The writing of the obituary of the Hillary Clinton campaign for the Democratic nomination for president began in earnest on Wednesday morning. Her narrow win in Indiana coupled with the loss in North Carolina has all of the pundits weighing in.
I don’t think anyone can deny that the path to the nomination hasn’t narrowed. The argument that remains, and has been a consistent theme of the campaign, is electability. It is what drew me to her candidacy in the first place. Pragmatic? You bet. A win in November has always been what I wanted.
I never had any intentions of being involved in a national campaign. As time has gone on, though, something changed. Somewhere along the way, I became personally vested in this campaign. Maybe it was NH and her “finding her voice.” Maybe it was the knowledge of what it’s like to run a campaign when it seems that so many people – particularly the media – are aligned against you. Maybe it was the attacks that I have gotten for my support of Hillary, ones that have come face-to-face and via emails. Maybe it was the the email from the 76-year-old Alaskan caucus goer who felt completely disenfranchised by the process. Whatever it was, the effect was a strengthening of my support for Hillary, and an increased willingness on my part to do what I could to help her succeed.
That willingness has put me in a position that I’m sure others have experienced when working on a campaign. Probably the biggest thing is that you become privy to information that you cannot share, some of it things you’d just as soon not know. Yep, like watching sausage being made. I’ve seen sausage being made, both for real and in campaigns. It ain’t pretty.
In 2006, there was a great push to get Democrats in control of Congress. We did that and what has it gotten us? Are we still in Iraq? Have we rolled back the Bush tax cuts? Has the deficit gone down? In other words, are we better off today than you were before? Only the most biased among us would say yes.
Oh, I’ve heard all of the excuses. And that’s all they are – excuses. There is no political will in Washington to do the right thing by the people of the United States. It is business as usual, only the characters have changed.
We all want to believe that changing the president will change things in Washington. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As Hillary has been vilified in the press and on the blogs, one of the major memes has been that she represents the “old” way of doing things. Well, doesn’t saying one thing while doing another represent the old way? Isn’t having your surrogates do your dirty work the old way? Isn’t blaming your opponent for your own behavior the old way? And isn’t trying to not count votes that favor your opponent, most notably FL, the old way?
The old way can never be changed at the top until we change it at the bottom. More than 29,000 people (pdf p. 457) voted in Norfolk in February’s primary while just over 8,000 bothered to vote in last Tuesday’s council election. In a city that has more than 105,000 registered voters, that is pathetic. Given the chance to influence those politicians closest to us, the people punted. It is no wonder, then, that those in Washington, far removed from the accountability to the people, don’t give a damn.
The blame lies with us. Ours is a populace that fakes concern for what goes on in Washington, because we fail to look beyond the soundbites. Our opinions are not shaped by the facts – what exactly are the differences in the platforms of the candidates? – but by fear and innuendo. Lies and distortions spread faster than truth – no, Obama is not a Muslim – helped in no small part by the echo chamber that was once the independent media.
The choice of new versus old is a false one, because the political process is stacked against it and there is no will at any level to change it. So for me, I’d rather have someone who knows how to negotiate it (like LBJ) than someone who will be stymied by it (like Jimmy Carter). As long as she’s willing to run, I’m with Hillary.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Well, I’ll give McCain this, he is unifying. By his own admission, he doesn’t know what to do about the economy, and he envisions 100 more years of war in Iraq, but at least we’ll all be f*cked together.
Anon E. Mouse, you ought to read your own source on the Werwolf. To wit,
“They committed arson, though perhaps less than they are credited with: every unexplained fire or explosion associated with a military installation tended to be blamed on the Werwolf. These activities slackened off within a few months of the capitulation on May 7, though incidents were reported as late as 1947.”
In other words, they dried up within a couple of months of the Allies’ “mission accomplished” moment. Their biggest coup, assassinating the mayor of Aachen, came a month before Hitler shot himself. After the surrender, the bad guys who weren’t caught either ran to South America or disappeared into ordinary civilian life.
The situation in post-World War II Germany is in no way comparable to that in Iraq. Our military presence after the war was devoted largely to cleaning up the Nazi leadership (through use of open courts with due process) and to deterring further Soviet expansion. There was no internal guerilla movement to speak of. The occupation forces were not suffering hundreds of casualties a month. The Werwolf were little more than a minor criminal element.
Nor is Korea comparable to Iraq. Though there have been more incidents than in Germany, the Koreans are divided into two well-defined factions with a clear geographic border. Also, in Korea, we do not occupy or police areas where the hostile faction lives. The Iraqis, on the other hand, are broken into numerous tribal, religious and ethnic factions who live cheek by jowl across the country, in areas our troops attempt to police day after day. Again, our casualties since 1953 have been nowhere near comparable to what we’ve suffered in Iraq since 2003.
Any attempt to compare the occupation of Iraq to those of Germany and Japan is apples and oranges. McCain’s blather about a “100 year occupation” assumes that we will stay in Iraq until we somehow magically turn Iraq into occupied Germany, then go on with 100 years of gemutlichkeit. It’s utter nonsense, and it shows clearly that McCain’s foreign policy experience has taught him absolutely nothing.
And despite all that, we have far fewer casualties in Iraq than we had in WWI, WWII, Korea, or Vietnam. So why the yellow streak? Why run away when our casualties are so low?
