Clinton Diehards Want Convention Vote

No likes to lose political races, but sometimes you have to face the fact that your candidate lost. Apparently though, some Hillary Clinton loyalists don't get the idea that she lost.

Clinton Asks to Keep Campaign Donations

I saw this one coming a mile away.

This Is As Redundant As It Gets

Clinton Will Hold Call With Fundraisers to urge them to raise money for Obama.

Yeah, like he really needs the extra cash.

Obama Hires Former Clinton Campaign Manager

The New York Observer reports, with some crass language, that Patti Solis Doyle will be the chief of staff to Obama's eventual VP nominee. Doyle, once Hillary Clinton's campaign manager was fired shortly after the abomination of Super Tuesday and reportedly there is very bad blood as a result.

Now Obama has hired Doyle. Okay, first, this is not uncommon an occurance, Obama has certainly hired former Edwards staffers and probably other Clinton staffers, so it is not all that shocking.

Second, Clinton supporters are mad about Doyle going to Obama's camp. Aren't these the same supporters who wanted her fired in the first place? Clinton and her supporters showed no loyalty to Doyle, why should she show them loyalty.

The episode points out one thing to me, the Clinton camp and supporters are the most vindicitve and petty group in politics and I for one am glad that they will be removed from the prominent public stage.

Obama Asks SecDef About Military Suicide Rate

Thomas Sowell calls is "cocky ignorance." After noting a letter to the Secretary of Defense on the matter of military suicide rates, which have seen a spike of late, Sowell's notes that Obama's tone is more like a President than a U.S. Senator. But that really is of little consequence, most Senators have an overblown sense of their importance and perhaps Obama can be forgiven given is relatively new status as nominee.

But what Sowell calls him on cannot be forgiven:

All this sounds very plausible, as so many other things that Senator Obama says sound plausible. But, like so many of those other things, it will not stand up under scrutiny.

What has been widely publicized in the media is that suicides among American troops have gone up. What has not been widely publicized is that this higher suicide rate is still not as high as the suicide rate among demographically comparable civilians.

No one needs to be reminded that suicide is a serious matter, whether among soldiers or civilians. But the media have managed to create the impression that it is military service overseas which is the cause of suicides among American troops, when civilians of the same ages and other demographic characteristics are committing suicide at an even higher rate at home.

Moreover, this is not the first time that military service overseas has been portrayed in the media as the cause of problems that are worse in the civilian population at home.

Yes, suicides among military members are a tragic problem and one that needs to be addressed. But even as Sowell pointed out, it is not nearly as bad as it seems.

Let's take a look at a few reasons why the suicide rate is far lower in the military than in a comparable civilian population.

First, military members have a built in support network--the members of their unit. The unit personnel and their officers see them every day--particularly in a deployed situation. They eat, sleep, live and work together 24/7. When and if someone's mood shifts dramatically in a short period of time, people notice and if the mood becomes too dark, people notice and often help can be had in relatively short order. Conversely, a civilian who is not close to their co-workers (or works largely alone) and has few friends can be overlooked.

Second, the military works very had to ensure the health and well-being of its members. To a large extent the this is in the self-interest of the rest of the unit, but serves the individual well to boot.

Third, even if one is not religiously inclined, a military member can speak to a chaplain at anytime, for any reason and for the most part confidentially--unless that service members represents a danger to themselves or others. The chaplain is nearby, readily available and because they too are military, the chaplain can understand the pressures of military life far better than other resources.

Fourth, the military in the past several decades has learned that mental health awareness is necessary and programs are available.

Many of these features are not available or not as easily available, without cost, to a civilian. Thus, where a civilian may have to pay for mental health services, even a small co-pay, such services are free and easily found for the military.

Yes, the Pentagon should investigate the spike in suicides amoung military members, as it is a troubling trend. But Senator Obama does not need to push the panic button yet.

