Redstate

Posted at 5:45pm on May 8, 2008 Permit me to translate this letter for you.

Just because.

By Moe Lane

It's a letter from Senator Clinton to Senator Obama regarding the Michigan and Florida delegations (via Hot Air), and like all such letters what the writer would like to say is not necessarily what it does say. Fortunately, I am in the throes of a telepathic trance (or a minor throat infection, which has roughly the same effects), so let's rectify that, shall we? The actual letter is in blockquotes: my, ah, channelings of what Senator Clinton actually wanted to say and/or include are in italics.

Senator Barack Obama

Obama for America
P.O. Box 8102
Chicago, IL 60680

Dear Senator Obama,

[Me channeling HRC: Guess what? I'm still here. I guess Jimmy was right: give you one of mine and we'll both have two. Oh, by the way, Jimmy really appreciated the way that you just sat there and took the insult to both you and your wife not like a man at all. "Performance art?" You're from Illinois: did you really think that'd play in Peoria?]

[Read on, Barry.]

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (9)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 5:38am on May 8, 2008 Who will be the traitors? Operation Chaos can still cause more chaos if the General wants.

By Erick

It's been 300 days since Barack Obama deigned to set foot in Michigan. Michigan has 18 unpledged super delegates.

Florida has 13 super delegates who are uncommitted.

Obama, in addition to thumbing his nose at Michigan, has blocked Florida's delegates from being seated, despite a legitimate election with his name on the ballot. Obama could have worked with Hillary Clinton for a do-over. But he knew he'd lose both states so he sought to block them.

Which super delegates will be betray loyalty to their state and endorse Obama? Will Representatives Tim Mahoney or Allen Boyd stab Florida in the back? Mahoney had a hush-hush meeting with Clinton today. Maybe he'll be loyal to the state Obama peed on.

What about Senator Carl Levin and Representative Bart Stupak in Michigan? What about soon to be indicted (potentially) Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick? 300 days it has been since Obama gave their state any attention. And Obama continues to push environmental legislation that would harm Michigan's auto industry, not to mention his rah-rahing of protectionism while going to Canada to tell Canadians to ignore it; he didn't mean it.

Who will these super-delegates pick? The woman who paid their states the attention those sates were due? Or the man who thumbed his nose at them?

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Operation Chaos — Comments (10)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:28am on May 8, 2008 It Cannot Be Stressed Enough

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the most protectionist major Presidential candidates to come down the pike in recent memory. I say "recent" because, of course there is one particular President who was in the same league with both Clinton and Obama when it came to promulgating lousy trade policy and making the country suffer for it. I know that Charlie Black works for the McCain campaign and gets paid to throw elbows, but he is right to go where he goes verbally:

The growing shopping list of promises has also served further to sharpen the contrast with John McCain, the Republican nominee, who has staked out a robustly free-trade stance for the general election.

"The last time we had a protectionist president was Herbert Hoover [in office from 1929 to 1933] and look how that worked out," says Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Mr McCain. "We think we can win this debate in a general election."

The ghost of Hoover may be smiling now. The ghosts of Hawley and Smoot most certainly are. The rest of us have every reason to feel grim.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Economic Antediluvianism | Free Trade | Hillary Clinton | Protectionism — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:48pm on May 7, 2008 McGovern endorses Obama, asks Clinton to quit

By Neil Stevens

So today, former Presidential nominee George McGovern has asked Senator Clinton to quit the race, and endorsed Senator Obama as the Democratic nominee.

Nobody told him that Presidential losers aren't superdelegates, and that the superdelegates are supposed to prevent him from happening again, I guess.

Posted at 11:01am on May 7, 2008 300!

By RightMichigan.com

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

There's a lot of speculation this morning that the race for the Democrat nomination for the Presidency ended last night somewhere on a back road in North Carolina.  Barack Obama delivered a WWE sized butt-kicking to Hill-Rod there in the squared (or in NC's case, rectangular) circle of primary politics.  

