Turning Things Around

Amid a mass of bad sports analogies, the networks have all decided that a) Clinton is turning things around because b) Obama can’t “close the deal”, and yet c) Obama can’t really lose. So what is really happening here?
First, the bad sports analogies department: this has been likened to a tennis match where Obama gets to match point (NH, OH, PA) and just can’t put her away, revealing a fatal weakness in his candidacy. Boy, talk about missing the big picture, tennis analogy-wise. What we have is a three set match where they split the first two (IA, NH, SC, Super Tuesday) and then Obama got s service break in the third, with his run of victories in February, which gave him a clear lead. What Obama has failed to do is break her again, but she hasn’t broken back and we seem to be at 5-4 with him serving in North Carolina. A decisive win there and this is over. Well, in the sports analogy sense and the theoretical sense. It ain’t over until the votes are cast at the convention and the Clintons are not going away. They will fight until the last vote, using Michigan and Florida as their ultimate weapons to keep things going until the convention.
Does it matter? Can she win? The expert analysis seems to be in three similar camps:
1) She’s a long shot, but if she can win Indiana, keep NC close, then win big in Kentucky and West Virginia, her momentum (and his slide) could turn things around. Many people have doubts, but the super delegates just might consider her the better choice.
2) It’s over, Obama will be the nominee, the Clintons refuse to accept the reality. They can fight as long and hard as they want, Obama will win NC, wiping out most of her delegate and popular vote gains from PA and he will have wrapped up the delegate lead and popular vote heading for the convention and the super D’s will fall in line very quickly to end the bloodshed.
3) Even the Clintons know it’s over, the campaign is designed to destroy Obama, with Hillary really aiming at 2012. This is the theory James Clyburn espoused this week and there is some merit to it, although the Clintons probably still think they have a chance at victory, the destruction of Obama’s chances are the one thing they know they can do. After all, it’s one thing for Republicans to attack Obama with partisan ads, it’s quite another to pepper those ads with quotes from HRC and Bill, both attacking Obama and praising McCain.

I tend to lean toward number 3, but I also think there’s a fourth scenario which no one is talking about. The first thing is to keep this going as long as possible, the PA victory was big for that, bringing in money and some campaign credibility. A decent showing in NC combined with a win in Indiana and the stage is set. Let’s call this the “deus ex machina” route to the nomination – an external event makes her the obvious candidate to everyone. In a saner world, her astounding pledge in the PA debate to use our defense umbrella to respond to any attack by Iran on Israel, Saudi Arabia, or any other friendly nation in that region would have been a huge story. In our silly society, it passed by quietly. Obama gave a more reasoned, less militaristic response. Combine that with her vote on the Lieberman-Kyl amendment and you have the warrior Hillary, set to pounce on Iran. The external event is a simple one -- we attack Iran. This week saw a string of accusations, not just from the Bush administration, but from assorted military leaders, regarding Iran’s attempt to destabilize Iraq militarily. The groundwork is being laid. We know McCain is on board, and Hillary has given notice that she is ready to fight as well. When the bombs fly, Obama will be left in a terribly awkward position and HRC will emerge as the only one ready to take on McCain in the battle for Commander In Chief. This isn’t over by a long shot.

Democrats Debate in Philly – Would You Buy a Used Car From This Woman?

This is a quick take, more depth to follow. For the first time the other candidates took on Hillary and kicked the living crap out of her. The only question is whether enough Democrats saw it to understand what a duplicitous piece of crap she really is. I called her Richard Nixon a few months ago and she was Nixon tonight, minus the flop sweat. It is time for the main stream media, which has fawned over her and anointed her as if she was anything other than the American Evita, to raise the real issues and treat her like the fraud she is.
Several of the candidates were surprising tonight and this is the order I would vote for them based on what I saw and their own histories:

1. Chris Dodd – A shame he’s not being taken seriously. Right on the war, right on the Iran vote, right on Hillary, and most importantly, right on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. He also has the guts to talk about decriminalizing marijuana.
2. John Edwards – Took it to HRC in a big way. Tough enough, smart enough, and for the first time, made himself look like he really belonged in the top tier.
3. Joe Biden – Still the smartest guy in the room, also the funniest. Went after HRC on her benighted Iran vote, complete grasp of every issue. Given the field, his poll numbers are sad.
4. Barack Obama – Formed a one-two punch against the wicked witch of the East and scored big. Still tends to wander a bit, strong on geopolitics, but the immigration issue is not strong for him or Edwards.
5. Bill Richardson – Strong on Iraq, doesn’t equivocate on most issues. He’s been a Governor, in case you didn’t know.
6. (tie) the Loon and the Liar – Kucinich is right on a lot of things, handled the UFO thing with humor, is in favor of impeaching the scum in the oval office. Still off the charts in too many ways.
The other L word was Hillary, who ducked and dodged and slipped and hopefully, fell. Her defense of her Iran vote was ludicrous and, as I said in my last post, either a lie or a serious ignorance of the middle east. And, as if to prove the point that everyone else made about her duplicity, she took a simple question about driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and answered it at least two different ways. Anyone who trusts this woman is a fool.

