Category Archives: Hillary Clinton

Obama leading in Iowa, and for the Right Reason

Good news today out of Iowa, and I’m not just referring to the fact that Barack Obama has pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton. That fact in itself would not be all that much to cheer over; in some ways, I’m about as likely to prefer Hillary as I am Obama.

The good news is the reason that "conventional wisdom," as codified by the WSJ today, gives for his ascendance — his anti-partisan message:

DES MOINES, Iowa — A month before Iowa holds the
first contest of the 2008 presidential campaign, a newly energized Sen.
Barack Obama has opened a narrow lead here, but many Iowans in both
parties say they could change their minds in the next 30 days about
which candidate to support.
Mr. Obama’s rising popularity was fueled by a fiery
speech three weeks ago in which he vowed to turn away from the partisan
battles of the Clinton-Bush years. That, plus the surprising strength
of his Iowa ground organization, is galvanizing his campaign.

That, as I’ve written before, speaks to my one great concern about Mrs. Clinton — that her nomination, much less her election, will doom us to more (if not an escalation) of the wasting Bush-Clinton Wars that have so polarized our nation. Mr. Obama, more than any other candidate in either party, has done the most to indicate his desire to be president of the whole country, not just partisan Democrats.

The WSJ traces Mr. Obama’s rise to the above-mentioned speech:

The night of the dinner, he delivered a call for unity that tweaked Sen. Clinton as a polarizing figure, without naming her. "America, our moment is now," Sen. Obama thundered. "I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Red America against Blue America. I want to be the president of the United States of America."
Rival campaign operatives sat there stone-faced. But some attendees put down their signs and thunder sticks for other candidates, jumped to their feet to cheer him on and grabbed Obama campaign materials as they streamed out of the arena.
"Barack found his voice" that night, says Gordon Fischer, a longtime Iowa Democratic leader who recently decided to support Sen. Obama. "That’s when the man and the moment met."

This is promising.

Obama_2008_iowa_wart2

Could our politics actually get uglier? I’m afraid so

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
LAST WEEK, a woman in Hilton Head asked John McCain a question that referred to Hillary Clinton by a five-letter word for a female dog.
Sen. McCain reacted about the way many guys would: He tried to keep his composure, failed momentarily, then finally mastered himself enough to say, very soberly and sincerely, that he had the highest respect for his Senate colleague. And after a priggish CNN announcer’s failure to portray Sen. McCain as being to blame in the incident, and the McCain campaign’s lame attempt to parlay that into sympathy and campaign contributions, the whole thing sort of faded, making way for the next round of spin-cycle nonsense.
But the incident still worries me, for reasons that have nothing to do with who called whom what, or how anybody responded.
I worry that it never occurred to anyone to wonder to whom the obnoxious question referred. I worry that within 24 hours of the clip appearing on YouTube, there was a Web site up selling T-shirts emblazoned with that question. I worry that there are those who will buy such T-shirts, and that such people increasingly define the tone of political discourse.
The same day that the “b-word” incident came to my attention, an op-ed piece appeared in The Wall Street Journal headlined “The Insanity of Bush Hatred.” Those who call themselves “liberals” will now snort in derision and say, “That’s The Wall Street Journal for you!” But it was actually a pleasingly dispassionate treatment of the subject by a professor named Peter Berkowitz who looks about at some of his colleagues and worries about “the damage hatred inflicts on the intellect.” I worry more about the damage it inflicts on our republic.
Mr. Berkowitz, after noting that “Hating the president is almost as old as the republic itself… Reagan hatred, Nixon hatred, LBJ hatred,” and so forth, frets that “Bush hatred is different,” because of the way many intellectuals have not only embraced that impulse, but endorsed it as a virtue, and proclaimed “that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene.”
I see it as something else — the next, more virulent stage of the political disease once known as “Clinton hatred,” which itself was qualitatively uglier than previous forms of political resentment, within my lifetime at least. I trace the onset of symptoms to the first days after the 1992 elections, when “Don’t blame me; I voted for Bush” started appearing on late-model cars.
And things just got worse from there. Many Republicans never accepted that Bill Clinton was the president of their country, and for eight years treated him as though he were the illegitimate leader of some enemy nation. I thought things couldn’t get worse, and looked forward to the end of the Clinton era as a time when partisans could regain their sanity.
Lord help me, I was so wrong. From Day One — nay, before Day One of the Bush presidency — there was a virulence aimed at the man like nothing I could have imagined. And no, it’s not about the Iraq War. I can recall asking colleagues, before Sept. 11, 2001, to help me get my mind around why so many Democrats hated the man so. This was actually qualitatively worse than what I’d seen aimed at Clinton, and that floored me.
I wish I could believe that the Bush-haters are right, that there is something — or many things — about the man that make such passionate dislike rational. I would like to think that because the alternative possibility — that this is a degenerative national syndrome that feeds on itself, and gets worse with each shift of power — is just too awful.
Except for a precious few days in the fall of 2001, this savage polarization of the electorate has crippled our national will in a time of great crisis, a time when we need to be taking difficult actions — from waging war to retooling our economy away from oil — that are unachievable without strong consensus.
At this point some Democratic readers are getting steamed, thinking I’m blaming them. But I don’t care whether it’s their fault, or Mr. Bush’s. There’s plenty of blame to go around, much of it of the well-deserved variety.
I’m more concerned about the effect. I’m worried that the most polarizing individual in the Democratic Party is, day by day, looking more certain to be that party’s nominee. And that is not to blame Mrs. Clinton — it’s just a fact that if she is the nominee, we’re on a downhill rush toward a general election of such bitterness that it may make us nostalgic for 2000. And I’m not sure there is anything that either she or the GOP nominee will be able to do or say to stop it. What do you do about a Zeitgeist in which a woman is unashamed to ask a candidate, publicly, the question that was asked of Sen. McCain last week?
As I look upon the threats to our nation’s future — our dependence on tyrants’ oil, the rise of Islamofascism, the relentless rivalries of a booming China and an aggressive Russia descending again into authoritarianism — there is one menace that looms more urgently than others: the possibility that the partisan bitterness militating against rational discussion of policy in this country could get worse.

