Any hope that Hillary will settle for a consolation prize is a bit like expecting the Terminator to be content with killing Sarah Connor and leaving John alive.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his New York governorship to boost him to the White House in 1932. But Thomas Dewey failed in the same trick in 1944 and again in 1948, and Mario Cuomo never even got that far.
So for a political operator as sharp as Senator Hillary Clinton, a governorship is just another dead end. In any case, her US Senate seat keeps her much more in the national spotlight.
But like Intelligencer says, she isn’t the kind of candidate to settle for consolation prizes. I think she will ride out her campaign right through to the convention. In any case, she knows as well as anybody that at least a quarter of the Democrats will jump ship and vote for McCain in the event that Obama gets the democratic nomination. The hard facts are that Obama scores heavy only among blacks and rich white liberals. Women, working class whites, Catholics, Latinos, Jews, Blue-Dog Democrats, predominantly go for Clinton. Moreover, independents tend to cluster with candidates such as Clinton and McCain, both of whom are regarded as either middle roaders (Clinton) or centrist mavericks (McCain); while Obama is as leftist as they come these days.
Moreover, Obama plainly has lost the vote to Clinton in all the major states, which are the only ones that really count in the hard school of american national politics. I’m talking real elections, not caucuses, which for me count for shit.
Finally, Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright is going to be the Willie Horton of this year’s presidential campaign. Anybody who really thinks that issue has died off knows nothing about american politics.
That, and continual references to “Barack Hussein Obama”. (If he finds that offensive, he should have changed his name. On the other hand, because we now have an extensive moslem vote in the USA, that would have queered it for him with millions of voters, wouldn’t it?)
Anyway, that’s the political music for this year, as I hear it.
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Any hope that Hillary will settle for a consolation prize is a bit like expecting the Terminator to be content with killing Sarah Connor and leaving John alive.
Intelligencer’s last blog post..Big Media: Is it really all about the money?
Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his New York governorship to boost him to the White House in 1932. But Thomas Dewey failed in the same trick in 1944 and again in 1948, and Mario Cuomo never even got that far.
So for a political operator as sharp as Senator Hillary Clinton, a governorship is just another dead end. In any case, her US Senate seat keeps her much more in the national spotlight.
But like Intelligencer says, she isn’t the kind of candidate to settle for consolation prizes. I think she will ride out her campaign right through to the convention. In any case, she knows as well as anybody that at least a quarter of the Democrats will jump ship and vote for McCain in the event that Obama gets the democratic nomination. The hard facts are that Obama scores heavy only among blacks and rich white liberals. Women, working class whites, Catholics, Latinos, Jews, Blue-Dog Democrats, predominantly go for Clinton. Moreover, independents tend to cluster with candidates such as Clinton and McCain, both of whom are regarded as either middle roaders (Clinton) or centrist mavericks (McCain); while Obama is as leftist as they come these days.
Moreover, Obama plainly has lost the vote to Clinton in all the major states, which are the only ones that really count in the hard school of american national politics. I’m talking real elections, not caucuses, which for me count for shit.
Finally, Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright is going to be the Willie Horton of this year’s presidential campaign. Anybody who really thinks that issue has died off knows nothing about american politics.
That, and continual references to “Barack Hussein Obama”. (If he finds that offensive, he should have changed his name. On the other hand, because we now have an extensive moslem vote in the USA, that would have queered it for him with millions of voters, wouldn’t it?)
Anyway, that’s the political music for this year, as I hear it.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
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