Hat tip to Brian at BlueNC for this news — homobigot Vernon Robinson, who tried and failed to unseat Congressman Brad Miller in the 13th District race here in 2006, has picked up something as a consolation prize — the “Willie” award for Worst Political Advertisement, given by progressive thinktank Growth & Justice.

Here’s what Vern actually put on the air to receive the honor; he does the NC GOP proud:

And a snippet the post I did back when that ad was first released (March 2006) is below the fold.
(more…)

(10:40 AM: Wow, people — is this topic so radioactive that no one is willing to comment on it? I’d actually like some feedback.)

I’ve laid off commenting about the dustup regarding the announcement of the 55 blogs selected for the DemConvention State Blogger Corps over the last few days in the hope of receiving more information regarding the program and handling of the fallout. There were actually two points of contention about the selection process that have been covered unevenly in the blogosphere.

1) Lack of racial diversity in the state pools selected (given the overall composition of the Dem party), and the fact that there is a different level of access to the state delegation given to these blogs on the floor at the Dem National Convention versus the general blogger pool, which will be announced this week;

2) The charge that there were political factors that went into the decision-making process for state blogs that resulted in highly qualified state blogs not making the final cut. This was the suggestion that state parties were consulted and were able to give thumbs up or down to specific blogs that may have been hard on the state parties.

Item number two has already been heavily covered in the progressive blogosphere, while outside of black blogs, the first item has been largely and curiously ignored by the top-tier blogs. As is the norm on such things, my position seems to straddle that group of progressive blogs. On the one hand, I think the problem is due to 1) an inability of state blogs to include more minority contributors; 2) some may not have thought about a lack of minority perspective on state and local issues as important; 3) those state blogs have truly tried by haven’t seen interest from POC who are well-versed in state and local issues who are able to/want to contribute to a state blog.

On the other hand, some of the black/brown bloggers have seen the selection results and have tossed “Jim Crow” charges out there — meaning overt, purposeful exclusion. I don’t see purposeful exclusion, what I see is a DNCC that wanted blogs represented at the convention in an unprecedented way, but was unable to see or fully address the minority representation problem (and we’re not only talking about racial minorities) it was going to create with its selection system.

The bottom line is that the lack of minority participation at the state blogger level is real, and it is a problem for the Democratic Party as well as the blogosphere.

However, both reactions aren’t particularly helpful in terms of improving dialogue long term — the defense shields go up, and nothing positive usually comes of this. It’s been frustrating to see it all unfold.

I was contacted by Aaron Myers, the director of online communications for the 2008 Democratic National Convention Committee, and spoke with him a couple of days ago to ask him about the credentialing process, the details in level of access, and some logistics, in an effort to get some information on the record. My notes are below the fold.
(more…)

KO was overwrought on Friday, but what he said was spot on. What Hillary Clinton did by invoking Robert F. Kennedy’s late primary win (and, unnecessarily, assassination — for the second time in two months) to bolster her case for staying in the race is beyond the pale.

It became more so after the non-apology (the usual “I’m sorry if I offended anyone,” and it didn’t at all address the context of assassination and Obama). It was more egregious that her comparison in the remarks to Bill’s 1992 race that she claimed wasn’t wrapped up until June, something she has also repeated, wasn’t even true.

While she said that he only wrapped up the nomination in June of that year, he was viewed as having secured it in March, when his last serious opponent dropped out.

FYI: The number of hate groups operating in this country has increased 48% since Bush took office. Taking what Clinton said lightly or as an indication of a moment of fatigue is not an option (for me, anyway).

Between the political dog whistles floated and denied over the course of the primary season by the Clinton campaign, and the overt statements by voters that race is an issue for them, you simply cannot ignore the first black man to be a serious contender for the presidency is a man with a target on his back and words do mean something — particularly coming from a candidate. That Senator Clinton’s campaign doesn’t care to or doesn’t want to admit what she said has an interpretation other than a slight to the Kennedy family is BS. We’re not talking about her believing she wants something horrible to befall her opponent, it’s the lack of discretion and judgment in raising the issue not once, but twice.

Sadly, our country is too sick and too incapable of dealing with the race-based hatred, ignorance and fear that has bubbled up during this primary season, and the reality is that we have a man willing to take the personal risk to run for president in spite of this.

And that is what Keith Olbermann addressed.

The transcript is here.
(more…)

Wow, talk about hardball. This was on CNN this AM, and it looks like the Clinton camp is tossing out some kind of not-so-veiled convention chaos blackmail card for the VP slot, and/or a way for the New York senator to have a face-saving exit strategy. The report from Suzanne Malveaux describes three scenarios being floated by people “inside Hillary’s inner circle.”

Scenario 1: Obama “ignores” Clinton and her supporters by offering the VP slot to someone else, which her camp sees as “a total dismissal of her” and is an unacceptable endgame that one Clintonista said could lead to open civil war within the party — and that this scenario is going to have consequences. This will allegedly manifest itself as women’s groups not willing to do any fundraising for Obama, and a tepid campaign by Hillary during the general campaign.

