Who is playing to win? Winning is important. The last thing we can afford as a country is another 4-8 years of continued Republican rule. If nothing else, Justice Stevens is not long on the bench, and losing his vote in the Supreme Court would inflict the nation with a solid conservative majority for generations. So who is doing everything possible to win? Hillary Clinton, by far.
...Clinton was the only top-tier candidate to refuse the ultimate Iowa and New Hampshire pander by removing her name from the Michigan ballot. That makes her essentially the de facto winner since Edwards and Obama, caving to the cry babies in Iowa and New Hampshire, took their name off Michigan's ballot. Sure, the DNC has stripped Michigan of its delegates, but that won't last through the convention. The last thing Democrats can afford is to alienate swing states like Michigan and Florida by refusing to seat their delegates.
...
So while Obama and Edwards kneecap their chances of winning, Clinton is single-mindedly focused on the goal.
...
Who is tested against the Right Wing smear machine? Clinton, by far.
... Obama has made a cottage industry out of attacking the dirty fucking hippies on the left, from labor unions, to Paul Krugman, to Gore and Kerry, to social security, and so on.
- Kos, 1/2/08
(via Avedon)
- vastleft's blog
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"Show me a good loser"
"and I'll show you a loser" - Leo Durocher
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“I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat.” - Will Rogers
x
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“I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat.” - Will Rogers
what chnaged his mind?
why the sudden conversion of weblog muckty-mucks to obama has got to be one of the really juicy stories that gets written after the demo nomination battle and the election are over.
kos and marshall both experienced VERY sudden conversions to messianic obamism.
as they say in politics, "who got to them?"
i am also tempted to ask
"what did these two guys get out of the deal",
but that would make me appear cynical.
Newsweek
One of them got a gig at Newsweek. TPM has become less interested in media critique and hence have become just like the MSM. TPM also has a lot of moolah.
Also, many of Obama's Super-Ds have gotten huge payoffs. I'm just saying.
Becoming part of the establishment
in the media, or in a potential Obama administration (empty promises in my view), I think, is what's at stake along with places of choice in the Democratic leadership.
Go Global!
I'm pretty sure I know what changed his mind, actually
The moment Obama became at all credible, he was always going to have the black community and the young white kids. But he needed more than that. How to separate the remaining white liberals from Clinton? Convince them that she's running a racist campaign. And enough people didn't see through it that it worked.
More liberal media at The Sideshow.
More liberal media at The Sideshow.
But Avedon, wasn't that the means, not the end?
I mean, it seems to me you're talking coalition building here. But why start that process in the first place? Because Obama became credible?
Getting the AA and white kids, casting out the Clintons and their voters as racists, ok, we got all that.
But why did Kos and others throw their hats in the ring for Obama in the first place?
I think I'm just missing the rationale out of which all this emerged.
Go Global!
Avedon!
I love that song Bryan Ferry does about you! xoxo!
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Most ot time, Balk's a shallow, silly editor, except about this.
http://alexbalk.tumblr.com/
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"Hillary Clinton, Hero.
It’s time for everyone to shut the fuck up about Hillary Clinton and start giving her the appreciation she deserves. She’s making the ultimate sacrifice for the party.
She knew. Of course she knew. She knew that a race pitting the potential first black president against the potential first woman president would leave one of the two vital Democratic constituencies feeling hard done by.
Did she want to win? Of course. With every fiber of her being. She’s certainly as qualified for the job as anyone else who ran this year. But, for reasons beyond her control, time had already passed her by. And she knew.
Once it became clear to her—maybe after Super Tuesday, maybe a few weeks later—that her inevitability strategy and failure to focus on the caucuses were the fatal flaw in her campaign, she knew that only she could heal the breach, could make the party whole, could reach out to non-traditional Democratic voters to whom Obama could not.
She had to be the bitch who couldn’t quit. She had to be the shrew who never knew. Basically, she had to be the terrible cunt who, in refusing to acknowledge defeat, foisted upon Obama a magnanimity he would have never gained on his own. And she had to be the one who gave the nutass right—the ones who hated her so irrationally—some reason to overcome their own racist prejudices by appealing to their even deeper misogynistic prejudices.
When Hillary Clinton says, as she did today, that she’s carrying this thing all the way to the convention, it’s very easy to mock her as a politician who won’t fold her cards no matter how deeply in the hole she is. But we all need to step back and realize that she’s doing everything she can—and more than anyone should have to—to ensure her opponent’s victory. And when you realize that, you have to acknowledge her as one of the party’s greatest champions. She’s destroying her legacy and subjecting herself to all the slings and arrows for one reason. She knew it might be the deal, and she’s keeping up her end of it. You may not like her, you may not admire her, but you have to admit it: She knew.
It’s time we celebrated her for it."
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I disagree vehemently with his insults of her, but not with his conclusion, the same conclusion we've been exploring -- even though we like a candidate's brand, and new voters flock to him in a fashion not seen with Gore or Kerry, he still needs to be tested by his own party as rigorously as possible, because if we don't test him, the GOP will test him to failure.
