how will she be able to govern... or can she govern with this kind of baggage? It was going to be difficult enough for her to govern (if elected) in the first place, in my opinion, given that she was not going to have long enough coattails to pull in a crowd of Democrats downticket along with her.  That is, she was already going to face a Congress full of hostile Republicans bent on typical Republican obstructionism.  Now, she adds these additional missteps and I unhappily predict she will be hamstrung, no matter what. What a shame, because it did not have to be this way.  

Over the past couple of days I have heard multiple people blaming all the missteps of the Clinton campaign on her advisers.  What ever happened to "The buck stops here"?  Does this remind anybody else of the Bush policy of it wasn't me blame my advisers.  The candidate ultimately is in charge.  I think it is a fair assumption that were Hillary to be elected she would govern the same way that she has run this campaign.

I don't think they have.  

Also, when you are at the top of a large organization, it is impossible to control the actions of all the individuals underneath you.  This is difficult for even CEOs when every employee underneath them is paid to do their job and fears losing it.  But in a campaign when the organization is a combination of paid and voluntary workers, that is harder to do.  It is a fair criticism to say she should have come out earlier and repudiated this.  But she can't control what every person who supports her or works for her campaign says.  And what one of her supporters says is not necessarily reflective of her views.

I think it is probably pretty difficult being Hillary Clinton.  You know when my friends or relatives say stupid things, I don't need to make a public apology for them or publicly repudiate their views.  That has to be difficult.  I think we all treat publicity as if it is an every day thing.  But we're not public officials, we are just accountable to ourselves and that's it.  I can't imagine how these things affect your relationship with your friends and family.

However, politicians always make the mistake of waiting too long to cut the cord and I think that is what caused problems for Clinton with Ferraro's comments.  She waited too long to cut the cord.

And I know it must have been tough.  Clinton did wait out of loyalty and friendship to Ferraro.  But she should have known what the end result was going to be, based on all that "experience" she has.  

Out of loyalty to her financial supporters and to her volunteers, she should have moved quicker to lessen the damage.  

I am still dumb-founded by Ferraro's comments - the first one and the second one.  
 

it would have taken Hillary to cut Ferraro from the campaign had she not left on her own will.

And I agree, yet another great post from Vivian.

Reading through all the horrible stuff Clinton is doing to effectively threaten the destruction of the Democratic Party, (latest is to make Obama "unelectable"), I'm wondering, at what point is enough enough and we demand her withdrawal from the race to protect OUR Democratic Party?
I'd say we're at or past that threshold and time to call for her to withdraw is now!

in Washington state - looks like the Ferraro flap was the straw that broke the camels back.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.c...

the corporate news readers just are taking their talking points from their bosses.

One can easily see that the subtext of the Clinton campaign's anger at Obama's success with blacks is anger at black people themselves for not just taking the abuse and staying on the Clinton plantation.

If this were happening in the Republican primary Democrats would be pointing out that the Republican party is rascist to the core. I think every Democrat would be a better citizen if he or she remembered that its country and Constitution first and party second. I see too many Democrats who are afraid to call things as they are in the party because they believe party unity is more important than any bad behavior within the party. This is self defeating since it is really the bad behaviour that is causing the party divisions.

you're nuttier than a pecan pie.  There's absolutely no basis for bringing in this sort of race-mongering plantation speak.  Someone accidentally lights a fire, and your solution is to try smothering it with lighter fluid and gasoline.  The fact that so many people--including you--insist on making this campaign about race instead of the countless challenges that are facing our country (foreclosures, recessions, a WAR IN WHICH NEARLY 4,000 AMERICAN SERVICEMEN DIED) is disgusting.  It's frankly gotten to the point where it bothers me reading it from your keyboard as when I hear it come out of Ferraro's mouth.

You asked me to call it like I see it?  Well there it is.

The comments Rebecca made are actually pretty reasonable, I think you might have misread them.

I was thinking it is a good thing that Hillary stays in the race just to let every voter get their two cents in... but perhaps there is some damage being done.

perhaps Rebecca's choice of words is a bit inflammatory...

And I'm also sick and tired of this persistent mantra about how supposedly so many Democrats aren't living according to their values if we don't feel like the very fact that someone's even challenging Barack Obama for the nomination is the most racist thing since cross burning and justification for stoning Hillary Clinton in the street.  Her argument basically boils down to this: "Even if you don't support Hillary, if you don't active hate her, you're a racist."

Even as an Obama supporter, that offends the hell out of me.

I lived down the street from Pat Robertson, and so I've had quite enough of the "if you don't agree with me, you're going to hell" rhetoric for one lifetime.  Is there any way I can filter out her comments so I never see them again?  Anybody know?

If you feel strongly, you can rate them as "unproductive" or whatever.  Other than that, I'd probably just ignore them if they bother you a lot...

But I certainly can't. I'm truly offended by this comment.  

of the word "plantation" is a bit over the line - and an exact example of the very behavior you believe can/is causing party division.

When you assume black people should remain loyal even after your husband plays the race card and your supporters play the race card I'd say that's a plantation mentality. Anyone with any sense would know exactly why black people have deserted the Clintons, anyone, that is, except the Clintons themselves. I call them like I see them.

"Calling 'em like you see 'em" can get you in a lot of trouble.  Friendly advice from somebody who has made this mistake before: better to think first, or just don't speak.  Opening your mouth and letting observations fly out is usually a VERY dangerous act.

is not only off-base, it trivializes the heinous institution of slavery by reducing it to a simple matter of racial identity politics.  We have plenty of actual plantations here in Virginia that have been turned into museums and historical landmarks; maybe while the hot months of the year are approaching you should take a day to go visit one and contemplate the slave quarters and what it would be like to toil in a cotton field under the hot sun in a humid Virginia summer.

Maybe then you'll take slavery seriously enough that you won't be so quick to equate it with some tasteless off the cuff remarks an old woman made in a moment of frustration.  

except the part about "a moment of frustration." Ferraro firmly stands by her comments in interview after interview and said the exact same thing about an African-American candidate 20 years ago.

That's a looooooong moment.

"You got yourself stuck in a moment,
And you can't get out of it..."
~U2

I'm going to have to defend Silence Dogood here. He's not wrong in his assessment of Rebecca.  Although she is very quick to label those who disagree with her about Obama as racist, she herself has shown bigotry on occasion.  

Here's one example.

After Hillary Clinton won Nevada by carrying the Hispanic vote, here was Rebecca's response.

According to CNN, female Latinos fueled Clinton's win in NV, confirming my theory that the "less than college educatied, stand by your man" female is supporting Clinton. Interestingly though, black voters are shifting to Obama in large numbers.

When other commenters protested her characterization of Latinas, with whom she personally disagreed, she wrote

As I explained in a post on another topic, when a woman cannot make enough money to make it on her own she will stay with an unworthy man for practical reasons. In the Latino culture this is common. The other part is that, from what I can tell, it is more expected in that culture. I am not putting anyone down, just telling it like it is.

When a woman is in the professions and can make enough money she is less likely to stand by her man when he is mishaving because she can make it on her own. The polls show that working class (I suppose this means not college educated) women are the ones supporting Clinton, not women who have college and beyond educations.

Sorry you think I'm being mean. These are just the facts, just the facts. These working class women can get a vicarious pay back by having one of their own be president over all the men in the country.

 
I will leave it to other fair minded readers to decide if this is anti-Hispanic, elitist, and insulting to working class women in general.

In addition, Rebecca's views on Israel and the American Jewish lobby come very close to the border of anti-Semitism.  I'm not going to call her an outright anti-Semite, but the consequences of views such as those she expresses give aid and comfort to bigots.

In fact, if every Hillary supporter is a race baiter, as Rebecca alleges, by her own standard, remarks like the ones below are Jew baiting.

She has posted stuff like this

From inside the halls of Congress to the offices of Democratic politicians around the country there is increasing criticism of the stranglehold the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its political allies have on the Democratic Party's agenda and political message. WMR has spoken to a number of Democrats off-the-record and the story is much the same: Democratic leaders, from House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emmanuel to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Dianne Feinstein -- pursuant to dictates from pro-Israeli political interests -- are curbing debate on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, impeachment, and generally, any strong or effective reaction by the Democrats to the Bush administration's and the neo-cons' disastrous war in Iraq. In various congressional districts, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is bypassing progressive Democratic candidates and replacing them with "centrist" and less anti-war candidates for the 2008 election."

In addition, she came up with her sourcing from a radical leftist conspiracy theorist website written by Wayne Madsen.

In fact, a commenter on that post challenged her with  this quote which he found on Wayne Madsen's site.

After three years of investigating the events of 911 on three continents, I can now report that the Saudi led terrorist attack, supported by wealthy members of governments and the top business communities of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and which was known in advance by an off-the-shelf Israeli intelligence operation supported by Israeli-Russian criminal gangs who helped to further inflame passions by posing as celebrating Arabs in and around New York City after the twin attacks on the World Trade Center[.] ... To cover their tracks, the Israelis managed, working through high tech database, networking, and communications companies in which they have a controlling interest, to destroy critical evidence concerning their role in not only failing to warn the United States of what was being planned for September 11, 2001 but in stoking the flames of anti-Arab tensions by posing as Arabs and appearing to threaten the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and the George Washington and Brooklyn Bridges.

To answer this, here's Rebecca's response (emphasis is mine).

And by the way.. I might also add that I do believe 9/11 was an inside job. So now you can lable me a nut case too. Have a field day.

Yup, Rebecca, we can label you a nutcase.  And a fairly bigoted one when people of other ethnic groups don't hew to your party line.  Not the Obama party line, but your personal extremist agenda. One which has little to do with true progressivism or liberalism.