Breaking the Final Rule of Politics

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Dreadsox

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By Gary Hart:

[Q]It will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party's nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned.


By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party's nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her.

As a veteran of red telephone ads and "where's the beef" cleverness, I am keenly aware that sharp elbows get thrown by those trailing in the fourth quarter (and sometimes even earlier). "Politics ain't beanbag," is the old slogan. But that does not mean that it must also be rule-or-ruin, me-first-and-only-me, my way or the highway. That is not politics. That is raw, unrestrained ambition for power that cannot accept the will of the voters.

Senator Obama is right to say the issue is judgment not years in Washington. If Mrs. Clinton loses the nomination, her failure will be traced to the date she voted to empower George W. Bush to invade Iraq. That is not the kind of judgment, or wisdom, required by the leader answering the phone in the night. For her now to claim that Senator Obama is not qualified to answer the crisis phone is the height of irony if not chutzpah, and calls into question whether her primary loyalty is to the Democratic party and the nation or to her own ambition.[/Q]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/breaking-the-final-rule_b_90420.html



She is going to ruin the Democratic Party - for her own political gain.
 
[Q]The morning after Tuesday's primaries, Hillary Clinton's campaign released a memo titled "The Path to the Presidency." I eagerly dug into the paper, figuring it would explain how Clinton would obtain the Democratic nomination despite an enormous deficit in delegates. Instead, the memo offered a series of arguments as to why Clinton should run against John McCain--i.e., "Hillary is seen as the one who can get the job done"--but nothing about how she actually could. Is she planning a third-party run? Does she think Obama is going to die? The memo does not say.

The reason it doesn't say is that Clinton's path to the nomination is pretty repulsive. She isn't going to win at the polls. Barack Obama has a lead of 144 pledged delegates. That may not sound like a lot in a 4,000-delegate race, but it is. Clinton's Ohio win reduced that total by only nine. She would need 15 more Ohios to pull even with Obama. She isn't going to do much to dent, let alone eliminate, his lead.

Clinton's justification for this strategy is that she needs to toughen up Obama for the general election-if he can't handle her attacks, he'll never stand up to the vast right-wing conspiracy. Without her hazing, warns the Clinton memo, "Democrats may have a nominee who will be a lightening rod of controversy." So Clinton's offensive against the likely nominee is really an act of selflessness. And here I was thinking she was maniacally pursuing her slim thread of a chance, not caring--or possibly even hoping, with an eye toward 2012-that she would destroy Obama's chances of defeating McCain in the process. I feel ashamed for having suspected her motives.


Still, there are a few flaws in Clinton's trial-by-smear method. The first is that her attacks on Obama are not a fair proxy for what he'd endure in the general election, because attacks are harder to refute when they come from within one's own party. Indeed, Clinton is saying almost exactly the same things about Obama that McCain is: He's inexperienced, lacking in substance, unequipped to handle foreign policy. As The Washington Monthly's Christina Larson has pointed out, in recent weeks the nightly newscasts have consisted of Clinton attacking Obama, McCain attacking Obama, and then Obama trying to defend himself and still get out his own message. If Obama's the nominee, he won't have a high-profile Democrat validating McCain's message every day.


Second, Obama can't "test" Clinton the way she can test him. While she likes to claim that she beat the Republican attack machine, it's more accurate to say that she survived with heavy damage. Clinton is a wildly polarizing figure, with disapproval ratings at or near 50 percent. But, because she earned the intense loyalty of core Democratic partisans, Obama has to tread gingerly around her vulnerabilities. There is a big bundle of ethical issues from the 1990s that Obama has not raised because he can't associate himself with what partisan Democrats (but not Republicans or swing voters) regard as a pure GOP witch hunt.


What's more, Clinton has benefited from a favorable gender dynamic that won't exist in the fall. (In the Democratic primary, female voters have outnumbered males by nearly three to two.) Clinton's claim to being a tough, tested potential commander-in-chief has gone almost unchallenged. Obama could reply that being First Lady doesn't qualify you to serve as commander-in-chief, but he won't quite say that, because feminists are an important chunk of the Democratic electorate. John McCain wouldn't be so reluctant.


Third, negative campaigning is a negative-sum activity. Both the attacker and the attackee tend to see their popularity drop. Usually, the victim's popularity drops farther than the perpetrator's, which is why negative campaigning works. But it doesn't work so well in primaries, where the winner has to go on to another election.


