4094 US deaths in Iraq: Let's put a Democrat in the White House and end this madness

For about the past twelve months, we Democrats have allowed ourselves to be distracted by the mainstream media, who has done nothing more than promote and exaggerate minor political points -- all the while ignoring the war, death, poverty and corruption that is "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

I'm sure I'm going to get some angry commenters who question my patriotism for this statement above. But does patriotism mean blind faith in political leaders who have a proven business interest in the outcome of war? Does it honor the men and women in uniform who serve us? Is it justice for the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire?

Two stories caught my eye this morning. First, this from Think Progress:

Bush administration blackmailing Iraq over long-term military agreement

Yesterday, the UK Independent reported that the Bush administration is trying to push a secret deal to “perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely.” Today, the paper has more troubling details about the Bush administration’s shady tactics:

The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.

US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal.

The Bush administration is arguing that some of the Iraqi funds would lose immunity protection if the U.N. mandate “is not replaced by the new agreement.” But the Washington Post reports today that the Iraqi government may request an extension of the mandate. Juan Cole and Spencer Ackerman have more.

Next, from antiwar.com, please read

Sunday: 2 US Soldiers, 28 Iraqis Killed; 18 Americans, 58 Iraqis Wounded

A suicide bomber killed a U.S. soldier and wounded 18 more Americans in northern Iraq. Anoother U.S. soldier was killed during a roadside bomb blast in Baghdad yesterday. At least 28 people were killed and 58 were injured across Iraq. Meanwhile, Turkey reported striking suspected Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq.

In al-Rashad, a suicide car bomber attacked a U.S. base, killing one soldier and wounding 18 more. Two Iraqis were wounded as well when the bomber drove a bomb hidden under a pile of animal skins into blast walls protecting the base. Police added five civilians to the tally of wounded. A conflicting report said that more soldiers were killed.

So, while the media tries to distract us with stories about Hillary Clinton's cleavage and Barack Obama's lapel pin, it is our duty as citizens of this most powerful and fortunate nation to filter out this detritus. Already we see shoddy reporting on the rising cost of gas -- stories that address neither our dangerous oil dependence nor the fact that supplies of oil are actually quite high, with the rising cost mostly a reflection of speculators and investors -- have we learned nothing from the housing crisis?

I cannot begin to tell you how disappointed I am in the outcome of the Democratic primary race. And if you've read this blog much, you know how I feel about how unfair the crowning nominating process in the Democratic Party was this year. But I do believe this debacle will bring about major changes in the DNC rules regarding primaries, caucuses, delegates, and superdelegates. Next time. But at this point, we must all get behind the presumptive nominee Barack Obama and work to end the war in Iraq. The worst case scenario at this point is John McCain in the White House, and you will surely help him get there by either voting for him, or by not voting at all in the fall.

Media, bored with Obama, begins attack on Clinton again

You'd think Barack Obama won the nomination by a landslide, the way the pundits are acting. All I've heard this morning is, "Why won't Hillary Clinton concede?!" Well, maybe because he only won by an incredibly small margin (somewhere between 0.1 and 0.2 % of the votes), and almost 18 million people voted for her -- that's more than any man anyone has ever received. So, can we just give her a break for 48 hours so that all the players can end this nomination process in a way that is in the best interest of the Democratic Party and the American people?

The scuttlebutt du jour is, "But will she endorse him?" Ridiculous. The New York Times sharpens its claws with "Clinton Discusses What She Wants, But Not What She Will Do." Ridiculous. Hillary Clinton has said time and again that she would fully support Obama as the candidate and that she would do everything she could could to get a Democrat back in the White House. So please, America, before you let the media (once again) make Hillary Clinton into some kind of monster, please read her message below, which she sent to her supporters, and which I'm sure the media is aware.

Dear Sue,

I wanted you to be one of the first to know: on Saturday, I will hold an event in Washington D.C. to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. Over the course of the last 16 months, I have been privileged and touched to witness the incredible dedication and sacrifice of so many people working for our campaign. Every minute you put into helping us win, every dollar you gave to keep up the fight meant more to me than I can ever possibly tell you.

On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.

I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party's nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.

When I decided to run for president, I knew exactly why I was getting into this race: to work hard every day for the millions of Americans who need a voice in the White House.

I made you -- and everyone who supported me -- a promise: to stand up for our shared values and to never back down. I'm going to keep that promise today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life.

I will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.

I know as I continue my lifelong work for a stronger America and a better world, I will turn to you for the support, the strength, and the commitment that you have shown me in the past 16 months. And I will always keep faith with the issues and causes that are important to you.