How do we give this guy a virtual slap up ‘side the head?

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Normally, I just delete comment-spam and notify Typepad — there’s a button to click on that does both at the same time, not that it does any good in the long run, because the stuff keeps coming.

But this one is so timely, so relevant, so enterprising, so egregious, so offensive that I just have to take note of it.

Someone reacted to this post with a comment steering us to this site — to save you from clicking on it, I’ll just tell you that the site features T-shirts in various styles, all bearing the offensive question spoken by the woman (the obnoxious woman, the woman that I struggle to find a word to describe) in the video.

This is a specimen of the disease eating away at our body politic. This slimeball might actually make some money off of this. Meanwhile, people who care about this country worry that if Mrs. Clinton (or anyone else with the name "Clinton" or "Bush") is elected, we might actually see an escalation of the virulent partisanship of the past 15 years, if that is possible — all because of the kind of people who would ask this question, or have such T-shirts printed up, or, worse, buy the damned things.

Looking at that Web site makes me want to reach through my laptop and give somebody a good slap up ‘side the head. I wanna go all ad hominem on ’em. But I don’t know how.

McCain on question about beating the ‘rhymes with rich’

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Just got this from B.J. over at the McCain campaign:

Hey Mr. Warthen –
I think you might be interested in this. Here’s the deal: On Monday in Hilton Head at a Meet & Greet, some lady asked McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” He responded. (See Video 1) Last night, CNN’s Rick Sanchez stooped to new levels of sensationalism in reporting the incident. (See Video 2). This morning, we released a statement from Buzz Jacobs, SC Campaign Manager. (See Below) Today at noon, McCain is holding a national blogger call and this is sure to be the hot topic. I thought you might want to get on that call, so if you’re interested, please let me know ASAP and I will send you the call info.

Thanks,
BJ

I told him, yeah, I might want to listen in on that. Anything y’all want to share prior to that? Personally, my immediate reaction is that I have but one complaint about the way Sen. McCain handled it: he spoke of the nomination of the "Democrat Party," not the Democratic Party. And I think the guy on CNN talking about it makes an ass of himself.

Also, here’s the release to which B.J. referred:

STATEMENT FROM SC CAMPAIGN MANAGER ON CNN REPORT
For Immediate Release
Contact: SC Press Office
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
COLUMBIA, SC — U.S. Senator John McCain’s South Carolina campaign manager Buzz Jacobs issued the following statement in response to a report aired last evening by CNN’s Rick Sanchez:

"It is disappointing that Mr. Sanchez would choose to engage in sensationalism in the hopes of generating a story. It not only reflects poorly on him, but on CNN. If Mr. Sanchez had even the faintest perspective on the race for the White House, he would know that Senator McCain has expressed his utmost respect for Senator Clinton numerous times on the campaign trail as he did at Monday’s event in Hilton Head."

###

The senators’ excuses for being MIA on Mukasey

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Here is something I meant to post yesterday, but didn’t have time after I finally got the info I needed.

Friday morning, I was reading up on Mukasey’s confirmation the night before, when I noticed that not one of the senators running for president had recorded a vote. Since I still needed a topic for my Sunday column, I thought this might be it. I decided to put each of their campaigns on the spot, and write on the basis of the responses I got.

