The way she's handeled herself recently has been atrocious.  She's probably hurting herself more than Obama.  Serves her right.

And emulate Al Gore in December of 2000.  Do what's right, not just for her party, but for the country.

It's over.  She should show some class.  And some true patriotism.

is that she continues to talk about pledged delegates being free to vote for whomever they want. Given the way she's pushing up negatives in her own party, does anyone really believe she could steal more delegates from Obama than the other way around?

This is what I get out from her repeating this idea that pledged delegates can vote however they want:

her campaign have sensed that super delegates won't overturn the delegate count going into the convention, and browbeating pledged delegates is her only chance to win the nomination.

If Senator Clinton somehow wins the Democratic nomination, I may be tempted to write-in my vote for "Present N. Disgusted".

The Bosnia story has not run its course, the Wright story is already old news.

Anyone who would be scared by the Wright story probably wouldn't be voting Democrat anyway.  Wright is Obama's friend, but he's not Obama.

The Bosnia story is far worse: it is Hillary Clinton telling an elaborate lie on videotape and then having proof of her lie produced for all to see, also on videotape.

It's not "macaca," but it's damned close.

Much of what Rev. Wright said -- however uncomfortable it might be for the white bread American electorate -- is demonstrably true.

Much of Sen. Clinton's persona -- despite the stone-faced, ignore the elephant in the room visage -- is transparently fabricated.

As to this latest poll, the Clintonista strategy has been to hang in there until Senator Obama slips up and then pounce.  Unfortunately for Senator Clinton, she's the one who slipped up.  Her feeble attempts to dismiss it as I just misspoke isn't working; the reason it's not working is that one ostensible little slip pretty much encapsulates everything that's wrong about her.  

Enough is enough.  She's had her shot and it's over.  It's time for her to do the right thing.

The Bosnia story is really not that important. She may have mixed up the event when she was under fire, if it really happened somewhere.

The media is being unfair against Hillary on this one. McCain has said a lot worse thing in terms of seriousness (we are winning Iraq, the economy is fine, etc), yet they won't bother  him at all.

The biggest problem that Hillary has is that she is running on an experience ticket, and there truly isn't a long track record there.

I suspect that early on the campaign Penn polled people to find out what was the strongest trait of Hillary, and people said experience. Not because Hillary actually ran the country together with Bill in the 1990s, but because people perceived it like that. So they decided to based the campaign on this erroneous but popular belief.

The problem is that when enemies and the conservative mainstream media starts going through your record, they will exploit this myth by making her look like a liar.

If you think that they were mean to Al Gore by painting him as a liar (when it wasn't true), wait to see what is coming to Hillary, since the whole meme has been already set up with this Bosnia mistake. The media will make the public think that Hillary was lying even about being married to Bill in the first place.

Colbert did an interesting piece last week in which he compared what Wright said about 9/11 ("chickens coming home to roost") to a tonally similar statement from Falwell / Robertson ("this is God's wrath because of the lesbians and the ACLU, etc.") Of course since his Presidential intentions became clear, McCain has been going out of his way not to offend the Liberty University crowd, because it's perfectly acceptable to blame 9/11 on the lesbians, but when the radical hyperbole skews against white America, it's a scandal and a half. And no one holds the double standard against him.

That's why this is like 'macaca.' The macaca thing was so damaging because it encapsulated everything that people had always known/suspected about George Allen. That he was an arrogant, bullying closet racist.

Same thing here. It completely encapsulates what many of us have long known/suspected about Hillary Clinton. That she lies about her experience and misrepresents her record and will say or do ANYTHING in order to grab a little more power. The only thing certain about Hillary Clinton is that she will step on any person and on any rights and will stoop to any behavior, no matter how repugnant, in order to become powerful. Tell bald lies on camera, dismiss people's importance because of the color of their skin or attack someone's personal faith. Nothing is out of bounds for her.

The idea of this person wielding executive power horrifies me.

This analysis of the resonance of the macaca incident is spot on.

I'm not sure I agree that the Bosnia story will have the same resonance with Clinton, mainly because I don't agree with the description of her, and there a lot of democrats who simply do not see her this way.  Perhaps this Bosnia gaffe will change their views. I saw it as typical campaign puffery, not a really substantive thing.

I tend to think the importance of the last week or two is that Obama took a huge hit and was able to weather it, nothing more complicated than that. No campaign of the duration of a presidential contest will be without these sorts of ups and downs, and dealing successfully with them is a positive.

