prevent our troop levels in Iraq from dropping below 130,000. Well, Reuters has this interesting news:

U.S. forces should keep withdrawing from Iraq this year without a pause, Iraq’s national security adviser said on Wednesday, disagreeing with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, whose post gives him a senior security role in the Iraqi government, said he would like to see U.S. forces draw down steadily to below 100,000 by the end of 2008.

Hmm. Wonder who will win that argument.

And al-Rubaie also had some words to which Democrats need pay close attention:

He also said he thought it was unlikely American Democratic Party candidates for president would be able to keep pledges to rapidly pull out U.S. forces if they are elected this year to succeed President George W. Bush.

Since November, Bush has been laying the groundwork to ensure that our occupation is made permanent. That will be difficult to reverse, but it’s also worth noting that both Senators Clinton and Obama offer Iraq withdrawal plans that include keeping the current “embassy,” including a force to guard it, which will undoubtedly number in the thousands. That “embassy” will be the largest in the world, and according to this Congressional Budget Office estimate (pdf), it will cost more than a billion dollars a year to maintain and secure!

Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will need our support, when attempting to dismantle the structures Bush has put in place to indefinitely perpetuate the occupation; but whoever that nominee turns out to be will also need us to keep pushing for a more aggressive withdrawal strategy. That embassy must go. Unless we can have a normal embassy, with a normal embassy staff, we should have no embassy at all, in Iraq. The occupation must end, and as long as we maintain that “embassy,” our presence in Iraq cannot be defined as anything else.  

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(Alternate title: Ratings and Relevance – Why the Media Elite Need Hillary to Stay in the Race)

Like many of you, I am fascinated by our Elite Media’s collective reaction to the Obama surge. They appear to be tripping over themselves to minimize the importance of his victories this week. They are muddling the delegate count to make it appear like we have a neck-and-neck horse race, rather than an obvious clear leader today. Tim Russert has to stand on his head wearing those 3-D colored glasses in order not to sound like a complete idiot when he says ‘As I read the results, there is no clear picture in the race today, Chris’. Matthews, Andrea Mitchell, and the rest are all saying how uncertain things are, when in fact we have a darn good idea of what is happening.

So what’s going on here? Aren’t these the same people who couldn’t wait to trash Hillary Clinton from the moment she announced her candidacy? Weren’t these folks practically wetting themselves when it looked like she had a legitimate challenger in the Democratic primary? Yet now, you get the sense they are all cheering her on behind the scenes, although of course they can’t be so blatant as to say so on national TV.

What’s changed?

Your U.S. Senate believes it is okay for you to be spied upon by your government, and for Bush to be able to define what that means, according to his whim. Your U.S. Senate believes that it was okay for the telecoms to break the law by allowing you to be spied upon when it was still illegal. Before today’s votes, Glenn Greenwald wrote this:

The Senate today — led by Jay Rockefeller, enabled by Harry Reid, and with the active support of at least 12 (and probably more) Democrats, in conjunction with an as-always lockstep GOP caucus — will vote to legalize warrantless spying on the telephone calls and emails of Americans, and will also provide full retroactive amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, thus forever putting an end to any efforts to investigate and obtain a judicial ruling regarding the Bush administration’s years-long illegal spying programs aimed at Americans. The long, hard efforts by AT&T, Verizon and their all-star, bipartisan cast of lobbyists to grease the wheels of the Senate — led by former Bush 41 Attorney General William Barr and former Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick — are about to pay huge dividends, as such noble efforts invariably do with our political establishment.

Dan Froomkin put it in these stark terms:

Here’s a White House ” Fact Sheet” on telecom immunity: “Companies should not be held responsible for verifying the government’s determination that requested assistance was necessary and lawful — and such an impossible requirement would hurt our ability to keep the Nation safe.”

But isn’t that the very definition of a police state: that companies should do whatever the government asks, even if they know it’s illegal?

You can read the roll call on retroactive telecom immunity here. These are the Senators who supported Chris Dodd, to prevent retroactive telecom immunity:

Akaka (D-HI), Baucus (D-MT), Biden (D-DE), Bingaman (D-NM), Boxer (D-CA), Brown (D-OH), Byrd (D-WV), Cantwell (D-WA), Cardin (D-MD), Casey (D-PA), Dodd (D-CT), Dorgan (D-ND), Durbin (D-IL), Feingold (D-WI), Harkin (D-IA), Kennedy (D-MA), Kerry (D-MA), Klobuchar (D-MN), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Leahy (D-VT), Levin (D-MI), Menendez (D-NJ), Murray (D-WA), Obama (D-IL), Reed (D-RI), Reid (D-NV), Sanders (I-VT), Schumer (D-NY), Tester (D-MT), Whitehouse (D-RI), Wyden (D-OR)

These are the Democrats who voted against it:

Bayh (D-IN), Carper (D-DE), Conrad (D-ND), Feinstein (D-CA), Inouye (D-HI), Johnson (D-SD), Kohl (D-WI), Landrieu (D-LA), Lincoln (D-AR), McCaskill (D-MO), Mikulski (D-MD), Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Rockefeller (D-WV), Salazar (D-CO), Stabenow (D-MI), Webb (D-VA)

Not a single Republican or Lieberman voted against telecom immunity!

(more)

From CNN’s Political Ticker:

Noting that “my husband never did well in caucus states either,” Clinton argued that caucuses are “primarily dominated by activists” and that “they don’t represent the electorate, we know that.”

Now, I don’t care which candidate you support–personally, I support Obama, but that’s neither here nor there for the purposes of this post.

The fact that any candidate for the Democratic nomination can openly dismiss activists in such condescending terms is shocking.  Senator Clinton apparently thinks that people who actually care enough about issues and are invested enough in a candidate to actually go out and suspend the routine of their daily lives to try to make a difference for the causes and candidates they support are in some way hijacking the “will of the electorate.”

More below…  

x-posted to BooMan Tribune

I stand by my pessimism that Hillary Clinton can be driven out of the race prior to substantial losses in the likes of North Carolina, Indiana, and Kentucky in May.  I stand by my pessimism that the Clintons would be better positioned to twist arms in a brokered convention, and that Hillary would win in part by offering Obama the poisoned apple of the Vice-Presidency, which he will turn down.  But it has occurred to me that there is one way that Obama would be able to win over a brokered convention, and it would coincidentally lead to the best ticket and the best government we could rightfully expect.

He can convince Al Gore to become his Vice-President.

I’ve just finished about two hours of making phone calls for Obama in Washington state, ahead of tomorrow’s caucuses.  They are going to be a nightmare, and Hillary may win them because of it.  Be on guard for that.

More after the jump.