If it is true that this mindless promise which will never be delivered upon (and we'll be better off for that!)sways voters because she "feels their pain," then we may as well kiss this planet good-bye.

Thanks for the leadership McHillary.

of course, no experts agree, only McCain.

McCain and Clinton. There you go.

Dumb ideas that dumb people like ARE EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!

Grats on the successful pander.

Oh yeah, and chalk up another Obama superdelegate, Texas DNC member John Patrick:

http://thepage.time.com/obama-release-on-texas-superdelegate-endorsement/

this thing is over. the adults have decided the charade has gone on long enough. hillary can win both NC and Indiana and it won't amount to a hill of beans.

obama passed his last test. the powers that be are satisfied he isn't going to implode. they like his judgement and they know the gas tax holiday is a crock and so are discounting anything positive for hillary as result.

she failed the leadership test that would have given the SD's cover to suport her. She has failed it repeatedly and that is why no matter what happens now, the race is over.

gas tax holiday is stupid pandering.
if you want to waste $10b why not buy everyone a free tuneup. that could be a more effective way to make the fleet more efficient and hence lower the price of gas.

Another Super for Obama.

via Ben Smith:

A Texas super for Obama

An AFL-CIO official, John Patrick, endorses the senator.

Release after the jump.

TEXAS SUPERDELEGATE ENDORSES BARACK OBAMA

31 year member of the United Steelworkers, DNC Member John Patrick Backs Obama

Hillary pandering? Hillary going along to get along with the right? Never! The Clinton campaign treating voters as cynical dupes? Say it ain't so!

In her cold, dark heart, Mrs. Policy Wonk knows this is a short-sighted and nonsensical proposal, but why allow good policy to get in the way of scoring cheap political points?

This a huge issue for Obama and he should be pushing even more after Garin's comments. It's about policy, yes, but it is really about *character*.

This is THE perfect example of running your campaign based on the reaction it gets in polling rather than what it will really do for people.
In fact, this proposal not only does not really help people but it is also counterproductive. yes it hurts the country, by discouraging conservation, by diverting resources from highway funds.
If you need more convincing:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/30/AR2008043003575_2.html?sid=ST2008050100090

Garin is saying, "It doesn't matter if we help people, just as long as they think we will." If you really think $30 bucks over 3months is worth the damage the policy does (and that is the best case of what it is worth), then why not just add $30 to everyone's stimulus check getting mailed this week, huh?

There is no excuse for a policy every expert says is moronic at best, and more likely counter productive. There is even less of an excuse for pandering and lying to the public.

The pandering on the gas tax is yet another Exhibit A as to why most supers are sick of the Clintons and are flocking to Obama.

This is a great example of the cynical opportunism of the Clinton campaign. They don't care that this proposal flies in the face of reaspm, honesty, and Hillary's own previously-stated positions on the environment and the economy. It's gonna get them a few votes with the SUV driving gas hog set that helped to get us into this mess in the first place, so what the hell, right? In the meantime, Obama is sticking to the truth and to what's best for America over the long term.

Next we'll see Hillary handing out twenty dollar bills at campaign events. Whatever it takes...

Serious question:

For this to take effect, she has to write legislation, get it passed by both houses, including the sixty-vote wall that used to be called a filibuster, and get it signed by Bush, no?

Has she written the legislation? We all know this is a fantasy and demagoguery of the Clintonest order, but is she even going through the motions beyond telling people what they want to hear?

ANOTHER Superdel for Obama (from Texas):

An AFL-CIO official, John Patrick, endorses the senator.

Release after the jump.

TEXAS SUPERDELEGATE ENDORSES BARACK OBAMA

31 year member of the United Steelworkers, DNC member John Patrick Backs Obama

CHICAGO, IL -- Today, a Texas superdelegate backed Barack Obama, citing his record of standing up for working families and opposing trade deals that fail to protect American workers. The endorsement by Texas DNC Member John Patrick, who is also a 31 year member of the United Steelworkers (USW) as well as a Vice President of the Texas AFL/CIO, brings the total number of superdelegates to endorse Barack Obama to 249. Senator Obama is 283 delegates away from securing the Democratic nomination.