It also suggests that Obama might be able to stand up to the mudslinging that is sure to come. This Rev. Wright stuff is just the start.

Finally, with each passing day that Obama does not blow it, and as Clinton's path to the presidency becomes narrower and narrower, she needs to take more risks to turn things around. If these tactics don't work, then the consequences are magnified.

that given a little time, the American people will begin to realize that more and more.  They will also realize, slowly, the profound significance of Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech that directly takes responsibility for and points out the real issues of Wright's sermon.

Obama's ratings have no where to go but up.
Clinton's have no where to go but down.

The Bosnia lie really does not matter in the grander scheme - but the continued misleading and deception seems very, very familiar to American voters regardless of party affiliation.  We are all tired of it after 8 years and ready for some honesty, even if it is honesty we would prefer not to hear.

Pennsylvania is April 22nd...  that will not be enough time for enough PA voters to get the message; but it is enough to erode Clinton's polled 10% advantage down to a 5% advantage.

By May 1st, National polling will have Obama ahead by 5%; my Memorial Day national polling will have him ahead by 12%.  By August it will be clear that Obama will be our next President - not because of anything additional he's done, but because more and more Americans will have found a few minutes to read his speech and think through the issues.

I have faith that America is waking up.

The very idea of giving the nomination to someone with a 37% approval rating is absolutely ridiculous.

Hillary Clinton has insisted on this logic of hers whereby the super delegates should cast their ballots based on their own judgment of who has the best chance of winning in November. All righty then. We have one candidate whose approval ratings are in Bush territory and another who is around 50% following weeks of being accused of being a racist (on account of having black skin and all).

It's a no-brainer. You nominate the candidate who has, you know, a snowball's chance in hell of winning an election against someone other than Adolf Hitler.

37%. Rick Santorum spent most of 2006 at around 37% and based on that number it was universally agreed that he was utterly doomed as a candidate. Hillary Clinton would be just as doomed in the outrageously unlikely event that she was given the nomination.

Another factor in Clinton's low ratings may be that the story about her association with "The Family" exploded across the internet yesterday. A lot of people are shocked that she would associate with such as group.

With whom Hillary had a torrid love affair and then personally stabbed in the West Wing in order to keep it quiet.

The fact that she was able to move his body from the White House to a park in Virginia, as I am sure Rebecca would agree, is ample evidence that she is not only capable of anything, but able to accomplish whatever she wants as well.

I know people suspect it to be true - but there is a world of difference between commonly held suspicion and established facts in the legal sense...

Was I under a rock when the facts were revealed, or is this still strong, if reasonable, conjecture?

That James Carville had Foster killed on Hillary's orders.  She was angered to find out that the father of her love child, Chelsea, was leaving her for a younger woman, Monica Lewinsky.  Carville ordered the National Park Service to stage the killing at Fort Marcy to look like a suicide.

The trigger man was Smokey the Bear.

;-}

It was snark.  Aznew was being sacrastic to the person he was replying to. Bad Aznew :)

Thank you

That gave me a good laugh to start the day! :)

That was the problem that I had with Al Gore.  Sorry, I know that some Gore admirers are here and feel like he got "swift-boated," but the truth of the matter is that he exaggerated his contributions in Congress, just as Hillary is now exaggerating her "over 35 years of experience."

Just as there is a huge difference between "favoring campaign finance reform" and "being a co-sponsor of McCain-Feingold," there is a big difference between "being the first First Lady to visit a combat zone since Eleanor Roosevelt" and "ducking for cover from siper fire as we left the airplane."

What troubles me most about this kind of behavior is not that it is dishonest and self-serving.  Worse, it is symtomatic of a severe personality disorder born of narcissism.  That is not someone who I want answering the phone in the White House at 3 AM.

(Sorry, I'm just as nauseated by that "3 AM phone call" crap as most of us.  I just couldn't resist the snark.  Forgive me.)

At least according to my recollection.

Please provide an example of Gore exaggerating that is outside the normal range of puffery that is common to politicians (including Barack Obama) or obviously a minor mistake?

Nor would I classify what happened to him as "Swiftboating." What happened to Gore was worse.

Gore was done in by a lazy and grossly negligent national media that for whatever reason did not personally like him.

It is not a question of my being a Gore admirer, by the way. Rather, accuracy matters.

In that spirit, I look forward to your documented example.

