Ok, which one of you pointed me to this insightful piece by Matt Yglesias? Was it YOU, Lambert?
Anyway, I think somewhere about a month ago, I made a comment about how Obama wins by suppressing the Clinton vote, not by actually, you know, *winning*. And Matt Yglesias lays it all out before us as to why the big boyz are screaming for Hillary to get out because The Math is against her. Here it is in Matt’s own words:
I think if voters better-understood the situation, they’d be much more inclined to vote for their second-favorite Democrat in the race, much less eager to do volunteer work for Clinton, much less inclined to donate money to her campaign, etc. But people won’t understand the dynamic unless it’s explained to them by credible party leaders.
There it is in all its maggoty ugliness. They are trying to make Hillary supporters stop volunteering, donating money and voting for her. How delightfully nasty. Fess up! Some of you even let them get to you, didn’t you? You stumbled on this site after hearing this from the Kossacks and Talkingpointsmemo and Chris Bowers and thought, “What’s the use? Even if I work my ass off, we can’t win.” I *know* you did because I have the comments that prove it.
The evil geniuses who run Obama’s campaign and the @$$holes in The Gang of Four (Dean, Brazile, Pelosi and Kennedy) have learned a lot of disgusting little tricks from the Republicans. Like, if you make people believe that Hillary doesn’t have a chance and you do this relentlessly over the next 5 weeks, maybe the voters will give up on her just as we gave up on Gore after the 2000 election. Sweeeet!
Rove made it so easy. Just copy his game plan. Don’t like pesky voters who won’t support your anti-Clinton candidate? Just disenfranchise them. Hate those annoying primaries with their long hours and secret ballots? Flood the caucus and make it so rowdy that precinct captains are intimidated, sorta like a Brooks Brothers Riot. Anyway, those stupid, old shift workers will never show up to vote for your opponent. If you want to keep her voters home and passive, just propagate the meme that even if she wins all of the remaining primaries, which looks like a distinct possibility, it merely delays the inevitable. And don’t forget that no Republican campaign against a Democrat is complete unless you make the outcome against you look somehow illegitimate, so tell everyone that it is unfair if the superdelegates break the tie.
Yglesias is wrong if he thinks Obama is our second favorite. I’d rather write in Mike Gravel or Dennis Kucinich at this point. At least I’m fairly certain *they’re* Democrats. I don’t know what kind of construct Obama is. And Edwards better get off the fence and do something if he doesn’t want his policies to be trashed by this imposter.
The Gang of Four want a charismatic candidate without a legislative past. He doesn’t have to earn his coalitions; they are gifted to him. If he wins the nomination, he will be beholden to The Gang of Four and the legislators in the Bush Dog states. And they are putting him forth not for his own value but as the “anti-Clinton” candidate because she is a Democrat with a strong political personality and Obama is weak politically in comparison and easy to manipulate. That’s the whole story, guys. That’s what it all means. And all the pieces make sense.
I think the Clinton campaign knows what it has to do to combat this meme but it will take a lot of troops on the ground in PA to turn this around. Even the strongest among us succumbed to it. The average voter needs innoculation. I’m going to do my part in a couple of minutes with my sister so she can tell her friends not to listen to it.
Fight it any way you can. There *is* a choice left. Our votes *do* count and we *can* turn this around. In this game, it’s not how you begin but how you finish that counts and as Shakespeare said…
“All’s Well That Ends Well”
Filed under: Presidential Election 2008 | Tagged: Matt Yglesias, Obama dirty campaign tactics |
The Confluence 
Well said.
That IS the game plan, and it is the game plan to insure a Democratic minority for years to come. These clowns can’t take the responsibility of governance, the dangers of hard decisions. That’s why Obarry is their man: missed votes, “present votes”, wrong button, out of town. Big talk, but no action.
The DNC has become nothing but Republican enablers. I couldn’t understand the hatred towards the DLC, especially from Josh Marshall (who used to be WITH the DLC in spirit… before he fnished his PhD).
They are collectively responsibility avoiders. And I am through with them.
Oh absolutely this is what is going on with them. (Take a look at mydd’s front page, which will not update to include the conflicting Rasmussen poll.)
What also needs to be hammered home is the disenfranchisement of Florida and Michigan’s voters. Right now the MSM spun it as “another loss” for Hillary, without once mentioning the voters. Even the more friendly Hillary blogs sort of gave up on it.
Voter disenfranchisement used to a rallying call among democrats, notably African Americans and progressives. Now everyone is pretending it never happened (move along folks, nothing to see here).
