Hillary Rodham Clinton romped to victory Tuesday in the West Virginia primary, burying Barack Obama in a landslide that seemed unlikely to stop his steady march to the Democratic nomination.
Running in a state tailored to her strengths—with a large turnout of white, rural and working-class voters—Clinton posted one of her biggest winning margins. With nearly all of the vote counted, she was leading Obama 67% to 26%.
Read More...Money: Even though West Virginia was long expected to go big for Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama still outspent his opponent by more than 2–1 on television advertising, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.
Read More.... . . your own opinion doesn’t count for much. A couple of weeks ago Barack Obama whomped Hillary Clinton in North Carolina and lost to her narrowly in Indiana, outcomes that were generally expected. Overnight, the media (and apparently the Democratic Party) decided that was that—Obama had wrapped up the nomination. The tone of the coverage underwent a sea change. Clinton was now an object of affection and indulgence:
My column on Wednesday argued for Clinton to gracefully exit the stage now that it looks like there are no more rabbits to pull out of her electoral hat. But readers—not all of them women—pushed back. Let her quit when she’s good and ready, many argued. She’s earned that right. Carol Marin, Sun-Times.
Read More...At this writing…a little before midnight Tuesday…the hype about Hillary losing North Carolina and either carrying Indiana by an eyelash or losing by an eyelash is-eyewash.
It presumes the race for the nomination is suspenseful. It has not been for many weeks. Barack Obama has been slated to win the votes of a majority of the Super-delegates for many weeks now. Those mathematicians who are calculating the numbers don’t understand that at this point it is not a mathematical game but a strategic one. Literally a no-brainer since it involves the long range future of the Democratic party. Why?
Because the future of the Democratic party is tied up with its huge lock on the black vote. Super-delegates are all for the most part practical politicians. To snatch the nomination away from Obama when he is ahead in delegate count would irreparably destroy much black loyalty to the Democratic party. ... Read More...
Peotone—This column has long been loud in its fanfare for John McCain, but—at least in the sounds coming from Huffington Post —some cacaphony is being orchestrated.
Here, of course, McCain is wildly popular in the ‘clingingly bitter community—garnering 48%percent of the vote in the official Republicans in Will County—and seems to have captured the hearts of the Peotonese as well. I suspect he could be elected King of Will County Fair in a landslide.
But since Pennsylvania, McCain has not been forced to battle four opponents at once—two Clintons and Obama frontally, plus the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Billy Boy Ayers from the rear. It has not thrown McCain’s campaign even somewhat off course and there is no sense that he has been brought down to earth – by that fat-assed Texas Preacher that Allan Colmes insists is just like Rev. Wright. Musically challenged, McCain’s soaring with oldies hits, the ... Read More...
PARIS—This column has long been sunny in its outlook for Barack Obama, but—at least in the view from overseas—some clouds are gathering.
Here, of course, he is wildly popular in the expat community—garnering 71 percent of the vote in the official Democrats Abroad primary in France—and seems to have captured the hearts of the French as well. I suspect he could be elected president of France in a landslide.
But since Pennsylvania, he has been forced to battle four opponents at once—two Clintons and John McCain frontally, plus the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from the rear. It has thrown the campaign somewhat off course and there is a sense he has been brought down to earth. The soaring rhetoric, the sense of unification he seemed to promise, the change he portended, all seem at least for the moment to have taken a backseat during this tough hand-to-hand combat.
Obama’s former ... Read More...
PARIS—There is nothing like the view from abroad to spot all the nonsense and bulljive coursing through the presidential campaign. Nonsense such as trying to project a general election winner from the results of a primary.
Does anyone really believe that the Democrat, Barack Obama in particular, would lose states such as New York, Massachusetts or California because Hillary Clinton carried them substantially—or conversely that Clinton would lose Illinois because Obama wiped her out there?
Does anyone expect a Democrat to win Alabama, even though Obama carried it handily? Conversely, Clinton carried Tennessee by a landslide, but neither of them is likely to win it against John McCain.