So I e-mailed contacts at each of the five campaigns. Under the heading, "Where was Sen. (blank)?" I wrote:

(contact name),

Why was Sen. (blank) (along with all the other presidential contenders)
recorded as "not-voting" on the Mukasey nomination last night? What was
more important? And what was the senator’s position on the question of
whether he should have been nominated?

— Brad

Unfortunately, the replies were slow coming in. The first was from B.J. Boling with John McCain at 11:51 a.m.:

Hi Mr. Warthen-

Senator McCain’s policy is to be present when his vote would affect the
outcome. When Sen. Feinstein and Schumer decided to confirm Mukasey it
became clear McCain’s vote wouldn’t change the outcome. He has clearly
supported Mukasey’s nomination. (Please see Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham’s letter below.) Senator McCain was receiving the endorsement of
Sen. Brownback in IA.

Thanks
BJ

I think BJ was confused; the Brownback endorsement was the day before. Anyway, I didn’t hear from the next campaign — Joe Biden’s — until 2:47 p.m.:

Brad:

Tried to reach you by phone to discuss but got your voice mail so thought I would respond my e-mail.

Don’t know exactly where Senator Biden was late yesterday when the
Mukasey nomination came up on the Senate floor. However, Senator
Biden had expressed his strong opposition to Judge Mukasey’s
confirmation (link to his statement…) and voted against
reporting the nomination out of the Judiciary Committee. Further,
Senator Biden has previously indicated that he would not miss a vote in
which his vote would determine the outcome. Obviously, the Mukasey
vote was not close giving the fact that six Democrats had announced
their support for Judge Mukasey well in advance of the actual vote
taking place. Call me if you have any further questions.

Trip King

It should be noted that because I was swamped — it being Friday, and my having to switch gears and pursue a completely different column idea — I wasn’t answering my phone, which presented an obstacle to the campaigns. Amaya Smith kept trying to call me, mentioned that she was doing so in an e-mail. I explained that I’d rather have e-mail because I didn’t have time to talk, so she wrote:

Here is the Senator’s
statement opposing Mukasey early on.

That was at 3:06. At 3:50, I heard from Michelle Macrina with Chris Dodd. She wrote,

Brad,
At a time when the confirmation seemed assured, Senator Dodd was the first Democrat to voice his opposition to Judge Mukasey’s nomination based on his position on the Rule of Law. He registered his opposition repeatedly and urged his colleagues to do the same.

Zac Wright with the Hillary Clinton campaign was apparently having a bad day, and missed my first e-mail. After I e-mail him again, he responded at 6:14 p.m. with:

She’s made every effort to make her votes, as evidenced by having the best attendance record of the candidates running. But she’s running for President and was campaigning in NH. Had this been a close vote, she would have been there.

She’s already spoken out about her views.
This is her statement from the Senate yesterday.

So those are their stories, and I suppose they’re sticking to them. If I’d had time to chat, I would have pursued the matter further with each, but I was multitasking, and this was a lower priority than cranking out pages. I’m just getting to this now.

What do y’all think?

Contrasting Obama, Clinton on licenses

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After having read or heard Barack Obama expressing his objections to Hillary Clinton’s answer to the debate question about N.Y. Gov. Spitzer’s driver’s license proposal, I finally asked Amaya Smith with his campaign for a statement of what Sen. Obama thinks about it. (That had been missing from the bits and pieces I had run into up to that time.) Here’s what Amaya said:

Barack Obama supports providing secure identifications to undocumented immigrants as a way to reduce fatalities on the roads, and give our law enforcement personnel the tools they need to fight crime and stop terrorism. However, this can only be a stopgap measure on the road to comprehensive immigration reform that includes securing our borders, fixing our broken immigration bureaucracy and bringing the 12 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and onto a responsible path towards citizenship. Gov Spitzer’s original plan is consistent with Senator Obama’s views on the issue.

To me, that didn’t sound wildly different from what Hillary had said, so to refresh my memory, I went back to fetch it:

"You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays ‘gotcha.’ It makes a lot
of sense… what is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a
serious problem. We have failed, and George Bush has failed. Do I think
this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand
the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this —
remember, in New York; we want to know who’s in New York, we want
people to come out of the shadows. He’s making an honest effort to do
it; we should have passed immigration reform.

OK, so Obama’s for it, but has reservations, seeing it as no more than a stopgap. Hillary sees reasons why the governor would do it, and doesn’t want to criticize, but in the end has reservations too strong to be for it. Which is where I am, only I’m not offended by Obama’s position. It makes sense, too. Seems to me like we have two reasonable people here, both of whom see the pros and cons, but they end up a few degrees away from each other, on different sides of a line.

