Why does Hillary want the Number two spot?

This was written early yesterday; way before Clinton insinuated that she’s gonna stick around just in case Obama gets assassinated.

From the look of things now, it seems that Hillary Clinton wants to be number two on an Obama ticket. Why would a former fist lady want to play second fiddle to an elitist, not-ready-to-be Commander- in –Chief? This imposing question has been on my mind since I spilled my coffee in a Starbucks upon reading Bill Clinton’s suggestion that his wife would make an excellent VP. What’s up here? Something funny, that’s for sure.

Hillary is hoping that a few scenarios play out:

1.) She is VP choice, so she gets to stick around and be in the media until the Democratic Convention. Between then and now, she will secretly be digging for dirt (or praying something comes up) on Obama and then make her case at the convention that maybe she is the better choice.

2.) She wants to stay in the news so that pollsters will poll her ratings against Obama and McCain. She wants vindication that she should have been chosen over Obama.

3.) She is hoping something tragically happens to Obama and she is next in line for the nomination.

4.) She just wants power at any cost—hey, after all being VP is not that shabby after all.

Machiavelli would have been proud of the way Hillary Clinton has waged this campaign. She will achieve her end by any means necessary. What baffles me even more is why are people still voting for her and superdelegates not uniting around Obama.

Hillary justified one of my theory by saying this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zh1MN-MybI

Amazing!!!

Update: Keith Olbermann rips Hillary Clinton Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8CsQyr6vlc

You have to give Keith credit for  calling it as it is.

This letter just came in:

Dear Mr. Predictor:

I’m very upset with this man Barack Obama. Despite whatever I say to him, he just brushes me off and pretends that he’s not hearing me. I said he can’t win white working class votes and I’m going to keep repeating it until the entire country listens and believe that that’s the truth.

No black candidate can ever win white working class voters, so could you imagine the gall of that arrogant, chauvinistic, sexist, black man to walk into Oregon (one of the nation’s whitest states – just under 2 percent of residents are black) and take away the majority of MY white working class voters? This is downright insulting and I demand an apology forthwith! I will not drop out of this race until I get one.

In the meantime, I’m going to tell everyone what a sexist, gender bias pig he is.

Yours faithfully,

Billary Clinton

Editor’s note:

I’m sorry to hear you feel that way, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. I will forward a copy of this letter to Barack Obama for any comments he wishes to make.

Excellent read from the NY Times:

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/white-on-white/

Hillary SPEAKS

It seems as though I got it wrong when I predicted that Hillary would drop out of the race on Wednesday. After listening to her speech in Kentucky after her huge victory over Obama in the state, I’m convinced that she’s going nowhere.

Her Talking Points

Hillary told the crowd that she’s toe to toe with Obama and she has won the most popular votes and cautioned not to listen to what the pundits and the media tell you; this race is closer than you think and she will fight to be the nominee in the end. Moreover, she described herself as the nominee “best positioned” (sounding very Karl Rove like) to win in November.

Clinton also promised to unite the party and elect a Democratic President in November no matter who the nominee is. It is also interesting to note that she did not mention Barack Obama in her speech.

The Analysis

The speech was baffling on many counts and after listening to her, one gets the opinion that she and her campaign is living in a cocoon far detached from the real world. How could she say the race is close when Obama is expected to win the pledged delegate race tonight? How can she reconcile her position of being in a close “fight” with Obama, yet still somehow “unite” the party?

I’m not sure what it is that she is referring to when she says she’s best positioned (won big states? Won the swing states? Only she can get white voters? Obama’s inability to persuade “working-class” white voters? She has won the popular votes?) to win in November. Regardless of what metric she applies to make her case, she can’t escape the fact that she has lost more states than Obama has won, her campaign is in huge debt, her fundraising is lagging Obama’s (Obama just raised another 31 Million last month) by a substantial margin, she offer less contrast to McCain than Obama does, more superdelegates are supporting Obama, she mismanaged her campaign which saw many close advisors and staff leaving, her persona has not been consistent and has resembled a chameleon changing colors to suit the occasion, etc…

I don’t know, but if you add that up, how in the world is she more “electable” than Obama. By the way, isn’t electability predicated on the belief that the individual is more likely to be elected in an election, then why she wasn’t “electable” enough to run away with the nomination?

Conclusion

Clinton is being disingenuous about her “better positioned” and “electability” arguments, she knows that she is a much tougher opponent for Obama than John McCain and that before heading into this race an Obama’s triumph over her was more unlikely than Obama beating McCain. He has toppled the Clinton machinery within the Democratic party, imagine what this guy will do to McBush McCain.

This morning (May 20, 2008) Geraldine Ferraro made an appearance on the Today Show where she was discussing the issue of gender and the Democratic Presidential race. When asked to comment on her statement that Obama is a sexist and to cite some specific examples of when he exhibited this sexism, Mrs. Ferroro listed two examples: calling Hillary Annie Oakley and dusting his shoulder off at a rally (which she and her husband found really offensive.)

Let’s examine the circumstances that led to Obama’s actions on these two occasions.

The first incident occurred the day after the infamous ABC debate and at a rally in North Carolina, Obama shrugged off the negative line of questions and Clinton’s responses at the debate by dusting off his shoulders; his way of saying sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never. How in the world is that sexist? Is it only women that are subjected to being shrugged off? The last time I checked George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson both belong to the same gender as Obama and the shrug was meant for both Clinton and the moderators.

The second incident came about when Hillary, campaigning in Pennsylvania, criticized Obama for referring to some small-town Americans as “bitter” people who “cling to guns and religion” and she went further by calling the comments “elitist, out of touch and frankly, patronizing.” Sensing an opportunity to capitalize on Obama’s gaff and to connect with gun owners, Clinton relayed a story about going gun hunting with her father when she was a little girl.

