Hillaryzilla

One thing I’ll say about Barack Obama is that he keeps a promise. He promised to get more aggressive and he did.

Today’s Barrack money quote:

“Now is the time when we’re going to be laying out a very clear contrast between myself and Senator Clinton.”

That’s all fine and dandy my young colleague, but you’re six months too late. What were you waiting for?

Very clear contrast? How hard is that when it’s already black and white?

Barack is a nice man, an eloquent speaker, and attracts the crowds. I’ll give him credit for creating a 21st century chocolatized version of John F. Kennedy. Media folks love that.

The problem here is that I voted for the war in Iraq based on the best information we had at the time. Good or bad, that’s what I did. Hindsight is always 20/20 vision, right? Obama was against the war in Iraq, or so he says. He had the luxury of not playing in the big leagues at the time, otherwise his stance on the war might have been different.

But that was then and this is now.

Obama is running a great campaign as the National Public Radio candidate for the well-educated elite and effete. Remember, all this mud tossing at me is from the same guy who thinks Canada has a president (hint: Canada has a prime minister).

NPR listeners are the constituency of Senator Obama. They’ll listen. They’ll give money. They’ll cheer. Both of them. Every political battle has casualties. Obama is his own casualty. Too bad for NPR.

Politics is a tough business. Despite what the country’s founding fathers may have thought about building a citizen government, the reality is that governing is tough, dirty work, not for the faint of heart.

Idealists get trampled out of existence by the pragmatists in government because compromise is an art form. It’s the give and take between vested interests that allows government to function. Take away the ability to compromise, to agree on differences, and you end up with gridlock.

Republicans created the gridlock in the federal government because they allowed in too many idealists from the right. Their influence became too much of “my way or die.” Such inspiration is hardly reflective of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, themselves pragmatic argumentarians.

Can the Republican Party be saved?

Yes. Why? Because pragmatism always wins. Pragmatism is the only solution that benefits the majority. The Republicans of the Bush era forgot that, and their party will suffer for years to come.

How can Hillary Clinton help save the Republican Party?

Clinton for President in ’08 is the first step. I’m a pragmatist. I know that a woman in the White House will be a polarizing event for the electorate. It will also be an opportunity for the few Republican pragmatists left in government. Instead of rallying to take back the government in the name of God and exploit the majority with their minority idealism, they’ll band together against a common enemy– a woman, a woman in the White House, a Democrat.

That’s how Hillary Clinton will save the Republican Party.  And I’ll make it look easy.

It’s all over but the singing. Too bad we have to wait until January for the votes to be counted in Iowa.

Howard Dean met his Waterloo in Iowa, so I decided to go to Cedar Rapids instead. Barrack Obama and John Edwards both went to Waterloo. A lot of good it did them. The Des Moines Register released their latest poll the other day. Clinton over Edwards and Obama in Iowa.

On plan. On schedule.

If you want to hear a fat lady sing, come to Iowa in January. If you can’t make it, don’t worry. Opportunities abound. There will be a fat lady singing in New Hampshire and South Carolina, too. She’s booked for two more songs right after the primary elections in New York and California on February 5th.

On plan. On schedule.

Florida and Michigan have me worried. Bill says it won’t matter. Iowa and New Hampshire run these rinky dink little votes far in advance of real states. It makes them feel important. Candidates like both states because it doesn’t cost much to campaign in either. Both are colder than hell in January.

The problem is that other states want to feel important and have some impact in a presidential race and gather a few million in campaign spending. Florida and Michigan moved their primary election to January just to get under the spotlight, so the DNC stripped them of their delegates and Democratic presidential candidates won’t campaign in either state. It serves them right.

Besides, Florida and Michigan both have so many near-deaf retirees that we have to run four television commercials to every one we would run in California or New York just to get across the same message.

I got a call tonight from Elvis. He agreed to perform live at my birthday bash in New York. Bill set the whole thing up. The bastard lost his touch. Bill, not Elvis

This modest little birthday party should tell you something about how to run a political campaign, which should tell you about how to run a government, which should tell you about the value of experience.

My 60th birthday party will feature Elvis. Costello, not Presley. Who else? So far, that’s it. That’s the best that Bill could do for me, and he’s a former president. Now I have to step in and fix my own damned birthday party.
What did I do for Bill on his 60th birthday?