Scenario 2: Obama offers Hillary the VP slot, knowing she’ll turn it down.( Huh? This spin is weird. Why is there an assumption that she would turn it down?) The leaking Clinton camp description here is that option obviously isn’t acceptable to the Obama camp precisely because they believe she would accept, and the two camps don’t trust each other enough to see it a workable teaming.

Scenario 3: Meet and figure out some compromise for public consumption. The idea suggested here is that Obama’s campaign would cover Clinton’s enormous debt, or back her for the Senate Majority Leader position, even though the insiders have seen no indication that Hillary wants the job in the first place, since she’s still running to win.

Raw Story has the CNN video.

OK, given the fact that this is surfacing from the perspective of the Clinton campaign, what do you think the motivations are for offering up these particular scenarios that don’t really look plausible or workable (in that it benefits Obama as the prospective nominee)?

And in other, even more surreal news, Clinton invokes RFK’s assassination in a newspaper editorial board meeting to bring up “historical context” in terms of why she shouldn’t drop out before the primaries are over. WTF?
(more…)

Here is a completely brain-dead quasi gay-baiting ad for Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), who tries to paint his opponent, Kay Barnes, as joined at the hip with Nancy Pelosi and her “San Francisco style values.” We all know what that means. Those values are hilariously depicted by a man in a cowboy hat dancing with two women…and even better, two of them are brown.

Talk about having zero to run on.

See the response from Barnes below the fold.
(more…)

Hillary Clinton easily breezed by Barack Obama in the Kentucky primary, bolstered again by working-class, less educated whites who made their decision to vote for her based on their unwillingness to vote for a black person. Another sad day in America.

Race played a decisive role in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s lopsided victory in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary in Kentucky, the latest contest to emphasize how fierce her rivalry against Barack Obama has become among the party’s voters.

…Seven in 10 whites overall backed Clinton in Kentucky, including about three quarters of those who have not completed college. That made Tuesday’s contest one of her stronger performances yet with those blue-collar white voters — little surprise considering Kentucky has one of the country’s highest proportions of people who are not college graduates.

How much does prejudice factor into this? The Bluegrass State is living in another time, where Negroes knew their place — and one of those places was certainly not on a ballot running for president.

* About one in five whites said race played a role in choosing a candidate;
* Nine in 10 of that group backed Clinton — the highest proportion yet among the 28 states where that question has been asked in exit polls;
* Only three in 10 whites who said race was a factor said they would vote for Obama should he oppose McCain in November;
* Nearly four in 10 said they would back McCain, while the rest said they wouldn’t vote.

These results in Kentucky (and West Virginia) neatly fit David Sirota’s theory of the Race Chasm. He originally pointed out the fascinating slice of statistics for In These Times. See the graph and a snippet below the fold.
(more…)

When the big announcement of the state blogs that will receive credentials to the Dem National Convention came down this week, there was an immediate buzz about the choices made by the DNCC.

The first controversy is over the unclear representation of minority bloggers in the state blogging corps. Francis L. Holland: Jim Crow Blogging at the Democratic National Convention?

I’m concerned that virtually all of the state blogs selected by the Democratic National Committee to cover Denver are white. Of course, it remains possibly that one of these white blogs will bring a Black person along as a blogger. But, Black bloggers and voters are not willing to wait until we arrive in Denver to find out whether a group of virtually all-white blogs will also send a group of all-white bloggers to Denver. We strongly suspect that we already know the answer, and it is totally unacceptable to us. Do any of these all-white blogs even have any Black bloggers who might participate? That’s something we need to know before Denver.

This isn’t the first time this issue has been addressed. When Bill Clinton met in Harlem with an all-white group of bloggers, Black bloggers were furious and Clinton’s campaign never recovered. The Clinton campaign had insulted and alienated the very Black bloggers corps that it most needed to reach out and round up support from voters in Black communities.

(Also see African American Political Pundit, The 2008 DNC Bloggers Corp - No Diversity! Jim Crow at DNC ??)

By the way, I can happily report that BlueNC, the progressive state community blog in my state, where I regularly post, will represent Tar Heels, though I won’t be attending under the BNC credential. There won’t be black representation in the state blog at the convention; the person and alternate on the list to go for BNC are white. Not that I have a problem with the two folks slated, because they are extremely well-versed in state issues, certainly more so than I.

More below the fold.
(more…)

I posted about this on a thread at my place, but wanted to post it here in case folks had heard any more developments.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy was rushed from his Hyannisport home to Massachusetts General Hospital this morning after an apparent seizure. One government official said the 76-year-old senator suffered a second seizure aboard a helicopter transport flight from the Cape to Boston.

Kennedy’s Senate office released a written statement just after 2 p.m. today offering the first official confirmation, saying, “It appears that Senator Kennedy experienced a seizure this morning. He is undergoing a battery of tests at Massachusetts General Hospital to determine the cause of the seizure. Senator Kennedy is resting comfortably, and it is unlikely we will know anything more for the next 48 hours.”

…The Cape Cod Times published a photograph of Kennedy, strapped to a gurney, being carried onto the chopper by paramedics.

