Ironically, the last time the person I voted for was also the person with a reasonable chance of winning was Bill Clinton in 1992. It was a very nice feeling to go into the polling booth believing the person I wanted to see win actually could. (The feeling wasn’t repeated in ‘96, alas. It was the complete wimp out with the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy that spoiled it for me.)

And stop with all this “Obama cultist” horseshit. You sound like the GOP. If you seriously want me to explain to you how I am not a cultist, let me know.

“Most Democrats… …The only people who DON’T…”

Really? Because I’ve seen lots of folks arguing for both sides and could hardly say truthfully that “most” go a particular way. Might you have some distortions, or at least spin, in your own post?

For myself, I’d have a very hard time voting for Clinton because I don’t like what we are seeing of her character. I’ve had enough of a president who doesn’t think rules should apply.

If Florida and Michigan had NOT gone for her, do you seriously think she’d be advocating as strongly for their delegates to now be seated? Why didn’t she take her name off the MI ballot, as the other candidates did? No, she didn’t have to. But it demonstrates the nature of her character that she didn’t when others did.

2.)Uh, no. Michigan and Florida are a mess thanks to the Democratic leadership in those states. The only people calling to re-write the rules are the people who can’t stomach actually being held to them, namely the Clinton campaign and her supporters. The bottom line is that Florida and Michigan broke the rules laid out last May. If the DNC lets them do as they please, at the very least they undermine their authority over all the state parties, at worst, they throw the entire process into chaos and lose control over the next election cycle completely. This isn’t an Obama thing, though it could be a Clinton thing. The rules already lay out a solution to the narrow delegate problem, namely, the super-delegates. I’d like to see a better process myself as the current one clearly doesn’t work particularly well, but that’s not an excuse to push to re-write the rules when things don’t break your way (even going so far as to threaten lawsuits).

3./4.)This depends on whether you think keeping your name on a state ballot while your opponents don’t can be considered “campaigning.” I know Hillary’s camp is trying to dance on a very fine line and argue that they only ever agreed not to go those states and actually campaign there (I’m talking physically campaign, not using mailers or the media). She is contending that the DNC only later decided not to seat the delegates. Conveniently, this ignores the fact that Dean openly threatened not to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida if they went ahead and moved up their primaries right from the word go. Arguing the difference between initial threat and official sanction is pretty thin, particularly when your opponents (both Edwards and Obama, otherwise known as the other two serious contenders, along with Richardson…I believe Dodd left his name on the ballot as well, but he was never in any position to capture any serious percentage of the vote) appear to have gotten a different memo. In fact, I would argue that this whole debacle would have been avoided had she pulled her name off the ballot and left both contests void of the opportunity to vote for any of the front runners. Had the candidates and the DNC been consistent, it’s likely Michigan and Florida would have dropped their bid to hold their primaries early (though, given the friction between these particular state parties and Howard Dean, maybe not).

So, ultimately, my raft of “outright lies” looks more like a bit of drift wood at worst. I’ll hold to the narrow definition of “campaigning” and concede that Hillary played by the agreed rules. Of course, that doesn’t change the ballot debate or whether she is now trying to effectively gut the DNC’s authority for her own benefit.

Well played.

Okay, fair enough. Why didn’t she file to have her name removed?

It’s just starting to get sad.

But this part

“…She knew about and agreed to the rules governing the primaries and caucuses almost a full year ago. Now she wants to re-write the rules so she can snag a load of delegates from Michigan and Florida where she campaigned virtually unopposed, going so far as to even put herself on the Michigan ballot after her opposition had followed the rules and removed themselves from the contest…”

needs to be addressed.

1. These “rules governing the primaries and caucuses” were never hard and fast. When Florida and Michigan decided to go ahead and hold their primaries early, several states including NH ALSO immediately applied for early status and IT WAS GRANTED. There’s your “rules”. They were not rules at all.

2. Most Democrats and Hillary want the leadership to consider the changed landscape since a year ago. When the rules were made, the intent was to punish the states that broke them. But in the present climate of almost a dead-even tie, 100-150 delegate difference out of 3100 counted or pledged, the original intent and the original rules HAVE to be reexamined. The only people who DON’T want Florida and Michigan to find a way to revote or find some way to get their peoples’ votes counted are Obama and his supporters.

3. Hillary NEVER “campaigned unopposed” in Michigan OR Florida. Outright lie.

4. She didn’t “put her name on the MI ballot”, she just never filed to remove it. There were no rules that said the candidates had to remove their names. SOME candidates removed their names, as Obama did, but there was no rule.

Let’s look at what we know for sure is true:

–Her campaign did threaten to sue over the Texas and Ohio primaries, only backing off, it seems, when it seemed clear she would get her confetti moment in the press.

–She knew about and agreed to the rules governing the primaries and caucuses almost a full year ago. Now she wants to re-write the rules so she can snag a load of delegates from Michigan and Florida where she campaigned virtually unopposed, going so far as to even put herself on the Michigan ballot after her opposition had followed the rules and removed themselves from the contest.

–The teacher’s Union tried to sue in Nevada to block the culinary workers from voting in the casinos. Again, a case of knowing the rules well in advance and then trying to change them when things didn’t break Hillary’s way (the suit was filed two days after the Culinary Worker’s Union came out in support of Obama). A textbook case of surrogates in action, btw, as the top officials of the teacher’s union are all open Clinton supporters and one (I’ll have to dig up the name again) is actually on the campaign staff.

–She has openly stated that she thinks that McCain and she are qualified to be the president and Obama is not. The fact that she said this multiple times and there are still people out there who support her is MIND BOGGLING. Talk about chugging the Kool-aid.

–She has met with Richard Scaife and Rupert Murdock and she or Bill have given interviews to media outlets controlled by both. During the Scaife interview, she echoed the whole right wing echo chamber, calling Wright, effectively, a purveyor of hate speech on the level of Don Imus. So, essentially, she was saying that she stood up for the black man, but Obama won’t stand up for whitey. You can argue that that’s not what she said, but you’d have to be either thunderously stupid or completely disingenuous to believe she meant anything else.

So right there I see “do anything it takes to win,” “deceiving,” “divisive” and “polarizing.”

Is the Bosnia story enough to add “untruthful” or “dishonest?” Or are we assuming that she was overtired and misspoke 4 times over 4 months? Want to get into how she brought peace to Ireland?

If this is all the dastardly work of the GOP or Obama’s camp, then why hasn’t the Clinton team come out and decried the covert campaign to undermine their campaign?

I’ll support Hillary in the Fall if it comes to that, mainly because I think she will probably be a better and more disciplined President than candidate (and f*ck McCain), but I’m not going to spend a day or two sucking on an exhaust pipe so I can see the world through Clintonite glasses.

…and all this huffing and puffing is about principles, so naturally wingers don’t get it.

You’re all invited.

Hillary isn’t any of those things. As far as I know…

.

And Obama’s surrogates NEVER miss a chance to dis Hillary, here at OW and everywhere else.

Peter Daou has the links:

http://blog.hillaryclinton.com/blog/main/2008/03/24/152617

“Monster” “disingenuous,” “divisive,” “untruthful,” “dishonest,” “polarizing,” “calculating,” “saying whatever it takes to win,” “attempting to deceive the American people,” “one of the most secretive in America,” “deliberately misleading,” “literally willing to do anything to win,” and “playing politics with war.”

Any of these sound familiar to anyone here? They’ve been pushed out as “facts abiout Hillary” for MONTHS among Obama cult followers, and Ollie here has threads that push these smear jobs every day.