Of course, it always gets bad over the weekend. I don’t know how much can be attributed to folks being offline or Hillary taking the holiday off. But some momentum needs to grabbed back on Monday. Maybe it is time – shudder – to bring Carville back on full-time. At least he’s willing to fight back.
With older voters they remember Truman holding the headline Dewey wins. For the rest of us it should be Florida 2000, what could have been if we hadn’t given up.
Indeed, well said, riverdaughter.
And Edwards better get off the fence and do something if he doesn’t want his policies to be trashed by this imposter.
Please, say it again!
Though, I’ve been one of those JE supporters who prefer he not make an endorsement.
Ygelsias is way off the deep end, and Kevin Drum (who favors Obama) calls him out on it:
Yes, it’s so nice that people’s votes are important when they’re pro-Barry, but shouldn’t be counted when they’re anti-Barry.
Move along.
It’s not Hillary who’s chances are slim — it’s Obama, who’s just Not Ready for Prime Time.
*whose
Riverdaughter, I agree. If Obama had this thing wrapped up, he wouldn’t be flailing around shooting himself in the foot right now. He wouldn’t be throwing the kitchen sink at Hillary and launching a new attack on a daily basis. They truly want us to believe that we are fighting a hopeless cause so we simply give up. As much as they holler that Hillary can’t catch up, they neglect to say that Obama can’t get the necessary number of delegates either. When all is said and done, he will enter the convention with less than a 100 delegate lead. If FL/MI are counted, he may be behind. This will be a brokered convention. And every smart Democrat should hope for that, since there is just no way in hell that Rev. Wright is going to fly in the general. I already have nightmares at the 24/7 media blitz of Rev. US of KKK-A playing on every channel.
BTW, I think you block-quoted the wrong section of your story. The part that came from Yglesias’s post looks like it is your words.
I’ve said it 100 times on DK, and it’s probably the only reason to be there at this point: the “Hillary should quit now” argument is made entirely out of bad faith, and it’s easy to prove. If indeed she can’t win, whether or not she quits is irrelevant, just as it’s irrelevant whether Mike Gravel quits. If she can win, then telling her to quit is stupid and insulting…not to her, but to those who support her. There’s no third possibility. This observation really pisses Obamabots off! So it’s especially fun to make.
I know its not kosher to dedicate angry music with profanity to liberal bloggers, but the last minute of Rage Against the Machine’s song “Killing In the Name” is my song to the blog boiz who are scared of Democracy!
See you in Denver . . .
As soon as the national Democratic Party set a “no sooner than” date for primaries/caucuses other than Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature tacked onto a bill a date, January 29, for the Florida primary in violation of that rule. The bill, which had as its primary purpose the establishment of a ballot paper trail (a truly salutary purpose), passed with Democratic support, given that Democratic opposition was pointless in any event (Republicans hold overwhelming majorities in both houses of Florida’s legislature), and defeat of the ballot paper trail bill might have doomed that badly needed reform for the foreseeable future.
http://www.bareknuckles.org/bkp/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=622
a little history….
While Dodd’s campaign is “committed to the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire going first,” Dodd will not withdraw from the (Michigan) ballot, said Dodd’s communications director Hari Sevugan. “It does not benefit any of us, if we are the nominee, to pull our name off the ballot and slight Michigan voters,” Sevugan said.
The Clinton campaign said she will not withdraw from the Michigan ballot because it is unnecessary to do so. The Biden campaign criticized Clinton and Dodd for not taking their names off the ballot. “The Dodd and Clinton campaigns have chosen to hedge their bets, thereby throwing this process into further disarray,” Biden campaign manager Navarro said. “In doing so, they have abandoned Democrats in Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina.”
CNN’s Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider suggested the Democrats who withdrew may have calculated that it was simply in their best political interest to do so. “If there’s no campaign, the candidate most likely to win Michigan is Hillary Clinton,” Schneider said. “Her Democratic rivals don’t want a Clinton victory in Michigan to count. They want Iowa and New Hampshire, where they have a better chance of stopping Clinton, to count more.”
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/09/michigan.primary/index.html
it’s the beginning of the 4th quarter. Eli Manning really needs to quit trying, because the Pats and their fans really really want a perfect season. and besides, everybody knows the Giants can’t win.
This has been a tactic for months. One of these Obama assholes told me that every Dem will come back into the fold at the convention after a hard fought primary. Then he asked me for money for the state party. “No can do” I told him. I explained that if you want to run thing you have to pay for it. A lot of these young folks are financially not as well off as old, white,female, racist, down market, low information voters, who just need to do what they are told , but were told quite recently they were not needed. Talk about chickens coming home to roost.