I end up on Hillary’s side. I see how licenses could be a way of bringing underground people out into the open and tracking them — not to mention making New York’s roads somewhat safer. But in the end, I think there are too many negatives to granting the licenses, including homeland security problems. And ultimately, the Congress should have passed the comprehensive immigration reform bill, which would accomplish the goals Obama says he’s aiming for.

If there were a scale with zero being the position of Lou Dobbs (completely against), and 10 being Spitzer (completely for), it seems like Hillary’s a 4, and Obama’s a 6.5 or 7. Not exactly polar opposites.

But then again, I don’t understand the passions this issue generates. Robert Ariail — who has upcoming cartoons both making fun of poor Dennis and hitting Hillary the way Obama is (if anyone still thought Robert marched in step with the rest of us, that should settle it) — and I just had another discussion/argument about the issue this morning, with little ground given by either of us. Robert’s a fence-and-deportation guy; I’m for the defunct McCain/Graham bill.

P.S. — I had lunch with Amaya and Kevin Griffis back on Oct. 18. Nothing eventful, aside from the fact that the maitre d’ had to shunt us off to a private room because although Kevin wore the obligatory sport coat, he wore in with jeans. The purpose of the lunch was for Kevin to introduce me to Amaya, a mission which he accomplished. Consider this to be my official, belated contact report.

Don’t take the brown museum!

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My man McCain keeps going on about this proposal Hillary had for a Woodstock museum, and I can’t help that the old dude’s missing the real problem here. I keep thinking: a museum? For Woodstock?

There’s something extremely uncool about that. Museums are where established, older-generation culture is stored and entombed in cold marble, right? It’s where the Man puts his stuff.

Wasn’t Woodstock — to the extent that it was about anything other than being a rip-roarin’, get-high-and-get-nekkid sort of party — sort of about the opposite of that?

Where was Hillary’s head at?

Oh — and in case you’re not digging where my headline is at, here’s a link.

Lay off Dennis the Menace. Hillary, too

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At last night’s debate, Tim Russert sought to have fun at Dennis Kucinich’s expense, and succeeded.

"Did you see a UFO?" asked the immoderate moderator. "I did," said Mr. Kucinich, and the place burst into laughter. He struggled on to explain, "It Dennis
was (an) unidentified flying object, OK. It’s like — it’s unidentified. I saw something."

If you see an object in the sky and you don’t know what it is, it’s an unidentified flying object. But you see, Superficial America — the version of America that exists on television, on blogs, at press conferences, and throughout political campaigns — has officially decided that Dennis the Menace, whom we all know as flaky to begin with, has duly outdone himself by admitting that he saw a UFO at (and this is the really rich part) Shirley Maclaine’s house. Everybody laugh now.

Yeah, Dennis is a fringe kind of guy, but this is unfair. It’s part of the dumbing-down and oversimplifying function of mass media, and people who live their lives as extension of said media. Call them the Blathering Classes. This shorthand culture demands that everyone fit into an assigned cubicle, preferably one of two choices in each case: Left or Right, Democrat or Republican, winner or loser, conservative or liberal, black or white, yes or no.

We saw the same foolishness at work in the way the other candidates jumped on Hillary Clinton for having answered a question about Gov. Spitzer’s immigrant driver’s license proposal pretty much the way I would:

"You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays ‘gotcha.’ It makes a lot of sense… what is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. We have failed, and George Bush has failed. Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this — remember, in New York; we want to know who’s in New York, we want people to come out of the shadows. He’s making an honest effort to do it; we should have passed immigration reform.

John Edwards, who would never be accused of holding a nuanced or complex few of any emotional issue, pounced:

"Unless I missed something, Sen. Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes, uh, just a few minutes ago. And, I think this is a real issue… for the country. I mean, America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them.

To my view, a person who explains that this is not an issue with a simple answer, and explains why — which Mrs. Clinton did — is the one who is being straight with us. To expand on something I’ve said before, anyone who thinks there’s a simple answer on this one is either not really thinking, or is NOT being straight with us.

Obama was no better:

I was confused on Sen. Clinton’s answer. I, I, I can’t tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important. One of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face.

Excuse me? She just did that.

Joe Biden said he wasn’t running against Hillary Clinton; he was running to be leader of the free world, a job he’s actually prepared for over lo these many years. Maybe that’s why he’s doing so poorly; Superficial America has no patience for that sort of thing.

Who could be president of ALL of us — Hillary or Obama?

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This is probably not going to change anybody’s minds out there, but before Democrats put the tiara on Hillary Clinton and send her down the runway, they really ought to ask themselves: Would anybody besides us vote for her? I realize that a lot of her supporters are likely to be personally offended that someone other than true-blue partisans would get a say in this, but unfortunately, them’s the rules.

