Clash of the Alpha Females, p.2: Hillary Strikes Back

The competition to be the Alpha Female is well under way. Speaker Pelosi is now under attack from the Clinton campaign for her repeated assertion that the remaining uncommitted automatic delegates should discard their right to vote for their first choice and instead vote for whomever has the largest number of elected delegates.
This position is such an irritant to Senator Clinton's Presidential aspirations that financial backers of Senator and former President Clinton sent a letter to the Speaker asking her to avoid further public pronouncements along these lines. Implied by the "shakedown letter," as it has become known, is that the donors will cut off fundraising for and donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of Speaker Pelosi's House Democrats.

The Speaker's position is inconvenient for the Senator because if heeded, it would serve to ensure that Barack Obama (see article inset below) becomes the nominee even if his delegate lead shrinks to an insignificant number. Despite the Speaker's constant since early February (find cite)her repeated public pronouncements of it

Pelosi's Delegate Stance Boosts Obama
By DAVID ESPO – 2 days ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it would be damaging to the Democratic party for its leaders to buck the will of national convention delegates picked in primaries and caucuses, a declaration that gives a boost to Sen. Barack Obama.

"If the votes of the superdelegates overturn what's happened in the elections, it would be harmful to the Democratic party," Pelosi said in an interview taped Friday for broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

The California Democrat did not mention either Obama or his rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, by name. But her remarks seemed to suggest she was prepared to cast her ballot at the convention in favor of the candidate who emerges from the primary season with the most pledged delegates.

Obama leads Clinton by 142 pledged delegates — those delegates picked in nomination contests to date, in The Associated Press' count.

Barring an unlikely string of landslide victories by the former first lady in the remaining states, he will end the primary season with a delegate lead, but short of the 2025 needed to win the nomination.

That gives the balance of power to the so-called superdelegates, prominent Democrats who are automatically entitled to attend the convention because of their status as members of Congress or other leaders. Clinton leads Obama for their support in the AP count, 249-213.

Pelosi's comments could influence other House Democrats who are neutral in the presidential race and will attend the convention as superdelegates.

In her interview, Pelosi also said that even if one candidate winds up with a larger share of the popular vote than the delegate leader, the candidate who has more delegates should prevail.

"It's a delegate race," she said. "The way the system works is that the delegates choose the nominee."

More than 500 delegates remain to be picked in primaries beginning on April 22 in Pennsylvania, which has 158 at stake on April 22.

In addition, Democrats in Michigan and Florida are demanding to have their delegations seated, even though they moved up the dates of their primaries to January in defiance of Democratic National Committee rules.

Clinton said Saturday she supports an effort by Michigan Democratic leaders to hold a do-over primary in early June, but the Obama campaign has not yet said whether it will agree. A full delegation would give the state 128 pledged delegates, not counting superdelegates.

In Florida, a plan for a mail-in primary appears doomed, leaving two major possibilities if the state's Democrats are to participate in selecting a nominee.

One is for a full-scale primary.

The other is a negotiated agreement in which Obama and Clinton split the 185 pledged delegates that would have been awarded had the Jan. 29 primary counted.

One prominent official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there have been preliminary discussions among the state's House Democrats to see whether a compromise can be reached along those lines.

Clinton would have won 38 more delegates in the primary than Obama, had the primary results been used to award delegates, according to The Associated Press' calculations. Merely dividing the delegates evenly would leave Obama's delegate lead unchanged. Obama appeared to open the door to some sort of agreement earlier this week, when he spoke of a procedure "that doesn't advantage one candidate or another too much."

Hillary Clinton is a Disgrace to Feminists

I can't believe that Hillary Clinton wants the world to think that whenever she gets into political trouble, she's going to have her husband come roaring about, breaking furniture, sucking up oxygen, spewing carbon dioxide. My impression is that she's strong enough to defend herself--she certainly showed that in the recent Democratic debate. But apparently she's not strong enough to control Mr. Bill...and if that's the case, any sane voter would have to think twice before enabling this sort of circus act in the White House.

Maureen Dowd

I'm not one to generally agree with Ms. Dowd, but in this case she's on to something. Hillary Clinton should be out defending herself and not sending her husband to do it for her. And the "all the other spouses do it" doesn't apply for two reasons: (1) no other spouse's megaphone is as big as a former President's; and (2) Hillary is a woman. Having a man step up to defend her just undermines her claim to be a feminist icon and sets the women's movement back decades, unless fish really do need bicycles.