Personally, I think this all about getting Hillary out of the race BEFORE Fitzgerald secures a conviction against Rezko. Once Rezko is in federal care, and is facing a sentence of decades plus in the stripey hole, he’s going to have lots of motivation to talk about his relationship with legislators. Some of what he has to say may be true, and some of it false – it really won’t matter. If he decides to finger Obama, just the process of the investigation will be a disaster for him. If Hillary is still in the race, and a credible candidate,. the SD will bolt to her so fast the internet itself will blow in the wind. And Obama knows this.
BTW, I did some research last night on the Illinois State Legislature. I knew his state senate job was part time, I just didn’t know how part time. It turns out the Illinois General Assembly meets about 75 days on average per year, and only 55 of those days are mandatory attendance. On non-mandatory days, they don’t even take roll call so you cannot know how many days your legislator showed up and worked. 55 days for 7 years works out to about a year and a half of full time work. He had two years in the US Senate when he announced for the presidency, so he’s basically a guy who worked 3.5 years before he decided to run for the Democratic nomination. Ego, ego, ego.
To me, it seems that there is a real pathological element to this guy. He seems to prefer winning with tricks. Knocking Palmer off the ballot, beating Ryan and the other guy with divorce papers, and now winning the nomination by disenfranchising entire states that he’ll need to win if he’s the nominee. Had he supported a revote, he might well have won Michigan and gone in to the convention looking like a good guy. But no, he won’t do that. He’s rather win with gimmicks now and count on his charm to win those voters back in November. And Rezko, if he can just get Hillary to drop out – just like old Alice Palmer did – then he can still take the nomination regardless of what happens there, and regardless of how bad it is for the Democrats. As Fredrick Douglas observed, “sow the wind, reap the whirlwind”.
Among the interested North Carolina voters will be John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, who saw his presidential prospects falter in Iowa. During an appearance with Jay Leno on Thursday, Edwards declined to endorse either of his formal rivals. Edwards is so tight-lipped that he would not even say whether he or Obama won the one-on-one basketball pickup game they played on Edwards’ NBA-regulation basketball court in his home outside Chapel Hill last month.
The primary has North Carolina Democrats split right down the middle, according to a new poll by Public Policy Polling in Raleigh……the Clintons also have strong ties to North Carolina Democrats. Former state party chairs Tom Hendrickson and Barbara Allen are helping Clinton. Among the big names expected to endorse Clinton are Gen. Hugh Shelton, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; retired Charlotte banker Hugh McColl and poet Maya Angelou.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1010298.html
It’s regrettable. It really, really is.
BTD picks up on my theme above. If we make disenfranchisement the centerpiece of our argument, the Obama campaign is going to have to explain why they didn’t want to allow revotes in MI and FL. He can’t and we are all going to need to keep the pressure on him. The media is not going to do it willingly.
It’s time to get this party rolling. If they want to get nasty, it’s time for us to stand our ground. And we don’t need to cheat like them.
Governor Napolitano claims that the MI and FL situation is “regrettable”.
Isn’t this the anti-immigrant lady from Arizona who wants to be VP and mollify the women who back Hillary???? No nuance to her ambitions……
Chris, that’s perfect.
Obama fans really don’t think Hillary is hurting their chances in the fall. They fear he can’t win anyway and will use Hillary as their scapegoat when he gets his ass handed to him.
If he can’t recover from punches now, maybe he was too weak to fight in the first place?
Hopefully Obama won’t have to suffer a humiliating defeat in November. That’ll happen on April 22 and hopefully, every contest to follow, taking a Democratic GE loss off the table.
Dampening enthusiasm and, especially approaching PA voting, holding down turnout for Hillary IS the strategy.
The MCM is doing its part by now hammering on Hillary’s untrustworthiness,” as in her “lying” about Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Macedonia.
Timmeh was big on this today, during the brief time I watched.
She should just get out! That message is not addressed to her–but to her voters.
You nailed it.
The photo on this post is astonishing in how much Obama’s maternal grandfather looks just like Obama. It’s almost uncanny. I had to double check, given the clothing, to make sure it wasn’t a photo of Barck. Really strong family resenblance.
In another photo I’d thought the nose and eyes were strongly similar, but this photo captures how his whole face is…granddad Stanley.
I was looking for bio info and came across this blog. On the right there’s a list of categories and under Barack Obama is as much bio info as the blogger could find, mostly out of curiosity as to why there was so little coverage of his white family.
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Democrats came under mounting pressure Sunday to close ranks behind a single candidate, as Hillary Clinton struggles to wrest the mathematical advantage from Barack Obama to win their party’s nod for the White House.
