Ruminations of an Expatriate

Archive for the ‘Clinton’ Category

Clinton - In It Until The End?

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Everyone paying attention (and I salute you who are not) has heard that Senator Clinton has declared that she intends to remain in the campaign for the democratic nomination until the bitter end.

The Washington Post quotes Clinton as saying:

“I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan. And if we don’t resolve it, we’ll resolve it at the convention — that’s what credentials committees are for.

“We cannot go forward until Florida and Michigan are taken care of, otherwise the eventual nominee will not have the legitimacy that I think will haunt us,” said the senator from New York. “I can imagine the ads the Republican Party and John McCain will run if we don’t figure out how we can count the votes in Michigan and Florida.”

I don’t believe it. I think Clinton is putting on a brave face in hopes that her Pennsylvania supporters, and those in other upcoming state primaries, don’t defect.

After all, her campaign is in the red, her public approval rating is at its lowest point since 2001, and Obama continues to roll up unpledged (so called super) delegate endorsements. The Wall Street Journal is reporting this evening:

WASHINGTON — Slowly but steadily, a string of Democratic Party figures is taking Barack Obama’s side in the presidential nominating race and raising the pressure on Hillary Clinton to give up.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is expected to endorse Sen. Obama Monday, according to a Democrat familiar with her plans. Meanwhile, North Carolina’s seven Democratic House members are poised to endorse Sen. Obama as a group — just one has so far — before that state’s May 6 primary, several Democrats say.

I have read and heard quite a number of pundits opine that Clinton will destroy the democratic party in pursuit of the nomination, to which she seemingly thinks she’s entitiled. I suspect Clinton will see through the election in Pennsylvania; and, if she does better than expected, may even continue on to the next few states.

In the end, Clinton will give it up and encourage her supporters to vote for Obama; and Obama will win the general election in November.

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Obama Plagiarism

Monday, February 18th, 2008

Everyone paying even casual attention to the democratic nomination campaign has is aware of today’s dust up wherein Clinton campaign officials are accusing Obama of “plagiarizing” Massachusetts’ governor Deval Patrick’s gubernatorial stump speech, countering his opponent’s contention that words aren’t important. Patrick has assured the world that he and Obama are friends and supporters, and often share stump speech material.

The funny thing to me in the whole sorry episode, which the media is eagerly lapping up, is revealed in this Politico.com report.

Here’s Patrick at a rally for his gubernatorial campaign on Oct. 15, 2006, during the final stretch of his successful campaign against then-Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey (R):

“But her dismissive point, and I hear it a lot from her staff, is that all I have to offer is words — just words. [bold added] ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, [applause and cheers] that all men are created equal.’ [Sustained applause and cheers.] Just words – just words! ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words! ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ Just words! ‘I have a dream.’ Just words!”

So Obama, whose chief political strategist, David Axelrod, and speech writer, Jon Favreau, also worked for Patrick, may have been sharing stump speech material with Patrick; but it was in response to Clinton’s lifting an attack from Patrick’s republican opponent.

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Submissive Democrats Enabled Iraq Invasion

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

Fomer Rhose Island Senator Lincoln Chaffee’s political memoir, entitled “Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President” will be released April 1, reports the Providence Journal’s Scott MacKay. The report to which I was led from Brad DeLong’s excellent blog.

Chaffee was defeated for reelection in 2006 by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, largely, it seems, due to dissatisfaction with the Iraqi adventure.

MacKay’s report includes this:

“I find it surprising now, in 2008, how many Democrats are running for president after shirking their constitutional duty to check and balance this president,” writes Chafee. “Being wrong about sending Americans to kill and be killed, maim and be maimed, is not like making a punctuation mistake in a highway bill.

“They argue that the president duped them into war, but getting duped does not exactly recommend their leadership. Helping a rogue president start an unnecessary war should be a career-ending lapse of judgment.”

Chafee was the only Republican senator to vote against prosecuting the war. “The top Democrats were at their weakest when trying to show how tough they were,” writes Chafee. “They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world, and when they acted in political self-interest, they helped the president send thousands of Americans and uncounted innocent Iraqis to their doom.

“Instead of talking tough or meekly raising one’s hand to support the tough talk, it is far more muscular, I think, to find out what is really happening in the world and have a debate about what we really need to accomplish,” writes Chafee. “That is the hard work of governing, but it was swept aside once the fear, the war rhetoric and the political conniving took over.”

Chafee writes of his surprise at “how quickly key Democrats crumbled.” Democratic senators, Chafee writes, “went down to the meetings at the White House and the Pentagon and came back to the chamber ready to salute. With wrinkled brows they gravely intoned that Saddam Hussein must be stopped. Stopped from what? They had no conviction or evidence of their own. They were just parroting the administration’s nonsense. They knew it could go terribly wrong; they also knew it could go terribly right. Which did they fear more?”

I think Chaffee is absolutely right when he observes that “They were afraid that Republicans would label them soft in the post-September 11 world,…”

This is the Democratic Leadership Council, DLC, orthodoxy, which stems from the so called “Reagan Revolution”, when republicans branded democrats as weak on defense and democrats immediately rolled over and wet themselves in submission to Reagan and crew, while alpha dog Reagan chewed on their necks.

Senator Clinton and President Clinton are a charter DLC members; and, I think, the Senator’s fear “that Republicans would label [her and her coming campaign as] soft in the post-September 11 world” motivated her vote to authorize the Iraq adventure. Likewise her vote for the feel good Kyl-Lieberman Act which, amongst other things, designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

Her votes “should be a career-ending lapse[es] of judgment”.

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Lobbyists and Presidential Candidates

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008

Want to know which lobbyists for foreign governments have raised money for and gained access for their clients to which presidential candidates? Here’s a handy illustration and you may read the ABC story here.

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