President Hillary Clinton

No, it’s not a special Halloween edition – The Three Scariest Words. Frankly, President Rudy Guiliani and President Mitt Romney are scarier, although they would be faced with Democratic majority in Congress which would be more likely to fight them than they would Hillary. The Shorenstein Center did a study on the early months of the campaign in the main stream media which noted that there was an emphasis placed almost entirely on the horse race rather than on the policies and potential Presidencies of the respective candidates. Since Hillary is the most likely winner, I figured I’d take a shot at this less frequent kind of analysis.
Now analyzing Hillary is tricky, since it involves parsing her positions in search of the truth, as well as looking at her history. Given that I believe little of what she says on the campaign trail, since most of it is what her pollster, Mark Penn, believes to be what people want to hear, this becomes exceptionally difficult. Let’s look at various issues to see what President HRC would be like.
Her name: I said President HRC but she is now running just as HC – the Rodham having disappeared for this campaign. I assume because polling data indicates that Bill Clinton is far more popular than anyone named Rodham. I assume that once elected, she’ll return to the name she used as Senator.
Iraq: In the early months of the campaign she screamed her big Iraq declaration “If George Bush doesn’t end the war in Iraq by January, 2009, I will!” She doesn’t say that anymore. She refuses to say she’ll end it by 2013. She’s the only Democrat who has not declared that U.S. troops will be out of combat operations in 2009. It’s clear she thinks she has effectively convinced the soft-headed Democrats that she’s anti-war, so she can return to the center for the general election. Her real position on Iraq is slightly to the left of Joe Lieberman. Despite her lie that she voted for the war just to give Bush the leverage to negotiate, there was not one piece of evidence that she opposed military action there, before or after it happened. Bill Clinton publicly supported it, she hasn’t split from him yet. It was not until Mark Penn told her she had to be anti-war to get the nomination that she spoke out against it. Look for the war to continue, albeit with fewer troops, which would happen no matter who the President is. The only way she gets us out is if she thinks she needs to to get reelected.
Iran: She voted for the retarded Senate resolution declaring Iran’s Republican Guard a terrorist organization. She was the only one of the Democratic candidates to do so, I assume because she figures she needs to vote that way for the general election. That the vote could be used by Bush to justify military action against Iran is irrelevant to her, since all that matters is her getting elected. Now that’s irresponsible, but the other interpretation, that she actually believes this to be a good idea is even worse. It demonstrates a frightening lack of understanding of Iran’s internal politics and bodes poorly for her ability to navigate in that part of the world. Of course, her Iraq position sort of does that already, but this is a little scarier. Will she, as a woman, feel the need to never look weak? Will this lead to military actions against Iran? If you aren’t a little frightened of that possibility, you are ignoring both her personality and her history.
Health Care: She will get nothing done on this because she has no ability to reach across the aisle for votes. The GOP will use her as a way to raise money and fire up their loyalists. What she will try to do is come up with a system to get more people health care without hurting insurance companies profits. Good luck with that one.
Trade: Given the amount of money her campaign has received from Chinese sources, many of them questionable, we can expect us to continue her husband’s policy of kowtowing to the People’s Republic. Given her close connections to big business and her husband’s support of Republican trade policies, we can count on more free trade agreements with some cosmetic side agreements which will generally be ignored.
Judicial Appointments: Pro-choice judges will be allowed to apply. The Supreme Court will get it’s first pro-choice judge in a decade, and maybe even a non-Catholic.
Torture: One could assume she would be opposed to it and would also close Guantanamo. But that could run into the “weak like a woman” thing she wants to avoid, so I’m less confident about these things than I might be. Look for more authoritative statements opposing these things, but I’m not sure they will be really meaningful.
Personal Freedoms: Here it gets tricky. The best hint we get of Hillary’s likely position on these things is the concept of “It Takes a Village”. She is a big believer in the nanny state. One of the few issues she has stepped to the forefront of is violent video games, where she shared the lead with Joe Lieberman. My expectation is that she will continue to oppose these things, along with misogynist lyrics in rap music, internet porn, and internet gambling. Both because she probably believes in those things and because it will allow her to show the religious right that she’s not the devil incarnate.
That's right, I'm not a fan. Many of you may find these positions just fine. If that's the case, to quote Hillary herself, she's your girl.