"Desperation" is the world's worst smelling cologne.

____________________________

With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

You got that right, Obama...you've taken your rhetoric so far over the edge, in regard to attacking other Democrats, that most of your voters will be Republicans. Which is not exactly the field I suspect HRC will be pursuing.

The Lee Atwater style attacks are coming from Bill Clinton who is baiting Obama as Billary remains behind in abandoned SC to do the Swift-Boating until next week.

Though I'm not an Obama supporter, I see Obama handling all this pretty well considering he's a rookie confronted by one of the most seasoned, accomplished liars since Baron Münchhausen.

The Clinton desperation is beginning to show and they're making fools of themselves at every turn.
Obama is a no-name compared to the Clintons, yet he's still neck and neck even as he defends himself against two attackers. That's not good if you're a Clinton.

"The mind is like a parachute, it only works when it's open."

No comment, just a question.

I want to support Obama but his actions and (maybe) lack of experience and his debate showings keep pushing me to Clinton. I am still undecided and may be when I walk in the voting booth. Oh yeah, his comment on pushing the wrong button while voting really inspired confidence too.

This kind of infighting makes me glad to be sitting on the Edwards bench.

It still pains me to have to watch it, though.

____________________________________
Less is the new More - Karrie Jacobs

You may not like the way he says it, but he's right: there are a significant number of voters who will stay home rather than vote for Hillary. Last poll I saw showed McCain beating Hillary in a one-on-one, the only match-up that puts a Republican back in the White House. Oddly enough, that's the same pairing (and result) we were looking at a year ago.

Shy and retiring people do not get elected president in this day and age. However ill-advised the verbiage of his statement was, they were the words of confidence and belief in oneself.

No matter what else happens, I will still not like the idea of dynasties in American executive politics. The only thing that is going to make me hold my nose and vote, after Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush, for possibly two more terms of Clinton to bring the total for the two families to 28 years (32 if you count Bush-the-Smarter's VP years) of rule. Yes, Hillary is qualified. Yes, Hillary is competent. Yes, Hillary is smart. Yes, Hillary has a close adviser with incredible experience. But not one of those things overcomes my distaste for a dynasty in my country. YMMV

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It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
  - William G. McAdoo

If you want to be able to convince yourself that Hillary is your candidate, that's fine. But to pretend that she's the victim here is pretty tough.

For Example

For crying out loud. What did people think Bill Clinton was going to do, when his wife announced a run for President? Sit on his hands, or work on his crocheting?

For the record, I didn't hear this kind of whining when media billionaire Oprah Winfrey started going door to door for Obama in Iowa. Sounds to me like it's OK to receive the support of an influential leader in the community when it's your side that's getting it.

Clearly Hillary is no angel, and many folks can look at her history and see that. My problem is that Obama really has no similar history, so he gets a pass from people who ought to be making more critical judgments. For the record, I think his activist background in Illinois is terrific, but what part of "same voting record in the Senate as Hillary" don't people understand? Public information is fair game, and if Obama can't take the heat of people looking into it, well, maybe he ought to think about wandering back out of the kitchen.

Frankly, the prognostications aren't entering much into my reality, because in two weeks we'll know the answer to all of this. But I stand by my prediction on Tennessee: Edwards will do better in Tennessee and in other Southern states for the simple reason that he's white and male (which isn't a judgment against the many bright people here who support him for his sparkling rhetoric, which has nearly moved me personally to tears more than once). Unfortunately, that storyline is starting to make headlines in other outlets as well: (link...) and (link...) .

Obama will not win Tennessee, to judge from what I'm hearing from folks out in Memphis, which would be his base, I would think. HRC will win, Obama and Edwards will duke it out for second. And we're going to have the kind of campaign season we had in 2006, when everyone was full of reasons not to support Harold Ford, and a lot of us wound up getting in line anyway. (I'm personally still pretty sorry a big part of that debate was the gay-marriage constitutional amendment, which brings me back to work I plan on doing on the ground in Tennessee in the coming months: trying to help build up our bench and influence things on more of the day to day level, so we don't have to do so much holding of noses before pulling of levers.)

