Posts with the tag 'Democrats'
The political commentariat is now operating under the assumption that Sen. Obama has at long last clinched the Democratic nomination by his landslide victory in the North Carolina primary and his near upset of Sen. Clinton in Indiana. This is wrong from the standpoint that Sen. Obama was effectively assured of the nomination following his string of victories following Super Tuesday, long before this past Tuesday. Indiana and North Carolina did not change anything except convince many of what was already, for all intents and purposes, inevitable.
Sen. Clinton intends to carry on, of course, because she is Sen. Clinton. As David Kahane writes, “She’s not going to quit because she has nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do. She lives for this, and without it, she has no life. In fact, without it, she doesn’t exist at all.” Since her husband raised his right hand in ‘93 she has been preparing for the day that she could raise hers. Until Sen. Obama’s nomination is official, she is not going to let that go.
Though it is all but inevitable at this point, it is only all but inevitable. That is how she will view the situation at least. She will look forward to large victories in the upcoming Kentucky and West Virginia primaries, hoping significant margins there will stoke further discussion of Sen. Obama’s inability to win over white, blue-collar voters and give Democratic super-delegates further pause as they size up the strength of Sen. Obama as a general election candidate. She will also continue to push for the seating of Michigan’s and Florida’s delegates at the convention (she sent a letter to Sen. Obama today laughably urging him to support that effort), arguing–not without some semblance of a point–that to deny those delegates seats would be to disenfranchise Democratic voters in those respective states and harm Democrats politically in what will be two pivotal battlegrounds in the fall.
Ultimately, these efforts will fail and Sen. Obama, warts and all, will accept the nomination in Denver this August. All that is really left to be decided is whether Sen. Clinton can and even wants to muscle herself onto the ticket and how exactly such a ticket would play in the fall. The race for the Democratic nomination is essentially decided and has been decided for sometime, but the saga and theater shall continue hence.
Tags: Clinton, Democrats, General Election, Obama
May 8th, 2008
Conventional wisdom for some time has been that this is a Democratic Presidential year. However, that theory is starting to be tested in a serious way. All signs indicate that the Democrats will be fighting through August where the nominee could be chosen at convention. This creates a huge challenge for the Democrats. First, the two candidates are beating each other up, and showing off each others flaws in big ways. Senator Clinton’s Bosnia remarks and Senator Obama’s ‘bitter’ comments could haunt them throughout the campaign, and if they keep up this pace more damaging remarks will likely come. Second, they have very little time to unite the party. Particularly in a contentious contest they may not win over the other candidate’s supporters. They have 2 months and 6 days from the end of their convention till the general election vote, which means they need to unite the party almost instantaniously, whereas Senator McCain will have had almost eight months to do that. Senator McCain has a huge time advantage not only in unifying his party, but in strategy and in direct campaigning. He stays above the fray, and can emphasize his strengths with little challenge from the left as they are preoccupied.
The decisive advantage that the Dems have had throughout the campaign is money. However, as asked in an article at The Pink Flamingo you have to wonder how much money the candidates will have on hand. Senator McCain, on the other hand, has had the luxury of saving his pennies. Obviously he has taken in less, but at this point in the race he needs less. Also, there is a strong possiblity of contributions increasing. No one wants to put their money on someone who can’t win and as it becomes clearer that his odds of victory are excellent people may be more willing to part with their cash; not to mention that he has Romney and Huckabee helping raise money now as well. Finally, Senator McCain has always had an appeal with Independents and moderate Democrats. If the other candidate comes out their convention battered or damaged Senator McCain could overwhelmingly win middle-of-the-roaders.
Tags: august, campaign 2008, campaigning, candidate funds, convention, democrat convention, Democrats, independents, mccain, middle of the road, republicans, victory 2008
April 14th, 2008
Promises from the left of a decent and honorable campaign so far are coming up short. Comments from Obama surrogates stating that Senator McCain is war monger and that his military experience shows that he doesn’t care about people are far from the ‘new politics’ that Senator Obama promises. The left has been crying dirty pool for the last eight years, and now their the ones with a pool cue in their hand. There’s always a challenge when candidates have other people speak for them, but it you compare the two sides Senator McCain is seriously out-classing the Democrats. When supporters were repeatedly using Senator Obama’s middle name, the McCain campaign told them to stop. When a radio host introducing him at an event went on a rant against Senator Obama, Senator McCain condemned it angering some conservatives. When a McCain blogger posted video about the Jeremiah Wright controversy, he was suspended from the campaign.
