There is no "battle" at all, except among the pundits....

Truth is not desperation.

He should be able to draw distinctions between himself and her, this is not the politics of destruction, it is warranted arguments.

For the record, I'm one of the Democratic women Hillary loses.

sclathena:

Look, if your whole thesis is that women will desert the first real chance they have to vote for a woman president because they think Obama is teh hawt, then just say so. Personally I think that's not only stupid but really offensive to women.

Otherwise please explain how the first truly viable woman candidate will have problems getting the women's vote.

Really. I'd like to hear your best effort with that.

American,

I thought Obama's whole campaign was to bring people together. Looks like he's uniting Republicans and Dems against Hillary. Haha. I'm kidding people. Kidding on the square.

Loki/Jim J:

Why don't you ask HRC why she felt the need to open this can of worms? She has one single primary and yet she's talking about how she can take up to 11% of the Republican vote (24% of women).

Someone forgot there's a primary to win first. Hillary stepped on her robe with this one. Maybe it's time you HRC supporters sat her down and had "a chat."

Don't look now, but her highness isn't wearing any clothes!

anon:

Um, because I don't have HRC's cell number? Tell me what it is and I'll give her a holla.

Sorry NYMARJ. Got a little carried away with my snark. I'll dial it back.

I am curious to see if anyone in the media will recognize that this is the direct result of Mark Penn's (and her campaign's) HUBRIS.

Oddly no obamavangelists are whining about MOE or even bothering to ask what poll[s] obama's hadnler is quoting... oddly. And apparently the "number of public polls" are different from all the other meaningless public polls.

If they didn't exist you couldn't make them up.

In all honesty, I can't tell if Dean or Gephardt is getting the best of this sniping ;-)

Jim J:

Not quite. A black candidate making a one-off comment that he can put states in play in the general by getting out the black vote is confidence.

Running your entire candidacy on the notion of inevitability to the point of taking the winning the nomination for granted and committing this type of gaffe is HUBRIS. No one challenged that she couldn't get women out to vote. Yet, she felt the need to put this out there. Sorry, she stepped on her robe with this one. No one to blame but Penn.

And I know, I know. You disagree.

My god. I hope Hillary wins. It is so going to be so much fun to watch that arrogant, insubstantial jerk get beat by girl. so he can "take" Hillary and Michelle is smarter than Bill. R-i-i-i-g-h-t.

In his fuckin' dreams. It is beyond me what anyone sees in that punk. As far as I can tell, he's the arrogant, belligerant, know-nothing Democratic equal of George Bush. Oh, he's a uniter, not a divider.

Given that the election is almost 13 months away predicting the demographic breakdown of the actual vote is highly uncertain to say the least. For what it's worth I think Clinton's two Senate campaigns suggest that she has broader appeal in a general election than many people believe. As for vitriol, there's hardly a post on any liberal blog where you can't find dozens of anti-Hillary diatribes. It's reached the point where I would certainly not vote for John Edwards and may not be able to vote for Obama either.

Hillary has already withheld documents asked for by the press during her campaign. As a democratic female, I am leaning towards Obama. Although he's a seasoned politician , and let's face it they are all in it for themselves, at least it won't be the same Clinton political machine with the ensuing scandals and investigations. Remember whitewater? It will all come back.
Obama may be no better, but he is at least a well spoken statesman (what a relief from W!) and if the DNC ran Rosie O'Donnell I wouldn't vote for her just because she's a woman.
That's insulting. Women will use their brains to make a decision on their vote, not gender identification.

Just one conversation with an upstate New York Republican woman. We were having lunch one day in August and after we showed our various photos we started talking politics. Knowing that I lived in New York City, even though I summered in her area, she asked me about Guiliani. When she got my negative answer - she said she was thinking of voting for Hillary but she could not tell her husband. Yep people that still happens. So we talked about politics a bit more and next summer obviously we will be talking more about her vote. But DO NOT undervalue the Republican woman vote. It might be there.

