Do you see what happens, Lebowski?
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has appointed some of his allies to key GOP positions affiliated with the Republican National Committee (RNC).
The Republican operatives will work at the coordinated campaign arm that serves as a liaison between McCain’s camp and the RNC. The appointments are expected to be announced on Friday.
A Republican source familiar with the personnel moves told The Hill that McCain has tapped Carly Fiorina to be his so-called Victory chairwoman. Fiorina is a former top executive at Hewlitt-Packard.
Lewis Eisenberg, a national finance co-chairman for McCain and a former partner at Goldman-Sachs, will serve as finance chairman.
Frank Donatelli, a longtime Republican operative and a contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog, will serve as deputy chairman.
The Republican source emphasized that these moves are “entirely consistent” with what every nominee does, and no one is losing his or her job as a part of the normal realignment.
As soon as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama secure the Democratic nomination, they’ll start retooling the Democratic National Committee (DNC), moving old people out and their people in. This is one of my prime motivating factors in opposing Hillary Clinton’s nomination. Long before Clinton’s surrogates started talking about the old days when Obama was attending a madrassa in Indonesia, or dealing crack in the neighborhood in Chicago, I opposed the Clinton’s because their allies/people absolutely hate Howard Dean, progressives, peace activists, and the netroots.
McCain is already cleaning house at the RNC. That’s precisely what I don’t want to see the Clintons do at the DNC.
But Clinton can get Republican voters, at least in Texas and Ohio.
According to SurveyUSA, Obama beats McCain 50%-40% in Ohio and loses 46%-47% in Texas. Meanwhile, Clinton also beats McCain in Ohio 50%-40% but loses in Texas 49%-42%. So who is winning more Republican votes?
Nyuk, nyuk. Yes, There is both statistical and anecdotal evidence that Clinton is receiving Republican votes. Of couse, Limbaugh is helping and he does reach a lot of people. But strategic crossovers (raiding) are different than appealing to the other side.
Exactly. They were bragging about it on FOX. I would like someone to do a good examination of the voting patterns in Texas and Ohio. There were places where there twice as many votes in the Democratic primary as registered Democratic voters, which means that a fuck load of Republicans crossed over to vote for Clinton to, as Rush called it, “bloody Obama” before the fall.
Long short: The MSM meme that Clinton had a great comeback on Tuesday may have only been a massive Republican dirty trick. Maybe all that drool on McCain’s war medals is just payback for the loan of ground troops.
Something like 20 counties in Texas where there were no, that is, NO FUCKING REPUBLICAN VOTES.
Where did they go, folks? Please, someone start looking at the vote totals.
Suppose he does get the nomination. Then what? Given that he represents simply another wing of the DLC, do you really think he won’t do the same thing Clinton would do? Oh, sure, the fifty-state strategy might remain in place, seeing as how it has worked so well. But whoever wins the nomination, Howard Dean is out.
yeah, the kid that spent his youth rolling spliffs at the beach in Hawai’i, doing community service in Chicago, and pursing civil rights litigation, and then representing an urban area in the state legislature, is going to govern the exact same way as the Goldwater Republican woman whose husband helped co-create the DLC, and whose advisers include Bruce Reed (change you can Xerox), and former and current DLC chairs Richard Gephardt, Tom Vilsack, Evan Bayh, and Harold Ford, Jr.
More:
You’re ignoring his gutting of health care reform as an Illinois state senator, his ties to corporate money (along with Clinton), his ties to the DLC, and other instances of embracing the conservative wing of the Democratic Party (as laid out by Matt Gonzalez) — among other things.
Obama is simply not the agent of change you might think he is. Not that he can’t be pressured into occasionally doing the right thing, mind you; the BAR link provided above reports how it was able to get the rising politician to embrace his remarks against the invasion of Iraq. But it is, in my humble opinion, both foolish and dangerous to pin our hopes on him by attaching progressive positions to Obama that he doesn’t really hold. I think we’re much better off applying pressure by asking tough questions — loudly and rudely, if necessary — and making sure we vote out the Bush Dogs in favor of actual, Progressive Democrats.
you just linked to the erroneous article that Obama debunked with two letters to the Black Commentator. That’s totally dishonest. You say he gutted health care when, in fact, he shepherded through the passage of a bill. And, as for corporate ties, his only corporate money comes from non-registered lobbyists that happen to work for corporations. Even my girlfriend would be listed as a corporate donor because she works in the pharma industry.
Look, no one runs a campaign as well funded and successful as Obama without compromising here and there.
We’re comparing candidates.
Compare their lives, compare their supporters, compare where their money comes from, compare their historic constituencies, and compare the DLC candidate to the one that forced the DLC to drop him as a member.
It’s not even close.
Everything about Obama is progressive except his positions on the issues, which are calibrated to win the nomination, just as Clinton’s are.
And even there, he’s been getting more progressive as the campaign goes on. A couple of weeks back, he started chewing out black churches for their homophobia and bigotry. It’s caused a lot of grumbling, but it hasn’t cost him any support, and it has made a few people go “You know what? Maybe he’s right!”
Although you have a point about Obama not being Clinton there BooMan, to be fair, most of us thought Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Howard Dean were going to be “better” too.
So you have to forgive me if I don’t expect much from the change department even with Obama in office.