And time and time again, a key difference between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama emerges: She appeals to the party-warriors who want to refight the polarizing battles of recent years, and he appeals more to people who want consensus government.

It was summed up fairly well last night by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who had this to say upon endorsing Obama:

“A lot of the Democrats are feeling heady these days — we’re sensing victory. We feel like we can reach out and grab at the White House again …. But I’m asking you to beware my friends. Beware because this discontent with Republicans is not enough to ensure a Democratic victory, nor should it be. I believe the challenges before us transcend party partisan politics. We don’t just need a Democrat — we need a leader.”

But the fact remains that plenty of folks just want a Democrat, preferably one who yearns to stick it to the "vast right-wing conspiracy," which apparently refers to the 50 percent of the electorate that says it would never vote for Mrs. Clinton — while Mr. Obama’s negatives in the same poll were only at 37 percent.

As I said, this post probably won’t change any Democrats’ minds, as those who care about getting the votes of Republicans and independents probably already prefer Obama between the two, and the rest would stick with Sen. Clinton.

But I thought it was time to issue a warning to the Democrats similar to the one I raised to Republicans a few days ago: You really, really need to think about November, people.

And I would add, you really need to think about the next four years. There are a lot of us out here who just aren’t going to put up with any more of this incessant red state-vs.-blue state, tit-for-tat, so’s-yer-mother, trashing of our shared public life.

Obama_2008_taxes_wart

Which candidate do YOU hate the most?

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"NEVER? Whaddaya mean, ‘never?’"

Seems like I’ll stoop to anything to get you to click on a blog post, doesn’t it? Sorry about the headline. Tacky. I would never encourage you to hate anyone.

But my point was to share with you the results of this Zogby poll, which found that half the electorate says it would never vote for Hillary Clinton. She has the highest negatives, and Mike Huckabee and Bill Richardson have the lowest, going by that standard. (You may have already read about this, as it came out Saturday, but I’m just now getting around to checking the e-mail account the release came to). An excerpt from the report:

While she is winning wide support in nationwide samples among Democrats in the race for their party’s presidential nomination, half of likely voters nationwide said they would never vote for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.
The online survey of 9,718 likely voters nationwide showed that 50% said Clinton would never get their presidential vote. This is up from 46% who said they could never vote for Clinton in a Zogby International telephone survey conducted in early March. Older voters are most resistant to Clinton – 59% of those age 65 and older said they would never vote for the New York senator, but she is much more acceptable to younger voters: 42% of those age 18–29 said they would never vote for Clinton for President.
At the other end of the scale, Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrats Bill Richardson and Barack Obama faired best, as they were least objectionable to likely voters. Richardson was forever objectionable as President to 34%, while 35% said they could never vote for Huckabee and 37% said they would never cast a presidential ballot for Obama, the survey showed….

Here’s the full list:

Whom would you NEVER vote for for President of the U.S.?

%

Clinton (D)

50%

Kucinich (D)

49%

Gravel (D)

47%

Paul (R)

47%

Brownback (R)

47%

Tancredo (R)

46%

McCain (R)

45%

Hunter (R)

44%

Giuliani (R)

43%

Romney (R)

42%

Edwards (D)

42%

Thompson (R)

41%

Dodd (D)

41%

Biden (D)

40%

Obama (D)

37%

Huckabee (R)

35%

Richardson (D)

34%

Not sure

4%

I got to thinking about it just now, and wondered for the first time which, of all the candidates, would I be least likely to choose at this point? Here’s how I would rank them personally:

Gravel — I’m 99.44 percent sure I would never vote for this guy.

Paul — 97.1 %

Kucinich — 97.05 %

Tancredo — 95 %

Hunter — 94 %

Edwards — 90%

Dodd — 51%

Thompson — 50%

Richardson — 40%

Clinton — 35%

Romney — 30%

Giuliani — 25%

Brownback — 20%

Obama — 15%

Biden — 14%

Huckabee — 13%

McCain — 5%

Mind you, that’s just off the top of my head, based on what I know now, without any of my editorial board colleagues setting me straight on any of the calls. And I’ll admit I cheated on one — I can’t even picture "Hunter," much left summon up any relevant impressions, so I just sort of buried him in the pack toward the "less likely" end, hoping no one would notice.

How about you?