For those who think experience is the only measure of a man, consider this:

"We had the experience but missed the meaning;"
T.S.Eliot "Four Quartets"

Or the old standard:

"Forget about experience, I'd rather have potential. I want a young, young man..."

OBAMA, you are the man! Rev it up! Experience without judgment is folly, or HILAR-Y-TY.

anon:

Um, who's making the argument?

Maybe the frickin' memo which is the subject of this entire post?

To wit:

"Moreover, these polls also indicate sizable defection among Democratic women should Sen. Clinton be the nominee."

Read it and weep. I'm just responding here, don't put the burden of proof on me 'cause I haven't drunk the Obama Kool-aid.

Jesus, people. I love mixing it up on behalf of my guy as much as anyone, and I've tossed my share of acid around here, but this is ridiculous. Could I respectfully suggest everyone on both sides of this fight just dial it the hell back a few clicks? Or at least save the real heat for some time when they're talking about something important rather than just tradin' a little unprovable political smack?

Obama 08! That's the end of the story, period.

I agree that many of us, almost certainly myself included, are taking this way too personally.

In my defense I would just say that I'm really tired of the constant fan-boy style disrespect hurled Hillary's way over non-issues like the basis of this post. I have determined to throw it back when it's thrown at me.

I'm not going to unilaterally disarm because my candidate is doing well and someone else may feel entitled to some handicapping.

Jim J @ October 18, 2007 6:00 PM:
The answer to your question:

Otherwise please explain how the first truly viable woman candidate will have problems getting the women's vote.

is rather simple . . . Clinton couldn't a shit about a single flesh and blood human being unless their multi-national corporation dumped a crap-load of cash in her lap . . . Most folk, including women, love their families and children and friends . . . Not an artifical human in the bunch.

HRC does not speak for or to lowly flesh and blood humans. Most non-artifical humans don't dig that . . .

I wasn't voting age in 1984, but I was old enough to have at least a few thoughts about politics. And I distinctly remember thinking the Democrats had it locked up, because with Ferraro on the ticket, that was 50% of the vote right there.

Turns out that things are just a bit more complicated than I was imagining.

Hillary is certainly courting Republican votes with her postions on Iraq and Iran. She leads all candidates Republican and Democrat in fundraising from the DEFENSE INDUSTRY.

Chief-Clinton-Advisor Mark Penn is sleazy. He is every bit as sleazy but not a smart as Karl Rove. If the public comes to understand who Mark Penn is based on his PR-firm's clientt list (Bush-insider-Iraq-abuser Blackwater and other defense contractors, strong-armed/unethical Allegheny Electric, etc.)
they will understand who Hillary is listening too and what she is likely to do a president. Hillary, as we all know, will do and say anything to get elected. But if elected, how will she govern? A huge question. Mark Penn's record is part of the answer.

Rather than counting Republican hens before they are hatched, Hillary would do better to worry MORE about carrying Independents and thinking Democrats who reject her stands on Iraq and Iran and who distrust her. Polls in Iowa have shown a significant "distrust" factor even among voters "committed" Hillary. When your campaign strategy is to be all things to all people, and follow the Mark Penn produced opinion polls, CREDIBILITY will become a major issue. And eventually, the huge weight of Clinton baggage will weigh in as voters ask "Can we really believe what Hillary says." An honest answer to that question sends voters quickly looking for other candidates.

Clinton Rakes in Cash from US Weapons Industry
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3075691.ece

Moms be the first one on your block to have your child come home in a box

I'm a left-leaning woman that will NEVER vote for Hillary. I'm so tired of her campaign paying for polls and still playing fast and loose with the results.

Hillary is having trouble with educated women of her generation. We seem to be the hardest sell for her right now because we've observed her, admired her, embraced her - and then become disillusioned. There's a sense that she doesn't possess core values. One feels she's uncentred in some odd way. And the chaos of her domestic life is not reassuring.

