itsmeeeeeee

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST ARTICLES I'VE EVER READ ON THIS SITUATION! i hope clinton supporters have the balls to read it!

Go Already! by Jonathan Chait
Hillary Clinton, fratricidal maniac.

Go Already!

The morning after Tuesday's primaries, Hillary Clinton's campaign released a memo titled "The Path to the Presidency." I eagerly dug into the paper, figuring it would explain how Clinton would obtain the Democratic nomination despite an enormous deficit in delegates. Instead, the memo offered a series of arguments as to why Clinton should run against John McCain--i.e., "Hillary is seen as the one who can get the job done"--but nothing about how she actually could. Is she planning a third-party run? Does she think Obama is going to die? The memo does not say.

The reason it doesn't say is that Clinton's path to the nomination is pretty repulsive. She isn't going to win at the polls. Barack Obama has a lead of 144 pledged delegates. That may not sound like a lot in a 4,000-delegate race, but it is. Clinton's Ohio win reduced that total by only nine. She would need 15 more Ohios to pull even with Obama. She isn't going to do much to dent, let alone eliminate, his lead.

That means, as we all have grown tired of hearing, that she would need to win with superdelegates. But, with most superdelegates already committed, Clinton would need to capture the remaining ones by a margin of better than two to one. And superdelegates are going to be extremely reluctant to overturn an elected delegate lead the size of Obama's. The only way to lessen that reluctance would be to destroy Obama's general election viability, so that superdelegates had no choice but to hand the nomination to her. Hence her flurry of attacks, her oddly qualified response as to whether Obama is a Muslim ("not as far as I know"), her repeated suggestions that John McCain is more qualified.

Clinton's justification for this strategy is that she needs to toughen up Obama for the general election-if he can't handle her attacks, he'll never stand up to the vast right-wing conspiracy. Without her hazing, warns the Clinton memo, "Democrats may have a nominee who will be a lightening rod of controversy." So Clinton's offensive against the likely nominee is really an act of selflessness. And here I was thinking she was maniacally pursuing her slim thread of a chance, not caring--or possibly even hoping, with an eye toward 2012-that she would destroy Obama's chances of defeating McCain in the process. I feel ashamed for having suspected her motives.

Still, there are a few flaws in Clinton's trial-by-smear method. The first is that her attacks on Obama are not a fair proxy for what he'd endure in the general election, because attacks are harder to refute when they come from within one's own party. Indeed, Clinton is saying almost exactly the same things about Obama that McCain is: He's inexperienced, lacking in substance, unequipped to handle foreign policy. As The Washington Monthly's Christina Larson has pointed out, in recent weeks the nightly newscasts have consisted of Clinton attacking Obama, McCain attacking Obama, and then Obama trying to defend himself and still get out his own message. If Obama's the nominee, he won't have a high-profile Democrat validating McCain's message every day.

Second, Obama can't "test" Clinton the way she can test him. While she likes to claim that she beat the Republican attack machine, it's more accurate to say that she survived with heavy damage. Clinton is a wildly polarizing figure, with disapproval ratings at or near 50 percent. But, because she earned the intense loyalty of core Democratic partisans, Obama has to tread gingerly around her vulnerabilities. There is a big bundle of ethical issues from the 1990s that Obama has not raised because he can't associate himself with what partisan Democrats (but not Republicans or swing voters) regard as a pure GOP witch hunt.

What's more, Clinton has benefited from a favorable gender dynamic that won't exist in the fall. (In the Democratic primary, female voters have outnumbered males by nearly three to two.) Clinton's claim to being a tough, tested potential commander-in-chief has gone almost unchallenged. Obama could reply that being First Lady doesn't qualify you to serve as commander-in-chief, but he won't quite say that, because feminists are an important chunk of the Democratic electorate. John McCain wouldn't be so reluctant.

Third, negative campaigning is a negative-sum activity. Both the attacker and the attackee tend to see their popularity drop. Usually, the victim's popularity drops farther than the perpetrator's, which is why negative campaigning works. But it doesn't work so well in primaries, where the winner has to go on to another election.

Clinton's path to the nomination, then, involves the following steps: kneecap an eloquent, inspiring, reform-minded young leader who happens to be the first serious African American presidential candidate (meanwhile cementing her own reputation for Nixonian ruthlessness) and then win a contested convention by persuading party elites to override the results at the polls. The plan may also involve trying to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, after having explicitly agreed that the results would not count toward delegate totals. Oh, and her campaign has periodically hinted that some of Obama's elected delegates might break off and support her. I don't think she'd be in a position to defeat Hitler's dog in November, let alone a popular war hero.

Some Clinton supporters, like my friend (and historian) David Greenberg, have been assuring us that lengthy primary fights go on all the time and that the winner doesn't necessarily suffer a mortal wound in the process. But Clinton's kamikaze mission is likely to be unusually damaging. Not only is the opportunity cost--to wrap up the nomination, and spend John McCain into the ground for four months--uniquely high, but the venue could not be less convenient. Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the White House. You couldn't create a more damaging scenario if you tried.