John Kerry released this statement (came in my inbox at 3PM):

BOSTON, MA- Senator John Kerry today released the following statement in regards to Senator Edward Kennedy. Senator Kerry is currently at Massachusetts General Hospital with Senator Kennedy and members of the Kennedy family.

“Ted Kennedy is beloved and respected on both sides of the aisle in the Senate in which he’s been a giant for close to half a century, a legend in Massachusetts, and a dear friend to me and Teresa. He’s also been a fighter who has overcome adversity again and again with courage, grit, and determination. Teresa and I are praying for Teddy, Vicki and all of his family and we know that everyone in Massachusetts and people throughout the nation pray for a full and speedy recovery for a man whose life’s work has touched millions upon millions of lives.”

Video below the fold.
(more…)

“Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures.”
–Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.

That Captain Obvious winner shows up in Peggy Noonan’s WSJ column “Pity Party.” This where the real spin begins, as she distances herself from the rest of the apologists and GOP cheerleaders for Dear Leader for the last seven years. She’s the one with 20/20 vision about the disastrous political bind the Republicans are in. The Democrats aren’t the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead.

For all their fractious fighting, they’re finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They’re busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They’re frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

…Many are ambivalent, deep inside, about the decisions made the past seven years in the White House. But they’ve publicly supported it so long they think they . . . support it. They get confused. Late at night they toss and turn in the antique mahogany sleigh bed in the carpeted house in McLean and try to remember what it is they really do think, and what those thoughts imply.

And those are the bright ones. The rest are in Perpetual 1980: We have the country, the troops will rally in the fall.

“This was a real wakeup call for us,” someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. “We can’t let the Democrats take our issues.” And those issues would be? “We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives,” he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

While she’s angry at how the GOP has failed her, she underestimates the capacity of denial and blame-shifting of these clowns in an attempt to save their personal political fortunes.

I say watch the former Bush faithful. If there’s one thing the GOP is good at, it’s the taking the long view of how to make a comeback. Look at what else Davis says to Noonan — after the jump.
(more…)

You know, I wasn’t sure if my former senator was actually going to throw his hat into the endorsement ring.

(WaPo):

In the immediate aftermath of Edwards’ decision to drop from the race, both Clinton and Obama made a pilgrimage to North Carolina to huddle with the former candidate and make their pitch for his support.

By all accounts, those meetings left Edwards genuinely undecided. Obama’s message of change and his call to end the influence peddling in Washington were clearly an obvious fit for Edwards’ sympathies, but he retained some lingering concerns about Obama’s depth of experience. Clinton, on the other hand, had considerable experience but struggled to represent the sort of change that Edwards believed was necessary to win the nomination.

Rumors flew for months about Edwards’s leaning although of late it had been expected that if he endorsed a candidate, it would be Obama.

Matt Bennett, a former Clinton Administration official, described Edwards as the “troubadour of the working class” and said the North Carolina senator’s endorsement of Obama makes it “tougher for Clinton to make the case that working class Democrats can’t [or] won’t support Obama.”

During his 2004 bid for president, Edwards focused his campaign message almost exclusively on middle-class and lower middle-class people — insisting that his southern roots, his father’s experience as a mill worker and his own up from the bootstraps success story uniquely positioned him to represent their interests in the White House.

The timing of this is quite interesting, given the proximity of the West Virginia primary, where the Two Americas message that Edwards ran on is highly relevant, as is the racial divide that was in stark relief in that primary. However, a slice of this demographic, as we’ve seen, has no qualms declaring that they will not vote for a black man under any circumstances — even if voting for a Republican is against their basic economic interests. You have to think those folks are unlikely to be moved by an endorsement by Edwards.

So what, if anything, do you think this endorsement means in the greater scheme of things?

Last night in another thread, I commented again about how poorly Hillary Clinton has been served by her hired campaign guns. Of course, the senator has stuck her foot in her mouth on her own as well, but nothing compares to this. From a new USA Today interview, she manages to top any dog-whistle race-baiting that her husband put out on the campaign trail with this naked appeal.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

Wow. Just. Wow. That didn’t blow by without comment, even in the article.

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.”

Is that another variation on “misspoke”?

You see the problem and beauty of Senator Clinton’s statement is that it boldly embraces the undiscussed fear in this Reagan Democrat demographic, the people who do consider race a major factor — concern that white privilege is being threatened, that somehow Barack Obama as president would exact retribution against “hard working white Americans” for past or present institutionalized racism. You know, like this candid Kentucky voter:

I’ve talked to people-a woman who was chair of county elections last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for a black man.” Patrick said he wouldn’t vote for Obama either.

Why not?

“Race. I really don’t want an African-American as President. Race.”

What about race?

“I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That’s my opinion.”

The frame is specific — that’s why Clinton referred to hard working white Americans. What happened to “blue collar Americans?” Oh wait, there are a lot of hard working black and brown blue collar/working class Americans, and many of them they voted for Obama, so she had to slice that demo down to the bottom line. Dog whistles no more.

I want to believe that it wasn’t a purposeful slip of the tongue because it’s too painful to contemplate that the black vote is now perceived as a “problem” because it skews to Obama, and because there are more white voters who have a problem with him based on his race, we have to nail that demo.

