Redstate

Posted at 12:34am on Jun. 28, 2008 One Big Happy Family?

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

I think not. Check out this report concerning the meeting Senators Clinton and Obama had with some of Senator Clinton's donors and supporters:

One major Clinton donor described it this way:  "This felt like when your mom forces you to go visit your Aunt Ida and she has to pinch your cheeks and you're sitting there in an uncomfortable suit and you can't wait to leave."

Another Clinton-leaning person who was in the room said after the meeting wrapped up that there is still "a lot of anger" toward Obama among Clinton's wealthiest fans.

"It was pretty bad," this source said.  He said donors were joking that the scene was like "an Irish wake" and that you "could cut the air with a knife" it was so tense in the room.

"He better go back to the internet," said one donor about the Democratic nominee's fundraising tactics.

Marc Ambinder's report is marginally more optimistic. Marginally. Barack Obama may yet unify his party but he is not out of the woods yet with Clinton supporters. The danger that they might stay home or that they might go and vote for John McCain likely continues.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Kneel Before Zod | Let's You And Him Fight | Rooting For Injuries — Comments (5)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 6:11pm on Jun. 26, 2008 Trouble In Paradise

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Now that the Democratic nomination contest is over, the effort to get the Clinton and Obama camps to sing from the same songsheet is getting a lot of attention. However, there are discordant notes:

Some Clinton supporters are grousing that Obama has yet to make the symbolic gesture of writing a check for $2,300, the maximum allowable campaign donation, to help retire her debt of over $12 million.

At her headquarters two weeks ago, a potluck dinner for women who had volunteered for Clinton turned into a forum in which many of her most loyal supporters expressed dissatisfaction with the outcome of the contest and with Obama, attendees said. And some of Clinton's aides said Obama's campaign had made only a perfunctory effort to hire Clinton staff members; the Clinton campaign payroll is ending for most employees in less than a week.

Obama's aides said that while he was prepared to help her pay off the debt, there was only so far he would go, given his campaign's own desire to raise record sums for the general election. In addition to the $12 million that Clinton owes to outside suppliers, she pumped more than $10 million of her own money into her campaign.

I actually thought that there would be a serious, comprehensive effort to help Clinton retire her campaign debt--if only to ensure that Clinton and her team would be fully on board in preparation for the general election campaign. Evidently not, or at the very least, the Obama people are not making this a priority. Of course, if they fail to keep Clinton supporters happy, there may very well be lots of problems down the road.

This will definitely be worth watching. I am sure that there will be a picture of unity at the end of all of this but the reality behind the scenes may be far, far different.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Kneel Before Zod | Let's You And Him Fight | Rooting For Injuries — Comments (8)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:57pm on Jun. 24, 2008 Question and answer time: The Great Obama Clinton Debt Bailout of 2008

Again, I'm not going to call it a Guide to the Perplexed.

By Moe Lane

Q. So, what's going on?
A. Senator Obama is going to ask his donors to help retire Senator Clinton's debt.

Q. Well, isn't that nice of him?
A. Not especially, no.

Q. Do you mean that it's mean of him?
A. No, I mean that it's pretty much required of him.

Q. Required? Do you mean, legally?
A. Nope. He's under no contractual obligation at all. Although he'd prefer to be.

Q. Why?
A. You can go to court sometimes and break a contract. Obama's merely over a barrel.

Read on.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Remnants Of The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (38)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:03am on Jun. 24, 2008 Campaigning In A Town Called "Unity" Doesn't Make You Unified

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are going to have their first joint appearance since Clinton dropped out of the race. The site is Unity, New Hampshire. It's symbolic of what the Democrats want to achieve, of course, but something is interfering with the symbolism. And that something is the Clintons:

People close to Clinton are frustrated that the Obama campaign has yet to propose a way to help her retire her campaing debt, while some close to Obama think the Clintons are being sore losers who won't go out of their way to praise Obama.

A case in point was Bill Clinton's appearance Sunday at the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

During his address, the former president mentioned Obama only once, and that was to praise Obama for supporting one of programs begun during Clinton's administration.

"I was delighted to read that Senator Obama said he would reinstitute the COPS program," Clinton told the conference.

And when Hillary Clinton made her first public appearance this weekend since her concession speech, she never even mentioned Obama's name.