So it goes in perhaps three quarters of the states, although there are prospects for either to put new states into play. Clinton might be able to pull off Arkansas, while Obama could turn Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado or Nevada from ... Read More...
Clinton and Obama are slamming each other and the oil companies in dueling radio ads in Pennsylvania. Both ads exaggerate and twist the facts. Both ads say, in effect, that the opposing candidate is reluctant to offend oil companies due to campaign donations. The truth is they both propose energy plans that are similar, and which the oil giants won’t like.
The continuing contest for the Democratic presidential nomination has become a frenzy of debates and proclamations about democracy. Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign has been particularly vociferous in claiming that its candidate stands for a transformative, participatory new politics. It has vaunted Obama’s narrow lead in the overall popular vote in the primaries to date, as well as in the count of elected delegates, as the definitive will of the party’s rank and file. If, while heeding the party’s rules, the Democratic superdelegates overturn those majorities, Obama’s supporters claim, they will have displayed a cynical contempt for democracy that would tear the party apart.
Read More...Today, with apologies to Richard Roeper, who created the format, you get five columns for the price of one—albeit brief ones, national and local:
First, in our (supposedly) newly invigorated dialog on race, are we really talking straight when it comes to a certain demographic that seems to be eluding Barack Obama? I speak here of white folks with less than college educations who earn below fifty grand a year. Somehow that demographic seems coterminous with what we used to call hard-hats or Reagan Democrats who started voting Republican largely on racial issues.
Somehow, a wealthy white Wellesley-grad woman lawyer from the Chicago suburbs seems to relate better to these folks than the half-black guy who bootstrapped himself into a Harvard law degree?
In a recent NYTimes piece interviewing Pennsylvanians in that demographic, almost all of them detailed why they were voting against Obama. Somehow they all began approximately “It ... Read More...
Hillary Clinton is not going to go quietly into that good night.
Although she is being called up to step aside in the interest of party unity, I fully expect Clinton to soldier on until the Democrats assemble in Denver for their party’s national convention. Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean may not like it, but where is it written that nominating conventions must be as predictable as a homecoming high school pep rally? There was a time in America’s political history where convention delegates actually did bargain and confer with each other and select their party’s nominees after multiple ballots were cast. Now, the pundits and network television expect the conventions to serve as coronation ceremonies for the presumptive nominees. The issue must be decided on the first ballot if one follows this script.
For weeks and weeks, Obama’s campaign has been urging us to believe that Clinton’s candidacy was ... Read More...
Now here’s my plan:
The Michigan and Florida delegations will be seated at the convention and Barack Obama wins the nomination. It’s all settled a month or more before the Democratic National convention in August.
Everybody’s happy except the Clintons. (You’re extra happy if you revel in a bit of schadenfreude over the Clintons.)
How do we reach this happy conclusion? A deal is likely to be struck with the superdelegates, who will in good conscience be following the will of da peepul.
I will outline the contours of the deal, but first let me take a moment to defend the concept of superdelegates.
There will be a total of 4,049 delegates to the convention who will vote to nominate the next Democratic candidate. Of these, 3,253 will have been elected in the caucuses and primaries that began in Iowa and end in Puerto Rico in June. The latter were ... Read More...
Northwest Indiana needs jobs, and she is the presidential candidate who will fight for them, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton told an audience of 5,000 Friday in Hammond.
Against an American flag backdrop at the Hammond Civic Center, Clinton declared, “It is time we have a president who stood for a comeback for Northwest Indiana.”
Imposing tariffs on steel imports would help foster that comeback and boost region employment, she said.
“My campaign is about jobs, jobs, jobs, middle-class jobs,” Clinton said.
Read More...Let me offer a Swiftian (Jonathan, not Tom) perspective on the Clintons’ largely race- and religion-based assault on Barack Obama—a multi-pronged attack they notoriously told the New York Times would mean chucking everything at him including a very mucky kitchen sink.
