There are two states where Obama had not campaigned because they violated DNC rules: Michigan and Florida. Now, of course, Obama has to introduce himself to those voters and assure them that they are as important as all the other states.
The only two big names who had still not endorsed either candidate were John Edwards, and Al Gore.
Today, Obama was campaigning in Michigan for the first time and he brought John Edwards with him. Bringing out the Edwards' endorsment today, than 24 hours after Clinton's huge victory in West Virginia, and just in time to be shown live on network news, was a brilliant political move.
The only thing better would be holding Obama's first political event in Florida on the day after the Kentucky and Oregon primaries, and bringing out Al Gore to endorse him.
You don't suppose....?
Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Getting our country back
The Democratic primaries and caucuses have brought out huge numbers of voters. In some races, the winner of the Democratic primary received more votes than all the Republican candidates combined. It's true that Republicans and Independents are making up some of that huge number in states where they are allowed to vote in the Democratic primary, but these voters alone aren't enough to account for the huge numbers.
Certainly the presence of the first viable woman candidate is bringing out many voters, especially women, but the candidate who is accounting for most of the excitement, according to the media and reports from the voters themselves, is Barack Obama. Obama is almost single-handledly creating a new generation of excited and involved Democratic voters and because of this the Democratic Party and indeed all loyal Democrats must be forever in his debt. No candidate in decades has created this much excitement and given so many young people the desire to participate in the democratic process.
Hillary Clinton is currently attacking Obama because he gives good speeches, while she offers "solutions." Of course, Obama offers solutions, too, but Clinton must draw a false contrast because she can't offer inspiring speeches.
The job of a good candidate, it seems to me, is to offer solutions as well as speeches, to offer ideas as well inspiration. Hillary is limited in how much she inspires. In fact, she depresses almost as much as she inspires. Part of that is her fault and part isn't, but it doesn't matter. She is who she is and the danger in having her as the nominee is that all the inspiration that has been infused into the young electorate is liable to vanish.
One thing that I look for in a candidate is what they do when they are losing, when they are no longer the frontrunner. Are they gracious, while they continue on with their campaign, or do they get desperate and turn ugly? When Obama was behind, which has been for much of the race, he did not go negative. He did not refer to Clinton's gender, as her husband referred to his race, and he did not play "gotcha." There are so many things Obama could bring up if he wanted to go negative on Hillary, including her husband's impeachment, but he has never gone there. He talks about policy differences, and brings up her vote for the war, but he doesn't hammer her over the head with them or attack her character.
This week, Hillary went after Obama because he wouldn't agree to a debate before the Wisconsin primary, even though there have already been eighteen debates. Her husband attacked Obama's health care plan (I don't recall Michelle Obama attacking Hillary's plan) for not being "universal" while Hillary had to admit that to achieve universality her plan might have to garnish wages of indivduals.
Besides going negative, Hillary's team is trying to overturn the rule that everyone agreed to - that the Michigan and Florida contests would not count. And her campaign is openly admitting that even if she loses the popular vote and the pledged delegate vote, she will attempt to overturn the will of the people by appealing to superdelegates.
This reminds me so much of the tactics of Bush that it discredits Hillary in the eyes of many voters. She may be smart, wonkish, organized, and "ready to lead" on day one, but she is also ready to do anything to win. And we have had enough of that with Bush.
This time around, we not only want to win, we want to win with dignity. This time around, we want to be able to trust our president, as well as be inspired by him.
We want our country back. Not the country that the Clintons or the Bushes create for their own aggrandizement, but our country, that country that is of the people, by the people and for the people. For the first time in many campaigns, we have a candidate who can give us back our country, and move us past Bill Clinton's misbehavior and George Bush's criminality, and that is why so many people are voting for Barack Obama.
Certainly the presence of the first viable woman candidate is bringing out many voters, especially women, but the candidate who is accounting for most of the excitement, according to the media and reports from the voters themselves, is Barack Obama. Obama is almost single-handledly creating a new generation of excited and involved Democratic voters and because of this the Democratic Party and indeed all loyal Democrats must be forever in his debt. No candidate in decades has created this much excitement and given so many young people the desire to participate in the democratic process.
Hillary Clinton is currently attacking Obama because he gives good speeches, while she offers "solutions." Of course, Obama offers solutions, too, but Clinton must draw a false contrast because she can't offer inspiring speeches.
The job of a good candidate, it seems to me, is to offer solutions as well as speeches, to offer ideas as well inspiration. Hillary is limited in how much she inspires. In fact, she depresses almost as much as she inspires. Part of that is her fault and part isn't, but it doesn't matter. She is who she is and the danger in having her as the nominee is that all the inspiration that has been infused into the young electorate is liable to vanish.
