From the brilliant Rush Limbaugh monologue about what Hillary Clinton is up to right now.
Folks, I think there's some of that going on in the Democrat Party now, that they have nominated the wrong person. This guy should be up by 10 to 15 points; the Drive-Bys writing stories about why isn't that happening. Now Mrs. Clinton saying, we gotta get... her name in nomination -- so that people don't walk away unhappy, "dissatisfied"?... You know that old Bill is out there working the phones. "I warned you people. I warned you. I tried to tell you, but he threw the race card out on me and distracted everybody, and I had to run around and defend myself on race. I'm the first black president of this country, and I had to run around and tell everybody, 'I'm not a racist.' I warned you. I said, 'This is not gonna work. This guy can't win. He can't get enough votes, get enough support, and he's got no experience at all.'Rush is at his best — and he knows it — when he's telling us in blunt terms what various Democrats must be thinking.
"Look, he had all that media coverage over there when he went over, that 'summer intern tour,' as Limbaugh calls it. He's exactly right about that, and what happened? His numbers fell, and keep falling. I tried to warn you."
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५३ टिप्पण्या:
Veni Vidi Vici made this argument on an earlier thread--Perhaps el Rushbo reads your blog. And VVV made a compelling case. (IMHO)
And Rush's Bill Clinton impersonation is hilarious, as well. He really gets inspired when he puts on that voice.
Rush is at his best — and he knows it — when he's telling us in blunt terms what he thinks various Democrats who will have no impact on the convention must be thinking.
Rush and the Right want the Clintons back so badly they're openly fantasizing. It's kind of sad, really. Who thinks Obama should be up 10-15 points? Why, those people who keep saying he should be up 10-15 points.
Instead, Obama's had a consistent 5 point lead. The campaign must be positively quaking over this fact.
Obama is in a tough spot. He's got McCain and the Repub add machine on one side, and the Clintons 'help' and 'conern for the voters' on the other.
This ought to test Obama. I'm even tempted to say that if he can make it through this, it could be argued that he has shown enough to, perhaps, warrant the presidency.
I think we should fasten our seat belts and hold on tight; this is bound to be quite a ride to election day.
It's amazing people fall for this crap. If Obama is bad as the Drugster and the GOP claims, why isn't McCain up 10-15 points?
Don't pay attention to the bumbling McCain. Look over there! Bill looks mad! Is Hillary trying to steal the nomination?? What IS she (they) up to!
Where's Nancy!
LOL.
When Senator Obama won the Democratic nomination, I said watch what Senator Clinton does.
In her support of him earlier this year, she refused to release her delegates.
The democrats need not have had this convention problem, we folks in the GOP gave an excuse to step up and push the Clintons out of public life in 1999 - 2000 (It was perjury, not the sex. That's why all the complaints against "Scooter" Libby are for naught).
But Democrats hate Republicans more then they hate Democratic corruption.
It would sound like the Republican Convention if anyone but pundits and comment-givers were listening. Everyone else is on vacation and doesn't care.
I was in St Paul the other day, and hourly workers were busily prettying up the Excel Center. All new trees and bushes being planted on the median between the center and the Science Museum so things look swell for the convention of a corrupt party.
(Note: a, not the)
While the whole polling thing is nothing more than grist for pundits mills--and especially during August when Washington has closed down--and there are no stories to cover such as the Edwards Love Child thing, the polls that matter are the swing state polls and particularly those polls that sample LIKELY voters and not registered voters.
Using polls as a justification for anything right now is just plain silly--Of much more interest to me would be the results of the internal polling done by the DNC.
Granted Hillary is not black - so that is a plus for her. But she is still Hillary Clinton and she's despised by much of this country. She'd be in the exact same situation as Obama now.
I expect Obama to give a great speech at the convention and will probably be up by 15 points once that's over.
