Well, part of the problem is that she trusted and put in charge a guy who 1) has a history of twisting facts to support his own biases, and 2) has NEVER run a democratic primary campaign.
I mean, sling all the arrows you want at Bob Shrum, I'm sure even he knew the mechanics of the primary process better than Mark Penn does.
(Heck, I'm pretty sure my cat does at this point).
On the misogyny angle -- I'm sure that some of it is because of The Clinton Rules -- but it needs to stop and all democrats need to learn to slap this crap down in the media when it happens, regardless of whether it's our preferred candidate in a primary or not.
The big question was are we more racist or mysogynistic? Well the bitch has been done away with, now the nasty racists will really cut loose.
Huckabee is talking assasination at the NRA. I'm sick of this shit.
"he had perfectly positioned his campaign when she made her error."
partly, and partly not... He bought into the 50 state thing early. Had offices in states back in Oct. 07 that are NOT swing states, Not super tues. states. And though I may be innocent, and Naive, I think it was partly strategy and partly belief in the importance of showing up everywhere.
I wonder what it's like to be married to Penn Jillette or William Kristol? Jillette: "White Bitch Month." Kristol: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that."
Huh. I happen to be married to a white woman who would not have taken kindly to such remarks had I uttered them.
But then, most guys I know would never think of saying something like that because we love our wives, and we would be lonely and childless without them.
Not only to Jillette and Kristol have to live with themselves, with their awful and embarrassing character flaws, but their wives have to live with them, too. I hope they're getting a little something on the side -- spending time with men who appreciate them.
I agree - a big-state game isn't viable versus a 50-state game: the big states just aren't big enough to compensate nor are there enough of them. But I also think HRC was hamstrung by continuing to make more & bigger mistakes after Super Tuesday, & by an inability &/or unwillingness to change her own image. It's foolhardy to try to run on "change" & tout your experience as a big player in the Old Boys' Network at the same time - it reeks of dissonance.
The sexism has been there, but her own attitude has fed into it. I hope she'll keep to her pledge to stay in the campaign, because her political skills & toughness are going to come in very handy for the Democrats between now & November.
I hope the GOP's use of the race-card backfires on them with bells on. They sure can't run on their current President, & his absence will speak volumes on the campaign trail, unless he torpedoes their odds by insisting on one more turn in the spotlight by showing up where he's obviously not wanted. Nor can they run on their economic or foreign policy records, both utter failures. They haven't got one single positive initiative to their credit, after 8 years. Their candidates are weak, & very few of them have any public support or respect - one photo-op too many with Emperor Chimpy back when he was a "hero" & not enough ethical spine when it really mattered.
The last 2 Presidential elections have been photo-finish races, but I think that trend is about to come to a resounding halt, & it will take a long time for the GOP to recover.
I was thrilled to vote for Hillary Clinton for NY Senator.
I used to send her emails, even letters, begging her to speak out, do something. Then she started voting with the Republicans.
As a voter, I had soured on her long before the primary. She was always my third choice.
This was before she started the rotten things to tear down a fellow Dem.
Know what I think? She looked into the abyss, and found it good.
I think that her name was Clinton was more a determinant of her fate in this campaign then her being a woman. Her gender was ancillary and was mostly referenced in who she was not- her husband Bill.
Hillary Clinton has terrible political instincts. Those were on full display in this campaign. She voted for the war, for Kyl-Lieberman and never had the ability to frame herself any other way. She got a position on the Armed Services Committee ostensibly to push up her defense credentials when she ran for President and did nothing on that committee that stood out. The worst thing about her campaign tactics is the ballooning of initial mistakes that she made into something larger and larger. The "experience" meme was one of these. The sniper story was another. Both would've positioned herself terribly for the general election.
If I was her I wouldn't have ever thought of running such an unfocused messy campaign. Rather, she should've sold the Clinton name for whatever it's worth these days. She tried to run on a middling to bad record as Senator and then switched over to trying to claim credit for her husband's successes. She should've emphasized a dynastic continuation that plays well to more conservative Democratic constituencies.
