Just in case anyone doesn’t understand why the Obama campaign’s courting of the Clintons, in the name of democratic unity, is such a delicate undertaking there is this.

Read more here

             In what is being widely acclaimed as a gracious and effective concession speech, Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed Sen. Obama, on Saturday. In the most telling words of her speech Sen. Clinton said, “You will always find me on the frontlines of democracy”. The frontline for Hillary, has for sixteen months, been the fight for her own candidacy; now she is trying to explain to her supporters that the general election is the new frontline, and Obama the best hope for progress for the issues that she has fought for all these years.

            Hillary Clinton is a good senator and a historic candidate. There are those things that she holds sole responsibility for. It was she who recalled sniper fire in Bosnia; it was she who seemed to diminish the accomplishments Martin Luther King; it was she who trusted George W. Bush on Iraq. These things played a role, but much of what has been so widely criticized about her campaign, in deed much of what led to its downfall, was not of her doing. Her advisers, particularly Mark Penn, gave her terrible advice. Her husband at times lots his temper at any challenge on the extent of his administrations accomplishments or more often stole the show when the focus should have been on the Clinton who was running for the highest office. (President, not God)  

            Perhaps it is not the best thing for women’s equality that the first woman president also be the wife of the former Commander-n-Chief. Perhaps it is not wise to run as the inevitable incumbent nominee in a “change election” when the sitting president is the most unpopular in generations. Perhaps a big state strategy doesn’t make a lot of since when the democratic primary contest is won on delegates that are distributed proportionally. These are the flaws that have undone the campaign, but they are not Sen. Clinton’s alone, and they are not reflections of a bad candidate, or a bad legislator.   

            Saturday’s concession speech was that of a woman who knows that her political future is still promising. Describing the impact of her campaign on women around the nation she said that while she had not broken the highest of glass ceilings she had put eighteen million cracks in it, referring to her number of votes. As Barack Obama said in his victory speech this past Tuesday, when our nation finally secures healthcare for all of its citizens, Hillary Clinton’s name will be on that project.

            The coming opportunity to achieve universal healthcare along with so many other progressive initiatives has called Clinton to this moment. In pointing to the fact that democrats have only won three out of the last ten elections she urged her supporters to seize the moment and win back the White House for the Democratic Party. And in her concession speech she not only endorsed Obama but even implied that the whole Clinton family was standing with her. Back in January in South Carolina at a campaign event for his wife, Bill Clinton spoke with me about how he hoped he might get a chance to vote for Obama someday, now they both will get their chance.

Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the General Election

This story is also up at the Global Report

           It was announced on Wednesday that Caroline Kennedy, Daughter of J.F.K., will be one of three people who are heading up the search for Obama’s VP. This reminded me that when G.W.B. was the republican “presumptive nominee’ back in 2000, he put former Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney in charge of finding a VP, he would of course eventually suggest himself.

            Despite the buzz, Hillary Clinton seems a very unlikely choice because of Bill Clinton if for no other reason. As big of a figure as Obama is, even he could find himself being overshadowed by the former president, whose political judgment seems to be past it’s prime, and who has shown himself this primary season to be impossible for even his wife to control.

            Look for someone with executive experience, so a governor is better than a legislator, since being governor is like being the president of your state. When you’re running against John McCain having someone with military experience could sure help. Also given Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign and the left over rifts in the “traditional democratic alliance”, maybe Obama should consider a Woman for VP. Also the Obama team has to think about swing states, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, someone from these states could tip the election his way. Along with all of that you have to think about the well healed notion of a balanced ticket, so if you are from Chicago (/Hawaii/Indonesia/Kenya/Kansas) then having a southerner would make a lot of since.  Now it might be true that no single person can satisfy all of those needs but you can be sure whoever is chosen will address some of these issues.

