Originally Posted By JohnS1 I am confused when I hear about a candidate "loaning" him or herself money. When Mitt Romney was still in the race, it was said he was spending his own money to campaign. Was that the same thing as "loaning" himself money? If I give money to a campaign, I don't expect to get it back. Why should she? If you believe in your ability to win, you shouldn't need to know that you are getting it back. You should be spending money to get your message out, without any expectations as to the return of your money.
Originally Posted By mele I agree, John. I do think it's one thing to loan money to someone else's campaign but if I'm using the money for myself, I don't consider it a loan. One of the things I like least about Bush is his stubbornness and, to me, it appears that Hillary has this same stubbornness. I am just really starting to dislike her.
Originally Posted By friendofdd George Will says it well today. <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/921267.html" target="_blank">http://www.sacbee.com/110/stor...267.html</a> >>>Hillary Rodham Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of "fairness," because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there. Unfortunately, baseball's rules – pesky nuisances, rules – say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up. After Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton, the Yankee Clipperette, can, and hence eventually will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat's Last Theorem, or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party's rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party's rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama's delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium's ZIP code. Or perhaps she wins if Obama's popular vote total is, well, adjusted by counting each African American vote as only three-fifths of a vote. There is precedent (see the Constitution, Article I, Section 2, before the 14th Amendment). "We," says Geoff Garin, a Clinton strategist who possesses the audacity of hopelessness required in that role, "don't think this is just going to be about some numerical metric." Mere numbers? That is how people speak when numerical metrics are inconvenient. Gen. Douglas MacArthur said that every military defeat can be explained by two words: "too late." Too late in anticipating danger, too late in preparing for it, too late in taking action. Clinton's political defeat can be similarly explained – too late in recognizing that the electorate does not acknowledge her entitlement to the presidency, too late in anticipating that she would not dispatch Barack Obama by Super Tuesday (Feb. 5), too late in planning for the special challenges of caucus states, too late in channeling her inner shot-and-a-beer hard hat. Most of all, she was too late in understanding how much the Democratic Party's mania for "fairness" has, by forbidding winner-take-all primaries, made it nearly impossible for her to overcome Obama's early lead in delegates. If even, say, Texas, California and Ohio were permitted to have winner-take-all primaries (as 48 states have winner-take-all allocation of their electoral votes), Clinton would have been more than 400 delegates ahead of Obama before Tuesday and today would be at her ancestral home in New York planning to return some of its furniture to the White House next January. Tuesday night must have been almost as much fun for John McCain as for Obama. The Republican brand has been badly smudged by recent foreign and domestic policies, so McCain's hopes rest on the cohort called "Reagan Democrats," who still seem somewhat resistant to Obama. McCain's problem might turn out to be the fact that Obama is the Democrats' Reagan. Obama's rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan's ideological nourishment, but he is Reaganesque in two important senses: People like listening to him, and his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness – the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.<<<
Originally Posted By mele <<Obama's rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan's ideological nourishment>> Nice.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Seriously, unless they find Obama with a sex tape getting it on with an underage boy talking about how much he believes Pasor Wright was correct while dressed up in Muslim gear, I doubt there is anything major that is going to sway the voters at this point.<< LOL! Talk about an October surprise!
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan <<in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her>> LOL! It's funny 'cause it's true.
Originally Posted By planodisney WorldDisney, while I think your scenario in post #20 would hurt obama in a national election, i am not sure it would hurt him in the democratic primary one bit.
Originally Posted By DAR When it comes to the general election I don't think anyone should consider Obama a slam dunk.