The bitter presidential campaign faces weeks of harsh confrontation ahead of next month’s crucial primary clash in Pennsylvania, one of 10 remaining contests to decide who will face off against Republican John McCain in November’s election.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080323/ts_alt_afp/usvote
The real praying we did this year was that Hillary doesn’t cave and stick us with another dim-witted, unfocused, uninformed republican with early dementia….
The photo on this post is astonishing in how much Obama’s maternal grandfather looks just like Obama.
Yes, and considered in the context of his repudiation, how sad.
As I posted at Corrente, I pledge that I will give $10 to HRC’s campaign every time one of the Big Boys Bloggerz mouths off “Why won’t that stupid bitch quit?” (WWTSBQ)… (it will be easy to keep track, Lambert has started a WWTSBQ Watch)
I have coughed up $20 over the weekend.
I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to keep it up but I’ll try.
Who’s with me?
PS: I have 2 PhDs, I am a high information voter, under 40 and I vote HRC. Also, I can type without typos, so, MY can shove his advice.
riverdaughter, are our leaders fighting the last war?
Are they trying to foist Obama on the electorate based on taking the wrong lesson from Bush’s win in 2000? That the R’s won by taking a peronsable (that’s how he was described back then) scion of the Bush dynasty who had little real political experience other than winning the governorship in TX twice. Since he didn’t have much power as governor, they could pick and choose his “accomplishments,” using much of what the Dems passed, conservative as they were in TX, to paint him temporarily as the “compassionate conservative.” Their relative newbie, however, had the Bush name and protection–for deep sixing bad information in his background.
It worked so well for the R’s in 2000, let’s try it ourselves!
Oh, great. And that worked out so well for the nation.
But, alas, Dems do not fight as dirty as ReThugs–so taking a charismatic newbie with a slim resume may not work as well for the Dems as it did for the ReThugs. Plus, the R’s had the full on assistance of the MCM–which Dems seldom get.
Which is not to say the Corporate part of the MCM might not decide it’s just too dangerous for their continued prosperity let another warlike ReThug have the WH. But, it might be worth it to keep all the crap that’s been done by the ReThugs and their cronies covered up. Who knows how the MCM will go? If past is any indicator, the MCM will back St. McSame.
I think it it was me, RD.
And I love SocProf’s idea of contributing. Perhaps the “Why Won’t That Stupid Bitch Quit?” headline is too inflammatory to be used everywhere, but if we did that, the idea, and the contributions, might propagate…
I wonder who Yglesias thinks these “credible party leaders” are? At this point I don’t trust any of them. The only way I’m going to believe that Hillary can’t win is if it goes all the way to the convention and I see the votes cast on the convention floor. And if Obama wins without MI and FL delegates being counted up front, I won’t accept the result anyway.
Too inflammatory? Lambert, I thought it was a stroke of genius on your part! 🙂
Ok, how about, “Why Won’t She Quit?” (WWSQ)
For every WWSQ post by
Kos
MY
JMM
One of the guys at LGM
or any of Lambert’s watch post… $10 for Hillary from as many of us as possible. How’s that?
Personally, I’ll up my contribution to $15 if the reason for quitting is based on sexism.
Could we have front page posts from all of us HillBloggers participating, just to make a few heads explode?
Lambert–
I’d be willing to bet that headline has already been posted at DK. I’m not going to go look, though.
BTD reports that Bill Richardson has criticized the Obama campaign for the “McCarthyism” charge against Bill Clinton.
http://www.talkleft.com
……to paraphrase Reverend Wright, I doubt if any white person ever called Barack Obama “nigger” in his whole life. It seems to me that the Obama took the personal decision to become part of African-American culture, in the same way he could have gone to an ashram in India and become a yogin. Attending such a radically black nationalist church as Wright’s was Obama’s way of joining the new culture… Now he has been caught by it.
I think Barack Obama is an immensely talented politician, but for him to really become anything great, I think it is essential for him to first fail miserably at something important. In my opinion this campaign is the first real event in his whole life. If he fails now at this imposture, he may come out of this trial by fire burned a shade darker and a much more interesting and important figure in American life.
……To be President he needs more time in the oven. Paradoxically what Obama is going through now is making him into a culturally genuine African-American. That is when his real story begins.
http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/2008/03/getting-real-trial-by-fire.html
eight years on….. maybe, maybe not.
wow, Jawbone, Barack really does look like his grandfather! his mother’s name was Stanley???
Bill Moyers’ Journal about “Body of War,” a documentary about a young soldier paralyzed from mid-chest down by a rifle shot he got on his 5th day in Iraq, is starting right now on PBS in the NYC metro area.
Searing.
Doc co-directed by Phil Donahue.
