Hot Potato Mash

SNL: Tina Fey Nails Sarah Palin Impersonation

HILLARY'S DOWNFALL

This may be the funniest thing ever!

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton

Subdued Hillary Fails To Mention Obama Once In West Virginia Speech

It's all over folks.

Part 1 (9:54)

Part 2

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton

Inside Pennsylvania

My politically active friend Todd Cammarata, who teaches Government, weighs in from Altoona, Pennsylvania late last night:

“I've spent many, many hours canvassing over the past 6 weeks and I'll be taking the day off work tomorrow for GOTV. 

The good news is that I continue to be impressed by the Obama campaign.  We've had an office here in Altoona since mid-March with a paid staffer and LOTS of volunteers.  Keep in mind, I've NEVER seen a paid staffer for a national campaign in this town - democrat or republican.

The campaign has been very organized and the calling and canvassing very targeted.  Much better than Kerry was for the general in '04 or Casey for Senate in '06. 

Plus Obama actually visited here (the infamous bowling stop - which I just missed getting into by just a few minutes).  I took 35 of my students up to the rally  at PSU- it was crazy... 22,000+ people packed onto the lawn at Old Main!  Yesterday Sen. Casey was back in town and I got to meet him.  It's been fun to matter for the first time ever!

Hillary, on the other hand, has had no paid staffers here at all and she didn't even visit central PA until last night.  I really can't understand it...this is supposed to be one of her strongholds and she basically ignores the area until last night.  Word is she only got about 1,000 people.

So things on the ground look great, but I realize that we're up against an aging demographic here so I'm not about to get too overconfident.  The way I look at it, so long as we can keep any Hillary win in the single digits I'll consider it a victory. 

I did take a break today to go see Bill.  I had to.  He was in Ebensburg - a little town very close to where I grew up.  I've got to say it was pretty cool and very weird seeing one of the most famous people on the planet in my little corner of the world.  I shook his hand and got my copy of his autobiography signed.  It was an honor to see him.  It's too bad how he's tarnished himself in this campaign...but I can't help being a little bit in awe of the first and only winner I've ever supported.

Anyway, wish us luck tomorrow.”

Late today Todd adds:

“The neighborhoods that I hit today were a bit disappointing.  That coupled with the talk I'm seeing on some blogs about a late Hillary surge has got me feeling a little down right now.  I'm just hoping it stays in the single digits.  There's just too damn many old people in this state.  Forget about race, forget about gender, imo it all comes down to age...I think this is a struggle between the past and the future of the party, and while I think youth will eventually win the war, I'm feeling like it just might lose the battle in PA today.”

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Pennsylvania Primary

HARDBALL Slams Obama For NOT 'Taking Down His Opponent' During Debate

Much has already been made about the horror show performance of ABC News moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos who spent the first 42 minutes of last night's democratic debate pummeling Obama “entirely on specious and gossipy trivia”. The two alleged newsmen spent half the debate on such pressing issues as Obama's “bitter” comment, the patriotism of Obama's pastor, Obama serving on a board with a member of the Weather Underground and Obama's decision not to wear a flag lapel pin.

With the above absurdity in mind, it was particularly refreshing to see Obama refuse to attack Clinton for her sniper fire lies despite being baited repeatedly by Stephanopoulos:

“I think Senator Clinton deserves the right to make some errors once in a while”

Refreshing that is unless you are a member of the mainstream media which clearly takes offense to Obama's above the fray tactics. For evidence of this one need not look any further than Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd and Bob Herbert's inanity on Hardball this afternoon.

One hopes that Obama learns a lesson here and next time slams Clinton or McCain or whoever for completely superficial non-issues in order to please our media whores!

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, hardball, Hillary, MSNBC, Chris Matthews

Hillary's Flimsy Case For The Nomination

“Hillary's Flimsy Case for the Nomination” by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi is a must must must read.

UPDATE: Even Markos Moulitsas sees the writing on the wall:

Hillary Clinton has proved during the past few months that she is a fighter, that she is tenacious, and that she is in the race to win. There's just one problem. She's already lost.