The closest the New York senator came to citing Obama during her speech at a Bronx high school's graduation was to say, "No one five years ago, or four years ago, could have conceived that an African-American and a woman would be competing for the president of the United States."

Don't think that the Clintons' supporters won't take note of this. They pay attention and the lack of enthusiasm that the former First Couple is showing for the new Democratic nominee most assuredly can trickle down to Clinton supporters.

The vast majority of those supporters will back Barack Obama. But they may not do much more than vote. Combine that with the supporters who may either stay home or vote for John McCain and you see why this may well be a closer race than many people believe it will be.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Kneel Before Zod | Let's You And Him Fight | Rooting For Injuries — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:31pm on Jun. 23, 2008 I'm not sure, but I think that she was blinking something in Morse Code.

I *think* that it was the word "hostage."

By Moe Lane

But it's been a while, so I'm rusty. Via Hot Air - and call me nuts, but I think that it may be a while before Senator Obama sees that donor list of hers*.

Call it a hunch.

Moe Lane

*Although we actually do have some people reading this blog now who presumably were on Senator Clinton's donor list. Have any of you folks been getting "give money to Senator Obama" email requests from them?

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Remnants Of The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 6:40pm on Jun. 21, 2008 Barack Obama Gets People Mad At Him (Part II)

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Apparently, that party unity on the Democratic side is going to be a little harder to achieve than some thought it would be:

A Thursday afternoon meeting between Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus grew tense and emotional for a moment -- perhaps illustrating that weeks after Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., suspended her presidential campaign, some nerves remain frayed.

[. . .]

Sources at the meeting said that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, a Clinton supporter, expressed the desire that Obama and his campaign would reach out the millions of women still aggrieved about what happened in the campaign and still disappointed that Clinton lost.

Obama agreed that a lot of work needs to be done to heal the Democratic Party, and that he hoped the Clinton supporters in the room would help as much as possible.

According to Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Obama then said, "However, I need to make a decision in the next few months as to how I manage that since I'm running against John McCain, which takes a lot of time. If women take a moment to realize that on every issue important to women, John McCain is not in their corner, that would help them get over it."

That last line didn't quite go over well:

Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., a longtime Clinton supporter, did not like those last three words -- "Get over it." She found them dismissive, off-putting.

"Don't use that terminology," Watson told Obama.

Between this and the Patti Solis Doyle hire earlier this week, Hillary supporters have been given a fair number of things to be mad about. Having beaten the Clintons and their supporters, Obama is now causing many of those supporters to believe that he has contempt for the Clintons and for the campaign that they ran. Any more such efforts at party unity and we might have ourselves a full-blown schism before September even hits.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Kneel Before Zod | Let's You And Him Fight | Rooting For Injuries — Comments (5)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:46pm on Jun. 16, 2008 Patti Solis Doyle Joins The Obama Campaign

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Here's the story. And here's a review of Doyle's job performance for when she was working for her old boss, Hillary Clinton:

After the [Clinton for Senate in 2000] race, Solis Doyle was put in charge of fund-raising and later became campaign manager for Clinton's Senate reelection bid in 2006. She earned a reputation as a contentious, domineering boss. Along the way, many of the staff members who worked under her left or were forced out, including several high-powered members of Clinton's inner circle, such as Kelly Craighead and Evelyn Lieberman, the deputy chief of staff to Bill Clinton famous for banishing Monica Lewinsky to the Pentagon. The frequent turnover in the fund-raising shop was a significant measure of Solis Doyle's unpopularity. Clinton staffers are notably loyal, and turnover among them tends to be much lower than it is among the staffs of other politicians. Fund-raising under Solis Doyle was a glaring exception, chalking up the kind of body count you'd expect from an episode of The Sopranos. She was infamous among her colleagues for referring to herself as "the queen bee" and for her habit of watching daytime soap operas in her office. One frequent complaint among donors and outside advisers was that Solis Doyle often did not return calls or demonstrate the attention required in her position.

Concerns about Solis Doyle have preoccupied many in the campaign for several years. Clinton insiders say that her campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, launched an unsuccessful bid to remove Solis Doyle while on vacation with the Clintons two years ago. Two top campaign officials told me that Maggie Williams, Hillary's former chief of staff (and, as of Sunday, her campaign manager), also sought and failed to have Solis Doyle removed two years ago. Last year, some of Bill Clinton's former advisers, known as the "White Boys," lobbied to oust her, too.

But because of Solis Doyle's proximity to Hillary Clinton, because she demonstrated the loyalty and discretion Clinton so prized, and because no one appeared capable of challenging Clinton's presumed status as the Democratic nominee-in-waiting, nothing was done. "What Patti has that is real power is the unquestioned trust and confidence of the candidate," Paul Begala, a veteran of Bill Clinton's campaigns, explained in an on-the-record interview last year. "That makes her bulletproof."

Of course, it didn't make Hillary Clinton's campaign bulletproof. The Obama people had better make sure that Doyle doesn't spend her time watching soaps in the office. The McCain people, on the other hand, may want to forward some "The Young and the Restless" DVD's over to Doyle to occupy her time. Also, they need to make sure that Doyle never learns about TiVo.

Now, I had thought that the most important aspect of this story was that the Obama campaign was getting an operative whose performance was . . . oh, how shall one phrase this? . . . less effective than the principal of that operative had hoped said performance would be. Not so! The really big news concerning this story appears to be the fact that the Clintons are about as enraged over Doyle's hire as Sauron would be had the Nazgul suddenly showed up at Frodo's and Sam's encampment and said something along the lines of "We're here to help you get rid of that pesky and troublesome ring. Oh, and you'll want to do something about that Smeagol fellow--we know for a fact that he is not to be trusted," and meant every word.

Read on . . .

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hell Hath No Fury Like Clintonistas Scorned | Hillary Clinton | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (9)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 5:15pm on Jun. 12, 2008 Iowa Students for Hillary Chair trashes Obama, endorses McCain, recommends McKinney as plan B

By Soren Dayton

This is so awesome. The Chairman of Iowa Students for Hillary endorses John McCain in a big ole letter to his organization. Needless to say, they don't like Barack Obama. Here's how much they don't like him:

We will put up someone who has been to Iraq once for a photo-op against someone who has a son serving in Iraq and has been there countless times, with Senator Clinton in some instances.

They don't think that Obama is qualified:

Senator Obama is unqualified for the job of Commander in Chief. He has said this himself at a press conference after the 2004 election after winning his Illinois seat. He has said he would invade Pakistan if necessary to attack al-Qaeda elements, which is a bad idea seeing how Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is unstable right now. His remarks on Pakistan sparked rioting there last year.

They point out that if you can't stomach John McCain, there is always Cynthia McKinney:

We think the endorsement will make more impact if it goes to John McCain, but we see Cynthia McKinney as a viable alternative and someone more qualified than Senator Obama to be President having served for longer in Congress.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Clintonistas for McCain | Hillary Clinton | Iraq | John McCain — Comments (27) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:58am on Jun. 10, 2008 Obama's costly primary

By Kevin Holtsberry

This New York Daily News column on the high price of Hillary's losing run for the Democratic nomination received a lot of linkage and commentary yesterday. And understandably so. Many folks, myself included, are enjoying the end of the Clinton era.

Celeste Katz points out that all that Clinton money and name recognition went for naught:

Posted in 2008 Democratic Primary | 2008 Presidential Campaign | Archived | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:08pm on Jun. 8, 2008 Barack Obama's "Hillary" Problem: A Continuing Series

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

I imagine that there is a lot of this going around:

I'd like to interrupt this Unity Day message with a small reminder to the Barack Obama campaign and the Democratic Party - unless he picks Hillary Clinton as his running mate - the day he announces his Vice Presidential candidate will be a day of disunity.

I hope someone is thinking about that. Because since today is "Why Hillary Lost" Day in the Media, they need to remember that Hillary Clinton got half of the votes. Yes, she lost . . . barely. Obama is in a tight race with John McCain and needs a unified Democratic Party and if he is set on NOT picking Hillary Clinton as his VP, I hope he has a plan for re-unifying the Party the day after he insists on NOT unifying, indeed, in dividing the Party by not choosing Hillary Clinton as his VP.