Hey, you Republicans! You want to stop McCain, or you want to stop Hillary? Looks like it’s one or the other

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Speaking of polls that really count, the only kind of national poll
that means anything is one that looks toward the general election. So
it is that I pass this on from the Rasmussen folks, in case you had missed it:

McCain and Clinton Are Neck-and-Neck

Monday, October 15, 2007

Arizona Senator John McCain has fallen nearly out of the top tier in the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination, but he’s still competitive in a general election match-up with Senator Hillary Clinton. The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows Clinton with just a single point edge over McCain, 44% to 43%.
McCain also trailed Clinton by just one percentage point in September and by two points in August. Those consistent results put McCain in a more competitive position at this time than any other Republican hopeful.
The new survey shows Clinton with a 47% to 41% lead over former
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Clinton has led Romney every time
we’ve polled this match-up. In September, she had a nine-point advantage.
Clinton
currently leads former NYC mayor and Republican frontrunner Rudy
Giuliani by seven and former Senator Fred Thompson by 15. Her lead has been growing steadily over these two in recent months.

So, a little something for you Republican ideologues to ponder:
Either get over whatever problems you may have with McCain, or get
ready to start saying "President Clinton" again (if she is indeed the
nominee).

It’s up to you — unfortunately.

Hillary vs. Katon: All right, who started this?

Hillary Uber Alles — on video, that is

1 Reply

Can I call ’em or can I call ’em? P.T. Barnum’s got nothing on me when it comes to knowing what the public wants. On Aug. 25, I predicted the following:

But wait — my Hillary’s Heckler video is moving up at an unprecedented
speed, having passed 6,000 views in only 3 weeks. (What’s faster than Blitzkrieg?)
I’m thinking that within a month, that clip of Mrs. Clinton and her
detractor at the recent College Democrats’ confab will outpace
everything, and put the Nazis in its shadow.

And here we are on September 19th, and my heckler video, shot during the College Democrats’ confab at the end of July, is now my most-watched video clip ever. It’s also the first ever to surpass the 8,000-view threshold — and it shows no signs of slowing down. (Yesterday, it was in third place.)

This is a good sign for the public’s tastes, as it finally eclipsed the previous favorite, which shows a Nazi leader talking about the Confederate flag on our State House steps. (OK, maybe a heckler isn’t the height of good taste, but it’s an improvement.) I’m also proud that my critically acclaimed "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?" — probably my finest use ever of my celebrated voice-over technique, not to mention its social relevance — is holding firm at third place. Indeed, until the heckler’s last-minute surge since yesterday, it was in second place.

Yeah, I know — nobody cares about this except me. But it takes a lot of work to produce these babies, and so I care a lot. That is, I care enough to bring you once again my Top Five Most-Watched Videos:

"Hillary’s Heckler," only 6 weeks old, zooming at Ludicrous Speed to 8,059.
"Nazi Presidential Candidate Defends Confederate Flag"
— 5 months old, with 7,906, this was the fastest-riser
ever before Hillary.
"Who Resurrected the Electric Car?"
— 6 months old, still probably my masterpiece in terms of sheer
artistry (the YouTube critics give it 5 stars). 7,810 views and also rising quickly. This is the feel-good hit of my repertoire.
"The Alpha and Beta of Thomas Ravenel"
— 11 months old, with 6,996 views, and falling farther behind as the scandal fades into the background. T-Rav is no longer box office magic.
"Nazis Defend Confederate Flag II." My shameless exploitative sequel, shot and released the same day as the first hit, a la LOTR. 5,269 views.

Hillary bumps Biden, quickly makes my Top Five list

1 Reply

My Top Five Videos, that is. She’s not on my Top Five Candidates list. That doesn’t mean she won’t be; I just haven’t composed that one yet.

But in just two weeks of boffo box-office, she has muscled her way to No. 3 among my most-watched video clips on YouTube. Well, she didn’t do it herself. Some credit goes to the star of the clip — the woman who heckled her at the College Democrats meeting in Columbia — and to her cinematographer, moi.

The title ("Hillary’s Heckler") probably helped. Alliteration is a powerful thing. Also boosting it was the fact that there was a CNN clip of the same incident. Still, that one — shot with a better camera and from a somewhat more advantageous vantage point — only got 2,232 hits, while mine had received 5,639.

How could that happen? Well, I’m going to credit the rough style of mine. First, I used the Steven Spielberg/"Saving Private Ryan" hand-held-no-steadicam style, rather than the stodgy, omniscient-viewer, fixed-position technique of the network. This really puts you in the action.

It’s shot from a combatants’ viewpoint. This is what a rapt young Democrat, fascinated by everything Mrs. Clinton had to say, would have seen and heard. The camera stays on Hillary, then there are murmurs and cries of "No!" and you don’t know what’s happening at first. Is the crowd turning against Hillary? Do they not like what she’s saying? But wait! The camera swings in the direction of the sounds, and here’s this nutty lady yelling at her, and (unlike in the CNN clip) you can hear what she’s saying — not that it makes sense, but you can’t have everything.

