Where's Doug?

I haven't posted for quite a while, as you two or three people who read this blog might have noticed. This is not because I have stopped posting, or even stopped having opinions (that'll be the day); rather it is because I am currently blogging at an experimental site that is a sub-site of Salon: Open Salon. I'm doing this because I'm an arrogant dweeb, and think that posts there will get a wider distribution than here.

I would direct the three (or however many) of you to head on over there. The site is currently in Beta and is thus (ironically) not "open," but you can sign up easily if you want, and it shortly will be open.

In the meantime, I'll be posting there rather than here. Just so's you know.

Perception vs. Reality

Alex Koppleman of Salon has a video up about the recent flap over Hillary Clinton's "woman's baby died because of evil heathcare industry" anecdote. Koppleman makes a good point that it is surprising that people on the Left would trust the word of a hospital CEO more than they would trust Clinton, a member of the same left. And he is very even-handed in this; I have no truck with Koppleman's basic premise.

My point is, if so many folks on the left now doubt Clinton's veracity as their default position, how on Earth is she going to convince swing voters in the general election? How can she continue to try to make the electability argument when her word is doubted by her own supporters?

I've said again and again that I think Clinton is unelectable in the general. If this doesn't prove it, what the heck will?

Random Election Thoughts

Some random thoughts on the current campaign nuttiness.

• If John McCain's temper is so "well documented", why are we hardly hearing about it during his current press-driven beatification tour?
• Is it just me, or are articles on "Why Clinton Should be Winning" or "Why Clinton Really is Winning" or "Why Obama's current lead doesn't really matter" more the kind of thing one hears as after a campaign is over as part of the postmortem?
• How do people so out-of-touch as David Broder and Cokie Roberts get to keep insisting that they know what "typical Americans" are thinking?
  
• Is anyone but me (and Glenn Greenwald, apparently) as disgusted by the fact that Ana Marie Cox, nee Wonkette, has become so much a part of the Washington media that she can't even recognize the obvious: that attending a friggin' bar-b-que with John McCain has an effect on the type of reporting he can expect from her?
• Why do people in a state being heavily wooed by candidates still get sucked in by naked and obvious pandering by those candidates? Do people in Ohio really think Clinton or Obama would throw out NAFTA? Do people in Florida really think they care (in an ultimate sense) about Castro? Do people in Pennsylvania really believe Clinton likes "Rocky," or that Obama is a Steelers fan?
  

Hillary, Michigan, and Florida

Am I the only one who is bothered by the blatant hypocrisy of the Clinton campaign with regard to the Florida and Michigan votes?

With Florida, Clinton has a bit of a case; everyone was on the ballot. But in Michigan, Clinton waited until every other candidate had removed their names from the ballot, and then she announced she would stay on. That's just blatant calculation and manipulation, and she knows as well as you or I that's it's absurd after something like that to talk about "counting everyone's votes."

But that's not what's bothering me. What's really bothering me is the fact that I know--and I'm sure that everyone knows--Clinton really couldn't give a rip about the voters in those states. If she had clobbered Obama on SuperDuper Tuesday, she wouldn't have cared about Florida and Michigan. If she had knocked Obama out via Iowa and New Hampshire, she wouldn't have cared about Florida and Michigan. The only reason she really cares is because she can't possibly be the nominee without those two states.

And after her blatant manipulation of the process with regard to Michigan, that makes me ill.

I am so damn tired of the Clintons; I really really want them to go away.

Still Confused

At this stage, the Clinton campaign baffles me. As far as I can see, her only path to the nomination is through re-doing the Florida and Michigan primaries (which they've already rejected), getting 2/3 or more of the remaining super-delegates to vote for her, or waiting for Obama to implode a la Muskie in 1968. Or a combination of them all. All this in combination with a scorched-Earth campaign to make Obama unelectable.

Is it just me, or is this complete insanity?

Over and over, I've said two things: that Hillary would make a fine President (although her campaign's recent [i.e., in the last month and a half or so] behavior is giving me serious cause to reconsider), and that she can't possibly win the general election. And I've seen nothing in this campaign that causes me to reassess the latter opinion. Consider:

• Hillary's negatives are remarkably consistent, between 45-55%.


• A Hillary candidacy will bring out the wing-nuts in droves. Right now they're apathetic. (Do the Hillary people want to wake that slumbering giant?)


• Hillary's current option--a scorched-Earth campaign followed by an overturn of the "regular" delegates by the "super" delegates--is almost guaranteed to alienate a lot of the new people who voted in the primary. How many will stay home? (In my view: a lot.)


• With the Clinton's there's always something for opponents to shoot at. Her Bosnia thing. Her "peace in Northern Ireland" thing. Bill's stupid statements.
  Something. And that's without the Right rehashing all the past stuff to invoke Clinton fatigue.

This is not sexism; this is not Hillary Hate; this is just a gimlet-eyed view of the current situation. I'm sure Clinton has pollsters and strategists and position papers up the wazoo showing how she can overcome all that, if she does all the right things. For one, I don't believe it. For another, hasn't her campaign shown so far that she can't do all the right things? (No campaign can, durn it!)

So why is she continuing? I can think of a few reasons, but none of them are very flattering, honestly. And speaking personally, I just wish she'd friggin' quit!

The Day After

Well, Clinton won two states and eked out a narrow vote win here in Texas.

My position is--and always has been--that Hillary would make a perfectly fine President, but that there's no way she can win in November. No way. The youth vote that supported Obama will stay home; the Republicans who are currently apathetic (at best) over McCain will be galvanized, and she will lose. So it's a complete bafflement to me that people continue to vote for her.

So I'm depressed. Because I'm tired of this campaign and want it over. Because I'm tired of the Clintons and want them off the stage. Because I'm convinced that the campaign is now going to descend to mutual mud-slinging, and I'm friggin' sick of that. And because I'm convinced that the longer this goes on, the greater the chance of a Republican win in November.

So I'm depressed. How about you?

Update: 9pm

Finished with the "precinct convention" (i.e., caucus) portion of the vote. The caucus started at about 7:15, and was still going on when I left at about 8:15. What I experienced sounds pretty different from what I've read about the Iowa process (probably because we're down to 2 candidates).

At 7:15, lines were formed for each candidate--a line for Clinton and a line for Obama, and each person "signed in," pledging their caucus vote to a particular candidate. There was no trying to talk Edwards supporters over to the Obama or Hillary side, or any of that; you just signed your name in the appropriate place (with your address, after showing either an ID that they checked against the rolls, or the little card they gave you earlier in the day that said, in effect, "Yuppers, I voted!"), and that was it. After everyone signed, there were be the proportional distribution of delegates for the district, followed by the delegate selection.

There were easily two Obama volunteers for every Clinton volunteer. There were also far more Obama people--I would guess between 2 and 3-1 out of a crowd that looked to me to be between 200-300 people (in a township that only has a stated population of about 1100!). This part of Austin would look to be heavy Obama territory.

At 8:15, there were still lines to sign in. There were now two lines for each candidate, and there was basically no waiting at the "Hillary" lines, with plenty of people still in the "Obama" lines. The Obama people were a big cross-section of folks--mostly white (Austin is pretty heavily Caucasian), but a few African-Americans and Indian-Americans. They covered all the age spectrum, and were men and women both. The Clinton folks were heavily female.

It wasn't a "contact sport" here in Rollingwood, but when something like 60% of the adult population of the district shows up to vote for a single party's primary, that's pretty amazing.