For Bill’s bash last year we had The Rolling Stones, Christina Aguilera,  Jack White and other notables. Martin Scorsese got the whole thing down on film, except where Bill tried to hit on Christina. Here’s what matters– we collected “gifts” of $60,000 to $250,000 from each of our friends. That’s how to throw a party.

This year, for my 60th, I get an over-the-hill rocker who can’t even shave without cutting himself. There’s no justice in the world.

For a backwater little state, Arkansas governors know how to wrestle around in the mud of media without getting too dirty.

Mike Huckabee was governor of Arkansas and he’s running for president. It won’t happen, but it’s always a pleasure to see Republicans wrestle around with the pigs in politics. Everybody gets dirty.

Last week Huckabee defended Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldier” diatribe, which many of us thought was worthless drivel masquerading as free speech. Huckabee said, among other forgettable things about free speech, “it is not the business of government to infringe upon the free speech of anybody, including a talk show host.”

Uh, Mike, where were you when the Senate Republicans were condemning MoveOn.org‘s advertisement, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” You were awfully silent about the government’s impending role infringing free speech. Remember that?

Huckabee defends free speech as long as the speech agrees with Huckabee.

Billionaire George Soros is credited with supporting MoveOn.org and their hit piece on General Patraeus. It was a catch advertising title but not much more. So why was Huckabee slinging mud balls? Maybe that’s the only kind he has.

Still, it took some kind of intestinal fortitude to loft a mud ball at a me. Huckabee said:

Good one, Mike. Really.

If a sitting general is guilty of treason, then explain why it’s wrong to say so? If a sitting president is wrong for doing Lord knows whatever to whomever and whenever, then why is it wrong to say so?

Bill says never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig loves it. Mike, I won’t wrestle with you. You’re a pig. But if you want to know what I think, look at my hand. Yes, that’s sign language.

What took you so long? That’s what I ask myself, sometimes. Budget cuts affect everyone these days, including mainstream media. It takes them forever to uncover a story, and even longer to uncover a story not worth uncovering.

Back in 1969, at the tender age of 21, I wrote a senior thesis at Wellesley College. In a nutshell, I examined the tactics of Saul Alinsky, a radical community organizer from Chicago. It amounted to 92 pages of fluff so I could graduate.

Don’t tell me you didn’t write similar pablum when you were in college.

Last spring, Bill Dedman of MSNBC dug into public records of Wellesley and found my thesis. Now there’s this groundswell among media donkeys to spin, analyze, debate, criticize a document that’s almost 40 years old in an effort to show the world how Hillary thinks.

The Republicans spent about $50-million trying to find some Whitewater to hogwash the Clintons and came up with nothing. Does anyone believe that a decades-old college thesis is newsworthy?

Britney will get bigger headlines.

Here’s what is newsworthy. Wellesley sealed the thesis while Bill was president, so, for eight years it was off limits to everyone but Bill O’Reilly, who claimed to have a copy. He made some noise about it. That’s what he does.

After all these years nobody remembers Saul Alinksy, who he was, what he stood for, and why the thesis was important. I don’t even remember. I just needed a thesis to graduate and figured that nobody would do one on Alinsky.

I was right. That’s it. There was nothing else going on so stop bothering the poor folks at Wellesley College about getting copies of my papers.

Who can help restore America’s reputation on the world stage? Bill.

Bush policies have wrecked America’s foreign policy efforts and our reputation all over the world. How can I restore the luster? Put Bill on the job.

Nobody in American politics has better relations throughout the world than Bill Clinton, the original comeback kid.

The Times Online has the best quote:

How can the next president of the United States not use this great national resource?

Bill loves to travel and meet new people. He knows everyone and everyone knows his charm. The Democratic platform for the 2008 election will include Bill Clinton as a roving ambassador to the world.

That will keep him out of the White House and away from my staff.

Politics is great sport. There are winners and losers, those who watch, those who participate, those who provide commentary and perspective.

There’s also a crowd in politics which relishes a good old fashioned political fist fight, and a smaller number who dig into the aftermath of a campaign with an almost religious fervor. They’re Post Mortemites.