But she didn't and she lost the election. In dynastic politics, gender is a lot less important than people make it out to be.
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is gonna be the 44th President of the United States. It will make people feel good for awhile like unclogging a dirty drain and watching the water run down. But we will are way too far down in the shitter for that good feeling to last long.
"Everything you're seeing now is theater, designed to let her gracefully ease her supporters from backing her for President, into backing the nominee of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama. Clinton will concede officially by June 15."
June 15 is too late. Even now, her ego and arrogance and sense of entitlement blind her to the fact that we can't afford theater. She wants theater, she can have amateur night at the Apollo. She lost the privilege of a graceful exit a long time ago. Now all she deserves is the bum's rush, with "the executioner" sweeping her off the stage.
"What she is doing now -- from the joint fund at the DNC with Obama, Clinton and the DNC -- lets her start to retire her campaign debt, campaign in a larger sense for party unity, and make clear to her supporters it is indeed over."
They'd better make it clear that not one dime of that DNC joint fund goes to relief of her personal loans to her own campaign, because if they don't everyone suffers. She should pay the price for her poor decisions and outsized ego, not Dem voters.
"What she is saying is, in running for President, Clinton exposed how deeply the sexism, the hatred of women, the fear of women goes in the United States."
We'll be able to say the same thing about Obama and race in the general election. But if we continue to obsess over identity politics from the Dem side and walk into GOP traps about race and ethnicity, I guarantee you that McSame will be President next year. Focus on competence, focus on intelligence, focus on reality-based vision, focus on reversing the complete disaster of neoconservative rule, and we stand a slim chance of winning.
"Her negatives are enormous. She's not liberal enough for the far-left liberals"
It's not only progressives on the far left. She's not liberal enough for a moderate liberal like myself. The DLC triangulators kept shifting the center to the right, until there was barely any difference between Hillary and Bush on critical issues like Iraq and civil liberties. Throw in the sense of entitlement, the poor campaign finance and strategy and hiring decisions, and the disgusting Rovian tactics and dog whistles, and it just enhanced the image of arrogant neoconservative incompetence she should have been running from.
"The race was lost because Clinton picked poor advisers and trusted them to a fault about a vital strategy."
Horrible management and judgement. Many of her supporters will try to fob off her failure on Penn and Wolfson and Bill, but ultimately she hired them and she kept them on. When it comes to a serious Presidential candidate, her supporters can't have it both ways: "The Buck Stops Here" attitude has to start when the candidate throws his hat into the ring.
"Obama didn't win because a wave of change sweept across America which he rode to victory, although it helped him."
Here I'd disagree. LM nailed it a while back with his piece on generational differences. A combination of two new generations (X and Millenial) of voters stepping into prominence at the same time always bring a wave of change, and in this case it's a rejection of the Boomer model. Technology only enhances this effect.
Obama doesn't just understand the rules, he understands the NEW rules (and, being a Chicago pol, he also understands that there are certain iron laws of politics that never change). Adapt or die.
Fortunately, now that we're through wasting time with Hillary, the Dems can use this new situation to counter the usual GOP lies and smears (which have already started). If Hillary was playing by the rules of 1992, the Republicans are still playing by the rules of 1980. Play by the rules of 2008, and we still have a shot at taking this country back.
"The last 2 Presidential elections have been photo-finish races, but I think that trend is about to come to a resounding halt, & it will take a long time for the GOP to recover."
I'm not so sure it won't be close. This is going to be a fight, and there will still be pressure from the K-Streeters and DLCers to run a big-state strategy and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory once again.
But I'll quote myself on why we must run a 50-state strategy anyway. It comes down to this:
2008 is the year to demonstrate conclusively that the Electoral College is both broken and un-democratic (not to mention un-Democratic), and to keep in a Congressional majority that can do something about it.
This means giving Obama a decisive nation-wide majority win in the popular vote, minimum 5% margin (something Hillary would never have come close to). Then watch what happens if McSame wins the electoral vote.
I won't miss "woman as victim".
She gives women a bad name by her actions and manipulative ploys and complete crazy batshittery.
