Category: Acting GOP

Dean sets a date. | The new new standard.

“‘I think it would be nice to have this all done by July 1,’ Dean said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program. ‘If we can do it sooner than that, that’s all the better.’” Howard Dean sets a date of July 1 at the latest for the primary election to end, meaning there’ll thankfully be no convention floor fight. I’m still thinking May 6 would be more preferable.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton drops the electoral vote standard (for now) and picks an even more unwieldy statistic by which to judge the candidates: “”Right now, among all the primary states, believe it or not, Hillary’s only 16 votes behind in pledged delegates,’ said the former president, ‘and she’s gonna wind up with the lead in the popular vote in the primary states. She’s gonna wind up with the lead in the delegates [from primary states].‘” (The 18 caucus states, you may remember, don’t matter.) Clinton also went on to do more stumping for John McCain, calling him a “moderate” who “has given about all you can give for this country without dyin’ for it.“

Easter Weekend: McCarthy, Bosnia, Judas.

Hey all. Well, I’m sure many of you are as sick of reading about this lingering primary season as I’m getting to be about writing on it. At this point, my feelings about the Clinton campaign and the dwindling band of dead-enders lingering around her failed candidacy have gone from disbelief to disgust to a sort of exhausted aversion: It’s unsightly and hard to watch, and not only because so many Clinton supporters online have been leaving the reality-based community in droves. Like a fatally wounded snake, the campaign is still writhing, hissing, and lashing out by reflex, seemingly unaware that its time came and went weeks ago.

But, the news is the news, and I did promise to keep following it. So, if you, like me, took a break over the Easter weekend, here is the most recent litany of outrages. (Of course, at this late date, you’ll probably only find these outrageous if you haven’t been following along for the past few months…)

  • “I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country.” Have you no sense of decency, Mr. President, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Back in action after his “mugging”, Bill Clinton suggested that only a race between his wife and John McCain would include two patriots, and only by picking Clinton as the Democratic nominee can the country avoid “all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics.” [See it here.] (I presume he’s talking about race, since I seem to remember President Clinton being personally responsible for “other stuff” intruding on politics back in the day, so much so that it ended up consuming a year of my life.)

    Obama supporter Gen. Tony McPeak has been taking some flak for likening this questioning of Obama’s patriotism to the antics of Senator Joe McCarthy, but, let’s be honest, what else would you call it? It’s definitely in the same ballpark. Since time immemorial, arguing against one’s opponent’s patriotism has been the last refuge of a scoundrel, and as sure a sign as any that a political campaign is wheezing its last. And Clinton, of course, knows this firsthand, since he was on the receiving end of a similar smear in 1992. In short, the president has shamed himself and his legacy yet again.

  • “There was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the First Lady…I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.” As she’s been doing with SCHIP, NAFTA, FMLA, and Northern Ireland, we already know Sen. Clinton has been grotesquely exaggerating about her trip to Bosnia in 1996. Well, now she’s been caught in an outright lie. (A four-Pinocchio whopper, no less.) Video has surfaced, and not only was there no sniper fire at the airport, there was a greeting ceremony for Sen. Clinton…and Chelsea, because if a place is really small, poor, or dangerous, apparently the First Daughter gets to come along. At this ceremony, then-First Lady Clinton not only waded through the usual throng of soldiers standing at attention and bored bureaucratic functionaries, but gamely faced down the threat of a little girl offering flowers. Grisly stuff, to be sure. Update: Howard “Ken Starr” Wolfson says Clinton “misspoke,” while more Bosnia exaggerations emerge.

  • “Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic.” This one hits a little closer to home, but anyway: Clinton supporter “till the last dog dies” and my former employer James Carville calls Bill Richardson’s endorsement an “act of betrayal“, and actually likens him to Judas Iscariot (making the Clintons…uh, Jesus? Perhaps Brutus, Benedict Arnold, or Lando Calrissian would’ve worked better.) In Carville’s defense, I’ll bet dollars to donuts he meant this mainly as a joke (and, as he recently editorialized in the FT, he’s not one for the overparsing of political speech anyway.) That being said, since Carville’s a big boy, I’m sure he can weather Richardson’s pointed riposte just as well: “I’m not going to get in the gutter like that. And you know, that’s typical of many of the people around Senator Clinton. They think they have a sense of entitlement to the presidency.” That they do, Governor, that they do.

