Why Hillary Is Losing

[Yavin4]

1. In 2000, after she was sworn in as the Senator from NY, she would not support the Black Caucus' efforts to unseat the Florida electors. Yes, Bush would have still been given the White House by the Republicans, but at least he would have taken the WH through normal election procedures, not a SCOTUS mandate.

2. In 2002, she voted for the IWR even though her own constituents were vehemently against it. She voted for it because of her own personal political calculus.

3. She assisted with the new bankruptcy bill becoming law. Again, this bill actually hurts working class women, esp. divorced women and single mothers, so why did she do this? Again, her own personal political calculus at work.

The bottom line is this. The Democratic party base is tired of their political leaders making deals or voting in order to serve their personal political ambitions at the expense of their supposed principles.

The people want a leader that represents their views and will work to build a consensus.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Na, she's losing because she's running against a media sensation.

It's like running a documentary the weekend of a new spiderman movie.

[Xenotime]

3. Agreed. I am still holding hope. She deserves it.

[Lex]

5. Edwards noticed that early on

I think. The "documentary on the weekend of a new spiderman movie" thingy, I mean.

Spot on.

[Yavin4]

6. That's Really Your Argument? Really?

Did you even read my post? Show me one example where Hillary lead a big fight for the little guy? Where?

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. Look at her senate voting record, or don't, I don't care.

It's just a waste of time.

[The Backlash Cometh]

30. I agree with you.

I think people are just ready to give someone new a chance, and Hillary has hurt people too many times. It really comes down to that. We're going to get whipped, no matter who gets in. The only say we have in the matter is who gets to hold the whip.

[AX10]

8. True.

[femrap]

10. Are you sure it isn't because

she doesn't have Bill's penis?

[Yavin4]

11. Yes, I'm Sure, and It's Not Sexism

It's the not the media. It's because Hillary really only cares about one person, Hillary.

[femrap]

14. Wow...'it's the not media.'

So you believe she is selfish. And BO's ego is sooooooooooooooooooooo small, right?

It's responses like yours that make me embarrassed for my party and my dying country.

We won't be chatting anytime soon.

[Yavin4]

16. She Used Her Votes As A Senator for Her Own Political Advantages

She rarely, if ever, votes out of principle. She abstained from the Immunity vote today!

[elixir]

You're tiresome and fishing for crap. She's done many things improving her constituents' lives.

[Forrest Greene]

17. "We won't be chatting anytime soon."

Spoken like a high school girl who overestimates her compelling attractions.

[Kahuna]

29. I believe she is selfish. Two words: David Shuster. Throw him under

the bus, ruin his whole career to try to gain leverage over msnbc? No problem.

[smoogatz]

15. So, you're saying Hillary's boring?

I'm glad we got that out on the table.

On edit: but seriously, you can't be serious. Hillary was the media favorite going in—they'd pretty much anointed her before the first freaking vote was cast. Turns out the voters had other ideas: they rejected Hillary's progressive-except-when-it-counts political calculus, and they rejected Edwards' born-again warm-and-fuzzy populism. What they're getting is a charismatic idealist who had the sense and the courage to oppose the war before it was cool to oppose the war, and who's running a competent and hard-nosed campaign against an incredibly tough politician. If Obama can take down Hillary, I have every confidence that he can handle McCain: it's going to be like Clinton vs. Dole, but with better music.

[regnaD kciN]

2. IMHO, I'm a little tired of Hillary...

...claiming she's "a fighter," when I've seen little or no evidence of that from her tenure in the Senate.

[Yavin4]

4. Exactly.

She never fought for anything out of principle, not once, not ever. Every vote is a political calculus to see how it would affect her political ambitions.

Did she even try to filibuster Alito? No.

[Yossariant]

28. You're wrong about that one, too. LinK:

"Three likely opponents for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination -- Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, and Evan Bayh of Indiana -- voted for the filibuster."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/01/31/alito_filibuster_effort_falls_short/?page=2

[blm]

36. Only AFTER an avalanche of phonecalls. She and Schumer spoke AGAINST it in caucus

and both their staffs attacked Kerry in the press for pushing for it.

[stillrockin]

9. She's a corporate shill. People want change.

[Yavin4]

12. Correct.

That's 100% correct.

[jconner27]

40. Talk is cheap

Other than fancy speeches do you truly know where Obama stand?

[smoogatz]

13. Yep. It's a DLC thing.

A hell of a lot of Democrats are sick of corporate sell-outs posing as progressives.

[VotesForWomen]

19. Change. heh. if O represented change he would have been out of the race a long time ago.

[Buck Power]

22. Any other year

you'd be correct, but not this year. Just look at the GOoPer race. McCain and Huckabee, the two candidates most hated by their party's establishment, are the last two men standing.

It's all timing. This year is different. It's the one positive thing we can attribute to George W. Bush: he fucked things up so badly that people are paying attention and invested and FED UP.

[eridani]

25. So is Obama

However, he's bringing in more new people.

[VotesForWomen]

18. Obama is no better, but he is less well known, so people project whatever they want to on him.

[Buck Power]

23. Not true

Obama has disavowed the DLC. And he is not beholden to lobbyists.

