Letters to the Editor
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@The Notorious W.E.S. (Texas)
Yes, Party rules in Texas state that one only wins if they can show the on the ground organization to have people vote in the primary and the caucus.
The ground game of politics is such that one needs to be able to motivate and organize your supporters to vote when and where you need them to.
Senator Obama won Texas, because he is organized and professional, and makes intelegent choices in the people he sends out when he can't be everywhere at once.
That's why caucuses are as important as primaries in our nomination process, and why Senator Obama has won more of both than Senator Clinton.
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Calculation, not conviction
I'm not a Hillary Clinton hater and I'd vote for her if she gets the nomination. She's clearly a better choice than McCain. But, I would not support her enthusiastically.
When people ask me why I do NOT support her campaign for the nomination I cite as principal reasons her vote on the Iraq resolution and her subsequent vote on the Iranian Guard resolution as Exhibits A and B.
I believe that both of these votes were motivated primarily by a calculated desire not to appear soft in in a presidential campaign in the face of almost certain Republican attacks designed to show the public that she is a weak woman who is not to be trusted to deal with the terrorist menace.
In 2002 I watched with disbelief and outrage as she and others walked us into a war that objective observers knew was a fool's errand at best. And, her vote on the Iranian Guard resolution may yet haunt her if the Bush Administration uses that vote as justification for an attack on Iran.
Her votes were reminders of that which I disliked most about the Clinton presidency, the all too frequent surrender of principle for the sake of short term political advantage.
All politicians make calculated decisions at one time or another in their careers. But, in this case her calculations abetted the losses of thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars.
Her refusal to apologize for or even to acknowledge the irresponsibility of her votes is more calculation. As I see it, she's afraid that an honest admission of error will cause her to be labeled as a weak woman.
I just can't support a politician whose calculations are so transparent and so damaging, at least not now, when there is a far more attractive alternative.
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I'm Sorry
But he lost Texas 51-47.
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careful wes
keep up this texas talk and we're going to start thinking you're a N.E.R........
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re: Texas
Yes, It was the republicans that put her over the top:
For a party that loves to hate the Clintons, Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/17/many_voting_for_clinton_to_boost_gop/
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In Any Event
Without 2025 total, the Texas situation would be another example of a legitimate matter for a superdelgate to interpret.
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debaser
You're right. I depart gracefully, with Hillary in my heart. And small Hillary face tattoo on my bicep. (no shit)
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WES, I normally ignore your one note symphonies but,
"And small Hillary face tattoo on my bicep. (no shit)"
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
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Joan:...
"...It was hard not to think, by contrast, about Clinton's failure to marshal all of her rhetorical resources -- a year ago, a month ago, today? -- to fight the single most persuasive argument against her candidacy: that when she had the chance, she didn't face down George W. Bush and oppose his rush to war in 2003...."
If Hillary had done a thing so right that a brain surgeon or a saint wasn't needed to do it, regarding the war resolution, or had even worded her proviso just a bit more strongly, with no weasel words like "...a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out..." she wouldn't even be able to see Obama in her rear view mirror on the road to the candidacy, rather than find herself in the present position of having to eat his dust.
And, as for "humble" Hillary admitting her mistake? Please, she's a Rodham and Hugh would have understood that. Sometimes the destination for your journey's set before you even think of taking it.
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She didn't "admit her mistake"...
... because she didn't consider it a mistake and still doesn't.
When she says she wouldn't have voted for it if she knew then what she knows now, just which piece of information does she mean has come to light?
She carefully constructed that response to let you believe that she's talking about her later knowledge that Bush is a lying monster, but that's not what it says.
She could easily have meant that she wouldn't have voted to invade had she known it would be so disastrous. As in, duh, lady.
She's never said she regretted her vote on moral grounds, as any decent anti-war politician would.
It's about time for people to realize that Hillary and Joe Lieberman are the best of friends, allies in the DLC, and agree on just about everything.
Including that the best way to make peace in Washington is to always adopt the rightwing approach to everything, but especially foreign policy.
Has anyone asked Bill Clinton why he didn't do anything about Saddam or Iraq when he was president? Was he really content to keep the sanctions going forever?
Remember: Saddam had disarmed. The sanctions therefore had no more legal or moral basis, and they were causing great suffering in that country. Saddam was undoubtedly eager to prove that he had no weapons.
Why didn't Clinton act to solve the situation peacefully? Wasn't he just kicking the problem to the next Bush?
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Tyler_Mason
"...The US still occupies Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Those nations have been at peace for many many decades. They are our allies. Why shouldn't we hope the same for Iraq?"
Because, once more, we beat them--fair and square--in a war with a formal beginning and a formal end and with two advanced homogeneous populations, not a hodge-podge conglomeration foisted on groups of people by outsiders [the same one's who'd recently invaded, with no valid reason] with an exploitatively economic stake in creating artificial boundaries. And, when we beat the former, we didn't have to contend with a religiously oriented radical movement and two hostile [towards each other] subsets of the same religion.
Ditto for S. Korea in the sense that it was also homogeneous, and instead of being invaded, by us, were protected from invasion by UN and American forces.
Get it? One is an apple; the other's an orange.
Laaawd hav' muhcy!