Even In Victory, Obama Is Overshadowed

I once heard a speech by Ward Connerly that recounted his memory with a former professor, I believe, where by the professor will believe that our country has overcome many racial problems when a black man is running for president on a national party ticket. Well that has happened with Obama apparently having enough delegates and superdelegates to put him over the top.

That should be the big story of the day, instead the news cycle is dominated by Hillary Clinton, her lame speech last night and the question of whether she will be VP.

To answer the question of her as VP, the answewr should be unequivocally no, although I understand teh Obama camp needs to look like they are considering the idea. The closest Hillary Clinton should come to an Obama White House is a State Dinner invitation and Obama certainly doesn't need Bill Clinton in the neighborhood either.

But instead of relishing the history of the moment, we are treated to the spotlight hogging of one Hillary Clinton, as if she, and not Obama, was the real story. I don't like Obama's politics and frankly I hope he loses in a landslide to McCain (the landslide won't happen but it would be nice). But the fact is that he is the first black man to lead a national party ticket and that, in and of itself is worthy and should be noted as more than just a simple footnote to a Hillary Clinton story.

The vanity of this couple is beyond belief. Her speech was calculated to give her the impression of victimhood and thus derserving of a spot on the ticket. If she wanted to make a case for a spot as VP, she should have conceded weeks ago and if not weeks ago, she should have dropped out formally yesterday. But she can't bring herself to do it, she can't admit that she lost to some upstart who five years ago was a state senator in Illinois. She lacks the humility to serve in the shadows so she makes a non-concession speech that still leaves lots of doubt as to the status of things.

So, Obama's history making achievement is swallowed by the vanity of a loser. Let's face it, Hillary Clinton and her campaign lost this race more than Obama won it. Yes, he ran a smart, aggressive campaign, but a year ago no one would have thought this possible. But Hillary Clinton lost this race, and she has plenty of people to blame, but the fault is ultimately hers.

Clinton to Withdraw?

The AP is reporting that Hillary Clinton will formally withdraw

Clinton Done and Dusted?

Ben Smith notes that the Clinton campaign is returning to NY and shedding staff.

Most of the staffers being shed are advance staffers, those to arrange events in local areas and past Tuesday there is not much use for them.

But one has to wonder if other staffers are being let go?

What Went Wrong for Hillary?

In a word--Hubris. But Michelle Cottle of The New Republic asked, anonymously, some of Hillary's advisors and others, the response were interesting.

Some of the operational problems relate to problems I have noted a number of times before with her fundraising operation: "There were a number of people who advised the Clinton campaign back in the spring of '07 that this could easily become a longer battle--a war of attrition. She needed to build a broad base of supporters beyond the virtually limitless number of Clinton friends and supporters who they counted on to not only max out, but to use their not inconsiderable Rolodexes to help her. That would have been fine if this thing had ended Super Tuesday. It didn't, and she ran out of money."

"There was financial mismanagement bordering on fraud. A candidate who raised more than a quarter of a billion dollars over the years had to pump in millions more of her own money to stave off bankruptcy."

"If you have no cash because you totally mismanaged the budget, you have no money to go up on TV; you're getting crushed on TV and in direct mail because Obama has so much more money--that is a huge problem. Who was looking at the money? The financial situation was a disaster.

The primary did become a war of attrition, a war that Hillary couldn't win.

See, Hillary's campaign was based upon the notion that she would storm through to the nomination by Feb. 12 at the latest. When that didn't happen, her operation was stuck, unable to pivot into crisis mode. This reminded me of a great line from Tom Hanks' From the Earth to the Moon miniseries on HBO. During the congressional investigation into the Apollo I fire, one Senator asked Col. Frank Borman (the astronaut that headed teh NASA inquiry, what went wrong. Borman replied that "it was a failure of imagination." NASA and the engineers who designed the Apollo spacecraft simply never imagined an accident such as one that occured.

In many respects, the quotes that Cottle collected demonstrate the same lack of imagination in the Clinton camp. While the scale of the Obama surge may have caught them by surprise, the fact that there was not even a basic plan somewhere to build from is ludicrous. No campaign for the presidence should be premised on the idea of inevitability. Other failings also point to a lack of imagination or even a simple lack of objectivity. There seemed to be no one around to say NO to Clinton and Mark Penn (who probably needs to should a fair amount of blame).

