I think that the notion that it is personal for the Clintons takes us off track.
  I think the Clintons are representing DLC interests-- corporate interests, the telcos and the HMOs and the drug companies, the corporate world, and the right-wing Lieberman Jewish gang who have always backed the neo-cons, and the neo-cons themselves.
These people have been smearing the Democratic Party and Democratic values for years.
So then it is a life or death fight for the Democratic Party (and the country) with all of the bad actors who keep us from any meaningful reform, those who have all of the power now.
It really makes more sense that this is what the fight is about, rather than about Hillary's personal ambition.
But because it is hidden, and unstated, it is at once more pernicious, and more evil.  It is the big lie all over again.  The big lie -- WMD are why we invaded Iraq, etc.  Never admitting what the truth is -- the simple truth.  I'd say that is what is going on.

syolles

"This isn't a fight over disenfranchisement, it isn't a civil rights battle, and it isn't even a fight over who the nominee will be. It's just a fight. And only the Clintons have a clue why they're fighting it."

There are several clues why the Clintons continue. It has nothing to do with the Party. It's all about money, power, money.

And some may disagree but imho there's the color thingy: resentment deep in their souls. If they can't succeed, no one else will. Black folks were there to serve, first to get them elected, then as window dressing. In the end black folks defeated them. And that's the rub. They were out-campaigned by an uppity who wouldn't wait his turn. So they'll deny him for as long as they can - by staying in the race - a race that's over.

If the Clintons really cared about civil rights, vote counts, where were they during December 2000?  If they really cared about advancement of Black America -at this point they'd be cheering Obama, not trying to steal his victory.

btw, via Will Bunch, David Gergen is whistling dixie if he thinks Hillary will take the high road

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

It's because it's all they know how to do, and the drive to win is consuming.

It doesn't matter that the math is against them.  It doesn't matter that public opinion and the MSM is against them.  In fact, the more opposed they feel, the more likely they are to keep fighting.

Some people are just wired this way.  You see it in sports all the time.  No matter how far the team is down, no matter how unlikely victory may seem, these people can see a way where others can't (and indeed, where sometimes there is no way).  

Jonathan Chait explored this today. Quote is the last few paragraphs of his blog post. Read the whole thing.

[ ... ]

Moreover, it's obviously true that Obama not campaigning, organizing, or advertizing in those states hurt him, and helped the more familiar candidate in Clinton. She decided to campaign to change the rules only after it became her interest to do so.

This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It's obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don't want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton's character. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton's gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.

If she's consciously lying, it's a shockingly cynical move. I don't think she's lying. I think she's so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It's not just that she's convinced herself it's okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency.

--Jonathan Chait

When a Republican gives his constituents some bull we here are not shocked. When Bush and his people lied over and over about Iraq and nukes and Saddam and missiles and democracy and every other piece of crap people in this neck of the blogosphere recognized it for what it was. Maybe not all of us, maybe not immediately, but we knew that Bush wasn't going into Iraq to prevent nuclear war. He was going in for the oil, and not for our (the American public's) benefit.

So how come we have such a problem looking at Clinton and not recognizing what she is doing? I knew she'd lost the nomination after Obama reeled off those eleven primaries. Booman can probably put an exact date on it, but we know it was long enough back in the process that much of the drama of the past several months has been unnecessary.

This is not a regular presidential primary race. It is unlike any I can recall in my life (I started paying attention in 1968), and I don't mean the race and gender issues. Never has one Democrat said that her opponent is not competent to be President BUT THE PRESUMPTIVE Republican candidate is. That, my friends, is political treason. It may not be as much of a shock to recent arrivals what with Joe Lieberman's antics, but for oldtime Dems this is the most awful behavior for a Democratic candidate. A dead hooker? We can find a workaround. But saying that the opposition's candidate is better than the guy in the lead?

I like stepping back and looking at a bigger picture (which may explain why I like Obama). When Clinton was President he did a lot of things that hurt working class Americans (I tend to look at things as class issues). The trade deals, the media megamergers, the gutting of welfare, the expansion of the drug war which put so many people in jail and guaranteed lives of poverty. Looking back you can say, gee, it wasn't so bad back then, and it wasn't---because the effects of much of what Bill Clinton put in place didn't bloom fully until Dubya took over. As a union activist I didn't think Bill was all that good with labor issues at the time although much of it could be blamed on the Contract With America and the Republican seizure of Congress.

