WTF??!??

I just saw this article from the AP and I’m having a really hard time understanding it.  The Obama camp must be really panicking if it is resorting to the type of twisted logic presented in this article.  First the message was that Hillary must ride the Unity Pony, now she must go into hiding so that she doesn’t point out how utterly inferior he is to her.  Here’s how it starts:

Whether Sen. Hillary Clinton stands at the side of Sen. Barack Obama during his bid for the U.S. presidency or not, her exit from the race could give him the boost he needs, a new marketing study suggests.

When I read this first sentence, my first reaction was, “I must be reading an older article”.  When I realized it was published today I thought, “whether she stands by his side or not?”.   What does that mean?  She has been stumping for him across country while he’s building sandcastles in Hawaii.  I guess the subtle meme they are trying to establish is that Clinton is secretly scheming against him behind the scenes.  This matches up with what CNN is implying with its article about The Denver Group’s latest ad.  If you look at the comments, they all hammer that point home, as if read from the latest talking points memo to Obama’s professional trolls. 

And what do they mean by her exit “could” give him a boost?  I thought she exited the race two months ago.  Could it be that the AP is throwing excuses for Obama’s poor polling out to the public and seeing what sticks?  This is completely ridiculous.  First she must pledge total fealty to Change and Unity, now she can’t get off the stage fast enough?  We are not fooled though.  We get the subtext.  The message is that she needs to go away and not be honored at the convention by having her name put on the ballot for nomination.  This neatly coincides with turncoat (sorry carol and pat) Ed Rendell’s letter in which he tells Hillary’s delegates cowardly lies about how the petition movement is somehow harming Hillary’s negotiations with Obama on the subject.

I have it on good authority that this is absolutely not true.  And common sense would lead any rational person to the same conclusion.  If this petition did not give her power in these talks, Rendell wouldn’t be opening his big trap in the first place.  The more people look at it, the more they understand that placing her name up for nomination is not only the fair thing to do, it is the right thing to do.  It is also the way things have worked for over 100 years.

Back to the AP article, they conveniently have research that indicates that once Hillary is gone from the scene all good Democrats will do the right thing and grab a seat on the unity bus.

The research supports an assumption often discussed by pundits: that undecided voters are likely to go with the candidate most similar to the one that drops out.

Yeah, that may be the case, but that’s not what happened here.  They will go with the candidate who is most similar, UNLESS that candidate calls them old, whiny, racist, dead-ender, low information, low class, traitors.  They go on to compare it to other products.  Seems to me that competing products don’t attract customers by repeatedly insulting them and saying they don’t want their business anyway.  Maybe that’s just me…  Anyway, I think they forgot about the whole New Coke debacle.

The article concludes by pondering what action the “staunch” (hysterical, crazy, or insert misogynistic term for why women aren’t rational here) Hillary supporters will take.  

Asked if staunch “Hillary supporters” would sway toward Obama, Rao said his results can’t answer that question.

(Hand raising) OOH!  OOH!! I can answer that question!! that’s a big HELL NO!!! Thank you very much.  And that’s why if the SD’s select him, or if he is coronated without a proper nomination, he will lose big time in the fall.