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Hillary Clinton is a much better former candidate for president than she was a candidate for president. 

While listening to last night’s speech, I was convinced for the first time that she really would make a good president, and she really does have strong leadership qualities.

I could not help but think that if she had campaigned for herself instead of campaigning against Obama, she could very well have ended up with the nomination.  Her campaign’s mean-spirited attacks against Obama were what brought her down.

But that’s all behind us.  Now she is campaigning as I thought she always should have:  She’s emphasizing the differences between the party platform by pointing out the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans, and attacking John McCain for his wrongheaded support of failed Bush policies, and she’s promoting the better plans that her party supports.

And to all those Hillary supporters who say they’d rather vote for McCain than Obama, I thought she nailed it with:

I want you — I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me, or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him?

Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids?

Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage?

Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

We need leaders once again who can tap into that special blend of American confidence and optimism that has enabled generations before us to meet our toughest challenges, leaders who can help us show ourselves and the world that with our ingenuity, creativity, and innovative spirit, there are no limits to what is possible in America.

…

We don’t have a moment to lose or a vote to spare. Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hangs in the balance.

…

That is our mission, Democrats. Let’s elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden for that future worthy of our great country.

She really delivered a great speech, and I am looking forward to hearing more from her during the next couple of months.

We have a presumptive nominee for the Democratic nomination for the office of President of the United States of America.  His name is Barack Obama. 

Most of us recognized him as the winner of the Democratic primary contest well over a month ago.  Last night he secured the number of delegates necessary to win the nomination. 

Or did he?  Clinton gave a speech last night but she did not recognize him as the winner and concede.  Instead we heard this:

Who will be ready to take back the White House and take charge as Commander-in-Chief and lead our country to better tomorrows?  People in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the territories, all had a chance to make your voices heard and on Election Day after Election Day, you came out in record numbers to cast your ballots.  Nearly eighteen million of you cast your votes for our campaign, carrying the popular vote with more votes than any primary candidate in history.  Even when the pundits and the naysayers proclaimed week after week that this race was over, you kept on voting.

Followed by a lot of “I,” “I,” “I… ” and finally:

This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight.

Hillary is STILL claiming that that she received more votes than any other primary candidate in history.  The only way she can make that claim is to count only the votes for her in Michigan and not give any of the “other” votes to Obama – a ridiculous assertion that basically says there were no Obama voters in Michigan – and to not count the caucus states’ votes, again… ridiculous.

Go here and you will see that Obama won the popular vote by any reasonable method of counting votes.  More importantly he won more delegates, and that’s what matters.

So why did Hillary spin her tired old yarn in last night’s speech?  I can think of only one reason:  To discredit the winner.

And about that “Who will be ready?” bullshit?  Not her!  She won’t be participating in the general election for president. 

Has anybody told her she lost?  Seriously.  You’ve got to wonder…

There were two other speeches last night.  Here’s what John McCain said in New Orleans:

Pundits and party elders have declared that Senator Obama will be my opponent.  He will be a formidable one. But I’m ready for the challenge and determined to run this race in a way that does credit to our campaign and to the proud, decent and patriotic people I ask to lead.

…

When Americans confront a catastrophe they have a right to expect basic competence from their government… Our disgraceful failure to do so here in New Orleans exposed the incompetence of government at all levels to meet even its most basic responsibilities.

The wrong change looks not to the future but to the past for solutions that have failed us before and will surely fail us again.  I have a few years on my opponent, so I am surprised that a young man has bought in to so many failed ideas. Like others before him, he seems to think government is the answer to every problem; that government should take our resources and make our decisions for us.  That type of change doesn’t trust Americans to know what is right or what is in their own best interests.  It’s the attitude of politicians who are sure of themselves but have little faith in the wisdom, decency and common sense of free people. That attitude created the unresponsive bureaucracies of big government in the first place.  And that’s not change we can believe in.

What?  Hey John!  Do you know what the government is?  It’s “We the People,” and we ARE the ones that have to find solutions to our problems.  We on the Left have chosen Obama as our candidate because we think he best represents OUR ideas for solving the many problems we face today.  When he is elected president, he will be making decisions based on what all Americans think is in their own best interests.  