John Patrick said, "Senator Barack Obama has spent a lifetime standing up for American workers, and he will be a crucial voice for us in the White House. Senator Obama chose a career as an organizer on the streets of Chicago, fighting for working families who lost their jobs, specifically those families in neighborhoods devastated by steel plant closings. He has consistently opposed unfair trade deals that fail to offer protection to American workers - like NAFTA. Senator Obama has a real plan to put money back in the pockets of working families by restoring the manufacturing base in merica."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0508/A_Texas_super_for_Obama.html

My junior senator is insane as well as an opportunist. Her own Democratic supporters in NY State have rejected this.
"Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said the "Republicans are trying to hide from the failures of the Bush administration. I believe that oil companies will simply raise their prices to eliminate any cost savings," Silver said. He said the Republicans should call the Bush administration and demand action to solve the problem."

Clinton is willing to allow wrecked roads and bridges and throw 300,000 road workers out of work for a damagogue's issue. Shame on this fraudster!

You know what? I'm sure it is helping them politically.

Let's just have no illusions about who this person is: a cynic who will sell out principle for points

Indiana Plant Closing story that Hillary has been LYING about to be an ABC News story tonight.

The story will expose Clinton's lies about the Indiana factory shipped over to China not by Bush, by Billy boy.

Hoosier Responsible?

Clinton Decries China's Acquisition of Indiana Company -- Ignoring Her Husband's Role in the Sale

As she campaigns throughout Indiana, Sen. Hillary Clinton has been talking quite a bit about Magnequench, a Valparaiso, Ind., factory that moved to China.

[snip]

What Clinton doesn't tell voters is that Magnequench was originally sold to Chinese interests during her husband's administration, which okayed the move despite concerns about national security and eventual job loss. Experts say the Chinese acquired the "technical sophistication" that created the magnets long before George W. Bush took office.

Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind,, Clinton's top surrogate in the state, often joins her on the stump in bashing the president for allowing Magnequench to move abroad. What Bayh doesn't tell voters these days is that he has blamed the company's moving on a 1995 decision made by Clinton's husband's administration.

Liar. Liar. Sniper Fire.

Shorter Geoff Garin: Our polling tells us what we want to hear.

Let's add in how Hillary attempts to fund this holiday; With a windfall Profit tax on the oil companies.

I'm quite certain that these companies aren't going to absorb that additional tax. They are going to raise prices. In the end, we will all be paying more for a gallon of gas.

Breaking:

Hillary Clinton proposes tax holiday on Band-Aids to stop the suffering of Gun Shot Victims

of course its helping her politically. thats what shameless pandering does.

From Politico just now on what Obama has done to Clinton in this campaign, but could:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10010.html

All manner of Clinton controversies, Obama partisans argue, have not been fully ventilated.

This includes old issues, like Hillary Clinton’s legal career, which includes lots of cases that never got much public attention even during the Whitewater era.

It also includes new ones, like recent stories raising questions about the web of personal and financial associations around Bill Clinton. Since leaving the presidency, he has traveled the globe to exotic places and with sometimes exotic characters, raising money for projects such as his foundation and presidential library and making himself a very wealthy man.

Which gets us back to gall. In the fantasies of some of his high-level supporters, Obama would peel off the tape to say something like this:

You want to talk hypocrisy? How about piously criticizing me for Jeremiah Wright when you have a trail of associations that includes golden oldies like Webb Hubbell? (‘90s flashback: He was one of Hillary Clinton’s legal partners and closest friends, whom she installed in a top Justice Department job before prosecutors sent him to prison.) It also includes modern hits like Frank Giustra. (In case you missed it: There was a January New York Times story, which did not get the attention the reporting deserved, highlighting how this Canadian tycoon and major Bill Clinton benefactor was using his ties to the ex-president to win business with a ruthless dictatorship in Khazakstan.)

Obama has never pressed Clinton to talk about Marc Rich, even though the former fugitive financier who won a controversial pardon from Bill Clinton gave money to her first Senate campaign.

He has never mentioned her brothers, even though Hugh and Tony Rodham once defied Bill Clinton’s own top foreign policy advisers by entering into a strange investment in hazelnuts in the former Soviet republic of Georgia (they later dropped the deal) and Hugh Rodham took large cash payments for trying to broker presidential pardons.

