[Archived] American Presidential Elections

[philipl]

The best analysis I have seen on what is left of the Democratic race for a while.

The Clinton campaign has passed the tipping point from being damaging to the Party and Obama to being self-destructive.

[Beta Ray Bill]

I was thinking the other day, would the British population have the stomach for such a longdrawn out process for elections?

I guess if Simon Cowell hosted it on ITV, a fair chunk would be interested once they'd spent more money than votes registered, but the vast majority of people wouldn't be.

[Eddie]

She has every right to keep going and what she is doing is no worse than Obama, it is just that the vast majority of the media are behind Obama now and are doing their very best to make Clinton look bad. They are both running fairly poor races at this point.

[Rovermatt]

She has every right to keep going and what she is doing is no worse than Obama

Her tactics in the last couple of months have been nothing short of disgraceful. Obama has naively believed it possible to run a campaign free of the mud-slinging Clinton is so well versed in. He's been forced to sink to her level on occasion and has looked weaker for it.

[Eddie]

That's one way of looking at it.

Personally I feel that this has gone on longer than either of them had expected and they've basically run out of things to say and have started to despise each other so they have resorted to the mud-slinging. I think to blame it on either of them is wrong.

[USRoverME]

I don't think that's fair at all Eddie. I honestly can't think of a single case where the "mudslinging" has started from Obama's camp on any issue. I can think of about 10 issues where Clinton has jumped to attack Obama as soon as news gets leaked on an issue. There's a line between mudslining and responsible "attack" in my eyes. For example... "attacking" clintons lies about the Serbia "war zone" trip, when she's running on a platform of "day one readiness" to my mind is legitamte, assuming you don't over do it, which I don't think he did. Whereas, the constant rehashing of the Rev. Wright comments, when Obama wasn't present for the sermon, and Obama wasn't exactly running w/ Rev. Wright as any part of his campaign... that's mudsligning, at least to me.

Although I loved this line from Bilary's camp. 'twas something tot eh effect of "the Republicans are going to dig into the Dem candidates past and dig up all the dirty laundry. We don't know what they are going to find on Obama, but my life is an open book." So basically she's saying "Isn't it better to re-hash all my old war stories and white house scandals and special investigators and take the country BACK 10 years in politics rather than try and move beyond it all..."

Hilary has run a race with no dicernable course or consistent message since "inevitablilty" got blown up in Iowa. If she wasn't Bill's wif and backed by 12 years of her family being the Power broker in the Dem party, she'd have been laughed out of the race months ago based purely on the merits and campaign strategy. I even saw and artical recently where Clinton's 'head' staffers were banking on winning ALL of california's delelgates to make a knockout blow..... even people with casual political interest know that the democratic primary NEVER awards a full state's quota of delegates to anyone, unless you get 100% of the vote, which is impossible in a state like California.

[Rovermatt]

Who will you be voting for?

[Billy Castell]

Hillary vows to fight until the end

[Rovermatt]

That's awesome.

[Eddie]

Big win for Clinton in West Virginia.

As it stands Clinton doesn't stand much chance of winning, but I don't think Obama has much chance of becoming President based on the states he's losing and type of voters he's missing out on.

[Rovermatt]

Clinton was always going to win West Virginia where views such as 'I hear he's a Muslim and his wife's an athiest' and 'I want a full-blooded American in the White House' abound. The big states he's lost have been relatively narrow victories for Clinton. Only PA was wildly in favour of Clinton. In any case, these are only primaries. Nobody knows what can happen between now and November.

[Eddie]

That's true, but he wins by getting true democrats votes. He is getting voters who would vote for any democratic candidate, if Clinton wins she'd get their vote. Clinton gets a type of voter that would also vote republican, with the exceptioin of her popularity amongst latinos.

[American]

Obama also has a better team and a better ground force in most states. Hillary can't even run a campaign that was hers to lose, how do we expect her to run the country?

[Eddie]

I think running the country and running a campaign are very different. The people in charge of her campaign have done a horrible job, fortunately they will probably never run a campaign again and would certainly not be involved in running the country.