Remember, the black vote has been the most reliable Democratic vote, not the Reagan Democrats. Black voters don’t turn out for Obama solely because he is black. I’ve blogged before about this bizarre train of thought — if the affinity vote is so powerful we would have seen a bum rush for Alan Keyes. What Clinton is saying is not inaccurate (polls slice and dice this way), but its use here is inappropriate and inflammatory. It’s because the last core demo left for her to appeal to is resistant to Obama for reasons that have little to do with policy differences, or 3 AM readiness. She’s brought the microtarget out into the light and it’s one many of us don’t want to face talking about, with a different name — scared white people.

She is naming her remaining trump card, and considering our country’s pitiful history of not frankly dealing with or discussing race — aside from painful, fumbling defensive fits and starts — we’re left to deal with the fallout of a “poorly worded” statement, lacking a sufficiently stocked toolbox to deal with the ramifications of courting a vote with implicit and explicit biases.

The question never explored is why are these people scared more about a black president (regardless of political viewpoint) than the prospect of a McCain presidency and four more years of failed economic policies that have left this very demographic high and dry? What do we want to do about this as Americans? Apparently nothing, that’s a third rail topic and there’s an election to win.

Naming it means acknowledging problems we haven’t dealt with, and exploding the myth of a post-racial America. Barack Obama may be the first post-racial candidate because of his personal heritage, but the United States of America is nowhere near “post-racial” when it comes to politics.

…Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, according to the numbers. The mainstream media has been focused like a laser beam on Barack Obama’s slippage in the blue collar white working class vote because of results in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It’s part of the assessment of the electability factor.

The curious thing is that little attention has been paid to the support of black voters for Hillary Clinton, which has fallen off the cliff. This piece puts the hard facts out there. (NYT):

Have white Democrats soured on Obama? Apparently not. Although his unfavorable rating from the group is up five percentage points since last summer in polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, his favorable rating is up just as much.

On the other hand, black Democrats’ opinion of Hillary Clinton has deteriorated substantially (her favorable rating among them is down 36 percentage points over the same period).

While a favorable opinion doesn’t necessarily translate into a vote, this should still give the Clintons (and the superdelegates) pause. Electability cuts both ways.

If Hillary Clinton should defy the odds (and the current math) and secure the nomination, she would be hard-pressed to defeat John McCain without the enthusiastic support of black voters, stalwarts of the Democratic base.

And the collapse isn’t because of the affinity factor — blacks voting for Obama solely because he’s black. When a majority of whites abandoned the former president during Monicagate, blacks were among his most steadfast supporters. In this election cycle, that loyalty has only garnered a perceived slap in the face. More below the fold.
(more…)

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper cracked down on the misleading and deceptive robo-calls by Women’s Voices. Women Vote that implied voters had to wait for and fill out a registration packet before they could vote. He stated that the calls are breaking state law. (Audio of the call here).

What is particularly egregious is that the calls went out after the registration deadline for the presidential primary — and were targeting minority neighborhoods, using a fictitious caller named “Lamont Williams.” In a measure of damage control, a press release landed in my inbox from WVWV in the late afternoon yesterday. A snippet is below the fold.
(more…)

And it isn’t a Republican effort. Chris Kromm of Facing South broke this story yesterday and has done more investigative digging and it’s not pretty — there will be calls for an answer to this. The source of the calls, which is a D.C.-based nonprofit called Women’s Voices Women Vote, which says it is trying to reach “unmarried women voters.” You’ll recall that the deceptive message told voters that they had to wait for a packet to fill out before they could vote.

“Hello, this is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is sign it, date it and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return the voter registration form when it arrives. Thank you.”

Chris got a hold of a press release from the group, and questions about ties to Hillary Clinton. More below the fold.
(more…)

I liveblogged the election returns last night in the Blend chat room and it was a fun affair, lots of folks participated. Some comments trickled into the thread itself. During my random updates on the related blog entry I posted this:

8:46 PM: Just surfing around and saw this “ You’ve got to be sh*tting me” item:

Clinton has a tough reality to overcome to be nominated no matter what happens — Obama is practically assured to end the race with a lead in pledged delegates. Even in Pennsylvania, a Clinton victory was never bound to net her much in the delegate count since urban districts where Obama is strong have more delegates than those in rural areas where Clinton was likely to do well.

Bill Clinton has already begun making a new argument for her candidacy — it’s the Democratic Party rules that have kept her from becoming the nominee, he told a reporter on the eve of the vote.

I later said this:

10:07 PM: She can’t win without superdelegates, the delegate race is over. Honest question to Clinton supporters — is bucking pledged delegates and the popular vote at the convention the only way to a November win?

This sent my Hillary-supporting readers over the edge. Read some comments below the fold.
(more…)

For obvious reasons, a lot is riding on the primary today, though I wouldn’t say it’s all over after today, because god knows Clinton and Obama could come out neck and neck, and this could all continue on. But I want to make the case for Obama.