Ultimate every failure has to begin and end with Hillary Clinton. The old adage of "if you are dumb surround yourself with smart people and if you are smart, surround yourself with smart people that disagree with you." certainly didn't make to Hillary Clinton's desk. The failure of her campaign is merely her failure writ large.

Politics--Bill Clinton Style

Wow, I just realized that I had not written a post on the Presidential election in a week (nice break for me), but this one I just couldn't resist, Bill Clinton is doing more damage to his wife's campaign than any Obama or McCain operative could hope for.

It seems impossible, but if Hillary wins the nomination, Bill Clinton may be John McCain's best weapon.

Clinton Can't Manage a Campaign, Let Alone A Country

The Politico offers that analysis.

I have never been enamoured of the manner in which Clinton has managed her campaign. It is not simply the concept of inevitability that has done her in, but her reliance on staff so fiercely loyal to her, that they cannot operate effectively if they fawn over their boss. Add to that a reliance on consultants that seem wedded to their own prowess than providing good services to the campaign.

Every campaign has set backs and it is the manner in which the staff and the candidate respond to them that sets them apart. I don't think Obama is right for this country, but he has confronted all the gaffes with an organization that is far more disciplined than anything Hillary Clinton could hope to cobble together.

If you can't manage a campaign, how can you manage a country?

Mark Penn Getting the Axe

Jim Geraghty has a longish piece on why.

The whole Columbia trade deal irking the unions is a smoke screen. She just needed an excuse.

Funny thing is, she didn't really need one beyond the fact that his strategy sucked.

Obama Cash v. Clinton Cache

The Washington Post has a sort of "horse race" story about the clash between Obama's fundraising machine and Hillary Clinton's struggles to remain in the race:

Obama's immense cash flow -- he has raised more than $240 million to Clinton's $175 million -- allows him to compete as aggressively in the final primary contests as he did in the early days of the race. He is vastly outspending Clinton in Pennsylvania, with $3 million in television and radio ads, including a Spanish-language TV ad airing in the Philadelphia area, compared with an estimated $500,000 that Clinton is spending in the state, which will hold its primary on April 22.

In North Carolina, which will vote on May 6, the Obama campaign has opened 16 offices, including ones in smaller locales such as Hickory, Elizabeth City and Boone. Obama is spending $800,000 on the airwaves, and his team is making a strong push to register voters, with 22 training and local outreach sessions scheduled for yesterday alone.

In Indiana, which will also hold its primary on May 6, Obama has spent $1 million on television ads that have been airing for more than a week, and the campaign opened its 17th office there yesterday. Clinton has 12 offices in the state.

The Clinton team has not run a television ad in Indiana; it began running its first ad in North Carolina yesterday.

Obama's heavy investment in field offices, phone banks and other or ganizational efforts probably is where his financial edge will be most significant, said Michael Feldman, a former adviser to Al Gore who says he is neutral in the Democratic contest.

"I bet if you scanned the number of campaign field offices they have, in some harder-to-reach places, you'd see that every voter is being pursued vigorously," he said. "They've been able to put a lot of effort into chasing these voters."

Obama's ability to capitalize on a sustained wave of online support has enabled him to spend almost all of his time campaigning. Clinton has attended more than a dozen fundraisers since Jan. 1, and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, has appeared at more than 40, while Obama and his wife have attended fewer than 10 during that time.

Obama has problems, but raising money is not one of them.

I have said repeatedly that that Obama fundraising operation is something that will be studied and emulated in the future. But his reliance on small donors is what is making his fundraising prowess so amazing. His donors are not fatigued and are not tapped out because he raises money in such small amounts, but from so many people, that he makes the reliance on the big dollar donors of Hillary Clinton seem so cliched. Last month, for every dollar Clinton raised, Obama raised two and not from $2,300 donors.