The jostling, the confusion, the lack of explanation of what just happened, Hillary’s smooth slide back into her speech — all add to a dynamic viewing experience.

That’s my interpretation, anyway.

Whatever the explanation, no video of mine has ever topped 5,000 in less than two weeks. And it makes poor Joe Biden — whose frenetic Rotary performance topped the chart for a time — even more of a footnote. Show biz is hell.

Here’s the list as it stands now:

"The Alpha and Beta of Thomas Ravenel" — 10 months old, still at the top, with 6,800 views. And to think that for the first few months, it had trailed Grady Patterson’s classic "He Makes Up Stuff," which has now falled to number 7, behind Biden.
"Nazi Presidential Candidate Defends Confederate Flag" — 3 months old, with 6,487, this may have been the fastest-riser before Hillary. It rose quickly to No. 1 right after it was posted, but fell after the Ravenel scandal broke.
"Hillary’s Heckler," as mentioned above, with 5,639.
"Who Resurrected the Electric Car?" — 4 months old, still probably my masterpiece in terms of sheer artistry (the YouTube critics give it 5 stars), with my first effective use of the voiceover technique. 5,440 views.
"Nazis Defend Confederate Flag II." My shameless exploitative sequel, shot and released the same day as the first hit, a la LOTR. 4,147 views.

So we see what sells, don’t we? Cars, cocaine, controversy and Nazis. At least I haven’t stooped to luring y’all in with sex. But that’s just because Ségolène Royal‘s agent has been completely unreasonable.

Hillary mentions Bennettsville!

6 Replies

You may recall that I have observed in the past a certain thing I’ve discovered about blogging — you can either get out and learn stuff and have experiences worth blogging about, or you can blog. There’s not enough time in 24 hours to do both. Way existential, no?

It’s a lot easier to blog from my office, just based on the stream of information that goes by me on Al Gore’s highway in the course of a normal day, publishing editorial pages. When I manage to pull myself out of that rut and actually go out and experience life as I did back in the 70s as a reporter, my mind will be on fire with ideas, things I want to tell everyone — but work that has to be done just piles up, and when I get back I have less time to share those observations than I would have.

And just so you know, I don’t have time to blog at all, whether I go out or not. What you read here is a result of my dysfunction, my obsession, my impulse. A lot of people seemed offended that I asked clinically about the "impulse" that leads to libertarianism (that’s liberanism to you, bud). Don’t be so touchy. I know from impulses. There is little more to me than a tangled mass of such — or so I sometimes suspect.

Java2
Anyway, here I am on vacation (which is why I didn’t post yesterday), and I find myself sitting in a more-or-less deserted, out-of-the-way coffee house where the Internet access is free (unlike some places I could mention) — a place that is actually a front for another business entirely (I’ll explain if you like, but I think I’ve mentioned it before), which is why they don’t care that I’m the only customer right now — while my wife and granddaughter are out wasting their time on the seashore (pah!), picking through some video I shot the other day.

So here it is.

Maybe it’s not quite enough to win my vote at this point in the contest, but Hillary Clinton at least got my attention by being the first presidential candidate within my memory to mention my hometown — which, of course, happens also to be Marian Wright Edelman’s hometown (Sen. Clinton’s context), and Hugh McColl‘s, and all sort of other people we are more or less proud to know (sorry, I couldn’t find a good link to something about Jack Lindsay for the word "less").

Now, I think I might wander back to the family compound and see what’s in the fridge… and then I might do something really important, like watch that final episode of "Firefly" that never aired. I’ve been saving it, knowing there will be no more after the cancellation, and the movie not being that big a hit, but I’m going to watch in anyway. I’ll let you know if I learn anything bloggable from it.

Obama’s folks catch Hillary with her foot in it

16 Replies

Well, now, this is interesting. Kevin Griffis, Barack Obama’s communications director for South Carolina, brings my attention to a January statement of Hillary Clinton’s regarding talking to the heads of rogue governments. It looks pretty doggone inconsistent with what she was saying last week about Obama’s intention to do so.

Anyway, here’s what Kevin said:

HEADLINE: how’s this for irony?
Thought I’d send this to you on
background. Just go to the 5:15 mark. I feel like we’re going full
circle. Let me know what you think. The transcript follows.

Here’s the clip:

And here’s the transcript:

OLBERMANN: Would you reach out immediately to the Syrians and the Iranians, even with the tensions between this country and Iran?

SEN. CLINTON: Absolutely. I don’t see it as a sign of weakness. I see it as a sign of strength. You know, our president will not talk to people he considers bad. Well, there are a lot of bad actors in the world, and you don’t make peace with your friends. You’ve got to deal with your enemies, your opponents, people whose interests diverge from yours.