To quote Cafkia from an earlier thread: I'd vote shit sandwich, if it were on the Dem ticket, myself. But luckily, given the choices between Obama, Edwards and Clinton, I'm going to get to vote for a great candidate. I'm disappointed in the recent turn of events between Clinton and Obama, but again, what did people think was going to happen? This is politics. All of these are bright people who want very much to win. It's depressing, but not at all surprising.

I'm personally not trying to make Hillary out to be a "victim" of anything. A HUGE reason why I'm supporting her is precisely this reason: She's tough as nails, has a terrifically hardworking and disciplined campaign organization, and not going to take crap off anybody, including Republicans who are going to come peddling the same tired storylines we've heard over and over. I suppose what Obama would like to see her do is melt into a puddle and shed tears on camera, so the press can have a field day with it yet again, but fortunately for her supporters she's both too smart and too strong to let them have that issue again.

And so yet again we get to think about the storyline any woman running for office must be prepared to face: Too strong and you're a dragon lady and a bitch, too weak and you're a sniveling, cowardly woman who can't handle Al Qaeda or the challenges of the 21st century. I'm not saying Hillary should be exempt from any of this, but as I also personally do fundraising for some of the women who comprise a whopping 16% of the Tennessee state legislature, it's an issue I've spent some time thinking about over the past few months.

To the folks who think somehow Obama will be immune to the kind of hot-tar treatment the GOP will dish out on the Clintons: Are you somehow not hearing the "Muslim, son of a socialist" rhetoric that's already coming from the folks who actually ran the Swift Boat ads? You may want to do some Googling. A friend forwarded me something so ugly I wouldn't besmirch our doorstep by posting it here, but you might want to do some thinking about the fact that the rhetoric coming from the Clintons is most likely mild by comparison.

[for the record, my comment above about Obama folks being Republicans wasn't entirely serious, but I can see now that many folks believe this isn't much of a time for jokes...]

1.SC big for Obama..needs a win.
He should do it but dont count her out.

2.Clintons are 4-0 in Tn(2 prim/2 gen)
Ned's backed em everytime.Should win this one.
The question is...how close will the delegate race be?

3.Edwards may work his way back in.If not he's going for delegates
to push his plans on the floor..or hold the cards as to who is the nominee.

Every Democratic nomination fight gets down & dirty.'60,'68,'72,'76,'80,'84,'88,'92,'00 &'04.

It aint beanbag

This kind of infighting makes me glad to be sitting on the Edwards bench.

It still pains me to have to watch it, though.

Every Democratic nomination fight gets down & dirty. '60,'68,'72,'76,'80,'84,'88,'92,'00 &'04.

CLEMENZA: It's as cold as they come -- impossible to trace, so you don't worry about prints, Mike. I put a special tape on the trigger, and the butt. Here, try it...

What's the matter, the trigger too tight?

(gun discharges)

MICHAEL: Madonn', my ears...

CLEMENZA: Yeah, I left it noisy -- that way it scares any pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders away.

All right, you shot'em both -- now what do you do?

MICHAEL: Sit down, finish my dinner...

CLEMENZA: Come on, kid, don't fool around. Just let your hand drop to your side, and let the gun slip out. Everybody'll still think you got it. They're gonna be staring at your face, Mike -- so walk outta the place real fast -- but you don't run. Don't look nobody directly in the eye -- but you don't look away, either. Hey, they're gonna be scared stiff of you, believe me, so don't worry about nothin'. You know, you're going to turn out all right. You take a long vacation -- nobody knows where -- and we're gonna catch the hell.

MICHAEL: How bad do you think it's gonna be?

CLEMENZA: Pretty goddamn bad. Probably all the other Families will line up against us. That's alright -- this thing's gotta happen every five years or so -- ten years -- helps to get rid of the bad blood. Been ten years since the last one. You know you got to stop them at the beginning, like they should have stopped Hitler at Munich. They should never've let him get away with that. They were just asking for big trouble.

____________________________

With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.

90% of the stuff that's being played up by the media as a feud between Obama/Clinton is disputes over stupid stuff.

