Is the Obama hit squad out?

Hillary Clinton’s name will be placed in nomination at the DNC and she will receive votes. This is a pretty gutsy move by Barack Obama since he does not have the number of delegates needed for an outright win and Super Delegates can vote for whomever they want. One Democrat indicates that as many as half the members of the House may vote for Hillary:

Rep. Loretta Sanchez says she’s happy for the chance to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Democratic National Convention — and she predicts that as many as half of the Democrats in the House could join her. Politico

Barry has been having a rough month, one that has Hillary and Bill silently laughing. The Democrats are worried that they might have made the wrong choice in candidates and the nagging issue of Hillary supporters has them nervous. Has Obama sent out the hit squad to ensure that Clinton supporters are not able to vote at the convention?

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has broken her ankle and will skip next week’s Democratic National Convention.

Feinstein, who was one of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top supporters, was to have chaired California’s delegation to the convention in Denver. Breitbart

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U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Cleveland has suffered an aneurysm and is in a hospital.
~snip~
She was one of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s biggest boosters during the primaries and is a superdelegate at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Denver. Breitbart

Maybe the Obama hit squad is out ensuring that Hillary supporters are unable to attend the convention. These “accidents” sure appear to be Chicago style politics. Barry has bumped off his competition before so it is not out of the question that he would do it again.

Maybe this is what he meant when he stated that McCain does not know what he is up against…

Big Dog

DNC Has a Choice to Make

The DNC has been put in a terrible bind by the Democratic Politicians in Florida and Michigan who decided that they wanted to hold their primaries early. The DNC told these leaders that if they did so they would not be able to seat their delegates. The states moved their primaries and the candidates all agreed not to campaign in either state because of the DNC ruling. The DNC figured it could be heavy handed with its threats and that the states would back down. When the states did not back down the sanctions were imposed and it did not, at the time, seem like a big deal because Hillary Clinton was the candidate in waiting. Everyone assumed she would be the winner and that is why these states had early primaries, they wanted to have a say in the process.

The Republicans had a front runner in Rudy but took a more conservative approach and decided to strip half of the delegates from any state that went early. This approach has been seen as fair and has caused no real complaints on the Republican side. The Democrats, however, have a real mess on their hands. It did not start out this way. Everyone expected Hillary to win and she, along with the others, agreed that they would not participate in the states that went early and they were all fine with the decisions of the DNC. Then Hillary turned out not to be the winner. She was getting trounced by Obama and all of the sudden she decides that Florida and Michigan should count.

It always seemed to me that the DNC made the wrong decision from the start because they were so damned adamant about every vote counting in 2000 (even all their dead voters and people’s pets). The word disenfranchisement became part of the vocabulary of people who can’t spell DNC and it was the ugly Republicans who were keeping votes from counting. That all turned out to be a bunch of bunk but after all the caterwauling from the Democrats about every vote counting they would come up with something better than not counting every vote.

A lot of people in Florida and Michigan feel disenfranchised (now that they know what it means) and they are upset that their votes, so far do not count. The DNC feels that it has to at least give the appearance of being tough and having rules but they do not want to tick off people in two states they must have to win. What message will they send? Will they keep it so that no votes count and risk losing the states or will they allow some or all of the delegates to be seated thus telling people that while the DNC has rules it is OK to break them. Unless they stick to their original edict, one which all parties knew and agreed to, then they are waffling in favor of politics. How can we expect these people to run our country when they have no respect for rules, not even the ones they establish?

To the Democrats in Michigan and Florida, it was your party leaders who allowed this to happen. If you want to be mad be mad at them. Vote them out of office and replace them with people who can lead. As for being disenfranchised, that is what happens when you allow greed to top the rules. Your states were so greedy to make a difference that they broke the rules. Don’t worry, we in the Republican party would welcome you with open arms. We will count your votes. You Hillary supporters who think she got shafted, vote for our guy to show your party that you disapprove of their leadership. You Obama supporters who feel that he is getting screwed because he did not campaign in those states and therefore did not do well (to know him is to love him) vote for McCain just to show your party that you will not be taken for granted. We will not disenfranchise you like your party did.