Considering that the two candidates have pretty much identical policy platforms, with each moving to the left a little on this issue or that to compensate where they’re to the right of the other candidate, it’s hard to say if there’s a single issue worth singling out, though the war is close to it. Obama is more dovish than Clinton, which is the main reason I went for Obama in the first place, especially since the health care plan is going to be written by Congress anyway. But since they are nearly identical, I think—and have said before—that it’s wise to cast your vote based on campaign strategies and sculpting the party how we want to see it in the future. Nominating Obama would send the signal to the party that we’re tired of the DLC, tired of the “move to the middle” strategy. It’s robbing the party of an identity, and it doesn’t win elections. Carter was something of a “middlist” since he had the religion thing, but he had the Watergate advantage. Since then, it’s been a loser. Clinton only scratched out victories because Perot was a spoiler. Gore was perceived as being to the left of Clinton because of the environmentalism, which meant he did better votes-wise, but it was still a squeaker that allowed the election to be stolen because his “move to the middle” campaign strategy caused the left to abandon him in disgust and vote for Nader. There’s also reason t believe the more swing voters would vote for an openly liberal candidate—some of them voted for Bush because they thought “compassionate conservative” was code for “liberal Republican”.

Obama initially started off with the “move to the middle” strategy, and there’s no doubt he does what politicians do and panders at times, but the force of enthusiasm behind him has given him the appearance of a grassroots candidate, and he has wisely embraced this, becoming more and more what people want him to be. Should he win the nomination, that would be a strong blow against the DLC, the “move to the middle” politics, and the Republican glad-handing that Clinton engages in. Like the Howard Dean campaign, it would tell the party that the people mean business. It’s easy to be cynical and say they ignore us completely, but look, Dean became the head of the party. And I don’t like everything he does, but he has answered the call for electing more Democrats in smaller offices, so already the people have had a good effect. And a campaign that looks liberal is just going to be more effective than one that looks like it’s skittish; people like to vote for someone with convictions, and like it or not, Obama looks like a man of conviction to your average voter. He speaks with confidence and authority.

A vote for Obama is a vote for small donors, against the evil cadre of Clinton consultants, and for a figure with enough charisma that he could be the Reagan for the surge of liberalism that the internet has harnessed in the way the Moral Majority harnessed reactionary sentiment in the 70s.

Blogging from Birmingham, Alabama…meeting up with Kathy of Birmingham Blues later today.

---

I swear, I lay off the posts about the Clinton campaign and candidate in meltdown for a few days and she and her minions put themselves back in the news again.

Hillary Clinton, who is apparently running a campaign completely ignorant of recording technology, as we saw with the Bosnia lie caught on video, does it again. An audio tape has surfaced from a private fundraiser that was given to the Huff Post, and it ain’t pretty.

She blasts Moveon.org (lying getting facts wrong in the process), but even more shocking, she blames grassroots activists - who have been energized in this primary season, turning out new voters in droves, for her difficulties in picking up votes. The tape was recorded after Super Tuesday, when she and her campaign were in shock that the coronation wasn’t going to happen.

“Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] — which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down,” Clinton said to a meeting of donors. “We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.”

…Clinton’s remarks depart radically from the traditional position of presidential candidates, who in the past have celebrated high levels of turnout by party activists and partisans as a harbinger for their own party’s success — regardless of who is the eventual nominee — in the general election showdown.

The comments also contradict Clinton’s previous statements praising this year’s elevated Democratic turnout in primaries and caucuses, and appear to blame her caucus defeats on newly energized grassroots voter groups that she has lauded in the past as “lively participants” in American democracy.

MoveOn was quick to set the facts straight.

In a statement to The Huffington Post, MoveOn’s Executive Director Eli Pariser reacted strongly to Clinton’s remarks: “Senator Clinton has her facts wrong again. MoveOn never opposed the war in Afghanistan, and we set the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim. Senator Clinton’s attack on our members is divisive at a time when Democrats will soon need to unify to beat Senator McCain. MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points.”

The disturbing trend we’ve seen as Clinton and her team saw her fortunes fritter away at the polls, has been to blame losses on various constituencies, demographics in whole states, the caucus system — everything except the fact that she couldn’t make the sale in those primaries.

It’s almost a pathological level of denial — she’s not winning the popular vote, number of states won, the delegate count or in the money race at this point. Her campaign blew the huge war chest on the high life, based on the premise that she wouldn’t have to stay in the race beyond Super Tuesday.

The netroots didn’t do that to her.

More below the fold.
(more…)

UPDATE: A whole lot of people who did tune in didn’t like what they saw — and folks are ripping ABC a new one. Check out the 6000+ comments on the network’s site. DHinMI (Dana) at DKos sums up the performances of Gibson and Stephanopolus this way — Lee Atwater Lives.

UPDATE 2: If you missed it, Nicole Belle @ Crooks & Liars has more. I placed the mashup below the fold (along with a partial transcript for those of you who can’t view the mind-boggling video at work), as well as a video of George and Charlie getting heckled after the debate.

I didn’t bother turning on the presidential debate held in Pennsylvania tonight; thank goodness I didn’t. Based on the blow-by-blow, the majority of it involved ignoring actual issues — oh, say Iraq, health care, the economy. Apparently ABC’s Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos thought it would inform viewers more about where either candidate would take the country if they dredged up the various bloody political battles/scandals/bloopers of the campaign for deeper analysis. So much for the MSM taking the high road of “news” while the blogosphere represents the unwashed, unethical masses tapping away with Cheetos-stained keyboard fingers.