I modestly propose that it’s a really good thing. It will actually help Obama—make him a stronger candidate if it doesn’t kill him off in the process. Sort of the way all those lightning bolts hitting Godzilla only made him more powerful.
They began chucking muck long before their official announcement. It started when the Clintons saw they were losing the Iowa caucuses.
The first muck-chucker was Bill Shaheen, their New Hampshire organizer, who hinted Obama not only used drugs—as confessed in his autobiography—but perhaps even peddled them. This was compounded by Clinton strategist Mark Penn tossing around the words “cocaine,” “cocaine” and “cocaine.”
Shaheen had to quit the ... Read More...
If Jagdish Bhagwati’s purpose in writing his FT column on March 3, Obama’s free-trade credentials top Clinton’s, was to cheer up those who support multilateral free trade and had become dismayed at the avalanche of protectionist drivel from both the Obama and the Clinton camps, he failed.
Read More...here’s no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns—boat, shoe, clock—by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.
And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.
Read More...The fat lady is about to begin her aria.
The Democratic nomination is all about the delegates, so here are the numbers prior to the Wisconsin primary and Hawaii caucus on Tuesday Feb. 19:
Barack Obama has 1,116 pledged delegates—won in primaries and caucuses; Hillary Clinton has 989, with 2025 needed for nomination. A handful is pledged to others, such as John Edwards.
There are 18 more states and territories to yet to vote, with a total of 1,078 delegates to be selected.
Of these, three big ones—Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania with a total of 492 delegates—are believed to be Clinton’s “firewall.” Let’s assume she carries these strongly with an average of 56 percent and thus gains 276 more delegates to Obama’s 216. (If there are any surprises here they will be to Obama’s benefit as his momentum can seriously reduce the spread.)
That leaves a total of 586 delegates ... Read More...
It ranks with Alderman Pat Levar’s (45th) disastrous bid for Clerk of the Circuit Court in 2000, and county Treasurer Maria Pappas’s fizzled campaign for U.S. Senator in 2004. Add to that Alderman Howard Brookins’ (21st) embarrassingly inept bid for state’s attorney on Feb. 5.
We now have a triumvirate: Dumb, dumber and dumbest.
The 2008 Democratic primary was supposed to be the Big Black Blowout, with black Democrats sweeping every county office in the wake of a Barack Obama lovefest for president. Indeed, Obama crushed Hillary Clinton in Cook County, amassing 708,276 votes (70.7 percent) to her 301,747. But the city and county black vote was not, as expected, monolithic. Brookins garnered an astounding 542,492 fewer votes than did Obama.
“He didn’t show his face,” said one Democratic observer. “He had lots of yard signs – Obama and Brookins. He had lots of ads on black radio. But he ... Read More...
When Democratic partisans vote in the Illinois primary Tuesday, they’ll have a choice between two leading candidates, one of which doesn’t want to play by the rules and the other who likes to play hide and seek.
Astonishingly, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) wants to change the rules in the middle of the primaries in her favor. And her opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) missed so many Senate votes, it would be hard to tell where he stands; except that one analysis of his voting record shows that he is the Senate’s biggest liberal.
Not much of a choice, if you ask me.
First, Clinton’s wanting to change the rules in midstream:
It involves her “wins” in Michigan and Florida, two states that were stripped of their voting delegates in the Democratic convention because they violated the Democratic National Committee’s orders not to hold their primaries before Super Tuesday. Clinton, like ... Read More...
As a life-long Democrat, I could never understand the anger that the Clintons evoked from my father – a conservative Republican whose face choked red throughout the 1990s at the mere mention of Bill Clinton in polite conversation. Although not as vocal about Hillary, he didn’t like her either.
I kept my relationship with my father alive throughout the 1990s by not mentioning the name Bill Clinton at family gatherings – even when I was angry at what I thought was an unjust impeachment effort which my local Congressman Henry Hyde helped lead.
My father’s constant refrain throughout the 1990s was that he saw a pattern of deceitful, unethical behavior by President Clinton. Nonsense, I thought.
