<p>Billary certainly showed her stripes last night getting hot and flaring her arms as she talked. She has gone on to the Super Tuesday states and left Bill to do her dirty bidding in South Carolina.</p>
<p>It didn’t look pretty but Obama cannot let Billary “swiftboat” his campaign by not responding to the falsehoods.</p>
<p>I think the way former President Clinton has been behaving in this race is very unbecoming of a former President. Most former Presidents refrain from engaging in down and dirty politics, realizing that their day has come and gone, that it’s time to fade gracefully into retirement, but this one is so itching to get back into the White House (in whichever way possible) that he’ll do or say virtually anything. Together, the two of them have always been known to behave in a politically unscrupulous and cut-throat manner. Bill’s skewing of the truth where Hillary’s rivals are concerned has her full blessing, so it was pretty disingenuous of her to hide behind his pants legs when Obama confronted her during the debate.</p>
<p>There was a poll in October 2000 asking if given the choice if you would want Bill Clinton back for a third term. By a substantial margin, the answer was no - people were tired of the Clinton circus. I think the danger of Bill’s hands-on approach to Hillary’s campaign, besides the fact that it is unbecoming, is that it will revive the feelings that the American public had during 2000. This could really harm the Hillary campaign.</p>
<p>I wholeheartedly agree with you, poetsheart. I haven’t heard the mantra “change” from Hillary’s mouth after Bill is now so visible in her campaign. He just can’t stay away from the spotlight.</p>
<p>Obama’s chief benefactor is a real problem–and it’s not Oprah.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.sfgate.com/flat/archive/2008/01/22/news/archive/2008/01/22/politics/p104139S65.html?tsp=1[/url]”>http://www.sfgate.com/flat/archive/2008/01/22/news/archive/2008/01/22/politics/p104139S65.html?tsp=1</a></p>
<p>I don’t find either Obama or Hillary inspiring.</p>
<p>To mini: I agree with every point you made, but I still think the Reps are so conservative about domestic social policy that they terrify me. The Patriot Act? Yuck.</p>
<p>Yes, there is no assurance that a Dem prez would not have supported this, nor is there any evidence that a Rep prez would not have supported the Iraqi embargo, though I do agree that the death of those 1M children is extremely significant and should not be ignored as a completely inhumane and unacceptable result of foreign policy.</p>
<p>I am confused about why so many posters think race is a more significant factor than gender. Black men voted before white women. Black men have more economic and political power than white women. Sexism is as rampant as racism and much more personal. Most men still go home to bedrooms shared with women. Uppity women are a threat of a whole different order than ethnic men.</p>
<p>I can’t abide Obama’s evangelical rhetoric. That’s what I find most disturbing about the Reps. Race has nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>mini: I find the contentious sentence perfectly reasonable and right.</p>
<p>Ah, a plague on all their houses, except someone is going to be in there. I’d be happy to have Carter back, old as he is, but I think I was the only one happy with him the first time.</p>
<p>Politics is a dirty business, so we may as well stop looking for a candidate with clean hands.</p>
<p>Mythmom:</p>
<p>As a woman, I can’t disagree with you more than on the issue of gender and race. All those black men in jail: how powerful are they, politically or economically. I can think of many powerful white women; the number of black CEOs is quite small.</p>
<p>“Yes, there is no assurance that a Dem prez would not have supported this, nor is there any evidence that a Rep prez would not have supported the Iraqi embargo, though I do agree that the death of those 1M children is extremely significant and should not be ignored as a completely inhumane and unacceptable result of foreign policy.”</p>
<p>The Dems were sold on military intervention in Iraq in January 1998, after the failure of Clinton’s genocide and the attempt to cut a deal with Chemical Ali failed, and the attempt to infiltrate the U.N. weapons inspections teams with CIA operatives was found out. It resulted in massive military action in December 1998, the largest bombing of a sovereign nation by the U.S. since Viet Nam. The U.S. also kicked out the weapons inspectors after they refused to go along with the Clinton-Tenet Big Lie. It was the Big Lie that made it possible for Hillary Clinton, a member of the Armed Services Committee, to support the invasion and hostile, aggressive occupation of Iraq without feeling duty-bound to even read the intelligence report. </p>
<p>There’s not much to choose between a Clinton policy of terrorizing a nation by killing its children (in the hopes that their parents will then rebel), or the Bush policy of ethnic cleansing with four million people uprooted from their homes, two million (mostly doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, and pro-Western) forced to leave their country, and now so desperate their children are becoming sex workers to feed the family (according the U.N. High Commission on Refugees). Indeed, the problem (if you see it as a problem) is bipartisan foreign policy that has made the U.S. the leading purveyor of state-supported terror (for political ends) on the planet. </p>
<p>What about the Patriot Act? How many Dems even bothered to read it before signing on? </p>
<p>I don’t expect candidates to have clean hands. I do expect them to lie well. They haven’t been good at it lately. I’m willing to vote for a little symbolism (for me, that’s quite a concession), but I can’t vote for wife of a mass murderer who claims that being his wife constitutes “experience” - the symbolism is too brutal (though I give her credit for not trying to campaign on the strength of her experience as a Wal-Mart lawyer. ;))</p>
<p>My guess on why race is more significant than gender in this race is that while 50% of the U.S. population is female, only 5.5% (ballpark guessing here) of the U.S. population is black male. Obama’s success would be impressive if only because of those numbers, IMO.</p>
