Obamamentum…take this out of context bitches…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama cruised past a fading Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Wisconsin primary Tuesday night, gaining the upper hand in a Democratic presidential race for the ages. It was Obama’s ninth straight victory over the past three weeks, and left the former first lady in desperate need of a comeback in a race she long commanded as front-runner.
In a clear sign of their standing in the race, most cable television networks abruptly cut away from coverage of Clinton’s rally when Obama began to speak in Texas.
Beyond this presidential campaign, I can’t but help to wonder if there is now Full-Clinton-Overload (or Clinton-fatigue) for the Dems.
They may be done.
I really liked the ex-President until this campaign.
I think you hit the nail on the head.
There was a time I felt sorry for them both. He was an ass but the Republicans and the press went after his personal life which should have been off limits. Now I believe the Clintons are just disfunctional, there’s no empathy there. I’ve grown to distrust them and dislike them.
I think that the rampant corporate shill and washington insider crowd swarming the Clinton campaign like bees looking for honey did them in. Now the same is probably true for any candidate but it seems that it was all too obvious with this campaign strategy. I was hoping Bill would be savvy enough to recognize this and tone it down. At the same time, it is still quite obvious that it is all too apparent in John McCain’s bid as well, with Lindsey and Phil Graham and the Enron crowd flocking around his bid with endorsements from the Bush family, and endorsements from the defense industry, and flip-flop votes on torture.
While I certainly am one who suffers from Clinton fatigue, what did them in, IMHO, is a once-in-a-generation figure like Obama who has galvanized people unlike anybody this side of MLK. Otherwise, we would be facing the utterly joyless prospect of Clinton vs. McCain.
Their only hope now is an egregious mistake by Obama in the upcoming debates. Wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.
Rebecca – some of us knew full well of the Clinton’s nastiness long before 2008 or 1998. The vicious win-at-all-costs-or-drag-everyone-down-with-you tactics of the Clintons was something I experienced up close in 94-95.
The attempts to tear down their “enemies” personally has long been a stock-in-trade of their political lives, all the way back to Arkansas.
It is why I always chortled when Bill later came to piss and whine about the “politics of personal destruction”.
He knew about it because he was the master of it. He just couldn’t stand a taste of his own medicine.
Their sickening political jihadism against anyone who stood in their way was just all-too-convenient for Democratic partisans at the time, who went along rather than reject it.
The inevitable counter-strikes a few years later from the GOP Congress, who got sick of the Clintons’ phony sanctimony, high-horse-riding, and demonization, were very much more a reaction, rather that a long-standing vast right-wing “get the Clintons” agenda.
I am happy to see many Democratic partisans finally waking up to what these people are really like…now that they are no longer your party’s royalty, in power anyway.
Better late than never.
It is just a shame it took you all until 2008, as their bile is turned on one of your own, someone who is a decent honorable man (Obama) with nothing but good intentions.
We in the GOP have already seen plenty of it. It is a shame it took a taste of it yourselves to feel what garbage it really is.
I just hope you all don’t merely reject the Clintons while carrying on with their blow torch tactics.
I understand the rough-and-tumble of politics, but the constant no-limits assaults on political opponents should be de-escalated once they leave the scene.
I fear the Clintonian-Rovian politics that has infected everything in the last decade will continue to last.
I see it quite a bit with the relentless broad-brush assaults on anything/everything GOP or “conservative”.
I popped in to the “live blogging” last night but found myself too disgusted by the infantile tearing-down and mud-slinging at John McCain to participate.
Policy is one thing, but going after anything and everything about your opponent is too positively……well, Clintonian.
If you want to “be the change you have been waiting for” I urge you all to start acting like it, rather than emulating the Clinton attack machine.
I can promise, at least from myself, the same effort and will urge the same of my own party where I can have any influence.
The high road is never paved with mud.
Thanks for listening.
I popped in to the “live blogging” last night but found myself too disgusted by the infantile tearing-down and mud-slinging at John McCain to participate.
D’oh!
Tyler, I hate to tell you but that was the lofty heights from which the discourse will descend over the next 9 months.
J – I understand the blog situation, I was speaking more on a general discourse level. I guess there is a fine line between snark and bile. If I took seriously everything you all say about Republicans or conservatives generally you would most certainly never hear from me again…personally or otherwise.
