You got to love the narrative

Lets see if I got it.

Hillary’s bad management, over paid staff and Obama's campaign strength has pressure her to loan the campaign 5M of “her” own money. The spin from her campaign is that they believes this shows her character, that she has now demonstrated to her supporters that she is committed to this race.

Well I head it all.

The media has not once question her judgment. Hillary's campaign is so strap for funds, that some senior staffers on her campaign also are voluntarily forgoing paychecks, but she spend thousands of dollars on a campaign victory party in Florida where you did not win any delegates. What’s up with that? Now I look in my mailbox and there is another Dear Priscilla email notifying me that the campaign exceeding their initial request of 3M by a 1M. Without missing a beat there is another request —the campaign ex out the $3 and inserts $6 in red — without once saying Thank You. Character for sure.

N.J. judge gives absentee voters do-over

TRENTON, N.J., Jan. 31 (UPI) -- New Jersey residents who have already voted by absentee ballot for candidates who dropped out should get another chance to vote, a judge ruled Thursday.

Six candidates listed on the ballot for next Tuesday's primary have taken themselves out of the running. They include former U.S. Sen. John Edwards, a Democrat, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, who both withdrew Wednesday.

Superior Court Judge Vincent Grasso ruled in favor of the Ocean County clerk, Carl Block, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported. Block acted on behalf of absentee voters who think they have been disenfranchised.

Grasso said people who want do-over votes must go to their county clerk's offices by 3 p.m. Monday.

Giuliani and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., were once so far ahead in New Jersey that few other candidates bothered to visit the state. By the time Giuliani ended his campaign, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had pulled even with him. Clinton continues to hold a lead over U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill, although it has shrunk.

Must See-TPMtv: Sunday Show Roundup

Counting Delegates: Hillary Wants Michigan and Florida Counted

"I don't need to go back and live in the White House. I've done that."-Hillary

The Clinton's are sure working hard to get the keysto the White House. More and more it looks like Obama is doing some major damage to the Clinton's campaign. The DNC's rules state that Michigan and Florida delegates will not be seated due to changing the primary date. All the Democratic candidates agreed, but Hillary now thinks otherwise. Lets see how the DCN plays with the Clinton's.




Hillary Clinton and Race and Youth: A Snapshot from South Carolina
Posted by Karen Tumuily, TIMES Swampland

One thing that has struck me in the day and a half I have spent with the Hillary Clinton campaign here in South Carolina is how white her audiences have been. This, as we have noted, is a state where half the Democratic electorate is African-American, and the Clintons' bond with that community is legendary. But at a stop yesterday at Anderson County Civic Center, I counted no more than 20 black faces in a crowd of around 800. And even Bill is not proving to be the draw you might imagine among African-Americans. My colleague Jay Newton-Small estimated there were about 25 African-Americans among the 200 people who attended a Bill Clinton appearance in Burnwell last night.

So I was particularly interested to see how she was received this morning at historically black Benedict College in Columbia. Barack Obama's name was never mentioned. However, the tone of the event was set by Stacey Jones, dean of science, who implored the students to "focus on our future, rather than acting on pure emotion." Clinton was also accompanied by former New York Mayor David Dinkins and New York Congressman Charlie Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rangel's is the most powerful chairmanship in Congress, Clinton told the audience of several hundred. "He didn't get there by leapfrogging. He got there by lots of hard work." Dinkins admonished: "Lofty rhetoric is nice, but ultimately, you have to govern."

This message of experience over excitement went over about as well as you might have expected it to with any college crowd, regardless of race. The applause was subdued, and came mostly from the older people who were there. ("Walking on eggshells," the man next to me whispered.) What may have been most telling of all, however, was the double edge of the line in her speech that drew the biggest applause:

"I don't need to go back and live in the White House. I've done that."

Robert, I'm sad too

Robert Reich's Blog
US 22nd Secretary of Labor, Clinton administration.

Bill Clinton's Old Politics

I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign. Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it’s not fair – indeed, it’s demeaning – for a former President to say things that are patently untrue (such as Obama’s anti-war position is a “fairy tale”) or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it. Meanwhile, the attack ads being run in South Carolina by the Clinton camp which quote Obama as saying Republicans had all the ideas under Reagan, is disingenuous. For years, Bill Clinton and many other leading Democrats have made precisely the same point – that starting in the Reagan administration, Republicans put forth a range of new ideas while the Democrats sat on their hands. Many of these ideas were wrong-headed and dangerous, such as supply-side economics. But for too long Democrats failed counter with new ideas of their own; they wrongly assumed that the old Democratic positions and visions would be enough. Clinton’s 1992 campaign – indeed, the entire “New Democratic” message of the 1990s – was premised on the importance of taking back the initiative from the Republicans and offering Americans a new set of ideas and principles. Now, sadly, we’re witnessing a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics.

