Hillary Clinton Playing Politics Like a Republican

How long might it take for liberal Democrats to support Hillary Clinton if hell were to freeze over and she became the Democratic nominee?  After today it will be longer than yesterday.  There just is no end to the horse-rot that comes from Hillary Clinton or her campaign as she grasps for anything she can grab in her zeal to be president.

This morning, George Stephanopoulos began his televised interview with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by asking if she could name a single economist who supported her plan for a gas-tax suspension.

Mrs. Clinton did not. “I’m not going to put in my lot with economists,” she said on the ABC program “This Week.” A few moments later, she added, “Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.”

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But like every other candidate, Mrs. Clinton has a team of economists behind her policy positions. Is she dismissing their work? And in the coming weeks, how far will she take her anti-elitist argument? After all, the race will likely end up in the hands of the superdelegates — many of whom are, by definition, the Democratic Party elite.

Hillary is even talking like President Bush and uttered the small-minded phrase “are they with us or against us’ in a speech about the oil problem in America. 

Clinton sent out a mailer this weekend attacking Obama on guns.  There is no level that she will not stoop in a Democratic primary to snatch a few votes.

Technorati Tags: HillaryClinton, BarackObama, Election, IndianaPrimary, NorthCarolinaPrimary, Election08, Democrats

Lynne Cooper Harvey, Better Known As “Angel”, Paul Harvey’s Wife, Dies

There are some people in the world that everyone recognizes and appreciates.  Paul Harvey is one, and the lady that he often spoke of with such fondness as “Angel”, Lynne Cooper Harvey, was another.  It is with sadness that the radio world awoke to the news that she had died due to leukemia at the age of 92.  When he spoke of her on his broadcasts there was always a tone and touch that reflected a genuine love and deep respect.

There are so many fast marriages, and faster divorces in our world, and that is perhaps why the enduring working marriage of Paul Harvey and Lynne was so special.  Being together for 68 years made them unique in this day and age.  In addition to their personal commitment to each other, their professional work together created remarkable ratings for Paul Harvey and awards for each of them.  She was a true original, and radio is better because she lived and worked in the medium.

A director, writer and editor, and the producer of her husband’s radio program, Lynne Harvey was the first producer ever inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.

She is credited with coming up with many of the programming innovations that became her husband’s trademarks, and she influenced the development of broadcast news, both on radio and television.

Among her ideas were the concepts of including news features within hard-news broadcasts, and the humorous “kicker,” which became a Paul Harvey trademark.

I grew up listening to Paul Harvey “stand by for news….” every weekday as a boy, and on weekends I recall many Saturdays sitting in the car with my dad hearing the Harvey broadcast as my mom shopped.  I worked in radio at a station connected with ABC, and as such we had Paul Harvey on three times a day, including his remarkable and always entertaining “Rest of the Story” broadcasts.

I know I speak on behalf of a nation that sends deep-felt sympathy to Paul Harvey and the family.  And we wish him a return to the airwaves when his heart allows.  Knowing Paul Harvey as most of us do through the airwaves, I suspect that he needs the connection with his audience as much as we want to hear his voice and know that he is doing as well as can be expected.

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Barbara Walters “Infatuated” Over A United States Senator

I love gossip.  And political gossip is always more interesting than the stuff one hears about the neighbors. 

Barbara Walters has long been someone I enjoy watching as she interviews interesting personalities.  Over the years I have felt she was made the butt of jokes far too often about her style of speaking.  After a short period of time the jokes were stale.  To her credit she brushed the rudeness off, and continued doing her work for ABC.  But her candor this week about a sexual affair with a married US Senator really did take me by surprise, and proves yet again that there is always more to learn about the faces in the news.  I admit to having problems with anyone who cheats, or becomes involved in such an affair.  Even liberals such as myself can be prudes…..  I still think that marriage vows should mean something, and that is why I advocate for marriage rights for all loving couples.

After three decades of keeping mum, Barbara Walters is disclosing a past affair with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke, whom she remembers as “exciting” and “brilliant.”

Appearing on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” scheduled to air Tuesday, Walters shares details of her relationship with Brooke that lasted several years in the 1970s, according to a transcript of the show provided to The Associated Press.