“I fear the Clintonian-Rovian politics that has infected everything in the last decade will continue to last.”
We must never pursue power so much that we forget what is right. European power politics will never and can never serve this country well whether they come from the Democratic or Republican side, it is a terrible threat to the republican form of government that we have inhereited and that we should rightly develop and cause to progress in our nation and through the world so that we can be the best hope for each other and for others. This forgetfulness about the negative freedom we enjoy, that governm,ent shall make no laws concerning…. that make our union unique in the history of world and make it special. European power politics from either side will destroy that and turn back the clock and not allow the good, natural and progressive innovation that secure our felicities and that restrains the power of one person or insitituion over another and fulfills the principles of our national heritage. We can choose that, or we can choose power politics, but power politics are going to lead us into a dangerous situation, I fear the day where we either have a peaceful global world or prove our unfitness to have a world order at all. A wise a frugal government that would provide for the indidivual development of each human person through his or her own talent, and could become the text of civic instruction should be the principle that we strive for; and we can do it alone and can become peaceful free and safe through a kind of wisdom that is just and new and revolutionary and open. I say we try that for a change and leave the scorched earth stuff behind before it gets us entangled in resource wars and utopian and meglaomanical fantasy.
The rovian-Clintonian politics are nothing more than a rehashing of european ideas about power and political processes that are very old and have everything to do with other nations and very little to do with anything in our heritage. They are a blip in history that I hope we overcome so as not to slip into some brave new world. For 4 centuries now, my family have lived with William Penn’s charter as a good guiding vision of principle, it produced a system a government that Voltarie said ” was as close to the golden age of man as one can reasonably expect to find on earth.” If we do this, and give the same freedoms and protections to everybody, rich or poor, regardless of ethnicity or heritage, it is going to give us a much better world. I wish we would just take those principles and build on them, instead of trashing them for power at all costs. The extreme of power says that we either get hegemony and destruction or we get to survive. Let’s hope we choose the latter.
I popped in to the “live blogging” last night but found myself too disgusted by the infantile tearing-down and mud-slinging at John McCain to participate.
I wonder if Tyler didn’t like my GILF comment.
Tyler does have a point, though the live blogging is a bit different that the standard blogging fare.
1. Live blogging is fueled by alcohol, and ifyou are not drinking, you should be.
2. Live blogging is one big circle jerk.
3. We all channel Donviti while live blogging.
The “politics of personal destruction” certainly did not start with the Clintons (perhaps we should talk about Lee Atwater — the legendary practitioner of the modern version of the politics of personal destruction — who didn’t start it either, but certainly lowered the bar several times in its practice). But the modern version of leave no muck behind (and make sure it all gets on cable or at least a push poll) has mostly republican origins (see Atwater) and has certainly gotten to MAD levels.
This is the kind of thing that the Third Way people were lamenting (while trying to get Bloomberg into the race) and said they wanted to change. What made their task so ludicrous was that many of these folks (on both sides) were and are senior members of their respective parties who were in positions to influence the discourse of their respective parties for a long time. Their Third Way effort sounded like too little, too late and why didn’t you do this when you were a nonstop feature on TV repeating the day’s talking points for your side?
And so what now? Certainly the world be much better if our political discourse focused on real issues, but almost throughout American History, the political season is most often the silly season. The rhetoric is certainly getting worse, but unilaterally disarming is certainly high-minded, but doesn’t get you very far, since these are apparently the new rules.
Nemski – HAH! I appreciate a Polack with a good sense of humor. (I consider myself one too…most of the time, anyway).
Cass – I thought about what you were saying (where did nasty politics really begin). Generally, I realized it goes back as far as the history of the Republic, at least insofar as political campaigns go.
In the modern era I thought about LBJ’s ’64 “girl with the flower” tv ad and most certainly about Lee Atwater as taking it up a notch with Willie Horton in ’88.
But there is no denying that the Clintons took it up a huge notch and propelled it into the current state of latent nastiness and free-for-all, all the time.
The Clintons are to be attributed with the phenomenon of the “permanent campaign” which, of course, nicely dovetailed with the then-emerging 24 hour news cycle, and eventually a proliferation of all-news networks late in Clinton’s term.