My gut feeling is that while Hillary Clinton is leading in the polls in Pennsylvania, her victory-assuming she wins--will be much smaller than the current 6.6% spread that Clinton has over Obama. Furthermore, Obama is clearly closing the gap and in polls with larger sample sizes (and therefore a smaller margin of error), Obama is doing pretty well. His ground operation is going to cut into Clinton's cache and he could end up winning in PA.

If he wins in Pennsylvania, he will be in a commanding position to push Clinton out of the race and his supporters will be doing just that. Additionally, it will have proven that Obama can take a few punches and come back. It still would leave the Democratic party with perhaps the worst possible candidate in terms of experience, but he will have done something that a year ago, everyone assumed was impossible,--take on Clinton, Inc. and win.

From Inevitable to Underdog in five short months

Hillary Clinton has compared herself to Rocky. Man, has she no scruples.

We have known she has no sense of irony.

So She Claim the Need for National Health Care?

Well, I don't know the reason, but the Politico.com's Kenneth P. Vogel notes that Hillary Clinton's campaign is nearly $300,000 in arrears for health care coverage for her campaign staff. Of course, that is not even the biggest debt the campaign owes, that is reserved for Mark Penn's firm, to which Hillary owes $2.5 million or so.

I can live with a campaign not paying their (overpriced) pollster, I can't live with not paying the hundreds of small businesses and other non-political groups as the debts come due.

According to the records, Hillary has over 600 unpaid bills ranging from a few hundred dollars to several hundred thousand dollars before you even get to Penn's firm. From Vogel:

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small-business circles.

A pair of Ohio companies owed more than $25,000 by Clinton for staging events for her campaign are warning others in the tight-knit event production community — and anyone else who will listen — to get their cash upfront when doing business with her. Her campaign, say representatives of the two companies, has stopped returning phone calls and e-mails seeking payment of outstanding invoices. One even got no response from a certified letter.

Their cautionary tales, combined with published reports about similar difficulties faced by a New Hampshire landlord, an Iowa office cleaner and a New York caterer, highlight a less-obvious impact of Clinton’s inability to keep up with the staggering fundraising pace set by her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton's campaign did not respond to recent, specific questions about its transactions with vendors. But Clinton spokesman Jay Carson pointed on Saturday to an earlier statement the campaign issued to Politico, asserting: "The campaign pays its bills regularly and in the normal course of business, and pays all of its bills."

Just like with other businesses, it’s common for campaigns to carry unpaid bills from month to month, but in Clinton’s case, it also could serve a strategic purpose.

The New York senator’s presidential campaign ended February with $33 million in the bank, according to a report filed last week with the Federal Election Commission, but only $11 million of that can be spent on her battle with Obama.

The rest can be spent only in the general election, if she makes it that far, and must be returned if she doesn’t. If she had paid off the $8.7 million in unpaid bills she reported as debt and had not loaned her campaign $5 million, she would have been nearly $3 million in the red at the end of February.

So in reality, the Clinton Camp is nearly $14 million in the hole and hoping to make it past the convention. Not exactly a sound financial plan.

Tuzla Tarmac Girl Unleashes on Hillary

Remember that girl sleeping the Hillary Clinton 3 a.m. ad who turned out to be a lot older than the ad, and turned out to be an Obama supporter. Well that is chump change compared to this, from Gateway Pundit, the Tuzla tarmac girl is now a med student and upset (along with her countrymen) that Hillary is making John Kerry-esque claims of bravery under fire.

From the New York Post story:

"I was surprised when I heard this," Bicakcic said, referring to Clinton's assertion that she braved snipers upon landing, ducking and sprinting to military vehicles.

Other Bosnians said they had one of two reactions to Clinton's debunked action-hero account of her visit: laughter or anger.

"It's an exaggeration," said former acting President Ejup Ganic, who was present during Clinton's visit. "No one was firing. There were no shots fired."

Sema Markovic, 22, a student, said she has long respected Hillary as a strong leader but was angered by her remarks.