    I’m not at all surprised Carville is “Stickin’” with the Clinton campaign well past its expiration date — It’s his nature, and you can’t teach an old Clinton yellow-dog new tricks. But he’s dead wrong on this one, and given that he more than anyone else should be able to see the writing on the wall, politically speaking, he really should be working to bring the party back together, not continuing to poison the well with badly thought-out religious metaphors. (And if saying thus make me a “Judas” in his eyes, well, so be it…although I’d prefer to think of myself as a Jack Burden.)

    Update: “I think the statement had the desired effect. It was what I said.” Carville talks Judas on CNN, and, as I suspected, he seemed to think it just all part of the game: “‘I doubt if Governor Richardson and I will be terribly close in the future,’ he said, but ‘I’ve had my say…I got one in the wheelhouse and I tagged him.’” What Carville seems to be ignoring here is that, tag or not, the game is already over, and Obama is the one going to the Series. So it’s a little late to be throwing the chin music.

    • Preach it, Keith.


    “You are campaigning as if Barack Obama were the Democrat and you were the Republican…Voluntarily or inadvertently, you are still awash in this filth.” One part Edward Murrow, one part Howard Beale, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann speaks his mind on the Clinton campaign, Geraldine Ferraro, and the kitchen sink.

    And, while I’m embedding video, these merry pranksters made a similar point today, albeit with more snark and less dudgeon. Vinegar or honey, they’re all speaking the truth.

    Pelosi: No Effin Way.

    “I think that the Clinton administration (sic) has fairly ruled that out by proclaiming that Senator McCain would be a better Commander in Chief than Obama. I think that either way is impossible.’” Sinbad aside, you really don’t want to tick off Speaker Pelosi. Calling a joint Obama-Clinton ticket “impossible” in an interview with New England Cable News today, Speaker Pelosi makes her displeasure obvious with the Clinton campaign for hyping McCain over the Senator from Illinois. “I wanted to be sure I didn’t leave any ambiguity.” Play with matches, Sen. Clinton, you were due to get burned. Update: Lest anyone missed the import, Pelosi says it again: “I do think we will have a dream team, it just won’t be those two names…Take it from me, that won’t be the ticket.”

    And the Horse They Rode in On.

    So, if you’re of the mind that GitM has degraded in quality and become obsessively single-minded since the election season began in earnest, and that I should really just head out to the movies and chill, I apologize. There’s a link about the The Dark Knight just above, and I’ll try to keep the coverage somewhat broader in the weeks ahead. Alas, although the electoral math would seem to make it clear that the race is over — former Clinton flunky Dick Morris is the latest to call it — it would also seem the Clinton campaign is not getting the message, and they’re more than willing to commit the party version of fratricide out of pique. Case in point, this new interview with Newsweek, in which Hillary Clinton actually floats (again) the nuclear option: stealing Obama’s pledged delegates. (“Even elected and caucus delegates are not required to stay with whomever they are pledged to.“) Uh, what? (And caucus delegates are elected delegates, but nice try.)

    So, I’ll be the first to admit that the election season has become more than a little tiring and draining at this point, and the idea of at least seven more weeks of this until Pennsylvania does not bring a smile to my face. But, it’s apparently time to take Fight Club up a notch. When Hillary Clinton and her campaign lie incessantly about her experience, cozy up with hatemongers for cash, try to change the election rules in mid-stream, spew forth readily disprovable idiocies in what seems at this point to be an attempt to hide some ill-gotten gains, and begin pushing John McCain over the presumptive Democratic nominee, she’s going to get called on it. When a guy like Joe Conason, who made a career out of arguing (correctly) that there was really nothing much to Whitewater, then turns around and tries to use the exact same pattern of half-assed insinuation to smear Obama with Tony Rezko (a media tic his Salon colleague Glenn Greenwald had savagely picked apart just two days before), he’s going to get called on it.