Women are, and need to be, their own "feminist icons" in their every day life. That's the power of women. We are not victims unless we wallow in the injustices. I'm most dumbfounded by the wallowing in victimology.
Thank God that I don't ever have to be labeled as a probable Hillary supporter because of my age ever again.
She lost because it was some idyllic fantasy cooked up by her bubble people from jump. It was built on bullshit.
Her behavior demeans women everywhere. There are farrrrrrr more qualified and more independent women everywhere who have more courage and strength and smarts in their little toe than Hillary Clinton has in her entire life. They look in the mirror for their feminist icons.
The right-wing media has worked in concert since 1992 to define who the Clinton's are.
Bullseye.
I saw her Pres. run focus two opposite fantasies: 1) to revive the idyllic prosperity of the Golden Clinton Years, and 2) to finally crush the Clinton name once and for all.
The majority of Americans care about neither, methinks.
"The right-wing media has worked in concert since 1992 to define who the Clinton's are."
Yep, creeps like Scaife and Murdoch and Drudge. The same people she crawled to for support in 2008. This truly was Greek tragedy.
Hillary Clinton lost the nomination because she was deeply, mind-bendingly, politically stupid enough to think that abandoning her natural progressive constituency and moving to the right, would gain her enough support from independents and conservatives to stand her in good stead for the general election.
That is why she got hammered on every progressive straw poll that was taken, and it's why she pissed off enough democrats to open the door for Barack Obama.
Her entire primary campaign was about giving short shrift to democrats, especially, progressive democrats, while she was buying a condo in the conservative house of cards.
She did this, and continued to do it, in the face of every indication that george bush and the war that she helped him start, were steadily losing support from voters across the board.
Penn and Wolfson are just the symptoms of how LITTLE "political savvy", and of how little political courage, she really had.
"The crucial difference was, Obama understood the rules deeply; Clinton didn't."
Well, maybe. But I actually it's worth asking WHY his team knew the rules so well.
The Clinton team announced early and often their strategy of inevitability. The goal was to scare away potential rivals. The fatal flaw was that they also assumed those rivals would use the same strategy, and they built their defense accordingly. IMHO the Obama team studied the rules in order to build a strategy to go around Clinton's defense, not through it.
In hindsight, the Clinton strategy was the political equivalent of the Maginot Line, for the same strategic reasons, with the same results.
A lot of good points.
One thing I would like to point out is that a lot of the insanely mysoginistic crap was put forward, not by the Obama campaign or its adherents, not by Democrats or our allies, but by the Freaky Right, and by people who have in the past resorted to calling Democrats "Fifth Columnists" and have taken part in some of the worst calumny and name-calling and guilt by association and McCarthyism seen in recent decades.
Conflating the so-called misogyny "revealed" by statements like "claws out" or "periodically" or "sweetie" with the blatant woman hating garbage spewed by Matthews, Cafferty, Kristol, Stone, and the rest of the mouth breathing thugs is risible.
The only example I can see of blatant misogyny on the part of a progressive is Randi Rhodes' statement about "fucking whores"....
In some ways, Clinton actually garnered some support and sympathy among many progressives as a result of the sometimes witheringly sexist assaults on her and her campaign. Obama, likewise, gained a bit of support in many progressive circles as a result of a lot of the racist and racialist overtones to the campaign.
I think the real indictment here should not be aimed at Obama, or the bloggers, or progressives who supported him, rather, at the clearly idiotic and disgustingly unprofessional media and chattering classes, who have played up, amplified and magnified the garbage being swilled at so many studios and on so many boards of directors.
Has Obama, has his campaign, have people supporting and boostin his campaign said things or done things that are sexist? Sure. Sexism is part and parcel of our society, and any campaign will reflect the society within which it takes place.
Likewise, have there been comments and actions taken by Clinton, her campaign, and her supporters that are blatantly, or can be construed as racist? Sure, and for the same reasons.