Posted in Barack Obama | Breaking News | Hillary Clinton | Michigan | www.RightMichigan.com — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:43am on May 7, 2008 Obamomentum, Revisited

Obama Gets A New Injection Of Fumes To Run On

By Dan McLaughlin

Most anyone watching the primaries had expected all along that Obama would win North Carolina - where the Democratic primary electorate is dominated by African-Americans and college towns - and Hillary would win the more conservative white Democrats in Indiana last night, but Hillary's relatively narrow margin of victory in Indiana and the simple fact that Obama notched a victory in a state of significant size after a string of losses both add up to an undeniably good night for Obama. Let's update the chart I ran previously of the popular vote since the beginning of March:

As you can see, over this period - covering the time after the genuine cracks in Obama's previously untouched public brand image had appeared - Obama is still behind in the popular vote, and with only Oregon on May 20 as a likely source for significant number of votes for Obama, that's not going to change.

Read On...

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | The Best Democratic Primary EVER — Comments (52)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:36am on May 7, 2008 Primary Night

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

So Obama has won North Carolina big and may very well win Indiana (it's very close as I write this and the networks have refused to call it for anyone the last I checked the television). A whole host of commentators are declaring the race over Obama has been all-but-anointed as the nominee.

Which he likely will be. But Hillary Clinton will fight on if her speech this evening was any indication and given the demographic patterns that have emerged during this fight for the Democratic Presidential nomination, the Clinton people probably have good grounds for believing that they will do well in the upcoming contests in West Virginia and Kentucky. Meanwhile, they will point out to superdelegates what E.J. Dionne and Ramesh Ponnuru observe concerning Obama's ability--or lack thereof--to draw votes from all parts of the political spectrum. And as pointed out by Michael Barone (link via Brother Erick), coming into tonight, Clinton has actually gotten more popular votes than has Obama. I haven't done the math to see whether that is still the case and it may not be, given Obama's huge win in North Carolina. But the point is that when it comes to the popular vote, Clinton is hanging in there and she may well use the popular vote to push for the argument that come general election time, she will be more electable than will Obama.

Is it possible that Hillary Clinton will drop out after this evening--especially if Indiana goes Obama's way? Sure. But I'm not betting on it. People named "Clinton" don't give up claims to power that easily.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Kneel Before Zod | Let's You And Him Fight | Rooting For Injuries — Comments (111)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:31am on May 7, 2008 If Pandering Is The Game . . .

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

It is generally agreed by those who are actually in the know when it comes to the specifics of trade policy and how free trade genuinely benefits America that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are moving Heaven and Earth to pander to protectionists for votes. But as Daniel Ikenson points out, in the runup to tonight's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, both pandering to free traders is the smart thing to do:

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Indiana's producers shipped $26 billion worth of goods to foreign customers in 2007 -- 14 percent more than the year before, and 80 percent more than in 2001. In fact, since 2001, the state's exports have grown at a rate one-third faster than U.S. exports overall. In North Carolina, producers shipped $23 billion worth of goods to foreign customers in 2007 -- 10 percent more than the year before, and 59 percent more than five years ago.

In 2007, exports accounted for 20 percent of U.S. manufacturers' total sales revenues -- the highest percentage in modern history. And nowhere in America is manufacturing more important to the economy than in Indiana, where the sector accounts for over 30 percent of the state's gross domestic product. Manufacturing is also more important to North Carolina's economy than it is to most other states, accounting for 22 percent of the state's gross domestic product, ranking it fifth among states in that measure.

In China, Canada, and Mexico -- the primary villains in the candidates' anti-trade narratives -- Indiana's producers are building relationships that are yielding extraordinary returns. Exports from Indiana to China increased by a whopping 36 percent between 2006 and 2007 -- twice the rate of total U.S. export growth to China, and nearly four times Indiana's exports to China in 2001.

Likewise, Indiana's exports to Canada and Mexico have grown 9 percent from 2006 and 67 percent from 2001, eclipsing overall U.S. export growth to the NAFTA countries in both periods. North Carolina's exports to NAFTA have grown 46 percent over the past five years -- to $7.4 billion.