            Here are the names I would look at: Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, who was the Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, Gen. Wesley Clark, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, or perhaps Clinton supporter Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh who is the former Indian Gov. Rounding out the conventional wisdoms short list are Former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, and Penn Gov. Ed Rendell who also supported Clinton.

            Then there are those  who are less likely but who are my personal dream picks: former Sen. minority leader South Dakota’s Tom Daschle, who served three years as an intelligence officer in the Air Force Strategic Air Command, or the Senator from Delaware Joe Biden. But maybe the most interesting option, the anti-war retiring republican Senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel who is a Vietnam War veteran.

According to numerous reports Hillary Clinton will end her campaign on Friday, almost four full days after her rival secured the nomination.

Read more here

 Tim Russert said Tuesday night on MSNBC that, “a very close adviser to Hillary Clinton” has told him that “she wants to the vice president”. This disclosure is practically a clear signal to Obama’s team. However before anyone should consider the so-called dream ticket coming true one huge factor must somehow be mitigated, that factor the former president. In what might be a sign that the Clinton campaign understands this and is taking steps to address it, Bill Clinton is going back to work for his foundation at his office in Harlem, according to Russert. Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the General Election

This is why so many Obama supporters resist an Obama/Clinton ticket.

In honor of all those Clinton supporters Democratic Party trashing attitude at the Rules committee meeting in DC, I thought it fair to revisit Hillary’s own words about the Michigan primary that they now fight to count.

Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the Michigan Primary

  Let’s talk math. Hillary Clinton and her surrogates keep saying she has won the popular vote, how can they say that? Clinton has at times been ahead in the popular vote only if you overlook the fact that popular vote doesn’t include caucus states the vast majority of which Obama won, and you count the votes in the disputed primaries in Florida where no one campaigned and Michigan where Obama’s name wasn’t even on the ballot. Oh, wait you count Michigan vote for Hillary and give Obama none of the 40% who turned out to vote uncommitted. It’s a crazy standard, and not the one that a rational party uses to pick a nominee. .

Read more from the Washington Post .

Hillary says the Michigan Primary “wont count for anything”.

 Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the Michigan primary

Here’s the introduction to “The Comeback Id”

“Old friends and longtime aides are wringing their hands over Bill Clinton’s post–White House escapades, from the dubious (and secretive) business associations to the media blowups that have bruised his wife’s campaign, to the private-jetting around with a skirt-chasing, scandal-tinged posse. Some point to Clinton’s medical traumas; others blame sheer selfishness, and the absence of anyone who can say “no.” Exploring Clintonworld, the author asks if the former president will be consumed by his own worst self.”

Read the full article here

Read about my brief conversation with Clinton in the run up to the South Carolina primary

          This is brave and accurate and gusty. Keith Olbermann was one of the first in the media to tell the truth about Iraq and Katrina and so many other debacles that should call any thinking president to shame. He was the very first on cable news to draw attention to the disturbing link between the timing of Bush administration political scandals and the heightening of the terror warning level. Again and again he has done what everyone in the media should be doing, he has looked out for the American people; job well done again.

 Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the democratic primary race

More from A New Day Post’s coverage of the Democratic Primary race

Thanks Lamby

 “Imagine the excitement of leaving the convention and still not knowing who the nominee was. That would be crazy, crazy exciting!”

The New York Times searches for the answer to a question that until recently, everyone thought they knew the answer to; who will be the first woman elected to the highest office in our land? 

read the story in the New York Times  

Most people who havw watched the race closely expected this to happen on Wednesday, but it looks like Friday is the beginning of a big move of uncommitted super delegates toward Obama. Along with the media finally deciding to do the delegate math and a drying up of finical resources, this move of super delegates is pushing Hillary Clinton further to the side of this nomination race weather she stays in or not.

