Tuesday’s campaign round-up

April 15, 2008

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* The Clinton campaign strongly hinted over the weekend that it would use the “bitter” flap for the basis of an attack ad against Barack Obama, and last night, the campaign followed through with a new TV spot. The ad features citizens — it’s unclear if they’re actors — describing how “insulted” they were by Obama’s comments. One man in the commercial says, “The good people of Pennsylvania deserve a lot better than what Barack Obama said.”

*The polls in Pennsylvania continue to be all over the place, though Clinton leads in each: “Yesterday we reported on the ARG poll showing a 20 point spread for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania. Three more today so far. Quinnipiac gives Clinton a 6 point margin; SurveyUSA gives her a 14 point edge; and Rasmussen gives Clinton a 9 point margin.” SurveyUSA’s track record has been strong; ARG’s has not.

* Speaking of polls, SurveyUSA also shows Clinton looking strong in Indiana, leading by 16, 55% to 39%.

* In still more poll news, Obama leads McCain in Michigan while Clinton doesn’t, and Clinton leads McCain in Florida while Obama doesn’t.

* People in Pittsburgh tell me this could have some significance: “Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney on Monday endorsed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid. In a statement, the 75-year-old Rooney said endorsing political candidates is not something he regularly does. ‘As a grandfather and a citizen of this community, I think Barack Obama’s thoughtful, strategic approach is important to America,’ Rooney said. ‘When I hear how excited young people seem to be when they talk about this man, I believe he will do what is best for them, which is to inspire them to be great Americans.'”

* I suspect this will change sometime soon, but the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll shows Obama holding onto a 10-point lead over Clinton nationwide. Gallup noted, “That 10-point lead matches Obama’s best of the campaign, and even as the controversy has dominated the political airwaves, Obama’s support remained strong in tracking interviews conducted on Saturday and Sunday.”

* Clinton is expected to win next week’s Pennsylvania primary, but her net gain in delegates is expected to be rather small.

* Remember Elton John’s concert for the Clinton campaign last week? It may or may not have run afoul of campaign finance law.

* Condoleezza Rice still isn’t going to be on the Republican ticket.

* A new plagiarism controversy? “At least three of the ‘McCain Family Recipes’ appear to be lifted directly from the Food Network, while at least one is a Rachael Ray recipe with minor changes.” If this happened to a Dem, would it be bigger news?

Re Clintonite Lanny Davis and his column on Rev. Wright that was discussed on this blog recently… check this out… apparently Davis received many emails on his column (big surprise) and says in a new column:

“One e-mail sent to me moved me the most, giving me a better understanding of Senator Obama’s reaction to Rev. Wright’s sermons. While not answering all my concerns, it still opened my mind and heart much more than before.

“It came from a highly respected attorney from New York City, Mr. Jeh Johnson, who happens to be an African-American. Jeh is a strong and steadfast supporter of Senator Obama. I have known of and admired Jeh from afar for many years. He also admires Senator and President Clinton and served with me in the Clinton Administration.”

Johnson’s email is posted below Davis’ column. Read it. All of it.

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/13/lanny-davis-civil-dialogue-on-the-issue-of-reverend-wright/#more-641

  • “The good people of Pennsylvania deserve a lot better than what Barack Obama said.”

    That doesn’t sound like something a normal person says. That sounds like a political speech. Or an actor talking on script.

    And, sheesh. If the endorsement of a sports team manager actually helps Obama, then I weep for my country. What a shallow culture.

  • If Clinton wins in Pennsylvania it will prove Obama’s comment about rural voters voting against their own best interests was right. More Clinton means more of the political sodomizing they got there in the 90s from Big Boy. The American people can indeed still be bamboozled.

    Yesterday, when The Empress pushed her bullshit to a union audience and went after Obama she was greeted with groans. Those folks know what Obama said was right.

    How do you spell “Bush”? C-l-i-n-t-o-n

  • The ad features citizens — it’s unclear if they’re actors — describing how “insulted” they were by Obama’s comments

    And that needs to be found out, quickly.

    I can’t imagine they’d be stupid enough to use actors in an ad about a rival’s supposed elitism, but they’ve done dumber stuff in the past and Mark Penn’s still there.