In the past few days, you have shown that support once again with hundreds of thousands of messages to the campaign, and again, I am touched by your thoughtfulness and kindness.

I can never possibly express my gratitude, so let me say simply, thank you.

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Emphasis mine, words hers. The foreign press seems to be thinking with a little more clear head this morning:

Hillary Clinton to endorse Barack Obama as Democratic candidate on Saturday, Telegraph UK

Clinton to endorse Obama this weekend, Belfast Telegraph

Clinton to leave race and endorse Obama, International Herald Tribune

Okay?

Obama wins it, but that's not my biggest disappointment

The airwaves will be full of pontification today, and I don't want to add to the ridiculousness of it all. As a Clinton supporter, of course I am disappointed at the final outcome. But let me tell you what disappoints me most about this entire Democratic primary race.

First and foremost, I am disappointed in many of my fellow Democrats, and with the Democratic leadership. I make no excuses for Hillary Clinton's defeat -- it was a very close contest, and she came close to winning. In the end, counting the Michigan voters, Clinton won the popular vote, with 17,790,119 votes to Obama's 17,495,726. Without the Michigan voters, Obama won the nomination by 0.1 percent. The popular vote is a little tricky to get a true handle on, because some states have not released their final votes tallies. Even with the best estimates, however, Obama won the popular vote by 0.2 percent. In the end, I think Barack Obama had a better marketing team and better fundraisers.

And as Hillary Clinton decides where she goes from here, so do her women supporters. You see, we all got a little beaten up during this race. I thought it would be over by now, but this morning I turned on CNN to get the final numbers, and was subjected to Obama supporter former Congressman Ben "Cooter" Jones. I wouldn't have believed if I had not heard him twice refer to Senator Clinton as "Miss Clinton."

It's the kind of subtle diminishing of our accomplishments that women have endured for our entire lives, and the kind of talk we thought was unacceptable. But in the glow of Obama's victory, not a word was said to 'ol Cooter.

Because it's still o.k. in American society to belittle and make fun of women.

You might say, well Sue J., did you just wake up to this fact? Of course not -- I've spent a lifetime competing with boys, then men. I've heard the comments around the conference room table, in the lunchroom, on the playing field. But where I hadn't heard it before was from my fellow Democrats. And that has been the biggest disappointment of this election, by far.

A while ago there was a story in the news about a man in Georgia selling t-shirts with a picture of Obama looking like the character Curious George. There was -- quite rightly -- public outcry at the racist overtones of the image. That seems to be then end of the t-shirts.

Compare that with the public reaction to the "Hillary Nutcracker." These items were proudly sold in gift shops throughout America. Because it's still o.k. in American society to belittle and make fun of women.

Many feminists have tried to co-op this language and these items, as oppressed groups often do in order to gain some control over their destiny. So, we see women buying the "Nutcracker" and declaring it to be funny. And we see the slogan "Bitch is the new black" arise as we try to take back control of language used to belittle us.

Throughout this campaign, Hillary Clinton has been subjected to (almost) unbelievably sexist comments from all angles. I won't list them all here -- Shakespeare's Sister has done a wonderful job of keeping track of the most egregious examples with the Hillary Sexism Watch, which is currently at 104. So disappointing about many of those examples is the fact that no one in the Democratic party stood up and defended this woman. Especially since the attacks often came from members of the Democratic party itself.

Of course I am proud of this country and our party for electing a man of color as the nominee. But that pride is balanced with the another truth, which -- until this year -- I naively thought was history:

It's still o.k. in American society to belittle and make fun of women.

On Clinton's comment about Bobby Kennedy UPDATED

Okay, folks. This is all I'm going to say about it. From the New York Times:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, defended her remarks in a telephone interview on Friday evening.

“I’ve heard her make that argument before,” Mr. Kennedy said, speaking on his cellphone as he drove to the family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass. “It sounds like she was invoking a familiar historical circumstance in support of her argument for continuing her campaign.”

So to everyone who's still trying to get Hillary Clinton to be a good girl and get out of the way so the boys can finish their game, stop twisting the facts. And to the rest of you, who read and accepted the blowhards' take on Clinton's comments before you actually read Clinton's comments, stop. Stop and think. For yourself.

UPDATE:
I just came across a post at Politico that is both enlightening and depressing. Politico played a huge part in flaming the fire of this non-story, and reporter John Harris describes the process and thought that went into the decision to take Clinton's comments, out of context, and make an issue out of them. He is unapologetic in his desire to increase traffic at his website:

The truth about what Clinton said — and any fair-minded appraisal of what she meant — was entirely beside the point.