One thing that I look for in a candidate is what they do when they are losing, when they are no longer the frontrunner. Are they gracious, while they continue on with their campaign, or do they get desperate and turn ugly? When Obama was behind, which has been for much of the race, he did not go negative. He did not refer to Clinton's gender, as her husband referred to his race, and he did not play "gotcha." There are so many things Obama could bring up if he wanted to go negative on Hillary, including her husband's impeachment, but he has never gone there. He talks about policy differences, and brings up her vote for the war, but he doesn't hammer her over the head with them or attack her character.
This week, Hillary went after Obama because he wouldn't agree to a debate before the Wisconsin primary, even though there have already been eighteen debates. Her husband attacked Obama's health care plan (I don't recall Michelle Obama attacking Hillary's plan) for not being "universal" while Hillary had to admit that to achieve universality her plan might have to garnish wages of indivduals.
Besides going negative, Hillary's team is trying to overturn the rule that everyone agreed to - that the Michigan and Florida contests would not count. And her campaign is openly admitting that even if she loses the popular vote and the pledged delegate vote, she will attempt to overturn the will of the people by appealing to superdelegates.
This reminds me so much of the tactics of Bush that it discredits Hillary in the eyes of many voters. She may be smart, wonkish, organized, and "ready to lead" on day one, but she is also ready to do anything to win. And we have had enough of that with Bush.
This time around, we not only want to win, we want to win with dignity. This time around, we want to be able to trust our president, as well as be inspired by him.
We want our country back. Not the country that the Clintons or the Bushes create for their own aggrandizement, but our country, that country that is of the people, by the people and for the people. For the first time in many campaigns, we have a candidate who can give us back our country, and move us past Bill Clinton's misbehavior and George Bush's criminality, and that is why so many people are voting for Barack Obama.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
I may not support Hillary Clinton
With the Democratic race tightening, and Obama taking over the lead in pledged delegates, Hillary Clinton is seeing her dream of inevitability slip away.
However, she is working hard on two possible strategies to help her win the nomination, even if Barack has more pledged delegates by the end of the primary season.
One strategy is to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, which were punished by the Democratic Party for moving their primary date up. Simply put, the Democratic Party warned Florida and Michigan not to move up their primaries as everyone had agreed to let Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina (each representing a different part of the country and a different demographic) go first, with all the other states allowed to choose any date after that. These states violated that agreement and so their delegates will not count. All the candidates were on board with this and all agreed not to campaign in these states. All the candidates but Hillary took their names off of the Michigan ballot, while all the names remained on the Florida ballot. Hillary "won" both contests.
Now Hillary's campaign is working hard to seat these delegates anyway although, had Obama won in those states, her campaign would be doing just the opposite: demanding the delegations not be seated. Hillary and her surrogates are saying things like "we need Florida and Michigan to win in November so we can't dismiss them now" and "unless we seat these delegates we will be disenfranchising African Americans." Never mind that they didn't say this before Florida and Michigan held their primaries. Never mind that they agreed with the rules ahead of time. Now that Hillary Clinton has "won," but more importantly now that she is losing in overall delegate votes, she wants to change the rules.
This is about as unfair as it gets. First you take one side in a controversy, than when it is to your advantage, you switch sides. (Kind of like Hillary's Iraq War vote.)
As my mother always says: two wrongs don't make a right. Maybe it was wrong for the DNC to punish Michigan and Florida with this rule, but it is even more wrong to change the rule after the voting. It's like agreeing to play only seven innings of a pick-up baseball game and then when you are losing, to insist that seven innings are unfair and everyone knows baseball games must be nine innnings.
Hillary may have "won" in Michigan and Florida, but only because there was no campaigning in either state (Obama always wins over voters when he can speak to them directly) and when only Hillary's name was on the ballot in Michigan. When the voters in Michigan couldn't even vote for Obama, and when voters in both states knew their votes wouldn't count anyway, many of them may have stayed home. The dynamic could have been completely different if the voters: a) got to see and hear the candidates; b) saw all the candidates' names on the ballot; and c) knew their vote counted.
There are suggestions in the party that Michigan and Florida should have another primary or at least a caucus, but this may not be feasible. If there is money to pay for such a scenario, it should be done. If not, the rules that everyone agreed upon should stand and Hillary should stop trying to game the system.
Her second option is to get more superdelegates than Obama and thus steal the nomination from him even if he wins the most elected delegates, the most states, and the popular vote. If she does this, and accepts the nomination, it would be unconscionable. It would also lead to a John McCain victory in November, as I predict millions of Democrats will refuse to vote for her. At first, I thought such a refusal would be self-destructive and that Democrats should all agree to vote for their nominee, whomever it was. However, if Hillary wins the nomination by cheating, she deserves to lose to John McCain. Of course, I don't want a Republican in the White House, and I hate the idea of radically conservative Supreme Court nominees, but a Democratic Senate with a spine (and with Obama taking a leadership role it just might get a spine) could prevent that, and after four more years of quagmire in Iraq and an economy that isn't what it could be, Obama can defeat McCain in his run for a second term.