For those who did watch, did they bring up the latest flap over Hillary’s 1995 comments about lunch-bucket Dems (the demo she’s cozying up to these days):

Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

“Screw ‘em,” she told her husband. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill. They’re doing nothing for you; you don’t have to do anything for them.”

That surely would have given George and Charlie an on-air woody.

(more…)

“Independent Democrat” Sen. Joe Lieberman is ready for his close up. (The Hill):

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Democratic Party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee, is leaving open the possibility of giving a keynote address on behalf of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) at the Republican National Convention in September.

Republicans close to the McCain campaign say Lieberman’s appearance at the convention, possibly before a national primetime audience, could help make the case that the presumptive GOP nominee has a record of crossing the aisle. That could appeal to much-needed independent voters.

…“If Sen. McCain, who I support so strongly, asked me to do it, if he thinks it will help him, I will,” Lieberman said in a brief interview. Lieberman said he doubts McCain will ask him to give a keynote address, but acknowledges the subject has yet to come up in the two senators’ discussions.

The Hill article also notes that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), despite Lieberman’s cleaving to Bush/McCain-lite positions, is going to protect the Connecticut Senator’s seniority re: chairmanship even if the Dems manage to pick up several seats in the fall, no matter what Rethug posturing Holy Joe does.

“I can tell you Sen. Reid had talked to me a few times and said he knows there will be talk if we get more than 51 Democrats next year,” Lieberman told The Hartford Courant this month. “As far as he is concerned, I will retain my seniority, et cetera, no matter how many Democrats there are next year.”

Jim Manley, a Reid spokesman, said he would not comment on the senator’s private conversations, but acknowledged that the two men spoke.

When asked Tuesday if Lieberman’s chairmanship was at risk next Congress, Reid said succinctly: “No.”

This past weekend I decided to get away from the blog. I just checked out and rest my brain from the insanity of politics and spent time with Kate in Asheville. I unfortunately turned on the TV for a short while and I mistakenly turned to CNN, and there the news bleaters were, talking about this scandal of Obama using the term “bitter” to describe blue collar voters disillusioned by the turn of the economic tide against them, and finding solace in clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them….”

As this was breathlessly reported on at least twice while I had the TV on, I turned to Kate and said — “is there nothing else to report?” and flipped it off. I was serious — aside from the predictable reaction that he is being elitist or out of touch, no one with any credibility can say that what Obama said wasn’t true. It appears to me, as I was not willing to watch any more news over the weekend while away, that the issue was less about the word “bitter” than Obama’s politically blunt truth-telling.
(more…)

This book review is interesting—more than any other critique of the 60s counterculture, this one seems to draw the correct conclusions about how the counterculture is sort of irrelevant while the 60s were significant. The world changed a lot in the 60s, but it was the civil rights movement and the Great Society that did it more than the counter-culture. The review sets up and knocks down all the goals of the counterculture: Ending the war? The influence of the counterculture on changing people’s opinions on that is controversial, and it seems that it might have hurt as much as helped. Free love? Its seeds of destruction were in the fact that it was so sexist. (Though the partial birth of feminism from the ashes of the counterculture is nothing to sneer at, but for the sake of this argument, let’s say that feminism was a unique movement.) Tuning in and dropping out? Yeah, that was never going to work. I find myself only halfway convinced by this—let’s just say the counterculture was overrated. The review mentions Thomas Frank’s tedious arguments about consumerism and how it took over the counterculture, but I find myself wholly unconvinced there’s a there there. Consumerism is an ill-defined idea. Is it consumerist if money changes hands? Or if it’s a lot of money? Is it selling out to make any money, or are you morally pure so long as you don’t make enough to live on? Shaming people about enjoying material things or making a decent living strikes me as a cheap substitute for taking on economic injustice—ensuring a living wage for everyone is hard work, and it’s a lot easier to cruise around calling people sell-outs for how they dress, how much money they make, or what electronic gadgets they own.

(more…)

This guy doesn’t need to be anywhere near the White House again. He simply cannot control himself in public — who let the Big Dog out? (SFGate):

“It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended,” one superdelegate said.

According to those at the meeting, Clinton - who flew in from Chicago with bags under his eyes - was classic old Bill at first, charming and making small talk with the 15 or so delegates who gathered in a room behind the convention stage.

But as the group moved together for the perfunctory photo, Rachel Binah, a former Richardson delegate who now supports Hillary Clinton, told Bill how “sorry” she was to have heard former Clinton campaign manager James Carville call Richardson a “Judas” for backing Obama.

It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade.

The rage-a-thon continues below the fold.
(more…)

This is priceless. Last week at the Young Democrats convention her in NC there was a private reception with Clintonista and DLC tool James Carville and local pols. Blue America-endorsed North Carolina U.S. Senate candidate Jim Neal was there as Mary Matalin’s husband got up to shill for Neal’s opponent and Chuck Schumer/DSCC-backed candidate State Senator Kay Hagan.