The Democrats are working this out. They will bend the rules in some fashion to allow at least some of the delegates to be seated. This is contrary to the rules they established but they are trying to appease people. They are the party of appeasement and they have a candidate in the lead who will meet with unfriendly nations without precondition so that he can appease them. This is the DNC platform, appeasement and they are showing it with regard to Florida and Michigan.

They want to be everything to everybody and that is not leadership.

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Big Dog

What, no cut and run from Hillary?

A recent poll shows that a majority of Democrats think Hillary Clinton should stay in the race. The candidate herself, despite insurmountable odds, has indicated she will stay in until the end and that she plans to win. Hillary and her supporters want her to stay even though it looks impossible to win and even though she is broke and lending her campaign money.

These are the same people who want us to cut and run from Iraq. They are the folks who tell us that we cannot win in Iraq and that it is costing a lot of money (it is). The successes in Iraq are certainly more evident than in the Clinton campaign but nonetheless, they want us to cut and run from the war.

Why is it that people who advocate cutting and running from a war we are having success in advocate for Hillary to stay the course even though she cannot win without her party screwing Barack Obama over?

If these people applied the same standard to Hillary’s campaign as they do to the war then she would have been gone long ago. Not that I want to see her leave but one would think these people could at least be consistent.

The painful truth is that if the Democrats had a winner take all primary, Hillary would have locked up the nomination long ago. However, the Democrats chose to play games with their system and now they are in a pickle. There will be blood at their convention and a lot of people will have hurt feelings.

Who could ask for anything more?

Related items:
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Big Dog

Democrats are not Good at Following Rules

Democrats in Florida and Michigan decided to hold their primary elections earlier than allowed by the DNC. Both states were informed well in advance of the election that they would not be able to seat delegates if they went ahead with the early voting and the states agreed. Now the Democratic race is tight and the prospect of a brokered convention looms large and is giving the Democratic Party heartburn. Of course, after the voting took place many Democrats cried that people were disenfranchised. If this is the case then they were disenfranchised by their party which is amazing since Democrats claim only Republicans do that to voters.

Howard Dean has tried to be tough on this issue and stated that they would not change the rules that everyone agreed to. Hillary is whining about the delegates (she won the token elections) and Obama’s folks are not happy with the idea of seating delegates in contests he did not compete in. However, the DNC is faced with the possibility of bloodshed at its convention and it wants to do anything to avoid that so the party is looking at alternatives including having another election. Major issues include how much will it cost and who will pay for it? Regardless, the indications are that there will be no “do over” if a number of conditions are not met.

Then again, it looks like the DNC might be forced into about anything. Fox News reported on television today that Florida was considering not including the Democratic candidate on the November ballot if its delegates are not seated. The Democrats know that they need to win Florida in order to win the White House and they do not want an open ballot that gives all the electoral votes to Republican John McCain.

It would appear that not only does Florida not know how to follow rules but now it is showing that it knows how to play dirty in order to get its way. If they had not brought this on themselves I would agree with the tactic but they decided that they wanted to have an impact on the primary and held their election early despite knowing what it would cost. I think they should abide by those rules. If the Democrats decide to have another election then the party should pay for it. Forcing the tax payers to foot the bill is unfair and a waste of money.

Having said that, I like this play by Florida because now it tightens the screws on Howard Dean and the DNC. They will have to seriously consider what Florida wants because that state is in a position to blackmail the party. If the delegates are not seated then Florida will not put the Democrat on the ballot. If Michigan decides to take the same path then the Democrats will not win the presidency.

Regardless of what happens, the infighting and posturing are great to watch and, I for one, pray that this thing keeps going right up until Denver so that they can destroy their party from within much the same way that party is doing to this country.