Those Pesky Delegates

Clinton Now Looking Beyond S.C.
Focus on 4 Delegate-Rich States Is Considered Risky

By Anne E. Kornblut and Shailagh Murray

Washington Post Staff Writers

SALINAS, Calif., Jan. 22 -- The next Democratic presidential nominating contest will take place in South Carolina on Saturday, but Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has already turned her full attention to places such as this: delegate-rich pockets of states that will vote in a tidal wave of primaries two weeks from now.

Clinton has been focused on California, New York, New Jersey and Arkansas since her defeat in the Iowa caucuses earlier this month, betting that she can sweep states where her name recognition and popularity are strong.

The logic seems simple: She represents New York in the Senate, and New Jersey is next door; she was the first lady of Arkansas for a decade; and California will be the biggest prize when 22 states vote on Feb. 5. But in a system that awards delegates by congressional district, with some worth more than others, the calculation is far from straightforward, and Clinton backers fear that the setup could boost Sen. Barack Obama if he fares well in populous corners of key states......

.....The Obama campaign's heavy emphasis on grass-roots organizing, which served it so well in Iowa, has led it to target the six states that will hold caucuses rather than primaries on Feb. 5. These are typically lightly attended affairs, but they could deliver big returns if Obama can follow his Iowa model of identifying a pool of supporters, including nontraditional participants such as college students and independents, and methodically turning them out.

The big three in that category are Colorado, Kansas and Minnesota. But the campaign also is active in North Dakota, where Obama has three offices; Alaska, where he has two; and Idaho, where he has one. To help balance out Clinton's edge with Democratic Party faithful, Obama is seeking endorsements in all six of the caucus states and may be close to securing the nod of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, sources close to the campaign said. (The Clinton team counters that the Feb. 5 caucus states are relatively unimportant, accounting for just 12 percent of the delegates who will be awarded that day.)....

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Update: Whose Running Clinton's Campaign?

January 18, 2008 12:00PM




Bill Clinton, Stumping and Simmering
By PATRICK HEALY, New York Times
Jan 18, 2008

Hillary Rodham Clinton may be the spouse running for office, but it is more Bill Clinton who appears to be feeling the heat.

After weeks of complaining publicly about concerning participation in the state’s caucuses this Saturday. Mr. Clinton believed the question had seemed sympathetic to Mr. Obama’s stakes in the suit, Clinton campaign officials said.

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Bill Clinton gives heated response on voter disenfranchiseme
Jan 16, 2008

Bill Clinton angrily responses to questions regarding a lawsuit by Hillary backers that would disenfranchise casino workers in Las Vegas and prevent virtually all of them from participating in the caucus


Hum......this was Hillary's response 6 days ago
Reno Gazette-Journal reporter Anjeanette Damon on Jan. 12

Hillary Watch: Intentional Deception and Distortion

Hillary sends Nevada Voters negative Obama mailer.

(click images to enlarge)
Hillary use this negative mailer in New Hampshire before the primary.

Obama campaign transcribed his response"

want to be clear about what [my] Social Security plan is, because so many people rely on Social Security....

We don't have an immediate problem, we have a long-term problem. We've got 78 million baby boomers who are set to retire and so we've got more retirees, fewer [inaudible]. If we don't do anything, then by about 2040, the benefits will have declined to where you're getting about 75 cents out of every dollar you were promised on Social Security. That is a problem. It has to be solved...

Now there's one more way of solving the problem. And that is raising the cap on the payroll tax. Now what that means is, currently, you only pay Social Security on the first $97,000 of income. Now it turns out that here in Nevada, 97% of the people in Nevada make $97,000 a year or less. So essentially, everybody except 3% -- if this was a random sample of Nevada, there are only about 3% of you who make more than that, everybody else, you gotta pay payroll tax on 100% of your income.

Now, what I've said is that what we should do is we should adjust the cap, so that billionaires like Warren Buffett are paying more, because right now they're paying a fraction of 1% of their income to payroll tax. And my answer is, that's not fair. Why would we have the wealthiest Americans pay such a smaller percentage of the payroll tax when everyone else is
paying basically 100%?

So I propose raising the cap. We might exempt middle class folks for maybe $97,000 for up to $200,000; there might be some exemptions, but those people are making over $200, $250,000, they can afford to pay a little more on payroll tax. So this is what I propose, this is what Senator Clinton is calling a trillion-dollar tax cut on hard-working Americans.

Hat Hip: Talking Point Memo

Obama gets major labor endorsement

By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The head of the politically powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor said Tuesday that she is endorsing Barack Obama for president.

The endorsement by Maria Elena Durazo is a coup for Obama that could help the Illinois senator in his uphill struggle against Hillary Rodham Clinton to win substantial support among Latino voters in Southern California. Obama has won the backing of other Los Angeles-area Latino leaders, but this is probably his biggest such endorsement yet, given the broad reach of the county labor federation.

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The View: Hillary Clinton Pt.1

Hillary Clinton was asked:
What are the first three things you will do if or when you become President?

The View: Hillary Clinton Pt2

Hillary Clinton was asked:
Would you use extreme force to get information?

The View: Hillary Clinton Pt.3

Hillary Clinton was asked:
Will Male Leaders respect a Women President?