A Necessary Follow-Up
A couple of weeks a ago I commented on the Ann Rice endorsement of Hillary Clinton by joking that the important question now was who Stephen King would endorse.
Well, he just endorsed Obama.
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 22 Jan 2008 8323 Comments
All Tears, All the Time
In a New York Times article about British chefs who are concerned about the way the animals they use to make meals are raised, we encounter the following sentence:
Like Hillary Clinton, his eyes welled up on television last week — in his case, while killing unwanted birds in the factory unit.
It’s official, when someone tears up a bit any news story about it must mention the Clinton tears. Soon people won’t say crying. It will be just known as pulling a Hillary or Hillarying. You heard it here first folks.
Our Lovely Press FriesWithThat 17 Jan 2008 5467 Comments
Karl Rove Rears His Ugly Little Head
The title of Karl Rove’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal is ‘Why Hillary Won’, but it soon becomes obvious that he is not at all interested in giving an honest assessment of the motives for Hillary’s victory. Instead, he uses the column to make vile and unsubstantiated attacks on Barrack Obama. Here are some choice excerpts:
His trash talking was an unattractive carryover from his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard, and capped a mediocre night.
Third, the Clintons began — at first not very artfully — to raise questions about the fitness for the Oval Office of a first-term senator with no real accomplishments or experience.
Former President Bill Clinton hit a nerve by drawing attention to Mr. Obama’s conflicting statements on Iraq. There’s more — and more powerful — material available. Mr. Obama has failed to rise to leadership on a single major issue in the Senate. In the Illinois legislature, he had a habit of ducking major issues, voting “present” on bills important to many Democratic interest groups, like abortion-rights and gun-control advocates. He is often lazy, given to misstatements and exaggerations and, when he doesn’t know the answer, too ready to try to bluff his way through.
Mr. Obama too often practices the old style of politics, saying one thing and doing another.
When it comes to making the case against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama comes across as a vitamin-starved Adlai Stevenson. His rhetoric, while eloquent and moving at times, has been too often light as air.
And Mr. Obama, in his own way, is often as calculating as Mrs. Clinton. For example, he was the only candidate, Democratic or Republican, to use a teleprompter to deliver his Iowa and New Hampshire election-night speeches.
The Democratic candidates left New Hampshire not liking each other. Mrs. Clinton, in particular, lets her feelings show. In her victory speech, as she listed her competitors, she put Mr. Obama at the tail end, behind Dennis Kucinich. Ouch!
[emphasis mine]
He is often lazy, given to misstatements and exaggerations. Don’t you just love how he says that as if it’s just a fact that no one could possibly dispute? Oh yes, it’s well known that Senator Obama is a rapist and a pedophile who likes to burn the American flag while pissing on dead soldiers’ graves, and that could possibly harm his chances to get elected.
Is there anything about Obama that Rove like? Oh yes, of course. He loved it when Obama criticized Clinton. More intraparty fighting please!
Obviously there is an agenda behind this. Either Karl Rove thinks that Obama is going to be the nominee and is preparing the ground for attacking him on the general election or he is trying to stop him from actually getting the nomination. I suspect there is a little bit of both in his motivations.
I would disparage the Wall Street Journal for publishing such obvious spin and propaganda, but honestly, this is not very far from the paper’s editorials.
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 14 Jan 2008 6488 Comments
Hillary Gets Ann Rice Endorsement, Secures All Important Vampire and Witch Votes
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 10 Jan 2008 7958 Comments
I can has job mom
Matthew Yglesias is right that the top five reader tags on Amazon for Jonah Goldberg’s sure to be camp classic Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning are great. But I feel like I should highlight that many of the less popular ones are equally awesome. My favorites are banged out by howler monkeys, books written while high on cheeto dust and, of course, the truth.
I do have to take exception with the readers that tagged it worst book ever . Nothing that allows for so much hilarious mockery can be the worst anything ever.
Wingnuts Behaving Badly FriesWithThat 10 Jan 2008 7964 Comments
Rudy Giuliani Declares Iowa and New Hampshire ‘Terrorist States’
Rudy Giuliani. Presidential candidate.
Former mayor. Crazy person.
Former mayor Rudy Giuliani has focused much of his presidential campaign on the issue of terrorism. His main worry has generally been with terrorism coming out of the Middle East, but now he is ready to add a few new names to his enemies list: the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire.
‘I’m the candidate that is most dedicated to combating terrorism’, said Giuliani in an press conference, ‘but almost no one in Iowa or new Hampshire voted for me. Therefore, they are obviously terrorist sympathizers. I mean, well known terrorist enabler Ron Paul came in front of me in Iowa! And I hear a bunch of people didn’t even vote for a Republican candidate.’
Giuliani promised to take very strong steps to deal with the problem. ‘If I’m elected president, my first action once I take office will be to nuke Iowa and New Hampshire’
When questioned about the harshness of that plan and about the likely death of even his (not many) voters Giuliani was undeterred: ‘Look, if you want to stop Islamofascism you have to be willing to kill a few thousand innocent people. We simple cannot allow thousands of terrorists to live peacefully inside our own country.’
The former mayor pointed to his steadfast resolution to combat what he called the ‘Iowa/New Hampshire’ problem as another reason why he should be elected President. ‘Has any other candidate promised to drop an atomic bomb in an U.S state?’, asked Giuliani, ‘No they haven’t. This show how much more committed I am to keeping Americans safe than anyone else in this race.’