If Hillary wins fair and square, I will support her. If she wins by cheating, I will not. She won't deserve it, and her willingness to break the rules to win does not portend well for her presidency. I simply will not trust her to be my president.
However, she is working hard on two possible strategies to help her win the nomination, even if Barack has more pledged delegates by the end of the primary season.
One strategy is to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, which were punished by the Democratic Party for moving their primary date up. Simply put, the Democratic Party warned Florida and Michigan not to move up their primaries as everyone had agreed to let Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina (each representing a different part of the country and a different demographic) go first, with all the other states allowed to choose any date after that. These states violated that agreement and so their delegates will not count. All the candidates were on board with this and all agreed not to campaign in these states. All the candidates but Hillary took their names off of the Michigan ballot, while all the names remained on the Florida ballot. Hillary "won" both contests.
Now Hillary's campaign is working hard to seat these delegates anyway although, had Obama won in those states, her campaign would be doing just the opposite: demanding the delegations not be seated. Hillary and her surrogates are saying things like "we need Florida and Michigan to win in November so we can't dismiss them now" and "unless we seat these delegates we will be disenfranchising African Americans." Never mind that they didn't say this before Florida and Michigan held their primaries. Never mind that they agreed with the rules ahead of time. Now that Hillary Clinton has "won," but more importantly now that she is losing in overall delegate votes, she wants to change the rules.
This is about as unfair as it gets. First you take one side in a controversy, than when it is to your advantage, you switch sides. (Kind of like Hillary's Iraq War vote.)
As my mother always says: two wrongs don't make a right. Maybe it was wrong for the DNC to punish Michigan and Florida with this rule, but it is even more wrong to change the rule after the voting. It's like agreeing to play only seven innings of a pick-up baseball game and then when you are losing, to insist that seven innings are unfair and everyone knows baseball games must be nine innnings.
Hillary may have "won" in Michigan and Florida, but only because there was no campaigning in either state (Obama always wins over voters when he can speak to them directly) and when only Hillary's name was on the ballot in Michigan. When the voters in Michigan couldn't even vote for Obama, and when voters in both states knew their votes wouldn't count anyway, many of them may have stayed home. The dynamic could have been completely different if the voters: a) got to see and hear the candidates; b) saw all the candidates' names on the ballot; and c) knew their vote counted.
There are suggestions in the party that Michigan and Florida should have another primary or at least a caucus, but this may not be feasible. If there is money to pay for such a scenario, it should be done. If not, the rules that everyone agreed upon should stand and Hillary should stop trying to game the system.
Her second option is to get more superdelegates than Obama and thus steal the nomination from him even if he wins the most elected delegates, the most states, and the popular vote. If she does this, and accepts the nomination, it would be unconscionable. It would also lead to a John McCain victory in November, as I predict millions of Democrats will refuse to vote for her. At first, I thought such a refusal would be self-destructive and that Democrats should all agree to vote for their nominee, whomever it was. However, if Hillary wins the nomination by cheating, she deserves to lose to John McCain. Of course, I don't want a Republican in the White House, and I hate the idea of radically conservative Supreme Court nominees, but a Democratic Senate with a spine (and with Obama taking a leadership role it just might get a spine) could prevent that, and after four more years of quagmire in Iraq and an economy that isn't what it could be, Obama can defeat McCain in his run for a second term.
If Hillary wins fair and square, I will support her. If she wins by cheating, I will not. She won't deserve it, and her willingness to break the rules to win does not portend well for her presidency. I simply will not trust her to be my president.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
A woman of her word?
Just a few weeks ago I wrote that I was sympathetic to Hillary Clinton, and would vote for her if she was the nominee even though I am supporting Barack Obama, because the possibility of another four years of disastrous Republican policies and never-ending war was simply too painful to contemplate.
I probably still will vote for her if she is the nominee, as the Republican candidates haven't yet turned into compassionate and decent human beings, but the thought of voting for her increasingly turns my stomach.
I've written about the pathology of the Clintons already, and stated why putting them back in the White House would be bad for the country (though not as bad as putting McCain or Romney or Huckabee in – just bad in a different way), but Hillary's refusal to honor her word with respect to the Michigan and Florida primaries should be a lesson to all of us.
Hillary can't be trusted to keep her word.
My understanding is that all of the candidates agreed they would not campaign in Florida or Michigan because those two states moved their primaries up after the Democratic Party had agreed that only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina would be allowed to hold their caucuses and primaries before Super Tuesday. They also agreed that Michagan's and Florida's delegates would not be seated at the convention and so they would have no say in who the nominee was. Obama and Edwards took their names off the Michigan ballot, in the spirit of honoring their pledge. Hillary kept her name on the ballot, so of course, she won.