  • Men with their culture of sports and war and conflict and aggression stick together. Of course this Rooney guy endorsed Obama. They both have penises. Never mind that Senator Clinton knows how to fire a gun and Mr. Downtown doesn’t. Never mind that Senator Clinton bowls 300 more often than not and Mr. Bright Lights, Big City’s ball stays in the gutter. Never mind that Senator Clinton loves hunting and the outdoors and Mr. Fainting Flower probably won’t go outside without first hiring some soon-to-be-a-gang-member neighbor child to shovel his walk and then insult the kid for doing the physical labor Obama thinks he’s above. She’s the hearty sportswoman who understands real Americans, but Rooney endorses Senator 2-D. Is any woman surprised?

  • Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney on Monday endorsed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid.

    in appealing to the working class vote this endorsement strikes me as more important than many of the other (political) endorsements combined.

  • Hmm. I am a woman, Insane Fake Professor, and I will vote for Obama because I don’t believe Clinton is “the hearty sportswoman who understands real Americans.” Maybe I haven’t had enough coffee this morning, but were you being sarcastic? It’s so hard to tell on these intrawebtubz.

    And I suspect Rooney’s endorsement WILL go a ways toward influencing many Stiller fans with de Arn City birs dey got frum Gian Teagle.

  • A recent issue of The Nation was devoted to the 75th anniversary of FDR’s inauguration; you can read the whole issue online. A series of articles covered many topics related to FDR. One of them, “FDR’s Propaganda”, inspired me to look up and listen to the first “fireside chat”, On the Bank Crisis, Sunday, March 12, 1933. If you click the left-side “audio” you can listen while you read the transcript. (The right-side “audio” lets you download an mp3 version.) It takes a little over ten minutes to listen to.

    It’s amazing to me how different he was from Bush and his Crime Family. FDR begins “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking.” I can’t imagine a more complex subject being approached so simply. And, unlike now, the times were dire – there had a been a real run on the banks until FDR, new in his office, shut them down by declaring a “bank holiday” a week earlier. People were panicked. FDR calmed them by giving them real information to replace their fear. In contrast, Bush panics the public by spewing lies (about Iraq) and hiding truths (about the $3 trillion dollar cost of the war and his $9 trillion debt, three times what he inherited from the entire history of our country).

    I’m not saying this one talk addresses the problems of our day Consumer credit, as we know it, didn’t exist then. Neither did multinational corporations, NAFTA (ugh … thanks, Clinton), subprime mortgages (thanks Bush), global warming and a host of modern frights both real and imagined. But it does remind us that complex things, even the Great Depression, can be put simply and that we still can control our lives if we have the knowledge and the will. I’m hoping Obama will give us both, once he gets past Hillary Gollum Clinton and her egomanical so-called husband.

  • If I were Obama, I’d smack her right back with this:

    “I’m not sitting here as some little woman ‘standing by my man’ like Tammy Wynette…”

    “You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas…”

  • Molly (#9),

    Does Hillary Gollum Clinton really expect us to believe that you hunt banded geese from behind a duck blind with a six-shooter?

    I don’t know. Seems like a real Michael Dukakis moment for me. I wonder if the superdelegates (ex officio delegates, to be precise) will get it.

  • Hey—I’d much rather have Rooney in my corner than that scummy little Rendell character who’s in the pockets of the real estate developers. Pretty much like the Hillistine-in-chief….

  • Why are you voting for Hillary IFP? Because she has breasts? and you sound more than alittle BITTER!

  • Hillary didn’t say she hunted ducks with a six-shooter. She said a rifle, almost as bad.

  • I think some of the commenters here are missing the key word in Insane Fake Professor’s handle.

    Hint: it’s the middle one.

