One of Hillary's latest talking points is her experience. Well, that appears to be something the Obama campaign is happy to address, and they make a convincing effort to do so. In this article by an Obama staffer, Clinton's so-called experience is completely destroyed as being smoke and mirrors (which it is). McCain would do well to remember this rebuttal if she somehow pulls out the nomination.
The fabled 'dream ticket' of Hillary and Obama together is just not realistic, and everyone knows it. Nancy Pelosi actually came out and said it. Not only have the two candidates been getting progressively nastier in their attacks, but there is absolutely no reason for Obama to agree to it! Think about it - Hillary is in second place, with virtually no mathematical possibility of pulling into first place, and yet she is proposing that Obama just give up the lead and willingly take second chair?? Is this a racial thing, or is Hillary just so blinded by her lust for power (and her belief that she deserves this nomination) that she's lost all sense of perspective? Or is this just a sign of how desperate she is? Also, the Texas caucus results are in, and it turns out that Obama won that, too, so he ended up getting more delegates out of the state than Clinton (even though she won the primary).
Their positioning is only underscored by the fact that Obama won the Mississippi primary yesterday by a huge margin. Will we start to hear whispers along the lines of 'of course he won Mississippi, it's got a lot of blacks...'? Don't be surprised if we do. It's still amazing to me that all of the blatant racism and sexism being thrown around is coming from the Democrat party, the party that is supposedly the party of minorities. Just wait - once we get to the general election, the MSM will instantly transfer those statements currently being made by other Dems neatly onto McCain.
On a side note, if you're thinking that the Democrat nominating process is nuts, you're right. The Republican has a lot of winner-take-all states, which clearly defines who wins and takes the delegates. On the Democrat side, it's a proportional system of delegate allocation, where -- generally speaking -- the candidate who wins 60% of the votes gets 60% of the delegates (and the one who gets 40% of the votes gets 40% of the delegates. That works out okay if there is a single candidate that runs away with everything, but in a slugfest like this one, it sure makes it drag out a long, long time. This was precisely the point of the Republican crossover in last Tuesday's big primaries (the so-called 'Limbaugh effect') - it looked like Obama was pulling away. The longer this drags out, the deeper the divide in the Democrat party, the less time the Dem nominee will have to focus on McCain, and the more money is spent on the primary race rather than the general race against McCain. Mission accomplished!
If you care, here's the Clinton plan for Pennsylvania, the next big primary state. Basically, it's going to suck to live there, because the candidates have sooooo much time to blanket the state (six weeks). The residents are probably going to be very sick of robo-calls!
There's also a great deal of talk about how there should be a redo of the Florida and Michigan primaries. Though disagreements exist on how they should be conducted, pretty much everyone is saying that they should happen. Just one thing I'd like to point out here. Florida and Michigan violated election rules by moving up their primary dates, so the DNC stripped both states of all of their delegates. All of the Democrat candidates agreed to this months ago, saying that the two states didn't follow the election rules so they shouldn't get a say in the nomination. Clinton actually spear-headed the effort (at the time, she probably thought she'd have the nomination wrapped up by the first Super Tuesday). Now, of course, everyone is crying about disenfranchising voters in those two states, and it seems to be a foregone conclusion that a redo will happen. My question is: what happened to the rules? I thought that all the candidates agreed to skip the two states to punish them for their violations! This incident illustrates beautifully how important rules are to the Democrat party (as if the 2000 election wasn't enough).
This is very important to understand because it goes straight to the character issue. What is character? The definition says 'qualities of honesty, courage, or the like; integrity'. Integrity, in turn, is 'adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty'. Now, is chucking the rulebook mid-stream in a tight race after all parties agreed to follow those rules a good example of honesty, courage, and adherence to ethical principles? No. Without rules to follow, you get chaos and mob rule. When mob rule reigns, all it takes is one eloquent speaker like Obama (history says Hitler was an extremely eloquent speaker, too), and you've got the recipe for major trouble. That is apparently okay with the Democrat party. The sad conclusion is that if the party as a whole is willing to ignore their own rules, there is a dramatic shortage of character from top to bottom. If there was truly a concern about disenfranchising voters, it would have been addressed months ago when the decision was first made, probably by the states not moving up their primaries. All that's happening here is that the bad behavior of these two states is being rewarded. This is the modern Democrat party, and the soon-to-be leader of it will have gotten there by choosing the low road.
Richard Cohen writes about another aspect of how the Democrats could lose the election in November. The nutshell is that this election is very similar to the 1972 election, with a war and rampant Democrat in-fighting going on. It makes a lot of sense, so go check it out.
Now, to the Rep side. One of the bickering points between Clinton and Obama is how they would pull out of NAFTA. McCain, on the other hand, scolds both of them for even considering such a move:
An excellent point, and yet another reason character counts. A deal is only as good as the word of the other party, right? This is another case in point. McCain is continuing to build on his national security and foreign policy credentials, making a trip to Israel and Europe. With the Dems still fighting each other, McCain has some time to build his own case, though he has to be careful not to fall out of the minds of the American people. It'll be a tricky line to toe, but hopefully he can do it.McCain said his potential Democratic opponents were wrong to threaten pulling out of NAFTA to force Canada and Mexico to negotiate more protections for workers and the environment in the agreement.
If that threat is made, McCain asked, "What are the other countries in the world going to think about the agreements we've negotiated with them?"
So there you have it! More election goodies by the day!
There's my two cents.
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