Hillary Clintons March 4 "firewall" broken before

The Original Nex · Post by **The Original Nex** » 2008-02-21 05:44pm

SirNitram wrote:He won the Virgin Islands and D.C. pretty handily.

D.C. should have been a wake up call. If the 'Establishment' player can't win the town of politics-above-all, she's not that much of a politician.

Well, the vast majority of D.C. voters are black, that may have been a factor in Obama's blow-out in that town.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2008-02-21 05:58pm

The Original Nex wrote:
SirNitram wrote:He won the Virgin Islands and D.C. pretty handily.

D.C. should have been a wake up call. If the 'Establishment' player can't win the town of politics-above-all, she's not that much of a politician.
Well, the vast majority of D.C. voters are black, that may have been a factor in Obama's blow-out in that town.

Could be, except he won in Wisconsin even though all three black people in that state voted for Hillary.

*rimshot*

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2008-02-21 06:04pm

CaptainChewbacca wrote:
The Original Nex wrote:
SirNitram wrote:He won the Virgin Islands and D.C. pretty handily.

D.C. should have been a wake up call. If the 'Establishment' player can't win the town of politics-above-all, she's not that much of a politician.
Well, the vast majority of D.C. voters are black, that may have been a factor in Obama's blow-out in that town.
Could be, except he won in Wisconsin even though all three black people in that state voted for Hillary.

*rimshot*

Debate Question 1:

"Sen. Clinton, how does it feel losing a state where the African-American population consists solely of players on the Packers?"

NeoGoomba · Post by **NeoGoomba** » 2008-02-21 06:15pm

Good thing for her the Packers didn't cut Bubba Franks until the 20th, or she only would have gotten 2 votes.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2008-02-21 07:48pm

D.C. should have been a wake up call. If the 'Establishment' player can't win the town of politics-above-all, she's not that much of a politician.

Not really. All the political players in D.C. make up a tiny minority of the population and a lot of them vote back in their home state. The real Washington city, where people live and work permanently isn't more about politics than any other town; its a working-class African-American community- exactly where Obama is strong.

Could be, except he won in Wisconsin even though all three black people in that state voted for Hillary.

Obama isn't winning solely on the black vote but let's not pretend that it hasn't benefited him tremendously. I would bet solid money that it helped him in D.C. This is a town that re-elected Marion Berry after he was caught on tape doing coke and hookers for chrissake.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2008-02-23 03:31am

Invictus ChiKen wrote:
CaptainChewbacca wrote:I somehow imagine Hillary on her throne, in her high command room, surrounded by exploding consoles and shattered mapboards screaming "How could this be??? I am INVINCIBLE!!!" Then Obama fires a torpedo or something.

I dunno, you get the image.
Obama: Fire!

Me: Fire!

Every Obama Supporter one after the other: FIRE!

Most Republicans one after the other: FIRE!

Clinton's ship goes up like the cloaked Bird of Prey in Star Trek VI

SEE WHAT YOU GOT ME TO THINK WOOKIE!!!

That was stupid. Please don't do it again.

D.Turtle · Post by **D.Turtle** » 2008-02-25 08:50pm

And the spin-doctoring of her most probably losing Texas starts:

Hillary Clinton on TexasMonthly.com wrote:I’d love to carry Texas, but it’s usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are.

The funny thing is that currently more people have voted early in the Democratic Primary (360k so far) than in the Republican Primary (120k so far).

But Hillary will lose Texas, so it no longer counts...

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2008-02-25 09:24pm

The "quit now while you still can" meme directed toward Hillary is growing.

BETWEEN THE LINES
Jonathan Alter
Hillary Should Get Out Now

Clinton has only one shot—for Obama to trip up so badly that he disqualifies himself.
Mar 3, 2008 Issue

If Hillary Clinton wanted a graceful exit, she'd drop out now—before the March 4 Texas and Ohio primaries—and endorse Barack Obama. This would be terrible for people like me who have been dreaming of a brokered convention for decades. For selfish reasons, I want the story to stay compelling for as long as possible, which means I'm hoping for a battle into June for every last delegate and a bloody floor fight in late August in Denver. But to withdraw this week would be the best thing imaginable for Hillary's political career. She won't, of course, and for reasons that help explain why she's in so much trouble in the first place.

