In accepting the Democratic nomination for the open Senate seat in Virginia, Mark Warner made it clear that he will not be in the running for Obama’s VP.
That’s unfortunate, as he would have been a great selection.
Hillary Clinton was at her best on Saturday in her endorsement of Obama. She had a job to do, and she did it well. In time, many of her supporters will back Obama as they begin to realize that McCain doesn’t share their beliefs.
That said, the Obama team should not, and probably will not, be fooled into putting her on the ticket. She will always have her own agenda, and the minute he offers her the second spot he will no longer have any leverage to control her or her husband.
The only scenario for putting her on the ticket would be some kind of political disaster over the summer that threatens his ability to win this on his own. Barring that, he has many good options for VP, so Clinton supporters should not hold their breath.
Bob Barr’s Libertarian campaign for president is already having an impact.
Bob Barr’s Libertarian presidential campaign is poised to play a serious role in this year’s elections, with early polls showing him taking away enough votes from Sen. John McCain to give Democrats a chance to win states that should be safely Republican.
Polls in Georgia and North Carolina over the last two weeks show Mr. Barr winning 8 percent and 6 percent respectively of the presidential vote, and in both cases helping keep likely Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama within striking distance of Mr. McCain in those states — which, taken together, account for more electoral votes than Florida, Pennsylvania or Ohio.
What a graceless exit. The networks are reporting the Hillary will suspend her campaign and endorse Obama on Friday.
This happened only after some of her strongest supporters implored her to concede. Charlie Rangel was upset and told her so. Her own advisors had to get eight Senators on the phone with her to tell her it was over.
It also appears that she will not be seriously considered for the VP slot, as the Obama team will require that Bill Clinton reveal all the donors to his library and his foundation as part of the vetting process. That is not going to happen, so the drama will soon come to an end.
After her shameful performance last night, she needs to muster a great speech on Friday when she endorses Obama in order to salvage her reputation.
The Clinton drama continues. Now everyone is speculating on what Hillary Clinton wants.
Those around her say that beyond the mundane negotiating points – a half hour in Denver, help raising money – there is a more personal, less tangible demand that she be accorded the respect she feels she earned in an historic bid that brought her closer to the nomination than any other second-place Democratic finisher.
This is so ridiculous. You don’t demand respect, you earn it. With her inability to be gracious in defeat last night, she has lost the respect of many Democrats, including some of her strongest supporters.
Hillary Clinton’s selfish speech last night is not going over well with some of her strongest supporters. Hilary Rosen hoped that Hillary Clinton would make a graceful exit last night, but she was disappointed, and she refuses to be a bargaining chip.
So, I am also so very disappointed at how she has handled this last week. I know she is exhausted and she had pledged to finish the primaries and let every state vote before any final action. But by the time she got on that podium last night, she knew it was over and that she had lost. I am sure I was not alone in privately urging the campaign over the last two weeks to use the moment to take her due, pass the torch and cement her grace. She had an opportunity to soar and unite. She had a chance to surprise her party and the nation after the day-long denials about expecting any concession and send Obama off on the campaign trail of the general election with the best possible platform. I wrote before how she had a chance for her “Al Gore moment.” And if she had done so, the whole country ALL would be talking today about how great she is and give her her due.
Instead she left her supporters empty, Obama’s angry and party leaders trashing her. She said she was stepping back to think about her options. She is waiting to figure out how she would “use” her 18 million voters.
But not my vote. I will enthusiastically support Barack Obama’s campaign. Because I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat.
I have to admit I was completely wrong about Hillary Clinton. I actually believed that when the time was right, she would do the right thing and try to unite the party to defeat John McCain in November. How could I be so foolish.
Her speech tonight was a disgrace. On this historic night, when the Democratic Party nominated the first African-American candidate in history, Hillary Clinton insisted that this was her night, not Obama’s night. She wouldn’t concede. She refused to rally her supporters around Barack Obama now that he has won the nomination.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a classy bone in her body. History will judge her harshly for this. Sure, at some point she will properly back Obama, but nobody should forget that she tried to make this historic night all about her.
I hope Obama doesn’t pick her as his running mate. It’s time to put the drama of the Clintons to an end.
It’s very early, and polls don’t matter much until both conventions are completed, but Kos offers an interesting analysis of the state of the electoral college based on polling averages from Pollster.com. So far, Obama looks pretty good. As I stated previously, I expect Obama to start taking a lead once Hillary endorses him and the party starts to come together.
Many in the media have been critical of Barack Obama, suggesting that he wasn’t tough enough to battle the GOP in the fall. They cited his unwillingness to attack Hillary Clinton as an example.