Her comment was news by any standard. But it was only big news when wrested from context and set aflame by a news media more concerned with being interesting and provocative than with being relevant or serious. Thus, the story made the front page of The New York Times, was the lead story of The Washington Post and got prominent treatment on the evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC.

As leaders of a new publication, Politico’s senior editors and I are relentlessly focused on audience traffic. The way to build traffic on the Web is to get links from other websites. The way to get links is to be first with news — sometimes big news, sometimes small — that drives that day’s conversation.

We are unapologetic in our premium on high velocity. In this focus on links and traffic we are not different from nearly all news sites these days, not just new publications but established ones like The New York Times.

Look, we all want more traffic. But according to Harris, Politico is more concerned with getting linked by other established publications than it is about reporting relevant or serious news stories. Think about that next time you cite Politico at your blog.

The media continues to tear apart the Democratic Party. And we continue to let them.

From a guest post over at Taylor Marsh's blog, a young woman who says what so many of us are feeling, with much greater eloquence:

Let me introduce myself. I am 29 year old female serving in the United States Army. I am black. I am proud. And I am a supporter of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

We have seen daily how Senator Clinton moves forward to speak for our loved ones, our families and our friends, despite the constant call for her to step down. She has gone forward despite the obstacles in her path and she has continued to fight. To attempt to destroy the reputation, the name of the former First Lady and Senator by falsely portraying her supporters as racist is one of the worst mistakes of the 2008 election process. To use the the history and the struggles in the black community to destroy another person's political career is the worst form of politics imaginable.

The media is slowly destroying the black community with their words. MSNBC should fire Keith Olbermann and let him return to being a radio sportscaster. They are ripping the Democratic Party apart and they are dividing this nation. Any sane, reasonable and coherent person can see that the cries of "racism" are their attempts to get Senator Clinton to leave this race. By any means necessary. Therefore any sane, reasonable and coherent person watching this debacle is going to resent what is happening, because anyone can see that Senator Clinton is being railroaded.

African Americans are not in any way stupid. If we believed that there was this level of racial discourse as these pundits make it out to be we would be marching on Washington D.C. But now we can only watch in horror as the media destroys our history. The only ones who are "outraged" are those who have no idea of true racial hatred.

Please read the rest here.

Clinton should fight for the Democratic nomination, as well as for anything else that's on the plate

Yes, I'm back from vacation and I'm all fired up again about the democratic primary. I pretty much avoided watching the news all week, just trying to stay current with the natural disasters in Myanmar and China, equal marriage legislation in California, and the weather forecast for Cape Cod. But yesterday I had a lot of time to read the newspapers , and I'm really starting to get annoyed (again) at the way Hillary Clinton is being treated by the Democratic Party.

Here's the thing: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are very close in this contest in both total votes and delegates. Yes, she's behind. But she's close. Very close. In fact, after winning several early large contests with his stadium style rhetoric, Obama hasn't continued his pace, but has instead basically maintained the same lead, not really gaining much more.

So why should she drop out? It's not unprecedented that a candidate should take this contest all the way to the convention. In fact, one of Obama's earliest supporters, Sen. Ted Kennedy, did just this in 1980, when he tried to get Jimmy Carter's delegates released at the convention in Madison Square Garden so that he (Kennedy) would get the nomination.

No, what's unprecedented is that this time it's a woman who is challenging the authority. So when Hillary Clinton stands up and says "I'm in this for everyone who's ever been down and kept fighting," it rings true for every woman who has ever worked hard only to be shut out. Oh, it's usually quite subtle, the shutting out. When I was a kid, we didn't have organized sports for girls, so for this tomboy it just became "sorry, you can't play." In the working world it's much more subtle, with women simply not being considered for certain opportunities, and then being offered less salary for the same positions.

And before you say, "yeah, and see what happened in 1980 -- we elected Ronald Reagan!" Please remember our state of affairs in 1980. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter had horrible approval ratings, inflation was through the roof, hostages had been taken in Iran, and along came the Hollywood Actor Playing the Part of President, Ronald Reagan.

Add to this the fact that Kennedy never really supported Carter once he became the presidential candidate. Hillary Clinton has vowed many times to support the democratic candidate for president, whomever it may be.