Big Dog

Clinton Campaign is Off Balance

The pundits are puzzled and the Clinton campaign is shocked that they are now the underdog in the Democratic primary race. Double digit (huge margin) losses, lagging in the delegate count and short on cash is not the way the campaign planned on spending the latter part of February but that is the situation that faces the once unstoppable Hillary Clinton. In a nutshell, Hillary believed the hype and did not plan past the Super Tuesday primaries.

Hillary Clinton entered the race for the presidency over a year ago just after young upstart Barack Obama. Instantly, she was the front runner and she was believed to be the inevitable winner. Hillary had it all; name recognition, a vast wealthy donor base, early Super Delegate support, and the power of a former president in her camp. Certainly she would win the nomination early and then get prepared to take on the Republican machine.

That thinking might very well cost her the nomination because by buying into the inevitability, Clinton failed to plan past Super Tuesday. She counted on early wins to build her momentum going into the February primaries and figured on delivering a knock-out blow by capturing the nomination. Her opponent had other ideas and set up offices in early states as well as those whose primaries were after Super Tuesday. His victory in Iowa shocked the Clinton camp and with the prospect of a double digit loss in New Hampshire looming large, things did not look good. She righted the ship in NH but was unable to build on that victory as one tactical misstep after another beset he campaign.

Instead of planning ahead the Clintons stuck to the idea that they would win it all on the big day. When things started to go poorly, they decided to go on the attack. Her campaign played the gender card while her husband’s rhetoric got out of hand and led to accusations of racial overtones. This is trademark Clinton but this time they did not have the MSM in their pockets and they were stunned by the response. All was not looking well for the campaign and it became obvious that the nomination would not be decided on Super Tuesday. The problem by that time was money. While she was spending like a drunken sailer on shore leave in the early states, her opponent was seeking small donations from all over the country. Clintons big name supporters had donated the maximum amount and she did not have as strong a mechanism in place to bring in smaller donations, as did her opponent. Perhaps she was being overly cautious after the Norman Hsu incident

Clinton ended up lending her own money to the campaign, a disclosure made after the Super Tuesday primaries. If it had been made any earlier, she would have been toast. Since there was little time to campaign in states that followed and since she had failed to plan for active campaigning after the big day, she was overwhelmed by Mr. Obama who planned very early on. He has won eight states since Super Tuesday while she has looked ahead to Texas and Ohio as a firewall to prevent further losses. She is taking in more money now but it might be too little, too late.

Hillary Clinton bought into the hype that she would have a cakewalk to the nomination and now she is very close to watching the nominee from the sideline. She criticized the Bush administration for failing to have a long range plan in Iraq, and yet she demonstrated the same failure in her campaign. The question now becomes, do we want a person who spends carelessly and gets minimal results running this country? Do we want a president who fails to plan for the future? This has been a big criticism of George Bush with regard to the war so will Democrats apply that standard to Hillary and move toward Barack Obama?

I do not agree with Mr. Obama’s positions on anything and I believe his claim not to support the war is irrelevant because he was not in the Senate at the time so there is no way to tell how he would have voted (especially since the vote was viewed as needed to get weapon’s inspectors back in Iraq). And while he offers a message of hope and change his speeches are long on lilt and short on substance. He talks a good game without telling anyone what he will do or how he will do it.

Regardless, people like to listen to him and the one thing he has going is that he was forward looking enough to plan well past Super Tuesday. He never bought into the hype that Hillary was the inevitable victor and he planned to fight to the end. In the short term, that strategy has paid off and in the long run it might be the single biggest factor, should he become the nominee.

Should he become President, I don’t think he will be a good one but at least he has shown that he has better planning skills than someone who claims to have 35 years of experience.

Perhaps she should have spent more time planning for the primary and less time being fitted for the crown.

Related Story:
New York Times
WSJ
Time

Big Dog