When a political campaign or candidate begins to falter, fade, flail, or fail, either in the polls, or as the result of an election gone bad, the ranks of the Post Mortemites begins to swell.

So it is with the Barrack Obama campaign. However you describe it, falter or fade or flail or fail, the shine is off the shoe. So, if it’s over, and it is, where are the Post Mortemites? They’re just late. They’ll show up soon. Remember, this was supposed to be a dead heat heading into the first votes early next year. It turned into a 10 round fight that only went 3 rounds.

What happened?

Bill described it to me this way: “Not enough finger pointing and too much corner painting.”

That’s what Obama did wrong. As the candidate for joy and happiness and change of a different color, he had a chance to do some damage early on. Instead, all he did was talk about the future, the need for a change and he forgot to point a finger at the past and present. Sure, voters want to look forward to the future, but they want blame assessed on those who got us where we are today.

What an opportunity Obama missed. He started strong, collected a lot of money, and then forgot who to point at, and probably how to point. It’s not as though the causes of our political morass are hiding or exclusive to one party or the other. Had Obama decided to assert his God-given right to point a finger at a mess, he would have come across as a leader. Point the damn finger. It’s what we do. Then talk about change and hope and blah blah.

Instead, Obama devoted his campaign to corner painting. He painted himself as a kind of National Public Radio candidate for change at a time when voters really want leadership and toughness and change. In that order. Anything he does now that smacks of finger wagging makes him looks desperate.

When necessary, a good politician wags the finger of accountability, and stirs the paint of hopes and dreams, all the while never pointing, and never painting.

Tough break, kid. Now you’re just fodder for the Post Mortemites.

I’m not sure what to make of the latest polls. It’s 53-percent to 30-percent, Clinton on top of Obama. It’s better on top.

Obama’s numbers continue to drop and my numbers continue to rise. That’s the trend and it looks good, but we’re a year away from the election, so anything can happen, especially where voters are concerned.

The problem with polls? The voters.

Voters say one thing and do something else. You can’t trust them. They make up the answers in every survey. Seriously. They make up answers. They lie. You’d think the electorate was made up of former members of Congress.

What no one truly knows is what comes first, the voters or the polls. Do voters support a candidate in a poll because they heard about other polls where a candidate was leading? Yes. Do polls drive the voter’s choices. Yes.

Voters, in general, prefer to support a winner, or, at the very least, someone who has a chance at winning. That’s why Obama continues to drop in the polls. Even black voters are convinced I can whip his butt. Why? Hair wins. Voters prefer hair.

That’s the biggest problem the leading Republican candidates have. No hair. They all look like Dwight Eisenhower. Hair wins. Who did Eisenhower beat? Stevenson. See? Even less hair.

Kennedy? Plenty of hair. Even Nixon had more hair than Hubert Humphrey or George McGovern. Carter had more than Ford. Reagan had more hair than Carter. Dukakis wore a piece. Bill has more hair than George Bush. Al Gore’s hair was thinning badly, and George W. Bush won the election. By a hair. John Kerry’s hair didn’t even look real.

Look at Giuliani, Thompson, or McCain? No hair. I can’t lose.

Congressman Neil Abercrombie is a child of the 60s and he looks awful in that beard and faux ponytail while wearing a leisure suit from the 70s.

The only reason Abercrombie wears suits from the 70s on the House floor is that he’d look even more ridiculous in bell bottoms.  Hawaii’s noisiest congressperson ever just got his pet Iraq war bill passed by the House.  377 to 46. Not bad for a nearly 70-year old hippie pit bull with no teeth.

What’s this Fitched up bill do? It would require President Bush to report to Congress in 60 days, and every 90 days after that, on the status of troop redeployment plans in Iraq.

That’s it. No mandate. No details. No teeth. No penalty provisions. The bill is a bi-partisan request for a series of reports from Bush. How lame is that? 181 Republicans voted for it. What’s that say?

Abercrombie’s money quote: “This is the first major step in turning the war around, in terms of getting us out of Iraq.” Right. Whatever.

The real trick will be to get the Senate to agree to the wimpy terms of the bill. That may not be so difficult considering how Senate Democrats have been posturing these days.

Can you say, “fetal position?“