This is not the campaign that Hillary Clinton and the party envisioned...

[rocktivity]

Last edited Sat Feb 13, 2016, 06:09 PM - Edit history (1)

Huffington Post: Sen. Bernie Sanders' victory over Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary all but guarantees the party what it wanted to avoid: a long, costly, and potentially damaging primary fight to determine the nominee...

(But) even amid the dour news on Tuesday night, there was confident talk. "We'll do well in March. And that's where the ballgame is," Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta said. The (Clinton) campaign released a three-page memo...touting (her) strength in the upcoming states and noting, rightly, that there were far more delegates to gain there...

(T)he memo read..."In total, 1,875 delegates will be awarded in the first 15 days of March, including nearly 900 on Super Tuesday alone. When you take into account the large number of Super Delegate commitments we’ve secured, as well as Hillary’s commanding lead in the polls in delegate-rich states, she is in a very strong position to become the nominee."

That Clinton's team has to rely on sharp analytics and delegate math-crunching to make the case for her winning the nomination is, in and of itself, remarkable. She wasn't supposed to be in this type of protracted struggle, certainly not against someone who wasn't even a Democrat...

Easy on the melodrama, Huffpo -- two primary contests, one of which was held in a candidate's back yard, do not a "protracted struggle" make. But it does mean that it's time to get this out of the mothballs:




As for Hillary's treasury of superdelegate commitments, here's another little artifact from 2008:




I'm not saying that Hillary's approach can't work, just that it didn't work last time.


rocktivity

[7wo7rees]

1. Thank you! And wah hoo! What an amazing ride to

SUPER TUESDAY this is going to be!

[winter is coming]

2. They're counting heavily on the superdelegates.

Given the exit polls from NH, showing Bernie kicking butt in almost all demographics, I suspect some of those superdelegates are starting to have second thoughts.

[TheBlackAdder]

5. Yes. Nothing says "Political Legitimacy" like Tea Party & Grover Norquist style "Loyalty Pledges."

[jillan]

6. Who can stop us from putting pressure on the super delegates if need be?

They are not going to be able to stand in the way of democracy, and if they do, there will be hell to pay.
Enough of these stupid pledges - it makes me think of Animal House for some reason - lol.

[TheBlackAdder]

3. Perhaps it's those Democrats with cosy inbred oil (Koch/BP) relationships, like Hillary's Podesta.

.


Check out the link...

Fracking, KXL, If election, would she do a Chris Christie and let ExxonMobile out of a Climate Change/Pollution settlement?



Hillary Clinton rakes in money from fossil fuel interests

Here’s just a partial list of the fossil fuel–friendly bundlers who raised money for Clinton from April through June:

http://grist.org/climate-energy/hillary-clinton-rakes-in-money-from-fossil-fuel-interests/

Heather Podesta and Tony Podesta have raised $31,150 and $74,575, respectively. The power ex-couple are big-shot Democratic lobbyists. Tony’s brother John is Clinton’s campaign chair and former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton. Even though John Podesta is considered a climate hawk, Tony and his ex-wife Heather represent fossil fuel companies. Heather’s recent past clients include Marathon Oil and Bill Koch’s Oxbow Carbon, a coal giant, and from 2004 to 2006 she lobbied for Koch Industries. Tony lobbied for BP in the wake of its disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, and through last year he represented Golden Pass, a company co-owned by ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum that wants to export liquefied natural gas. To be fair, they also work on behalf of renewable fuel companies — Tony represents SolarReserve, a solar power company, and Heather lobbies for the ethanol industry. You might call the Podestas the very embodiment of the Obama/Clinton “all of the above” energy policy.

But the contrast between her and her opponents is clear, and it’s indicative of real policy differences. O’Malley has laid out a set of strong, detailed proposals to combat climate change. These include not just measures Obama has begun taking, like regulating carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act, but ones he hasn’t, like adopting zero-tolerance regulation for methane leaks from oil and gas wells and denying new offshore oil leasing permits. Clinton has not endorsed any stances beyond Obama’s except for charging more for coal leases.

“Hillary Clinton’s position is stuck in the past,” says Jamie Henn, a spokesperson for 350 Action. “We have the tools to transition away from fossil fuels. What about all the jobs lost because of climate impacts? We need a president who is willing to make tough decisions about how to transition our economy in the face of climate risk.”

.

[HassleCat]

4. This could be good for us.

And it may be the right time to do it. We knew we would have to fight this battle someday. There has been growing dissatisfaction with the "third way or whatever we want to call it. We win the presidency with some regularity, but we lose at all other levels of government. We lost Congress. State legislatures are hopelessly Republican, many of them stacked to the rafters with crazy, dangerous Republicans. How many governors are Democrats? Even when we win the presidency, many of our congressional candidates disavow our president and refuse to support legislation that reflects anything remotely connected to the public interest. We're losers, and many of us are tired of being losers, tired of being a party of defeatists, tired of being afraid to stand for anything or fight for anything.

So we're ready to settle this right now. We know we could nominate Bernie Sanders and lose the presidency, in which case we would be banished for life, never to see another progressive candidate run as a Democrat. Yes, it's risky, but we're not particularly vulnerable this time. The Republicans have no strong candidate. In fact, they might not even be able to make a decent fight of it. We could win no matter who we nominate. So let's have this fight right now and do the best with the result, no matter which way it goes.

[Cassiopeia]

7. It was supposed to be over tonight.

Instead, the wheels have come off. The tow truck is on the way with spares, but I think it will run out before too long.

[TTUBatfan2008]

12. Odds are still heavily in her favor

If he wins the nomination it will be one of the biggest upsets in political history, especially considering the Super Delegate situation.

[Cassiopeia]

13. That's a long damn way from

he'll never get any traction and it will all be over by NH. That was the message to us when Bernie announced.

[Chakab]

8. I have no idea how this race will play out, but I simply can't imagine

any scenario where the party would try to hand the nomination to Clinton based on the super delegate support if Sanders had a slight lead in normal delegates after all of the primaries and caucuses.

The ensuing revolt would destroy the party.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. A favorite saying in the Beltway is "They're measuring the drapes for their office."...

Bernie doesn't give a fuck about the drapes.

[daleanime]

10. Nope....

Bernie's got other fish to fry.

[Major Hogwash]

11. Not that it's important or anything . . .

. . . but Hillary has been actively running for President for at least the past dozen years, she has instant access to hundreds of millions of dollars via PACS, she garnered endorsements from almost every elected Democrat sitting in Congress today, then DWS agreed to limit the debates to 6, while Hillary refused to discuss her positions on TPP, the Keystone Pipeline, or on several other large international issues, and then, and only after she heard what Bernie and O'Malley were saying about those issues, did she change her tune on those issues.

No, her approach won't work.
It never will.
People don't like her policies, or her habit of taking each and every conceivable position on the issues that are affecting our lives on a daily basis.

This election is not about Hillary or about Bernie being good candidates.
This election is about taking the Democratic party back to its fundamental principles, back to its base.
It's about us . . . the ones who make up the fucking party . . not about the candidates themselves.