Hillary Clinton is an incredibly smart and dedicated woman. She has worked diligently to be where she is today. She deserves a fair shot at the presidential nomination. To suggest she simply "drop out" because she's behind is to diminish all that she has done, and to diminish how far we have come as women in American society. If you doubt that she has done more than Barack Obama and has the more substantive knowledge of politics and world affairs, please read the front page story from yesterday's New York Times, The Story of Obama, Written by Obama, which examines the story behind his two best-selling books. The books deserve a close look, because that's just about all we have to go by if we want to understand who Obama is. Unfortunately, in his effort to tell a good story Obama uses devices such as composite characters and changing the chronology of events to better suit the story.

“The book is so literary,” said Arnold Rampersad, a professor of English at Stanford University who teaches autobiography and is the author of a recent biography of Ralph Ellison. “It is so full of clever tricks — inventions for literary effect — that I was taken aback, even astonished. But make no mistake, these are simply the tricks that art trades in, and out of these tricks is supposed to come our realization of truth.”

It has worked out well for the Junior Senator from Illinois.

“Barack is worth millions now,” Mr. Osnos said. “It’s almost all based on these two books, two books not based on a job of prodigious research or risking one’s life as a reporter in Iraq. He has written about himself. Being able to take your own life story and turn it into this incredibly lucrative franchise, it’s a stunning fact.”

I'm sorry if you think she's being "divisive" and not working for "the good of the party." He's only ahead by a small margin, and he's not the better candidate. I've spent my entire life watching my mother put the needs and wants of others before her own. Just once I'd like to see her take the last brownie on the plate. But she won't. We won't. Because women are taught to compromise and to take care of others.

Take the brownie, Hillary. You deserve it.

My Clinton post of the week

O.k., so I wasn't going to write anything serious this week because I'm on vacation, but we did watch Hillary Clinton's victory speech last night, and I did happen to see the headline on the Boston Globe today that read "Clinton crushes Obama in WV Primary," and then I saw this:

Those who are responsible for putting Democrats in the broken place we are in right now with regard to Barack Obama had better own it to the end. Leave those bumper stickers on and wear those campaign pins until the bitter end folks because YOU OWN IT. And people are going to want to know whose to blame.

And as for the superdelegates, just an FYI, we have the list with your names, you will be held accountable on Election Day and beyond, too. This time around, everybody's going to be looking for accountability.

What's even more astonishing is that this post was on HuffingtonPost, of all places! (Well, the incorrect grammar should have been a tipoff, I suppose.) The article, "You Broke It, You Own It, Obama Style" is by Kristen Breitweiser. She continues:

Flash forward to Election Day 08. Can you imagine the backpedaling going on when it comes to explaining how Barack Obama -- the Democratic nominee by math not by sensibility -- loses key states? What will those pundits say?
...

In August when the Republican attack ads unroll with a screaming, ranting, raving, railing, and dancing like a chicken lunatic Reverend Wright juxtaposed with an angry Obama with an outstretched pointing finger overlayed by Obama's voice saying that he can't disown Wright anymore than he can disown his grandmother, will the superdelegates feel good and justified about their decision to try and kick Hillary out of the race before she won a state like West Virginia or Kentucky? Will those same superdelegates apologize for their bad judgment in thinking a candidate who lost 40% of the Democratic vote in a state primary -- a mere 5 months before Election Day -- should even still qualify to be the best candidate in a general election?
...

To me, it's the difference between buying cereal for the picture on the box rather than the ingredients on the nutritional label. Clinton supporters want to know what they are eating for breakfast--they don't get swayed by the fancy packaging that often hides the sugar and artificial additives hiding inside. They check the label. They read the ingredients.

The fact that Clinton won by such a landslide last night is important. I don't know what the Democratic powerful should do. But I do know that if they try to pretend that once Clinton drops her campaign, Obama will win the presidency, they are wrong. They (and we) need Hillary Clinton. So instead of insisting she drop out, let's figure out a win-win solution. For the country.

Take me home, country roads.

Next stop, "West Virginia, mountain momma."

You're probably hoping this nomination decision is over soon -- if for no other reason because then, and only then, will I stop using song titles from the seventies in my posts. (C'mon, you know you're lovin' it!)

Everyone, including Hillary Clinton, knows at this point that Barack Obama will be the democratic nominee. But my prediction is that she will not concede the nomination until after the West Virginia primary, and I think she deserves the right to do that. After all, she is currently ahead in the polls there at 56% versus Obama's 27%, according to Rasmussen Reports. She's going to win, and probably win big. And although it will be merely a symbolic win (there are only 28 delegates at stake), it will be a strong win. She can announce she's ending her campaign and balance that news with the joy of victory. It will make her supporters happy, and it will allow her to bow out with a positive image ("See, she can win primaries"). Her political future will still be bright.

