I'm so tired of the "Hillary Fantasy", "the race is neck-and-neck", etc.  That version is supported only in the fevered imaginations of die-hard Clinton supporters.

The facts tell another story, and I prefer living and operating in a fact-based world.

If she can't outrun a fellow Democrat, how in the hell is she supposed to be a shoo-in for a win over a Republican?  It's just nuts.

Stunning! This is the type of BS that repulsed me from the Clinton campaign. It's more in the style of black propaganda than argument.

Here's a few sections, of many, that I have problems with:

"-But the real culprit is the party's stupid, self-destructive nominating system.. .

First, it was designed to anoint a nominee by early February, far too early in the process. The result: Obama built up an insurmountable lead at a time when he was still largely unblemished, untested and unscrutinized."

Although it's certainly hard to disagree with the "stampede" that resulted in the sanctioning of Florida and Michigan (and S.C., N.H. and Wyoming for the Republicans, besides FL and MI), it was the Clinton campaign that (nearly) benefited from this front-loading of nominating contests. The argument should be turned on its head -- why did Clinton campaign fail so miserably given their enormous advantages?

And a subtle point that might be missed here is that the Clinton campaign always relied on mass market appeal, as opposed to the retail, grass roots politics practiced by the Obama campaign. Although much has been made of the differences in class appeal, a better indicator is the educational divide between Clinton and Obama supporters, since it reveals a difference in the modality of persuasion technique favored by each campaign. The "Clinton brand," as it's been called, is  an appropriate expression since the campaign's emphasis was always marketing Clinton in much the same way a manufacturer might market dish soap.

The "unblemished, untested and unscrutinized" crap is just Clinton smear tactics. I'll acknowledge that Obama has only been in the U.S. Senate for a short time so some of this is fair game, but it's mostly a Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt (FUD) strategy. The purpose of a FUD strategy is not to persuade -- per se -- but to create confusion and paralysis. The end result is that the individual seeks safe harbor, which in this case is the well known Clinton brand.


ad bellum purificandum - Kenneth Burke

Oh lordy BooMan, the primary season must be getting the best of you. Why untidy your beautiful mind with old Ms. Twisty Cokie Roberts. She pollutes.

I thought with the exception of NPR she had been pastured. Long overdue then.

Well, "You can't vote for war and disown the results"

Democrats simply cannot imagine denying the nomination to the first serious African-American candidate for president.

 is offensively racist because those folks like Jesse Jackson were extremely serious about running.

Grandma Jo

Race? RACE???? Great screaming FSM, Cokie Roberts is supposed to be a senior political analyst. How can she look at the priarmies and not see that Obama has registered hordes of new voters, raked in a ton of cash, has a message that is consistent with Democratic values, and has proven himself electable in election after election after election? The Democrats would nominate a Martian if he'd done all that.

The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote. -- Ambassador Kosh

Hillary couldn't run a nomination campaign. She lost fair and square. McCain will, according to outgoing Republican Rep. Davis of VA, lose by 20% if he's painted as a 3rd Bush term. Obama's doing just that and with Bush's help. This should be fun. Sorry about that Hillary. You shouldn't have listened to Mark Penn and to Bill. Wrong year to be an incumbent. Mandy Grundwald was right. That's what listening to that kind of man gets you.

These people have all clearly either never taken, or took and failed, logic courses.  And, really, facts are silly things that can be ignored in the interest of preserving narratives that idiotic reporters need to keep their world together.  It's not even worth getting worked up over, Boo.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to you country.

I think the thing a lot of these polls are missing is that their results are based on the (flawed) assumption that Hillary can somehow capture the nomination in a method that would be perceived as legitimate. If her pipe-dream nomination is obtained by a method seen as illegitimate - coup by superdelegate, for example - I think her poll numbers will drop substantially.

Kill because somebody was killed. Get killed because he killed. Do you think peace will ever come like that?

Iran, IRAN, I-R-A-N. Don't think so? Think again.

When did Pennsylvania secede from the Middle Atlantic states?

Just a point here:

John and Cokie Roberts both worked for Gloria Steinem's CIA propaganda mill during the Helsinki International Youth Festival in the early sixties. It's even mentioned with a chuckle in their joint autobiography.

John, Cokie and Gloria. Those are three "former" CIA propagandists in Clinton's corner this go-round. "Retired" CIA "counterterrorist" specialist Larry Johnson is running a pretty vile pro-Hillary (really, a vile anti-Obama) website. He came out of right field in the last year to give some non-essential criticism of his ol' Agency and then became yet another CIA propagandist for Clinton.

That's four.

There are other loud Hillary supporters that strike me as at least suspicious. Taylor Marsh's rise from the LA sex industry to political pundit, her bona fides all paid for, makes her another invention of someone or something. The Contours sang, "First I look at the purse." Deep Throat said, "Follow the money." Marsh is an invention and she's a pro-Hillary invention.

At this point I'm even a tad bit suspicious of Valerie Plame and her Republican hubby. If you look at information developed independently by Sibel Edmunds and Larisa Alexandrovna, the cover for Brewster-Jennings was blown two years prior to all that stuff that became candy for us lefty bloggers. If Brewster-Jennings had been blown two years earlier wouldn't the folks at B-J notice something was up? Wouldn't Plame know?

I'm not saying that Clinton is the CIA's candidate, or even that the CIA is anything more that another tool of the establishment which tries to keep control of the game. What I do say is that this is a fair-sized collection of keys of the mighty Wurlitzer and as such it is noteworthy.

Sure, it's bullshit they're all generating, but it's a certain brand of bullshit.

Democrats seem intent on nominating Barack Obama, in the face of mounting evidence that Hillary Clinton would be the stronger candidate against John McCain in November. And they only have themselves to blame.

The Israeli settlements doubled on Clinton's watch. But Hillary DID get her New York City senate seat. ...and now I will nuke Iran for you!

Is there any site other than the Jewish World News willing to carry this desperate spin from the Hillary camp?  Cokie and spouse are just regurgitating the fear-mongering talking points that the Hillary camp has been using to try to shore up their support in the Jewish community (even if they risk undermining Obama's support among Jewish swing voters in the general).  In the process, the Roberts have reworked Ferraro's racist argument:

The election map, however, has been starkly static during the Bush years, with only three small states switching sides between 2000 and 2004. Winning Ohio with Clinton is a safer bet for Democrats than capturing Colorado and Virginia with Obama.

So why don't Democratic leaders and superdelegates face these facts and shift to Clinton? One reason is race. It's true, as Obama says, that being black in America has hardly been a political asset, given the fact that he's the only African-American in the U.S. Senate.

But at this time, in this party, being black is an enormous asset. Given America's long, torturous path toward racial justice, many Democrats simply cannot imagine denying the nomination to the first serious African-American candidate for president.

From a moral perspective, that's a noble judgment. From a political perspective, it could cost Democrats the White House.