Mr. McCain, you are being extremely cynical when you say your opponent has “bought in to so many failed ideas.”  You mentioned the “disgraceful” failure of the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.  The government failed because it wasn’t a government of the people headed by a president who represented the people.  It was a government who’s primary mission was to return favors by appointing cronies and giving away billions to the rich people that got him “elected.” 

And what about that twisted first sentence of the second paragraph above:  “The wrong change looks not to the future but to the past for solutions that have failed us before and will surely fail us again.”

Are you suggesting the president should not look to the past?  Are you crazy?  Whoever is elected president must surely look to the past to see what types of policies worked and what types of policies failed.    The successful policies of the past are good starting points fore developing new solutions for today’s problems.  The policies that worked in the past should not be ignored.

Now to the main event.  Obama’s victory speech.  If you missed it, go watch it or read it now. 

Here’s the part of it that I thought was a great response to McCain’s “government is not the answer” bullshit.

So it has been for every generation that faced down the greatest challenges and the most improbable odds to leave their children a world that’s better and kinder and more just.

And so it must be for us.

America, this is our moment.  This is our time, our time to turn the page on the policies of the past, our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face, our time to offer a new direction for this country that we love.

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long.  I face this challenge — I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations, but I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people.

He needs to keep making these types  of speeches to remind people that he really does represent something different from the status quo, and that it’s not just him that will turn things around, it’s us, and he will lead the way.

There’s a lot of work to do between now and November.  He will be hammered by the mean, nasty, hypocritical R’s.  There will be rough times in the next six months, but when he comes out of them, he needs to return to what he said tonight.  There will be plenty of opportunites to flesh out the details of his platform, and he’ll have to make convincing speeches and win some tough debates to show the Democrats have a better plan.  But now he now has the entire Democratic party behind him (Let’s hope Clinton makes a gracious exit soon… ) so he should be able to tap the best (dare I say elite?) minds of the party, and run an unbeatable campaign.

… and lost her mind.

I have friends who have expressed concern for Obama’s safety and worry about him getting assassinated.  Friends bringing it up in conversation is way different than Hillary bringing it up in a television interview. 

You’ve got to wonder what is going on in her head?  All of the candidates knew the party nomination rules when they entered the race.  They knew the race would be decided by delegate votes.  The candidate that was most effective campaigning for delegates now has an insurmountable lead.  No matter how she tries to spin the numbers, she’s still behind.

So why is she staying in the race?  She’s lagging behind waiting for an assassination?

Mr. Fish has another great comic about the race.  Go read it now.

Barack Hussein Obama is the Democratic candidate for the President of the United States of America.

Jonathan Schwarz thought about that and put up a post on This Modern World:

It’s September 12, 2001. You’re sitting in front of a TV, watching footage of the World Trade Center collapse over and over and over again.

All of a sudden, someone from seven years in the future walks out of a tiny temporal vortex, and tells you: George W. Bush is going to fuck this up so badly that in 2008, the United States of America will likely elect as president a black man whose middle name is Hussein and whose father was Muslim. Oh, and he also admits he’s used cocaine.

I think it would have been easier to convince me of the reality of time travel. “No, no, I believe you really are from the future. But the other stuff, that’s CRAZY.”

Of course Hillary Clinton hasn’t admitted to herself that she’s so far behind now that, even if she is granted her wish to have the “disputed” delegates from Florida and Michigan counted in her favor, she won’t be able to overcome her deficit in both pledged delegates and the popular vote in the remaining primaries.  Phil Singer, one of her own campaign spokesmen, estimates that even in a best-case scenario, she’d still be about 100 delegates behind. 

Clinton will fight on regardless.  She says she’s “staying in this race until there is a nominee,” and has decided to loan another $6,000,000 of her own money to her campaign fund.

So what are going to see from now until the nomination that’s already been decided is decided?  Garbage time.