Clinton's path to the nomination, then, involves the following steps: kneecap an eloquent, inspiring, reform-minded young leader who happens to be the first serious African American presidential candidate (meanwhile cementing her own reputation for Nixonian ruthlessness) and then win a contested convention by persuading party elites to override the results at the polls. The plan may also involve trying to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, after having explicitly agreed that the results would not count toward delegate totals. Oh, and her campaign has periodically hinted that some of Obama's elected delegates might break off and support her. I don't think she'd be in a position to defeat Hitler's dog in November, let alone a popular war hero.


Some Clinton supporters, like my friend (and historian) David Greenberg, have been assuring us that lengthy primary fights go on all the time and that the winner doesn't necessarily suffer a mortal wound in the process. But Clinton's kamikaze mission is likely to be unusually damaging. Not only is the opportunity cost--to wrap up the nomination, and spend John McCain into the ground for four months--uniquely high, but the venue could not be less convenient. Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the White House. You couldn't create a more damaging scenario if you tried.


Imagine in 2000, or 2004, that George W. Bush faced a primary fight that came down to Florida (his November must-win state). Imagine his opponent decided to spend seven weeks pounding home the theme that Bush had a dangerous plan to privatize Social Security. Would this have improved Bush's chances of defeating the Democrats? Would his party have stood for it?

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic



That means, as we all have grown tired of hearing, that she would need to win with superdelegates. But, with most superdelegates already committed, Clinton would need to capture the remaining ones by a margin of better than two to one. And superdelegates are going to be extremely reluctant to overturn an elected delegate lead the size of Obama's. The only way to lessen that reluctance would be to destroy Obama's general election viability, so that superdelegates had no choice but to hand the nomination to her. Hence her flurry of attacks, her oddly qualified response as to whether Obama is a Muslim ("not as far as I know"), her repeated suggestions that John McCain is more qualified. [/Q]

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ba30ff16-a5af-4035-a883-cf15ffee406c
 
Remember when Gary Hart was the shining Democratic hope? I'm thinking Gary's still bitter because he thinks he should be/should've been what Bill Clinton is.
 
CTU2fan said:
Remember when Gary Hart was the shining Democratic hope? I'm thinking Gary's still bitter because he thinks he should be/should've been what Bill Clinton is.

Having worked on his campaign in 1988 while in college and from meeting him I would say I do remember it. I thought he should have run in 2004.
 
CTU2fan said:
Remember when Gary Hart was the shining Democratic hope? I'm thinking Gary's still bitter because he thinks he should be/should've been what Bill Clinton is.

because Gary Hart had a Gary Hart/ Bill Clinton problem

and Bill Clinton got 8 years in the Whitehouse


I am not surprised
 
Re: Re: Breaking the Final Rule of Politics

U2democrat said:
Irvine and I have been saying this for awhile now.

If a candidate will blame his loss on someone else

Perhaps, he should just pull a Rudy and bow out


I don't hear anyone whining that it will be Obama's fault if Hillary loses


Whining like spoiled children will only get you and Irvine
one thing


spanking.gif
 
Re: Re: Re: Breaking the Final Rule of Politics

deep said:
I don't hear anyone whining that it will be Obama's fault if Hillary loses

Obama isn't saying that he and McCain are the only two in the race that are fit to serve as President.
 
He is saying Hillary is not fit for the job

because we need

change

change

change


Every time he says
change

he is hurting Hillary !!!!!!!



If she loses
it is his fault.


url]


wha , sob, whaaaaa!!!
24M5.GIF
 
Last edited:
deep said:
He is saying Hillary is not fit for the job

because we need

change

change

change


Every time he says
change

he is hurting Hillary !!!!!!!



If she loses
it is his fault.


url]


wha , sob, whaaaaa!!!
24M5.GIF

There's a difference between crying about it and pointing out some really shitty tactics. There's also a difference between campaigning on change and pointing out your fresher perspective and saying someone doesn't have the experience or leadership to hold the office.

And you know that.
 
Diemen said:
There's also a difference between campaigning on change and pointing out your fresher perspective and saying someone doesn't have the experience or leadership to hold the office.



None of this would matter if Obama and his supporters were not concerned that is is a legitimate concern.



If you say the king has no clothes on and he does

then you are considered silly and irrelevant


But if the king has no clothes on
then the king is seen for what he is. :shrug:


let's put it another way

I have a friend

and I say he is obese

he weighs 400 pounds
am I right?
and I am sure people will say I should not mention his weight

but it does not change his size


and if he weighs 150 pounds

he does not care if I call him obese
 
Last edited:
Irvine511 said:




you have to speak more slowly, and louder. use monosyllabic words.

old people (i.e., Hillary voters) are hard of hearing.