Several reporters pointed out that polls shows that he could lose in many other states, but Rudy was unfazed. ‘I’m sure we can still be a great nation and rebuild our world dominance even if I have to nuke various states. I ask you this: do we really need Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Wyoming, Florida, Oklahoma, Montana, Michigan, Texas and Nevada? I say not.’
When asked what his campaign strategy was going to be from now on, America’s Mayor responded by chanting ‘9/11! 9/11!’ for ten minutes.
[Note: I know that sometimes it’s hard to tell with the Rudy campaign, but the above was a satire. Giuliani has not promised to bomb any American states. At least not publicly. ]
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 09 Jan 2008 5267 Comments
I Can’t has Change?
Photo by Flickr user Daniella Zalcman
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 09 Jan 2008 6517 Comments
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Poor Mitt. Iowa was too full of evangelicals. New Hampshire too full of independents. What Romney need is a state with a large big fat phonies constituency.
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 09 Jan 2008 7151 Comments
That Crazy Expectations Game
But that would be two weeks ago. Today people were expecting Obama to win by a large margin. Ten points maybe. And since he ended up losing people in his camp are bound to be very disappointed and people in Hillary’s camp are bound to very very happy. Not to mention that the story will turn from ‘Obama has the Momentum’ to ‘Hillary Comes Back.’ And so a close Clinton win in the polls turns into a major Clinton victory in the campaign.
I’m not sure what happened. Maybe the polls were all just very wrong. Maybe there there was late movement towards Hillary (Blow back for the way the tears incident was treated by the media? The theme of experience against words connected?). I’m thinking it was probably a little bit of both. I doubt that the polls were ever that wrong, but I also find a late 10 point swing hard to believe in, so the polls couldn’t be that right. But the truth remains this: Hillary is back, and Obama’s path to the nomination just got a lot harder.
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 09 Jan 2008 4999 Comments
Surprise, Surprise
It seems that Obama isn’t even going to manage a narrow victory after all. Hillary leads seems pretty solid at this point.
At least it should make for a very interesting race.
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 08 Jan 2008 5270 Comments
Who Exactly are Those People?
So, Clinton and Obama are the front runners and both have good chances of getting the nomination. Choosing who you prefer is understandable.
Edwards doesn’t seem like he has much of a shot, but many of his supporters still believe there is a chance. Besides, many people like his populist message and want to send a message to the Democratic party.
If you really want to send a message tough, you go with Kucinich.
But who are all those people voting for Bill Richardson anyway? With over half the votes counted the guy is clinging to a healthy 5%.
But who are all those people voting for Bill Richardson anyway? With over half the votes counted the guy is clinging to a healthy 5%.
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 08 Jan 2008 7767 Comments
Hillary Clinton to Me: Have You Considered Voting for Obama?
The Clinton camp, still reeling from the unexpected large defeat in Iowa, seems to be preparing a new line of attack against Obama. Tom Edsall reports:
Hillary’s aides point to Obama’s extremely progressive record as a community organizer, state senator and candidate for Congress, his alliances with “left-wing” intellectuals in Chicago’s Hyde Park community, and his liberal voting record on criminal defendants’ rights as subjects for examination.Along the same lines, ABC reported that Clinton aides gave the network various examples, of Obama’s controversial stands. The aides cited Obama’s past assertion that he would support ending mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes, pointing to a 2004 statement at an NAACP-sponsored debate: “Mandatory minimums take too much discretion away from judges.”
Obama is a liberal? Oh my God. I’m glad they told us. Can you imagine if we allowed a liberal to win the Democratic party nomination? The horror!
In all fairness to her, Obama is attracting a lot of independents, so perhaps this line of attach is meant to make some of those stay away. And Democratic primary voters have been known to be swayed by the argument that someone is too liberal to be elected (*cough* Howard Dean *cough*). But considering the themes of the Obama campaign and the current political situation those seem like very lame attack lines.
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 07 Jan 2008 5589 Comments
Romney: I Spent All This Money And All I Got Was This Stupid Second Place
The Romney strategy was simple. Use his considerable money advantage to win big on Iowa and New Hampshire. Then ride the good publicity of those wins into a national victory, with the help of even more money and deep institutional support, of course.
Well, money was spent, by the bucket loads, but the evangelical support for Huckabee guaranteed a Romney defeat in Iowa. And the McCain surge is making a win in New Hampshire harder and harder. So, what does Romney do? I’m not sure, the guy is in a tough spot right now.
That is too bad. Romney seemed like a very probable loser in the general. McCain and Huckabee strike me as being much more dangerous.
But not all is lost. Never underestimate the power of money, especially in a Republican primary.
Photo by Flickr user IowaPolitics
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 04 Jan 2008 7389 Comments
Clinton and Edwards Claim Moral Victory in Iowa, Obama left Only With Actual Victory
The results are in and the candidates are, of course, claiming they are not only happy, but ecstatic about the results. That has been a little easier for Obama, who won the caucus by a larger than expected margin. But reality has not stopped Clinton and Edwards from putting the best spin on things.
Edwards claim is basically that the most important thing is that Hillary came in third. The media had been trying to make this a two person race between Obama and Hillary and he was widely outspent, so coming in second is a great thing. And now the race is between him and Obama, to decide what kind of change people want. Accurate? Not completely, but close enough.
Hillary, on the other hand, has the arduous task of turning a slide from clear front runner to third placer into a good thing. And she did this by … not talking much about it. She instead focused on how the high turnout was a great omen for the Democrats and started talking about New Hampshire. Keep the dream alive Hillary.
Primary Fun FriesWithThat 04 Jan 2008 7865 Comments