I have heard some folks pondering her ambitions for 2012. I can't even conceive of the confidence and strength it would take to run for president again after everything she has been subjected to this season. But I have become incredibly impressed with Hillary Clinton as a person during this election -- even though she still disappoints me with some of her policies. So I wouldn't put it past her to have the strength and ability to come back in 2012 and once again take on the old boy's club.

Meanwhile, I'm having flashbacks to when I was a kid happily playing flag football with the boys in my neighborhood every day. I had a pretty good arm, and was also a reliable receiver. And then one day they all signed up for tackle football and I wasn't allowed to play anymore.

Just sayin' ....

And this is why "Slate" is no longer on the blogroll

I removed Slate from my blogroll quite some time ago when it became clear the site had become just another in the long line of unabashedly pro-Obama love-fests. I mean, it's one thing to be a blogger who promotes one candidate -- I do it. But you know this is all my commentary here, and I know it's commentary when I visit another blogger who supports Obama. We are speaking with our own voices, giving our personal opinions.

But the sites of larger, "professional" organizations -- Slate, Huffington Post, Raw Story etc. -- used to have a more balanced tone. These sites have many writers on staff and on-call, and they used to publish diverse opinions on topics of the day. Because it became all one voice over there, I really haven't visited Slate in a long time. But apparently I haven't missed much. Tennessee Guerilla Women did a little survey on Slate's ... ahem ... "journalism" and reports:

Hillary Sexism Watch: Slate's Arrested Development

By now we've had our faces repeatedly rubbed in the fact that the historic bid for the presidency by the first ever viable woman is nothing more than an opportunity to wallow in cheap misogyny by the mainly male media.

The historic campaign that means so very much to girls and women all over America, as viewed by the apparent adolescents at Slate:

Hillary's "Lapse" Dance by Mickey Kaus

Hillary Clinton, Fairy Princess By Timothy Noah

The Hillary Deathwatch By Chadwick Matlin

The Hillary Deathwatch Index

The Hillary Deathwatch Widget for your blog, iGoogle, or Facebook page

Please go visit the Tennessee Guerilla Women. They do good stuff over there.

Cutting through the fog on the Iraq Authorization vote

Ambassador Joseph Wilson has an extremely well-reasoned essay on the the Iraq War and what the experiences of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have to do with it. Ambassador Wilson knows a bit about foreign policy. Taylor Marsh posts it here, but here is a brief excerpt:

Obama's campaign has been built upon his supposed transcendent qualities and intuitive judgment. His foreign policy experience is limited to having lived in Indonesia between the ages of 6 and 10, and having traveled overseas briefly as a college student. He further claims that a speech he gave against the war in Iraq six years ago to extremely liberal supporters in a campaign for state senator in Illinois is sufficient proof of his superior judgment in national security matters and qualifies him to be president and commander-in-chief of U.S. Armed Forces at a time when we are fighting two extraordinarily difficult wars. As with his relationship with Wright, a closer examination is warranted.

In the U.S. Senate, to which he was elected in 2004, a year after the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he has done little to act on his asserted anti-war position, and has said repeatedly that had he been in the Senate at the time of the vote on the authorization for the use of military force he doesn't know how he would have voted. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe, with jurisdiction over NATO, he has held not a single oversight meeting because, as he admitted, he was too busy running for president, even though NATO's presence in the Afghanistan war is critical to success in that venture.

One of my biggest concerns with Obama has been just this: while he says he is anti-war, what has he done since getting elected to the Senate? As for Hillary Clinton's vote to give the president authority, Ambassador Wilson explains it clearly:

Obama repeats the incorrect and politically irresponsible mantra that Sen. Hillary Clinton voted for the war and that therefore he is more qualified to be president. Unlike Obama, as the last acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq during the first Gulf War, I was deeply involved in that debate from the beginning.

President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell made it clear publicly and in their representations to Congress that the authorization was not to go to war but rather to give the president the leverage he needed to go to the United Nations to reinvigorate international will to contain and disarm Saddam Hussein, consistent with the resolutions passed at the time of the first Gulf War.

With passage of the resolution, the president did in fact achieve a U.N. consensus, and inspectors returned to Iraq. Hans Blix, the chief U.N. inspector, has said repeatedly that without American leadership there would have been no new inspection regime.

