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  • PITIFUL

    Filed at 6:58 am under by dcobranchi

    Just to prove that I’m an equal opportunity asshole, I’ll call this pro-Democratic Op/Ed among the worst of this political season. I’ve met Marena a couple of times. Nice lady. But this is really bad:

    On this campaign trail, the political workplace is no better. The Democratic Party realized too late that many women see it as epitomizing the injustice of a less qualified, less experienced man trying to take the job promotion from the more qualified, more experienced woman who survived years of the good-old-boys’ club to earn the status of best candidate for the job.

    They see Obama supporters heckling the press over Obama’s own abysmal performance in the Philly debate, playing the “angriest voting block” card to take her job. They see his big-money marketing him as an inspirational movement to take her job. But can Obama win the general election if he takes her job opportunity? There is an ominous rumbling in the ranks. From the national political blog “Talking Points Memo” in April: “I don’t see this as any different from any other case where a less-qualified male gets a job over a more-qualified woman. She said she found the Democratic Party doing this more repulsive than a McCain presidency … It was clear in her voice that where I was equivocating, she was not.”

    First a bit of a fact check. The quote is not from Talking Points Memo. It’s from some pseudonymous blogger who is a reader at TPM. Saying that this quote is from TPM would be like pulling a quote from one of my rants at DailyKos and attributing it to kos.

    As for the substance, total bullshit! We don’t choose a nominee based solely on resume. If we did we wouldn’t need primaries. Just program some computer to find the person in the country with the most impressive CV and Bingo! We have a winner! We choose a nominee (and president) based on a whole lot of factors, including experience. No one is entitled to the job. That’s been Hillary’s problem since before Iowa. Her campaign has been run entirely on that premise. It doesn’t work that way.

    I’ll also strongly disagree that he is less qualified. A big part of running for President is being able to raise the money to do so. Obama routinely pulls in 3X what Hillary does. Her campaign is literally broke, while Obama has some $40M on hand to spend on the rest of the primaries. So how is Hillary the better candidate?

    Do I agree with Obama’s positions on all of the issues? Not really. Hillary’s health-care proposal is better. But Edwards’ was better than Hillary’s. So what? Obama is right enough on enough issues and McCain is wrong on all of them.

    Obama will win the nomination. There’s just no way that the math works out for Hillary. Not even a blowout in PA today will get her close to parity with Obama in pledged delegates. The Hillary people are going to have to recognize that, although Hillary’s was an historic run for the presidency, she didn’t do what she needed to do to earn the job. And if they don’t want to see McCain’s face on the teevee announcing that we’ve just gone to war with Iran, they’re going to have to bite the bullet and vote for Obama in November.

    6 Responses to “PITIFUL”


    Comment by
    Alasandra
    April 22nd, 2008
    at 7:08 am

    Personally I am still upset that Edwards dropped out of the race before I had a chance to vote for him.

    I do hope they change the primary system because under the current system Mississippians only get to vote for the leftovers.


    Comment by
    Darren
    April 22nd, 2008
    at 7:52 am

    I think the Republicans had a similar vibe going in 1996, with Dole being the “I’ve put in my time, now it’s my turn” candidate. And we all saw how effectively that turned out.


    Comment by
    don
    April 22nd, 2008
    at 8:50 am

    I keep hearing about supporters of both Clinton and Obama who will vote for McCain if their candidate does not get the nomination, but I don’t see that happening on a large scale. I think the larger danger for the Democrats is that those voters just won’t vote at all. However, most will bite the bullet and vote against McCain.


    Comment by
    Nance Confer
    April 22nd, 2008
    at 2:48 pm

    Doesn’t it seem like bad strategy to keep pointing out that Obama is spending so much more? He’s spending more because he has more and knows he can get more because all his contributors are not maxed out and because he wants to win.

    Doesn’t complaining about that sort of remind us that Clinton doesn’t have as much and what that means?

    And, btw, Alasandra, in FL we tried the “fix the primary voting schedule” thing and we what it got us? 🙂 But at least I had my chance to vote for Edwards.

    Nance


    Comment by
    JJ Ross
    April 23rd, 2008
    at 7:10 am

    I didn’t hear a word last night in cable news coverage about the effect of PA Republicans free to register as for the primary, just keep HRC(Her Royal Clinton scrabbling along looking possible awhile longer. Did anybody? It was as if campaign politics didn’t exist at all except between Democrats . . .so odd.


    Comment by
    Nance Confer
    April 23rd, 2008
    at 8:53 am

    Who are these “Republicans” you speak of? It seems I heard a tale of some ancient people who died off long ago. . . 🙂

    The only thing I heard about registering was that a whole lot of new voters registered, mostly D, and some Rs switched to D. I didn’t hear any report of Ds switching to R.

    The only interesting “news” I heard last night was one of the talking heads saying this was really just the media dragging things out as there is no way Clinton can win, unless the rules are suddenly changed. So why don’t they stop doing that instead of just chuckling over it?

    Nance