For more from Hot Potato Mash on why Obama is the better Democratic candidate versus John McCain see:

• OBAMA MORE ELECTABLE THAN HILLARY SAYS EVERYONE (04/03/08)
• Hillary Is Literally The GOP Candidate Of Choice (For Now) (03/18/08)
• CNN, GOP, HILLARY SUPPORTERS GANGING UP ON OBAMA (03/06/08)
• VIDEO MASHUP: Why Does Bush Favor Hillary Over Obama? (02/11/08)
• ELECTABILITY IS EVERYTHING (02/03/08)
• Can Barack Obama Overcome Karl Rove, Republicans, Hillary, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George And The Mainstream Media (12/04/07)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain

OBAMA MORE ELECTABLE THAN HILLARY SAYS EVERYONE

When informed by Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM) that he was endorsing Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton allegedly responded, “He cannot win, Bill. He cannot win.” Clinton chief strategist Mark Penn also said last month that Obama “can't win the general election”.

It would seem that the Clinton Camp, like the Bush administration before it, has officially left the “reality-based community”. As the video (0:45) above makes clear, just about everyone and their mothers believes that Barack Obama stands a far greater chance of beating John McCain in November than Hillary Clinton.

And, as my posts below indicate, this has been the case for many moons:

• Hillary Is Literally The GOP Candidate Of Choice (For Now) (03/18/08)
• CNN, GOP, HILLARY SUPPORTERS GANGING UP ON OBAMA (03/06/08)
• VIDEO MASHUP: Why Does Bush Favor Hillary Over Obama? (02/11/08)
• ELECTABILITY IS EVERYTHING (02/03/08)
• Can Barack Obama Overcome Karl Rove, Republicans, Hillary, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George And The Mainstream Media (12/04/07)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, McCain, olbermann

Hillary Is Literally The GOP Candidate Of Choice (For Now)

The Boston Globe reports that Hillary is benefitting mightily from Republicans hoping to sway the outcome of the Democratic race:

For a party that loves to hate the Clintons, Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.

A sudden change of heart? Hardly.

Since Senator John McCain effectively sewed up the GOP nomination last month, Republicans have begun participating in Democratic primaries specifically to vote for Clinton, a tactic that some voters and local Republican activists think will help their party in November. With every delegate important in the tight Democratic race, this trend could help shape the outcome if it continues in the remaining Democratic primaries open to all voters.

Spurred by conservative talk radio, GOP voters who say they would never back Clinton in a general election are voting for her now for strategic reasons: Some want to prolong her bitter nomination battle with Barack Obama, others believe she would be easier to beat than Obama in the fall, or they simply want to register objections to Obama.

This is what Hillary calls momentum. For more on Republican Party preference for Hillary see:

• CNN, GOP, HILLARY SUPPORTERS GANGING UP ON OBAMA (03/06/08)

• VIDEO MASHUP: Why Does Bush Favor Hillary Over Obama? (02/11/08)

• ELECTABILITY IS EVERYTHING (02/03/08)

• Can Barack Obama Overcome Karl Rove, Republicans, Hillary, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George And The Mainstream Media (12/04/07)

Yet, none of this appears to phase Hillary and her supporters who seem hellbent on fighting dirty 'til the finish in order to tarnish Obama so badly that the super delegates will not be reluctant to overturn the will the people (Obama has an insurmountable delegate lead). Wow. Sick. Gross. Unbelievable. Unreal. Despicable. Outrageous. Contemptible. And stupid.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, gop, Hillary Clinton, republican

Keith Olbermann: Special Comment On Hillary's Campaign

Hillary Supporting Congresswoman - We Don't Need No Stink'n Rules!

Congresswoman and Hillary supporter, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), states while advocating for a new “Do-Over” Florida primary that we need to stop worrying about whether rules were broken and that “all of this talk about the rules and that kind of thing is counterproductive.”  Yeah, we don't need no stink'n rules!