Read on . . .

Posted in Barack Obama | Economy | Free Trade | Hillary Clinton | John McCain | Protectionism — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:41pm on May 6, 2008 That strange new respect

By Kevin Holtsberry

I have been pondering writing a post dissenting from the recent spat of articles where conservatives find they have a strange new respect for Hillary Clinton. But before I could, Phillip Klein beat me to it. Now, obviously I am professionally biased, but I heartily endorse his sentiments:

But what is there to admire about this so-called "tenacity"? Clinton began this campaign with a financial edge, the support of a popular former Democratic president, a built-in political apparatus, a consistent lead of more than 20 points in national polls, and more than a hundred superdelegates.

If a candidate starts off with all of those advantages and is too stubborn to drop out of the race, it's no surprise that she is still hanging on.

There is absolutely nothing admirable about a politician so narcissistic and hungry for power that she is willing to say or do whatever suits her political interests at any given moment.

If the Republican Party has declined to the point where conservatives are so worried about defeating a freshman Senator that they are rooting for Clinton to do their dirty work for them, it is simply pathetic.

Whatever Obama's faults, conservatives should ask themselves whether they can bear the possibility of the nation being held hostage by the psychological drama of the Clinton family for another four or even eight years.

Posted at 1:12pm on May 6, 2008 Shorter Paul Krugman

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

"Don't worry too much about Hillary Clinton getting things completely and utterly wrong on the gas tax since economists are the only ones who are really obsessed about this issue."

I had no idea, of course, that we were supposed to excuse a policy error of tremendous proportions merely because if we failed to do so, we would be paying undue attention to the pet peeves of economists. Alarm bells should go off when a lousy gas tax policy is forwarded by a major Presidential candidate and when said Presidential candidate also says that she won't listen to the economics community and its consensus opinion that said Presidential candidate's gas tax policy is almost cataclysmically wrong.

Then again, perhaps Krugman just feels the need to get back into Senator Clinton's graces. She thinks he is The Enemy now:

She peddled her sham gas-tax holiday and repeated her attempt to blame Indiana's job losses on outsourcing and Nafta. Stephanopoulos asked her to name a single economist who thinks a tax-holiday plan would work, and the daughter of Wellesley and Yale took the chance to shove the geeks into their lockers: "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists."

When Stephanopoulos pointed out that Paul Krugman, a Times columnist, has raised doubts about the plan, Clinton lumped Krugman in with the Bush administration and said she wasn't going to listen to the people responsible for the last seven years.

Insert your own joke here.

Posted in Economic Antediluvianism | Economy | Hillary Clinton — Comments (19)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:00pm on May 6, 2008 Clinton Will Break the Democratic Party to Save It

You See, Obama has to be Cleared Away by the Hand of Hillary! like the McGovernites of Old. Now She will have to Burn this Party.

By Mark I

The Huffington Post has an update to their story of this past weekend saying that the Clinton campaign has confirmed that it plans to use a May 31st meeting of the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee to try and seat the entire Michigan and Florida delegations at the Democratic National Convention. The Clinton campaign estimates that seating of the entire delegations from the two disputed states will give her a pledged delegate lead of around 55 delegates over Sen. Barack Obama.

In a statement released in response to the story, the campaign did not deny that it intended to exercise what the Huffington Post characterized as the "nuclear option." It only objected to the notion that the plan was a secret one.

There is no secret plan....The Clinton campaign has been vocal in stating that the votes of 2.5 million people must be respected. Hardly a day goes by when a Clinton official doesn't publicly declare that the votes of Michigan and Florida count and that the delegations from those states should be seated.

If the campaign follows through on this, it may be left to the ultimate superdelegate, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, to decide the Democratic nomination. Denver is going to be fun.

Read on…

Posted in 2008 | 2008 Presidential Campaign | Barack Obama | Democratic Party | Hillary Clinton | Howard Dean — Comments (35)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:47am on May 6, 2008 Reality-Based!