  • I guess some folks here weren’t awake through the 90s. Thems were good times.
    Comparing Bush with Clinton? What a joke! Nobody that has been around for the last several decades could possibly find such a comparison credible.
    You Obama followers can be distinguished from genuine Obama supporters because you parrot right wing talking points and call HRC supporters names.
    I have not met many Obama supporters, but those I have met talk about policies, electablity, etc.
    If Obama received the racist remarks like HRC gets sexist remarks I think that a couple of the commenters on this site would explode.
    If Obama tried something like this:
    “I’m not sitting here as some little woman ’standing by my man’ like Tammy Wynette…”
    Obama would be history… instantly.
    And you guys can’t let go of the NAFTA thing. Either you refuse to accept the truth that HRC did not support NAFTA, or you think she is just a Bill clone. Either way you lose credibility.
    So if you see your self in the above, take note. You are not supporting Obama, you are alienating HRC supporters. We are almost half the voters who will vote in November. Show some respect, or take the consequences.

  • It’s such a wild coincidence that most of the pro-Clinton rants/threats on this blog from all these different people have the exact same spacing problems. What are the odds?

  • Neil

    I haven’t heard anyone make sexist remarks about Clinton.

    But McCain called his wife a cunt and a trollop — is that sexist enough for you?

  • The Clinton campaign strongly hinted over the weekend that it would use the “bitter” flap for the basis of an attack ad against Barack Obama, and last night, the campaign followed through with a new TV spot. The ad features citizens — it’s unclear if they’re actors — describing how “insulted” they were by Obama’s comments. One man in the commercial says, “The good people of Pennsylvania deserve a lot better than what Barack Obama said.”

    And they’re now playing Mellencamp’s “Small Town” at her rallies.

    Interestingly enough, from an analysis at TPM, the polls are showing – when compared overall – that there is basically no movement as a result of all of The Empress’ sturm und drang on this.

    She just gets more pitiful and loseswhat little “moral authority” she had, as she stands there swinging at what she thinks is a target, becoming more and more obviously the Goldwater Girl she always was.

    A lady born into an upper class, management family, raised in an upper class, management surburb, sent to an upper class college at a time when no one of any other background got there, now a multi-millionaire (as a result of her husband’s friends), knows anything about what she’s talking about?

    And I’ll bet her “hunting experience” is as accurate as her sniper-dodging.

  • You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas…”

    MissMudd,

    Hillary doesn’t need to stay home for tea and cookies. That’s what Bosnia is for.

  • I’m in love with IFP. She’s so angry! It’s sexy!

    Didn’t Pennsylvania vote for Bush in 2004? There seems to be a track record of voting against their own interests (and the nation’s). Let’s hope Rooney’s crystal clear understanding of why Senator Obama is the right pick for President translates to PA thinking about its future this time around.

  • Cleaver, Cleaver, Cleaver, do not fear Bill Clinton’s virility.

    I don’t think Clinton can win, but she hasn’t lost enough to quit. I hope Obama can learn enough from Pennsylvania to make some inroads into the difficult demographic that Clinton appeals to.

  • Hello, fellow Ameri. . . hang on, gotta let the dog off the roof of the car. . . Americans (at least those of you with flags on your lapels). Gosh darn glad to join you for this little town meeting you’ve got here.

    Now, I hope you’ll all vote for John McCain and I this November – that’s not premature is it? – but being a fair-minded, bipartisan, once-upon-a-time semi-moderate, I need to defend Hillary Clinton here. No, she’s not perfect. Doesn’t know her place as well as the Mormon women do. But I am disappointed in people like “Tom Cleaver” and his cynicism about her hunting bona fides.

    I understand what she’s going through – I had questions raised about my own support for the National Rifle Association (can I get a moment of silence here for my good friend Moses, er, Charton Heston?) Like her, I’ve spend most of my life in city. But I think that makes our experience expressing our Second Amendment rights all the more telling: we sought out opportunities to use guns; why, it was almost like being a street thug! Just kidding. Not really. I’m actually tough on crime. “Street thug” isn’t going to get me called a racist is it? Forget that.

    Anyway, my point here, and then I’ll let all of you Islamofascist loving liberals get back to your own discussion, is that I have, in fact, hunted with Hillary. Yep. Actually, that is why I was not marching with my Dad and Reverend King. And I can tell you, she was pretty good at shootign small varmints in the backyard with me. And really, she’s pretty clever honoringthe National Rifle Association by saying she hunted ducks with a rifle. Wish I’d thought of that. McCain might be begging to be my vice president!