How about this, aznew:

Al Gore on the Internet:

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." (Al Gore, CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," 3/9/99)

"The Internet, originally called ARPANET, dates to 1969, when the Defense Department began funding the project. Gore, then 21, was still eight years away from joining Congress." (The Associated Press, 3/11/99)

Al Gore on his service in Vietnam:

"And I was shot at. . . . I spent most of my time in the field." (Al Gore, The Washington Post, 2/3/88)

"I carried an M-16 . . . I pulled my turn on the perimeter at night and walked through the elephant grass, and I was fired upon." (Al Gore, Los Angeles Times, 10/15/99)

"On the campaign trail today, while he suggests no combat heroics, he nonetheless mentions his service in Vietnam proudly." (Los Angeles Times, 10/15/99)

"In Vietnam, Alan Leo, a photographer in the press brigade office where Gore worked as a reporter, said he was summoned by Brig. Gen. K.B. Cooper, the 20th Engineer Brigade's Commander, and told Leo that he, Cooper, 'had a great amount of respect for the senator.' He asked Leo, the most experienced member of the press unit, to make sure that nothing happened to Gore. 'He requested that "Gore not get into situations that were dangerous,'" said Leo, who did what he could to carry out Cooper's directive. He described his half-dozen or so trips into the field with Gore as situations where 'I could have worn a tuxedo.'" (Newsweek, 12/6/99)

(This one kinda sounds like "ducking sniper fire in Bosnia" doesn't it?)

Al Gore on his Support of McCain-Feingold:

"Gore noted that he had backed a sweeping campaign finance bill sponsored by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin. 'Unlike Senator Bradley, I was a co-sponsor of it,' Gore said, 'and I feel that it's very important to get the influence of special interest money out of our politics.'" (The New York Times, 11/24/99)

Sen. Russell Feingold was not elected to the U.S. Senate until 1992, the year Al Gore left the Senate to become Vice President, therefore making it impossible for Gore to be a co-sponsor of any McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform legislation. (The Almanac of American Politics 1994) Even Bill Bradley Called Gore on This Lie. "Gore not only did not, but could not have cosponsored McCain-Feingold. Russ Feingold was not elected until 1992. Al Gore quit the Senate in 1992 to become Vice President. Feingold and Gore never served together." (Bill Bradley for President Press Release, 12/7/99)

Al Gore on Love Canel:

"I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. I had the first hearing on that issue and Toone, Tenn. But that was the one that started it all." (Al Gore, The New York Times, 12/10/99)

"Mr. Gore held Congressional hearings on the matter in October 1978. But two months earlier President Jimmy Carter had declared Love Canal a disaster area, and the federal government, after much howling by local residents, had offered to buy the homes." (The New York Times, 12/1/99) Lois Gibbs, the Leader of the Love Canal Home Owners Association, Rebukes Gore. '"He did not begin Love Canal,' Lois Gibbs, legendary leader of the Love Canal Home Owners Association, said Wednesday in an interview." ([New York] Newsday, 12/3/99)

And it goes on and on...there is a good reason that this narcissistic clown couldn't beat a third-rate idiot Republican like GWB in 2000.  As Newsweek magazine noted at the time, "With eight years of economic prosperity and all time low unemployment, it shouldn't even have been close."  

Thank Donna Brazile and the other Democratic geniuses for the past seven years that we have endured under Bush 43.  Do you really want to do it again with Hillary as the Democratic nominee?

Here's the way I would put it:  I don't want to do it again with a Democratic party whose leadership, however you define it, stands mute while the Democratic candidate is trashed and misrepresented by the press. I don't want to do it again with a bunch of gutless gasbags who will not call bullshit on the media.

It's well documented that the press destroyed Gore.  The Love Canal misquote was especially egregious.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.c...

However, this thread isn't about Gore nor should it be. Gore like any public figure speaking constantly on the record, made some mistakes, like the McCain-Feingold one, which he had to correct.

But here's the thing.  When it happened to Gore and there wasn't a huge cry of outrage; and then happened to Kerry and there was no cry of outrage; and then it happened to Edwards and Hillary Clinton and there was no outcry -- what on earth makes you think you can stop if from happening to Obama?

The Great Liberal Media Bias that Faux News was created to counter is now the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Do you Clinton people even hear yourselves?  Do you have any idea how paranoid and silly you sound to disinterested observers?

Your comments beautifully illustrate the consequences of thinking that way.  Smears are accepted and repeated as truth, especially if reprinted in the N.Y. Times.  The smeared candidates are blamed for being big fat liars.  Anybody who protests is, well, either crazy or stupid or a whiner. And elections are lost when they should have been won.  

Any disinterested observers like the sound of all that?

I hadn't heard about that Internet thing. Did Gore really take credit for it?