A moderate Republican from Massachusetts who took office in 1967, Brooke was the first African-American to be popularly elected to the Senate. Both he and Walters knew that public knowledge of their affair could have ruined his career as well as hers, Walters says.
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Bill Clinton Harming His Image As He Fights For Hillary Clinton

I have often disagreed with the more centrist and moderate positions that President Clinton took while serving in the Oval Office.   Apart from those differences I always knew Bill Clinton to be an expert politician with well-honed skills for speaking to the needs and desires of the electorate.  Even members of the GOP had to admit he was a master politician. 

And then came 2008.

What has happened to the former President is hard to say.  But the facts are clear.  He has proved to be race baiting when emphatically stating to his audiences made up of mostly white people, that they are somehow different from those that vote for his wife, Hillary Clinton.

“She’s in it for you and she’s in it because of you. People like you have voted for her in every single state in the country.” People like you. The phrase hung in the air and the room quieted. Clinton didn’t say what the people who voted for Obama were like, but the suggestion was that they were somehow different.

Bill Clinton has often been a hindrance to the campaign team of Hillary Clinton and his missteps, which are clumsy and more noticeable given his true abilities, makes the headlines. 

His role has come at a cost — to morale among some campaign staff, relations inside the Democratic Party and with African-American leaders, and in the view of some, his own legacy. He has lost considerable credibility with many party leaders, who, as “superdelegates” to the party convention, will be crucial in determining who is the Democratic presidential nominee.

At several moments in the campaign, Mr. Clinton has raised hackles with offhand remarks. He offended some African-Americans when he compared Sen. Obama’s eventual victory in the South Carolina primary to Jesse Jackson’s victory there 20 years earlier. Some black leaders considered that a slight against Sen. Obama’s success.

A few weeks ago, he tried to explain away Sen. Clinton’s remarks about a trip to Bosnia, in which she mistakenly said she faced sniper fire when getting off a plane. Instead of clarifying the matter, Mr. Clinton bungled his explanation of how his wife had made the slip, putting renewed attention on an issue the campaign had wanted to put behind it.

When Bill Clinton makes blunders about race, and then pretends not to know that he has stepped over the line, it is then that it is most obvious that winning at all costs has taken a toll on the long-term image for the former President.  And as others note there is a price to be paid.

“I mean, who ‘played the race card’ on President Clinton?”  House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C Clyburn said, referring to comments made in an interview Clinton gave to WHYY-FM in Philadelphia and later denied making. “What does he mean by that unless he is trying to send some kind of signal on race?”

Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American in Congress, has remained neutral throughout this contest, but he has continually expressed concern about the tactics of the Clinton campaign.

“I am concerned … that the conduct of this campaign could very well make the nomination not worth having,” Clyburn told Fox. ““Our party is much bigger than Bill Clinton. It is much bigger than Sens. Clinton or Obama. It is a party that is here to serve the American people. … And I don’t want to see us conduct a campaign in such a way that it does irreparable harm to our being able to do that. When this campaign is over, if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, she cannot get elected president if 25 to 30 percent of black people vote for McCain. She is going to have … to have that same 92 percent of black people that Obama [has] now. And if [Obama] is the nominee, he is going to need her help and her husband’s help getting white voters that he is not now getting. And I don’t see how you can go back to these people and get them to vote for the nominee if you have done all these things and said all of these things about him during the campaign … because you are not going to be able to reverse field in the middle of general election.”

 

 

Technorati Tags: JimClyburn, BillClinton, HillaryClinton, Election08, Democrats, BarackObama, Racism, TheNewYorker, ABC

Hillary Clinton’s Win in Pennsylvania Gained By Dirty Tactics At Expense Of Barack Obama

The idea that the Democratic nomination should be Hillary Clinton’s, and that her right to that goal is paramount above the needs of the party and the nation, is hard to understand.  Granted there needs to be within the heart of every candidate the idea that they are the best for the position for which they campaign in order to make it through the daily grind of the race.  That is, I suspect, only a natural feeling.  If a candidate did not feel so strongly that they were superior to the opposition the race should never have been attempted.  But when ego and power becomes the driver of the campaign at the expense of the greater good, than we need to examine that candidate even more closely.  That is where we are this morning after the conclusion of the Pennsylvania Primary where Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama 55% to 45%.

The issue is how she won in yesterday’s primary.  By ripping Barack Obama, who many Democrats feel will be the eventual nominee this fall, she only gives ammunition to the Republicans who drove the nation off the road during the past two terms of President Bush’s time in office. 

