HeadlineUpdate

Some Wise Words About Hillary

Thank you, Gail Collins, for today's New York Times column about Hillary Clinton. It's spot on about Clinton's troubles and I agree, as another famously unsuccessful presidential candidate once said, "One thousand percent." 

Collins shares the view I've previously expressed that Hillary Clinton is a lot sharper than her consultants. 

If things don’t go well for Hillary over the next few weeks, some of her consultants may need retraining for a promising new career in, say, motel management, but here’s what I hope she understands. She’s done fine. And she’d probably have won the nomination walking away if Barack hadn’t picked this moment to mutate into BARACK!

You do your best, and if things don’t work out, it just wasn’t your time. Life isn’t always fair.

Hillary's Celestial Choirs

Considering what I wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last month, I consider myself quoted by Hillary Clinton as she wonders about the realities of the "politics of hope."  I still think, as the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party said to Chris Matthews yesterday, that a strong, partisan Democrat in the White House and a stronger Democratic majority with skilled leaders like my old college classmate Rahm Emanuel is a stronger formula for success, but hey, I read the papers and watch TV too and am prepared to rock with Barack just like every other Hillary voter I know.

You Can Read It In The Sunday Papers

Once again, I'm pushing nostalgia for Joe Jackson as well as a recommendation that we all spent a little more time reading good newspapers on Sunday morning (sorry, Cincinnati, you can read the Times and the Post online) as well as good political blogs like PoliticalWire and The Huffington Post.    Here's what's caught my eye today, starting with this story about one of the many politicians I've wrongly thought were winners, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.  I agree with her remarkably candid remarks about what went wrong with the Clinton campaign, although ultimately, I think (and I called this wrong, too) Mark Penn was a bigger negative than Bill Clinton.

A welcome diversion from the political news in the New York Times is this lovely piece of writing about what many believe to be, as Jim Jarmusch calls it, "the greatest radio station on the planet," WFMU. The great Vin Scelsa helped create the station when it was Upsala College, just a few miles from my home in Weird New Jersey.  And speaking of the Garden State, Yo La Tengo does an annual fundraiser there, my friend Jed Distler has been on their air, and when he and I were in junior high Jed and I volunteered to help at their phone-a-thon and real live hippies were all around us talking about scary drugs. 

I was going to close with another wry observation about the campaign but I've just started to listen to Bob Edwards' interview with Pete Seeger.  The documentary about him is about to be aired on PBS (and presumably, then offered for sale on DVD) and I recently had the privilege of spending a morning with Seeger interviewing him for a different documentary project. I asked him if he had gotten cynical or disillusioned and he said no, it's the little things that people do every day that give him hope.  Forget what I said above.  Put away the papers and listen to this interview, watch the documentary and remember what it means to be a truly great artist.
 

Hillary Clinton's Shocking Confession!

Never mind what she said in last night's debate, the real news is what's in her campaign spending report, as enumerated in today's New York Times.  The shocking, shocking news is that she spent a lot of money on consultants and the trappings of a White House level travel operation (you'd think she'd have learned that lesson!), which, as the quote below keenly observes, wouldn't be mattering now if she'd had won Iowa.

It’s easy to be critical, but had she won Iowa, none of this would have mattered. It wouldn’t have mattered what she spent because money would have come pouring in,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant and a veteran of Mr. Clinton’s successful 1996 re-election bid. “But the fact that she did not has made everyone focus on where the dollars went — and where they think the money should’ve gone.”

McCain and the Lobbyist(s)

    The most interesting part of what so far, no one is calling "McCaingate," was this nugget from the much anticipated New York Times story today:'

At one point, his campaign invited scores of lobbyists to a fund-raiser at the Willard Hotel in Washington. While Bush supporters stood mocking outside, the McCain team tried to defend his integrity by handing the lobbyists buttons reading “McCain voted against my bill.” Mr. McCain himself skipped the event, an act he later called “cowardly.”

    I've been saying for weeks that I hope someone at a 527 is reading a batch of "Keating Five" commercials and this just cinches that strategy.  McCain is vulnerable on the issue of big money and special favors.  And when he pretends to think otherwise, he doesn't even have guts to go to his own fundraiser? 

    When he comes after Obama (see?  My towel with the HRC initials is still thrown in) on experience, we'll need to come back at him with corruption.  Enough about Iraq, already. Follow the money!

McCain-Romney?

Have I just seen the Republican ticket?  Watching Mitt Romney stand behind John McCain was like watching Dan Quayle--a man born to be Vice President. Oh, they'll say that McCain and Romney won't be able to get along, and that the ultra-conservatives won't be satisfied with Mitt's pedigree, but sod the Right, McCain might say, Romney's conservative enough and he might kick in another twenty or thirty mil if the race gets tough...