Withdrawing would be stupid if Hillary had a reasonable chance to win the nomination, but she doesn't. To win, she would have to do more than reverse the tide in Texas and Ohio, where polls show Obama already even or closing fast. She would have to hold off his surge, then establish her own powerful momentum within three or four days. Without a victory of 20 points or more in both states, the delegate math is forbidding. In Pennsylvania, which votes on April 22, the Clinton campaign did not even file full delegate slates. That's how sure they were of putting Obama away on Super Tuesday.

The much-ballyhooed race for superdelegates is now nearly irrelevant. Some will be needed in Denver to put Obama over the top, just as Walter Mondale had to round up a couple dozen in 1984. But these party leaders won't determine the result. At the Austin, Texas, debate last week, Hillary agreed that the process would "sort itself out" so that the will of the people would not be reversed by superdelegates. Obama has a commanding 159 lead in pledged delegates and a lead of 925,000 in the popular vote (excluding Michigan and Florida, where neither campaigned). Closing that gap would require Hillary to win all the remaining contests by crushing margins. Any takers on her chances of doing so in, say, Mississippi and North Carolina, where African-Americans play a big role?

The pundit class hasn't been quicker to point all this out because of what happened in New Hampshire. A lot of us looked foolish by all but writing Hillary off when she lost the Iowa caucuses. As we should have known, stuff happens in politics. But that was early. The stuff that would have to happen now would be on a different order of magnitude. It's time to stop overlearning the lesson of New Hampshire.

Hillary has only one shot—for Obama to trip up so badly that he disqualifies himself. Nothing in the last 14 months suggests he will. He has made plenty of small mistakes, but we're past the point where a "likable enough" comment will turn the tide. When Obama bragged in the Austin debate about how "good" his speeches were, the boast barely registered. He has brought up his game so sharply that even a head cold and losing the health-care portion of the debate on points did nothing to derail him. Hillary's Hail Mary pass—that Obama is a plagiarist—was incomplete.

So if the Clintonites were assessing with a cold eye, they would know that the odds of Hillary's looking bad on March 4 are high. Even Bill Clinton said last week that Texas and Ohio are must-win states. If she wants to stay in anyway, one way to go is to play through to June so as to give as many people as possible a chance to express their support. While this would be contrary to the long-stated wish of many Democrats (including the Clintons) to avoid a long, divisive primary season, it's perfectly defensible.

But imagine if, instead of waiting to be marginalized or forced out, Hillary decided to defy the stereotype we have of her family? Imagine if she drew a distinction between "never quit" as it applies to fighting Kenneth Starr and the Republicans on the one hand, and fellow Democrats on the other? Imagine if she had, well, the imagination for a breathtaking act of political theater that would make her seem the epitome of grace and class and party unity, setting herself up perfectly for 2012 if Obama loses?

The conventional view is that the Clintons approach power the way hard-core gun owners approach a weapon—they'll give it up only when it's wrenched from their cold, dead fingers. When I floated this idea of her quitting, Hillary aides scoffed that it would never happen. Their Pollyanna-ish assessment of the race offered a glimpse inside the bunker. These are the same loyalists who told Hillary that she was inevitable, that experience was a winning theme, that going negative in a nice state like Iowa would work, that all Super Tuesday caucus states could be written off. The Hillary who swallowed all that will never withdraw.

But in her beautiful closing answer in the Austin debate, I glimpsed a different, more genuine, almost valedictory Hillary Clinton. She talked about the real suffering of Americans and, echoing John Edwards, said, "Whatever happens, we'll be fine." She described what "an honor" it was to be in a campaign with Barack Obama, and seemed to mean it. The choice before her is to go down ugly with a serious risk of humiliation at the polls, or to go down classy, with a real chance of redemption. Why not the latter? Besides, it would wreck the spring of all her critics in the press. If she thinks of it that way, maybe it's not such an outlandish idea after all.