But the really vile shit is not coming, in large part, from either campaign nor from the campaigns adherents (although let's be honest: Taylor Marsh, No Quarter, Hillaryis44, and a bunch of the allied blogs and bloggers are pretty fucking disgusting). The really vile shit is coming from the rightwing and their stooges in the media.
Same as it ever was.
I listened to a conference call between hillary and her bloggers and ..... she's not quitting. This isn't over. And actually declaring it "over" serves to energize her defenders as we've seen every time we have a truth call on her antics.
She's telling them to blog "Its not the numbers, its the map". The numbers now don't matter one little bit. She's claiming "confirmation" that she is ahead in the popular vote, that she's pulled to within 5 in or, and that she "will win". The maps indicate she has the electoral votes in excess while he comes up short. "He might can win", but she "WILL win". And all so on and so forth about the mcauliff strategy that worked so well in 2000/2004. She's going to the convention and doesn't see why the media is making a big deal out thaaaat. She's going to take it to the convention. And she's imploring those on the call to not let the media get away with being the ones to select the nominee. End call.
So 'tis not over. It's not going to be over and she's going to hold her breath and stomp her feet till she turns purple or until she gets the nom.
Now, I'm thinking she's pretty miffed right now BUT remember how before anyone had voted all the media/blog stories were all hillary all the time? The headlines/post titles streams of "Is Hillary ahead?", "Hillary stubbed her toe", "Hillary sneezed", "Why is Hillary winning", "Hillary is Winning"...... and all that bunch of bullshit because none of it was true as we came to find out when people actually started voting.
So that's her plan. Play out the June 3rd ones, throw a fit about FLMI even though the dnc has already said they'll be seated several times over, keep hammering the loser mcauliff strategy maps discounting Obama's votes by 1/3 and start up the media blitz talk again until the convention. She's going to the convention and telling the pubbies exactly her strategy and make Obama tell alllll his good stuff in defense. Super plan, eh.
I really am questioning her sanity here with this "its not the numbers, its the map" business. How better to say "fuck you voters, only certain states count". so fuck it. Just hold the fucking election in those states and let us know what they decided, kay?
She's not done. She'll never be done. She has every intention to take it to the convention with the 2000/2004 mcauliff maps and charts in hand.
8:19 pm--"The Clinton strategy was the political equivalent of the Maginot Line"
Uh, do you realize what that analogy makes the Oborg? 
Myrtle June -
The race will be over by mid June.
The general election has started. It's way out of Clinton's hands now. What she's saying to her bloggers on a conference call, and what she's actually doing in terms of mending fences behind the scenes with the Obama campaign are two entirely different things.
She has to say those things to her bloggers -- she's trying to keep donations coming in from her stalwarts, to retire her campaign debt. She has less than a month to make the transition. If it isn't done by then, expect everyone from the Speaker to Dr. Dean to the remainder of the uncommitted SDs to step in and put this to bed.
It's OVER.
The way you can tell is, she simply is not making brutal attacks on Obama anymore. She's only talking up her supporters in private and at rallys, but she's being very careful to talk about Unity, and about working together no matter what to support the eventual winner (and of course, that Obama will do the same if she wins.) It's all about party unity. Yes, she says she's going to win. But watch how she's saying it. She isn't in it to win. She's in it to get paid and to get her supporters used to the idea.
If she just dropped out tomorrow, LOTS of her supporters would just walk away, and according to polls, they'd walk away to McCain. She needs to sliddddde them over to Obama. That's what she's doing. That she's getting her debt paid off in the process via the DNC fund, well, that's just a cost of doing business. Remember, the point is for all of us to win the Presidency.
There are millions of voters pretty pissed off right now that Clinton isn't the nominee. It's going to take real work on HER part to move them over to supporting Obama. That's what the fund is for. In assuming her old debt, it frees her up to campaign for Obama and bring her supporters over to be on his side. Yes, it will piss off some Obama supporters. Think how much more they'd have been pissed off if she'd won. *laughs* No one gets to have everything.
When you win, it's wise to let your opponent maintain face and walk away with something. Especially if you need them for something. That's what Obama is doing here. Smart guy.
Clinton will be gone by mid-June.