You Say Obama, I Say Uncle

As regular readers of this space know--all 12.82 of you--I've been a confident, enthusiastic supporter of Hillary Clinton for years.  I admit it, I want Bill back, but also I want my daughter to know that a woman can be president. And I think that in many ways Clinton would be a more effective leader than Barack Obama.   

In a contest against John McCain, I felt that she would run a stronger race.  I bought her "strength and experience" argument and still think that against McCain, Obama will look like a freshman Senator without much of a legislative record.

But...every time I see Barack on TV I like what he says and the way he says it.  He makes me feel good about myself in a way that Hillary doesn't (but Bill did). And as a graduate of a "women's" college (Sarah Lawrence) I found myself alone among my classmates in supporting the woman running for president. Plus some leading feminists I know who have supported Hillary all along are ready to make the switch.  They say, and I agree, that Clinton ran on the wrong message, took the "inevitability" factor too seriously, relied too much on her husband's poll ratings, and failed to retool her campaign in Iowa in time to make a difference (which would have changed everything).

I still think she's thought through policy solutions more completely than he has and that she would be ,as she somewhat inelegantly puts it, "ready from Day One" to confront the nation's problems. But I've decided I'd be just as excited as my friends are to see Obama in the White House.  So while I voted for Hillary yesterday, I can do the math that Chuck Todd was doing on MSNBC last night too, and I don't see how she can win this thing. 

However...the always lively and intelligent Maureen Dowd makes a good case today about how women have rallied behind Hillary before when she's been on the ropes, despite whatever ambivalence they have about her husband.  And if she wins big in Ohio and Texas, she'll be another comeback kid.

Finally, I Was Right!

As I'm not shy about admitting, I'm often wrong about my political predictions.  (Kerry/Cleland?  Mayor Mark Green?  Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend?) but I've been saying for months that John McCain would be the Republican nominee.  I never took Rudy Guiliani's candidacy seriously and apparently, neither did he.  Mitt Romney was undermined by all the people who googled "Mormon underwear."  John McCain was always the only Republican who stood for something. I was not surprised when his campaign's reckless spending was revealed, as I I often note how consultants (like me) are harming democracy.  It's not the cost of campaigns that's out of control, it's the mark-up. According to this article in the Washington Post, Romney was set back by that familiar political phenomenon, squabbling consultants. 

Once McCain found a way to scrape by without expensive consultants, he basically moved to New Hampshire and reminded voters why liked him in the first place. I've always felt that McCain would be toughest to beat, because Democrats find him tolerable and Independents  think he's cool.  This longtime Hillary fan admits to speculating if Obama's appeal to Independents would trump McCain's clear advantage on "experience." And would Hillary be true to her word and run a very respectful campaign against her "friend" John McCain?  If that happens, look to the 527s to do McCain's dirty work against the Democrat, which should begin any minute. Memo to liberal 527's:  start working on those "Keating 5" spots now, please.

 

What It All Means

Ah, such a good question.  Who's to say really?  What can we mortals say with any certainty?

Oh, what Super Tuesday means.  Ah, such a good question...

I found most of the answers in the most essential political site I visit, PoliticalWire.com.  Although I was worried for a day or two about my natal state, New Jersey came in for Clinton and she won what I and everyone else said was the big enchilada, Kahleefourneeuh, as it's now pronounced. the conventional wisdom was right.  Every one expected a virtual tie among delegates and now it's a long hard slog through the rest of the primaries, maybe even to the convention, where dreamers and pundits on TV always speculate about the return of the legendary "open" or "brokered" convention.

Who will be the first talking head to spin this scenario, which will include a story about how after a primary season spend tearing each other down, the Party would look for a healer, a peacemaker, a candidate who could unite them all...don't grow back that beard just yet, Mr. Gore!

My Predictions for Super Tuesday

Now, given the fact that I"m always wrong, how can I resist weighing in on the biggest political story of the year?

As a hopeless consumer of the Clinton conventional wisdom, I'm still hoping that she can pull out a victory in California, but according to the numbers the race is "hotter than the Devil's anvil, " as the greatly missed Dan Rather would  say. If Clinton wins California,  and maybe "Massatusets" as Obama likes to call it, giving Obama Georgi, it might all come to down to my natal state, New Jersey, where for the first time in decades news reports won't be about Bruce Springsteen or Tony Soprano.

But watch the networks finally catch on to the delgate hunt versus primary winner story, and temper every "She won New York" report with "But Obama won delegates in key districts."  If by the end of the evening, Clinton leads Obama by only 150-200 delegates--or less--than we'll all pick up and look towards Maryland, Virginia, Ohio and Texas.  If it's closer, all those dreamers with their dreamy dreams every four years of a brokered convention can start thinking about  Al Gore again...I learned my lesson years ago, having actually come to Washington to work on the "draft Humphrey" campaign (yes there was one) in 1976 and owning a "Draft Muskie" button from the 1980 convention.

Watch this space for updates later.