Just to be clear, I'll say it again: If Barack Obama wins the nomination, I will vote for him. But I'll still always think Hillary Clinton would be better.

No question: This girl's got game!

From MyDD:

Hillary Clinton Raises $2.5 Million And Counting

Since Pennsylvania was called for Hillary Clinton 3 hours ago she has raised $2.5 million, 80% of which is from new donors.

Voters do not want this to be over.

UPDATE: Again, from MyDD:

On MSNBC a few minutes ago Terry McCauliffe announced the Hillary Clinton campaign raised $10 million online "with 50,000 brand new donors" since the polls closed in Pennsylvania last night. "The biggest day we've ever had." An impressive amount by any measure and, as I wrote last night, a clear sign that people do not want this primary to be over.

I know there's the "Operation chaos" theory, that Republicans switched their registration in order to be able to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary and then vote against her in the general election .... on the grassy knoll, too, I suppose. Anyway, I highly doubt those party-switchers are also donating money. Gee, maybe her support is for real?

Pa. primary results raise real issues of electability

With Hillary Clinton's win in yesterday's Pennsylvania primary come some real concerns about Barack Obama's ability to win over voters. Or rather his lack of ability. The Obama campaign's defense is that Clinton had a stronghold on Pennsylvania and so her win there should not be a surprise to anyone. My issue with that defense is that these voters are just the type that he will need to win over in the general election. And I'm not sure he can do it nationally, if he couldn't in Pennsylvania, where he outspent the Clinton campaign by a 3 to 1 margin.

Both candidates have their strong and very loyal base, and that's how the voting went. CNN has the exit poll data -- click there to read all the numbers. But to summarize, the results don't show me that Obama is making any inroads with the voters he will need to win the general election in November.

Obama won
Younger voters
Blacks
College grads
Philadelphia and suburbs
Independents
Liberals
Candidate quality: Change


Clinton won
Women and older voters
Whites
Church-goers
All regions except Philly area
Gun owners
Democrats
Moderates and conservatives
Candidate quality: Cares about people, experience, electability
Voters worried about the economy
Union members

But by far the most interesting result to me was this oddity (click to enlarge):



Does anyone want to explain that one to me? Because what I see is that only 79% of Obama's supporters believe he will be the Democratic nominee, and I find that stunning.

Debating the debate: Hello? McFly? Has anyone been paying attention?

I wasn't going to write anything about last night's debate, but after traveling around the blogosphere as well as writing some comments here, I find that I do have just one point I'd like to make.

Where have all these outraged viewers been all season?

I tuned in to the debates halfway through without expecting much — and I guess the fact that I didn't feel compelled to watch from the beginning says something right there. The part of the debate that I saw could be characterized as (1) questions consisting mostly of issue-oriented topics, and (2) both candidates were taken to task a few times by the moderators when they seemed to avoid giving a straight answer.

Over coffee this morning I said to Un-named Partner that I thought it was a pretty good debate (compared with the rest of the debates this season), and that Clinton seemed composed, while Obama seemed tired. I also said I thought the moderators were tougher than they have been in the past, which is also how many saw it overseas and here at home. Little did I know that there was a storm brewing amongst the Obama supporters over planted questions, and "trivial" topics.

Where have all these outraged viewers been all season?

As a Dennis Kucinich supporter, I watched in disbelief as Kucinich waited patiently to get asked a question, only to have Tim Russert ask him about UFOs. The man is leading a movement to impeach the President of the United States for taking us into an illegal war, and you ask him about UFOs?

Where have all these outraged viewers been all season?

In the Republican debates, Ron Paul was regularly shunned and otherwise ignored. While I don't agree with much of what he says, he was a candidate on the debate stage. And deserved equal time. But the mainstream media ignored him. The mainstream media ran the show.

Where have all these outraged viewers been all season?

So you'll have to pardon my lack of sympathy for Barack Obama having to answer questions that some people think are "trivial." These topics of who he associates with and choices he has made in his past are an issue to many people, and while they may not have merited 45 minutes of primetime coverage, I am astounded that anyone is surprised it happened.

Where have all these outraged viewers been all season?

photo credit Jae Hong

Polls, polls, and more polls! Clinton up by 20 points

The Pennsylvania primary is a week from tomorrow, and there will be many more polls popping up in the coming the hours, I suspect. The candidates have had a very busy weekend, and it will be interesting to see how the Pa. voters react. But first out of the gate is the poll from American Research Group, which has Clinton up by 20 percentage points (click image to enlarge it):

Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama 48% to 44% among men (45% of likely Democratic primary voters). Among women, Clinton leads 64% to 31%.