    Anyhow, I gotta run. Corporate speaking engagements, meeting with evangelical preachers, campaign debt to try and pay off. (Who am I kidding – my full season DVDs of Big Love just got here and I’m gonna kick back and watch with the Mrs’s.)

    So don’t be so hard of Hillary – at least not for her hunting stories. And remember, McCain-Romney in November! (Shout it loud! – preferably right behind John when he doesn’t know you’re there. But not until after the inaugural. Wont do me any good until then. Thanks.)

  • nell, do you have to write the same comments in every post? it’s getting very repetitive. talk about “talking points”

  • I’m in love with IFP. She’s so angry! It’s sexy!

    If I had a dollar for every time a man has tried to reduce the powerful words of a strong and serious woman to mere sexuality, I’d send it to Hillary. It’s just a way of devaluing our intellect and talents. I bought these sensible shoes just to avert this sort of thing, but you can’t stop a man bent on denigrating and controlling women through physicality.

  • Ed @ #22, Bush did NOT win Pennsylvania in ’04; the Keystone State was one of the few swing states to land in Kerry’s column, even as its residents re-elected Arlen Specter.

  • Thank you #27, I was just rushing to correct that as well! Even with our spiffy electronic voting horrors we managed to pull out a Kerry win.

    I think the Rooney endorsement could be yet another factor helping people along into undecided and perhaps all the way over to Obama. However, our local paper here (the Post-Gazette, I don’t mean Scaife’s Tribune-Review) barely covered it. I went looking online, not having seen it in my copy. Found an online click poll about it, but finally had to email. It’s mentioned at the very end of a longer story…about Clinton.

    Supposedly there was a picture of them, but I have yet to track that down, two different people responded to my email, but only one sent a link.

  • I stand corrected on the PA vote in 2004. I just couldn’t remember. Thanks for the correction. I still wouldn’t put it past PA to go McCain’s way in the GE, thus proving my larger point that Americans seem hell-bent on voting against their interests.

    As for IFP, why is it that every time a man expresses his feelings to a woman, they can only see it in terms of an expression of physicality? Sexy isn’t just about the flesh. For me, it’s more about the emotion brought to any given subject. And you, IFP, you bring it!

  • Please accept my apology, Ed. I can see that you’re a rare and special man, a man who understands the romance of the true intertwining of spirits, rather than fixating on that messy sticky stuff. I’m honored by your words.

  • We hear all about the Steelers endorsement of Obama and nothing about Hillary’s 100 mayors endorsement. Typical.

    Kevin Drum is talking about the rediscovery of feminist discontent arising from the way Hillary has been treated in the media. I found it especially interesting that none of the women would go on record because of the harrassment they said they were receiving from bosses and male friends. Sort of like the beating Clinton supporters take here.

    He assumes that feminists who favor Clinton will line up in the Fall behind Obama, but I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I won’t and I know there are others who feel the way I do about this election. It is radicalizing to find that the press gets upset when some jerk calls Obama “boy” but no one cares that an anti-Hillary organization is called C.U.N.T., a term every bit as offensive.

  • Don’t worry, Mary. I mentioned the 100 mayoral endorsements a couple hours ago on one of the other threads. Do you know how many of these endorsements are from Dems?

  • Mary: It is radicalizing to find that the press gets upset when some jerk calls Obama “boy” but no one cares that an anti-Hillary organization is called C.U.N.T., a term every bit as offensive.

    Certainly, “radicalizing” in the sense that “to say that ‘no one cares that an anti-Hillary organization is called CUNT’ is a radical departure from reality.” The dozens of blogs that covered CUNT soundly chastised Roger Stone in no uncertain terms.

    And I took a look at that thread over at Drum’s place; looks like you’ve been a very busy girl in it. Someone called you out as one of the “new” posters, I see.

    danp: Do you know how many of these endorsements are from Dems?

    How many? Five?

  • Cleaver, Cleaver, Cleaver, do not fear Bill Clinton’s virility.

    Anticipating more Ovary Office romping, Bill secretly sings in the shower: “Viiiiivaaaa Viagra!!”.

    Sadly, Hillary now hires interns who are either clones of Madeline Albright or muscle-bound steelworkers.