    And this talk — by the candidate herself! — of stealing pledged delegates is the last straw. In short, these people need to go. Since the Clintons are not going gracefully, since they seem hell-bent on refusing to respect the rules in this contest, and since, in the naked pursuit of power, they have effectively decided to obliterate their legacy in the Democratic Party and salt the earth around its smoldering remains, there’s nothing else to be done. It’s time to cry havoc, and let slip the blogs of war.

    Hillary stumps for McCain.

    “‘I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold. I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy.’…Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a ‘distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,’ Clinton said, ‘Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold.’” Say what? Still happily in denial about her recent loss of the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton spouts more GOP talking points on national security in an attempt to wound Obama after the fact. (In case you missed it, she did the same sort of thing the other day.) Now, I remain unclear as to what national security qualifications McCain and especially Clinton assume they enjoy. (Lest we forget, Clinton didn’t even have a national security clearance during her tenure as First Lady.) That being said, this sordid wallowing in (and thus legitimizing of) right-wing agitprop is exactly why the party can’t afford to let Hillary Clinton sustain the delusion she will be our nominee. It is time for her to go.

    Reality Check: It’s Over.

    Sigh. Since the spin levels today coming out of the Clinton camp are reaching Iraq war proportions, let’s take a moment to review. As I said on Monday and several times before, Sen. Clinton had a very tough task before her last night. Unfortunately for her candidacy, she failed to accomplish it. The Clinton campaign did not “turn a corner” last night, unless you mean they’ve now rounded the corner to oblivion. Let’s assess Sen. Clinton’s post-March 4th position by her own standard, before we collectively sign on to the notion that the Clinton “surge” is suddenly working: (Via David Plouffe on Monday.)

    “This election will come down to delegates…After March 4th, over 3000 delegates will be committed, and we project that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be virtually tied with 611 delegates still to be chosen in Pennsylvania and other remaining states…As history shows, the Democratic nomination goes to the candidate who wins the most delegates – not the candidate who wins the most states.” — Mark Penn, February 13, 2008. (Well, he’s right about the delegates. But it’s March 5th, and they’re not tied. And Sen. Obama has won the most delegates and the most states.)

    “We think that at the end of the day on March 4 we will be within 25 delegates.” — Clinton aide Guy Cecil, February 13, 2008. (They’re not. They’re down at least four times that.)

    “I Think We Will Be Ahead In The Delegate Race After Texas And Ohio.” — Howard Wolfson, February 11, 2008. (They’re not. They’re down big.)

    None of these happened. While the numbers are still being crunched, it looks like Sen. Clinton picked up between 4 and 10 pledged delegates last night (depending on how the Texas caucus ultimately comes out.) She was down approximately 150 pledged delegates, and there are not enough contests left for her to feasibly make up that difference. Ohio and Texas were her last, best hope to turn things around, and — in spite of all the sorry Republicanisms of the past week — she failed to do so. As such, the race is now effectively over. Finished. Kaput. In the fridge. Our nominee is Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

    True, some news outlets are tipping their hat to the mathematical reality today: Fournier at AP, Dickerson at Slate, the Wash Post and the New York Times. But, since all too many (ostensibly Clinton-hating) media outlets seem to be playing the idiot and rolling with her “comeback” spin today, I’ll try to explain it using a sports metaphor. Obama is up 34-7 in the fourth quarter. Clinton just scored a touchdown. The score is now 34-14, but now there’s only 2 minutes left and Obama has the ball. For all intent and purposes, he can just take a knee and run out the clock. (Not that I suggest he do so. Since the other team is playing dirty, we might as well run up the score.) Or, since we’ve been talking knockout punches of late, Obama failed to land one last night, true. But he’s way up on points and will clearly win the decision. Clinton needed to score her own knockout last night. Unfortunately, for her, she didn’t connect.