Posted in Archived | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | It's Not Easy To Love Another — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:30pm on Jun. 7, 2008 Barack Obama's "Hillary" Problem

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Because of the very same crass, power-hungry behavior we have come to expect from the Clintons, Barack Obama is presented with a fair amount of trouble. Despite Hillary Clinton's endorsement of Obama in today's speech announcing the suspension of her campaign, some of Clinton's supporters are not quite yet willing to come on board:

Cynthia Ubaldo, 44, a Clinton supporter in Columbus, Ohio, just switched her registration from Democratic to independent and donated $10 to Mr. McCain. The endorsement on Saturday is a mandatory, empty gesture, Ms. Ubaldo said.

"I'm sure Hillary's cussing Obama out to Bill and Chelsea as we speak," she said.

[. . .]

If he does not offer the vice-presidential position to Mrs. Clinton, "I'm going to be really angry," said Alida Black, another longtime Clinton supporter.

"Hillary is not interchangeable," Ms. Black added, warning Mr. Obama not to select, say, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas as a gesture to please women.

[. . .]

For Ms. Ubaldo, the Clinton supporter who switched registration and donated to Mr. McCain, the Republican nominee is not so much a protest choice as an appealing alternative.

"This guy is not a conservative," said Ms. Ubaldo, who does not have health insurance but does have a subprime mortgage.

I imagine that there are a fair amount of people like Ms. Ubaldo. Some of them are discussed here. They could have potentially transferred their loyalties long ago, but Hillary Clinton decided to drag out the campaign to the point that her supporters became quite embittered indeed. Oh sure, most of these people will go back to supporting Senator Obama. But some may not. And in a close election, that may make all of the difference in the world.

Barack Obama may have lots and lots of reasons to dislike Hillary Clinton at the end of all of this. She has done everything within her power to prevent Democrats from being able to come together earlier and united their party against John McCain. Maybe Obama can patch the party back together soon enough. But if he can't, and if more people like Ms. Ubaldo either sit on their hands or end up supporting John McCain, Obama will know who to thank.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | It's Not Easy To Love Another — Comments (32)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:18pm on Jun. 7, 2008 So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehn, Goodbye . . .

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Whatever else happens during the course of this election cycle, we have already won one victory. And by "we," I mean "all of us."

Here it is: The Clintons have been sidelined from the fast track to power.

I write this knowing that Barack Obama will make a significantly tougher opponent against John McCain than will Hillary Clinton. Yes, I know of the demographic suppositions that state that Hillary would have been the stronger Democratic nominee given her wider appeal in the Midwest and in some of the southern states. I don't buy it, though. As the primary and caucus season has shown, the Clintons' campaign machine has a propensity to sputter and halt in all of the wrong places. They go through money like most people go through socks. The campaign staff is disorganized and dysfunctional in its intra-staff relations. And the candidate herself is flawed.

She is flawed because she campaigns not for some great cause, but for herself. Just herself. Only herself. Sure, she has her policy interests--health care being the most prominent example--but at the end of the day, Hillary Clinton was, is and always shall be in politics for Hillary Clinton alone. Power is her central organizing principle and always has been. She came into the race as "the inevitable nominee" and was determined to run her campaign as if it was a coronation. She was clearly shocked, outraged and offended that Barack Obama, in his upstart way, elbowed her aside and captured the prize she had lusted after for so long.

Of course, at the end of the day, it should surprise no one that Obama was able to win the Democratic nomination instead of Hillary. He had a far better organization than she did and the people in his organization both understood the rules surrounding the Democratic Presidential nomination process better than Hillary's team did and was filled with fewer prima donnas, thus ensuring that the focus would always remain on Obama rather than on any drama within his staff structure. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign was subsumed in ignorance surrounding the nomination process, couldn't use the fundraising structure of the Democratic Party or the Internet nearly as well to stay competitive financially and regularly drowned out Clinton's message with stories of fights between Harold Ickes and Mark Penn, Harold Ickes and Patti Solis Doyle, Mark Penn and Patti Solis Doyle, Bill Clinton and everybody on the planet and . . . well, you get the picture.