Ryan Teague Beckwith at The News & Observer’s Under the Dome has the skinny on what happened, and here’s a great photo of people reacting to the confrontation as Carville was steamrolled into silence by Neal:

At one point, Carville said that North Carolina has a great Senate candidate in Kay Hagan, noting that he had just spoken with her daughter, Carrie.

Neal, who is running against Hagan for the Democratic nomination, spoke out from the back of the room.

“I said, ‘We have primaries here in North Carolina. We don’t have coronations,’” Neal said later.

He said Carville did not respond. “It was the first time I’ve ever seen him quiet,” Neal said.

Incidentally, Kay Hagan has finally agreed to a BlueNC liveblog; it’s today at 5PM. I have already posted a few LGBT rights-related questions to ask the elusive candidate.

* Prior posts about Jim Neal
* DSCC’s Chuck Schumer is staying neutral on the N.C. Senate race - NOT
* Jim Neal picks up additional high-profile endorsements
* Independent poll: Neal and Obama take the lead in NC

(UPDATE: The latest flap is that Hillary hasn’t paid her staff’s health care premium to the tune of $292K. FEC filings show unpaid bills to provider Aetna for at least two months. Good lord, this PR problem is beyond the pale. Here is Clinton’s FEC filing, and Obama’s.)

The Clinton campaign is trying to keep its financial operation afloat as it hits the next slew of primaries, but this is bad PR any way you look at it. You can’t sell yourself as a president ready to give hope and help to working families when you stiff small vendors who have made you look good on the road. Even worse, when vendors have contacted the campaign to see when they might be paid, no one responds. (The Politico):

Event production is important to big-time presidential campaigns. It shapes how candidates look and sound, not just to the thousands of people who turn out to campaign speeches and rallies but also to the millions who catch snippets of them on television.

And word is getting around that Clinton’s campaign does not promptly pay those who labor to make her events look good, said an employee of the event production company Forty Two of Youngstown, Ohio.

…The Clinton campaign paid the company $16,500 to set up a stage, press riser, sound system and backdrops at a Youngstown high school last month for a raucous union rally, where an aggressive Clinton stump speech drew thunderous applause. But the Clinton campaign has yet to pay Forty Two for two other February events, and the employee said the campaign has stopped returning phone calls, e-mails and didn’t respond to a certified letter.

More below the fold.
(more…)

UPDATE: The scorched earth strategy isn’t working, Hil. Her negatives have surged, which goes to show you that the “strategy” of Penn and Co., and the big donor bullies is hurting their own candidate even as the try to take Barack Obama down. (Wall St. Journal):

The negativity of the Obama-Clinton contest seems to be hurting Sen. Clinton more, the poll shows. A 52% majority of all voters says she doesn’t have the background or values they identify with. By comparison, 39% say that of Sen. Obama, and 32% of Sen. McCain.

Also, fewer voters hold positive views of Sen. Clinton than did so just two weeks ago in the Journal/NBC poll. Among all voters, 48% have negative feelings toward her and 37% positive, a decline from a net positive 45% to 43% rating in early March. While 51% of African-American voters have positive views, that is down 12 points from earlier this month, before the Wright controversy.

More ominous for Sen. Clinton is the net-negative rating she drew for the first time from women, one of the groups where she has drawn most support. In this latest poll, women voters with negative views narrowly outstrip those with positive ones, 44% to 42%. That compares with her positive rating from 51% of women in the earlier March poll.

***

I tried to lay off blogging about the swill coming out of the operation run by Mark Penn and his boss, the Senator from New York, but I simply can’t — the desperation has turned into such scorched-earth campaigning that it’s hard to digest. One can only believe that winning at any cost is the mantra going on in that shop.

Take this latest flap — wealthy donors sending a letter to Nancy Pelosi that’s no less than a street-thug mobster bat to the knees, an extortion attempt to silence the Speaker after she stated her opinion about the role of superdelegates: “If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what’s happened in the elections, it would be harmful to the Democratic party.”

Deep pocket, influential Hillary supporters who are big fundraisers in the party sent out the missive (obtained by TPM Election Central). Snippets are below the fold.
(more…)

What is wrong with Hillary Clinton and her advisers? In an effort to promote her foreign policy experience — and thus draw a contrast between the NY senator and Barack Obama, she boldly claimed on March 17 that she went on a harrowing, brave trip to Bosnia in 1996 as First Lady.

“I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia… we came in in an evasive maneuver… I remember landing under sniper fire… there was no greeting ceremony… we ran with our heads down, we basically were told to run to our cars… there was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, we basically were told to run to our cars, that is what happened.”

Now as First Lady, she and her crack team of high-paid consultants should have known that there were not only reporters on the trip (and video) to blow away this account. But no, they stuck to their story, and the end result is that the video evidence has surfaced, making her look like a prevaricating resume padder.

Below the fold, a video that makes the campaign look incredibly bad/incompetent again; they should have seen this coming.
(more…)

UPDATE: Here is the video of the endorsement…

A snippet: “Today I am endorsing Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States because I believe he is the kind of once-in-a-lifetime leader that can bring our nation together and restore America’s moral leadership in the world…As a Presidential candidate, I know full well Senator Obama’s unique ability to inspire the American people to confront our urgent challenges at home and abroad in a spirit of bipartisanship and reconciliation.”