Grandfather Stanley wanted a son and named his daughter Stanley Ann Dunham. She went by Ann.
Sorry for the O/T but this electoral map is important to view as it is updated daily….look at the bottom for the links to both Obama/McCain and Hillary/McCain and as you can easily see Hillary is far ahead now in electoral votes….I wish all the super delegates could view this thing….
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
And of course, besides being in the tank for Obama anyway, the party leaders have an incentive to want Clinton to drop out. If she does and Obama can pick up the remaining delegates by default, then they’ll seat the Fl and Mi delegates. Otherwise, they’re going to stick to their guns and be marching outside with signs like “Disenfranchisement forever” and “All-white states will ALWAYS come first.” And as arrogant and clueless and stupid as they’ve shown themselves to be, they’d still prefer to ot go there.
nominating Obama is a sure loser IMO…I just hope enough SD agree with me
I just read that puke inducing post from Matt Yglesias. You have to give it to him. Obama’s supporters are so much smarter than the rest of us. Is it here the despicable arrogance of the White Liberal?
Jon Chait wrote an abominable piece in the LA Times titled “Was the Right right about the Clintons”, which inspired me to submit my op-ed title “Was the Right right about the Liberal Elite?”
I had such a great Easter week-end and I’n not gonna let these clowns ruin it. Tomorrow, I will be back with a terrible mood and ready for a no holds barred fight all the way to the convention.
Watch out Liberal Elite! The educated mass that supports Hillary will beat your post-PhDs out of you.
This is why John Edwards ran. This is why he’d have been our best candidate. Dammit to hell, nobody should tell him who to endorse. He saw Democratic voters swayed by Obama quoting him without attribution, and attacking the union ads for him in Iowa, where he should have won the nomination. This is the great tragedy of this primary season: identity politics destroyed the Democrats’ chance of the strongest candidate–not to mention the most progressive.
I remember Senator Clinton saying once she was about lifting people up, not pushing them down. The media and the Dean wing of the Democratic Party are trying to push Senator Clinton and her supporters down. We all have to keep standing up.
Thanks for your article and all the great comments from those who refuse to give up. With Richardson’s choice now the pressure will increase but we’re up to it. They will try to use the A-word to scare you but don’t let them.
It’s time to take a moth-eaten myth out and give it a shakeup. The old chestnut that women will bite the bullet and vote for BO because of abortion, and because the Dem Party bosses support him is DOA.
Nothing has show women how ineffective, weak and unconcerned our Dem elected lawmakers are in supporting women’s right to choose. For that matter, even after attaining a majority, they mostly sat back and let the minority Republicans have their way in everything. One of Speaker Nancy’s first moves was to take impeachment off the table – Free ride for Bush/Cheney.
Early on when Roberts and Alito were proposed for the Supremes, most Dem Senators went along and voted for them with hardly a murmur. Even Pat Leahy of Vermont, who claimed he was a champ for women’s rights, when he was running for reelection, bent over and spread them.
Women mostly get bupkiss from the Dems, yet women have been the most loyal voting bloc, the hardest workers and are still largely unrepresented. Events in this presidential primary have more than proven how the DNC has been the moving force to defeat HRC’s bid to become the Dem nominee by promoting BO’s campaign of misogyny and sexism.
Women have noted how many of the Dem leaders have done nothing to correct media reporting they know to be false. They have also noted how many of them actually pile on to criticize the Clinton campaign, echoing the media.
Enough! There is a limit to being constantly nice and dependable patsies. As more and more women and their supporters become aware of what is being chucked down their throats they are determined that since fairness does not prevail, they will vote McCain 19% or stay home 13%.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/keystone-democr.html
And this doesn’t even count the number of disenfranchised voters who went out and voted for HRC in Florida and Michigan. BO has declared these votes to be null and void, with the dithering, idiotic backing of the DNC. They know BO has prevented any re-voting too.
While declaring that the Super Delegates must vote for the winners in their states, the DNC and BO campaign find it A- OK when NM Gov. Richardson, Senator Ted Kennedy and others ignore the vote of their states to support BO.
Plenty of women just are not going to vote for someone who has divided this country into little pieces: by gender, by age, by race, by religion and by claiming that all whites are typical and racists. Bye, bye DNC Party bosses – keep your penis rulz and false promises for the GE and McCain. You have no credibility left. You’ve let women down to often.
Anyone have a ink to the WWTSBQ counter?
I’d send $10 per, though I might have to change that to $1 so I don’t bankrupt myself.
I would even where the t-shirt.
Nevermind, I’ll find it.
Ohio-it’s at lambert’s blog at correntewire.com
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