So we have a President who behaved in many ways like a Republican, and we have his wife running for President and behaving like a Republican. Even praising the Republican candidate. And the Republican noise machine has been aligned to H. Clinton. My point is that the Clintons aren't as Democratic as they may appear to be. And if Clinton is doing things to hurt the Democratic Party in November, maybe just maybe she is doing this on purpose.

And actually the Republican-Democrat doesn't work as well as corporatist/non-corporatist.

Daniel Brandt wrote an essay fifteen years ago about Bill Clinton.

Here: http://www.namebase.org/news01.html

And she's coming to my small town Friday. Why? Ugh.

I'm half tempted to go just to see the spectacle, but I don't know that I'll be allowed to bring a giant barf bag in with me.

Hope that wasn't too harsh...

It finally occurred to me -- today -- what Hillary Clinton is. She's a demagogue.

When I read comments posted by her supporters, I often feel pity. They are totally marching to her drumbeat. Hillary is not reality-based. No doubt she, like the Bushies before her, would take this as a compliment: Ordinary people are relity-based, SHE creates her own "reality". But in order to construct thi parallel universe, she also creates band of -- dare I say it? -- dittoheads. Because everybody else has already left.

This is classic demagogue territory and in my view, it is the best argument of all for why she should never be president. It is the same MO as the Republicans, that's why she's so comfprtable with Limbaugh, Murdoch and Scaife -- just a somewhat different constituency, at a time when 28% of Americans think Bush is doing a good job.  

I really don't think America needs another demagogue in the White House.

I think Syolles (above) has it right.  What we are seeing here is the corporate wing of the Democratic Party fighting desperately to hang onto control, and Hillary is their point person.  They created the DLC for the sake of suppressing the populist urge within the Party, and now they are scared shitless because we the people are on the rise.

Sigh.  Just make the idiot go away.

Hillary Clinton is a nut case, as is anyone who votes for her at this point.

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

Mrs Clinton has had a few brief moments of clarity and humanity in this campaign, enough to feel a bit sorry for her and certainly enough to keep her supporters fighting for her.  It's sad how she is ending her campaign in smears.  It didn't have to be that way, and it will taint the Clinton legacy among those of us who supported them against the attempted coup by Newt Gingrich.  

Part of the problem is Bill.  He thinks he knows best, and that nobody else does.  It has to be very galling to see an unknown take the prize.

Knut

I am so fucking sick of the clintons and their defenders.
I am just so. fucking. sick. of. it.


Brendan Calling John Mccain

It's now or never for Hillary, so she's doing everything that she can to try to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat. If Obama wins in November then she can't run against him in a primary in 2012 without a severe backlash - she'd lose the presidential primary and then find her Senate primary opponent with $20-30 million cash on-hand and thousands of volunteers from sea to shining sea. If she waits until 2016 then there would be some political heir to President Obama that she'd have to run against and she would be nothing more than the 69 year old senator from New York, two decades removed from the last time that a large swath of the country felt good about a Clinton. Simply put, if she doesn't win now then she'll never be president. So why doesn't she do the right thing and admit that she has no chance of winning now?

Three reasons.

First, and most obviously, if she critically wounds Obama while keeping a significant segment of the Party convinced that her hands are clean  ("It's the misogyny, stupid!") then she can tell the Party "I told you so!" after the election and become the front-runner for 2012.

Second, there is no carrot for her to abandon her race now. She won't be the VP nominee and she's probably not interested in some cabinet position. Harry Reid isn't about to hand her the Majority Leader's position and I can't see her leapfrogging any senator for the chairmanship of any significant committees - even with potential vacancies there are a lot of senators ahead of her in seniority - so what carrot is there to offer her to drop out now?

Third, there is no stick, no punitive action that could be threatened that would make her drop out now. If she chooses to spend the rest of her days as the senator from New York then realistically she could serve from now until Chelsea runs against George P. Bush for president (if we ever actually see that then they'll find me floating face-down in the Ohio River).

Point being, it's now or never for Hillary, and nobody has anything to entice her or force her to give up her campaign against Barack Obama. Since she's grown she can do whatever she damn-well pleases, and in this case, unfortunately, that means doing whatever it takes to be the Democrat who takes the oath of office on January 20, 2009, because right about now a yellow dog could beat John McCain if it were the Democratic nominee.

The Underground Railroad

Kevin Spacey, as quoted on Talk Left:

I do not see how you can pretend two million people did not vote.

Huh?

I don't see why it's worth counting votes for something that wasn't a fair contest.

The illogic just fries the mind.

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes