Right. It’s Obama’s supporters who are saying they either won’t vote or will vote for McCain if Clinton is nominated. But it’s Clinton who’s “me or nothing”.
It’s Obama’s supporters who keep sticking forks in Clinton and calling for her to do the right thing and step aside so Obama can win. But it’s Clinton who’s desperate for victory.
It’s Obama’s supporters who are calling Clinton devious and soulless and lying and evil and fascist and mean-spirited and a bunch of other things I shouldn’t repeat in this forum. But it’s Clinton who’s being negative.
Are you saying Clinton’s Camp has done less to portray itself as negative compared to Obama’s Campaign? Do you think when taking the Pepsi Challenge between Clinton’s Campaign and Obama’s Campaign people should see Obama’s as being more negative? Perhaps that’s why Clinton’s personal approval rating is at a 7 year low according to a new NBC - WSJ poll just released. I wonder why her personal approval rating is so low? It must be Obama supporters that are getting polled.
First off it is objectively a misspeak to claim that Obama supporters are currently more likely to not vote or vote for McCain if their candidate did not prevail than are Clintonites.
Secondly, no matter how much you love Hillary, it is readily apparent that her chance of pulling this off is slim to none. There is virtually no chance that the supers would be convinced by a two to one margin to over-rule a more than 100 point pledged delegate even with a slim popular vote lead, there is virtually no chance for her to either get that said slim popular vote lead or of getting the pledged delegate lead down to 100.
True the chance is not zero, just damn close.
Now Hillary’s argument is that it is okay to run up each other’s negatives and divide the party no mater how infintessimal her real chances because she promises that she help rally round Obama later and that there will be plenty of time to heal the hate distrust and fear that is currently being fostered during the 8 weeks or so from the convention to the general election. She’ll get that 28% of her supporters to love Obama in those few weeks just fine. Others point to record Democratic registrations in PA resulting from the contentiousness as a beneficial outcome (even though some are Republicans stoked up by Rush).
Me, I see the line as crossed. Love her or hate her her she has no real chance at it now and prolongation of the death of her campaign will only cause needless suffering for the entire Democratic family. The sooner the plug is pulled the better for the good of the party as a whole. The healing will need time. Let it begin.
Thanks for explaining. Then the Michigan and Florida Democratic State Party’s should be held responsible for what hillary is calling “disenfranchised voters”.
And these DNC Rules and Bylaws created a hell of a mess now that the primary is so close.
Sure, in the perfect world, hillary would bow out and let Obama take the lead since he’s ahead… But we’re talking about hillary here, and her scumbag air of entitlement to the presidency… even if she’s not the favorite.
I have been watching the media news channels religiously these past few weeks to gauge the bias, spins and commentary. I have watched the pundits endlessly parse Rev. Wright’s comments and then agree about the damning consequences for Barack Obama. Staunch conservatives like Buchanan, Scarborough, and the illustrious Fox News defend Hillary Clinton’s choice to take the primary all the way to the convention while they smear Barack Obama. Squeezed between Obama bashing and the glorification of Bush, the intellectual, Bill O’Reilly, crusades to de-fund PBS because it is a left wing loon channel. CNN runs stories picked up from conservative right wing blogs that pour over items posted on the Trinity Church bulletin board. Tonight, CNN suggested that Obama might be too liberal to work across the isle in Washington. The message is that Obama can’t unite and liberal is a negative.
This is a critical election for a multitude of reasons, but the most important issue for me is faith in the electoral process. The Clintons obviously don’t care about healing the country, nor do they care about compromising the integrity of the Democratic Party. An honest election is the last thing they want. Instead, the Clintons choose to fan ignorance on Fox, intimidate elected officials, destroy a fellow Democrat with smear tactics, and dismantle the Democratic Party. I have come to loath the Clintons.
I fear we are watching the final demise of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism.
The contention is that it’s Hillary Clinton (not her supporters) that seems to have a “me or nothing” attitude, while Barack Obama (not his supporters) doesn’t seem to have such an attitude.
Supporters of any given candidate will say plenty of outlandish, hateful, and ridiculous things. Ascribing a particular view or attitude to a given candidate, simply because a minority of supporters hold that view, isn’t really fair.
I was originally a Clinton supporter but was eventually convinced that Obama was the better person for the job. That was before things got so unpleasant within the Democratic race. Now I am totally disgusted with Clinton because I believe that she would damage the Democratic Party rather than give up her chance at the White House.
Party unity, the will of the people, the war in Iraq, “four more years” – all may fall to her determination to be the Democratic candidate. Meanwhile, her negatives are on the rise.
I just don’t see any way for Clinton to have a happy ending even if she managed to pull it off. Just think of all the resentment.
You will note that Carter was only able to win after the Republican Party did its level best to commit electoral suicide, and then only barely.
And in so winning, the country lost big time. I recall that his reelection campaign was beset be an interparty insurgent candidacy, and that he then lost the general election rather decisively.
I don’t think anyone can argue that Jimmy Carter was a particularly strong candidate. And after being given weak candidates like Cater and Mondale, the superdelegate apparatus must have seemed a worthwhile reform of the McGovern-Fraser system.
I’m a bit confused over the idea that Obama has this popular mandate.
Fact is, if FL and MI followed the rules the delegate race would either be a dead heat or HRC in the lead. Obama is ahead by a technicality, a valid one, but a technicality nevertheless. He does not have the popular lead.
You can’t extrapolate the results of the pseudo-primaries in FL and MI to come up with a “legitimate” number. None of the candidates campaigned in FL or MI, and none of the major candidates were on the ballot in MI except Clinton. IF both Clinton and Obama had been able to campaign in both states, and if both were on the ballot in Michigan, you may well have seen different numbers. As it is, the candidate with the highest name recognition at the time got the most votes. Surprise, surprise, there.
Edited to add: And IF the voters of FL and Michigan thought their votes were going to count (and most of them didn’t because, apparently unlike the Clinton campaign, they knew their primaries were invalid), then you’d see different numbers as well. The point is, you cannot logically take the numbers that exist from FL and MI and say “This is the way it would look IF…” because it’s not.
This is not accurate at all. Many voters in FL and MI did not show up for the primary, there is no way to tell how many voters would have shown up if everything was on the level.
Not necessarily – if FL & MI had their primaries late enough in the calendar (say Feb or early March when Obama looked like an unstoppable juggernaut), they could have jumped on the Obama bandwagon too. It’s all speculation at this point.
Fact is, we don’t know what the MI/FL returns would have been if they held their primaries on or after Feb 5th. Especially in MI where later polling showed a much tighter race between Obama & Clinton than the original primary suggested. From Rasmussen on March 7th:
Well, look at the '88 primaries. You had Gary Hart self destructing with the Donna Rice thing, you had Biden and his plagarism, you had Al Gore running negative ads against everybody, etc. On the Republican side, you had Robertson trying to mobilize the Christian right for him, you had George Bush calling Bob Dole “Senator Straddle”, and Dole telling Bush to “Stop lying about my record”. You had the Republicans trying to get conservative Democrats to vote in the open Republican primaries to take votes from Gore and Gephardt, etc.
And then, of course, you had the Tanner campaign, but the less said about that, the better.