[American]

But it shows that she doesn't know anything about picking good people. That is the key to being president nowadays, surrounding yourselves with a good staff.

[Eddie]

That's also true. I would fully expect her to pick good people though, I'm sure she would use a lot of the same people as Bill Clinton (at least if she has any sense she would).

[USRoverME]

Given the amount of very public gaffes Clinton made (Flowers, Lewinsky, that eral estate scandal, the pardon of his brother to name a few off the top of my head) that he was able to cover up with his charm and speaking ability (neither of whic his wife possesses) I'm pretty sure selecting Bill's cabinet would be a BAD move.

[Eddie]

As long as the policies are generally right I don't care too much about the scandals.

[Rovermatt]

And 19 more delegates.

[Eddie]

I like Edwards and I don't want to be too cynical, but it's very good of him to throw his weight behind someone when the race is basically over...

[Rovermatt]

You're not being cynical at all. It's entirely transparent. Now Obama seems to have it sewn up Edwards has finally come out of hiding to see what he can wrangle out of the new party leadership. He should have done this months ago really.

[USRoverME]

Edwards played it smart... from all accounts he doesn't want the VP role, and he didn't want to be king maker. I think he was forced to wait out the Mich-Fla debates to make sure they didn't give Clinton any advantage. If Clinton is smart, this is her cue to bow out with grace... Though based on teh comments from her camp, it won't happen. I'm still not sure what she's waiting for... Oddly enough Edward's wife does not endorse Obama, I read a story where she thinks Clinton has better health plan (which I find humorous given Clinton's past failures in health care reform as first lady where she couldn't even convince her husband that her plan would work, and the moderate success of the CHIP program)

Eddie, re policy vs. scandal.... the political and media climate in the states now is such that scandal can (and likely WILL) prevent you from having the authority to dictate policy in large measure. Spitzer is the latest example, the Rev. Wright issue cost Obama alot of momentum and sway. There is such an air of superiroity these days that once someone is "outed" as floawed, the media and pundits simply attack and attack that flaw until the "outed" has no where to go but to step back. I don't like it, I'd prefer that ideas and good policy were more important than actions, but alas its is not the reality of Washington.

[Eddie]

My father was working within the health system during the time when Clinton was trying to push through her reforms, he still feels that her ideas were good and that her failure was mostly not her own fault. He doesn't seem to be a big Hillary Clinton fan, but that is not an area of her's where he is ever critical.

As a sidenote, who here would bow out? You've still got a chance to become the most powerful person on the planet, although it's look slim, but do you really bow out from that? If Obama wins and then wins the election in Novemer Clinton probably won't be in with another chance to win (someone else will have popped up by 2016), so she may as well fight as hard as possible now. As long as it is possible for either of them to win, I feel they both should stay in the race.

[USRoverME]

that's the thing, she doesn't have a chance anymore, the math is no longer there, without probablilities so long that it'd boggle the mind.

The only theory I can come up with is that she's trying to contune to weaken Obama so that McCain wins 08 and she's still top of the pack in 2012 with a "I told you so" platform.

If she cuts her losses now, she could possibly retain her strong grasp on her senate seat, or position herself for a possible run at NY Gov (ugh) since right now you have a very weak incumbent there. The more she talks, the more opinion of her is dividing, her followers won't leave, but those who aren't 100% for her and largely apathetic and failing fast.

edit: Oh, and if I were running any organization that was 15 mil or so int he hole and still leaking money liek a sieve, yeah, I 'd call it quits.

[Eddie]

Well, do you honeslty believe that any of these candidates truly care about their party? If not, then you will be like me and feel that they simply want the position for themselves. Of course they have some strong political beliefs and most of those will overlap with general party policies, but I think most candidates would sell their soul to win. If that is the case then anything she can do to stay in it, regardless of how much it may damage the party, or to give herself a chance of running next time if Obama should lose the election, makes sense.

She'll find someone to bail her out financially.