The 2008 Democratic Convention is not remotely like the 1976 Republican Convention. In 1976, neither candidate had enough votes to win when the convention opened. Barack Obama is not a sitting President of the United States and Hillary Clinton does not have the rhetorical skills of Ronald Reagan.
Granted Hillary is not black - so that is a plus for her.
But she has a vagina so that should count for something no?
"Granted Hillary is not black - so that is a plus for her."
If Mort were awake he would tell you this is racist.
"But she has a vagina so that should count for something no?"
If Althouse were awake she would tell you that is sexist.
Is it sexist to mention Lee Lee's Valise at times like this?
Don't forget four other "awkward" items for the Dems.
1. They ran for a year and Obama won the nomination on the Central Truth that Iraq was lost, we had to flee. Hillary was wrong and Barack, addressing his Hyde Park Lefties in 2002 showed his perfect judgment and courage as the Black Messiah on the Iraq War.
Except none of that narrative is true and the Convention will have factions at "war" over Iraq's being the only important thing.
PS - The Planet melting, all new domestic energy except beautiful solar, wind, ethanol is evil and the Goracle must be obeyed is another false narrative the public appears to be rejecting. While ideologues in Dem ranks are committed to since the 70s...the average American wants energy solutions, getting away from overdependence and loss of wealth on foreign oil...
2. Presenting Obama, Hillary as the "glory" of identity politics just as the general public is signalling it has had it's fill of racial, gender, sex orientation card playing.
3. You have Slick Pony. Who has a nice little block of delegates and his "Two America's" stupraiser speech Obamessiah approves of so much. What do you do with Slick Pony? Invite him to speak? Which woman do you invite to the Convention?
4. As criticism of the celebrity and cult of Obamessiah is having a notable impact on the public, you have the 2-year Senator set to address the Convention from a mass rally of fans at Denvers major sports stadium. Because Obama and his ego is too big, too important to merely speak at a Convention Hall as even accomplished sitting Democratic Presidents have been content to.
garage-
If Obama is bad as the Drugster and the GOP claims, why isn't McCain up 10-15 points?
Hey, we know we have a terrible candidate. This is about tearing other people down to make ourselves feel bigger. This is about positioning ourselves as the scrappy underdogs so we can yell, "You suck!" to the leaders even if they're winning.
About Obama's 5 point lead in the polls. That's what Kerry had at this point in 2004.
MM: Did you stop in at Great Waters Brew Pub while you were there?
Between the left and the right there is a huge gap in artistic talent. What I find most oppressive about the left is not their idiotic views but the artistry with which they express them...Quick example: In Godfather II there is a scene on a hotel balcony were the execs of various American interests meet. A huge cake labelled Cuba is brought out. The Mafia and AT&T execs cut it up and divide it among themselves. Look: the Mafia is a criminal organization and AT&T sells phone services. It does not murder to maintain market share. How stupid do you have to be to believe that there is any kind of equivalence between the Mafia and AT&T and how talented do you have to be to express this viewpoint in a memorable way....I enjoy Rush not only because he is quick and funny but because the left has no one who approaches his talent. Talk radio is not a haute art but it gets into the synapses of your brain more than any other art form besides a great novel. And Rush is the Tolstoy of talk radio.
"That's what Kerry had at this point in 2004."
Exactly. And look how down-to-the-wire Kerry brought it to Bush. Kerry stumbled at the finish line with his badly played "Mary Cheney is gay" line in the last debate. This pulled focus from Bush's "I never said I didn't care about Osama" lie.
But, Roger J is right: Polls at this point are pretty meaningless.
Did you stop in at Great Waters Brew Pub while you were there?
No, I'm not a big beer drinker when I'm the one driving the kids around. We did have shakes at Annie's near the UM campus. Boy were they good -- much better than Mickie's Dairy Bar, and that's saying something. I'd even put them near Meyer's Dairy in delicious creaminess. But the coffee shake just wasn't coffee-y enough.
Better than Mickies? That must be some shake.