I believe that's called quantum of solace, Mr. Bond.
Crap, I used to like Penn Jillette, but I've long since had enough of his "épater les PCs" schtick.
"Oborg"
wow, ya know what I won't miss? all the dumb names some people give the candidates and their followers even though we are supposedly on the same side....
hated it in the Dean era, hate it now.
demeaning and stupid.
I don't mind her maintaining face (what she has left of it); but she aint gone yet.
I say, until she formally withdraws, and unequivocally throws her support to Obama, that he and the democratic party that he's in process of taking over, give her no money and no position.
She's steadily retreating into the peckerhead bunker. A lot of democrats are about to the point where we don't give a shit whether she comes out or not, and I don't think many of us feel constrained to bribe her to rejoin the party, by giving her money or the vp slot.
This primary season, she got her degree in Rovian campaigning, and flashed it regular as clockwork. Let her take the responsibility for the political consequences.
She's done a middlin' good job of setting the democratic house on fire; when we see her with a bucket in her hand, we'll talk about saving face.
Put it like this: she, and her "misogynist"-shreiking, John McCain-praising supporters do NOT have the hammer in this situation. At this point, she needs Obama's blessing more than he needs hers. She's $20 million dollars in debt and sinking, and she has NO way to retire that without the help of Obama and the DNC, and she's losing more democratic respect and support every day.
If she wants to play chicken, I think and hope that Obama understands that she's got about as much room to do that, as have the republicans, looking at November.
I think that the idea that she can do a Lieberman and give this election to McCain is abject nonsense.
By Obama's NOT caving to that rightwing fantasy, he can show more of the same character and intelligence that has already brought him to the verge of making political history, and the american people will recognize that.
If she wants that
So,Jesse, you're saying that after June 15 we don't have to hear about Hillary Rodham Clinton anymore? Promise?
OK, shake my hammock then.
I don't know why you published that long outtake about all the misogyny and then said, wisely, tersely, that it was all about a strategic error, but I do agree with you.
I hereby propose a toast to all those who failed to get off that beaten path before they were beat.
If the HRC campaign were to be the past as prologue of the Hillary Presidency, we are very lucky that they did a helluva job.
I find it very hard to feel bad for a wealthy elitist when they lose a mere $20 million against $100 Million that they still have left to tap.
Call me cold, cruel, whatever, but it isn't misogyny. Pride comes before a fall. You may start out as the front runner and end up as the mere hare.
You may try to claim it is someone else's fault, HRC, but only the deluded are paying attention any more.
Fraud and scam artists would kill to find out the names and addresses of the people still sending HRC cash.
I propose we call the Final Days Of HRC the "Barnum Strategy". I'll go nap now.
humm i see a number of things that caused hilalry to lose.
she has a problem with tellign the truth.
she thaught it was a good idea to pander to the right before and during the DEMOCRATIC primary.
she thaught it was a good idea to use a faild dem path to election while running a rupublican style campaign.
While the majority of people in her party are ambivolent to her, far more dislike her then like her.
she thaught racebaiting was a good idea in a DEMOCRATIC primary.
I gues it all boils down to the fact that she ran as a moderate rupublican in the dem presidential race....that realy is the hart of her issue. If i wnated to vote for a republican I would choose one that had the guts to put the R after their name
As for her voters going else where (remember when obama supprots push that its a bad evil thing that they wont actuly do, when hillary supporters due it its an issue taht we need to appies hillary to correct). I wont hold my breath on that one..perhaps some of the hard core feminists, but they never tended to be a relible voteing block. the idea that they will vote for McCain, mr I call my wife a ****...that isn't going to happen
Edited By Siteowner
That word is not allowed on this site. DONT use it here again.
gator: Can we keep the nasty nicknames for Republicans? I like 'Little Boots', 'McSame', 'Johnny Freeride', and all the rest.
Jesse - So who's the misgoynist now?
Who in hell would stand by and knowingly condone and support this exploitation of a primarily female constituancy? Who?
You say she is fucking lying, manipulating, exploiting her supporters/defenders and that's just fine.