    And she swallowed all the Viagra just before the hunting trip.

    (Funny I never see Mary posting how blatantly sexist that bastard really is, seducing a starstruck co-ed just because he could, and essentially ruining her career and her life. Nah, don’t matter one bit because the die-hard lesbian league has always assumed it’s a small price to pay to get that whore in office.)

  • MissMudd, at the risk of sounding like I am blaming the victim (and I in no way say this to excuse Big Dog’s behavior – what he did was stupid, indulgent and wrong), it is not like Monica was some virginal innocent “taken” by Bill. By virtually all accounts, she maneuvered to have contact with him, and flashed her thong to get things started. Some accounts portray her behaving in similar ways toward her professors, and a former paramour claimed she had, upon landing her DC internship, made comments about taking her “Presidential knee-pads.”

    Now, all of that suggests a lot of reasons to be concerned for her, to be saddened, to think she was vulnerable and easily taken advantage of — and again, for all of those reasons and many more what Bill did was very very wrong. But to say he was seducing a starstruck co-ed just because he could, and essentially ruining her career and her life absolves her of any responsibility for her own choices, ignores that she was headed down this path long before he took any actions to “seduce” her, and ignores that her own apparent lack of sexual self-respect may well have “ruined her life” whether with Bill or someone else (and that said I don’t know that she is doing so badly – didn’t she get a pretty elite graduate degree?)

  • BTW Mary, as a woman, it’s been my experience those most offended by the word “cunt”, usually display that very attitude which earns them the name.

  • Mary,

    I seem to remember The Carpetbagger Report and several regular readers being quite offended about Citizens United Not Timid when it happened months ago. I’m sorry we’re not in the habbit of bringing it up every time someone slights Obama racially. I didn’t know we were supposed to.

  • Reality Much, that would be true if he hadn’t already had that huge history of not keeping the old pipe snake in his britches. He was the President for chrissake and he used and abused that power not just to scandalize the woman, but lie about it like a cheap rug from K-Mart!

    That’s the same idiot logic some guys use when claiming “it”s not rape because she smiled at me first.”

  • I didn’t post at Kevin Drum’s. It must be someone else. I’ll go look, but I’m not the only Mary in the world.

  • MissMudd,

    With all due respect (not that you are showing much of it), there is a huge difference in the dynamics of rape and of consensual sex. Noting that Monica had a role as an adult woman in what happened is not at all the same as saying rape victims “had it coming” and I very much resent the suggestion that I hold such a position as to rape victims.

    You are simply ignoring reality if you honestly believe women are always the passive little flowers waiting to be courted with a stately formality by a gentleman. Sometimes women make their moves, too.

    Indeed, in downplaying the role an educated adult woman’s choices played, who is patronizing women here? (And I repeat again, my belief that that scandal took two means that I also hold Bill responsible for his stupid, unhinged, reckless choices as well.)

  • Mary–

    You can royally f-off. So can all of the other so-called “feminists” who are stomping their feet and saying they won’t support Obama in the general.

    If something were to happen that *fairly* resulted in Obama taking a nosedive and Hillary ended up the nominee (without any dirty tricks), I’d DAMN WELL VOTE FOR HER.

    Why? I’m not a big fan of Hillary these days, HOWEVER, I have the ability to think about politics rationally. It’s pretty clear that McCain is WAYYYY scarier than Bush. Imagine Bush with a brain, military credentials and a strong desire to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”

    I’m sorry if Hillary’s coronation isn’t going as planned. If you are such a big feminist then please, by all means, vote for the man who publicly called his wife a cunt in front of his staff. Vote for the man who said that Chelsea Clinton was the offspring of HIllary and Janet Reno. Vote for the man who wants to overturn Roe.

    If you want to turn back the clock on feminism please vote for McCain out of petty, infantile spite for Obama.

  • I don’t know why Obama supporters are on Clinton for some gun-thing. I didn’t catch a reference to her saying anything…

    …But really, a revolver can be used to hunt grouse and small game. That was the classic western way to get them; not terribly efficient, but still plausible. (My spouse tells me about the time she shot twice with her revolver and got two quail… Which was also the last time she walked around with a loaded revolver.)

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