"It is an ugly thing for a politician to tell lies,' she said. "We had problems for years, and I don't like when someone lies about them. It makes us look bad."

Ms. Mrkovic, if it makes you look bad, imagine how it will make America looks to have such an unrepentant and uncreative liar in the White House.

"The Democratic race is heavily racialized, and is perhaps becoming more so."

Byron York proclaims that it is so based on polling and other data.

This is really not all that surprising to me. As teh Democratic nomination has dragged on, it becomes, easier and easier to base a campaign on simplistics.

There seems to be no chance Clinton can win more black votes against Obama, so her only hope is to encourage more whites to vote along racial lines. No one in the campaign would ever say such a thing — they certainly haven't to me — but what white voters do in Pennsylvania on April 22 will be a critical indicator of where Clinton's campaign is going. Will they vote like whites in Mississippi, New Jersey, and Ohio? And if she wins big in Pennsylvania, then what white voters do in Indiana and North Carolina will be another huge indicator.

If this indeed turns out to be the case, the Democrats race problem will only get worse. Will it cause a realignment? I am not sure, but it might.

Is Hillary broke?

That is the story in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Scoop du jour? Sneed hears major money problems in the Clinton camp may soon become a coroner knocking on her campaign door.

• To wit: Word is the cash feeding into Hillary Clinton's campaign coffers has not only slowed down in a big way, undisclosed campaign debts that have yet to be made public could signal the end and have insiders biting their nails.

• Translation: "It won't necessarily be politics which may force her out of the race," said a top Dem source. "There is no hanky panky going on, but Hillary needs to raise money to stay alive . . . and word is she may not be able to climb out of the money hole."

• The buckshot: "I think it's safe to say Hillary's not going to dip into her pocket again," the source added. "And if her employees start taking pay cuts while chasing the dream . . . it's usually the beginning of the body becoming totally cold."

Technically Hillary wouldn't be broke, she will have a lot of money put aside for the General Election that may not come.

As I have said here a number of times, her fundraising strategy was built on the premise that she would have the nomination wrapped up by Tsunami Tuesday. When that didn't happen, her fundraising operation didn't change tactics soon enough. Her reliance on big dollar donors for her meat and potatoes means that she doesn't have a nice, big steady stream of money rolling in via small donors, unlike Obama who could probably keep up his pace for months to come.

Clinton Says She ‘Misspoke’ About Dodging Sniper Fire - New York Times

I'm sorry, this explanation doesn't cut the mustard. If you call Bosnia Boston, that is misspeaking. If you call Tuzla, Tulsa-that is misspeaking.

Saying you dodged sniper fire when you didn't is not misspeaking--that is lying, there is not other word for it.

But if this picture, posted on the NY Times Website is accurate--if it was such a dangerous situation, why is Hillary Clinton bringing her daughter along?

Here is another little tidbit, I am pretty sure the Secret Service (you know those guys charged with protecting the President and his family) would have insisted on a least some body armor under that strange green coat Clinton is wearing. No evidence of such body armor.

The backpedaling is not even artful, it just reeks of an attempt to get something over on people and simply cries out Clintonism.

Hint to the Clinton camp, honesty--it is a lot easier to remember the truth.

Richardson a "Judas" for Endorsing Obama

James Carville and the Judas Comment:

James Carville, a political adviser to the Clintons, said this afternoon that he stood by his comment last Friday – Good Friday, to Christians – comparing Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico to Judas, even though a Clinton campaign aide said today that, if he were Mr. Carville, he would apologize for the remark.

“I was quoted accurately and in context, and I was glad to give the quote and I was glad I gave it,” Mr. Carville said. “I’m not apologizing, I’m not resigning, I’m not doing anything.”

For a change a political operative is not backtracking, I admire that, I think the statement is a little over the top.

However, Richardson is more than qualified to give an accurate assessment of working with Hllary Clinton and I think it is indicative of something substantive that he chose to endorse Obama.


Hat Tip:The Instapundit