 

“Chomsky On Anarchism” (Noam Chomsky, Barry Pateman)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, cnn, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Hillary

CNN, GOP, HILLARY SUPPORTERS GANGING UP ON OBAMA!

 

The Clinton News Network (CNN) is now working overtime on Hillary's behalf by advocating ad-nauseum for new primaries or “Do-Overs” in Michigan and Florida. It seems that despite Hillary's amazing victories on Tuesday people are finally waking up to the fact that she has lost the nomination barring some last minute shenanigans. Enter CNN, the GOP and Hillary supporters! 

In this latest piece of propaganda (video above) CNN's Wolf Blitzer all but begs Florida Governor Charlie Crist to hold a second democratic primary in the sunshine state. Both men point out all of the positive advantages of a “Do-Over” which supposedly include bipartisan support, fairness and a financial windfall to Florida. My god, it's a win-win for everyone! Except for Barack Obama, of course, which CNN fails to mention.

CNN also fails to mention that all of the democratic supporters of the “Do-Over” in the segment are Hillary supporters. Whoops! And if you think that that is an accident or oversight, please see the mashup below from a CNN sponsored debate a couple of months back where the cable news network does the exact same thing:

But CNN propaganda is not just limited to the big ticket items evidenced above. The network also has no problem misleading viewers on the small stuff too:

IMPOSSIBLE FOR HILLARY TO WIN NOMINATION IF DEMOCRACY HOLDS

After all is said and done with the vote tallying from last night MSNBC estimates that Hillary Clinton will gain anywhere from 7 to 13 (on the very high end) delegates on Barack Obama. Entering yesterday's contests Obama held about a 150 pledged delegate advantage. Thus, should everything turn up roses for Hillary, she's looking at cutting into Obama's lead by about 8%.

This evidences the near impossibility of Hillary winning the nomination without the significant help of the super-delegates. Play around with Slate's delegate calculator and you find that even if Clinton wins every remaining contest (Wyoming, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Guam, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Puerto Rice) by a 58 to 42 margin, her largest victory to date outside of her home states of Arkansas and New York, she would still fall short of Obama by 41 delegates (1,625 to 1,584). And this is merely done as an exercise to show just how far in front Obama remains since he will clearly fair much better than 42% in heavily African American states like Mississippi.

Thus, the only way Hillary can win the nomination is for the super-delegates to overturn the will of the people and make the entire primary election contest - which saw record turnout across the country - superfluous. While I doubt this will happen as the outrage would be something spectacular, you never know what the elite are capable of doing. Hence, the importance of letting the super-delegates and the Democratic Party know that there will be severe repercussions for their actions should they decide the nomination.

I, for one, will not vote in the general election for president or help Hillary's campaign in any way, shape or form. All Obama supporters and supporters of Democracy are encouraged to take the same stand and should make this point clear to party leaders now. Secondly, all super-delegate elected office holders that continue to support Hillary contrary to the people's choice should be targeted for defeat in their next election. Again, this point should be made loud and clear now so that it does not come to this later.

Finally, these cannot be idle threats. If Democracy is worth fighting for, we must fight for it.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign has sent out an email that puts into perspective Hillary's huge wins (imitating the mainstream media) yesterday:

Our projections show the most likely outcome of yesterday's elections will be that Hillary Clinton gained 187 delegates, and we gained 183. 

That's a net gain of 4 delegates out of more than 370 delegates available from all the states that voted. 

For comparison, that's less than half our net gain of 9 delegates from the District of Columbia alone. It's also less than our net gain of 8 from Nebraska, or 12 from Washington State. And it's considerably less than our net gain of 33 delegates from Georgia. 

The task for the Clinton campaign yesterday was clear. In order to have a plausible path to the nomination, they needed to score huge delegate victories and cut into our lead. 

They failed.

Clearly. So why is the media, which supposedly treats Hillary ever so unfairly, reporting that we now have a race on our hands? Nothing could be further from the truth.   

UPDATE 2: The folks at Hardball on MSNBC reach the same conclusion as I do above -- Hillary cannot win the nomination democratically. The only way she can secure the nomination is if the super-delegates override the will of the voters. 

