Anyone?
I fail to see how any of that is “problematic”. For Hillary i guess.
Arabic-to-English translation of Benghazi:
Ben = “Vince”
Ghazi= “Foster”
I read this and thought “No fuckin’ way!”
Then realized this wasn’t the “amazing BS facts that are actually true” thread. :smack:
Though I agree the Iraq war stance was a strong differentiator between Clinton and Obama, I think it’s more likely Mrs. Clinton’s lost because the Obama campaign was far better organized–especially in the smaller states.
After an early Iowa loss, Clinton won NH and seemed on her way. But then (1) she won a plurality in NV, but because Obama’s team understood the apportionment rules and campaigned according to them, he got more delegates than her, (2) she had no real campaign in SC–banking that SC was a less-important state for Dems and that she would have had momentum by then anyway–and (3) focused her Super Tuesday strategy exclusively on the largest states, which allowed Obama to rack up just as many delegates (and more total states) by tailoring his campaign. It was after this point that the race focused on individual primaries/caucuses, and because Clinton didn’t expect the race to go this far Obama’s advanced planning for these states (including an understanding of the often byzantine methods used for delegate apportionment) led him to rack up consecutive victories and steal the mantle of inevitability. It was only when Clinton decided to take these later primaries seriously that she was able to start winning again (she actually won more states in the final month than Obama), but by then it was too late.
I’m pretty convinced that–had she run a better campaign–she would have cruised to the same kind of victory as Obama did, regardless of her Iraq war position.
Yes.
She isn’t on the wrong side of the issue that burned with Democrats the most like she was in 2007. She’s a repected elder ststesman and massively popular with the base. If she’d been against the war she would have walked the nomination.
Getting back to the original topic, Politico has a piece today linking a “purge” of Tea Party favorites on Fox News with Rove’s new Conservative Victory Project:
The article documents the expected arguments on both sides, but this paragraph buried deep on page 2 offered a new wrikle I hadn’t thought about before (bolding mine):
There is a cottage industry of selling outrage on the right, and “direct mail fundraising” is only the tip of the iceberg. Things like the Obamacare Survival Guide (just $19.99!) relentlessly hawked on Newsmax and the [are obvious, but more insidiously RW outrage aggregators like NewsMax and TownHall also [url=Latest Posts]lease out their mailing lists to third party marketers](]Patriot Depot[/url). They send the usual spam to subscribers but couch them in RW language–like the medical product which “Washington, the medical industry, and drug companies REFUSE to tell you about.”
This mail-order industry has a long history and is pretty well-entrenched on the right, but otherwise it’s little different than the usual snake-oil cons that have been parting fools and their money for ages. The moderate leadership has tolerated it for decades because despite the fleecing it still brings the sheep to the polls. Now that they’re an embarassment they want to eliminate it–OK, but it won’t be that simple if there’s money involved.
This could well be true but had she not been on the wrong side of the Iraq argument (as far as the Dem base was concerned) then she could have run an even worse campaign and won easily.
And this sets the stage for a massive civl war between the corporate wing of the party, people like Rove, and the nutjob wing who are not going to go down without a fight.
Shhh!
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte
grabs popcorn
Very good point.
Back in 2003-7 Bill Clinton was easily the bigger political figure of the two Clintons and he was truly hated by a huge section of the Democratic base for having backed Bush’s Iraq adventure. Voting for Obama was seen by a lot of Dems as a way of getting back at both the Clintons. Since then he made two spectacular convention speeches to help Obama and a bunch of campaign appearances, Iraq is forgotten and everyobdy loves him again. If he doesn’t cark it before 2016 that’s yet another huge weapon Hillary has.
It’s hard to argue this since we’re talking about perceptions, but I think this is overblown. Certainly Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq war authorization in 2002, a vote which was embarassing for her in the 2008 campaign. But Bill Clinton in particular followed the precedent of other ex-presidents and refrained from anything more than token support for US policy in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and in any event both Clintons (like the rest of the Dems) were quick to criticize once the political winds started blowing against the war in 2004-5. Given this, it’s hard to see why the base would especially single them out for their opprobrium; while there were surely some who hated Bill Clinton’s serial hypocrisy and the fact that he lobbed a few cruise missles into Iraq in 1998, I just don’t recall it gaining much traction outside of the liberal blogosphere.
What I do remember are the PUMAs and the Just Say No Deal coalition–clearly a base effort, even if it came a little late to save its candidate. It’s hard to see how these would have existed if a huge portion of the Dem base wanted to get back at Bill. I’m not saying it wasn’t a factor, but I’d credit Obama’s victory more to his campaign’s mastery of the process and the historic nature of his candidacy (this is what brought the superdelegates and the moneymen on-board) than to the base’s need for revenge against the Clintons.
Agreed. I know, for me, the reason I opposed Hillary in the 2008 primaries was that the Clintons were deep in DLC crap, way too centrist for me, and her choice of campaign operatives only reinforced that for me (Mark Penn?! Terry McAuliffe?!).
Of course, in the end, we got a president who’s pretty much completely what I expected Clinton to be anyway, so I figure, what the heck? Let’s back Hillary next time…
ETA: And I’d say that the huge amount of Republican-policy triangulation Clinton did (welfare reform, in large part) helped to disaffect a lot of Democrats, far more than any lukewarm support for Bush’s Iraq Adventures did. Even given that, though, I still say that if the 22nd Amendment weren’t there, Clinton would have gotten at least a third term.
N.B.: Some notable PUMAs were/are not what you’d call loyal Democrats, and even openly backed McCain in the 2008 general election. Don’t be so sure Hillary could count on their support in 2016.
Ooh, that would be a fun game of Anagrams!
Welfare reform? Penny-ante stuff. Clinton signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall into law. The 2008 economic debacle is DIRECTLY attributable to that supremely misguided bit of legislation.
In any event, the problem the Dems will have in 2016 is base erosion. As the Republicans have moved ever to the right, the Democrats have been, as described, ruthlessly centrist, and as a result they’ve followed the Republicans into far-right territory, especially on economic issues. Wall Street owns the Democrats as thoroughly as they own the Republicans. This is gonna discourage a lot of Democrats, especially as Obama in his second term seems intent on becoming the Reagan Republican he always was.
Yeah, the PUMAs were not really “base” - they were a faction who stood to benefit from a return to the Clinton Era policies, this time (they presumed) with a Dem Congress for the whole term, and in the Obama candidacy saw the Professional Left and the College Kids throwing away what should be their easy victory. In hindsight, of course, we know we got a centrist administration with some mild liberal splashes of flavor anyway all the same.
In any case, the GOP proceeded to neutralize the PUMAs thoroughly by offering them Sarah Palin as a consolation prize.