Obama people are trying to get the media to pressure delegates to push Clinton to drop out tomorrow. Please don't fall for it.
There are one third of the primaries left. Obama has made much about Hillary staffers referring to 'important' states and he has gotton lots of applause lines on it. But 18 remaining states are not important?
Over 966 pledged delegates yet to be chosen.Hundreds more of superdelegates are uncommitteed. And Michigan and Florida may run new primaries with millions more voters, thereby raising the required-to-win delegate level to 2,2208. Or they may be seated by the convention credentials committee, according to the rules, in a decision to honor the previous vote.
The next few months offer many possibilities for change in the count. Hundreds of superdelegates have not weighed in. Rules allow "pledged" delegates to vote their choice on the first and following ballots at convention, regardless of the candidate they were pledged to at time of selection.
This rule allows for the delegates to react to changes in circumstances between primaries and nominee vote at convention.
There are a number of things happening in the next little while that may have an effect on votes.
The big push by some Obama supporters to threaten smear and primary campaigns against Clinton-supporting legislators may backfire.(like those expressed in diaries here;see tags) The push among Blacks to threaten the jobs and community support of Black legislators is particularly "very troubling" as Obama, himself, has said about other "sinister, racially motivated" perceived offenses.
There are threats of war in Gaza., Lebanon, Columbia and significant boiling spots in Central Asia, Africa and the Balkans. There are elections in Russia. There are Turkish incursions into Iraq.
People are just beginning to look at Obama's record of leadership in the Senate. He holds one leadership job there as Chairman of the subcommittee on European Affairs. He has not held a hearing, set an agenda, even set up the committee web site in his 14 months as chairman.
So what does his committee have jurisdiction over?
-NATO and its participation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Balkans and other hot spots
-terrorism as it relates to our joint efforts with European countries to "fight the global war on terror"
-nuclear proliferation (including loose nukes getting into the hands of terrorists)
-drug trafficking
- treaties including all treaties for security, international policing, mutual response to threats involving any European nation
-trade, imports, exports, balance of trade, tariffs, violations, anything else related to trade treaties with European nations
-US-European response to problems in other parts of the world.
-Global Warming treaties and our lack of participation
-US-European responsibility for threats from global epidemics,health and environmental threats, human rights and economic development efforts with developing nations
Almost any of the concerns Obama mentions in debates and speeches regarding our role in interaction with the rest of the world could be acted upon in his committee to burnish his credentials to be President and to show the American people how seriously he takes the responsibilities of leadership.
Ask the European leaders how much traffic they have had with Obama these last 14 months.
Has he been to their capitals, met with new leaders,attended major international conferences, gone to see them after Bush has done something particularly non- representative of much of the US in his conduct with Europeans?
Mayors and Governors have, when Bush refused to participate in our treaties and our interests. So have Attorneys General from states and regions. And many states are trying to deal directly with Europe on trade issues without federal help.
But not the one Chairman that taxpayers paid to be in charge in the Senate of doing the research, holding the hearings, monitoring the problems, generating the bones of legislative solutions, providing oversight over the Bush Administration,conducting investigations, collaborating with our partners in developing the process for solutions and being a voice for a co-equal branch of our government to our allies on very serious matters of National and International Security. During his time chairing this subcommittee, Joe Biden learned enough to become the chief foreign policy expert in the Senate. But, he thought the job was important and he worked at it.
Obama answered in the debate that ever since he got his leadership job he has been running for President. And so we all say,"Oh, Okay."
When somebody looks a little more deeply than "Okay", look at what is waiting to be found. Are any of his areas of jurisdiction important to us? Have they been over the last 14 months?
Should we forgive his lack of interest in these areas of national responsibility because he had personal political ambitions to be President during his service as Chair.
Other people ran for President while tending other responsibilities.
Biden traveled to war zones and conferences and chaired many hearings and committee meetings. Dodd lead committee work and participated in many hearings and led floor debates and legislative processes.
Clinton participated in many oversight hearings on various committees, presented significant floor speeches, managed legislation and ran several oversight hearings for her subcommittee (with tapes available on her committee web site!)
Hillary, along with John McCain, took a group of "no such thing as global warming" Republican senators on a flight around the world to show them the actual effects of global warming, an effort which resulted in a bipartisan consensus that it's real!
She also made time to attend the gathering in New Orleans last week of 5000 Black leaders meeting to discuss The State of the Black Union.( No other candidate showed interest or respect by showing up. This was AFTER the Lousiana primary.) Richardson ran New Mexico while campaigning for President.
From October 1, 2007 to March 1,2008, Senator Obama is recorded as showing up at the Senate on parts of 7 days. He was busy getting ready for the primaries,so that should not be used as a measure of his job dedication or his work ethic, right?
OK, so where was he in October and November and December of 2006? For 5 days he was in the Senate. Where was he the rest of the time and should we count that as evidence of his work ethic?
This is getting serious.
If Senator Obama wanted to run for president full time and make little effort to be chairman of his committee, why did he take the job and swear to do his duty to it?
Or, as soon as he and others noticed that he was not doing the job, why didn't he ask to be replaced,so that the job could get done?
