Letters to the Editor
BadgerBlue
Published Letters: 193 Editor's Choice: 7
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Joan, not only would many Obama supporters have a different interpretation of the event...
[Read the article: Clinton prepares to concede]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...but apparently some of Clinton's most stalwart backers since the race began, Charlie Rangel and Ed Rendell among them, didn't think much of Clinton's speech either. I have no quarrels with many of Clinton's fervent backers feeling personal dissapointment at not being able to make history when the odds appeared to favor it just 6 months ago, but Clinton's speech needed to make a long-overdue attempt to address that reality. Instead, she got up there and trotted out that same lie about her "popular vote win", followed by she's the party's "best chance to win in November". Graceful? Respectful to Obama? I didn't see it that way and it's pretty obvious that Rangel and Rendell didn't as well and may have even felt enough embarrassment about it that they felt compelled to speak up about it.
Just because Clinton didn't repeat some of her other previous absurd comments towards Obama's candidacy on Tuesday(McCain has more experience, Rev. Wright would never been her pastor, let's ask him if he needs a pillow? And of course the nauseating "Shame on you Barack Obama!") doesn't mean her performance wasn't any less disrespectful to the party's nominee especially when compared to Obama's repeated statements of praise for Clinton in nearly every speech on TV he has given for weeks now.
I'm not so sure Clinton's speech was even truly respectful to some of her most die-hard backers that continue to insist that she should keep fighting all the way to the convention. That speech struck me as nothing more than another disingenuous ploy to solicit one last round of donations to help retire that nearly $30million in debt she wracked up while helping to divide the party just at the worst possible time in modern history. Will all those baby-boomer feminists that rushed Clinton a donation Tuesday night while attempting to clear thier schedules for a possible march on Denver still feel the similar euphoria you described was in the air at the speech or will they feel shortchanged that Clinton cut short the fight that she intimated she'd coninue on with?
Perhaps the hold-outs will finally come back to earth. But for the types that paraded around at the RBC meeting insisting anything short of Clinton being the nominee was the equivilant to the election of 2000, Clinton finally admitting reality(that being her campaign for The White House is over) will be a crash landing rather than a smooth one. Will any of them question whether Clinton's motives really included them or not? More likely they will just continue to take thier often misplaced anger out on Obama even after he took the extremely gracious step of offering to help try to bail Clinton out of the financial mess she's created while trying to constantly stab him in the back in the process.
It wasn't that Clinton missed a chance to leave on a graceful note, Joan. It's that Tuesday was really her last chance out of way too many she'd already been handed to finally show some grace and respect to those other than her supporters that was long past due from her, and she as usual arrogantly dismissed them and about 30 or more states as "irrelevant". The only good thing I can possibly see coming out of her conduct this week is it gives Obama some ammo for shooting down the trial-balloon Clinton publicly tried float for the VP spot on the ticket, which might be even more disrespectful than that awful speech. Her arrogant sense of entitlement borders on the grotesque and it's becoming a distraction that shouldn't have taken place to begin with. At least Rangel and Rendell had enough objectivity to leave the "celebration" early. Thankfully, not every entrenched party machine Clinton supporter isn't Geraldine Ferraro.
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Slackie, we won't know for sure, but...
[Read the article: Clinton suspends campaign, endorses Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...what you stated is correct that Obama's campaign model has executed well enough that I think the door is at least opening to that possibility. It's fair to say that a big part of the reason Obama and Clinton finished the race where they did was certainly the structure of thier campaigns. Obama helped create his "bottom-up" operation and it definitely endured far better than Clintons' "top-down" structure. A good deal of his model really looks like what Howard Dean had envisioned, so there's good reason to be encouraged. But I'm cautiously optimistic at best. It took an extremely charismatic candidate who could routinely draw arena and even stadium-sized crowds to swell Obama's largely small donor-driven base to get it this far while Dean's run in '04 lost momentum overnight. Obama also was aided by the fact that Clinton's campaign made critical mistakes at so many crucial points that created huge opportunities for him to lock in huge gains.
I think for the "bottom-up" model to eclipse the DLC-driven machine anytime soon, Obama not only has to win convincingly in November but is going to have to get out there and campaign with other candidates that embrace the strategy themselves because not every candidate running smaller races has the ability to inspire and connect like he does. He's definitely made a case for making the "bottom-up" approach a blueprint strategy, but it's not quite all downhill yet at least from this point. It's at least a promising beginning though for sure.