    Now, some might argue, “What’s the rush?” Why not just let the Clinton campaign continue to send dispatches from their make-believe world until the convention in September? Well, that might’ve been acceptable if Sen. Clinton had chosen to go the amiable, Huckabee route. But, she hasn’t. Rather, she’s been trying to make Obama bleed, and has now — as if her credibility wasn’t already at rock-bottom — donned the fearmongering and national security wardrobe of the Bush-Cheney GOP. In effect, she is now basically acting as a McCain surrogate. Since we can only expect her to continue this behavior for as long as we indulge her delusional fantasy that she can be the nominee, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is time for the Democratic party to collectively put its foot down.

    So, to sum up, the race is over. And, since Sen. Clinton will not withdraw gracefully, or do anything that might put the good of the party before her own desperate ambitions, it is now up to the supers to force her out. Every day they wait is another day our chances in the general election are threatened, merely for the sake of assuaging the vanity of an also-ran who is “drawing dead” and has conducted a truly terrible campaign.

    Whatsmore, despite her grasping this morning, Sen. Clinton will not be on either end of the Democratic ticket this year. In fact, now that she’s in the process of destroying any likelihood of her being Senate Majority Leader, the closest she’ll get to the White House anytime soon is if President Obama is charitable enough to let her on a Health Care Task Force of some kind. (Although, a word of warning, Mr. President-to-be: She ran the last attempt at health care reform right into the ground.)

    Shenanigans in Texas.

    “The control of the sign-in sheets and the announcement of the delegates allotted to each candidate are the critical functions of the Chair and Secretary. This is why it is so important that Hillary supporters hold these positions.” In their training materials for Texas caucus participants, the Clinton campaign requests that supporters game the system. Classy, as always. And, since Camp Clinton can’t seem to stop acting like Republicans at the moment, why not some of the real thing? Rush Limbaugh encourages his listeners to vote Clinton in Texas and Ohio (as do other GOPers), to keep the Dem party divided against itself for as long as possible.

    Oof. I really hope this ends on Tuesday night. Mathematically, that would seem a certainty, given the huge margins Clinton needs in both Texas and Ohio to stay viable. Still, an unmistakable knockout blow, for those non-number-crunching folk among us, would be nice.

    Going down swinging.

    Four days out from Zero Hour and as per the kitchen sink strategy, the Clinton campaign attempts a few more sad gambits to stay alive in the race…

  • Fearmongering: It’s 3am and your children are safe and asleep, but there’s a phone in the White House and it’s ringing…” Sen. Clinton has a new terror, terror, terror ad out in Texas, suggesting an Obama presidency will result in all manner of horrible things disrupting the sleep of your dear children. (It echoes this old Mondale spot, by the same ad guru twenty-four years ago.) Sen. Obama responded here: “We’ve seen these ads before. They’re the kind that play on peoples’ fears to scare up votes…We’ve had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer.” Update: If this seems like a McCain ad, that might be because it was one, a fan-made ad back in January. (Then again, LBJ did it too.) Update 2: The Obama campaign already has a response ad out.

  • Moving the Goalposts (again): Flying in the face of reality once again, the newest Clinton campaign spin gets silly: “With an eleven state winning streak coming out of February, Senator Obama is riding a surge of momentum that has enabled him to pour unprecedented resources into Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. If he cannot win all of these states with all this effort, there’s a problem.” Uh, no. Quite the contrary. The math hasn’t changed since Wisconsin. Sen. Clinton must not only win Texas and Ohio, but win them both by twenty points. Anything less, and her campaign is mathematically kaput. (The reason for this goofiness from the campaign? Rhode Island looks to be an easy Clinton pick-up.)

  • Shady lawyering: “It has been brought to my attention that one or both of your campaigns may already be planning or intending to pursue litigation against the Texas Democratic Party…Such action could prove to be a tragedy for a reinvigorated Democratic process.” Texas Dem sources say the Clinton campaign has — in keeping with their strategy in Nevada last month — threatened a lawsuit to disrupt the caucus process there. Camp Clinton has backed away from these threats since they leaked, but sources maintain Clinton is suggesting legal action to cast doubt on the Texas caucus results on Tuesday night, thereby possibly buying her campaign a media cycle or two before the inevitable happens.

