The Clinton Narrative-Ben Smith's Blog

Ben Smith's Blog - Politico.com

Ben Smith writes about the rationale why Hillary continues to be covered as if she still has chance to be nominee, even though mathematically she does not. I would venture to guess their is a dark subconscious reason Hillary will stay in the race (well after all primaries have been decided in Obama's favor) and that reason is we have never had a presidential candidate with such a likelihood of being assassinated as we have in Barack Obama.

If a tragedy does befall Obama, Hillary will likely be this generation's Herbert Humphrey and loose to McCain in the fall. If Barack Obama lives to a ripe old age, then our generation will have what the 60's didn't: a charismatic leader that we are left with faults and all. With the on going adulation the media has been giving Obama, and repeatedly being compared to a Kennedy it is not entirely good for him to fulfill the presidential path of JFK or RFK. Both Kennedys presidential aspirations (achieved and potential) tends to be over hyped through the rose colored glasses of nostalgia in my opinion. Had JFK not been killed, he may very well have lost re-election, though probably not to Goldwater but an ideological middleground candidate. RFK would not have been able to carry all of the hopes, dreams and aspirations that the deaths of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. put on his shoulders, and would have been a tredmoundous let down.

Super Tuesday Aftermath

To the defenders of GOP's policy of splitting Michigan and Florida delegates, we won't see the benefits of either DNC or GOP reaction to states breaking party rules until 2012. If in 2011 every republican primary is moved a full year forward to catch a jump on the other states knowing the worst the RNC will do is halve their delegates, so be it, Chris Mathews and Brian Williams and Tim Russert and Faux News will still fawn over any state that flouts RNC directions. On the other hand if Dean shows his back bone and really will not seat the delegates from states that broke party rules then certainly no state would be willing cross the DNC 4 years later.
As far as the super delegates, there are over 800 of them! Seriously if you think that Hillary can win the nomination with the 160 she has today, sorry it just won't happen. Obama's 50 super delegates aren't going to win him the nomination either. The 600 super delegates that are waiting to see how the primaries result in a clear winner and/or looking to see who will poll better against McCain in the general election they will be the king makers. John Edwards and his 26 pledged delegates are looking pretty influential now that delegate results (sans super delegates) are nearly tied.

Finally, if Hillary can not raise any money from the grassroots simply because she is uninspiring then she certainly is the one that Howard Dean will have to coax out of running. I;m from NY and almost a tautology of elected officials here are for Hillary mostly because of fear that Obama isn't tough enough, too much of a peacenik to make a strong argument that he will be able to keep the country safe. President Bush certainly isn't lacking machismoism and bravado; He will never be considered a dovish politician and yet the country has certainly lost security through his bellicose foreign policy. On September 12th, 2001 there were 6 Billion inhabitants that could easily recognize who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. On September 12th, 2001 there were millions of muslim, arabic, and or middle eastern Americans that had already rejected religous fundamentalists of their old home countries and chose America over the culture of fake-martydom that Sayyid Qutb, and Osama Bin Laden promotes. On September 12th, 2001 we could say that the World Trade Center was the largest in muslim deaths of any single terrorist attack or single western Military attack. Alqueda began with the bombing of Kobar towers attacking fellow muslims and yet the U.S. continues to frame the problem with ourselves against all muslims and that the problem can be solved militarily. Sen. John McCain, President George W. Bush, and Sen. Hillary Clinton all suffer the same perspective in that the tool they have in the tool box is hammer (military), therefore every problem looks like a nail (a war).

Barack Obama was willing to stick his head out to be cut back in 2002, when he openly opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq despite it being massively popular. He supports the war in Afghanistan, therefore is far from a pacifist. He is the only plausible next-president that actually can and wants to make peace in the world.

Black voters tilt toward Clinton: study - 2008 Presidential Campaign Blog - Political Intelligence - Boston.com

Black voters tilt toward Clinton: study - 2008 Presidential Campaign Blog - Political Intelligence - Boston.com

I just watched this story on MSNBC's Tucker. Tucker Carlson commented that it is unusual that "blacks, who are the quite possible the most liberal voting block seem to be supporting the the most liberal the least, Edwards coming in at 45%, and supporting the most conservative candidate Hillary Clinton at 83%." Though I share Tucker's surprise that Barak Obama did not do better in the survey (with 75%) but he is taking a huge misstep confusing Democratic party loyalty with liberal beliefs on social issues since African-Americans and Caribbean-Americans socially are some the most socially conservative people in our country. It is only the GOP elite and the party's rank-and-file own bigotry that bars them from taking back the black vote (Republicans were until the 1964 Civil Rights Act the party of Lincoln and had the loyalty of African-Americans.)

As far as long-term partisan political strategy, I am thrilled with the fact that Republicans are either too dumb or too racist to take advantage of the innate commonality between African-Americans (and Latin-Americans to a lesser extent) and social conservatives.

Obama: the 2008 Howard Dean model

The Dean campaign around the same time in cycle in 2003 were attracting the same size crowd (though with less money raised) yet were able to use the grassroots for the free labor to control the crowds. Obama seeming to have even less planning than Dean's campaign could end up the same way as Howard Dean.

A little advice to Senator Barack Obama, please remember to take your loss in Iowa calmly and not to take it as an opportunity to pump up your supporters that just spent months in the cold to see you come in 3rd.

The point of the Dean-Obama comparison is that Obama has all the media buzz, like McCain before Dean, and Perot before McCain. Dean's campaign had state by state infrastructure which had ten thousands people at rallies in Vermont (for the kickoff), Austin, TX, Boston, MA as well as a huge rally in Bryant Park here in NYC. The Dean campaign had a more authentic grassroots creation, nearly every aspect of the campaign was directed by the supporters, while Obama's campaign seems to be overwhelmed at every step. Even Obama's blog is simply to be just running account of press releases.

The problem with both the Obama campaign and the Dean Campaign is that they need/ed to focus with just states the first 4 states. IA, NH, NV, & SC campaign staff has to be native to the state. The 3,000 orange capped out of staters that descended onto Iowa in the name of Dean for America, had more to do with his defeat than his scream/yelp.

Blacks are unemployed because there are too many broken 40 oz. bottles

Barak Obama speaking to 1199SEIU union staffers and excutive council members had a question posed to him by Kym Platt of askthisblackwoman.com asked the junior senator from Illinois "the African-American community suffer from a large unemployment problem, especially here in New York, what would your adminstration do to solve this problem?"

Barack Obama's response was to state

"that our government has failed them but also there seems to be too many broken 40 oz bottles in the streets."

Sen. Obama pivoted off the racial faux pas by pointing out that in Iowa the problem of unemployment leads to hopelessness as well and that they also turn to drinking. When he finally got around to answering the question he returned to an earlier answer about energy conservation and environmental concerns that would lead to "many new jobs for our young men and women." Obama, in my opinion, did not adequately dodge the racial issue that was couched in the question, nor did he answer the question in anything close to a straight forward manner.