Right now we’re flying blind when it comes to Iran. We don’t have good intelligence about Iran, about what their real motivations are, who’s calling the shots; the same with Syria. And I would immediately open a diplomatic track. And I don’t think we would lose. In fact, I think we would gain insight.

I mean, if we have to take a firm stand against Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons, let’s get more information before we do that. Let’s figure out, you know, what levers of power in their society we might be able to pull and push.

Kevin asks what I think. I think that without a whole lot of extenuating explanation that I have not heard from either candidate, both sound awfully naive. There are lots of ways to "deal with your enemies, your opponents," and handing them a propaganda coup is not generally considered the wisest way.

I also think that — unless there was some stuff that explain away this comment that I haven’t seen — Hillary is sounding a lot less tough-minded, and Brooks and Krauthammer might want those bouquets back.

Hillary and the neo-cons, sittin’ in a tree…

5 Replies

Has anyone else noticed that prominent neo-con or center-right syndicated pundits have gotten awfully sweet on Hillary Clinton the last few days?

First, there was Charles Krauthammer, holding her up as the measure of what’s right and true as he pounded Barack Obama in the column that could have been headlined, "Yeah! What Hillary said…."

… For Hillary Clinton, next in line at the debate, an unmissable
opportunity. She pounced: “I will not promise to meet with the leaders
of these countries during my first year.” And she then proceeded to
give the reasons any graduate student could tick off: You don’t want to
be used for their propaganda. You need to know their intentions. Such
meetings can make the situation worse.
Just to make sure no one
missed how the grizzled veteran showed up the clueless rookie, the next
day Clinton told the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa, that Obama’s
comment “was irresponsible and frankly naive.”

Then there was David Brooks, whom — since he’s NYT — I can’t link to. But it was on the op-ed page of this morning’s paper. If you haven’t gotten to it yet, here’s an excerpt:

LACONIA, N.H. — The biggest story of this presidential campaign is the success of Hillary Clinton. Six months ago, many people thought she was too brittle and calculating and that voters would never really bond with her. But now she seems to offer the perfect combination of experience and change.
She’s demonstrating that it really helps to have lived in the White House. She can draw on a range of experiences unmatched by her rivals. She’s dominated most of the debates. She’s transformed her position on Iraq without a ripple. Her measured, statistic-filled speeches rarely inspire passion, but always confidence.

It’s an inexplicable phenomenon. Maybe you explic it — I mean, explain it.

Videos of Hillary Clinton in Columbia

2 Replies

Since it’s getting into the wee hours of Sunday morning, and I’ve been going since early Saturday, I’m just going to slap down a couple of clips from Hillary Clinton’s appearance at USC Saturday morning. There’s more from the College Democrats of America confab that I hope to post when I have time — but right now, I don’t. In the meantime, enjoy the clips.

The first is entitled, "Hillary Clinton, Young Republican."

The second is, "Hillary’s Heckler."

Hillary shows Darrell the money

20 Replies

Just wanted to make sure everybody had seen this. An excerpt:

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign reached a deal to pay a key South Carolina black leader’s consulting firm more than $200,000 just days before he agreed to endorse her run for president, it was revealed yesterday.
The arrangement involves South Carolina state Sen. Darrell Jackson, a well-connected African-American leader and pastor whose support is coveted by national campaigns.

Here’s what The Hotline had to say about it. Excerpt:

Yesterday, Jackson confirmed that he had decided to endorse Sen. Hillary Clinton,
less than six days after his public relations firm, Sunrise
Enterprises, agreed to a contract with Clinton’s campaign worth at
least $10,000 a month through the 2008 elections – a total of $210,000.
(The contract has not been signed.)
A few days before that, Jackson was deep in negotiations with Steve Hildebrand, a senior strategist for Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign.
On the table was a contract worth in excess of $5K a month, beginning
on 3/15/07. Separately, Obama was personally soliciting Jackson’s
endorsement.
There’s no question that the contract and the negotiations are
legal. Sunrise is the oldest political consulting firm run by African
Americans in the state and its services were in demand: at least five
candidates, including Gov. Bill Richardson and Sen. Joe Biden, reached out to Jackson.

Personally, I suspect Sen. Jackson DID have his pick of contracts, as he says, and he preferred Mrs. Clinton. Whatever one thinks of the ethics of this, there’s no question it’s bad news for Obama, for former Jackson favorite John Edwards, and for poor old Joe Biden, who’s been working his behind off in this state for a couple of years now.

Sen. Clinton hasn’t even arrived here yet, and Sen. Jackson’s favor is already hers. It’s an unfair world.

Hillarywaits

bradwarthen.com

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