The Democrats on the other hand have their leader, Howard Dean, making personal attacks calling Senator McCain an opportunist. This is an attack which is both personal and baseless. The liberal blog The Atlantic posted an admittedly unsubstatiated article that was a direct personal attack on the Senator. The Democrats have accepted and embraced political dirty pool. If this trend continues, and if America is truly seeking a more decent and respectful style of politics Senator McCain has shown himself to be the leader bringing this change.
Tags: campaign, change, decency, Democrats, dirty pool, DNC, honor, honorable, Howard Dean, mccain, Obama, republicans, rnc, rockefeller, wright
April 9th, 2008
For someone that is allegedly a blatant opportunist, Roxana Tiron at The Hill has an article discussing how John McCain refuses to use Jimmy and Jack McCain’s military service for political gain. One of the more common attacks on the current Bush Administration is that the prominent members of the Administration have not served in the military and do not have children that serve.
That is not a line of attack that the Democrats can use this November (although, with Obama and Dean’s disdain for the facts, they might try) on John McCain. However, Senator McCain does not want to use his children as political pawns in this election, not does he want to endanger them and the men that serve with them.
“He feels very uncomfortable. He does not want Jimmy and his comrades to be put at any risk,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), McCain’s closest ally and friend in the Senate.
“I know that John McCain is very proud of his son’s service and he talked to me about it many times, but he is certainly not going to exploit it for political purposes,” Collins said.
So no, Mr. Dean, John McCain is not a blatant opportunist. If you are so desperate to find someone worthy of that tag, perhaps you should look in the mirror.
Tags: Democrats, election, Howard Dean, iraq, Jack McCain, Jimmy McCain, John McCain, mccain, Obama
April 3rd, 2008
The Fact Checker at Washington Post has finally weighed in on The Leader of the New Politics’ repeated distortions of John McCain’s comments on the Iraq War.
At one time or another, both Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton have said that the presumptive Republican nominee is willing to fight a 100-year war in Iraq. When challenged about this claim on Monday, Obama referred journalists to the YouTube version of the Derry Townhall meeting. But the YouTube clip does not back up his case.
The Pinocchio Test
A more honest line of attack for the Democrats against McCain would be his support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, whether or not he has a clear strategy for winning the war, and the feasibility of a long-term occupation of a Muslim country by the United States. Instead of attacking him on these grounds, they have twisted his words, by claiming that he “wants” to fight a 100-year war.
I’ve said it before, but for the Candidate of Hope and the New Politics, Barack Obama certainly resorts to old style political deception an awful lot.
UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: Lots of others are also calling out Obama for distorting McCain’s words.
The New York Times:
He offered those as possible timelines, but only hypothetically, to make his points that terrorism had rendered the region unstable and that he would support a continued troop presence if warranted. But the timetables, flippantly tossed out, have been condensed into sound bites by his Democratic opponents, turned into fund-raising appeals and mashed into YouTube parodies.
Many of the sound bites mischaracterize and distort what was said in Mr. McCain’s six-minute exchange on Jan. 3
The Associated Press
No, John McCain is not proposing a 100-year war in Iraq.
The future Republican presidential nominee and the Democrats vying to run against him in the fall are engaged in a debate of sorts over how long U.S. troops should stay in Iraq and under what circumstances.
That’s a genuine point of contention. But Hillary Rodham Clinton and especially Barack Obama have distilled McCain’s position into sound bite oversimplifications, suggesting he foresees a war without end in anyone’s lifetime.
FactCheck.org had debunked this back in February, but that hasnt’ stopped Obama or Hillary from deliberately lying for their own political means.
Tags: Barack Obama, candidate, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, iraq, iraq war, John McCain, liberal lies, Obama, politics
April 2nd, 2008