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Go to anewdaypost overage of the democratic primary race 

Associated Press on the Obama’s Friday Super delegate momentum

Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the Democratic Primary race

            Some in the media call it a split decision but on the whole, Tuesday was a win for the Obama campaign. With his 14% point victory in North Carolina, Obama won the considerably bigger state by the considerable bigger margin, over performing the polling going in to the vote that had suggested a Clinton surge. The importance of this contest was not lost on Obama; in his own words, North Carolina is a “big state, a swing state, and a state where we will compete in November, if I am the nominee.” Obama’s total vote count from both North Carolina and Indiana was 1,506,557 to Hillary Clinton’s 1,296,194 which breaks out to 54% to 46% in favor of Obama and a net gain of about 13 pledged delegates.

            Since the Iowa Primary, there has been this huge story that everyone could see coming like a ripening fruit hanging low in American springtime. And while this story is bigger than much of what has been in the news, few have been willing to write what has now become clear: in the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination, the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, has defeated the inevitable Hillary Clinton. It is one of the greatest upsets in the history of the Democratic Party, but out of respect the media has, for the most part, gone along with the narrative that this was a photo finish contest. Now the facts and the numbers are laid bare. After North Carolina and Indiana, more uncommitted super delegates are up for grabs than total remain pledged delegates in the states yet to vote. That means that the ground war of this nomination race is over.

            With the guilt by association argument played out, only the ‘big state’ argument is left. This is where the Clinton campaign says that her wins in California and New York primaries show that she is stronger candidate against McCain in the big states that a democrat must carry to win the White House. That argument may fly on the street but it will never work with the well informed party insiders to whom it is now being pitched. The super delegates understand that those big states aren’t up for grabs in 2008. Hillary is saying that only she can win California? Dennis Kucinich could beat John McCain in California and New York this year.

            Now that the ‘kitchen sink’ has been emptied and with so few states left to vote, the only remaining path to the nomination for Clinton evolves the so-called ‘nuclear option’ which is a cocktail of Obama character assassination and an insistence on changing the rules to included the votes in the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries. To carry the metaphor further, for Clinton that ‘nuclear option’ path involves mutually assured destruction and a generational setback for the Democratic Party. As Rachel Maddow said tonight on MSNCB, all Hillary has now is “a post-rational approach to getting the nomination”.

            Rumors swirled Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning of a 5-15 super delegate rollout today by the Obama campaign, what is fact is that Hillary Clinton has canceled a planed whirl wind of morning show appearances today. Talkingpointsmemo.com is reporting that Clinton is in fact canceling all public events Wednesday. The Campaign is said to be in finical peril and there is speculation that Hillary has again loaned money to the campaign. In her victory speech in Indiana, however, Hillary reassured her supporters and the nation that, “No mater what happens [she] will work for the nominee for the Democratic Party.” Perhaps these are signs of things to come.

            Whether Hillary Clinton’s coming exit from the race is graceful or not, focus must turn to the general election contest that now finally begins to take form. In Raleigh on Tuesday Obama said of that coming contest and the dirt that remains to be slung, “The question is not what kind of campaign they will run; it’s what kind of campaign we will run”. Obama is calling his supporters, many of them new voters, to a new kind of campaign and to this point they have responded.

See this story in the Asheville Citizen-Times and the Mountain Xpress

Tim Russert: “we know no who the nominee will be

The Huffington post : presumptive nominee (Barack Obama)

            Strangely, going into the vote in the democratic primary in North Carolina, the last of the “big states”, the talk is all about issues. In an attempt to recast herself as a populist Hillary Clinton has found her self in what might have seemed far fetched circumstances only a few months ago. The New York Senator has called Barack Obama an elitist and sought to contrast herself; recently pumping gas with and blue collar worker who gave her a lift on his morning commute. In an irresistible photo opportunity, the multitasking Clinton road shotgun in the pickup truck while conducting a telephone interview and waving to cameras.