    Granted, I’m a partisan. But I really don’t see any of these working to Sen. Clinton’s advantage. In fact, they just make her and her campaign look that much more petty. (See also the newest playing of the gender card: “‘Every so often I just wish that it were a little more of an even playing field,’ she said, ‘but, you know, I play on whatever field is out there.’” Aw, it’s hard out here for the wife of a popular, two-term ex-president!) Update: In the meantime, Sen. Obama has picked up four more supers.

    Update 2: Let’s see…what else does the Clinton campaign have under the kitchen sink? How ’bout some misleading mailers? (Gasp! Tough mailers? Shame on you, Hillary Clinton!) In any case, one claims “Barack Obama voted against protecting American families from predatory credit card interest rates of more than 30 percent.” As Obama said in a previous debate, he opposed the bill because “thought 30 percent potentially was too high of a ceiling. So we had had no hearings on that bill. It had not gone through the Banking Committee.” (Lest we forget, Sen. Clinton actually voted for the lender-friendly bankruptcy bill in 2001.) The other basically suggests Obama is a corporate stooge on the payroll of the energy companies. Left unsaid: Sen. Clinton has taken more donations from the energy industry.

    • Drowning in the Mud.

    So, since Thursday night’s seemingly valedictory moment, when it seemed Sen. Clinton might withdraw from the presidential contest with dignity intact, we’ve witnessed the ridiculous “shame on you” farce, her grotesquely unbecoming (and unpresidential) spate of unhinged sarcasm, further railing against Obama’s foreign policy (in part by comparing him to Dubya), some really desperate whining about the press coverage, and — arguably a new low — her staff’s apparent attempt to get the “closet Muslim” smear machine up and running again with the already-infamous Somali gear pic. (Here’s a quick summary of recent events.) Update: One of the more egregious spins of the day: Combining the biased-press and Somali-photo tacks, a Clinton aide is quoted as saying, ““Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were [Clinton]?” Uh, no, because there’s obviously no whispering campaign arguing that Sen. Clinton is secretly Muslim. Really, what kind of idiots do you take us for?

    It can only make you wonder what the next eight days will bring, and how much lower the Clinton campaign can possibly sink. I understand that they’re desperate now (See also Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro all but begging supers to back HRC), but they’ve really gone beyond the pale. At this point, I’m less outraged than I am just disgusted by Sen. Clinton, Mark Penn, and co. The self-immolation of the Clinton legacy is almost complete, and any goodwill they might’ve once enjoyed in progressive circles is well past exhausted. Let’s just hope the trail of slime they leave on their path to the exit doesn’t prove fertile ground for the Republicans in the general.

    Update: Sen. Obama personally responds to the Somali pic flap: “Everybody knows that whether it’s me or Senator Clinton, or Bill Clinton, that when you travel to other countries they ask you to try on traditional garb that you have been given as a gift. The notion that the Clinton campaign would be trying to circulate this as a negative on the same day that Senator Clinton was giving a speech about how we repair our relationships around the world is sad. We are going to try to stay focused on what will make a difference in our foreign policy, including bringing the war in Iraq to an honorable end.” He then proceeded to twist the knife: “The notion that they would try to use this to imply in some way that I’m foreign, I think is, you know, unfortunate…These are the kinds of political tricks and silliness you start seeing at the end of campaigns.”

    Update 2: The NYT surveys “what one Clinton aide called a ‘kitchen sink’ fusillade against Mr. Obama,” while the WP’s Dana Milbank reports on the efforts of the increasingly combative and bizarre Clinton spin room: “They are in the last throes, if you will…there was no mistaking a certain flailing, a lashing-out, as two Clinton advisers sat down for a bacon-and-eggs session yesterday at the St. Regis Hotel…[They offered] a fascinating tour of an alternate universe.”