Obama, however, did not want to alienate Hillary’s supporters. He got tough at times, but he often held back, knowing he would need her supporters in the fall.
With McCain, Obama is not holding back. He’s still running a generally positive campaign, but he’s showing he’s more than willing to go toe-to-toe with McCain on foreign policy and other isuues.
The latest scuffles involves McCain’s mistatement shere he claimed that our troops in Iraq were down to pre-surge levels. That was incorrect. Troop levels are 20,000 above pre-surge levels. McCain, however, would not acknowledge that he mispoke.
McCain has been hammering Obama for not visiting Iraq, so Obama took this opportunity to go after McCain.
We all misspeak sometimes. I’ve done it myself. So on such a basic, factual error, you’d think that Senator McCain would just admit that he made a mistake and move on. But he couldn’t do that. Instead, he dug in. And the disturbing thing is that we’ve seen this movie before — a leader who pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course, who ignores the evidence. Now, just like George Bush, John McCain refused to admit that he made a mistake. And that’s exactly the kind of leadership that we’ve had through more than five years of fighting a war that should’ve never been authorized, and should’ve never been waged.
We don’t need more leaders who can’t admit they’ve made a mistake, even when it’s about something as fundamental as how many young Americans are serving in harm’s way.
This is great stuff. McCain was gaining traction with the issue of Obama’s visits to Iraq, but then he makes a fundamental mistatement about troop levels and is unwilling to correct himself. And then Obama hammers him. Get ready for more of the same.
It’s refreshing to see a Democratic nominee who isn’t afraid to speak his mind about Cuba. Most Democrats run scared on this issue, but they always lose this vote to the GOP. The views in the Cuban-American community are changing, particularly among the young who question the policies that have changed mothing in Cuba.
Obama engaged McCain on this issue by promising to ease travel restrictions and the ability to transfer money.
Obama said he would maintain the existing trade embargo to use as leverage for winning Democratic change in the Communist island nation. But he said he would immediately allow “unlimited family travel and remittances to the island.”
“It’s time to let Cuban-Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. It’s time to let Cuban-American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime,” he said.
This change will be very popular, even among older, more conservative Cuban-Americans who resent the tough travel restrictions. Obama has a tough road ahead of him in Florida, but this policy battle will help. Also, expect him to hit McCain hard later in the campaign on Social Security privatization.
This is all playing out as expected, but it doesn’t make Hillary Clinton any less annoying. Her speeches are a little more gracious than before, but her shameless claims that she is winning the popular vote, a calculation one gets to only by counting Michigan and giving Obama ZERO votes for Michigan, is just pathetic.
The press is hyperventilating, trying to explain how the party is trying not to offend her by proclaiming that the race is over. At some point the issue becomes how much she is willing to offend the rest of the party.
There’s no reason to be concerned. She’s finished. But I still wish she would just go away.
The fall campaign is underway. Getting Edwards to endorse has less to do with wrapping up the nomination and more to do with uniting the party for the general election.
Hillary Clinton won big tonight in West Virginia, demonstrating the Obama has plenty of work to do in that part of the country, but she knows it’s over. She argued her case again tonight, but she gave a very classy and gracious speech. She will play this out, at least through next week but probably through all the primaries, but it looks like she will try to make a classy exit.
Obama is already starting to pull ahead of McCain in the polls. If Hillary follows through, supports Obama, gives a classy convention speech and then works hard to unite the party, the Dems will be in great shape in the fall.
Classic quote from a voter in West Virginia:
Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.
“I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.
Tuesday will be an ugly day for Obama. Fortunately, it really doesn’t matter, but it will present yet another opportunity for Hillary to pontificate about race.
Vulgar and cynical. It’s amazing how low Hillary will go. She will go down as one of the most classless politicians in American history.
Obama is gearing up for the fall, as he goes after McCain regarding Hamas.
Obama said he was offended when McCain said last month, “It’s very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president.”
“I think it’s disappointing because John McCain always says, ‘Well, I’m not going to run that kind of politics,’ and then to engage in that kind of smear I think is unfortunate, particularly since my policy on Hamas has been no different than his,” Obama said.
“And so for him to toss out comments like that, I think, is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination.”
“Losing his bearings.” I love that line.
Fred Barnes makes a persuasive case.
I’m not a big fan of Rendell, but he would deliver Pennsylvania.
Obama starts the process of party unification in his speech. Hillary makes similar comments, though she took some shots as well.
We’ll see what happens after we get the final numbers in Indiana.
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