Truthfully, I'm a little miffed that Obama changed his stance on public financing, though I understand his reasons. Part of this is who you believe -- Obama says, quite rightly, that he never pledged to refuse public funds, only that he pledged to "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." McCain says Obama's camp never approached them. Obama's camp says they did, but McCain wasn't interested. I'll give Obama's people the benefit of the doubt here, of course, but it does admittedly look a little bad. (I'm sure people will get over it.) It looks bad for Mr. Campaign Finance Reform himself to also show no interest in public financing this time, but McCain changes positions on issues so often these days it's impossible to take any specific issue seriously.
Anyhoo, there is a solution to make Obama look awesome coming out of this:
The infamous ARG (who has been all over the map this cycle -- usually way wrong, occasionally dead-on accurate) has released the most recent MT/SD numbers:
More published reports today concerning Obama's possible overture to Senator Clinton re: a cabinet position (HHS, to finally get a chance to advance universal healthcare with a Democratic House and Senate).
Personally, I think Hillary would prefer to be the Senate Majority Leader, and enact healthcare reform that way. And, truthfully, I think she'd be quite good at that job. Viciousness does have its place, sometimes.
But let's assume Hillary is offered, as says yes. What other positions can we fill?
JK and I launched MichiganDecides.com today. In it, you'll be able to read information about the history of Michigan's troubled primary, and the options available to the Rules and Bylaws committee to fix the problem.
Most importantly, you can vote on what you think the best solution should be!
One thing that keeps getting overlooked when it comes to seating the Michigan delegates based on the January 15th primary is that, for all practical and legal purposes, Michigan did not have a January 15th primary. The entire act which created the January 15th primary date was struck down as unconstitutional, thereby retroactively voiding the primary to begin with (it essentially "never happened".) It is therefore illogical and unethical for the Clinton campaign, or anyone else, to treat the votes cast on that day with any more reverence or validity as an online voter preference poll.
Let's take a trip down memory lane and see how this all went down.
It's time again for a General Election Predictions Thread! Post here with your best prediction, and then, if you're eerily accurate this far out, you can show it to everyone after November and get a job as a political talking head on MSNBC! (Well, theoretically, anyway.) :)
Hillary Clinton's campaign is STILL pushing the ludicrous meme that she's ahead "in the popular vote", and rather than being laughed at, some newspapers and networks are starting to report it as fact.
Of course, as has been reported here and elsewhere, it only works if you count Michigan (giving Obama 0 votes) and Florida and don't count most caucus states. So let's analyze all the possible ways of calculating the popular vote, and see who's ahead:
Obama is going to believe that the behavior isn't really what we say it is, but half of us (at least) have to know better than this.
Look, this is an important issue and deal, if Hillary gets the presumptive nomination in or out of Pennsylvania, this is not going to be good, for any of us.
I was chatting with a Hillary-supporting friend earlier who, like Hillary's staff, backers, and Hillary herself, can't keep complaining about the media coverage being (allegedly) more negative against Hillary than against Obama. "It's not fair," complained my friend. "There should be some rule that the network news has to run equal numbers of positive and negative stories for each candidate!"
This is one of the worst problems to come out of the modern cable news debate and news programs: the ludicrous notion that being "fair" means giving both sides of an issue equal say, equal time, and equal respect, regardless of whether one side is, through research and anaylsis, objectively superior to the other. It is not "fair and balanced" to just let both sides have their say unchecked -- the truth is not neutral between two opposing positions.
It looks like csquared's diary about Monique Davis ( http://www.dailykos.com/... ) is reaching 1,000 comments (which means we won't be able to continue the discussion for much longer), and I don't think csquared is still logged in to create an overflow, so if anyone still wants to chat or debate on these issues, feel free to post here instead! :)
Okay, I've seen a lot of crap out of the Clinton campaign in recent months, from subtle race-baiting to insensitive comments to flat-out racial prejudice unsuitable for any Democratic candidate. But this recent "he can't win" campaign is a new low point, and the ad below is over-the-top. Is this really her only strategy left for winning the remaining states??? Unbelievable.
For the life of me, what Barack was afraid of in Michigan I will never understand.
Hillary Clinton, in the Washington Post, again repeated and detailed this lie that Obama blocked a revote in Michigan. Nearly all news sources have been repeating this narrative verbatim, despite the fact that it has never been true.
Please, Obama, give a public speech on this issue. Explain your position and call her out on this lie, and specifically call out those in the media who are continually complicit in pushing this lie.
...and yet we're still talking about Rezko, apparently the only person ever tangentially connected to Obama (not counting his occasionally over-the-top preacher) being charged with corruption? Really??
Yes, I know Obama wants to run a positive campaign, but at some point, if Clinton and/or her MSM buddies bring up Rezko again (in the next debate, if there is one?), can Obama please take the proverbial gloves off and simply list a couple dozen names of indicted and/or imprisioned ultra-corrupt Clinton donors?
Clinton's campaign continues to hammer this absurd notion that every time Barack Obama loses a primary contest to Clinton, that means McCain would probably beat Obama in that state come November.
Why?? This makes no sense at all. It is an intentionally misleading non sequitur. And if it was true, wouldn't therefore the reverse of it also be true -- that every state Clinton lost to Obama would somehow magically go for McCain as well? (Cause if that's the case, she'd lose in an electoral landslide.)