In Florida, though, the candidates' names all remained on the ballot. Now, Hillary is trying to curry favor with Floridians by saying that she wants the delegates from both Michigan and Florida to be seated and their votes to count. And tonight she is holding a victory party in Florida in anticipation of her win. Some say she is doing this to leave voters with a memory of a Clinton victory rather than the memory of Obama's South Carolina victory before Super Tuesday.
This may be true, but it may also be true that she realizes the race is so close that the only way she can avoid a floor fight with Obama at the convention is to seat those delegates.
What these tactics tell me is that Hillary is not a woman of her word. She changes her mind and goes back on a promise in order to win. And it isn't the first time. The Clinton campaign, or Clinton surrogates, also tried to change the rules in Nevada. After the Nevada Democratic Party had decided to hold caucuses in the casinos to allow the workers there to participate, a lawsuit was filed to disallow these caucuses. Of course, the lawsuit, brought by the union that supported Hillary, was only filed after the union representing the casino workers endorsed Obama. Fancy that!
These reversals may be smart politics, but they are also a sign of raw ambition, with honesty and integrity taking a back seat. And campaign tactics aren't the only place where we've seen Hillary put her ambition before anything else.
We all know that Hillary's vote to support the Iraq War was a calculated political move. She knew she could not vote "no," even if it was the right thing to do because she believed it would kill her chances to be commander in chief. I guess she figured the vote would be far enough away from her 2008 campaign to allow people time to forget. And it appears many Democrats have because she is currently the front runner in a party whose members opposed the war when she supported it.
The American people deserve better than candidates who lie, scheme, cheat, and steal. George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and most of all Richard Nixon have manifested such glaring character flaws. Hillary's recent actions in the campaign show us that she is capable of the same.
Andrew Sullivan cites one of his readers who calls Hillary "Nixon in a Pantsuit."
I really hate to say it, but I think Andrew's reader was right.
I probably still will vote for her if she is the nominee, as the Republican candidates haven't yet turned into compassionate and decent human beings, but the thought of voting for her increasingly turns my stomach.
I've written about the pathology of the Clintons already, and stated why putting them back in the White House would be bad for the country (though not as bad as putting McCain or Romney or Huckabee in – just bad in a different way), but Hillary's refusal to honor her word with respect to the Michigan and Florida primaries should be a lesson to all of us.
Hillary can't be trusted to keep her word.
My understanding is that all of the candidates agreed they would not campaign in Florida or Michigan because those two states moved their primaries up after the Democratic Party had agreed that only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina would be allowed to hold their caucuses and primaries before Super Tuesday. They also agreed that Michagan's and Florida's delegates would not be seated at the convention and so they would have no say in who the nominee was. Obama and Edwards took their names off the Michigan ballot, in the spirit of honoring their pledge. Hillary kept her name on the ballot, so of course, she won.
In Florida, though, the candidates' names all remained on the ballot. Now, Hillary is trying to curry favor with Floridians by saying that she wants the delegates from both Michigan and Florida to be seated and their votes to count. And tonight she is holding a victory party in Florida in anticipation of her win. Some say she is doing this to leave voters with a memory of a Clinton victory rather than the memory of Obama's South Carolina victory before Super Tuesday.
This may be true, but it may also be true that she realizes the race is so close that the only way she can avoid a floor fight with Obama at the convention is to seat those delegates.
What these tactics tell me is that Hillary is not a woman of her word. She changes her mind and goes back on a promise in order to win. And it isn't the first time. The Clinton campaign, or Clinton surrogates, also tried to change the rules in Nevada. After the Nevada Democratic Party had decided to hold caucuses in the casinos to allow the workers there to participate, a lawsuit was filed to disallow these caucuses. Of course, the lawsuit, brought by the union that supported Hillary, was only filed after the union representing the casino workers endorsed Obama. Fancy that!
These reversals may be smart politics, but they are also a sign of raw ambition, with honesty and integrity taking a back seat. And campaign tactics aren't the only place where we've seen Hillary put her ambition before anything else.
We all know that Hillary's vote to support the Iraq War was a calculated political move. She knew she could not vote "no," even if it was the right thing to do because she believed it would kill her chances to be commander in chief. I guess she figured the vote would be far enough away from her 2008 campaign to allow people time to forget. And it appears many Democrats have because she is currently the front runner in a party whose members opposed the war when she supported it.
The American people deserve better than candidates who lie, scheme, cheat, and steal. George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and most of all Richard Nixon have manifested such glaring character flaws. Hillary's recent actions in the campaign show us that she is capable of the same.
Andrew Sullivan cites one of his readers who calls Hillary "Nixon in a Pantsuit."
I really hate to say it, but I think Andrew's reader was right.
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