Obama is likewise galled to be lectured by Clinton for not being sufficiently committed to universal health coverage. Why is it, his team asks, that Democrats have done so little to advance a long-time progressive goal for the past 15 years? The answer has everything to do with Hillary Clinton’s misjudgments when she was leading the reform effort in 1993 and 1994.

Most irritating of all to Obama partisans is what they see as her latest pose: that she is selflessly staying in the race despite the long odds against her because of devotion to the Democratic Party and the belief that she is a more appealing general election candidate.

It is an article of faith among most people around Obama that the Clintons were a disaster for the party throughout the 1990s. When Bill Clinton came to town in 1993, Democrats were a congressional majority, with 258 seats in the House. When he left in 2001, they were a minority with 46 fewer seats. There were 30 Democratic governors when he arrived, 21 10 years later.

As for electability, the Obama side believes — for all his trouble winning lower-income whites in recent primaries — that it is ludicrous to believe she is the stronger candidate in the fall.

A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found nearly 60 percent of voters think Clinton is dishonest. Think about that: Only four in 10 voters do not think she lies when she needs to. A majority hold an unfavorable view of her.

Will those numbers improve if she wins the nomination and Republicans resurrect the scandals, the Bill Clinton sexual affairs and her Bosnia fib with the same intensity they brought to the Wright uproar? Unthinkable.

Now that the Democratic superdelegates are facing their moment of decision in this close race, you might think it would be time for politesse to give way to an unvarnished discussion about both candidates' real strengths and liabilities.

The Obama side is frustrated with the news media for not carrying more of its argument. His operatives thought a Newsday story looking exhaustively at her legal career — including the revelation that as a young lawyer she attacked the credibility of a 12-year-old rape victim — would provoke a herd of other coverage. It did not happen.

If he really wanted, Obama could generate all the coverage he wanted about Clinton’s past by leveling accusations in his own words. But that is not going to happen.

Vetted, my ass.

All these polls end on Monday or Tuesday, meaning before Obama shut off the Wright flap and while the gas-tax stuff really got scrutiny.

Like Greg said, it will be interesting to see what future polls show.

the gas tax thing won't happen, so it's harmless pandering. it's not as if for political expediency she supported an unnecessary war that killed thousands -- oh, wait, she did that, too.

Whoop-de-damn-do. Internal polls show good news for the candidate who commissioned them. Will wonders never cease. I really need to tune out the rest of this election because it is frying my brain. Can anyone imagine a contest where the stakes are greater and the focus of the participants is more trivial? I wonder if this is what it felt like to be a Roman in the days of Leo the Great?

Internal polling?

Would this have been internal polling conducted by Mark Penn, perchance?

While a commendable job was done setting the record straight on the "holiday" itself, I find it curious that many are not challenging the premise that this is actually helping Clinton.

I am not sure if Garin is aware that asking Wolfson what he thinks is not what "internal polling" means.

Having to constantly unspin Greg's spin on stories makes me dizzy.

The fact that Obama took the principled side of the gas tax holiday question will not help him politically in '08. Just as his anti-war stance would not have helped him politically in '02. I admire his courage and integrity.

On the other hand Hillary made the smart political move. You and I might see through it but a lot of those on the fence between her and McCain will interpret it as concern for beleaguered families. Sure it's fuzzy math, but this is politics, not an intellectual exercise. Wouldn't you rather have your candidate win?

Now let's get straight about this. Hillary and McCain would lower the price at the pump of gas temporarily by dropping a federal tax of a few pennies. This most likely would raise gas consumption, raised demand. Thus, when the tax goes back up later, the price of gas should be higher than if the tax had been left in place. Not mere pandering this, but dangerously short sighted. This isn't leadership, but selfishness for short term political gain. A smart political move at our expense. Another reason not to vote either for either Republican: McCain or Hillary.

Dear Freaktown,

Scheduling. Unfortunately, I work different times each day and the bus only works 2 of my days. I am planning to kick it up to at least twice a week. Good prod though.

The gas tax rebate or holiday (or whatever you may want to call it) is nothing but political pandering at its WORST!