REPUBLICANS ARE THROWING JOHN MCCAIN UNDER THE BUS

Everyone is abuzz about the NY Times McCain philandering/ethics story but for the wrong reasons. The most troubling aspect of this story is its timing as the Times sat on the story since before the Iowa caucuses. Why run it now a day after the Wisconsin primary and once John McCain has all but wrapped up the GOP nomination?

The answer is what happened in the Wisconsin primary -- that Barack Obama creamed Hillary Clinton and all but assured himself the Democratic nomination for the general election. This was and is horrible news for John McCain and Republican hopes for recapturing the White House in November. As I blogged about here and here, Barack Obama matches up far better than Hillary Clinton against John McCain. This is why we recently found everyone from President Bush to Fox “News'” jumping on the Hillary bandwagon while simultaneously attacking Obama at every opportunity.

Once Obama essentially wrapped up the nomination last night, it became abundantly clear that Republicans needed a Plan D (Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson representing Plans A and B to the McCain Plan C). That Republicans are so willing to throw McCain under the bus is hardly surprising considering he fell into the nomination based more on his supposed opponent (Hillary) and the failure of the other Republican presidential hopefuls rather than based on anything he brought to the table. Once coroneted, McCain still failed to win the hearts of the hardcore CPAC haters or the evangelical base and he continues to struggle against Mike Huckabee despite a full-court press by the GOP establishment.

Clearly the Republican elite saw the Wisconsin results as the last straw. They know that McCain cannot beat Obama no matter how much they rely on the Southern Strategy and stealing elections (which need to be relatively close). The fact is that there is not one significant area where McCain is superior to Obama:

• Old vs. Young
• Old vs. New
• Old vs. Good looking
• Anti-hope vs. Hope
• Plain spoken vs. Articulate
• Uninspiring vs. Inspiring
• Another 100 years in Iraq vs. Against the war from the start
• Terrible fundraiser vs. Great fundraiser
• Lousy campaigner vs. Crazy good campaigner

So while we are going to hear conservative talk radio and Fox “News” rail against the bias of the New York Times in the coming days, it would be wise to withhold judgment until the newspaper clarifies why it held the story until now. Did a GOP insider or a former McCain underling finally corroborate parts of the story? If so, it's safe to assume that those orders came from Republican higher-ups since it would otherwise be career suicide.

And if that is the case, just what is Plan E? Jeb? Cheney? Romney? Newt? Perhaps only Bush's Brain knows...

“Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential” (James Moore, Wayne Slater)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, cheney, christianity, CPAC, democracy, Democrats, election, foxnews, Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Huckabee, iraq, Jeb Bush, McCain, Mitt Romney, New York Review of Books, Newt Gingrich, nytimes, Politics, Wisconsin, religious_right, republican

Tucker Carlson: Sex Lies And Hyprocrite

Tucker Carlson mashed up to reveal his usual self...

VIDEO MASHUP: Why Does Bush Favor Hillary Over Obama?

Hillary Clinton is the candidate of choice for Republicans - including President Bush (as seen in the video mashup above) because she matches up so poorly with Senator John McCain. Among the many problems a Hillary nomination poses are:

• She voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq thus taking the disastrous war off the table
• She will not pose the stark age contrast with McCain that Obama can
• She cannot distinguish herself as a Washington outsider or legitimately claim to be an agent of change
• She will rally the Republican base to vote in a year when many would stay home
• She will lose the support of the growing youthful electorate that have rallied around Obama

Those are merely a few reasons why Republicans have rallied around Senator John McCain who is universally disliked by the Republican base. Republicans are willing to accept a lesser candidate because he stands the best chance of defeating Hillary (the presumptive nominee), thus enabling the GOP to hold on to the White House in November.

While there is no doubt that either Clinton or Obama would be far superior leaders than Bush or McCain, there is also no doubt that Obama stands the best chance of defeating the Arizona Senator. One hopes that this truth weighs heavily on Democrats in the remaining primaries.