Obama's "Hope and Change" campaign message is a shallow and empty one when examined closely. But credit where it is due; it is a message. What was Hillary Clinton's message? "Elect me because I was a First Lady and it would be really really cool if a former First Lady could be elected as the first female President of the United States." When it became clear that this approach was . . . er . . . less than optimal, she tried on various different personae; the "Fighter," the "Populist" the "Woman Who Survived Sniper Fire at the Airport in Tuzla." None of these approaches worked because they were so transparently fake and some were even faker than others. Voters, not being stupid, saw through the whole charade. The rest is history.

Read on . . .

Posted in 2008 | Hillary Clinton | Loser — Comments (8)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 3:33pm on Jun. 4, 2008 The Road to Hell is Paved With Democrats

By Richard H Collins

So the general election has begun. Oh sure, Hillary hasn’t formally dropped out yet and neither party has had their convention yet. But last night John McCain and Barack Obama made it clear that they have switched their attention towards each other.

Obama claimed the mantle of the Democratic nomination, which he had secured not by primary votes alone but by the special party elders, known as superdelegates, and took time to accuse McCain of running for the third term of President Bush. McCain, speaking before Obama, pointed out that despite Obama’s constant mantra of change, and obvious rhetorical skills, he mostly offers standard liberal big government solutions not real change.

Posted in 2008 | 2008 Democratic Primary | 2008 Presidential Campaign | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | John McCain — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:47pm on Jun. 4, 2008 Democrats Finally Embrace the Bible, Shut Out the Woman, and Repeat History

By Erick

While I feel a bit of pity, mixed with glee, at the tragic fate of Hillary Clinton, I think the Democrats should be applauded for following the Bible. "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent," the Bible teaches in 1 Timothy 2:11-12. Likewise, the next chapter makes clear that overseers, or leaders, should be men, not women.

The Democrats have taken to the Bible.

Of course, in the history of this country, women have always taken it on the chin in favor of not just the man, but the black man. We could not expect the Democrats to defy history.

We would do well to remember that women were on the verge of getting the right to vote before the Civil War, but the war interrupted the movement. Women sat by patiently for the end of the war.

1870 looked promising. The nation had before it the 15th amendment giving all citizens the right to vote. Except the amendment decided to make citizens and voters equal to men only. The women's movement protested and fought, but they were outmaneuvered by an eloquent black man named Frederick Douglass.

And black men won the vote leaving all women out in the cold.

In 1914, things looked very promising. In 1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the congress. But then war broke out. From 1918 to 1920, women again sat on the sidelines while the men took care of business.

In 1920, women got the right to vote. Fast forward to 2007. Hillary Clinton was set to become the first woman elected President of the United States, finally capping the long struggle for equal rights. Though deeply unpopular with a lot of the country, people were still willing to vote for her for President. Of course, students of the women's movement should have seen it coming, but they didn't.

An eloquent black man came on to the scene and talked people out of a giant leap for womankind. And just as it happened so often in this country, yet again women's hopes have been crushed. I await the feminists new strategy of scrapping affirmative action, except for women.

Ladies, back to the kitchen please. Mr. Obama is hungry.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:35am on Jun. 4, 2008 Obamomentum - End-of-the-Primaries Edition

It's Like Popularity, But With Fewer People

By Dan McLaughlin

Now that the Democratic primaries are finally over, let's take one last look at the charts I have been running for some time now (see here, here and here) of the Democratic presidential primary popular vote totals for the months of March, April, May and now June. (Source: RCP, except I used CNN's updated figures for Montana) - "margin," of course, is Obama's margin of victory/defeat in each primary:

In other words, Obama ends the last 3 months of the primary season more than 600,000 votes in the hole, losing the popular vote decisively to Hillary over a stretch of 16 primaries in which 13 million votes were cast. In percentage terms, Hillary's 4.52% margin of victory for that period is larger than the general election margins of Bush over Kerry in 2004, Carter over Ford in 1976, Nixon over Humphery in 1968, Truman over Dewey in 1948, and just a point smaller than that of Clinton over Bush in 1992. He lost six different primaries by margins of 100,000 or more votes. All this during the time period when he should have been sealing the deal with Democratic voters after having taken what looked at the time like a decisive, momentum-tipping lead in mid-February. The final insult was losing South Dakota, a state he was widely projected to win and in which he led decisively in the few polls taken until the last day or two before the election, and which cast its ballots while the vultures were visibly circling Hillary's campaign.*

Read On...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (15)/ Email this page » / Read More »