Originally Posted By ecdc Can Hillary do all that much damage to Obama at this point? The tone over the last two days seems to have really shifted. Clinton no longer seems seen as a fighter, the "comeback kid." She seems largely viewed as stubborn and desperate. With that in mind, I think anything she tries to do will backfire on her. Any negative ads will be seen as sour grapes. Most additional campaigning will be seen as hurting the party. The pressure will only mount. The longer she stays in, the more she only hurts herself.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <I have been amazed to watch him outspend Clinton 3 to 1 the last 2 months, along wih the liberal media pushing him along every step of the way,> The media were very kind to Obama early on, back when Clinton was seen as a shoe-in. The media wanted a fight, a tough race. They didn't just want Clinton to be coronated. After Obama won Iowa, and briefly surged ahead in the polls in NH, they started treated Clinton much better. Again, they didn't want Obama to take both and effectively end the race. That only lasted about 5 days. After Clinton won NH, and was assumed to be the frontrunner again, they started treated Obama better. After super-Tuesday was essentially a draw, and then after the run of post-super Tuesday victories (12 in a row), when Obama became the frontrunner really for the first time, the media got much tougher on Obama, and started treating Clinton much better. They didn't want Obama cruising to victory, especially since the GOP race (which in January was the one predicted to take longer) was over. Again, they wanted a fight, a tough race, something to yak about for their endless hours of coverage. That's the media's real "horse" in this race - the race itself.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <The longer she stays in, the more she only hurts herself.> Lawrence O'Donnell had an interesting take on this last night. He said that it's actually better for Obama if Clinton stays in at least a little longer. If she dropped out now, he said, he die-hard supporters would be left with a bitter taste in their mouths, and might even carry through on their threats (as reflected in exit polls) to vote for McCain in November or stay home. But if Clinton can exit gracefully, and sort of prepare her die-hards for the inevitable, they might not feel so badly towards Obama. Of course, that's what he said after yesterday, when Clinton gave a rather gracious speech. Today she's back trashing Obama again, so that theory might go out the window. To use another baseball metaphor, she might be like poor Willie Mays on the Mets, past his prime but no one would tell him he'd do himself a favor by retiring so we could remember him at his best, and not as someone who didn't know when to step down.
Originally Posted By Lisann22 <<<<poor Willie Mays on the Mets, past his prime but no one would tell him he'd do himself a favor by retiring so we could remember him at his best, and not as someone who didn't know when to step down.>>> Ugh, now why did you go and bring that up. I was eating lunch! ;>
Originally Posted By DAR If you want to keep with a sports theme Hillary has now entered Hack A Barrack mode, similar to Hack A Shaq. Except she's down 15 with 20 seconds left and has all of her timeouts left. And she's just going to use them all to annoy everyone. Even thoush this game is over.
Originally Posted By JohnS1 I heard something hilarious the other night on a discussion (talking head) news show. One commentator said that he wouldn't be surprised if Hillary accepted the VP slot. And another commentator replied, "I don't know; that would mean that Barrack would have to put a food taster on his staff." So, if nothing else, the current situation has provided a great deal of humor over the airwaves!
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan To use still another sports analogy, it's like she and Barrack have completed a round of mini golf. They're at the 18th, and Barack is about to hit the ball into the dragon's mouth for a free game. Meanwhile, Hillary is back on the 17th, trying to fish golf balls out of the blue-dyed pond so that she can have a few extra chances at that dragon. And if that doesn't work, she'll say that what really counts is how good someone is at air hockey, so they should go into the Putt Putt Golf Arcade and try that. And if she wins at air hockey, that's all that matters, and mini golf won't count in her mind. Unless she loses at air hockey, too. At that point, she'll climb out the restroom window and run into the parking lot saying bad stuff about Obama.
Originally Posted By DAR Or she could use the old "well I'm a girl so I should get four strikes instead of three." excuse. And don't you get the feeling that she's the type that would hit the reset button if you were beating her at a video game. Or she'd flip the Candy Land board over?
Originally Posted By DisneyFreak96 <<Or she could use the old "well I'm a girl so I should get four strikes instead of three." excuse.>> As a woman in a male dominated field, this argument of hers grates at me. It just weakens the whole "women are equal and should be treated as so" argument. She can't have her cake and eat it too. It makes the whole equality movement look weak.
Originally Posted By DlandDug In all fairness, Hillary is leading among those voters who would have voted for her if they hadn't actually voted for somebody else.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder It sounds to me that after all the time spent hyping her as the presumptive nominee, she bought into it at some point (if she didn't already believe it), and now that Obama has come from basically nowhere and snatched it from her, she's just having a hard time letting go of the concept. She's keyed her entire life around re-occupying the White House, starting with when she ran for senator, and now that her plan isn't coming to fruition, this just isn't a reality she envisioned and therefore can't readily accept. What's unfortunate is that the entire country realizes it, but she's having her gradual epiphany if you will in front of the country. She never thought for a moment it wouldn't happen and so she won't let go. At this point it's kind of pathetic.