            Now the ‘rural voter debate’ (media echo chamber) is centering the question of a summer holiday from the federal gas tax.  The idea that was originally put forth by John McCain now has Hillary Clinton’s Support. Obama though says that the gas tax break is a political gimmick that will actually make the problem worse. The experts are on Obama’s side but in this debate the poorest voters might be on Clinton’s, which will surly serve to reinforce the argument that Obama is an elitist. But is standing on principle and telling the truth more elitist than cynically pandering to the people who have got the least time to try to figure out what is in their long-term economic interest? 

            There is wide ranging consensus amongst economist and pundits, that the saving to the consumer would be minimal, in the range of about 30 dollars across the three month tax break. That is, if the price of gas stays the same, however it is likely that the savings would just be passed to the oil companies who could just raise the prices and who would surly benefit from increased demand. The real solution to the rising price of oil (which has in the last few minutes reach 120 dollars per barrel for the first time) and its effect on our weakening economy, is for our nation to have an energy policy that focuses on new technologies and renewable resources and an end to our dependency on Middle Eastern oil. That is the only thing that will ever solve this long range and fundamental problem that poses a real and present threat to our national security, environmental conditions, and national sovereignty. As for your 30 dollars, Obama has for some time called for a broad middle class tax cut, and currently supports senate plan for a second and more robust economic stimulus package.

Huffington post: Overwhelming Majority See Gas Tax Suspension As Political Ploy   

Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the democratic primary race

I suppose that it is to be expected that in a race with the “it depends on what the meaning of the word is is” Clintons, we would get into having to define some of these terms that get thrown around.

Elite it seems can mean anything, and the wife of the former leader of the free world can use it against a man she who only weeks earlier she said was to inexperienced to be commander in chief. Now Stephen Colbert helps us out with what the definition of the word electability is.

Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the Democratic Primary Race

Wait, what was that? It has been said that a gaff in politics is when you say what you really think.

Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the Democratic Primary Race

Do you ever have one of those moments when you think that you are so particularly unsuited for life in society that camera crews should follow you around and document the mishaps that fill your day? I know I do. Do you ever find your self in a situation where you are trying with all you might to make one point while the circumstances keep conspiring to make the contrary point? Well, as Clintons are known to do, Hillary ‘feels your pain’. It’s only fair to point out that it’s not Hillary’s fault she looks unnatural at this, it’s been a long long time since she has been into a gas station and pretended to get herself a cup of coffee.

See Hillary outside of the station at the pump

What does it mean to be an elitist? Does cynically appealing to the lowest common denominator politically or condescendingly patronizing the voters you court make you an elitist, maybe not but it sure makes you look like a phony.

Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the Democratic Primary Race

            On April 6th, while speaking to a group in San Francisco, Obama made comment about the tendency of working class rural voters to distrust Washington to such a point that their political allegiances tend to be formed on the social issues, religious values, or the 2^nd amendment, rather than on economics. The result of this phenomenon is that struggling white families in the rust belt, or in the south, often vote against their own economic self-interest.  This is how people with no savings, who live pay check, end up siding with those who want to give tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our nation, even as homes are foreclosed on and children go with out health care.  

            The former first lady, who ran as the inevitable candidate all summer, is now calling the Obama an “out-of-touch elitist” over these comments, though her campaign is simultaneously arguing that her major attributes when compared to Obama are her experience in the White House and that she was a known quality among party insiders. What’s more she has been for sometime arguing that her candidacy remains viable because of the Hail Mary strategy of having super delegates (party bosses) overturn the will of the common people and install her as the nominee. This ‘Obama is an elitist’ argument is being circulated even as resent reports show that she and her husband have made over a hundred million dollars since leaving the White House less than 8 years ago. Now it is Obama who is out of touch with ordinary working people?

            Just as an example of the two candidate’s respective timelines; In 1979 Hillary Rodham-Clinton was the first lady of Arkansas while Barack Obama was a senior in high school in Hawaii. Then in 1986, while married to the next democratic president, Clinton was sitting on the board of Wal-Mart, one of the world largest and most notorious corporations, while Obama worked as a community organizer and prepared to go to law school. Later in 1991 Obama graduated from Harvard law school, meanwhile Hillary Clinton was the first lady of the United States of America. She lived at White House, flew on Air Force One, and apparently spent time lobbying for the NAFTA Agreement she now claims to have apposed. In 1996 Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate, and Hillary Clinton still lived at the White House, having congressman, lobbyist and political contributors over for lunch. Finally in 2005, though he was still paying off student loans, Obama is sworn in as a US Senator. He joined the former first lady Hillary Clinton, who has been a member of that chamber since 2000.

            This is not to say that Sen. Obama doesn’t have political experience or powerful connection, but as the wife of Bill Clinton, Hillary had an access to some of the most powerful people in the world, unparallel by any of the other candidates in either party’s primary. She was instrumental in her husbands restocking of the Democratic Party infrastructure with influential friends and loyal colleagues. And as evidenced by her successful senate campaigns, she commanded the attention of the party’s donors as well as political handlers. The agility needed to pivot mid-campaign and go from inevitable ‘incumbent’ to anti-elitist woman of the people, isn’t only beyond Hillary, its superhuman.

            Rank and File Democrats who have been hit hardest by the Bush years also blame the Clinton administration for leaving them behind. Even during Bill Clinton’s ‘miracle economy’ (according to noted anthropologist Stanley Eitzen) in 1999, 12 % of Americans lived in poverty. In 1997 the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a study that showed that one in five U.S. poor (7.4 million persons) were classified as working poor. For these Americans, Clintons hypocritical charge that Obama is an elitist might ring hollow, regardless of how they might feel about him.

Recently Clinton Campaign manger Mark Penn stepped down from his position on the campaign because of revelations that he had worked to bring about a trade deal with Columbia that Hillary has apposed. Now we learn that her husband, the former president has also has connection to the Columbia deal.

read more here

            Keith Olbermann characterized Obama’s and Clinton’s criticism of McCain’s statement that he wouldn’t have a problem with keeping the troops in Iraq for a “maybe a hundred years”, as “truth slinging” And that’s what it is. “McCentury”, as he was called by the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson later in that MSNBC segment, has an uphill climb in front him this fall, as he tries to sell an open-ended military commitment to a public that has turned decidedly against the war in Iraq.  

Go to A New Day Post coverage of the 2008 general election

            One of the jobs in Hillary Clinton’s resume that hasn’t gotten much coverage this election cycle until now is the position she once held on the board of Wal-Mart, a corporation that is toxically unpopular among environmentalist, protectionist economist, consumer advocates, and labor unions.  

Go to A New Day Post Coverage of the Democratic Primary Race

Read more here

Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the North Carolina primary

To her credit, Hillary Clinton has taken the lead among the presidential candidates in calling on Present Bush skip the opening ceremony in Beijing.

Read more here

Go To A New Day Post’s coverage of the controversy surrounding the 08 Olympics

      This guy has carried so much water for the Bush administration that his proverbial fingers are tired and all pruned up, so you have to take what hey writes with those fingers with a grain of salt. He goes on in to rip Obama and has a track record of outlandish moments, even for a Fox New annalist. But he is undoubtedly smart, and in this case, correct.

“Clinton’s problem, however, is that a corkscrew landing under sniper fire is the kind of thing that is hard to forget and harder still for memory to invent. This is confabulation on a pathological scale. A Clintonian scale. And that’s the problem. Barack Obama has been gaining on Hillary in Pennsylvania in part because Tuzla reminds Democrats what they had largely succeeded in banishing from consciousness: the Clintons‘ rather arm’s-length relationship with truth.”

Read this article in the Washington Post

          Hard to believe it but NBC’s Tim Russert already has his red and blue pins out trying to figure out state by state, which candidate really is the most likely to win the 2008 election. The most interesting thing here is the idea of a new electoral map, if Obama is the candidate. Instead of the election being won and lost in Ohio and Florida like 2004 and 2000, Obama would bring lots of new states into play. In states like Iowa, Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Montana, polls show Obama would challenge the republican nominee in ways Clinton or Kerry or Gore could not.

See Tim Russert look in to his crystal ball

       As the Hillary Clinton campaign becomes more desperate to land a blow against Obama before the bell, it is sometimes exhausting to try to document all of the ‘misrepresentations’ of the truth that they are engaging in, but when they outright make stuff up; that’s easy to catch. Now Hillary seems to be saying she was against NAFTA while she was for it.

At this point this poll would have to consider an outlier but it does reflect a tightening seen in other polls in Pennsylvania. Most pundits agree that an Obama win in the PA primary would end the race, while a large Clinton win (10 points or more) might extend the fight.

read more here

Preexisting conditions like her breast cancer would be covered under the democrat’s plan and not under McCain’s.

More from the LA Times

            Last week Hillary Clinton described a trip she took as first lady to Bosnia. She began, “when a place was too small or too dangerous for the president to go they sent the first lady…” According to Hillary it was quite a scene. Complete with the first lady covering her head and ducking to avoid incoming sniper fire as she ran from her airplane to the car. Now this is the type of thing that really sets Clinton apart form her democratic rival, she has first hand experience in a war zone. The only problem is it isn’t true.

            Just days after Hillary retold the story; video footage surfaced showing the first lady and a teenage Chelsea Clinton strolling off their plane and being formally received. Ms Clinton is even seen taking time to meet a little girl who she stoops down to speak with for some time. No one has on a Kevlar helmet, no one is ducking or running for the car and there is no sniper fire.

            Today Clinton acknowledged that her original story wasn’t correct, but worsening the political impart of this blunder, she attempted to justify her faulty memory by saying she was sleep deprived. That’s right, the same lady who Americans are supposed to trust to take that 3 A.M. phone call, was too sleepy to remember whether or not she and her teenage daughter had been shot at. Who knows what she might say if she answered that red phone. This race, and the coverage of it as a still competitive contest, is before our eyes, leaving the realm of reality.

NBC’s coverage of this story with footage from Bosnia

Go to A New Day Post’s Coverage of the democratic primary race

            Former Tennessee representative and current chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, Harold Ford Jr. said today on MSNBC’s Race for the White House, that whoever wins the North Carolina primary will be the nominee. On what is perhaps a related note, in his NCAA tournament bracket Barack Obama has picked the University of North Carolina Tar Heels to win a national championship. So far it looks like a good pick, and if UNC does win a championship it will happen on a little over a month before the May 6^th democratic primary. In the same segment conservative commentator Pat Buchanan stated the obvious but seldom spoken truth, “if Barack Obama comes in with the lead in the popular vote and in pledged delegates, there is no way the Super Delegates give the nomination to Hillary”.

Go to A New Day Post’s coverage the race for the democratic nomination

New York Magazine’s John Heilemann says North Carolina is the new Pennsylvania  

           To her credit, Sen. Clinton has made a statement today urging Chinese forces to exercise restraint, in the current conflict in Tibet. There really isn’t any middle ground in a conflict between indigenous unarmed pacifist Buddhist monks and the occupying Communist military police that have shown a willingness to kill those who express their disagreement with the state. All candidates, and anyone who has a platform upon which to do it, should condemn the atrocities that are currently unfolding and side with the Dalai Lama as he urges his people to maintain nonviolence . 

Read Clinton’s comments

Go to a New Day Post’s coverage of the controversy surrounding the ’08 Olympics

Clinton Campaign Manager Mark Penn said that Obama can’t win the general election, but the numbers don’t back that up. Jonathan Chait over at the New Republic takes a look at the facts, so should you.

. Go to A New Day Post’s coverage of the democratic primary race.