It is well documented what happened to Gore in the 2000 campaign. And no, I don't blame it on a conspiracy or on Fox News, but on a shallow and lazy press corps that failed to do their jobs. Snark works great here on RK; in the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times, however, it is inappropriate.

To fully understand the relationship between Al Gore and the press, I strongly recommend this now classic blog post from 2002 by my late colleague, Jim Capozolla, "Al Gore and the Alpha Girls.":

http://rittenhouse.blogspot.co...

Onto specifics, then.

As for the Internet remark, I actually am surprised you raise it. The coverage has been so thoroughly debunked that the incident no longer even says anything about Gore, but is instead a symbol for the vapid, spin-driven press coverage of presidential candidates that unfortunately persists to this day.

Here is bob Somersby, the acknowledged expert on the Gore/Media trainwreck, and a critic who meticulously documents everything he writes, on that:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh1...

Love Canal:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/h12...

But just for the record, there is no apparent dispute about the facts of this case as Gore outlines them in this passage. Gore did hold the first hearings on this subject; they did involve Toone and Love Canal; they did produce significant outcomes.

On your Vietnam assertion, I don't have time to find all the documentation, but read your allegation carefully. First, what Leo said doesn't even contradict what Gore said, unless of course Leo can attest to having spent every waking moment with Gore in Vietnam. Indeed, both Gore's account and Leo's can be true.

Second, even to the extent that they are contradictory, Leo's account is based on heresay. Do we really know that is what cooper said? Perhaps Leo is looking to puff up his own sense of bravery?

And lastly, HisRoc, just for the record I'm interested only in discussing the issue, not in attacking you. I would only point out that criticism of your arguments and criticism of you are quite different things.

Do you still feel that aznew's comment is worth a 4?

for his reply.

He's right and I'm grateful that he took the time to reply with so well documented and well sourced a response so that I didn't have to.  I would refer you, however, to all of Bob Somerby's archives at Daily Howler from 2001 onward. He deconstructs the press corps' continual misreporting and misrepresenting of Gore's claims.

Two things worth noting are the following:

Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet.  What he said was that as the chair of the Senate science subcommittee he was responsible for making sure that the research and development of the army's project, which led to the Internet as we know it today, received adequate funding. Gore was well known in the 80s and early 90s for his efforts on behalf of technology development and his advocacy of, what was then called, "the Information Highway."

And while Gore was serving in Vietnam, he was part of the press corps.  His superiors did have orders to keep him out of danger because he was a senator's son.  However, given that it was a guerrilla war, where even American civilians assigned to Vietnam were at risk, there was no truly safe place in that country.  It was a place where children set off bombs in crowded cafes, much like Iraq and the Middle East today.

Gore was not the first nor the last Vietnam veteran whose service to the country was denigrated by the Bush administration with the acquiesence of a compliant press.

It was precisely because of the bad reporting by a lazy, elitist and frivilous press corps that so many of us got into blogging.  We wanted the truth. They were not providing it.

I can see that I have touched a nerve here and will withdraw.  However, I still find it curious that reasonably intelligent people can put themselves through such mental contortions to justify their pre-conceived notions.

"a lazy, elitist and frivilous press corps?"  Do you realize that Rush Limbaugh built his entire career on the fantasy of an "elite, liberal media bias?"

You see, if you are convinced of the valence of your political views, then you can construct a case to accommodate even the most radical of departures from the norm.  A case in point:  read Charles Krauthammer's defense today in the WP of McCain's "100 years of war" declaration.  It is full of parsing, after-the-fact interpretation, and outright revisionism.  Personally, I don't see any daylight between his column and these silly explanations of what were, at best, puffy exaggerations by Gore and, at worst, indications of a severe personality disorder based on narcissism.

I do want to express to all readers my admiration and appreciation for how we can have this discussion without personal attacks and invective.

I don't know if Krauthammer's defense of McCain's statement stands up when compared to transcripts or other primary sources, or not, but I think that Krauthammer's column illustrates two very different points:

1.  It's an another example of the Republicans showing us how it's done.  They can smear and distort, and they can defend their candidate.  From what I've seen, they are generally better at doing both.  

2.  For anyone who cares about elections being decided on reasoning and facts, rather than by which campaign can sling more mud than the other, this type of rebuttal is a good thing.  I don't support McCain.  But I don't think people should be persuaded to vote against him based on claims that he advocated "100 years of war", if in fact that isn't what he said.  It's fair to attack him on his remarks, but only if his position is fairly represented.