Almost hard to believe

I recently made a vow to be pleasant and nice to Sen. Clinton… seeing as how her or Sen. Obama are going to be the Democratic nominee and I continue to pimp my post that we all get along and vote the ticket in November.

That vow does NOT cover her former chief strategist Mark Penn… whom I blame for the colossal clusterfuck her campaign has e devolved into.

Seems I’m not the only one…

“[I]n a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there[,] [a]s aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. . . . Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?"

Wow… I find it very hard to believe, but it appears that Clinton's chief strategist (whom she still owes millions of contractual dollars to), thought the Democratic primaries/caucuses were winner-take-all and not proportionally allocated… now correct me if I’m wrong, but almost every high school civics student now knows that Democrats, unlike republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all.

Penn didn’t know this.

Again… wow.

Rather than scuttle the original campaign calendar he had created and re-do it from scratch because he’s an over-rated putz, her campaign stayed the course and started to insist that big states were the only states that mattered in the campaign.

How’d that strategy work out for ya Ms. Clinton?

Oh wait, that’s right, we already know.

Not well… in fact, I would argue that that strategy, more than anything else, cost Clinton the nomination.

Put another way; Penn cost her the nomination.

Think about this; at this moment we are facing some of the most trying times in our history… and there is no such thing as sufficient experience to lead… that’s why I don’t count experience as a major factor in this election. We’re experiencing things we’ve never experienced or seen before, making it totally new for everyone.

Our next president, more than ever before, has to surround himself/herself with the best and brightest and, this is where Bush failed miserably at; LISTEN TO WHAT THEY HAVE TO SAY.

But in the meantime, I think it’s fair to lay a majority (99.8%) of the blame on Ms. Clinton’s collapse on the hiring of Mark Penn.

Make it stop

(HT to Daily Kos)

The Clinton campaign is getting a tad obsessive-compulsive as they have started an on-line petition aimed at, what else, forcing the DNC to recognize the delegations from Michigan and Florida or else promise to hold new elections.

Michael Kempner, a Clinton donor and PR exec, says; “For whatever reason, the DNC seems to be captive of the Obama campaign. The fact is that many, many long-time supporters both financially and non-financially, that have a very different point of view. We very much want to put them on notice.”

Kempner then went on to say that the campaign wants DNC chairman Howard Dean “to exercise some leadership.”

Wow… first, let’s start with the fact that the DNC is NOT captive to Sen. Obama but, in fact, is captive to its own rules… and in abiding by those aforementioned rules, Dean is showing some fantastic leadership.

Why in God’s name should the DNC help Florida and Michigan skirt the rules when 48 other states were able to abide by them? It doesn’t make sense… and as far as new elections go, Dean has said all along that he and the DNC would recognize new contests in both states, but both states passed on that option because, well, because they’re idiots…

None of this has anything at all to do with Dean or Obama but more-so two state’s (bipartisan) decisions to chuck the rules in the toilet and do what they wanted to do…rules be damned. And now, just like we teach children to do, the DNC is abiding by the rules… but Clinton and her people – knowing there is no math anywhere in this world or out of this world that will give her the needed number of delegates – are trying to browbeat HER OWN PARTY… AGAIN... to do what benefits them… rules be damned.

Explain to me again why she has any supporters left?

Hmmmmmm....

Interesting… more than four times in the last few weeks Sen. Clinton, in touting her foreign policy experience, recalled a trip to Bosnia where her, as First Lady, and her group landed “under sniper fire” and were told to “run to our cars.”

Earlier this week Clinton said she was “sleep-deprived” and “misspoke” when she said that she had landed under sniper fire during that 1996 trip to Bosnia…

Sleep-deprived? On multiple occasions?

And she wants us to elect her to answer the red phone at 3 o’clock in the morning?

Something doesn’t make sense here… oh right; her.

Please stop, you're making a spectacle of yourself

I don’t want to start trashing Sen. Clinton on this blog as I used to have profound respect for both her and her husband… respect though that I see being tarnished with some of her and President Clinton’s actions in the last few weeks.

Despite that, I've tried to hold my high ground and have refused to get into trash posting like I've seen on other blogs... but what she said this morning on NPR was simply too much for me to ignore.

First you should know that Ms. Clinton, along with Sens. Obama and Edwards,
signed a pledge not to campaign OR PARTICIPATE… and this morning she appeared on NPR:

Clinton: “Well that was his choice, remember. There was no rule or requirement that he take his name off the ballot, and his supporters ran a very aggressive campaign to try to get people to vote uncommitted. So it wasn't that he didn't participate at all. In fact there was a real effort to get people to vote uncommitted and I still won 55% of the vote.”

