--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > [ Compare and contrast Hillary's reaction to having > been soundly trounced by Obama to Judy Stein's con- > tinuing denials that she slandered Mel Gibson and > his movie without ever having seen it. Two peas in > a pod, and with the same amount of credibility. > Emphasis below (**) is mine, because these state- > ments really deserve to be emphasized; comments in > brackets [] are mine as well, because those lines > need to be commented on. ] > > Obama's first test: Handling Hillary > Roger Simon > Wed Jun 4, 12:14 AM ET <snip> > **For someone giving indications she would like to be Obama's > running mate, Clinton was surprisingly ungracious. In fact, > if you had just awakened from a (blissful) 17-month sleep, > you would have thought she had won.**
First, it's not at all clear that she's given any such indications. Her campaign has denied it. And the Obama campaign has excellent motivation for putting out the story that she has. Second, what was *astonishingly* ungracious was for Obama to arrange for his superdelegates to put him over the top yesterday, instead of waiting a couple of days to make his victory speech. Last night *should* have been Clinton's exclusively, and it would have done him no harm whatsoever to let her have it. But he deliberately stepped on it. His words of glowing praise for her in his victory speech ring exceedingly hollow in the context of such blatant, deliberate disrespect. > "Because of you, we won together the swing states necessary > to get to 270 electoral votes," she told the crowd in New > York City. "I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted > for me to be respected, to be heard and no longer to be > invisible." > > But her fighting words only increased the need for Obama to > show that he can be strong, tough and in charge. Clinton's > unwillingness to recognize Obama as the victor only increased > the need for Obama to act like a president and not like a > doormat. And denying her a vice presidential slot may be a > way of doing that. This is what I alluded to above, Obama'ss motivation for circulating the very possibly false story that she had expressed a desire for the VP spot. Why does he believe his delegate-count victory is threatened by her lack of acknowledgment? If anything makes him look weak and insecure, it's the entirely unnecessary chest-beating. He isn't acting presidential, he's acting like somebody who's afraid people will think he's a doormat. <snip> > Another Obama adviser, who asked not to be identified, said > that he was not worried that Clinton supporters would stay > angry. > > [ I would add, *of course* some of them will stay angry. > As with Judy Stein, their *nature* is to be angry and stay > angry. Why is that relevant to anything but their desire > to poison their own minds and bodies and as much of the > environment around them as possible? ] <snicker> This is coming from a person who was so angry at the United States that he left the country for good and delivers himself repeatedly of tirades against it and its inhabitants. The notion that Hillary's supporters shouldn't stay angry when what has *made* them angry hasn't changed is strange indeed. By the same token, Barry should be dumping on those who are still angry at Bush for stealing two elections and using them to bring the country to the brink of disaster. <snip> > [ And, lest we forget, Hillary promised to campaign strongly > for Obama if he won the nomination. My guess is that if she > said the same thing today, she'd play Judylike word games > and say, "I will campaign for him as soon as *I* admit that > he won the nomination. He won't have "won" the nomination until a majority of delegates cast their votes for him at the convention in August. At this point, he's still only the *presumptive* nominee. Delegates may change their minds at any time. Hillary is still deciding what she'll do from now until then. Depending on how you count, she either has almost as much of the popular vote as Obama, or more of it; and numerous analyses of the demographics appear to show that she would have a better shot at an electoral-vote majority in the general. She may decide to try to make the case to Obama's superdelegates, based on these facts, that they should switch their support to her, and she has every right to do so. This has been one of the closest primary races, if not *the* closest, in history. There was no landslide for Obama, no overwhelming mandate, only a numerical edge in delegates; and most people agree that the current method for awarding delegates is badly broken. So that's another part of her case: the mechanics of the process that gave Obama the numerical delegate edge are shaky and by no means fully representative of the will of the people. <snip> > [ Exactly. Ignore her silly ass, as if she were no longer > relevant. She IS no longer relevant. The media will attempt > to still make her relevant, but as the author says so well, > she's history. She is as relevant to the rest of the campaign > as another media darling, Britney Spears. And as popular. ] Note that it isn't Hillary who is being so cavalierly dismissed as irrelevant here, it's more than 18 million people, half the Democratic Party. Such an attitude is hardly conducive to the "party unity" Obama claims to want. <snip> > "Change is a foreign policy that doesn't begin and end with a > war that should've never been authorized and never been waged," > Obama said. He used that argument against Clinton, it worked, > and now he is going to use it against McCain again and again. > > [ And people like Judy will continue to claim that Hillary's > vote for the war was somehow "different" than McCain's. ] Of course, I never made that claim. I never heard anybody make it. I'm not sure what it even means. (Not to mention, of course, that a vote for the AUMF was not a "vote for the war," as I *have* repeatedly pointed out. Plus which, Obama's and Hillary's votes in the Senate concerning funding and other war-related issues have been virtually identical; and Obama himself has said that he doesn't know how he would have voted on the AUMF had he been in the Senate at the time.) Barry might also want to consider whether John Kerry's (or John Edwards's) vote for the AUMF was somehow different from Hillary's. Barry's appallingly ignorant of the issues, so of course he simply swallows Simon's column whole. <snip> > [ And that is the reason she failed, and should be relegated > to the footnotes of history. Hillary Clinton does not have > the *ability* to soar, to inspire. She never has, and she > never will. And her strident supporters like Judy Stein > don't understand this because *they* don't have the ability > to inspire, either. All they can do is attack. ] (Hitler, I understand, had the ability to inspire. So did Mao, according to Curtis. And MMY, of course.) Well, it depends on what inspires you. Some people are inspired by "soaring rhetoric," others are inspired by concrete proposals, wonkish command of the issues, and a fighting spirit. Generally speaking, it's those who have made and delivered on the latter who are viewed as our most successful presidents, while the rhetoreticians' inspiring glow tends to fade out over time, and they're ultimately seen as empty suits. Sometimes it can even be seen from the start who is an empty suit and who has real substance.