Yes… Hillary is like a player in an NBA series that is already down three games and is eleven points behind with 14.8 seconds to go.  Intentional fouls are ugly things, but that’s what we’re going to have to watch for the next few weeks.  Obama will fend them off and shoot his free throws in the remaining contests.  If he misses a shot here and there, Hillary might close the gap a little bit, but she’s not going to win.

Hillary will probably continue to hack away at Obama and attempt to prove to the superdelegates that she, in spite of what we voters have decided, is the better candidate for president. 

She’s not the better candidate, but she could be a better opponent.  

All she has to do is look at the bigger picture.  She’s a Democrat and the real battle ahead is with the Republicans.  She could choose to focus her attacks on John McCain while she runs out the clock on her campaign.  She could explain why it would be terribly wrong to vote for a man that wants to appoint more Supreme Court justices like Roberts and Alito; that it’s a bad idea to vote for a man that doesn’t have a plan to end the war in Iraq; that voting for a man who wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent will lead to larger budget deficits and greater income inequality; and that voting for a man that thinks free markets will solve all are problems will not get us on the pat the universal healthcare.

We’ll soon find out how she chooses to play the game.

Mr. Fish illustrated the unnatural combination of politics and religion perfectly in this week’s comic featuring a caricature of Barack Obama.  Go read it now and then come back here.

Mr. Fish could make the same point with any of the candidates running for president.  All he’d have to do is replace Obama with McCain and add statements made by James Agee, or replace him with Clinton and mention her former pastor who was recently convicted of molesting a seven-year-old girl or her membership in The Fellowship.

All the candidates would be well advised to lay off each others’ ties to religious figures and religious organizations.  Counter attacks are too easy and, no matter how much the media chooses to focus on it, religion isn’t supposed to have anything to do with who we choose to be our president.  What’s supposed to matter is what the candidates themselves say and do.

The real story isn’t that these candidates are Christians and attend churches.  The real story is about how the media’s coverage is driven by race.

Read E. J. Dionne, Jr. today.

Read This Modern World today…

She would step aside.

On January 25th The New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential candidacy.  The paper acknowledged that both Clinton and Obama were excellent choices, but they went with Clinton because they thought she had a better “here and now” record.  But they also cautioned her:

As strongly as we back her candidacy, we urge Mrs. Clinton to take the lead in changing the tone of the campaign. It is not good for the country, the Democratic Party or for Mrs. Clinton, who is often tagged as divisive, in part because of bitter feeling about her husband’s administration and the so-called permanent campaign. (Indeed, Bill Clinton’s overheated comments are feeding those resentments, and could do long-term damage to her candidacy if he continues this way.)

Today The New York Times has had enough of Clinton’s destructive campaign:

It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.

That’s from the most widely read paper in the country, located in Clinton’s state – the same paper that endorsed her three months earlier.  They are now calling for an end to the fight that has dragged her and her opponent into the gutter, and made both candidates appear less electable.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the Times put up an interactive tool on its front page that illustrates just how unlikely it is, given the mathematics of the remaining contests, for Clinton to win the nomination.  If she does well and wins 50% of the remaining delegates, she would need 75% of the remaining super delegates to capture the nomination:  75%!

What would happen if that’s how the votes go for pledged delegates and somehow, someway the superdelegates were to go against the will of the people who participated in the state caucuses and primaries and voted to give the runner-up the nomination?  It would be 1968 all over again – A complete meltdown of the party.  They have to know that.

If Clinton cannot recognize the damage she’s doing and do the right thing by stepping aside, then she is not fit to lead this country in a new direction. 

As Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer put it so well in their excellent pamphlet, The True Patriot:

“America deserves leaders who insist that politics isn’t about the promotion and protection of self-interest, it should be about promoting the interest of all Americans.”

and…

“America deserves leaders who help us understand one another, not drive us apart.”

It’s time for the Democrats to accept that the people have chosen Obama, and that there is a long difficult battle ahead against the Republicans and their not-so-nice, but extremely well funded proxy organizations.  Democrats need to unite behind their candidate now and organize a campaign to win the presidency so that they can begin to rebuild our country for all Americans and repair our image abroad.  By doing so, our country will regain its stature as a beacon of liberty and leader of the free world.