Additionally, the more she attacks Republicans the more she loses the residual good will built up by working in a bi-partisan way with her Republican colleagues. She is setting things up for a re-run of hte 1990s and we really don't need that. Additionally, no one in the Republican Coalition will refrain from dredging up all of Clinton's mis-deeds and mis-judgements from his post-Presidency from pardonning big donors to his investments with the sketchy Ron Burkle. They also have no interest in helping further the Bill Clinton legacy and will do everything they can to hang him like an albatross around Hillary's neck.

Bill Clinton Shows He's Just Another Cracker

Bill Clinton's continual use of symbols and code words to inject race into the Democratic Presidential contest, not only to drive white voters away from Obama, but also to devalue Obama's South Carolina victory (such as comparing him to Jesse Jackson) shows that he fully understands exactly what he is doing. The fact that he would do this shows that the Clintons care more about retaining their own power and are willing to drive a racial wedge through the Democratic party to do it. The Clintons are still about the politics of personal destruction and nothing will change by putting them back into the White House.

If you don't believe me read this quote from President Bill Clinton, as reported here:

"They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender. That's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here," the former president said at one stop as he campaigned for his wife, strongly suggesting that blacks would not support a white alternative to Obama.

Clinton campaign strategists denied any intentional effort to stir the racial debate. But they said they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as "the black candidate," a tag that could hurt him outside the South.

A Little Intellectual Honesty from President Clinton (and many Republicans) Would Be Nice

Bill Clinton's recent attempts to burnish his record as President while simultaneously attempting to destroy the first viable black candidate for President (Senator Obama) are worth noting for their disengenousness. Especially the claims about the economic success and policies of the 1990s.

Now, I realize that Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992. I also know that Newt Gingrich and the Republicans seized the Majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1994 elections after Senator Clinton's disastrous health care plan and President Clinton's massive tax hikes. The first time in decades that federal spending declined year over year was fiscal year 1995. It's not a coincidence that this happened when Republicans controlled Congress.

The Clinton Presidency with the Republican Congress is the only functional government that has existed in my lifetime (except for President Clinton's self-destruction by cheating on Senator Clinton). The reason is simple: The Republican Congress wouldn't let the Democrat President increase spending as much as he wanted and was able to force through necessary legislation such as the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (Primarily written by Republican Ways & Means Chairman Bill Archer and Republican Finance Committee Chairman Bill Roth) and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (welfare reform)of 1996. And the Democrat President wouldn't let Republicans cut taxes as much as they wanted.

To claim that the budget would have been balanced with a Majority Democrat Congress is a flat out lie and intellectually dishonest. This is because President Clinton himself even said in 1993 that cutting the deficit through reduced spending wasn't a priority. He only changed tactics and triangulated his way to re-election (with the help of uber consultant Dick Morris, who BTW never misses a chance to take a cheat shot at Senator Clinton). While Bill Clinton is right that many good policy ideas in the 1990s did originate with the Democratic Leadership Council's think tank, he chose not to pursue many of those ideas and instead pushed through a series of small, targeted policies which only had peripheral impacts, but were hugely symbolic.

BTW, the DLC, which President Clinton Chaired, was founded because the Republicans DID have some of the best ideas of the 1980s and he, Senator Lieberman and Al From thought that the Democratic party needed to move away from the San Francisco Democrat fringe (so-named because of the site of the 1984 Democratic National Convention) and towards the middle - i.e., where the Republicans were. So a little intellectual honesty on that front would be nice.

Back to the main point - a Majority Democrat Congress in the 90s would've gone on a massive spending rampage just like the Republicans did when Tom Delay destroyed the Republican party by spending like sailors on shore leave in an attempt to buy more House seats to retain power for its own sake instead of to advance positive policy solutions. The Democrats just would've spent the money on different things.

The economic success of the 1990s wasn't due to politicians per se, it was due to divided government keeping both parties in check. Specifically a Democratic President and Republican Congress - we've seen too many times that the reverse never produced economic success of that enjoyed in the 1990s.

Therefore, President Clinton's attacks on Barack Obama are out right disengenous. But his relationship with the truth has always been worse than his relationship with his wife.