Whatever you think

Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones had a beautiful smile. And a lot of times, that made me smile with her.

Word

Noam Scheiber:

Don't get me wrong, Barack Obama was going to win the floor vote just now to suspend the rest of the roll call and proclaim him the nominee. (It was positively electric in here when Hillary made the motion.) But surely there were a couple dissenters in the house. Nancy Pelosi pulled the trigger on that gavel before she'd even finished pronouncing the word "nay."

It made me laugh, because she didn't even pause for a second. I love Speaker Pelosi!

Bill Clinton

Genuinely loves his wife:

“I never expect to be moved again like I was last night at a convention.”

I was proud of her too.

Why I dislike Hillary

Mark Halperin writes:

February 9, 2008: Obama wins contests in Louisiana, the Virgin Islands, Nebraska, and Washington state, beginning a month-long winning streak that effectively locks up the nomination.

And she knew it too, but chose to spend another 100 million trying to destroy Sen. Obama. Thanks.

Racist drivel

This article is extremely racist, and clearly written by a disgruntled Hillary supporter. I especially hate this section:

3. Most successful black candidates have undergone a "hazing"--military service, an impoverished upbringing, etc.--which makes them acceptable to whites. Tolerating Hillary could be that hazing.

That's right. Black candidates need to be "hazed" to get elected - why don't we just send him out to the field and let Massa whip him for a while? This is terrible and I don't know how it gets published in something like the HuffPo.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez is full of it

This woman pisses me off:

Rep. Loretta Sanchez says she’s happy for the chance to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Democratic National Convention—and she predicts that as many as half of the Democrats in the House could join her.

No, they won't. Hillary didn't even have that level of support to begin with, I don't know why she would have it now. Rep. Sanchez is the total idiot who refused to attend the Congressional Hispanic Caucus meeting with Sen. Obama and instead demanded that Sen. Obama come to her office and talk to her. She's full of herself and is a bitter deadender.

Sense from David Broder

There's a great article by David Broder in the WaPo about Sen. Obama's "well-oiled machine." Very worth reading, but this struck me:

I had just come from listening to George McGovern lament the lack of discipline that wrecked his 1972 nominating convention and, perhaps, his chance of challenging Richard Nixon. "My acceptance speech was the best speech I ever gave," he said, "and it went on at 3 a.m. Eastern time, so nobody saw it."

It is unlikely to happen to Obama. Now that he and Clinton have agreed -- sensibly -- on giving her the roll-call vote her ardent supporters demanded, no contentious issues of policy or procedure remain to be ironed out.

I am shocked by how many people have argued that Sen. Obama "caved into" Sen. Clinton's demands on the roll-call vote. She got almost as many votes as he did, and I'm not a Clinton supporter, but as I argued in the past, this was the only way to go.

David Shuster sizzles

Via Rumproast, David Shuster lays the smack down on the PUMA crowd:



It's a delicious 11 minutes of pure awesomeness.

Bob Johnson

You can try to buy forgiveness with your money, I'll never forget this gem:

And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood –­ and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book –­ when they have been involved.

Thank you Sen. Clinton

For engaging in character attacks when you knew you couldn't win. Thank you for enraging your supporters and making them think that John McCain had passed the "Commander-in-Chief threshold" and Sen. Obama hadn't.

From Slate:

When I ask what Obama would have to do to win her over, what she says first is that he'd have to adopt Hillary's health care plan. But by the end of the conversation, we get to the real bottom line, which is that she just doesn't like Obama, sees him as a total poser and nothing-burger who swooped in from nowhere and stole the thing, and all the health care reform in the world is not going to change that. At this point, she's thinking seriously about staying home on Election Day. She is not going to wake up the morning after Hillary's name is placed in nomination and have a whole new lease on Obama. And my guess is, Hillary knows that.

It's just a reminder of all we have to thank Sen. Clinton for when we are discussing the roll call vote.

More on the roll call vote

According to the NY Times, Sen. Clinton will use her superdelegate vote to vote for Sen. Obama. If I were him, I would return the favor. Nothing says unity like that.

Further prediction: I think this will be an incredibly well choreographed event and will end up being a saccharine sweet unity love fest.

Duh!

Of course Sen. Clinton's name is going to be placed in nomination. I could have told you this months ago. Marc Ambinder reports:

In negotiations this summer with Obama's campaign, Clinton's team did not ask for Clinton's name to be submitted.

But within the past week, Clinton advisers informed the Obama team that many of Clinton's staunchest supporters felt strongly that something had to be done, and that Clinton had concluded that, in part for the sake of unity, their wishes ought to be respected. They heard back immediately: the Obama campaign had always been open to having her name placed in nomination alongside his.

DUH! Seriously, I always knew that the deadenders were not truly representative of Sen. Clinton's feeling. I mean, she already lost, why do you want to take a vote that commemorates your lose? However, certain people are under the illusion that she can win, so they are forcing this. Whatever. I knew the Obama campaign would be okay with this. Why not? They get to win all over again.

Sen. Clinton has shown a lot more class in losing that I would have expected. Marc goes on:

Clinton aides also confirmed, and Obama aides did not dispute, that it was Clinton who informed the Obama campaign that she did not [want] to give the keynote address to the convention. It is not clear whether the Obama camp would have offered the honorific, but they did not, sources said, deliberately deny it to Clinton.

