Author: Gerardo Orlando (Page 133 of 169)

That’s the description of the Clinton campaign from a brilliant post by Josh Marshall. Josh has been nuetral in the battle between Obama and Clinton, and his opinion carries significant weight in the liberal blogoshpere.

The Clinton camp’s super delegate gambit is not only audacious. Far more than that it is simply unrealistic. The super delegates who are gettable for Clinton by loyalty, conviction or coercion are already got. And enough’s been seen of both candidates for everyone to be more than acquainted with them. The ones who remain — who make up roughly half the total — are waiting to see who the winner is.

The truth is that there are over 1000 elected delegates remaining to be won. We really don’t know what’s going to happen yet. But if the trend continues and Obama ends the primary season with a clear majority of elected delegates, the idea that those remaining super delegates will break for the candidate who won fewer delegates, raised less money and is polling worse against the Republican nominee simply makes no sense. I’m not saying that’s how it will be. But if Clinton starts winning big primaries in Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania and other states, then the whole question is moot.

But this is like the unreality that seems more and more to suffuse the Clinton campaign. I don’t mean the candidate or her policies or the premises of her candidacy. I mean the cocoon of political ridiculousness that has increasingly permeated her campaign apparatus since early January.

You’ve seen my continuous barbs at Mark Penn, Clinton’s ‘chief strategist’. The last couple days have shown very clearly I think that Clinton could do nothing better for her campaign than to throttle this clown and let her get down to the business of making a case to voters for her candidacy. Perhaps good spin is an oxymoron, moral if not linguistic. But good spin is clever and forward-leaning pitches of actual realities, facts. The word in the sense we use it today actually came into being in the early 90s and to a great degree around the ’92 Clinton campaign, which had such mastery in its practice. But this Clinton campaign has been doing it in a weird parody mode. Not sharp ‘spins’ on favorable realities, but aggressive pitches of complete nonsense. So now you have Penn successively saying caucus wins don’t really count, small state wins don’t really count, medium state wins don’t really count, states with large African-American populations don’t really count, all building up to yesterday’s gem: “Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”

People are growing tired of the Clinton spin machine. That’s one of the reasons she is losing.

This is getting to be embarassing. I know she’s desperate, but she’s doing her best now to look desperate as well.

Here’s her latest “argument” against the Obama candidacy.

“Speeches don’t put food on the table,” Mrs. Clinton said at a General Motors plant in Warren, Ohio, on Thursday morning. “Speeches don’t fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night.”

“My opponent gives speeches,” she added. “I offer solutions.”

So the implication here is that Hillary has a stellar career of getting results. The problem is that she hasn’t accomplished much. She talks about 35 years of experience, and then tries to claim credit for the acomplishments of her husband’s administration.

Clinton and her supporters claim we must scrutinize Obama’s record, but scutiny of her record leads one to question her competence.

The two most important policy challenges faced by Hillary Clinton are health care and the Iraq War. Her attempt to reform health care in the 1990’s was an unmitigated distaster, plagued by secrecy, bad policy, and an inability to negotiate a good settlement. Bob Dole tried to get a compromise together that looks very similar to the health care plan she is offering now. She rejected it. Americans got nothing.

The health care debacle let to the 1994 Republican revolution, resulting in the loss of the House and the Senate by the Democrats. Thus, she created a policy disaster and a political disaster.

Then, in the Senate, she was faced with the decision of whether to support the Iraq War. Many Democrats and some Republicans had the judgement and the courage to stand up to the Bush administration and the rush to war. Hillary Clinton did not. The result was the biggest foreign policy disaster of our lifetimes.

Now, years later, she has the nerve to claim that she didn’t believe she was authorizing war, but instead was giving Bush the tools he needed to get the inspectors back in. This is pathetic. Everyone with a brain knew that Bush was heading toward war and that this resolution gave him the authority to go to war. Now we have our army stuck in a Muslim country trying to keep peace between groups of people who despise each other for religious and ethnic reasons. Thousands of lives have been lost and hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted.

The facts are simple. Hillary Clinton faced two huge challenges in her career, and she had two opportunities to demonstrate her judgement and competence. In both cases she failed miserably. The price paid by the country for her failures have been huge.

Obama should welcome a debate with Hillary about competence and the ability to deliver.