Despite Clinton’s victory in the state, overall expectations were on Obama’s side. Fifty-five percent said they expected him, not Clinton, to be the party’s eventual nominee.  And Obama supporters were more confident: just 5 percent of his supporters thought Clinton will win the nomination; by contrast, 22 percent of Clinton supporters said they think Obama will be the nominee.

By undermining Obama in such harsh and deep ways, when she knows full well there is no way she can become the nominee, she is feeding the opposition talking points for the fall.  In addition, she is driving a wedge through the Democratic Party that may not be so easy to mend after she has finally been defeated from her seemingly never-ending quest to chase a dream.  Two-thirds of voters in exit polling in Pennsylvania felt that Clinton attacked Obama unfairly.

Bigger needs and issues, from the Iraq War to the recession that grips the nation, should be the topics that are brought home to the dinner tables of the voters.  Instead a steady stream of ‘nasty’ is wrapped in campaign bunting by the Clinton forces and presented as political discourse.  The whole nation suffers by her tactics.

The fact that Barack Obama leads in the national polls, and has more delegates and popular votes, gives no good reason for superdelegates to view Clinton with more enthusiasm now then they did before her six-week trek through the mud of Pennsylvania.  She has taken the Democratic Party on a path no thoughtful or wise party elders wish to travel. 

We are where we were before Pennsylvania.  Barack Obama is ready to be the nominee, and qualified to be President of the United States.

Who will tell Hillary Clinton it is time to exit the stage?

Technorati Tags: BarackObama, HillaryClinton, PennsylvaniaPrimary, Democrats, Election08, IraqWar, PresidentBush, ABCNews

 

ABC News Failed To Educate And Inform During Democratic Debate

 

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ABC News Demonstrates How NOT To Run A Democratic Candidates Debate

I was busy last night so I taped the Democratic debate and watched it this morning.  Sad and perplexing are the two words that come to mind. 

I am 45 and have followed politics since 1976.  I have watched the debates and analysis over the years and have never witnessed such a poorly run and executed debate by a major news organization.  After I had finished watching I turned to the media writers online from the major papers and found the criticism of ABC to be withering.  And rightfully so.

The Washington Post stated it accurately.

For the first 52 minutes of the two-hour, commercial-crammed show, Gibson and Stephanopoulos dwelled entirely on specious and gossipy trivia that already has been hashed and rehashed, in the hope of getting the candidates to claw at one another over disputes that are no longer news. Some were barely news to begin with.

The fact is, cable networks CNN and MSNBC both did better jobs with earlier candidate debates. Also, neither of those cable networks, if memory serves, rushed to a commercial break just five minutes into the proceedings, after giving each candidate a tiny, token moment to make an opening statement. Cable news is indeed taking over from network news, and merely by being competent.

Gibson sat there peering down at the candidates over glasses perched on the end of his nose, looking prosecutorial and at times portraying himself as a spokesman for the working class. Blunderingly he addressed an early question, about whether each would be willing to serve as the other’s running mate, “to both of you,” which is simple ineptitude or bad manners. It was his job to indicate which candidate should answer first. When, understandably, both waited politely for the other to talk, Gibson said snidely, “Don’t all speak at once.”

For that matter, the running-mate question that Gibson made such a big deal over was decidedly not a big deal — especially since Wolf Blitzer asked it during a previous debate televised and produced by CNN.

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To this observer, ABC’s coverage seemed slanted against Obama. The director cut several times to reaction shots of such Clinton supporters as her daughter, Chelsea, who sat in the audience at the Kimmel Theater in Philly’s National Constitution Center. Obama supporters did not get equal screen time, giving the impression that there weren’t any in the hall. The director also clumsily chose to pan the audience at the very start of the debate, when the candidates made their opening statements, so Obama and Clinton were barely seen before the first commercial break.

At the end, Gibson pompously thanked the candidates — or was he really patting himself on the back? — for “what I think has been a fascinating debate.” He’s entitled to his opinion, but the most fascinating aspect was waiting to see how low he and Stephanopoulos would go, and then being appalled at the answer.

Technorati Tags: ABC, BarackObama, HillaryClinton, Election08, CandidatesDebate, ABCTV, WashingtonPost