<p>Race has everything to do with the Clintons’ game. What they are doing is allowing South Carolina to go to Obama (Hillary is leaving Bill there to campaign and get his face on TV while she moves on to other states). Then after Obama has won the state with the large African American vote but no other state, one of them (Bill?) will slyly allude to this so that there is a white backlash. They are shameless and it’s sickening to watch.</p>
<p>mini: Excellent points I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about.</p>
<p>mythmom:</p>
<p>Not all the Republicans voted for the Patriot Act, check out Ron Paul, he was staunchly against it.</p>
<p>“I can’t abide Obama’s evangelical rhetoric.”</p>
<p>Obama’s evangelical rhetoric? What about Obama’s rhetoric is “evangelical”?</p>
<p>Back to the OP: Is Obama done, cooked and baked? Is Hillary done, cooked, and baked. Let’s not forget Edwards! Is he done, cooked and baked. </p>
<p>At this point, the only one done, cooked and baked is me! I tired of the process, tired of the endless debates, tired of the bickering, name-calling and rhetoric, but most of all TIRED OF ALL THESE CANDIDATES, ON BOTH SIDES!</p>
<p>Almost embarrassed to be an American (OK, a little far in MY rhetoric there, but almost), if this is how the way we will elect our leaders has become, with no hope in sight for any change. Give me a candidate that has the charisma of Obama, the fortitude of Hillary, the passion of Edwards (and maybe his hair as well 
), the experience of McCain, the down to earth humility of Huckabee, the business smarts of Romney, the leadership under fire of Guilliani, heck, even Ron Paul’s willingness to take a stand on an issue and stick to it. </p>
<p>What do we have instead: mostly fools and clowns. I stopped wanting to go to the circus years ago. Sigh</p>
<p>b&p: I support the sentiments of your posts completely. Just a little quibble. Guilliani’s leadership under fire is a media fabrication.</p>
<p>I have to respectfully disagree on your comment about Randy Rudy. A fool and a clown? Yes (just like all the others), but NO ONE in this country did a better job of getting in front of a camera in the days immediately following 9/11 and providing this country with a sense of control and calm. Those days are the only reason he was a viable candidate for President in the first place; America remembered being scared and Uncle Rudy providing some leadership in those days. Why do you think his answer to the guy at Baskin Robins as to “which of our 31 flavors would you like?”, he replies “9-11”. (someone else posted that joke here on CC long ago; can’t take credit for it, but it is hilarious!)</p>
<p>Everything else about Rudy? He talks and acts like he hasn’t got a clue, and has long past his ability to order the guys at CSI:NY to give him one.</p>
<p>Maybe you’re a NY’er too, I don’t know, but many of us don’t think all that much of him or the decisions he made pre-9/11 re the location of crisis headquarters, etc.</p>
<p>But mine is just an opinion.</p>
<p>The thing about Hillary ,independent of being the wife of a mass murderer, has to do with her experience, judgment, and character. When she voted for the War and aggressive, hostile occupation without, according to her own admission, reading any of the intelligence report, either one of two things is true: 1) her judgment, when it comes to life and death matters, based on her “experience”, simply cannot be trusted, and she also can’t be trusted to do her homework; or 2) she was in on her husband’s Big Lie of 1998 which eventually brought the nation to war, she knew it was a lie, and hence didn’t need to read the intelligence. In the first view, she cannot be trusted because experience shows her judgment is easily clouded, and, in the second view, she was in on the ground floor of a deception that has cost the nation 4,000 lives, tens of thousands abroad, two trillion dollars, and what is left of our international reputation for decades to come.</p>
<p>I honestly don’t know which of these two is true, and since I’ve ruled her out on “wifely” grounds, I don’t need to. But given what she admits to, I can’t see how folks could vote for her for dogcatcher, no less President of the United States.</p>
<p>Threads like this always exasperate me, because first, I’m not really that interested in the attacks by people who would never vote for any Democratic candidate, and second, I’m even more annoyed by the people who feel that they must support their chosen Democrat by tearing down the others. In my opinion, those of us who are Democrats have three pretty good choices this time: I would be reasonably happy with Clinton, Obama, or Edwards as the nominee, and I think any one of them is likely to win (particularly if the economy continues to have problems). Each has pluses and minuses. None of them has the kind of executive experience one would prefer, but think: Bush did have it, and he’s been the most pathetic excuse for a President of all time (in my opinion), and his supposedly more experienced advisors (like Cheney and Rumsfeld) were even worse–so I’m not as impressed about the experience thing. Also, although Hillary hasn’t exactly had “experience,” she’s had direct exposure to a successful presidency, and she’s a smart person who probably absorbed a lot of what made it successful. Obama and Edwards are also very intelligent individuals, and would hopefully call on the experience of others. I do hate to see Democrats relying on the race card, the sex card, nasty campaigning, etc.–that’s the Republicans’ job.</p>
<p>“Maybe you’re a NY’er too, I don’t know, but many of us don’t think all that much of him or the decisions he made pre-9/11 re the location of crisis headquarters, etc.”</p>
<p>I don’t think much of him at all, but I don’t have a problem with the location of the crisis headquarters. There is simply no way that anyone could have predicted such a catastrophe, and since 1 and 2 WTC withstood the first bombing, that area did seem like a good bet. Again, I’m neither a fan nor a supporter, but I fault no decent human being for failing to imagine what terrorists could.</p>