We’ve got a lot of work to do.  Let’s get started.

On the campaign trail in Pennysylvania yesterday, Obama said:  “Either Democrat would be better than John McCain, and all three of us would be better than George Bush.”

Clinton, now in perpetual attack mode, addressed her supporters with this response:  “We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain.”

Cheer on?

Bush will in all likelihood be tagged with “Worst President Ever,” so saying McCain would be better than him is hardly a cheer, it’s more like a backhanded compliment. Clinton had to recognize it as such but she’s desperate, so she’ll take anything Obama says and twist it around to suit her purposes.

Since becoming the nominee, McCain has learned to campaign like a true Republican – with the expected rigt-wing red baiting.  You can waste your time reading his remarks in the story link, or you can read a good opinion piece about right-wing red baiting here.

Wednesday night’s debate between Clinton and Obama was one big media blunder.  Moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos chose to focus on missteps made by both candidates in the previous three weeks instead of on the issues affecting average voters.

I am pretty sure that most people don’t really care to hear Obama explain for the hundredth time why he doesn’t routinely wear a flag lapel pin, yet there he was explaining it again.  The question was presented via video from a Pennsylvania voter.  As I watched, I was thinking that anyone who thinks someone can’t be a true patriot because he doesn’t wear a flag pin should not be allowed to vote.  I wanted to take away her voter registration card and burn it.

Sniper fire in Bosnia?  Strange story, but old news.  There she was explaining he memory problem again.

Can we discuss something that matters now?

Nope.  The question that followed the lapel pin question was another question about who you know and whether or not you should know them or associate with them.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, if you get the nomination, you’ll have to — (applause) — (inaudible).

I want to give Senator Clinton a chance to respond, but first a follow-up on this issue, the general theme of patriotism in your relationships. A gentleman named William Ayers, he was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that. And in fact, on 9/11 he was quoted in The New York Times saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough.”

An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won’t be a problem?

I watched Stephanopoulos ask that question and immediately thought he was a mindless jerk.  In what should be a serious debate, there he was pandering to the worst instincts of the American electorate:  we must find a way to tear somebody down now matter how lame the connection.  Anyone who knows about politics, and I’m sure Stephanopoulos knows a lot, realizes that politicians attract people with power and money, and some of those people might have questionable backgrounds and motives.  It doesn’t mean that because a politician meets them and speaks with them the politician is sympathetic to their cause or sanctions everything they’ve done in the past.  Anyway, here’s Obama’s answer:

SEN. OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about.

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.

The fact is, is that I’m also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions.

Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn’s statements? Because I certainly don’t agree with those either.

So this kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow — somehow their ideas could be attributed to me — I think the American people are smarter than that. They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn’t.

Excellent response.  Now, can we move on to a topic that matters?  The economy?  Iraq?  Healthcare?  Taxes? Inequality?  Anything of substance?

Nope… Clinton cant’ leave well enough alone.  She’s “a fighter” so she has to join sides with media idiots (mediots?) and the Republicans.  Here’s her jab at Obama:

SEN. CLINTON: Well, I think that is a fair general statement, but I also believe that Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Foundation, which was a paid directorship position.

And if I’m not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York, and I would hope to every American, because they were published on 9/11 and he said that he was just sorry they hadn’t done more. And what they did was set bombs and in some instances people died. So it is — you know, I think it is, again, an issue that people will be asking about. And I have no doubt — I know Senator Obama’s a good man and I respect him greatly but I think that this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising.

And if I may say so Hillary, YOU just raised it.  Perhaps you really are just a sparring partner who is there only to help toughen up Obama for the race against the meanest, nastiest, deceitful political party on earth.  For that we thank you, but now we’ve really had enough already.

Of course Obama had to show her that he can throw a counter punch when necessary:

SENATOR OBAMA: I’m going to have to respond to this just really quickly, but by Senator Clinton’s own vetting standards, I don’t think she would make it, since President Clinton pardoned or commuted the sentences of two members of the Weather Underground, which I think is a slightly more significant act than me –

AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Applauds.)