I asked about Great Waters because it's quite close to the Xcel. Good beer. Especially fun on St. Patty's day, though if you want to take your life in your own hands, you go to McGovern's, a couple of blocks down 7th. Then you head to the Livery ("Home of the 20 oz. pint") for corned beef and cabbage.
Where's Nancy!
The real question is "where's Michelle?"
Original Mike--
In the middle 1960's, I lived on the Levee, and then just off of 7th Street and St. Clair. 7th used to be a very run down part of St. Paul. It sure is different now.
Rush Rush Rush. As a Democrat I sure do appreciate your concern. But there's a little something you are forgetting.
First, being ahead is not losing, at least not in this universe.
Second, Obama's numbers have remained steady for months... you are selectively reading some tracking polls to find a dip (which is gone now anyhow)...
Third, the rise of Obama is all about how sheer competence of management and organization is what matters in this game. The country has been split nearly evenly for a decade. The campaign that can organize best in the swing states wins. That campaign is not Republican this year.
Obama will blow McCain out of the water, Rush, and I'm sure your capital gains will suffer because of it. Maybe you'll have to sell one of your hundreds of luxury cars, or take a boarder into your opulent mansion... maybe you can buy your $500 Ferragamos used off of John McCain...
Exactly. And look how down-to-the-wire Kerry brought it to Bush. Kerry stumbled at the finish line with his badly played "Mary Cheney is gay" line in the last debate.
Meanwhile, back here in reality, Bush was polling consistently ahead of Kerry from mid-August onwards. The "Mary Cheney is gay" thing happened in mid-October, after which the gap between Kerry and Bush actually shrank.
So aside from your argument being wrong on all points, it was pretty convincing.
Obama will blow McCain out of the water
So why isn't he?
I mean, seriously, the Republican Party is about as popular as rectal cancer right now. The Republican President has Nixon-esque approval ratings. The economy is sluggish at best, we're in the middle of an unpopular war, and half the Republican Party can't stand the guy they've nominated. And in spite of all that, Obama has lost his lead in the polls. He's tied with the guy from the widely-disliked party who is widely disliked BY that party.
Now personally I think Obama's still going to win. He can count on blacks voting on racial lines, which will probably carry some of the important swing states. But he SHOULD be completely running away with the race at this point, and he isn't. That suggests that even though Obama has a core of rabid supporters, his broader appeal isn't really there.
7th used to be a very run down part of St. Paul. It sure is different now.
No kidding. I've been going up to that neighborhood in the middle of March since 1988 (for a hockey tournament) and McGovern's used to be the bright spot of the neighborhood. The transformation has been remarkable.
Trevor wrote: Instead, Obama's had a consistent 5 point lead. The campaign must be positively quaking over this fact.
Prof. Althouse wrote: About Obama's 5 point lead in the polls. That's what Kerry had at this point in 2004.
It's difficult to compare these points in time from 2004 to 2008. In 2004 the Democratic Convention had already occurred, while it is a few weeks away at this point in 2008. However looking at some data from before the 2004 Democratic Convention it would appear that Obama is doing marginally WORSE than Kerry did. This despite the facts that the economy is in (legitimately) bad shape and that the country is sick of Republicans in general. Objectively this looks bad for Obama.
Caveat: I'm a small-government-favoring conservative who won't be voting for either McCain or Obama this fall.
Also about that five point lead:
Here's some Rasmussen analysis from Wednesday (August 6, 2008) of the daily tracking polls.
The bottom line is that Obama’s lead has declined from the 5-6 point range for the first five weeks [after Obama clinched the Democratic Party nomination] and has fallen to the 1-3 point range for the past four weeks.
The fact that the race has tightened up despite glowing wall-to-wall coverage can't be a good sign.
Personally I've gove from thinking an Obama win was all but assured to thinking he is probably going to lose. The more attention he gets the more ground he seems to lose in the polls. That's not good now that all of the focus is on him.
