RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Hillary in 2008

So when I started out by responding to your post about "you can't stop the momentum" (Obama's talking point btw) referring directly to how Obama's momentum isn't really momentum, that was what? Verbal trickery on my part?

Yeah, you started out with that and rebutted it with a comment about how he can't win the big states.

I can't comment on that?

Despite the Clinton's mixed messages with Hillary calling for party unity and Bill praising McCain at the same time. Someone is really going to have to sit down with Bill because it seemed that he's more interested in power at all costs than Hillary, based on these events yesterday. and it's hurting Hillary's slim chances among Democrats even more than they already are.

The independent and new voters that Obama has inspired to join in on the process however are not something that are going to carry over with pleas of party unity. These new folks aern't party people or even political people. That phenomena is directly on account of the candidate.

...
Strange that Hillary isn't bragging about this foreign policy "experience."

Federal Election Commission records show he donated to the campaigns of Mr. Bonior, of President Bush, and of Spencer Abraham, a Republican senator of Michigan who served as Mr. Bush's energy secretary. He also gave to Rep. Tom Campbell, a Republican of California, and to Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat of Michigan.

But former Rep. Pat Schroeder, a strong proponent of the legislation, remembers Hillary Clinton as a "huge" advocate for the proposal during her time as Arkansas first lady and during the 1992 presidential campaign. Once the Clintons were in the White House, Schroeder said, "it was just putting a bow around it at that point. Certainly she had worked very hard the past five years to get it there."
In the final days before the 1993 bill won congressional approval, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and President Clinton all went to Capitol Hill for last-minute lobbying, according to news stories from the time.
Now in the Senate, Clinton joined Dodd in sponsoring legislation that was enacted this year to expand benefits provided under the family leave law by allowing the families of wounded military personnel to take up to six months of unpaid leave to care for loved ones. As a presidential candidate, she has called for extending unpaid family leave to an additional 13 million workers and spending $1 billion a year on paid leave programs.

Clinton Vows To Stay in Race To Convention
She Stresses Finding Solution On Michigan, Florida Votes

By Perry Bacon Jr. and Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 30, 2008; Page A01

NEW ALBANY, Ind., March 29 -- In her most definitive comments to date on the subject, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton sought Saturday to put to rest any notion that she will drop out of the presidential race, pledging in an interview to not only compete in all the remaining primaries but also continue until there is a resolution of the disqualified results in Florida and Michigan.

A day after Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged the candidates to end the race by July 1, Clinton defied that call by declaring that she will take her campaign all the way to the Aug. 25-28 convention if necessary, potentially setting up the prolonged and divisive contest that party leaders are increasingly anxious to avoid.

"I know there are some people who want to shut this down and I think they are wrong," Clinton said in an interview during a campaign stop here Saturday. "I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan. And if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention -- that's what credentials committees are for.

"We cannot go forward until Florida and Michigan are taken care of, otherwise the eventual nominee will not have the legitimacy that I think will haunt us," said the senator from New York. "I can imagine the ads the Republican Party and John McCain will run if we don't figure out how we can count the votes in Michigan and Florida."
...

But Hillary can't have it both ways. She can't argue that the popular vote should decide the winner and then try to get the nomination through uncommitted superdelegates, can she?

...

So, to recap, she seems to be trying to have it both ways: using the "popular vote" argument now even though she'll probably have to abandon it to win the nomination.

But, you're right, I was insufficiently detailed in my earlier comment. Sorry about that.

And, MEM, you're right. Obama needs the superdelegates too. At this point, however, the popular vote argument favors him.

In the end, both candidates would be better off making a pitch to the superdelegates based less on mathmatics and more on the simple of question of "who do you think will best represent the party in November". Because, in the end, that's the point of the nominating process.

The popular vote favors him now but there is still a chance she closes that gap.

As I said before, however, that only means a statistical tie in the popular vote. If that's the case best case scenario for her, she can't count on the superdelegates supporting her in sufficient numbers to overcome Obama's existing lead.

That's why I said she would be better off using a different argument.

Saying that Hillary is better qualified to take on John McCain because of her performance in those [large battleground] states only makes sense if (a) you believe that the people who voted for Clinton in the primaries will not vote for Obama in the general election, and (b) you believe that no Democrat can win the traditionally red states (that is the old LOSING DLC strategy BTW as opposed to Howard Dean's successful "50 state strategy" which Obama and the new Democrats seems to be employing) . In fact, Hillary has mostly been winning the traditionally blue states —places like New York, California, Massachusetts and New Jersey —that are going to go blue in November anyway, no matter who is running on the Republican ticket. And even in the states Hillary has won, it has been registered Democrats, not swing voters, who have carried her to victory, while Obama has dominated her in virtually every contest among registered independents. Even in her home state of New York, Obama whipped Hillary among independents by fifteen percent. In Missouri, that margin was twenty-eight percent. In California? Thirty percent.

Obama, meanwhile, has performed extraordinarily well in traditionally red states like Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina. And sure, some of that is due to the black vote. But all of his victories have been marked by two things: larger-than-usual turnout and routs among independents, leading to the large number of blowout wins that are basically responsible for his delegate lead at the moment. On Super Tuesday, Hillary won sixty percent of the vote in only one contest, Bill's home state of Arkansas. Obama won seven states by that margin or more.

In other words, Hillary is winning the Democratic voters who are going to vote Democratic anyway. Obama is bringing in new voters, and he's winning large numbers of swing voters in red states.

who gives a fuck. Obama still wins Texas.

Not a popular vote race.

petulance and sarcasm isn't going to help Hillary change reality either.

The results are the results and all you can do is deal with it.

petulance and sarcasm isn't going to help Hillary change reality either.

The results are the results and all you can do is deal with it.