© 2008 Newsweek, Inc.

Flagg · Post by **Flagg** » 2008-02-25 11:06pm

D.Turtle wrote:And the spin-doctoring of her most probably losing Texas starts:

Hillary Clinton on TexasMonthly.com wrote:I’d love to carry Texas, but it’s usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are.
The funny thing is that currently more people have voted early in the Democratic Primary (360k so far) than in the Republican Primary (120k so far).

But Hillary will lose Texas, so it no longer counts...

I see she's continuing her strategy of telling 40 out of 50 states that they're unimportant and their votes shouldn't count. Because that will help in the general election! And it's not like the Democrats took back congress just a year ago by going into places that "don't count" and asking for their votes for the first time since Jimmy fucking Carter. Can we get this bitch a sword so she can fucking fall on it already?

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2008-02-26 01:39am

Even if Hillary got the rules changed to include Michigan and Florida's delegates, I don't think it would help her prevail over Obama. And given the shitty way they've been treated, a good number of them would as likely bolt to Obama rather than support Hillary. I wouldn't bank on her winning a re-vote in the two states either.

At this point, she's just embarassing herself.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2008-02-26 03:50am

Patrick Degan wrote:Even if Hillary got the rules changed to include Michigan and Florida's delegates, I don't think it would help her prevail over Obama. And given the shitty way they've been treated, a good number of them would as likely bolt to Obama rather than support Hillary. I wouldn't bank on her winning a re-vote in the two states either.

At this point, she's just embarassing herself.

Even the higher-ups and PLEOs at the DNC (who can lose an election like nobody's business) have got to see the writing on the wall. If Hillary wins the nomination, not only can she kiss the independent vote goodbye, but she's done such a good job of pissing off Obama's camp that I seriously doubt they'd show up to vote for her.

A couple months ago, I would've said, "Yeah, I'll show up to vote for Hillary; I'd just rather have Obama." But after the bullshit that she and Bill have been pulling (race-baiting, fear-mongering and outrightly mocking people with whom Obama's message resonates), it would take one hell of an apology from her to get me out there.

Obama is, without question, the most electable candidate here. He draws out independents, he has no real political baggage, he's got the right message, he's got the fundraising power, he's got the young voters and he's a 40-something black man going up against a white guy who once said he'd been around "longer than dirt". What's Hillary got? No wins, serious money problems, a divisive personality and a whole shitload of political baggage.

If I was Howard Dean, I'd be sitting Hillary down right about now and explaining the facts of life to her. She utterly and completely botched her candidacy.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2008-02-26 09:41am

Massive early voting in Texas can only be good for Obama especially when he called for it in the rally he had after his win in Wisconsin. I think the writing is on the wall in Texas. Early voting in record numbers, delegates portioned out by congressional district with the largest number in urban areas (Obama country) and the latest polls this morning showing a statistical dead heat (with Obama leading within the margin of error) in Texas where she was leading by double digits just two weeks ago all spell electoral disaster for her and she really really needs to think about conceding as soon as she loses Texas.

Unfortunately I don't think it's in her character to be graceful. She thought she deserved this, that it was hers by right of her years in the party and political connections and the fact that she was a woman. I don't think she can quite let this go yet no matter what the numbers are telling her. The Clintons have shown that they are all about winning no matter the cost.

CmdrWilkens · Post by **CmdrWilkens** » 2008-02-26 08:37pm

I think right now her campaing staff is trying desperately for SOMETHING to make her relevant again. The problem is that every attack they make is based on the same Washington playbook that has been in use since the Nixon-era. Obama has been able to pivot on her attack lines every single time and until the Clinton camp trys something different (they may tonight but I doubt) then the rest of the primary season is simply watching the Decline and Fall of the House of Clinton.