So why isn't he?
Because we remain a basically 50-50 country as we have been for all intents and purposes since 1996, don't you agree?
If you look at Gallup's ten-day moving average of its polls for the past 15 weeks, not much has changed, with Obama showing a consistent small lead. Within the margin of error, as you've pointed out about other polls, but when it consistently ends up that way, it is a pretty safe bet that it reflects reality at the moment. Carter's 1976 victory was 3-points, as I am sure you know.
Despite what goes on around here, most people are not paying all that close attention and won't be until after Labor Day. The race could change or not after then. Karl Rove had an interesting op-ed in the WSJ yesterday, in which he appeared to argue that Obama has an easier job in front of him than did McCain. Did you see that?
Outis said...it would appear that Obama is doing marginally WORSE than Kerry did. This despite the facts that the economy is in (legitimately) bad shape and that the country is sick of Republicans in general. Objectively this looks bad for Obama.
And this is true despite Obama receiving more positive media hype than any mere lawyer/politician in history.
The Republicans are about to nominate a 72 year old, non charismatic Senator who has never been popular within his own party.
The Republican brand is currently about as popular as the Tylenol brand in 1982 yet Obama has yet to poll above 49%.
McCain will win 52% to 47%. That's my guess.
"...shakes at Annie's near the UM campus. Boy were they good -- much better than Mickie's Dairy Bar, and that's saying something."
No one makes ice cream, shakes, etc. like Ted Drewes in St. Louis. Worth the trip, every time! And located right on old Route 66.
"The fact that the race has tightened up despite glowing wall-to-wall coverage can't be a good sign.
Personally I've gove from thinking an Obama win was all but assured to thinking he is probably going to lose."
I feel somewhat similarly. In addition to Revenant's reasons at 12:07, and others', the tongue-bath / teabagging that the media has been giving Obama since jumpstreet should have done something substantive.
That the guy still can't break 50% should be worrisome, especially in light of the facts that (a) none but the truly partisan/politically-interested are paying attention right now; and (b) McCain has a lukewarm base of support and he's not particularly well-liked by several factions of the Republican party electorate; and (c) Republican voter ID is down substantially, whereas Democrat identifiers' numbers are way up.
All this plus the fact that the guy has generally come across as pretty likeable (before he apparently began believing his press clippings) should have given Obama some hang time over 50%.
For all its institutional media-enabled support, the Democratic party succeeds at framing legislative issues far better than it is able to frame candidates. This probably explains a lot about the proportional relationships between the respective years of R presidents and D legislative majorities and their inverses.
When Senator Obama won the Democratic nomination, I said watch what Senator Clinton does
I thought he had to go to the convention and win the nomination there? I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that:
1. He didn't have enough delegates at this time to say he "won"
and
2. Hillary didn't concede. She just put her campaign on hold.
If I were a Hillary voter or delegate I would be a bit P'oed at the assumption that Obama is already the candidate, much less the assumption that he is already President.
For sheer entertainment value, I'm really looking forward to a roll call vote and a floor fight at the Dem's convention.
The reason Obama's lack of any sort of lead is significant is because McCain is not a very good candidate who can't excite his base very well and doesn't seem to be running a very good campaign and is strapped for cash.
Meanwhile, Obama's campaign is awash with cash, the media have turned out in full force to sing his praises and worship his footsteps with relentless persistence, the opinion of the country is massively against Bush and the republicans (partly for very good reasons, partly because of the on-going media war against them) and Obama is loudly hailed as the most brilliant, principled, insightful, charismatic, and wonderful politician of the age, who is the bringer of hope and the agent of change and the creator of a new and holy breed of politics which blithely transcends the previous grubby brand of politics, whose coming has been long foretold and has excited the admiration, devotion, and worship of the nations.
The situation is so bad for Republicans right now that if you cloned McCain and stuck a "D" after his name he'd beat himself by a landslide.