At the time, I believed Clinton was almost Reagan-like in his ability to deftly deflect public criticism and undermine his opponents at the same time.
However, as I have witnessed the Clinton husband-wife-tag-team in ... Read More...
Gordon Brown has not come up a great deal in the American primary campaign, but he did during last week’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Nevada. Senator Hillary Clinton brought him up.
It was the second time she’d mentioned our prime minister, actually. The first was on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. And here’s how she put it: “I don’t think it was by accident that Al-Qaeda decided to test the new prime minister Gordon Brown immediately. They watch our elections as closely as we do, maybe more than some of our fellow citizens do . . . So let’s not forget you’re hiring a president not just to do what a candidate says during an election. You want a president to be there when the chips are down.”
Read More...The more the conversation gets to be about race, the better the Clintons think they will do. It’s as simple as that.
They want to nudge—even provoke—Barack Obama into becoming the “black” candidate rather than the healing, unity candidate. They want black supporters to raise their voices on his behalf—preferably the Al Sharpton types who will shrilly cry “racism” and thus exacerbate the divide.
That’s why Billary changed the conversation in New Hampshire, risking some anger against them in the black communities—anger they know would be assuaged in a general election. Okay, let him carry South Carolina, as long as he is tagged with Afrocentrism.
Hillary went on the attack in the last 24 hours of the New Hampshire campaign, first telling Obama he was no Martin Luther King, then going on to say, in effect, that all King could do was preach and agitate—it took Lyndon Johnson to actually ... Read More...
Hard Work—Not a Snap of the Fingers.
One of the more ridiculous debates going on in the Democratic party primary rages between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Obama’s people charge that Clinton is disparaging the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. because she has said that achieving civil rights takes more than a flurry of speeches. As everyone knows, the argument is valueless. The civil rights movement needed Martin Luther King to make the case and provide a sterling example. It also needed legislative craftsmanship to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the Congress. The skills of movement motivation which touched the conscience of America and legislative leadership worked in tandem.
Hillary made the perfectly reasonable statement that following King’s crusade and assassination, it took tough political action in the Congress by the Johnson administration to pass civil rights gains. For proof, read it again in my “Flashback” ... Read More...
Robert L. Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, who is campaigning today in South Carolina with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, just raised the specter of Barack Obama’s past drug use. He also compared Mr. Obama to Sidney Poitier, the black actor, in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
At a rally here for Mrs. Clinton at Columbia College, Mr. Johnson was defending recent comments that Mrs. Clinton made regarding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She did not mean to take any credit away from him, Mr. Johnson said, when she said that it took President Johnson to sign the civil rights legislation he fought for.
A series of comments from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her husband and her supporters are spurring a racial backlash and adding a divisive edge to the presidential primary as the candidates head south to heavily African-American South Carolina.
The comments, which ranged from the New York senator appearing to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr. in the civil rights movement — an aide later said she misspoke — to Bill Clinton dismissing Sen. Barack Obama’s image in the media as a “fairy tale” — generated outrage on black radio, black blogs and cable television. And now they’ve drawn the attention of prominent African-American politicians.
Read More...Can You Imagine if Hillary Were President Now What the Media Would be Blasting? Then Consider if Bush is Getting a Media Break…and Get This! The Economy is Starting to Expand Now Thanks to Hillary Who Got Us Out of the Bush Slump!
Hillary the Wonder-Worker! *
Do you know that if Hillary Clinton were president today she would be on the fast track to immortality…regarded as one of the greatest of the presidents-exceeding her husband, exceeding Ronald Reagan? Look at the figures and tell me if having a feisty woman president doesn’t revolutionize things. Why with the fiscal year 2007 that ended September 30, the federal budget deficit that she inherited from that awful George W. Bush has FALLEN BY 35%! It is now $161 billion…an amazing change which means that trust a woman with shrewd fiscal sense to impose a discipline that has been sorely lacking under ... Read More...