Brian A.
I'd rather be cycling.

"90% of the stuff... is disputes over stupid stuff."

That's probably true for most of the disputes in life.

The problem with primaries is that "what you say can, and will be held against you" in the general.

And we're going to have the kind of campaign season we had in 2006, when everyone was full of reasons not to support Harold Ford, and a lot of us wound up getting in line anyway.

And he lost.

Realistically, Obama v. Unnamed Weak White Male Republican in November will probably end up a national version of Ford-Corker in '06.

I've been following the Hillary/Obama spat in the comments of Hullabaloo (who shut them down due to how ugly it got), TMP Election Central, FDL, and several other blogs for the past couple of days, and it's pretty clear that many solid Dems--who six months ago thought the idea of Hillary winning the nomination was absurd--are starting to get very uncomfortable about the probability of it. The gorilla in the room consists of the 62 million morons who reelected Bush in '04 who will ALL get out and vote against Hillary. That's a given, no matter what shit sandwich the R's nominate. If Hillary and her supporters have a plan to get 273 electoral votes, I'd sure love to see it.

Obama definitely has some support from fence-sitting, left-leaning Republicans and moderates (not a bad thing in the general election), but he also has support from young, audaciously "hopeful" progressives who view the Clinton machine as a key part of the recent history that put us in the hole we're in now. Saying "get over it and line up for Hillary" to them isn't going to work in the general election. (Unlike Dean's supporters in '04 who united in vain to vote ABB/Kerry).

Anyway, in the spirit of the so-called "vetting process," I'm cheering on the ugliness in hopes that Clinton and Obama continue to sink in the mud and smear each other to the point that Edwards rises to the top.

In other news, the big dog is back in it!

Was there a time in American history when reasonable people ran for office telling us what they would do and why they were the best candidate, or has it always been a fight to show how bad the other guy is? I haven't been voting nearly as long as some people, and maybe I'm just remembering a rosy past that never really happened.

Either way I'm tired as shit of the people who should be president getting stuck in the back of the line because the media just won't recognize that they are also running. Is this really the kind of country we want? Don't we deserve better?

Edwards is the only one of the top three Dems who seems willing to tell us what he really thinks while Obama and Clinton just keep sniping at each other's heels like tiny dogs with loud barks, pointy teeth and not a damn thing else. Is it any damn wonder that I don't even want to bother voting? Neither Obama or Clinton has said the first word that would make me feel as if they've earned my vote, yet I have to get out and pull the lever for one of them just to do my part to make sure the Reps don't send us the rest of the way into the ditch.

It almost makes me want to cry.

Does anyone have Canada's phone number?

or has it always been a fight to show how bad the other guy is?

It's almost always been a fight, and some of them have been nastier than this one.

That said, you'd think that Democrats would come to their senses, see that the wind is at their backs and the sun is illuminating their path, and not seem so obsessed with hurting themselves even more than the Republicans could.

NYT today

Bill say's Barack is putting out "a hit job on me."

Clinton's adds quote Obama "Republicans were the party of ideas."

"Really"the voice over says "Arent those the ideas that got us into the economic mess mess we're in?"

Barack calls that "dishonest"
His adds say "She will say anything & change nothing.

The only problem is getting the media to pay attention to issues instead of looking for a cat fight.

I've thought for a long time that they should switch the political analysts with the sports analysts. The sports analysts' coverage is far too indepth, and the political analysts' coverage is far too shallow.

Go figure.

I've still been trying to think of the most winable VP choice, regardless of who wins this slugfest. Either my wife or I blurted out Bloomberg as VP. Has anyone seen any analysis, polling, speculation, etc. about that prospect? It would pretty much gold plate the Dem ticket and I can't see how Bloomberg would be a bad VP either (disclaimer: I don't know much about the guy). He probably wouldn't want the slot, but I don't know why he wouldn't. Why the hell not?

Sorry to get off topic. As for it, I think there's a lot of rhetoric now that is getting overheated and also being taken out of context. I'm gonna chill and probably will vote Repug in the primary to try and mitigate GOP damage.