Letters to the Editor
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Mark. Penn.
Is. The. Worst. Strategist. Ever.
Seriously, the guy didn't get proportional delegates? I don't make 300K for working on campaigns and I get proportional delegates. Clinton should've hired me. Or the guy begging for change on the street. I bet, if someone explained it to him, that HE'D understand proportional delegates. We're not talking higher level calculus here. It's a FRICKING RATIO!!!
God, Mark Penn. Why are you still working? You might be the largest (in stature and magnitude) failure in political history.
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She's right
As an male Obama supporter who would have gladly supported her had she won the nomination, I would like to see Hillary gracefully concede, but there's no hurry. I believe she will eventually do so and do it well. She's learned from this campaign and has the right to be in until the end. Her argument - given at the end of this piece - is also compelling. She's come far further than any woman before her and I think she's moved the argument beyond "CAN any woman be elected president" to "WHICH woman WILL be elected president". That's a LONG journey from where we were not so long ago. To keep good faith with that progress and the people who have supported her to this point she DOES need to go the distance - not for HER sake but for the next woman.
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If she had used Donna Bazile
Clinton would be so far in the lead it would be over. Her problem was in not firing Penn that moment.
The question is, why did she KEEP him?
Is it loyalty, Judgement? What did this guy do to keep a job when he screwed up the basics that bad? The "big state" strategy was repudiated in 2004. Why bring it back?
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I suppose we could talk all day, all week, all month
about where she went wrong. We could pick apart every mistake. And if Obama were to be in her position right now, we'd be talking about where he went wrong. But this is like a basketball game or any other kind of head to head competition and I personally don't see why we need to obsess over it. Bottom line is Obama has won more states and more votes than Hillary. The celtics scored more points than the cavs in game one.
There is no useful information to come out of this question. The only purpose it serves is to give talking heads a chance to pollute more of our air with carbon dioxide and danish breath.
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Wow, Alex
I have to say, I'm kind of impressed. You didn't pull your punches. Did Hillary loan you one of her three balls or something?
You could have saved yourself some time by just writing about the things that Hillary did right in her campaign. But to your laundry list of missteps, I'd add that she either never should have voted for the Iraq war, or she should have made a complete, sincere, and abject apology for it. Also, it wouldn't have hurt if she'd used her time in the Senate to make some news by directly challenging Bush and company, even when it was politically inconvenient to do so.
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One more time
SHE LIED!!! Jesus H. Friggin' Christ, how many times do we have to tell you 'pundits'???? Bosnia-she FABRICATED the sniper story, 4 state pledge-she VIOLATED her pledge, endorsments-she ENDORSED McCain over Obama. She went way over the top negative with the 3am ad. Bill lied about her Bosnia story too. She keeps moving the goal posts-it's about delegates, it's the popular vote, without FL and MI, Obama is not legitimate. I could not care LESS about her 'warmth' and 'charm'. Hell, Bush has those(when he wants to). No, Billary ran a nasty, incompetitent campagn staffed with nasty, incompetent people. Why on earth would we think her administration would be any different??? Give us a friggin' break.
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She's yesterday's model
I remember when the beginning of September would come and all the car dealerships would cover their windows in butcherpaper. Then they would tear the paper down and in the showrooms were all of the year model cars. Well the paper came down and Hillary Clinton got a close look at this year's model. People aren't just sick of George Bush. They're sick of the rancor and divisiveness that has defined our politics and government for years. Barack Obama seems like a breath of fresh air (whether he can deliver, we'll have to wait and see). There is alot of excitement in this country over him, and there is alot of international excitement as well.
Hillary clinton has watched her time pass. Its telling that she immediately resorted to all the old dirty tricks to combat a new style of politician. She did alot of things wrong, but in the end her shelf life had expired.
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Please Less Cut and Paste
Alex, I wish you would refrain from simply taking long excerps from major news websites and offering little more than "isn't this interesting." To me this treads dangerously close to stealing content. This may be OK for independent blogs who are doing newsroundups but Salon is a for-profit site. Hint, if the quoted excerpt is longer than your commentary, it probably isn't really covered under fair-use. I know you can write pretty well yourself, so how about a little more effort on your part?
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Hillary's Biggest Mistake of All
She ran on her husband's presidency, taking credit for the things that are remembered fondly, but disavowing or sloughing off the failures, scandals, mistakes, etc. Can't have it both ways.
She tried to sell being married to a president as a qualification for BEING president, which to many seems rather ridiculous. Laura Bush is not qualified to be President. Hillary needed to run on her own experience -- and frankly, that on its own wasn't enough of a selling point for her.
She made health care a key platform issue, despite having bungled, mangled and quite publicly self-destructed her own health care reform efforts.
She exaggerated (some say lied) about her own experience -- taking tea with the Prime Minister's wife, and accepting flowers from school children -- are not "diplomatic missions," nor is accepting flowers from children in Bosnia "dodging sniper fire."
But above all -- I think what's destroyed her campaign is fact of her utter failure when actually put to the test. She ran on the "Ready on Day One" experience issue, but she kept forgetting that Day One already came, and it was the day of the war authorization vote. And she blew it.
Despite all Hillary Clinton's experience, with all her years with access in the White House, being married to the President, privy to the inner workings of the government, and her years of "public policy" study and so on...
SHE MADE THE WRONG DECISION.
And she made it on what may be the most important political vote of the last half-century. And her decision has sent more than 4000 Americans to their death, and countless hundreds of thousands of others.
And not only was she wrong, she clearly made it to pander. America knows that.
SHE MADE A CRAVEN, WRONG, PANDERING, COWARDLY, BAD DECISION -- for her own political aims, because she didn't want to be one of those brave few senators willing to defy Bush to do what was right.
The 3 a.m. call came, day one has come and gone, and she was called upon to muster together all the benefits of her experience, access, and her vast intellect, and SHE GOT IT ALL WRONG.
So ultimately, HILLARY CLINTON FAILED THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF TEST, WITH A BIG FAT F...and, when the Iran vote came up, she went and failed the makeup exam on top of it.