***

This statement from Bill Richardson just landed in my inbox and it’s huge, coming at the right time — when we all need to discuss the impact of race — all of us. It is apparent that Obama’s speech on race and reconciliation had an impact on his decision, which had to be difficult. The AP story is here.

New Mexico Governor and former Democratic presidential contender Bill Richardson could have easily endorsed Hillary Clinton — he served as Secretary of Energy and UN Ambassador in the Clinton Administration and he is a long-time friend of the Clintons. His mainstream candidacy touted his impressive long resume of experience in federal and state government — it makes both Clinton’s and Obama’s current bickering about who is more “3AM-ready” look ludicrous.

This is a tremendous loss for the Clinton team because they publicly worked so hard for Richardson’s endorsement — don’t you remember Bill showing up to watch the Super Bowl with the governor? And what makes it even more stinging is that Richardson’s statement is extremely enthusiastic, calling attention to bridging the racial divides and healing the schisms rather than politically capitalizing on them.

Richardson, who has been chatted up as a running mate in the MSM for both candidates, is slated to appear with Obama on Friday at an event in Portland, Oregon. Emphasis added is mine.

During the last year, I have shared with you my vision and hopes for this nation as we look to repair the damage of the last seven years. And you have shared your support, your ideas and your encouragement to my campaign. We have been through a lot together and that is why I wanted to tell you that, after careful and thoughtful deliberation, I have made a decision to endorse Barack Obama for President.

We are blessed to have two great American leaders and great Democrats running for President. My affection and admiration for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver. It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall. The 1990’s were a decade of peace and prosperity because of the competent and enlightened leadership of the Clinton administration, but it is now time for a new generation of leadership to lead America forward. Barack Obama will be a historic and a great President, who can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad.

Earlier this week, Senator Barack Obama gave an historic speech. that addressed the issue of race with the eloquence, sincerity, and optimism we have come to expect of him. He inspired us by reminding us of the awesome potential residing in our own responsibility. He asked us to rise above our racially divided past, and to seize the opportunity to carry forward the work of many patriots of all races, who struggled and died to bring us together.

As a Hispanic, I was particularly touched by his words. I have been troubled by the demonization of immigrants–specifically Hispanics– by too many in this country. Hate crimes against Hispanics are rising as a direct result and now, in tough economic times, people look for scapegoats and I fear that people will continue to exploit our racial differences–and place blame on others not like them . We all know the real culprit — the disastrous economic policies of the Bush Administration!

Richardson’s statement and a video from a couple of days ago that illuminates his thinking on his decision continues below the fold.
(more…)

UPDATE: Here is the speech, “A More Perfect Union.” The transcript is below the fold.

Barack Obama was in Philadelphia today and delivered a speech about race, religion, and with it, cultural differences and perceptions. The dustup over the contentious comments by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama’s church, who stepped down from his religion advisor role in the campaign after inflammatory recorded comments of Wright’s sermons surfaced cast a pall over the campaign — and the Right ran with it.
(more…)

Thank you Keith. He used his Special Comment tonight to address this comment by 1984 VP nominee and former Clinton 2008 finance committee member Geraldine Ferraro:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

I discussed at length why I thought the Clinton campaign’s seeming death wish for their candidate and the party here. That campaign is so off the rails, so off message, awash in campaign tactics of yesteryear, the good-old-boy strategies that push buttons that make people jerk to toward that third rail of race — a place of extreme discomfort for most Americans of any color.

For more background if you haven’t watched the whole video, Ferraro went on a barnstorming media tour to defend her remarks, which only resulted in the emergence of past instances of saying much the same thing before (so it wasn’t off the cuff), something Keith addresses in full. MSNBC:

(more…)

This article in the San Francisco Chronicle about why political wives allow themselves to be put through the humiliating “stand by your man” routine, wherein you literally stand by your man while he admits (or issues a semi-admission/semi-denial) to fucking a mistress, another man, or a prostitute to the press, is pretty interesting. Of course, to hear Dr. Laura speak it, the women being put through this humiliation at the behest of their beloveds (or at least sources of prestige and income) are being let off easy. They probably should be the ones apologizing, since they the reason men cheat, and if they were more submissive, this wouldn’t happen. But I suppose standing silently with pain written all over your face while your husband tells the press about his extra-marital dalliances is the first step on the long road to proper wifely submission.

All joking aside, it’s more painful when it’s a Democrat, isn’t it? Republican wives are a little easier to understand, aren’t they? Being a political wife is their career, and so standing by your man is basically just shoving through a major issue at your job, with the hopes that things will continue as normal soon. But the Democratic men are another story altogether—the high power, professional wife with a life of her own has become the standard. As the Chronicle states, Silda Wall Spitzer fits into this mold, with her history of being a handsomely paid Wall Street attorney. Same story with Hillary Clinton clutching Bill’s hand in 1992 to wave away his infidelities. These are women you can imagine just packing their things and walking straight into a brand new life without him.

(more…)