When a blond twit cock-sucking media whore can pull an energy policy out of her skinny little ass that is better than Obamas, he's got problems.
Thanks for the nod, Roger J. Here's my posting from a couple of nights ago, in case anyone gives a flying pfack. Note the NJ connection, which is to the coming convention what the synchronized African embassy bombings were to the synchronized airplane-bombings of 9/11; namely, a test run of sorts.
What does anyone care [what Obama thinks about Affirmative Action]? This "fairy tale" campaign is over at the convention, mark my words.
Obama can't beat 49%. He's steadily losing his support among the young and women, if polls are to be believed. Meanwhile, Bill C. the other day was interviewed and found a million ways around saying Barack is "ready" for the office.
Then, today, Hillary's in the news trying to bump up the pressure at the convention, bring on the vote, it's not over, etc.
Superdelegates watching Obama's likely-to-continue-declining poll numbers in the next few weeks will be panicking; a friendly "it's not too late, you know" call from team H's minions will be well-received by many of them.
At the convention, I predict the first vote won't be conclusive with the proper number in Obama's column. Once that happens, delegates are free, and the second vote will go to Hillary based on her advance prep of superdelegates and her asskicking convention speech, which will feature just subtle enough "told you so" undertones vis. the One's performance to date.
Obama will be named as VP nominee to keep the peace. If they win in November, Obama will be shipped off to the Naval Observatory grounds, where his duties as VP will be to gaze at his naval for the next 4 years, in the manner of most VPs whose names you know only because of what you learned in school, and whose accomplishments were nonexistent. Note also that the Clintons sidelined Gore for most of his tenure; it wasn't til he was really needed to manage scandal-spin that they trotted him out in earnest. They'll know how to handle Obama.
Question: Where the hell has Terry McAuliffe been since Hillary dropped out? Conspicuously not with the presumptive nominee's organizing efforts.
This will be the greatest rope-a-dope play in political history.
If Obama hadn't just yesterday called for all the MI and FL delegates to be seated at the convention, I'd think he was out of the loop. As it is, I'm beginning to think this deal was sealed in Feinstein's living room, weeks ago.
You heard it here first.
Note also that the Democrats successfully did a switcheroo in NJ a few senate races back, with regard to that Lautenberg fellow.
Or it might have been the seat of "Launch Loincloth" or whatever his name is/was.
Oh, and I meant to say that Obama's VP duties would be to observe his navel at the Naval Observatory. Sorry for the grammatical imprecision.
It would sound like the Republican Convention if anyone but pundits and comment-givers were listening. Everyone else is on vacation and doesn't care.
And that's different from '76?
What I love--loooooove--is the absolute confidence some people have in predicting the future.
A year ago, there was this absolute confidence (among some) that Hil(l)ary would be the nominee and the President! (And I guess it could still happen, though the machinations required to make her the nominee would seem to guarantee alienating enough people to make her election impossible).
Stuff like this makes me realize why bookmaking is so profitable.
Blake,
predicting the future is a fun parlor game and terrific pastime. It's also a nice way to chew the fat and bullshit with people you know only tangentially, like those one meets in public social situations like bars, bus platforms, blog comment threads...
Why not be absolutely confident about it? It's not like anyone really knows, anyway; the alternative would be to avoid saying anything at all, which would defeat the purpose of places like this blog's fertile comments section.
I would caution anyone from getting too excited about Obama's slide in the polls. It isn't that it has been fast or big. It was a slow erosion that has stopped for the moment. These are troublesome signs for Obama's campaign and for Democrats in general, but it hasn't become a rout either.
Kay:
Look: the Mafia is a criminal organization and AT&T sells phone services. It does not murder to maintain market share.
Michael:
Now who's being naive?
I think the race is close because the race is for president, not Messiah.
If we really needed a Messiah, Obama would be far ahead of McCain. But he might have other competition to worry about.
