Letters to the Editor
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I Mean
If the superdelegates cannot absorb and react to something like the result of Wright over a few primaries and how that might translate to the general, once again with no one having 2025, what's the point of superdelegates?
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It's hard to believe we could have avoided this
How is it that the defining characteristic of a powerful Democrat came to be the ease with which he or she jumped on powerful right wing bandwagons?
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Clinton lost my trust
Clinton lost my confidence when she said of her Iraq war vote, "If I had known then what I know now..." Twenty-three members of the Senate voted against going to war. What did they know that she didn't know, and why didn't she know it?
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It Could Be The Absolute Clincher For Him
That the Hillary side would have to honor--- Look at these results and polling data. He took the Wright hit, which is about as bad as it gets, and it hasn't hurt him. Superdelegates to him. It's over.
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an honest question
Hey Wes,
You're a big fan of Hunter S Thompson aren't you?
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Hillary voted for war...
... because she was in favor of war.
She hasn't repudiated her vote in favor of the war because she doesn't regret it, and would vote for war again given the chance.
She will not disengage from Iraq. She has sent out various surrogates to reassure the hawks that she will keep troops there to project American power into the Middle East for decades to come, no matter the cost.
Her approach to Iraq is the same as McCain's. Her approach to Iran is the same as McCain's.
Her definition of "National Security Experience" is identical to that used by the Republicans for the last generation: it means the willingness to use American military force to expand the empire of the United States, and subjugate other people to our will.
Anyone who thinks Hillary's just a spineless liberal who can't say she was hoodwinked because she's too proud is seriously deluded. She wasn't hookwinked: a blind child could tell Bush was lying.
She voted for the war because she agreed with Bush's real reasons for invading (namely empire and money), not because she was fooled by Bush's fake reasons for invading.
Anti-war people who think they have a hero in Hillary are sadly mistaken. She became a hero to the left only because her attackers in the 90's were the most horrible ultra-rightwingers imaginable, not because of anything she ever said, did, or believed.
If and when Obama becomes president, he'll have to fight Hillary Clinton every step of the way to get our troops out of Iraq.
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@The Notorious W.E.S. (2025)
You know, I conceed the point that Obama has not won the necessary delegates to win the nomination outright.
And if Senator Clinton had run a respectful campaign highlighting her policy differences with Senator Obama, I doubt I would care if she left after Pennsylvania or Peurto Rico.
The problem isn't that Senator Clinton has opted to continue to run, it is that the way in which she has opted to run serves only John McCain.
Time and time again, Senator Clinton and her Surrogates have tried to drag this campaign into the mud, and leveled accusations against Senator Obama that will be brought back in the general election under the title "If members of his own party feel this way, how can we trust him?"
If Senator Clinton wants to run she needs run with a greed for all the party not just herself.
She can run on her record, and compare it to his, but that isn't what she has done to date. Instead she has tried to tear down a member of her own party and offered little about her own qualifications beyond his.
If Senator Obama had responded in kind, and made this election a scortched earth campaign for the both of them, then yes Senator Clinton would be excused for her equal treatment. But instead we have one candidate who is more concerened about Party cohesiveness than about his own nomination, and one who has taken the opposite tack.
And if Senator Clinton won Pennsylvania by 20 points it might give us pause...but that is fairly unlikely. If Senator Clinton does not win Pennsylvania by 20 points however, what do we do then? Just keep on hacking away at the nominee until the convention? Make this a superdelegate race of coffee filled back rooms (no smoking in Colorado) and giving one or even either candidate the look of usurping? Not to mention the wasting of campaign funds fighting amongst ourselves while John McCain the unquestioned "war hero" raises money and tries to look presidential.
It isn't a question of three or four states and we need a winner, but there comes a time when a candidate must decide what is best for the party, and put their own interests to the side. We are fast approaching that time for Ms. Clinton (and likely past it when she lost Texas), and she has shown no signs of interest in doing the right thing.
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Lost Texas
Huh?
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Joan, you actually used the word 'Obamaton'?
You're no better than the hectoring Hillary trolls...I'm done with your corner of Salon.
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College grade sniping
For every Obama supporter I consider an Obamaton (they're out there)...
Okay, look, I'm really not super invested in either Democrat. I think they're both great and if the party comes together whoever gets the nomination will take the White House. Seriously.
But honestly, Joan Walsh's sniping at Obama has fallen to the level of a cheap college campus opinion columnist. The ad hominem non sequiturs every time she mentions Barack Obama have become absurd. Seriously, they're a disgrace. Michelle Goldberg compared favorably.
It's not endorsing anymore. It's not having a preference. It's not even being implacably critical. Walsh is writing at the level of some of the worse of her reader letter writers, and it's agonizing.
Please, let her get some rest or take a break or whatever it is that she needs to get back on her game. Salon is too important to suffer from this kind of degradation.
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Oh You Mean
Counting the people who voted twice in Texas.
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That's legal (and required ) in Texas
Counting the people who voted twice in Texas.
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It's Not Required
To go to the caucus
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Okey dokey, Joan
Joan Walsh deserves at least some points for directing some criticism at Hillary Clinton. So here you go, here are your points.
I wasn't happy with Hillary Clinton's vote either. I wasn't happy with her explanations afterward. I think it is a little silly to lay the blame at the feet of Mark Penn, because after all, Hillary Clinton is the leader of her campaign and can make those decisions for herself. Not distancing herself from her Iraq war vote is (after the war vote itself) one of the most cynical moves she could have made. Iraq is a fiasco with a capital F -- which is also the first letter in FUBAR. It's also the first letter in The Fonz, who as we know is a guy incapable of saying "I was wrong," just like Hillary is incapable of saying it: "I was wr-oo-oo-mgphh..."
Hillary Clinton is not responsible for the war, but she is partially responsible. Many other senators backed the war, but Clinton was one of the leaders of the Democratic side of the vote. She actively convinced other Democrats to join her. It's not like she was some unknown junior senator; Clinton was already known to be angling to become president, and her vote was one of the most symbolic and meaningful pro-war-authorization voices from the Democratic side of the aisle.
I think about this when I consider her presidential candidacy. I also think of the photos of Iraqi children with their arms and legs blown off, their mothers crying, the asphalt stained with blood, the U.S. soldiers making random young men (the breadwinners of their family) trudge off to third-world condition prisons wearing hoods, denied due process, with no recourse. I think of Hillary Clinton's vote against limitations on the use of cluster bombs. I think of how all of these Clinton votes are based not on principle but on the desire to be seen as "hawkish" so she can shore up center-left and center-right votes, look tough, and be taken seriously. It makes me sick.