NPR: “You say that was a fair result even without Barack Obama's name on the ballot?”

Clinton: “Well that was his choice, Steve”

NPR: “Wasn't it the Democratic Party's choice that it would not be a result that be counted and most people took their names off the ballot?”

Clinton: “No...I think that the Democratic Party said that they would not under the circumstances count the votes. But we all had a choice as to whether or not to participate in what was going to be a primary. And most people took their names off the ballot, but I didn't. And I think that was a wise decision because Michigan is key to our electoral victory in the fall. And I think if there is to be any difference between my proposal that we count those votes and any other course of action, it should be a complete redo of the primary. Nothing else is fair and I feel strongly about that.”

So how is this NOT a direct and unequivocal violation of her pledge to the DNC and Democratic voters?

Simple… it IS a direct and unequivocal violation of her pledge to the DNC and Democratic voters… she’s just choosing to change the rules to benefit her, because she wants the presidency so badly that she’s under the impression that she’s not only destined for it, but that the office is somehow owed to her.

My favorite part of her interview was her saying; “…we all had a choice as to whether or not to participate in what was going to be a primary. And most people took their names off the ballot, but I didn't. […] And I think if there is to be any difference between my proposal that we count those votes and any other course of action, it should be a complete redo of the primary. Nothing else is fair and I feel strongly about that.”

Really Ms. Clinton? You’re going to bring up fairness? Seriously? Explain to me and everyone else in this country how the hell it would be “fair” to count two states who broke the rules… how would it be “fair” for you to go back on your pledge?

Fair...

Ms. Clinton’s actions of recent weeks reminds me that we haven’t seen someone like this – someone so intent on getting elected president that they would even throw their own parent under the bus to achieve it – since one Richard Milhouse Nixon ran for president… and we all know how well THAT one turned out.

And before I get flamed for making a parallel to Clinton and Nixon, keep in mind that I’m not comparing the person per se, but rather the lengths they would go to in order to achieve this specific goal…

Sen. Clinton is starting to make a spectacle of herself, and a fall from grace when you're as high-up as she is, can really hurt...

Isn't ignoring the public a republican trait?

Steve Grossman, a former DNC Chairman and Clinton supporter, as well as a super-delegate, sent out an open letter to Democratic Party Super Delegates this past weekend, and in it he urges these other super delegates to refuse “to be mindless tabulators of primaries and caucuses won, or popular votes amassed” because “our party concluded that we had demonstrated the ability to act as stewards of the national party--and of the national interest. By dint of our experience in the community and our public service, we were adjudged fit to fulfill a moral responsibility to act in the best interest of the country as we saw it…”

So let me understand this… he wants the super-delegates to IGNORE the will of the people and to IGNORE the primary results…

I wonder if he would think along these lines if his candidate was leading the delegate count?

I would vote no, but he would overrule it…

Please, make it stop

Just when you think Sen. Clinton can’t say anything that would surprise you, she says something that surprises you, but really shouldn’t considering who it is.

Sen. Clinton told a gaggle of reporters yesterday that she and the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain offer the experience to be ready to tackle any crisis facing the country under their watch, but Barack Obama simply offers more rhetoric, saying; “

I think you'll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say. […] He’s never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.”

I’m sorry… did she just endorse the presumptive republican nominee over her fellow Democrat??

This is part of the problem I have with Clinton, her claims that she is ready to be the commander-in-chief from “day one.” But what I want to know, and what a reporter asked her at press conferences, is if she can name a particular instance in her past that equips her to deal with a national security crisis.

When asked by the reporter yesterday she stalled and said “Well, I was involved in a lot of the decisions that were made.”

Huh? What decisions and when?

As a Senator?

As a First Lady?

When? How? What?

Come on, inquiring minds want to know Ms. Clinton… give us some examples... but she won’t… because she doesn’t seem to have any.

And then there’s this tasty tidbit from the Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp that happened earlier this week to an Ohio lawyer;

So last night around dinner time, the phone rings. It’s the Hillary campaign–official number, per the caller ID. The woman on the other end asks me if Hillary can count on my support Tuesday. I say I have not decided.

At the end of her spiel, she says, “And we haven’t heard anything that specific from Osama bin Laden.”

I say, “You did not just say that.” She replies, “I’m sorry . . . just a slip of the tongue.” She then thanks me for my time and encourages me to vote for Hillary on Tuesday.

Sad… sad and pathetic…

But really, what else should we be expecting from her campaign now?