And he does not make the hair stand up on the backs of 50% of American's necks...

Isn't a Democratic majority with a real mandate the fantasy? Obama has demonstrated that he alone can deliver that. I have no problem with him picking off a few disillusioned Republicans. It's the 25% that still think that Bush is doing peachy that he should never cater to. And he never has.

But some people seem to think that talking sense into people and winning defectors from the other party somehow equals sleeping with the enemy. Which makes me wonder if half of us are nuts, too.

[Skittles]

24. the pharma people certainly have faith in him

http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/02/drug-money-pharma-bets-on-obama/

[Buck Power]

37. Let's see

Hillary's numbers on that.

[Buck Power]

20. The fact that

she is now trying to get people riled up about "disenfranchisement" in FL and MI isn't helping matters much for her.

People hear that and they are quickly reminded of a 6 year old making up the rules to a game as she goes. People understand that no one campaigned in Florida except for Clinton (against her word). People didn't turn out, because they were told that there votes wouldn't cound for their candidate. And people understand that Obama and Edwards weren't even on the ballot in Michigan.

It's absurd. And they won't hear the idea of a re-vote. That would be the only reasonable way to seat FL and MI, but they aren't having any of it.

They want to count yesterday's votes, not tomorrow's.

People smell the bullshit a mile away. I hope she keeps it up.

[Yossariant]

26. Florida had the highest turnout in the history of the state.

[Eric J in MN]

21. Regarding the Bankruptcy Bill,

...she didn't vote because she wanted to be near her husband, who needed heart treatment.

[Yavin4]

32. Spare Me

There are millions of people who still do their jobs even though they have a sick spouse, child, relative, etc.

[Quantess]

27. This belongs on GD-P

Point to "alert"

[Voltaire99]

31. And because...

1. She's a heartless neoliberal who backs outsourcing, putting capital's interests ahead of those of American workers.

2. She showed little opposition to Bushism during its long, ugly reign, but instead facilitated it on numerous occasions from Homeland Security to IWR to war funding.

3. Fleetwood Mac. The thought of having to listen to "Don't Stop" at another inauguration is too f'ng much!

[Raiden]

34. This Obamaniac takes offense to your dismissal of Fleetwood Mac

Getting that band back together was the best thing Bill Clinton ever did, IMO--and the most difficult! ;-)

[Arugula Latte]

33. The Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton thing ain't helping, either. nt

[jconner27]

41. Short term

The last time I check people did pretty well for themselves in the 1990s. It's sad that so called Democrats are repeating RNC talking points against the Clinton years to prop up someone.

[Carolina]

35. TOUCHE!

K&R :kick:

[jconner27]

38. Hate springs eternal

Op-Ed Columnist
Hate Springs Eternal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In 1956 Adlai Stevenson, running against Dwight Eisenhower, tried to make the political style of his opponent’s vice president, a man by the name of Richard Nixon, an issue. The nation, he warned, was in danger of becoming “a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland.”

The quote comes from “Nixonland,” a soon-to-be-published political history of the years from 1964 to 1972 written by Rick Perlstein, the author of “Before the Storm.” As Mr. Perlstein shows, Stevenson warned in vain: during those years America did indeed become the land of slander and scare, of the politics of hatred.

And it still is. In fact, these days even the Democratic Party seems to be turning into Nixonland.

The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre. Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts). Both have broad support among the party’s grass roots and are favorably viewed by Democratic voters.

Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod.

Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.

The prime example of Clinton rules in the 1990s was the way the press covered Whitewater. A small, failed land deal became the basis of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investigation, which never found any evidence of wrongdoing on the Clintons’ part, yet the “scandal” became a symbol of the Clinton administration’s alleged corruption.

During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.

And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother’s campaign — as adult children of presidential aspirants often do — asked, “doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.

I call it Clinton rules, but it’s a pattern that goes well beyond the Clintons. For example, Al Gore was subjected to Clinton rules during the 2000 campaign: anything he said, and some things he didn’t say (no, he never claimed to have invented the Internet), was held up as proof of his alleged character flaws.

For now, Clinton rules are working in Mr. Obama’s favor. But his supporters should not take comfort in that fact.

For one thing, Mrs. Clinton may yet be the nominee — and if Obama supporters care about anything beyond hero worship, they should want to see her win in November.

For another, if history is any guide, if Mr. Obama wins the nomination, he will quickly find himself being subjected to Clinton rules. Democrats always do.

But most of all, progressives should realize that Nixonland is not the country we want to be. Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.

One of the most hopeful moments of this presidential campaign came last month, when a number of Jewish leaders signed a letter condemning the smear campaign claiming that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim. It’s a good guess that some of those leaders would prefer that Mr. Obama not become president; nonetheless, they understood that there are principles that matter more than short-term political advantage.

I’d like to see more moments like that, perhaps starting with strong assurances from both Democratic candidates that they respect their opponents and would support them in the general election.






But the Obama kool aid drinkers don't care about that

[sniffa]

42. Welcome back

:hi:

[jconner27]

43. That's ok

Heard the hope flavor has nothing in it.

[Sapphocrat]

39. Point number one...

What Senator did?