There is a duly elected government in Iraq. That government has not asked us to leave, because they recognise the threat that the Islamic terrorists pose. When we left Vitnam, many thousands of people who worked with us were murdered. Is that what you want for Iraq? Do you want the U.S. to have the reputation of running after a few thousand casualties? Hell, we lost more Marines on Iwo Jima (6800) than have died in Iraq. When did the Democrats become such wimps?
Anon,
Are you posting from Iraq. I was just wondering if you have had to leave your family 4 or 5 times since the beginning of the stupidity called Iraq. Democrats are definitely not wimps since there are far more elected officials in congress serving on the Democratic side that have actually been in the military. I ask you which nations have fought against the war on terrorism by thinking invading countries will do the trick. Only one-the U.S. Germany, Britain, France , and Spain all enjoy better success against terrorism than the U.S. They realize terrorist, unlike countries move around so it is a lost cost to assume you take over a country and you defeat terrorism. Anon it is real easy to be gung-ho ahead as you and Bush are when you have the comfort of sitting in your nice cozy living room and blogging about someone being a wimp. Would i be fair in saying you are a wimp because you are not there? I will not go there as you have done.
No, Anon is posting from under a bridge. It consistently amazes me how many really really smart readers Vivian’s site gets, yet so much of the comment time is spent addressing the various idiocies that flow from Anon’s keyboard.
Have you seen the latest Reverend Manning video?
“Germany, Britain, France , and Spain all enjoy better success against terrorism than the U.S.”
Really? How many terrorist attacks have occurred in the U.S. since 9/11? How many in Germany, Spain, and England?
You’re right about one thing, Gene, our troops in WWII had in much easier — they only had ONE tour of duty.
BM, do you have any counter arguments, or do you just like to be insulting?
Mouse, why aren’t you in Iraq if you feel so strongly?
Just wondering?
Honestly, I volunteered. However, having had three knee surgeries (a ligament replacement and half of the cartilage removed), I did not pass the physical.
That’s good Mouse, sorry you weren’t able to go. I have three friends there that I pray come back ok.
I lost my former boss in Afghanastan in January. Needless to say, I support the troops but am ready for them to come home.
Anon,
they have had way fewer than the U.S. since you have to consider every troop that has died in Iraq as a terrorist act. Remember we are making their task very easy, the terrorist that have came to Iraq since the fiasco don’t even have to plan an attack against our mainland all they have to do is sit in the country of Iraq and fire away. Shoot they haven’t even got to buy gas to shoot at americans over there , just go down the street. Are you really scared of the terrorist. Do you wake up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat thinking they are going to bomb your house. Americans are a bunch of wimps if they fear that easy or think that the terrorist are out to get them.
At the risk of being told to STFU by the kumbaya wing of the Democratic Party, I stand with HRC today, tomorrow and beyond. The respect and admiration I have developed in the past few months has no bounds. The hate mongering and absolute lack of respect she has endured by the fawning Obamedia and bloggers would have shrunk most people from the fight. I now wish she would have been my first choice last year.
Mouse, most supporters of this strategic blunder in Iraq have deluded themselves into conflating Iraq with the GWOT. Iraq had virtually nothing to do with what you people call islamo-fascist terrorism. In fact, Iraq was more of a bulwark against it, a strategic counterweight to Iran in the region, with the secular dictator Saddam in power. This war has made both the threat of terrorism worse while actual terrorist attacks have exploded worldwide since. Randy is impeccably correct, to make false comparisons to WW2 and the Cold War to Iraq is both intellectually lazy and is factually an absurd claim to make. If blowing $2,000,000,000,000.00, wrecking our magnificent military and causing incredible death and destruction of Americans and Iraqis only to make matters worse is something you embrace, seek counseling at your local Bush addictive rehab center.
Oh, since Iraq is this democratic wonderland, maybe Jenna is honeymooning there this week, you think?
Sorry about your boss. Well all die — I’m glad he died well.
Gene — If they weren’t in Iraq, they’d be training. And that’s no picnic, either. Our military death rates aren’t much worse now than when Clinton was in office, and are lower than when Reagan was president. Even Carter had more military deaths in 1980 than Bush has had in ANY year.
Click to access Death_Rates.pdf
Now, your point about “making their task very easy” is well taken, and that is part of the reason we are in Iraq — our military fights them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.
This is the most vile and disgusting charge you apologist for Bush make. Take your flypaper theory and stick it. You are now just a blithering idiot worthy of contempt and scorn. How God Damn insulting you embrace the policy that sent my Marine to Iraq to attract people into Iraq to kill him so we might kill more of them while they are there. You are an imbecile if you think we are going to put the last bullet in the last terrorist and declare victory and end terrorism. Go to bloody hell you soulless bastard.
We went into Iraq because bush and the noecons ginned up a war rational, to disarm Saddam from his WMD. If you had a damn clue, you would know that only about 2% of the people we are fighting came there to kill Americans. The rest are part of indigenous sects or tribes fighting for religious, political and financial reasons. You are too stupid to even know that the Maliki political part is SCIRI, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
Damn, you ruined my Sunday night with this crap. Too bad 4000 Mothers could not truly celebrate today because of you and your little despot, bush
NND, it’s not worth a ruined Sunday night. Seriously, Anon is a semi-competent troll, at best. He does well here because folks here expect a basic level of sincerity on the part of any commenter, and Anon abuses the hell out of that, over and over again. So, completely undeserving of even an ounce of your worry or anger.