For that matter, if he was going to use the campaign as excuse for not performing in the Senate leadership, why not let somebody else represent Illinois?
Word of this will eventually get out and may have an effect on voters.
Has anybody asked how a rookie senator ever got that committee chairmanship in the first place?
He had not been to Europe, studied the issues, and he knew next to nothing about the areas of jurisdiction. It looks from here like it might have been a show appointment for a man who would be president, arranged by some powerful backers to look like credentials. But they didn't actually make him do the work? If he had done the work, he could have learned a lot about things we need a president to know.
This story has huge implications for the country. As the people who support Obama learn about this story, some may feel Donna Brazille's buyers' remorse. The story is just beginning ,so maybe Obama's 86% positive press coverage may start to change. And that coverage is always reflected in the votes.
Also...there has been very little reporting yet on Obama's credentials on the State Senate part of his resume' and his early days of US Senate.
Most of his environmentalist supporters who haven't googled it, probably don't know his history with the coal and nuclear industries, for instance. Your print colleagues' archives in Chicago show a whole lot that the country should know about his history in Illinois, beyond his campaign's explanations.
He seems to favor work done by other people.
And most of his admirers cheering in arenas don't know how many of the applause lines and program promises he only started using after Edwards and Clinton had been using them for months and only after complaints that Obama had no substance began to get a little traction.
His New Orleans Recovery Plan that he "introduced" to fanfare in a big speech in New Orleans during LA primary week had actually first been given by Obama last August.
It had as its core five major plans taken directly from Hillary Clinton' s New Orleans Recovery Plan Speech delivered last June.
His new mortgage plan, college plan, energy plan all have major elements from earlier released Clinton plans.
When Edwards was still in debates, Obama often used lines he heard from Edwards as his own answers the next time.
In the debate last month, Obama told a story of his supporter who had a $30,000 foot amputation because insurance wouldn't pay for a $150 visit to the 'dietitian'. Now he mumbled and sort of trpiped over 'dietitian'. That was probably because the word was 'podiatrist' and the supporter was Mike Huckabee's and Huckabee had the story in his stump speech all year!
The New, Non-Freeper Blogger Bully
There is a lot of talk on progressive blogs about Hillary supporters being ganged up on and abused on some by Obama supporters with outrageous, often violent language and diary busting tactics to prevent and overwhelm any positive discussion of Clinton's potential presidency.
The curious paradox is that this aggressively intimidating I can do-anything-I-want-to-you-and-get-away-with-it, 'mob rule' behavior on blogs and even in some caucuses is "inspired" by the 'new politics of hope and unity'!
On DKos, for instance, most pro Hillary voices have been pushed off, troll-rated or silenced by anti-Hillary gangs who rove the site looking for positive comments about Hillary and questions raised about Obama. DKos used to be set apart from many blogs by the standards and rules that used to be actively applied there to insure civil discourse and rapid punishment of abusers. It significantly distinguished itself from some of the right wing sites where anything goes. In recent months those standards and rules seem to have been dropped and some of the former leaders and enforcers are now proponents or permissive of the current hate speech norms.
There is something causing this extensive, defensive bullying. Are some of them Republican plants hired to disrupt and attack any Hillary support so Obama can get nominated? If these bad actors really support Obama, then they almost seem that they need to hurry and get this over with before some great flaws are discovered, or something. What's wrong with this picture?
Time can only help the country if any of these issues matter.
And there are a host of stories to be investigated and told. Candy Crowley has won honors for excellence in journalism in the '80s and 90's. She is going through the hardships of the campaign trail. She needs more to say than the conventional wisdom story everybody has been spouting all day. She could just be cozy and warm in the hotel and let a tape roll to save the trouble.
Wolf and Jack see themselves as getting to the bottom of things and putting the real story out there. How much of what they say was not on the morning news on MSNBC?
Anderson sees himself as the hot shot investigative reporter? Then jump on it, AC. And then the expert journalists who discuss the issues of the day with the political consultants....how about something that isn't on everybody's copy of the talking points from them?
Can't we give all the women anchors some more background to better inform their chatter and interviews?
How about some excellence on the "Who IS this guy; what has he done; who does he owe?" story? Who better than the 'best political team on television'?
Also...
The Rezko federal corruption trial, much delayed, finally starts today. There will be much fresh reporting on Obama's ties to Rezko and people will become aware of the connection.
And, so , dear CNN,
So please do not fall for this move to force Hillary out and disenfranchise the voters in 18 states. Don't prematurely cancel this race and leave all of the stories left untold and all the future debates unheard and all of those magnificent ratings lost to Fox.
Don't let your anchors, reporters or talking heads get away with making 'she has to get out' the CNN mantra until it becomes conventional wisdom and the party leaders cave and try force Hillary to quit. When so much is changing right now and so much left to change.
If you folks are tired of the story or the travel, rotate jobs and get fresh vistas for a while. Dig up fresh exciting stories. Keep the ratings going. Win some awards for excellence in this century!
The numbers are not firm until the vote is taken on the convention floor, no matter what anybody says now! Them's the rules.