Thank you, Josh.

Posted at May 25, 2008 10:39 AM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle

I know what you mean. I defended the possibility that her comments weren't as ghoulish as they seemed and then she wrote that belligerent explanation in the Op-ed for the NY Daily News and I'm back to realizing that Hillary the woman will NEVER escape Hillary the Candidate. The candidate has thrown the woman from the train.

Posted at May 25, 2008 10:37 AM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle

I thought her Iraq vote was politically motivated, too, and it horrified me, and I still would have voted for her because the alternative was McCain (who would keep the war going, I believe and get us into new ones).

It's inconceivable to me that a decision could be made to send young men and women off to die for the sake of a political calculation.

It was the refusal to restrict cluster bomb in civilian areas that did me in (even McCain voted to restrict their use).

ICAM about the tone deaf advisors. It's just amazing that so many smart and well educated people were so clueless. Talk about an echo chamber!

Posted at May 24, 2008 9:05 PM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle

"C'mon Denni this isn't that hard to figure out and doesn't require psychoanalyzing her without a degree. It just takes a little empathy. Wouldn't you feel a little insecure if you were watching your lifelong dream go up in smoke? Wouldn't it make you just a little bit crazy? Or willing to grasp at some tactics that seem at the time in the last dying days in the campaign bubble to be salvation? "

Of course it would, it would push anyone to the wall, but some of her actions are consistent with her behavior for some time, even as First Lady (the fights with Jim Cooper over Universal Care)

"She put up with Bill's philandering ways because she always put up with them. She's been putting up with it for over half her life. Why should she destroy everything they built together personally and professionally just because others think it's what she should do? "

Protecting what they built up explains why she continued to put up with it. It doesn't explain why she STARTED putting up with it. She was highly educated, a bright woman, someone who could have made her way on her own. She had drive and ambition. It predated the White House years.

"If you're talking about becoming the blue collar champion over the last couple of months it was poltical calculation. In the early states Edwards had staked out that position literally for years.
Until TX and OH there wasn't a clear enough field
or a big enough vote to win that way. It was a deliberate decision to try for blue collar vote because Obama had the netroots, the leftwing and intellectuals sewn up. Trying it pre 2/5 would have lost her as many votes as it won"

But she wasn't just 'Blue Collar Hillary'. She was 'Emotional and Dedicated Hillary' in New Hampshire. She was 'Southern Drawl Hillary' in places like TX where she picked up a 'twang' in her voice. She was 'Conciliatory Hillary' once or twice on the trail. Every state or region brought a new Hillary with her.

I think 'smart to the point of knowing policy inside out Hillary' was good enough. It was the constant shifting of personality that helped do her in, I think. Earlier in this campaign, I could have been happy with either candidate, but then Sen. Clinton began to show that she really wasn't ready for the office on day one (or that's the way I've perceived her actions).

Posted at May 24, 2008 9:00 PM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle

Mark, I see what you're saying, but my full point was that both Solis AND Penn failed Clinton miserably. She felt Solis was expendable, and refused to give up on Penn - though he was the architect of her failure.

I'm a woman supporting Obama. I would never recommend that a woman be hired or fired just because she's a woman.

Posted at May 24, 2008 7:20 PM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle

ICAM! Isn't it telling that both Clintons and President Bush have that same trait. I can't remember if Bush Sr. did as well.

Posted at May 24, 2008 6:21 PM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle

I hate using this word, but I will. I have to wonder if there's a basic insecurity to Clinton that makes her so unsure of herself (no matter how bright she is) that she'll accept anything. Someone suggested using the terms cognitive intelligence and emotional intelligence to make the distinction. She seems to be high in the former, weak in the latter. She doesn's seem to know how to connect to people - Obama is a master of that. He's high in both.

Why else would she put up with Bill Clinton's philandering ways?

Why does she seem to want to mold herself to the group she's with and become 'one of them' to please them?

I don't remember any other candidate doing that, ever. I don't know if she's ill, just ill-equipped for office. Gore Vidal said that the election was making her crazy, but I don't know how he meant it when he used the term.

Posted at May 24, 2008 6:20 PM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle

"But just imagine what would have happened if she'd taken the nomination very early in the process. Then she'd have gone into the general election still believing in her own "inevitability," even more committed to bad advisors, and still essentially untested as a campaigner and manager. All the flaws that have come out in the nomination process would instead have come out in the general election. A scary thought. "

Very true. As an Obama supporter, it would be twice the insult for me.

I honestly think that Mark Penn doesn't deserve even one more dollar, not ONE. He should donate the money he's made to the DNC to help undo the damage he's done

Posted at May 24, 2008 5:54 PM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle

I'd read Molly Ivins (R.I.P) so I THOUGHT I was prepared. Now I realize that Ivins could have written a hundred more books about Bush and we still wouldn't have had enough information to prepare us. I thought that since Texas survived we all had a shot at making it... OY!

Posted at May 24, 2008 5:51 PM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle

Quasar, thanks for that question. I now realize that the comment could be taken to mean that I'm suggesting that Clinton is mentally ill, but that's not what I meant. I meant that when you think about who she was in the White House, and the tough as nails partner who helped her husband get elected, that's not the person who showed up on the campaign trail this past year.

Even Clinton's detractors were impressed with the sheer amount of information she had committed to memory during the hearings on universal healthcare. She never even the most minute details, without checking her notes. Even then there was a conflict in who she was because she knew so much, but yet had such a hard time working with even her own party on the matter. I still don't think Bill Clinton would have been President if she hadn't pulled the reins and worked as part of his election team.

Yet, when she ran her campaign, someone must have told her that 'brainy Hillary' wasn't good enough. I can't remember which speech this was, but I remember that in front of some crowd she said something like, 'Well, big crowds and big speeches are exciting, but I think talking about the policies that affect our lives are exciting too. That's what I care about.' I thought, 'how sad' because it's almost as if she was apologizing for what she knew.

She kept trying on different "Hillaries", looking for the one who resonated with the electorate. By the time she got to P.A. "man's man" Hillary showed up. She left being "heavyweight champ" who pretty much challenged Obama to get in the ring in Ohio.

It made her look weak, not strong. Sen. Obama was always consistent. You knew who was showing up from day to day, state to state. It's so clear that he has a strong sense of self and is a confident man. I think if Clinton had a sense of herself, she'd have assembled a better team and not the taken crap from Mark Penn. I don't think she would have sold out her principles and allowed the racially tinged campaign to happen. I don't think she would have turned balkanizing the Democratic party by race, age, education, etc and then attacking everyone who disagreed with her as sexist.

She, on one hand, claims that she's discriminated against and that the sexism is overwhelming. She, on the other hand, talks about how close the contest is and that there's almost no difference between her and Sen. Obama in terms of the vote. Unless she is narcissistic enough to believe that she would be running away with the vote because the nomination was destined to be hers, the conflicting Hillary accounts don't make sense -- and she's countered her own argument that she's 'more electable'.

Sadly, this campaign will most likely be her legacy and that of Bill Clinton's. Everything else will be marred by this race. She had choices to make and she made the wrong ones, in my opinion.

Posted at May 24, 2008 5:48 PM in response to Hillary has never been campaign tested - she folds in battle