If we value the presidency as we say we do, we know it should not be a free ride for any candidate. I think Clinton values the presidency so dearly because she knows what the position could do, at its best.
I knew that her reaching out to white male working-class voters was the play every other Democratic candidate makes, to compensate for the embrace of minorities, women and the poor that sooner or later every pundit says hampers Democratic chances in an election season. If this season is different in that Obama pretends white male working class voters are less important than they are, well then, that's not Clinton's fault -- but she knows no president gets elected without them.
I've said it before: She's taking one for the team, because she can stand to be hated, threatened and despised as long as she has the respect of the populace she cares about -- the people who have been despised along with her, when they ask government to help them and their families survive.
Hilary Clinton is a hero. It's about time her enemies respected that fact, too.
but she's the 1 who's run the trad Dem campaign, &
she's the one who's gotten the most actual Democratic votes in all Democratic and swing states (except IL). Her focus on domestic issues, middle and working class people, her coalition of every big and growing group except AAs--all traditionally Democratic--and historically successful as well.
He's run away from issues, and from registered Democrats as well as Democratic/large/blue states. He's the one whose rhetoric and themes were non-Democratic--they are IND.
Avedon, I agree. That was the magic moment.
The Clintons-as-racists meme opened the floodgates, and the demons from all-too-many Democrats' ids came flying out.
From the perspective of the Creative-Class Fratboys, it was suddenly open season to guzzle the truthy powdered drink, because only your candidate was legitimate, and people who disagreed were beneath contempt (but the contempt was thrown in, anyway). You could be a swaggering dick and feel noble about yourself at the very same time.
RATIONAL OBAMA VOTER PROPHYLACTIC: If you're a perfectly sane, considerate person who prefers Obama, this is not about you.
Avedon's version
sounds very reasonable and, indeed, it worked on Kevin Drum as I was reading him. Yet, I would look for more general explanation since the conversion included way too many people.
Kos and Josh knew well enough that neither of the Clintons is a racist. Still they bought the swap land in Florida. Also, before South Carolina Krugman already notify the progressives that Obama is a Republican, which Obama proved with his Rovian memo, and the Koses of the world knew that Krugman doesn't have a bone in the fight.
Going back to Kevin Drum, with his background, his Krugman manuals, Clinton's "the first black president," what pushed him into the con?
KoshemBos
either they're all less sharp than everyone thought, or
there's money and jobs in it for them. Also, their egos are fed by proving how "progressive"/wonderful/superior they are for supporting the black guy--their egos are harmed if they back the woman who's not new.
Not mutually exclusive
It's all of the above:
- big egos
- not as smart as they think they are
- money and jobs at stake
- the feeling of superiority for promoting "the first black president"
you got them, pegged, Amberglow.
Go Global!
Support for Continued Clinton Candidacy Grows
Calls from the MSM and FOB for Clinton to drop out of the race are being increasingly rejected by Democratic voters. From Rassmussen Reports today:
Translation: 68% of Democrats, and 67% of all voters, do not want Clinton to drop out of the race. This surge of support from Democrats for Clinton's determination is up from 62% just ten days ago.
Surely this will dominate the news cycle, and all the talking heads will agree that this extraordinary show of support for Clinton staying in the race suggets that Democrats are having serious second thoughts about Obama. Tim Russert's apology for jumping the gun will doubtless be the most heartfelt of all.
Other nuggets:
And:
Oh, and if you were wondering just what proportion of the Democratic Party is wholly sane and rational, here's the answer:
Congratulations to all of us in the >97th percentile rank.
[Hey VL, nice not seeing you here again. One question; should your title have read "As a once-great man once said"? Just asking.]
count me in the 29%
who want her to run as an independent.
isn't her war chest for the general already something like 3x the size of obama's? it's not like she's going fade into obscurity like almost any other person in the u.s. would in the same situation. she'd have a real shot at it, and i've long wanted to see more independents in politics, real ones, not more liebermans. plus, it would give her more freedom to push radical agendas like single-payer national health insurance. no more having to toe the party line.
might help mccain? i won't vote for him, but if there's a viable third choice, and that third choice is on the left, i'm willing to take the chance that the far right might prevail, because i'm not going to get the things i need under obama's center-right vision.
[also, i'm in florida, it's our lot in life to point out flaws in the system to the rest of y'all by breaking stuff.]
To paraphrase Bill Clinton
"They did something for the worst possible reason. Just because they could. That's just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything."
Kos wrote that
before Iowa. After that, I think he heard the footsteps: either lose his base or pander to it. Also, it would have taken more courage than he apparently had to walk into Peet's or Rick & Ann's in the heart of the People's Republic of Berkeley wearing a Go Hillary button. Wasn't going to happen.
"I find it ironic that Hillary has been done in by the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy"--Dennis Miller
"I find it ironic that Hillary has been done in by the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy"--Dennis Miller