Well, it isn't fine.
Have we all not had enough of "leaders" exploiting groups of people via back channels, blogs, and msm to establish and maintian their convoluted "reality"? I have and I thought Democrats had too.
I'll further contend that because Hillary Clinton is exploiting women for her own gain that she is in fact acting in a misognyistic manner. Who's the misogynist now? Keeping women in their victim role serves her pocketbook. It sure as hell does not empower or enhance women.
She'd be far better thought of if she willingly made a donation to the DNC of say...... I dunno... $20M for the specific purpose of the Democratic nominee winning the Presidency. I'd say that would go a damn sight farther in bringing her credibility deficit back into view.
Instead, she's telling her bloggers and the public the lie that she's in through the convention to exploit their good intentions and their pocketbooks. Those are HER words, Jesse. And I, like most people who don't engage in the exhausting practice of thinking for someone else, take her at her words. That's what she's put out there.... HER words.
If you, or anyone, thinks it is the least bit helpful to those supporters of hers to string them along with outlandish lie and after lie then I don't know what to think on that.
These people are not children who should be coaxed and molly coddled while lifting their pocketbooks. They are GROWN individuals who can hear the truth, the facts say NO Hillary will not be the nominee. It will be a jolt but by stringing them along here is really going to piss them off even MORE when they finally get IT. There's nothing worse than being lied to and second to that is knowing you've been played and basically mugged.
Now, they'll either vote for Obama or they won't. NO amount of pandering will change anyone's mind in the end.
I happen to think Hillary's supporters are people of strength and courage and, once told the truth by Hillary, in no uncertain terms on JUNE 4th, will take a moment to compose themselves and immediatly get about getting Barack Obama elected. In the meantime she needs to stfu about the crazy "not the numbers, its the map" crap. It's 2008, not 2000/2004. It's a HUGE mistake.
The more time they spend in Hillary's Fantasy Election game, the less time they're at the oars of the big boat we're all rowing together. Do we need them at the oars.... sure we do. But if they jump ship, then fine we can get more to replace them. That I'm sure of.
Hillary needs to make a BIG assed donation to the DNC here.... she can afford it. We can't afford for her Fantasy Election game to continue. She needs to stfu, NOW.
I have told friends that Hillary Clinton's campaign was like the US going into Iraq. The conventional wisdom was that the US which had destroyed Iraq by fighting a shadow war for 10 years would defeat the Iraqis handily since they had the largest, and best military in the world plus the resources of the most powerful nation in the world. Well things did not turn out that way. and I think that had more to do with taking the Iraqi's for granted and assuming that they were some stupid sand niggers. You can also see it in people being foolish enough to buy what "The Arab Mind" says. There are other examples like such as the Europeans assuming that the Japanese would not be able to shoot them since they could not see as well as round eyes.
Like the US govt the Hillary campaign assumed that it would be no contest. The conventional wisdom was that Hillary would be the nominee and the person she beat would be her veep. Unfortunately for her campaign like the American administration and its' military she hired people who sabotaged her campaign, they assumed that it would be a wrap in Iowa so they took the other states for granted.
Just like there are folks who hate the US its' not America's enemies fault that the campaign in Mesopotamia & Afghanistan have failed. Similarly just because some people hate Hillary they are not the reason that she has not been able to secure all the delegates that she needs.
DNC fund to retire Hillary's debt? But what amount the refunds the DNC made to the big money donors that were upset about MI/FL not being seated? Remember about a month ago, the letter sent to Howard Dean asking for refunds, ostensibly about not seating Florida when in reality it was because Dr. Dean wouldn't switch the numbers to make Sen. Clinton the winner.
Are these donors the ones that are going to retire her debt? Otherwise - later for her. The DNC needs that money for actually general election campaigns.
(sigh) Shouldn't post after midnight. Typos and more typos.
Amount = about
Actually = actual
"gator: Can we keep the nasty nicknames for Republicans? I like 'Little Boots', 'McSame', 'Johnny Freeride', and all the rest."
Absolutely!
I am just talking about ending the Dem Circular Firing Squad.
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