The Clintons took the mud of the campaign trail and made it a feature of daily political life, starting with their assaults on the new GOP Congress in ’94, before they were even sworn-in, and the onward and downward.
If you want to trace American politics and governance (not just election campaigns) as constant personal warfare and attack, done over the public airwaves, it all began with the Clintons.
Saying this phenomenon has Republican origins is simply as revisionist as saying it has Democratic origins.
It has Clintonian origins and will persist with those two and their ilk on the scene.
Witness Hillary’s “I will fight” mantra. They know nothing else.
They are the ultimate “warrior-victims”.
From cnn.com
Heading into Wisconsin, most thought the contest was a toss-up. Obama’s sweeping win there Tuesday can’t be encouraging for the Clinton camp heading into Ohio as there are a lot of similarities between the blue-collar, Rust Belt states.
If the demographic trends continue, it doesn’t look good in Texas. Obama won the Latino vote in Maryland and Virginia last week, a segment of the electorate that was solidly in the Clinton camp at the beginning of the race.
Polls in Texas show the contest there being a dead heat, but they showed the same thing in Wisconsin.
Come on Hillary, we all know where this is going.
http://tinyurl.com/36bkra
If you want to trace American politics and governance (not just election campaigns) as constant personal warfare and attack, done over the public airwaves, it all began with the Clintons.
Talk about revisionist. Wingnut talk radio was enjoying its ascendance and there was not a one of them that was not taking the Clinton(s) to task over the real and (mostly) made up every day. They even went to town on the teenage Chelsea Clinton — and what was that for? Wingnut radio was connected to the daily talking points for repubs and those repubs were busily working at damaging Clinton(s) by any means necessary. The Permanent Campaign was (in part) a response to the Permanent Assault — an assault that was supposed to make it impossible for Clinton to govern not by any real debate of the merits, but because Clinton himself was suspect.
No other president in my lifetime has had to live with that , on so many fronts; and the Permanent Campaign is much of the reason why Clinton — in spite of his spectacularly appalling behavior with Monica Lewinsky — maintained reasonably good approval ratings for much of his time in office. (David Brock is really good on this — and he was one of the pieces of the machine pointed at damaging Clinton.)
BushCo has been very good at the politics of personal destruction — and they turn it against their best critics. Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson — BushCo takes the you are with us or against us stuff personally, even when folks call them on their lies.
The Clintons have more than their fair share of problems and I would not want to see either of them back in the White House right now. Not because I don’ think she can’t do the job, but because I don’t think that she’ll do the job that is needed after 8 years of the disastrous George Bush and his legions of Regent College lawyers. Unfortunately, one of the real strengths of Hillary Clinton is that the wingnut machine already worked her over when Bill was in office and she survived. And she survived by pushing back hard and even going on the offensive at the wingnut assault squads.
Their only sin here is being effective at fighting back and countering the wingnut assault squads.
Nice post Cass.
My feeling about Hillary Clinton is that she could win the general election as she is such a polarizing figure with the wing nuts. Even if she did win, Washington would come to a complete standstill, and there is too much work to be done.
Cass you’re living in the past, not merely reflecting on it.
Polarize, polarize, polarize. It’s what you want, no?
Your mindset is no steps away from “they had it coming to ’em”, as it concerns any of your hated foes, whether invented or real.
You’re angry. So am I.
But I’ve learned the answer is not in being the head bitch ass prosecutor in the imaginary trial of your hated political adversaries.
Let’s try to work in good faith where we agree and forget labels and recriminations that have zero to do with substance.
Well, I guess that is one way to avoid a selective history.
Let’s try to work in good faith where we agree and forget labels and recriminations that have zero to do with substance.
I am on board with this — but am not interested in a POV or a history that tries to place the blame for bad behavior on one side without ever acknowledging that this kind of political bad behavior rarely exists in its own vacuum. And while I certainly don’t like the crap perpetrated by either the Clintons or their own prosecutors, insisting that it is all one side’s fault doesn’t get you far in the good faith stakes.
As I said above :
Saying this phenomenon has Republican origins is simply as revisionist as saying it has Democratic origins.
We have to stop beating each other up at some point, if we are really going to work together and make progress in public interest.
‘Nuf said.