Clinton leads 64% to 29% among white voters (82% of likely Democratic primary voters). Obama leads 79% to 18% among African American voters (14% of likely Democratic primary voters).

Clinton leads 52% to 43% among voters age 18 to 49 (50% of likely Democratic primary voters) and Clinton leads 62% to 31% among voters age 50 and older.

10% of all likely Democratic primary voters say they would never vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary and 24% of likely Democratic primary voters say they would never vote for Barack Obama in the primary.

23% of likely Democratic primary voters say that excessive exposure to Obama's advertising is causing them to support Clinton.

What's going on with that last item? People have complained about Clinton "attacking" and running a "negative campaign" in the past, but it looks like Obama's campaign is it's own worst enemy in Pennsylvania.

Hope, change, a beer and a shot!

As long-time Jello Heads will know, we play a little drinking game around here. Every time we hear Barack Obama use either the word "hope" or "change," we do a shot (much like the game "Hi Bob" of years ago).

And now, it looks like Hillary Clinton's playing along, too! Maybe next time she's choose a jello shot, instead of boring old whiskey!

Obama's delegates: California dreamin'

If you think this election season has been out of control, you ain't seen nothing yet! Are you ready for today's civics lesson? Good! Today we'll examine California's system of electing delegates to attend the Democratic Convention this summer. You probably thought California voters already did that, right? No, silly, it has to be much more complicated than that, because if you really understood how our election process worked, you'd be storming the Bastille! From The RawStory:

Party caucuses scheduled for Sunday will elect a slate of delegates for each candidate — 134 for Clinton and 107 for Obama, for a total of 241. More than 2,000 candidates are running statewide.

So in the California primary, voters gave Clinton 134 seats at the convention, and Obama 107. Who will be sitting in those seats will be decided in yet another vote this Sunday. And here's where the fun begins. Yesterday, it turned out that the Obama camp had purged almost a thousand names from the list of potential delegates. And most of those names were "progressives," the kind of people who work for causes and issues rather than for candidates. The kind of people who could potentially be swayed on the convention floor.

Earlier this week, Obama's and Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign took advantage of party rules to purge scores of potential delegates in a bid to ensure that only their loyalists travel to the August convention in Denver where the party will anoint a presidential nominee.

Most of the cuts, about 900 names, were dropped by Obama, leading supporters to complain that they had been unfairly excluded. Clinton's campaign dropped about 50 names from its list of prospective delegates.

There was much unhappiness in the land of Obama! Supporters blogged with stories like Obama Slashes and Burns Through the Delegate List, and even the Obama lovin' Huffington Post ran this story: Obama's "Big Tent" Campaign Cuts Out the Little People in California.

That's pretty bad when Huffington Post gets on the bandwagon. But Obama's team has seemingly realized how dangerous it just might be to piss off the hardworking campaign staffers in the field, and so we have this:

Obama reinstates Callif. delegates

Facing a backlash from supporters, Barack Obama's presidential campaign reversed course Thursday and reinstated hundreds of people to lists that will be used to choose California's delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Campaign manager David Plouffe said in a letter to potential delegates that all names would be restored to ballots that will be used Sunday to elect the delegates, overturning the earlier decision. The letter did not refer to the complaints.

Driven by fears that some prospective delegates might be concealing their true allegiances, the campaigns searched campaign finance data, scoured the Internet and made telephone calls to weed out people they believed to be dubious candidates.

Excuse me, but my Cynic-o-meter just short-circuited. The candidate of change looks like he's bringing old-style Chicago politics to the national stage ....

Hillary Clinton on gay rights: She gets it

I don't want to get too Clinton-heavy today, but I came across this video of her on "Ellen" earlier this week and wanted to share it with you. She speaks about the importance of equality and fairness for gays and lesbians, and it just seems so heartfelt to me — like she really "gets it." On this issue, Obama still seems very uncomfortable and speaks in platitudes about "our gay brothers and sisters." Despite his reputation as a uniter, that still frames the issue as "us" (straight) and "them" (gay). Safe. Very safe.

Dept. of "Cause bitches get stuff done!"

Don't count her out yet. There's more than a few people left in this country who haven't yet voted in their state Democratic primary. Despite the media's strong-arm tactics to shut out the American voter, let's wait and see what they say, shall we?