MR. GIBSON: Please.

SENATOR OBAMA: — than me serving on a board with somebody for actions that he did 40 years ago.

Ouch!

Nice round senators.  I hope that when you go back and review the tapes, you recognize what you were doing was knocking each other down.  That’s great if you want McCain to be our next president.  Personally, I don’t.

I know you guys are fighting each other for a shot at the oval office, but if you continue punching each other out like this for the next four months, you’re both going to look battered and beaten and neither one of you will be able to defeat McCain.

You should use these debates to explain the differences in your proposed policies, but you should also be working together in a united front against Republicans and explain how their policies are destroying our nation.  Ultimately, they are the ones you must defeat.

So how about a truce?  Can’t you both get your teams together and agree to stop the personal attacks against each other?  Can you see that your proxies get the message too so that we don’t have another repulsive episode like the one a couple weeks ago when someone in Clinton’s camp said Obama wasn’t electable because he was a LIBERAL.

Enough!  You are both on the same side.  The goal is to defeat McCain and put Democrat in the oval office.  Please don’t lose sight of that.  If you do, neither one of you will win and all of America will lose.  (Well… except for the extremely wealthy 5% of Americans that is.)

Yes, using the “L” Word as an epithet is back in style, and not only by those you would expect to use it.  The Washington Post reports:

But as Obama heads into the final presidential primaries, Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have already started to brand him a standard-order left-winger, “a down-the-line liberal,” as McCain strategist Charles R. Black Jr. put it, in a long line of Democratic White House hopefuls.
 
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign has also started slapping the L-word on Obama, warning that his appeal among moderate voters will diminish as they become more aware of liberal positions he took in the past, such as calling for single-payer health care and an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba. “The evidence is that the more [voters] have been learning about him, the more his coalition has been shrinking,” Clinton strategist Mark Penn said.

I would expect that tired old attack from McCain’s camp, but from Hillary?  From a fellow liberal Democrat?

Yes, her campaign used it in the same way that Republicans have been using it since back during the Bush Sr. campaign when Dukakis was branded by The Right as a “Liberal.”  They used the label as an insult, and now the Clinton campaign is doing the same thing against another Democrat. 

The attack is both unconscionable and ridiculous.  Clinton attacks Obama from the Left for not being as liberal as she is on health care and then, when things get tough, she does the GOP’s dirty work for them and attacks him from the Right for running on a liberal platform.

Dukakis didn’t respond to the “L” Word attack very well, and his weak response, among other things, cost him the election.

Obama has responded not by embracing the term, like Dukakis should have done.  He could have said what Krugman says in his latest book:

I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty.  I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law.  That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.

Instead Obama says the labels “Liberal” and “Conservative” have lost their meaning and are outdated, and he has a point.  The traditional meanings of the words have been turned upside down.  Again, quoting Krugman:

One of the seeming paradoxes of America in the early twenty-first century is that those of us who call ourselves liberal are, in an important sense, conservative, while those who call themselves conservative are for the most part deeply radical.  Liberals want to restore the middle-class society I grew up in; those who call themselves conservative want to take us back to the Gilded Age, undoing a century of history.  Liberals defend long-standing institutions like Social Security and Medicare; those who call themselves conservative want to privatize or undermine those institutions.  Liberals want to honor our democratic principles and the rule of law; those who call themselves conservative want the president to have dictatorial powers and have applauded the Bush administration as it imprisons people without charges and subjects them to torture.

Clinton’s labeling of Obama as “liberal” today makes her look like a bratty kid in a playground spat.  It’s almost as if she was hoping to catch him off guard and make him look ridiculous by getting him to respond with the equivalent of, “I know you are but what am I?”  But it is she who looks ridiculous.

This episode of the way-too-long campaign has lowered my opinion of her to a level where I would find it difficult to actively support her should she somehow win the nomination. Like I said before, it’s unconscionable and, in the end, it should remove any chance of her winning the nomination.