Although you do have a point that there would be more change with Obama than Clinton, but then again that’s like saying having your in-laws visiting for only two weeks is better than the three weeks they originally wanted.
Dean has been better. Under McAuliffe, we lost the Hill. Under Dean, we got it back.
And frankly, I called Reid as a capitulationist douchebag from the moment he took office. The DLC foisted him on us, and we should hardly be surprised that he’s enacted their agenda straight down the line. Clinton is just going to be more of the same, only imagine someone like Pelosi and Reid in the White House. With Clinton VS McCain, the Republicans don’t need to win – their agenda’s going to get enacted all the same.
Obama has a chance of sucking less. And while his rhetoric may be empty, it is doing good things. Namely, raising awareness of how horrible politics is, how broken the process is, and how to change it.
and make your ethical arguments and avoid the trash heaps of Obamania. That is the direction that needs to be taken by the left bloggers, make your case and stay out away from the herd mob mentality. We are more likely to end up with the candidate we need who can easily defeat McCain and who will represent our needs, instead of the candidate we’ve spun and angled for and owes no loyalty to anything other than spinning and angling.
We don’t need the candidate who is going to lose us the youth vote, piss off and dishearten the progressives, the larger wing of the Democratic party, and the candidate who will continue to prove we’re no better than they are by engaging in gutter politics.
If that’s the best we can do, I’m without a party come November.
so how is it that the progressive would be pissed off? Many progressives not that impressed with him, and the number grows daily. If his worshippers caused him to earn their worship he could stand a chance of becoming progressive. It isn’t enough for me that our next president becomes president because they aren’t Republican and it isn’t enough for me that the next Democratic nominee becomes the nominee just because they aren’t a Clinton and that isn’t what is happening anyway that is just what posters on this blog tossing the same tennis ball back and forth have themselves convinced of. A lot of people voting for Obama in the open primaries are Democrat for a Day Republicans. Maybe they’ll feel alienated and pissed too and I need to be concerned about that.
frenchfries, I see a lot more worshipping over at TalkLeft. Over here I see a lot of reasoned discussions. A lot of people came to Obama after other candidates bowed out. I’m a progressive, or a socialist or something a little past that. So what? When you go to an election you choose your best last option.
Obama may turn out to be as bad as Clinton has been. He’ll get more Democrats elected to Congress and in state elections. If he turns out to be as bad as Clinton at least he won’t destroy the Democratic Party. Again.
LBJ? Carter? Both were much worse for the party than Bill Clinton ever was but the party continues on. So much drama on this blog along with the sound of one hand clapping.
Excuse me? Just how young are you and where in the hell are you getting your political history lessons, kid?
Judging from the handle, I’d say McDonalds.
Isn’t that what Obama supporters are always whining about?
A dramatic excuse me question? Just selling the hell out of Obama and what he stands for.
This issue — control of the DNC — is both one of the most important AND least noticed issues to the average voter.
It’s best to look at this issue through the lens of political science rather than the partisan lens that many use. Consolidation of power during Bill Clinton’s tenure allowed the Clintons to strongly influence the future direction of the Democratic Party. And many within the party would argue that the Clinton’s influence both hurt the party and helped the Clintons.
The issue is not whether the party needed to be taken the way of the DLC, which depends on one’s point of view, but whether the Clintons’ strategy of consolidating power weakened the party. As such, this issue is about centralizing control versus strengthening the periphery (state parties, etc.), and about creating a network beholden to the Clintons versus a more decentralized framework.
THE CLINTON’S ATTEMPTED COUP AGAINST HOWARD DEAN
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080317/berman
Whereas this issue would have remained unnoticed by the vast majority of the public, it became salient — although still relatively unnoticed — when Clinton loyalists, Carville, Greenberg and Emanual, attacked DNC chairman Howard Dean immediately after the 2006 election. Although the Clintons remained nominally neutral on the issue, it appears that they orchestrated a coup against Dean in order to pave the way for Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
One name Carville suggested as a possible replacement for Dean at the time — Harold Ford Jr. — later became head of the DLC, and is solidly in the Clinton camp. General Wesley Clark, who is also a Clinton loyalist, was urged to run against Dean by the Clintons. Clark, a conservative Democrat, is not a member of the DLC although he’s clearly from the same mold.
Although having a Clinton loyalist as chairman of the DNC would have helped Hillary’s candidacy, particularly since it would have allowed control over the decision making process as well as filling vacant positions with loyalists who would vote as superdelegates, it wasn’t as if the Clintons lacked influence on the DNC. The last four chairmen of the DNC are all superdelegates currently supporting Clinton. And three of them are playing major roles working for her campaign.
Interestingly, wresting control of DNC was not the only strategy. The New Republic reported on the Clinton camp’s efforts to to set up a “shadow” DNC immediately before the 2006 election, which would have afforded many of the advantages of the DNC without being hindered by the disadvantage of a democratically elected body, whose members might not see eye to eye with the Clintons on some issues.
DNC SUPERDELEGATES
The issue of the Clinton’s influence on the DLC became pertinent once again when a large contingent of superdelegates supported Clinton early in the process, unlike the elected pledged delegates. Since the beginning of the nomination process, in Iowa, Obama has led in elected delegates, and he has steadily increased his lead since then. Moreover, elected officials who are superdelegates tilt slightly towards Obama. The current edge in superdelegate support for Clinton consists of DNC members.