Posts by Russell Brown
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Gordon Campbell: Clinton's last chance to go gracefully.
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Should I leave it up there, then?
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The viral media keeps flowing.
This PowerPoint file is a bit less "so wrong" than the YouTube video but it's still fairly stinging.
I hope someone writes the book on citizen-media creators' role in this election, what the links between the bloggers and the campaigns really are, and to what extent bloggers and posters are campaign surrogates, as opposed to fired-up citizens.
Clearly, there's a mix. It'd just be nice to know how the mix works.
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Anyway, it is fascinating, but now that Obama has the lead in superdelegates, to go with his lead in pledged delegates and the popular vote, it is, really, over.
Clinton will win West Virginia by miles, but Obama is rather pointedly not even bothering to campaign there, and is now in key general election states. They'll declare victory after taking Oregon on May 20.
Even the most partisan pro-Obama blogs are re-orienting to take on McCain. I'm sure that's the strategic message from the Obama campaign: we've won -- so act that way.
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It's the sort of analysis here, here, and especially here that I think highlights that it's a gender issue.
Thanks, Deborah, I read them all. But I didn't find them convincing. The Feministe post says "misogynist" a lot, but the actual argument barely gets beyond "because I said so".
It goes without saying that Clinton has suffered more or less overt woman-hating commentary. But it's waaay too big a stretch to claim that people want her to stop because they hate women.
Apart from anything else, there are plenty of women (including the staffer dismissed for describing Clinton as a "monster" to a journalist) on the Obama campaign. According to the CNN exit polls, 49% of women in the Indiana primary voted for Obama (which is presumably why Clinton has shifted her pitch to white men without college degrees).
Do you think Nancy Pelosi, the House's first female Speaker, is being sexist because she prays every night for Clinton to drop out?
Peggy Noonan put it this way:
The Democratic Party can't celebrate the triumph of Barack Obama because the Democratic Party is busy having a breakdown. You could call it a breakdown over the issues of race and gender, but its real source is simply Hillary Clinton. Whose entire campaign at this point is about exploiting race and gender ...
To play the race card as Mrs. Clinton has, to highlight and encourage a sense that we are crudely divided as a nation, to make your argument a brute and cynical "the black guy can't win but the white girl can" is -- well, so vulgar, so cynical, so cold, that once again a Clinton is making us turn off the television in case the children walk by.
"She has unleashed the gates of hell," a longtime party leader told me. "She's saying, 'He's not one of us.'"
She is trying to take Obama down in a new way, but also within a new context. In the past he was just the competitor. She could say, "All's fair." But now he's the competitor who is going to be the nominee of his party. And she is still trying to do him in. And the party is watching.
And it's not hard to find comments like this:
Stephen, I agree. I'm a 57-year-old white man who's supported Barack Obama from the start, but I'd always liked Hillary Clinton. Last year, I would have been happy enough with either of them. No more. Her arrogance, her overriding ambition, her willingness to use racism and anything else to get the nomination - even to the extent of destroying the Democratic Party and doing lasting harm to our country - have completely changed my mind.
I am furious at her and at that part of the Democratic Party which is still racist or at least willing to overlook this kind of thing in order to advance their own political power. There's a reason why Hillary has consistently lost support from black voters. She was very competitive with that segment of the party at first, but I'm sure they're more likely to notice racist innuendo (or else it just matters more to them than to many whites).
But this is NOT the kind of Democratic Party we want, I hope. It's certainly not the kind I want! We chose the high road once before when we gave up the South by backing integration and civil rights. Was that wrong? I don't think so. And the country has moved on. We have not come as far as I'd hoped, but we're not the country of my childhood. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a huge stride forward. How can we not make the attempt?
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Edwards seems to say he voted for and will duly endorse Obama ...
The discussion is worth watching.
That MSNBC embedded video looks right tasty, too.
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And meanwhile, another one of McCain's lunatic preachers ...
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__On the other hand, I see no reason why she shouldn't fight to the wire. Isn't that what a male candidate would do? And be lauded for it?__
That's any easy one - how many of the (male) GOP candidates are still scrapping it out against McCain?
Quite. But why bring gender into it at all, Deborah? How is it even relevant to the argument?
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Did we notice talk of a Michigan deal?
The angry, delusional take on a Michigan compromise on the part of the Clinton diehards at TalkLeft is ... weird.
To accuse Obama of "vote stealing" when both candidates agreed the primary there wouldn't count -- but Hillary stayed on the ballot -- you've got to be pretty far out there.
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Best news story of the awards for me was www.vorb.co.nz.
Just a shame they didn’t get one more vote.
Tama didn't seem to mind. He spoke briefly about how much has happened for him since last year -- he has a financial partner, and a new car (important, given that the last one burst into flames in the car park of Pak 'n' Save just as he had to drive up to the awards).
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