Imagine in 2000, or 2004, that George W. Bush faced a primary fight that came down to Florida (his November must-win state). Imagine his opponent decided to spend seven weeks pounding home the theme that Bush had a dangerous plan to privatize Social Security. Would this have improved Bush's chances of defeating the Democrats? Would his party have stood for it?

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CosmicRocker

If Obama can't take Clinton's heat - he sure as heck will melt under McCain's. Poor thing.

It's a political contest - but we don't want you Obamaniacs to get too upset;
so Hillary will just fold up to make you happy. feel better now?

Of course when Obama loses Ohio, and Pennsylvania to McCain,
then you'll have a lot a time to think about why Clinton is the better general election candidate.

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Traveling Wilburys (l to r)

Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, George Harrison, Roy Orbison

itsmeeeeeee

yeah, right.

well, if clinton pulls this off, and loses the GE because she tore the party to shreads, i will enjoy telling you i told you so... for four miserable years.

and if obama manages to survive the bitch's attacks, and loses to mc cain because she did mc cain's job for him before the GE even starts, i will also enjoy telling you i told you so... for four miserable years.

i will enjoy telling you so, because it will be the only thing left to enjoy.

tell me something - to you think more than five minutes ahead?
wait, no need to answer. it's obvious you do not.

i guarantee you, this article describes EXACTLY what's going to happen if she's not stopped VERY soon.

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Heretic

When Hillary has to outright lie to win a state and she's STILL behind then it's Hillary who'll have problems against McCain not Obama.

If you want democrats to win in 2008 you'll have Hkillary drop out now. If she even worms her way into the VP spot then your party loses my vote.

Wrong, because it'd mean that Hillary would've lost by even larger margins. She cannot win the general. This is proven because she can't even win the primary. She's too far behind and she's too polarizing. There's a large swath of liberals who know her record and donor lists too well to ever vote for her.

If- by some extremely remote chance, Hillary got the nomination she'd forever be known as The Slayer of Dreams, Quasher of Hope. That's a moniker that'd cause her to lose by a landslide and bury her party in the pages of history. And her sidling up to the extreme right wing would mark her as another Nedvel Chamberlin.

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"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

itsmeeeeeee

how hillary supporters think she can win a GE when she can't even pull off the primary is beyond me.

and they cling to this even in the face of her using lies, lawsuits, and nothing BUT smear and fear to absolutely tear apart the CANDIDATE WHO'S WINNING IN HER OWN PARTY! if those tactics REEK of the politics that everyone despises (including supposedly THEM) and is SICK TO DEATH OF, and still it doesn't turn off her supporters, it only proves how completely deluded, short-sighted and desperate they ALL fucking are.

it makes me want to puke that they (hillary and her supporters) would sabotage the whole election when the stakes are this high.

there will be a special place in hell reserved for the whole lot of them. right beside bush.

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Heretic

If- by some extremely remote chance, Hillary got the nomination she'd forever be known as The Slayer of Dreams, Quasher of Hope. That's a moniker that'd cause her to lose by a landslide and bury her party in the pages of history. And her sidling up to the extreme right wing would mark her as another Nedvel Chamberlin.

__________________
"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

EvilMonkey

Well to begin with Obama is favored nationally over Clinton against McCain in the GE.

How soon we forget that as recently as a week ago Hillary was shining, kicking and screaming that she wasn't getting fair treatment. Then it was "enough with the huge rallies!!!... He's an empty suit... Shame on you Barack Obama!! I am proud to be running with Obama... McCain has expience, I have experience, Obama had a speech"

Who is the one who can't take the heat, a calm and collected Obama or a bi-polar psycho bitch?

Marie_D

Wow, there is something seriously mentally wrong with you to wish millions of people in this country to hell. Have you seen a doctor lately?

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...........You can fool some of the Typical White People some of the time but you cannot fool all of the Typical White People all of the time........

Marie_D

Hope she gets bitchier! She needs to really focus on kicking his ass.

__________________
...........You can fool some of the Typical White People some of the time but you cannot fool all of the Typical White People all of the time........

HarperLee

She really may be bipolar. A friend is reading Bernstein's book about her and there is a section where Hillary is very depressed because she is asked not to sit in on advisory meetings -- after her egomaniacal
health care fiasco pretty much alienated Democrats and Republicans and her [perpetual] negatives were hurting Bill.

Dick Morris suggested alternative activities to bring Hillary out of her depression. I don't have the book to quote from, but the point is made that Hillary is either really high or really low.

Someone responding to Larry David's Red Phone piece said with great drollness that "putting Hillary in the White House would be taking
deinstitutionalization too far".

Bipolar Disorder or even Paranoid Schizophrenia could be treated with
drugs. A total lack of conscience, integrity and morals, sadly,
cannot be treated with drugs.