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

I suppose that one of the reasons why Hillary Clinton finds herself unexpectedly playing the role of underdog in the fight for the Democratic Presidential nomination is that she strikes people as one of the most arrogant know-it-alls imaginable (strange, I know, since she is the one trying to tag Barack Obama as the "elitist," but still . . .). She showed her tendency towards know-it-allism yet again just over the weekend:

This morning, George Stephanopoulos began his televised interview with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by asking if she could name a single economist who supported her plan for a gas-tax suspension.

Mrs. Clinton did not. "I'm not going to put in my lot with economists," she said on the ABC program "This Week." A few moments later, she added, "Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans."

She also said that despite the doubts of actual economists, she was sure that if her Administration got her tax plans "right," then "it would be implemented effectively." The haughtiness is breathtaking. Clinton actually thinks that the paltry savings from a gas tax holiday will be enough to (a) overcome the increase in demand, which will drive prices back up and (b) will overcome the costs that will be passed on to the consumer thanks to her foolhardy plan of imposing a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. Indeed, she doesn't even acknowledge that the oil companies would naturally pass along the costs to the consumer in order to protect their bottom line--which is entirely what one would expect as a result of misguided tax policy that ends up punishing business. As far as Hillary Clinton is concerned, there really is such a thing as a free lunch and her tax plan provides it. If it is ever implemented, consumers will find out that free lunches have gone the way of the dinosaur. And yes, John McCain is also wrong to think that a gas tax holiday would work but at least he doesn't compound his error by opting for the Clintonian windfall profits tax.

Posted in Economic Antediluvianism | Economy | Hillary Clinton — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 9:32am on May 5, 2008 In choosing between the evils of two lessers, I choose Hillary

How about a controversial statement for your Monday morning?

By Erick

I think, given the choice between Barack and Hillary, we should throw our support behind Hillary.

To be sure, Hillary is a threat to our freedom and would be a disaster as President. But when judging between the evils of two lessers, we must sometimes make tough choices.

I write from the premise that, regardless of what McCain does this Presidential season, the odds are still in favor of a Democrat in the White House. And from that vantage point, I think Obama has the potential to do more long term damage to this nation than Hillary Clinton.

Hillary has an iron fist that will first pound on the Democrats and media that opposed her. It'll be close to three years in the White House before she focuses on the rest of us. Obama, on the other hand, is both a piss poor manager and is a terrible judge of character.

While Hillary values loyalty, Obama is ready and willing to throw every one of his staffers under the bus so long as he does not have to throw one of his marxist friends under the bus. Obama really seems to buy into this "change" notion and the best I can tell, his version of "change" is to effect the proletariat revolution against evil capitalists. Imagine this dude's cabinet picks -- the friends he won't throw under the bus. He'd put people comparable to Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright and his wife into positions of power. He'd have no control over these people or would choose not to control these people. While the policy positions between Hillary and Obama are not far apart, the people Obama has chosen to surround himself with in public are far to the left of Hillary. How much further left are those he surrounds himself with in private — the ones we don't know about yet?

Put simply, Hillary Clinton knows she needs the right as a foil. Obama thinks, after the revolution is complete, the right will be irrelevant. He's Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson wrapped up into one incompetent package with a ready willingness to let his friends on the far left run the ship of state.

Given the choice between Hillary and Obama, I'll take the one who, at the end of the day, is in it mostly for herself over the guy who is in it to see Marx's dream made real.

Posted in 2008 | 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | John McCain — Comments (40)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:59am on May 4, 2008 In Which I Am Frustrated With The New York Times

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

You know, if you are writing a story indicating that polls have tightened in advance of the primary in North Carolina, you might want to let some of the readers know what the new and closer poll numbers actually are.

Just a thought. In any event, here is what I have access to, indicating that while North Carolina will likely go Obama's way, it isn't out of the question that Clinton will win it. Indiana, of course, is more favorable to her.

Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Hillary Clinton | Press Coverage — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »