Infighting Worries Democrats

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Infighting Worries Democrats
Split Between Backers Of Clinton and Obama Lifts Republican Hopes
By JONATHAN KAUFMAN
March 11, 2008; Page A4

(snip)

About 75% of Republicans say they are satisfied with Sen. McCain, compared with 24% who say they are dissatisfied, according to an analysis of February and March exit polls by Public Opinion Strategies, which conducts the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. Among Democrats, 71% said they would be satisfied if Sen. Clinton becomes the nominee, while 28% said they would be dissatisfied; roughly the same number, 70%, would be satisfied with Sen. Obama; 29% dissatisfied. Although Sen. McCain is benefiting from having clinched the nomination, there is a marked change from January, when 81% of the Democrats said they were satisfied with their candidates, compared with 57% of Republicans who said they were happy with their field.

(snip)

That isn't likely to change soon. In Mississippi, which votes today and where polls show Sen. Obama holding a substantial lead, about 12% of Democratic primary voters say they would never vote for Hillary Clinton, while 20% say they would never vote for Sen. Obama... Until recently, Democrats were buoyed by record fund-raising and record turnout in the primaries and by the belief that divisions among Republicans, especially between social conservatives and moderates like Sen. McCain, would weaken the party's chances in November. Now, however, Democrats are confronting cracks among groups seen crucial to victory in November. Blacks, women and young voters all could play key roles in what is expected to be a close general election. Sen. McCain has also signaled his intention to compete for the Hispanic vote based on his support of immigration change and to woo blue-collar voters who have voted frequently for Republicans.

Black radio talk shows are ablaze with callers saying they will stay home in November if Sen. Clinton wins the nomination. Warren Ballentine, a nationally syndicated show host, says he has been flooded with calls and emails from African-Americans saying they won't vote for Sen. Clinton... While few believe Sen. McCain will win large numbers of African-American voters, a fall in turnout would hurt. "Black voters are very similar to evangelicals," says Keli Goff, a black political analyst. If there's not an acceptable candidate, "we're more likely to stay home."

Anger is also appearing among women supporting Sen. Clinton. Connie Swanson, a teacher in Fort Worth, Texas, voted for Sen. Clinton in the primary and tried to recruit friends to caucus for her. "If Obama gets it, I'm voting Republican," she says. "I've watched all the debates, and I honestly don't get it. He's like a fantasy." Betty Fung, a graduate student in Washington who supports Sen. Clinton, complains "the attacks on Hillary from the Obama side tend to be very personal attacks. They are not attacking her policies, they are attacking who she is." If Sen. Clinton wins the nomination, Ms. Fung says, she would volunteer to travel to other states to campaign for her. If Sen. Obama is the nominee, "I might help out locally -- if I had the time."

Supporters of Sen. Clinton also worry about young voters, male and female, who have turned out in large numbers for Sen. Obama. "Young students for Obama could stay home; that's one reason I am so furious at them," says Fran Reiter, former deputy mayor of New York and a Clinton supporter. "They are all excited about him, and they don't have any staying power. If Obama doesn't get the nomination, do they get angry again and crawl back into their apathetic hole?"

Republicans are gleeful.

(snip)

--Amy Chozick, Elizabeth Holmes and Nick Timiraos contributed to this article.


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120518989380725515.html (subscription)

[AX10]

1. Oh well, at least the Democrats have one talent.

Losing elections that is.

[lvx35]

2. K&R. I mean WTF???

The things I see here are so cowardly...The shit Bush has done has NO precedent...Certainly not with Bill Clinton. Yet people still blame the Clintons? Alternatively, in my opinion Bush has worn his badness on his sleeve, its obvious even in the way he speaks...Yet people act like there is some way somebody as intelligent and beautiful as Obama could be nearly as bad? We need to wake the hell up, and pull this party together.

[bebeholmes]

4. Clintons

Here are some things I borrowed from Neal Boortz that you Hillary supporters should be proud of. Enjoy. There are no good choices for president in this election, but it is obvious that McCain (RINO)is the lesser of 3 evils.

Hillary is a liar. She's a pathological liar. A habitual liar. She lies when there is no compelling reason to do so. She lies when the truth is easily ascertainable. It's just part of her psychological makeup ... when she talks you can't believe what she's saying.

Hillary is such an accomplished liar that books have been written dedicated solely to exposing her lies! One you might like to try is "I've Always Been a Yankees Fan, Hillary Clinton in Her Own Words."

Now I know that this is old news, but I was on vacation last week and didn't get to gleefully join in the raucous laughter when Senator Rodham Clinton Rodham came out with this wonderful comment about ducking sniper fire upon her arrival in Bosnia. By the end of the week we were being treated to a video of Hillary saying something like "So, I made a mistake. I'm human" in an overly snotty and condescending manner..

Mistake? This was a mistake? Did she, as she says, "misspeak?" Let's subject this ridiculous assertion to a little logical scrutiny.

Hillary says it was a mistake. Well, what was the nature of this mistake? Did she confuse Bosnia with some other dangerous location she visited while First Lady? Think about it ... There was not. To accept that this was a mistake you would have to form some sort of a belief that she was actually thinking of some other situation – some other landing and visit to a combat zone – and errantly transposed that experience to the Bosnia visit. Well, have you been listening? Have you heard her say that she just transposed events? Have you heard her explain that the sniper fire actually happened at another time and another place? I'll answer that one for you .. no, you haven't. That would be because the whole "corkscrew landing" and running from sniper fire never happened anywhere at any time. It was completely made up. It was a lie .. a lie told to make her appear to be more important and courageous to the voters than she really is. It was a lie to enhance her image and credentials. Mistake? Give me a big time break. Her mistake was in making up and telling the lie in the first place. But that is a mistake she makes quite often.

Let's just do a quick review here.

Then there's the story about Chelsea jogging around the World Trade Center when the Islamic terrorists attacked on 9/11. Wasn't true. Chelsea was nowhere near the trade center. Where did Hillary get this story? Did her daughter make a mistake and tell her that she was out jogging? Hardly. There was no basis at all for this lie. None. This was Hillary trying to make herself a part of this tragic story .. telling a bold lie in order to bring to herself just some of the sympathy felt for those who suffered actually losses in this attack by Muslim goons.

How about Monica Lewinsky? Do you really think that the whole story was just made up by some "vast right wing conspiracy" to discredit her husband? Come on now. How many so-called "bimbo eruptions" had Hillary handled before Monica came huffing along? She knew what a whore-dog her husband was, yet she sat there and prattled on about a right-wing conspiracy. Just another lie.

Then we have the Sir Edmund Hillary thing. Yeah .. her mother named her after the first person to climb Mt. Everest. Problem is, nobody had heard of Sir Edmund Hillary when Hillary Rodham was born. A lie.

Remember Bill Clinton pardoning those Puerto Rican FALN terrorists as he left office? Hillary was running for the Senate in New York at the time, and the Puerto Rican community was demanding these terrorists be pardoned. Hillary – the woman so involved with everything Bill did in the White House – says she didn't know about the pardons. Right.

Oh yeah ... Hillary wanted to be an astronaut. Remember this one? She wrote NASA to find out how to apply, and she says they wrote back saying that they "don't take girls." Sally Ride was about three years younger than Hillary when she became the first U.S. woman in space. Do you believe that NASA actually sent that letter to Hillary.

Then there's this biggie. The Rose Law Firm billing records. This wasn't an inconsequential lie designed to enhance her image. It was a lie to cover her rear end. Investigators wanted her billing records from the Rose Law Firm to see if she had done any work on a tax scam known as Casa Grande. She claimed – under oath – that she didn't have those billing records, that she didn't know where they were, and that she frankly doubted that they existed at all. Well .. it turns out they did indeed exist. They were found in her private quarters in the White House two years after she swore under oath that she didn't have them. Not only were they found, but they had her handwriting and fingerprints on them. This particular lie was a crime. She was never prosecuted.

Moving right along to the soccer lie. The story here was supposed to be that Hillary was on a junior high school soccer team and had a confrontation with the goal tender from an opposing team. If I remember the story correctly, the opposing goalie told Hillary that she didn't like white people. Oh yeah .. like high school soccer goalies just spontaneously blurt out their hatred for white people during a soccer game. The problem here was that the school Hillary was attending didn't have a soccer team. Another lie.

Hillary says she didn't give the order to fire the White House travel office staff. Staffers remember the exact words she used: "Fire their asses." She then had their asses and all their belongings unceremoniously dumped on the Ellipse behind the White House

[Appaloosa]

5. that's politics for you

I just learned of several Obama "white" lies. However, people are so caught up in his persona and so determined to stick with their choice that they don't want to hear these stories. So the media picks, picks, picks at HRC. It would be funny if it weren't so sad. It is *impossible* for one person to be as irredeemably *bad* as people claim HRC is. Even Bill Maher says "there's noting hateful about that woman." When we get some time and distance from this stuff, the analysis of what happened here is going to be truly revealing.

I used to really be inspired by Obama. Then he announced his candidacy for President. For all of his beautiful rhetoric, turning professional pol makes you dirty. If the media played up his fabrications and foibles, you would see that happening already and it's really too bad. The only reason B.O. doesn't look as bad as some of the others is: he hasn't been around as long. It's ironic. The very thing people like about him and want from him will be taken from him. If he makes it past the Repub attack machine, there will be another Carter-like Presidency followed by x more years of Republican rule. (Don't get me wrong, Jimmy Carter is a noble human being and worthy of admiration. He's just a better statesman than a President.)

I'll say this much for HRC, while she's reviled and scrutinized, while stories of how *awful* she is (and let's not forget, there can be several sides to a story), she sure can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

[spuds]

3. you really think the dem's will do as they

you really think the dem's will do as they say? From what I seen both sides are full of crap look at Nacy Pelosi and her do nothing congress she can't even get all the dem's to vote the same way her and jack mertha sure made it look go and after they got in nothing...and that paising the minimum wage crap was a joke look at the economy you really think 2 bucks witch isnt a gallon of gas really helped? when I get my stimulus check im making a video of me flushing it down the toilet and sending it to congressmen willson I cant be bought off that easy.

[spuds]

6. more hillery digs

As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying. The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes. Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her foormer law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career. Why? “Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.” How could a 27-year-old House staff member do all that? She couldn’t do it by herself, but Zeifman said she was one of several individuals – including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House Counsel) Bernard Nussbaum – who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation. Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach – including Kennedy’s purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro. The actions of Hillary and her cohorts went directly against the judgment of top Democrats, up to and including then-House Majority Leader Tip O’Neill, that Nixon clearly had the right to counsel. Zeifman says that Hillary, along with Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar, was determined to gain enough votes on the Judiciary Committee to change House rules and deny counsel to Nixon. And in order to pull this off, Zeifman says Hillary wrote a fraudulent legal brief, and confiscated public documents to hide her deception. The brief involved precedent for representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding. When Hillary endeavored to write a legal brief arguing there is no right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding, Zeifman says, he told Hillary about the case of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, who faced an impeachment attempt in 1970. “As soon as the impeachment resolutions were introduced by (then-House Minority Leader Gerald) Ford, and they were referred to the House Judiciary Committee, the first thing Douglas did was hire himself a lawyer,” Zeifman said. The Judiciary Committee allowed Douglas to keep counsel, thus establishing the precedent. Zeifman says he told Hillary that all the documents establishing this fact were in the Judiciary Committee’s public files. So what did Hillary do? “Hillary then removed all the Douglas files to the offices where she was located, which at that time was secured and inaccessible to the public,” Zeifman said. Hillary then proceeded to write a legal brief arguing there was no precedent for the right to representation by counsel during an impeachment proceeding – as if the Douglas case had never occurred. The brief was so fraudulent and ridiculous, Zeifman believes Hillary would have been disbarred if she had submitted it to a judge. Zeifman says that if Hillary, Marshall, Nussbaum and Doar had succeeded, members of the House Judiciary Committee would have also been denied the right to cross-examine witnesses, and denied the opportunity to even participate in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Nixon. Of course, Nixon’s resignation rendered the entire issue moot, ending Hillary’s career on the Judiciary Committee staff in a most undistinguished manner. Zeifman says he was urged by top committee members to keep a diary of everything that was happening. He did so, and still has the diary if anyone wants to check the veracity of his story. Certainly, he could not have known in 1974 that diary entries about a young lawyer named Hillary Rodham would be of interest to anyone 34 years later.

it's time for a change and not to the same old crap in drag.....GO Barack Obama