Therefore, Senator Clinton, your invocation of the 2000 general-election debacle in Florida is specious, especially since members of the Democratic National Committee who support your candidacy -- most notably Harold Ickes -- voted to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates in the first place. Floridians -- as well as Michiganers -- will have their say as to who they want to be our next president when they vote in the November 4 general election.
And despite her huge wins in West Virginia and Kentucky, Clinton appears to be swimming against an increasingly strong current of support for Obama among Democrats nationwide. The latest Gallup daily tracking poll suggests Democratic voters are beginning to coalesce around the Illinois senator.
Obama holds an 11-point lead over Clinton in Gallup’s latest daily tracking poll released Thursday. He has the support of 53 percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters while Clinton’s support is at 42 percent.
Obama’s lead over Clinton is down slightly from a 16-point, 55-39 percent edge on May 18, two days before Tuesday's primaries in Kentucky, where Clinton clobbered Obama by more than 30 points, 66-34 percent, and in Oregon, where Obama scored an easy 56-38 percent win. It remains a dramatic reversal of fortune for Obama, who, prior to John Edwards’ withdrawal from the race, lagged 20 points behind Clinton in mid-January.
The Longer Clinton Fights On, the More She Turns Off Black Voters
The Clinton campaign -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- has been subtly and not-so-subtly playing to the racial fears of working-class white voters, particularly in West Virginia and Kentucky. But while the former first lady adopts a populist appeal to working-class whites, she's at the same time alienating blacks -- the Democratic Party's most loyal voter constituency since the 1960s.
Employing euphemisms -- long denounced by many African-Americans as racial "code words" -- about how Obama can't win over “blue-collar” voters, Clinton is completely ignoring the reality that there are many blue-collar blacks.
This comes on top of Bill Clinton's ill-mannered attempt in January to belittle the significance of Obama's overwhelming victory in the South Carolina primary by comparing it to the Reverend Jesse Jackson's South Carolina wins in 1984 and 1988 -- a naked attempt to paint Obama into a corner as "the black candidate," unable to attract white voter support.
The former president's remarks infuriated African-American voters -- who make up more than half of the Democratic electorate in South Carolina -- and they responded by voting overwhelmingly for Obama.
Until the South Carolina primary, black voters were almost evenly divided between Obama and Clinton, with African-American women especially torn between voting for the nation's first woman president on the one hand and the country's first black president on the other.
Since the South Carolina primary, however, black voter support for Clinton has almost completely collapsed, with Clinton drawing less than ten percent of the black vote in every primary and caucus -- including a record-low six percent in West Virginia.
Not since the 1972 run -- abruptly ended by a would-be assassin -- of former Alabama Governor George Wallace, a one-time arch-segregationist, has a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination fared this badly among black voters.
Without Black Voter Support, No Democrat Can Win the White House in November
The cold political reality that Clinton has apparently chosen to ignore is the fact that the last Democratic presidential nominee to win a majority of white voters in the November election was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Ever since Johnson signed a host of civil rights legislation into law during his presidency -- most notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- the Democrats have seen a steady erosion of support among white voters, especially Southerners, to the Republicans. It is, therefore, imperative for the Democratic nominee to secure the strong support of African-American voters in order to win the November election.
I'm a native of New York City who's called the Green Mountain state of Vermont home since the summer of 1994. A former freelance journalist, I'm a fiercely independent freethinker who's highly skeptical of authority figures -- especially when they're on the wrong side of the issues I care about. But I'm not afraid to also call into question those with whom I would usually be "on the same page" if and when they, too, are on the wrong side of the issues I care about.
"The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal-clear: if any votes aren't counted, the will of the people is not realized and our democracy is diminished."
If Obama didnt run in Florida and Michigan, it makes no sense for Hillary to run and then complain her votes are not counted- there was no election in those strates. Her votes are only significant if paired against another candidate.
This steamroller will accept the vice presidential nomination. It is only a heartbeat away from the presidency. A Hillary vice president will throw a monkey wrench into every attempt by Obama to fix things. The Clintons are Washington old guard; Bill Clinton deepened and extended Reaganomics. He funded NAFTA and Plan Colombia. He refused the lifting of bans on gays in the military. He supported 3 strikes. He was very much hand in glove with the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development, or World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Along with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT), a multinational trade agreement, these economic arrangements represented what became known as the Bretton Woods system of postwar economic development, fully supported by Bill. He presided over the BCCI banking scandal (1991) -- BCCI was a British bank but did international business, including clandestine money-laundering for the CIA, DIA, DEA, the Israeli Mossad, Noriega, the Contras, and various terrorist organizations. It escaped regulation because of the state secrets involved. The Clinton Justice Dept. sat on its hands while the scandal unfolded.
Of course I realize that Hillary is not Bill, but birds of a feather fly together. She certainly fully supports "my husband" and has never uttered a whisper of repudiation for his nefarious activities. Surely Hillary in the White House would continue to work for those same masters.
by
Antonio (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 63 comments)
on Friday, May 23, 2008 at 2:51:21 PM
Hillary Caught in another lie - Listen to Keith Olbermann
Why did she say it? She is an intelligent calculated person that will do anything to win, including helping John McCain win, which would allow her to say, "I told you so. Elect me now."
The media tonight are being much too kind.
Hillary Clinton made the same statement about Robert Kennedy's assassination a few months ago, which further shows her apology was false. She did not know about Ted's tumor the last time she said it.
"The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy," she added, referring to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s recent diagnosis of a brain tumor. "I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever."
Keith Olbermann went through the different times she referred to Bobby Kennedy. He blasted her tonight, in my opinion, very much deserved, every word. Actually, I think Keith was still to nice in his word choices. Check out his site later for the video clip.
What is it about WE HAVE TO GET THE REPUBLICANS OUT does she not understand? If she keeps this up, McInsane will win & people will drop her like a hot potato.
The Clintons have been playing politics too long - it's getting to their heads.
by
Deborah Wells (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 44 comments)
on Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 7:00:38 PM
Incredible. Only hours after my article was posted, Hillary Clinton committed a cardinal political sin by citing the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as her reason for staying in the race through June.
After the media jumped all over that, Clinton's campaign then had the unmitigated gall to accuse Obama of taking her comments out of context.
Not only are the Clintonites telling a bald-faced lie -- Obama has said only that there was no place for those comments -- they're proving my article to be prophetic: Clinton, knowing that she cannot win the Democratic nomination, really IS out to screw Obama.
I've got a newsflash for Hillary: She and Bill will NEVER live in the White House again. They've had their eight years -- and eight is enough.
by
Skeeter Sanders (32 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 78 comments)
on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 12:54:09 AM
4 comments
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