Why not be absolutely confident about it? It's not like anyone really knows, anyway; the alternative would be to avoid saying anything at all, which would defeat the purpose of places like this blog's fertile comments section.
We could swap recipes.
OK, fair point. But.
It seems like the Greeks were always getting in trouble for this sort of Hubris.
Also, notice that people don't do it for anything that matters: Like you don't see Troop predicting the WORLD CHAMPION GIANTS winning again this year.
Michael said...
When a blond twit cock-sucking media whore can pull an energy policy out of her skinny little ass that is better than Obamas, he's got problems.
Sounds like Michael is a faggot.
Otherwise, he would know that cock sucking is a wonderful activity that good-looking blondes need to enjoy frequently and do well.
Nor does being good-looking and a skilled cock-sucking vixen make a babe a twit, necessarily - unless we are talking the blanket condemnation of such sexually hot pieces of ass - by the feminists or their simpering gay male posse....
As for being a media whore, it was paying Paris 6-8 million a year, with SAG work, modeling, music vids, & appearance fees of 25-100K just to show up at certain parties of newly arrived megamillionaire even billionaire nebbishes to show they had "arrived". Not a bad line of work, if you can get it.
Apparantly she is seriously dyslexic, but very intelligent and she selected her agent and parts accepted carefully...A little abuse problem that is in the rear view mirror, it seems. She hasn't done badly for herself at all.
Rush is an idiot.
So is Veni, Vedi, Vici,
Obama is the nominee. Ann, her idiot son, Rush, DBQ, and the rest of you morons who are spinning your little fantastical scenarios whereby the Democratic party self-destructs at the convention need to get used to it.
Are any of you who are coming up with absolutely ridiculous circumstances where Hillary emerges as the candidate (other than Obama actually getting assasinated--and if that happened I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it was discovered that the assassin posted on Althouse under the pseudonym "Cedarford) willing to bet money on it? Because I will take your bets.
Sen. Clinton should watch and listen to the broadcast of her interview on the O'Reilly show again and again -- until it sinks in that she is best when she talks to people rather than at them.
She could deliver a speech at the Democrats' convention that would make them at least wonder if they were making the right choice -- but not if she tries to orate rather than simply talk to them. Leave the loud voice out of it, and let the sound techs handle the volume. Don't rant, just talk.
She showed that she can be self-assured about her positions without seeming argumentative or arrogant. She can disagree without being disagreeable. She can be human.
She just needs to be that human at the microphone.
Obama is NOT the nominee! He is the prospective nominee. He is not the nominee until the Party, through their convention gives him the nod. As to the Clintons, they are not through with their vile and dirty tricks yet. This process will get worse and the Clintons will get dirtier, never letting Obama forget that he is the upstart. Obama should start referring to Hillary as the has been.
Freder, you've got to learn better to orate, rather than fellate.
Blake,
"Also, notice that people don't do it for anything that matters"
You think this presidential thing *really* matters anymore? I'm not sure things would have worked out all that different, but for the "playing to the gallery" small stuff, had the officeholders 42 and 43 been reversed, for example. Our government is far to corporatist for anything too radical to occur anymore. That's the stuff of landslides and realignments, and I don't see anything like that on the horizon, do you?
Veni,
I was, of course, being snarky.
But it seems to me we could take care of the whole situation very, very easily.
What we do is pay a stipend--a percentage of the GDP--to our elected officials. A graft tax, if you like.
To get it, they'd only have to agree to do nothing. No pork, no programs, they'd jut sit up there in DC, banging pages and taking lots of field trips. (They'd have to pay for both the pages and the trips, tho'.)
I'd better stop riffing on this; I like it waaaay too much.
Actually, I would take Hillary Clinton over Obama now, and thank my lucky stars I got her.
Her candidacy is knowable. I know what I'm getting.
His is an enigma wrapped around a riddle skewered by a shibboleth.
His is an enigma wrapped around a riddle skewered by a shibboleth.
Oh, that is so racist.
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