:rolleyes:
 
deep said:
He is saying Hillary is not fit for the job

because we need

change

change

change


Every time he says
change

he is hurting Hillary !!!!!!!



If she loses
it is his fault.


url]


wha , sob, whaaaaa!!!
24M5.GIF

:rolleyes:

for you, too, mister
 
Seriously, the Democrats have done a pretty good job of fucking themselves already for the last 7 years. I fail to see how it's all Hillary's fault. That said, yes, her comment about McCain being basically better than Obama was another low point for her.
 
joyfulgirl said:
Seriously, the Democrats have done a pretty good job of fucking themselves already for the last 7 years. I fail to see how it's all Hillary's fault. That said, yes, her comment about McCain being basically better than Obama was another low point for her.

She lost me at the "He's not Muslim....as far as I know" comment. I think she hit rock bottom with that one. Pathetic.
 
anitram said:
She lost me at the "He's not Muslim....as far as I know" comment. I think she hit rock bottom with that one. Pathetic.

joyful

knows the truth on this one

he is playing into their hands
 
I was going to address that post of yours

but it slipped by


in a way Obama
is his own worse enemy

Is it in judo?
where one conserves their energy by using their opponents momentum against them?

McCain is a much better candidate for his 2000 experience
I believe that whole lobbyist/ affair was a bullshit story to get him to go berserk and self destruct

in 2000 he would have blown it.
 
Senator Clinton is a train wreck-w/Bill as the power intoxicated engineer, and her as a dis gruntled dependent in first class.

The train's broke, catch a cab a go away quietly, please.

dbs
 
The question that begs to be asked is:

Do the Clintons have one iota of social grace in their personas, or is always about them and what they think their entitled to.

They're getting as bad as Ron Paul and Huckabee.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article3510778.ece

Even John Edward finally got the message, although there are rumors that he has a love child soon to be born-that may have forced his departure.

dbs
 
deep said:

But if the king has no clothes on
then the king is seen for what he is. :shrug:




this is the kind of experience we need:

[q]Nobel winner: Hillary Clinton's 'silly' Irish peace claims

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Last Updated: 9:30am GMT 08/03/2008

Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.

"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player."

Mrs Clinton has made Northern Ireland key to her claims of having extensive foreign policy experience, which helped her defeat Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday after she presented herself as being ready to tackle foreign policy crises at 3am.

"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland," she told CNN on Wednesday. But negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that her role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years.

Lord Trimble shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, in 1998. Conall McDevitt, an SDLP negotiator and aide to Mr Hume during the talks, said: "There would have been no contact with her either in person or on the phone. I was with Hume regularly during calls in the months leading up to the Good Friday Agreement when he was taking calls from the White House and they were invariably coming from the president."
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Central to Mrs Clinton’s claim of an important Northern Ireland role is a meeting she attended in Belfast in with a group of women from cross-community groups. "I actually went to Northern Ireland more than my husband did," she said in Nashua, New Hampshire on January 6th.

"I remember a meeting that I pulled together in Belfast, in the town hall there, bringing together for the first time Catholics and Protestants from both traditions, having them sitting a room where they had never been before with each other because they don’t go to school together, they don’t live together and it was only in large measure because I really asked them to come that they were there.

"And I wasn’t sure it was going to be very successful and finally a Catholic woman on one side of the table said, ’You know, every time my husband leaves for work in the morning I worry he won’t come home at night.

"And then a Protestant woman on the other side said, ’Every time my son tries to go out at night I worry he won’t come home again’. And suddenly instead of seeing each other as caricatures and stereotypes they saw each other as human beings and the slow, hard work of peace-making could move forward."

There is no record of a meeting at Belfast City Hall, though Mrs Clinton attended a ceremony there when her husband turned on the Christmas tree lights in November 1995. The former First Lady appears to be referring a 50-minute event the same day, arranged by the US Consulate, the same day at the Lamp Lighter Café on the city’s Ormeau Road. [/q]
 
Not to mention she had no national security clearance :shrug:


But what do I know, I'm just a stupid, whiney whipper-snapper who needs to be spanked. I guess youth = stupidity.
 
U2democrat said:


But what do I know, I'm just a stupid, whiney whipper-snapper who needs to be spanked.

I have something to say - but my wife is sitting next to me giving me the I know what you were going to type look.:sexywink:
 
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