Obama responded by asking if she thinks she’s “Annie Oakley … packin’ a six-shooter.” How is that sexist? That was telling the truth. Hillary Clinton a gunslinger? Puh..lease! If it were a male candidate, Obama would have asked if he’s playing Charlton Heston?

I really think that Geraldine Ferraro is a bitter woman and she’s tying to play the gender card and subtly say to female Clinton voters not to vote for Obama in the fall.

Awesome!

This has got to be the most amazing image from this campaign season so far. WOW!

DNC?

Will keep updating this one. You an also send your comments.

-Ditched Negative Clinton

-Dean Not Cool

-Dean (Howard) & Nancy’s (Pelosi) Creation

-Do Not Care!

GOP?

Ever wonder what the acronym GOP stands for?

-Guns, Oil & Pulverize

-Grossly Out-of-touch Party

-Geriatrics Only for President

-Generally Oblivious Party

-God, O‘Reilly, & Privilege

-Get Obama Pissed!

-Good at Obliterating Party

-Greedy Old-boys Party

-

DEMOCRACY?

When all the rhetoric, confetti and euphoria (much akin to a circus) of the US Democratic nomination contest is over, the post mortem will reveal whether the United States passed the “democracy” test.

After a long and fierce battle between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, many people have commented on how marvelous and splendid American democracy is. They have pointed to the large voter turnout in all the contested states; the rapid counting of ballots and early availability of the results and the acceptance of those results by the winners and losers. “This is exactly what democracy is all about,” said one television commentator when discussing the wins on March 4th by Hillary Clinton.

“A model the world should emulate,” he went further. Well, from my perspective I would have to say “wait a minute.”

You see, democracy is a very complicated concept and by no means would I want to trivialize its conception. However, at the most rudimentary level, electoral democracy is premised on the notion that whoever amasses the most votes in an electoral contest should be declared the winner. That simple! But wait a minute; let’s examine the situation in the US Democratic Party contest.

Instead of relying on the will of the majority, the votes are awarded proportionally by geographical constituencies in the form of “delegates.” So, where one candidate might win the popular vote, he or she can still lose the delegates’ race; take Nevada, Clinton won the popular vote, but lost the delegates race to Obama.

We also have a situation where Clinton is arguing that delegates and the popular votes really don’t matter. What matters to her is where you have won. If you win the big states like California, New York, Ohio, etc. then you should be the favorite for the nomination. She is willing to exclude and assign to the dustbin all the votes from the “small” states, even though the combined number of voters of those small states is larger than those in the big ones. Is that a shining example of how democracy is supposed to work?

Another important aspect to examine is the so called “super delegates.” The super delegates leave us with a situation where power is concentrated in the bosom of a small group of dominant party figures. For those serious students of politics, you might remember and aptly term this situation as a manifestation of the “iron law of oligarchy.” Participatory democracy is only used as a disguise at best and window dressing at worst and is overridden by elitist oligarchic group members (whom it is believed are more qualified than ordinary voters).

Another aspect that comes into play is the enormity of money that is required to contest a presidential election in the US. Is democracy only supposed to be for the rich and to those most connected to those with money? The staggering figures being raised and used by both Hillary and Obama to secure the nomination make one blush. You can opt for public financing, but be ready to take a beating by those who secured private financing. Obama got lucky, he raised his profile and popularity with his electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, otherwise, this would have been a no-contest for Hillary Clinton; hardly, a shining example of democracy at work.

Let’s hope in the end, the post-analysis showed that the “will of the people prevailed.”

EXPECT HILLARY CLINTON TO THROW IN THE TOWEL ON WEDNESDAY

Remember when you couldn’t wait to see who was going to win the next Primary or Caucus or which persona of Hillary Clinton was going to show up or what she was going to say next about Barack Obama, well the drama has died down ever since the North Carolina and Indiana Primaries. Hillary has not been the same. Except for her USA Today slip that Obama can’t win white voters, Clinton has been a changed woman.

Maybe facing the stark reality of the improbable math towards securing the nomination or the enormous debt she has gotten her self into (and not to mention little or no dirt to dig up about Obama), made her realize that the OBAMA locomotive is full steam ahead. Over the past few days, she has become utterly and essentially irrelevant. The Democratic Party elders and super delegates are ignoring her and now George Bush, sorry I meant to say John McCain, and the GOP are paying no attention to her and are aiming all their ammunition towards Barack Obama. Poor Hillary! Things have gotten so bad that many people are not aware that the Democratic contest is still on and that Kentucky and Oregon hold Primaries next week. I have to freaking keep reminding everyone that Hillary is still in the race.

Hillary is a different woman and I urge all those Obama supporters who have been offended and hurt by her tactics and some of the things she said about Obama to forgive her, because on Wednesday she will throw in the towel and pack it up (you heard it here first). Her campaign insiders are now saying that because of the GOP’s violent and unforeseen vicissitudes these past couple of days and their strategy of ganging up and trying to bully Obama, wiser counsel has prevailed and Hillary, sensing the overpowering force of circumstances and necessity, has decided to end her self-serving quest and lend a strong hand to Obama.

This is no laughing matter. The Associated Press is reporting that Mike Huckabee said this at the National Rifle Association‘s convention after hearing a loud background noise: “That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair. He’s getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he — he dove for the floor.”

What is this guy thinking? Isn’t he supposed to be a pastor?

The GOP and the Republicans are acting really desperate towards Obama as of late. There is absolutely no justification for that kind of inflammatory and incitable language. Mr. Huckabee owes Barack Obama and the American people an apology.

Here’s the video link of his speech:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFnuF4_H2Vo