It's nice that she's getting this out there. Not that the deadenders will believe her.

Hillary Clinton losing does not equal Chinese Oppression

I wrote a while ago about how Hillary Clinton losing doesn't equal rape, and here is it's follow up guide to how Hillary Clinton losing doesn't equal Chinese political oppression.

From the NY Observer:

“Hi everybody. I hope that the Denver convention will be turned into the American equivalent of Tiananmen Square,” wrote a commenter named “johninca” on a Web site announcing PUMA’s 2008 “convention” in Washington.

What happened in Tiananmen Square:

In Beijing, the resulting military response to the protesters by the PRC government left many civilians dead or injured. The reported tolls ranged from 200–300 (PRC government figures), to 300–800 (The New York Times), and to 2,000–3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross).

Hillary Clinton supporters are protesting this:

Hillary Clinton lost a primary Election

Participants in Tiananmen Sqaure protested this:

The PRC is known for its intolerance of organized dissent towards the government. Dissident groups are routinely arrested and imprisoned, often for long periods of time and without trial. One of the most famous dissidents is Zhang Zhixin, who is known for standing up against the ultra-left.^[31] Incidents of torture, forced confessions and forced labour are widely reported. Freedom of assembly and association is extremely limited.

Oh so similar.

MoDo too

It seems that today I agree with those who normally I can't even read. MoDo sums up my feelings about Hillary Clinton with this:

Obama also allowed Hillary supporters to insert an absurd statement into the platform suggesting that media sexism spurred her loss and that “demeaning portrayals of women ... dampen the dreams of our daughters.” This, even though postmortems, including the new raft of campaign memos leaked by Clintonistas to The Atlantic — another move that undercuts Obama — finger Hillary’s horrendous management skills.

Besides the crashing egos and screeching factions working at cross purposes, Joshua Green writes in the magazine, Hillary’s “hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.”

It would have been better to put this language in the platform: “A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of our daughters.”

Deadenders

The Hill reports that:

Heidi Li Feldman, co-founder of the Denver Group, said, “There is going to be a steady stream of activities for the first three days of the convention” and predicted thousands of Clinton backers will appear at the events.

Just like the thousands tens of tens of supporters who showed up to the Rules & Bylaws meeting. At this point, I'm more embarrassed/sad for them than I am worried that thousands will actually show up.

Obama's VP?

I am so excited that Sen. Obama is announcing his Vice President choice over a text message/email. What a smart way to A) get people to sign up for your email address and B) keep the whole thing an absolute secret until the very last second. This way you announce it and people run lots of stock footage of the Vice Presidential candidate and then you have a "first Event" together and get roadblocked cable news coverage.

My prediction: Bill Richardson

Let me get this straight

John at AmericaBlog highlights this section of an ABC article:

Sen. Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic presidential nominee if John Edwards had been caught in his lie about an extramarital affair and forced out of the race last year, insists a top Clinton campaign aide, making a charge that could exacerbate previously existing tensions between the camps of Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

"I believe we would have won Iowa, and Clinton today would therefore have been the nominee," former Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson told ABC News.com.

His response "Woulda, coulda, shoulda."

My response: Weren't Edwards and Sen. Obama splitting the anti-Clinton vote? If I recall correctly, Sen. Clinton had a ceiling of support that she never moved passed. If anything, Sen. Obama would have destroyed her even more in Iowa and then would have beaten her even more in New Hampshire.

More stupid

For some reason The Field Negro discussing the stupidity of Makethemaccountable.com inspired me to visit that website... There I found more stupidity, including this quote from No Quarter:

Two months after Obama has claimed the nomination, far from abating, the clamor for Hillary to be nominated has gotten louder. PUMA has grown, for obvious reasons. One big problem: R.E.S.P.E.C.T. We can’t seem to get any. Never mind sastisfaction. We ain’t getting’ any of that either… If Obama really had respect for Hillary or Bill Clinton and was generous enough to put the interests of someone else besides himself first – you know, like the American people, he would show the respect to her and to her voters and ask for her name to be put into nomination. He would want the stronger candidate to drive us to victory – whoever that may be – and let the chips fall where they may. He would want everyone to be heard, knowing, as Hillary herself has stated, we would have a better chance then to be united as a party and win in November.

I knew it, but I'm glad that they finally admitted that nothing short of Sen. Obama dropping out and conceding the nomination to Sen. Clinton will satisfy them. Damn the voters! It's Hillary or Nothing.

Elizabeth Edwards

Elizabeth Edwards will be able to speak truth to power at the Democratic Convention about the need for Universal Health Care and John McCain won't be able to say squat against her. She not only has terminal cancer, but is the "cheated on" wife of a major adultery scandal.

So far between this and the Clinton delegate voting controversy, the Democratic Convention is turning into a major media Event. Just like the Obama team wants it. By contrast, the big "news" at the Republican National Convention revolves around Vice President Cheney. I like that comparison.

More thoughts on John Edwards

I'm not just happy that he didn't win the nomination, but I'm also happy that he didn't come close like Sen. Clinton. It's very good for the Democrats that John Edwards dropped out of the race in January, instead of June.