On the campaign trail, she doesn't make an emotional connection with her audience because she's always parsing language. She's a rhetorician. You get these parsings of the Iraq war - "Well, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have voted that way." What does she mean? That she wouldn't have voted that way if she'd known it would cost her politically?

There's an over-clever, over-conceptualized political personality there who has trouble being an ordinary person.

For someone with so much international exposure, she's not great on the stage. She's well prepared with her sound bites. But when she has to play outside her sphere of preparation, she seems taken by surprise. When someone asked her, "Do you think homosexuality is immoral?" she just shunted it off. She said, "I'll leave that for others to decide." She's essentially a policy wonk. She has no vision.

Then there's the sense of her espousing feminist ideals on the one hand, but also tolerating gross exploitation and insult from her womanizing husband. For me, the worst was her campaign of defamation against the working-class and lower-middle-class women her husband solicited. She has tremendous powers of denial to block out what is going around her in her own family life. But she's also able to perceive herself as an ethical, God-fearing, Bible-reading Methodist who is quasi-saintly for her commitment to ethical causes. She will not admit a mistake. She has no power of self-analysis. She thinks all her problems are due to her enemies.

And we don't want a situation when Bill Clinton is acting as proxy president in the White House.

She was able to succeed as a carpetbagger in New York State because she's the very image of the corporate-legal meritocracy of Manhattan. I cannot stand the snobbery and elitism of this lawyer-heavy superclass. Hillary and her friends are symptomatic of that class. She can glide through those corridors extremely well. But one feels that she has no real pleasures. There's something about Hillary that's anhedonic - the inability to take pleasure in the moment. Everything for her is this beady-eyed scheming for the future, combined with this mass of resentments for the past, the people who have done them wrong.

She has a powerful machine. But many, many other candidates will be draining off support. The Democrats around me all have their fingers crossed that [Barack] Obama can develop complexity and stature on the road. This is our hope right now. We want to turn the page. We don't want to go backward into the Clinton years, which is what will happen if she's nominated.

I don't know where people are getting the idea that the Democrats are a shoo-in. I don't see them gaining the White House unless there's a third-party spinoff, like Ross Perot. I listen to conservative talk radio, because the callers really do give one a sense of where popular sentiment is at the moment. And I just don't see how any of the Democratic candidates is going to be able to present the national-security credentials that will be crucial in this election. The Republicans have [Mitt] Romney, [Rudolph] Giuliani, [Fred] Thompson, even [Mike] Huckabee - a series of candidates who would be way more credible than Hillary, if only because of the projection of strength they give.

You're saying that Fred Thompson would project as more credible than Hillary?

I'm not a fan of his - we don't need another actor in the White House - but he's highly articulate and he's a gut fighter and debater. Every one of those guys is twice as articulate and twice as masterful in give-and-take as she is, and they are able to project a geniality and a humour that she is unable to.

The Bush-Cheney regime is coming to an end, and the Republicans are in no way going to be running on the record of George Bush. I pray it is not Thompson - he's kind of a flâneur - but Romney does have a record of achievement as a manager and a governor. Giuliani has sort of fascist tendencies, and I find it hard to believe the Republican Party would nominate a man in his third marriage with so many skeletons in his closet.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070915.wcamille15/BNStory/specialComment/home/?pageRequested=all

Shaniqua, Greta, and Sonia et all are advancing the same enlightened position of "leftist" women who gave themselves Alito and Roberts rather than vote for "not a dimes worth of difference" Al Gore and his Clinton-related establishmentarian Democratic Party election machine.

When Hillary is nominated, please take the statistacally insignificant bunch of your other whining self-hating "liberal" women and don't let the door hit you in your azz on your way out of the party. The rest of us will soon be celebrating the election of the first woman president in the glorious progressive history of our country.

And I am one of the founding members of the Milwaukee chapter of NOW in 1969 so don't go all more-progressiver-than-thou like the other Hillary haters on TPM boards.

It is always fun to watch a team properly execute formation flying.