Meanwhile, if you still have any doubts about the hateful, sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton being demonstrated by the mainstream media, watch the video below. By the end, you'll be smiling!



h/t/ to Suburban Lesbian Housewife

Media jumps on Clinton story without checking the facts

I know, I know. I said I wasn't going to let myself get pulled into the mud in the battle between these two. But this is typical of the differing treatment they get in the media, and I can't just sit and watch. First Clinton is dragged through the press for her exagerations about her trip to Bosnia. At least she admitted she was wrong and laughed at herself. By now you've probably read and heard that the sad story Hillary Clinton has been telling about a pregnant woman who died after being denied treatment because she couldn't pay the hospital was false. False! I tell you! (That's what all the papers said, so it must be true!)

Uh, not so much. Now from The Washington Post:

For weeks, Clinton repeated an anecdote she heard in Ohio on Feb. 28 involving a young woman who lost her baby and later died because she lacked health insurance and did not have $100 to gain access to a nearby hospital.

But over the weekend, Clinton came under fire when officials at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital, after reading about her remarks, demanded that she stop recounting it because the patient, Trina Bechtel, was admitted there and did have insurance.

That part, it turns out, is true. But so is Clinton's claim that Bechtel did not get care at another hospital that wanted a $100 pre-payment before seeing her, according to the young woman's aunt, Lisa Casto. "It's a true story," said Casto, 53.

Casto said her niece, who suffered from preeclampsia during her pregnancy, did not seek care at the first hospital she when she fell ill because she knew she did not have the $100 out-of-pocket she believed she would need to be seen. Instead, she went to O'Bleness Memorial Hospital, where her baby was stillborn. Bechtel was later flown to Columbus and died there. She was 35.

There was a time once when reporters checked the facts of their stories before they went to press. This is admittedly a somewhat complex story of our dysfunctional health care system, but one which could have been checked a little closer before publishing. Instead it was picked up by Hillary hatin' sites such as Huffington Post under the headline: Clinton Under Fire Over False Story Of Health Care Horror ... .

Which amazes me, given the number of times Obama has told much simpler tales full of errors, such as saying that his very existence was due to the marchers in Selma who changed society so that his parents could marry and have children. From his speech:

There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama.

Except that he was born 4 years before the Selma march.

Or how about when he recently tried to establish family ties between the Obamas and the Kennedys by saying his father came to America on a flight payed for by John F. Kennedy. Obama went so far as to say he owed his "'very existence' to the generosity of the Kennedy family."

It's touching. It's profound. It's downright audacious! But it's wrong.

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.

No matter ow many times he tells these tall tales, America lets it go. Sure, these details don't change the world. But are they an indication of the man who speaks with a golden tongue? Cane we believe what he says when his stories are so often riddled with errors? I hope his supporters are right, because it certainly does look like he will get the Democratic nomination. But I have to tell you, I have that same feeling in the pit of my stomach when I watched the returns in 2000 and 2004. I hope you people know what you're doing.

Clinton Talks, Obama Balks

That headline is from the Philadelphia Gay News, which requested interviews with both of the Democratic candidates, as well as Sen. McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate. Only Hillary Clinton took the time to meet with this publication, even as the battle for delegates and superdelegates continues and the media spotlight shines now on Pennsylvania. I've said it before and I'll say it again, one of my concerns with Barack Obama is that he seems to court the LGBT vote when he needs us (close contests in Ohio and Texas) and ignore us when he doesn't (Pennsylvania is predicted by most people to go for Clinton fairly strongly).

Some highlights from Clinton's interview:

[M]arriage is in the province of the state, which has actually turned out to be lucky for us, because we didn’t have to get beaten on the Federal Marriage Amendment because we could make, among other arguments, that it was such a stretch for the federal government and it was wrong to enshrine discrimination in the Constitution. 

Even states that have civil unions, domestic partnerships or even marriage laws are running into roadblocks with the federal government when it comes to federal benefits and privileges. Of course, immigration is a federal responsibility and I am going to do everything I can to eliminate any disparities in any benefits or rights under our law at the federal level so that all people will have available to them every right as an American citizen that they should, and that would include immigration law.

I will have a comprehensive review, and I think a lot of that work has already been done, to look at everything that is discriminatory in the tax code or in any other aspect of federal law. And we will try to eliminate all of that discrimination. I think we will have a good argument, ironically, because I think we can say, look, the states are making determinations about extending rights to same-sex couples in various forms and the federal government should recognize that and should extend the same access to federal benefits across the board. I will very much work to achieve that.

You can read the rest of the interview with Clinton here.

Et tu, Obama?