Clinton makes excuses for her failing campaign; McCain embraces an anti-Catholic extremist.
Hillary Clinton has gone there. She says she wishes it was an even playing field, and she suggests that her gender is a factor in her looming defeat. This, of course, is overly simplistic, wrong, and could be extraordinarily damaging to the party. Clinton's answer implies that racism is worse than sexism and could potentially lead to bitter feminists backing John McCain out of spite in November.
Hillary Clinton is not on the verge of losing the Democratic Nomination because she is a woman. As I've argued previously, her gender is a central reason—perhaps the only reason—why Clinton is still taken as a serious contender for the nomination. Other politicians—males all—have made the same mistakes Clinton has made this year, and met swift defeats at the ballot box.
Hillary Clinton is on the verge of losing the Democratic Nomination because she is a terrible candidate who has run a terrible campaign. Clinton's campaign over-spent in the lead up to the Iowa caucuses. The poor planning forced Clinton into loaning herself $5 million to compete on Super Tuesday. Clinton's campaign team decided to completely write off caucuses—and the delegates that could be obtained in them. Clinton herself thought that the nomination would be over on February 5th, consequently she allowed her campaign team to devise no strategy for states like Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin, and the list goes on.
Hillary Clinton, as a candidate, has been inadequate. Striking mixed messages is always disastrous for a candidate—ask John Kerry about that. Hillary Clinton's "kitchen sink" approach sounds scattered and desperate, not coherent and thoughtful; the "kitchen sink" approach" would still sound scattered and desperate if Hillary Clinton were a man.
Blaming gender is the easy way out. Ensuring that 3-5% of the Democratic Party remains bitter about the primary is a way to sabotage Obama's prospect's in November, and set herself up for a run in 2012. The reality is that the playing field was even between Senator Obama and Senator Clinton. Both candidates faced challenges because of who they are; and both had to run the perfect campaign to win.
If anyone is inclined to believe Hillary Clinton's assertion that the playing field slanted against her, and in favor of Senator Obama, I have a few observations. An extremist hate-monger said nice things about Obama from afar; Obama got asked a series of questions about the extremist hate-mongers views by Tim Russert. John McCain decided to appear on a stage with Pastor John Hagee, another extremist hate-monger—a fundamentalist Christian leader who is gleeful at the prospect of a war with Iran, claims that Jews brought about their own persecution, rails against Catholics in a bigoted way and all sorts of other extremist things. Catholics United asked McCain to denounce Hagee earlier this month, yet no one in the media has asked John McCain about his bigoted friend. Let's get this straight--Farrakhan says nice things about Obama from a thousand miles away and it's a media obsession for a couple days; McCain has Hagee stand behind him on a stage, and no one notices. Biased media, surely—biased against Senator Obama.
Here's a link to an AP Photo of Hagee and McCain together at a campaign event.