Hillary Can’t be the VP

There are an array of reasons that Obama should not choose Hillary as his running mate.  But there is one simple reason that Obama cannot select Hillary for the ticket: she doesn’t share his world vision.  Through the course of the primary process, we have learned that Hillary subscribes to a values system that differs from Obama’s.  Although their ideological stances pit them in the same corner, Obama’s raison d’etre clashes with Hillary’s behavior during this race.  For him, Hillary’s the part of Washington that needs to be reformed or displaced.  They play by different rules, and I’m not so sure that Hillary can be reformed.

Obama revealed a lot about his world vision in his speech on race a few months ago.  Explaining his revulsion to Reverend Wright’s infamous and derogatory comments, Obama said:

“[The remarks] expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”

Later, Obama states:

“The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

Why do I raise these statements about Reverend Wright when talking about Hillary Clinton?  Hillary and Bill, as Jonathan Chait surmises in the New Republic, adopted a conservative populist rhetoric in the waning months of the primary season.  Chait writes:

“Conservative populism… dismisses any inference that the rich and the non-rich might have opposing interests as “class warfare.” Conservative populism prefers to divide society along social lines, with the elites being intellectuals and other snobs who fancy themselves better than average Americans.”

Indeed, this accurately explains why, to borrow once again from Chait, the “über-wonk [Hillary] has disparaged economists and expertise” and “the staunch ally of black America [again, Hillary] has attacked her opponent for lacking support of ‘working, hard-working Americans, white Americans.’”  I’d like to add to this the fact that Hillary has shamelessly failed to state unequivocally Obama’s religion (He’s not Muslim “as far as I know.”).
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Overdone

According to her own advisers, Hillary can’t win even by changing the rules:

In a Clinton campaign conference call with reporters on Wednesday, three top advisers acknowledged that even if all the delegates from disputed primaries in Michigan and Florida were seated at the Democratic convention, Mrs. Clinton would still not have enough delegates to claim the nomination.

Phil Singer, a spokesman for the campaign, estimated that in a best-case event, where the Michigan and Florida delegates were apportioned according to each state’s popular vote, Mrs. Clinton would still be about 100 delegates shy of the number needed. Delegates in those states have not been counted, the penalty for holding early primaries.

So it’s difficult to see where she has a case to stay in the race (I’m a rapper) if she can’t even win via a coup d’etat.

Hillary: A Bush in Democrat’s Clothing

Disgusting is the politician who uses his opponent’s skin color and religion to fear people into voting for you.  Hillary became disgusting when she said Obama’s not a Muslim “as far as I know“.

Pathetic is the politician who attacks people because they disagree with him, especially when he is incredibly wrong.  This is what Hillary became today.  From Reuters:

“I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,” Clinton said when asked to name an economist who backed her proposal.

“We’ve got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans,” said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.

Sadly, the attack-when-wrong tactic is a tried and true method of convincing people that you are right.  But if this is your strategy, then who needs to be right?  Tired is the politician who conforms the world to his worldview, rather than making the adjustments to his worldview that would cause it to fit the world.

“Mission accomplished,” right?

I’ve had enough of this bullshit for the last 8 years to last a lifetime…  how about you?

Playing the Momentum Game

The big news out of Wisconsin and Hawaii is that Barak Obama won in two states that he was expected to win. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on whether or not you are “on the hope train,” this news is not very big at all. In fact, most news outlets have decided to focus their articles on Obama’s win streak or what the exit polls tell us or both.

I’d like just to pause for a moment and bask in the meaning of Wisconsin and Hawaii. The fact that Obama won these states expectedly, particularly Wisconsin, which is seen as a swing state, is a very big deal. Had Hillary won, or even come close, the tenor of the post-February-19th-primary news cycle would have been entirely different.

Because Obama won Wisconsin and Hawaii, two weeks of news will focus on the despair and frustration of the HRC campaign rather than the hopeful optimism that might have been. She will fuel this descent by truncating her articulation of purpose and harping the urgency of her cause. Her message of hope, which was over matched by Obama’s in the first place, will be replaced by attacks on his. Hillary will blame the media for taking her statements out of context and for siding with Obama. No, it couldn’t be her fault that she’s struggling to hang on. Maybe she needs a new campaign manager.

Of course, most of the things I’ve written above have been characteristics of Hillary’s campaign for quite some time. They are more descriptive than predictive. Wisconsin and Hawaii prove that Hillary began digging her grave prematurely: despair became her story even though destiny was still something she could control.

Now, all she has is despair. She may want to make some campaign visits to churches, where maybe she can pray for a prayer.

Cementing my anti-Hillary Position

As the Obama movement proceeds to overtake Hillary’s support base, Hillary has done a good job convincing voters that her campaign is struggling. In January, Hillary had to loan her campaign $5 million of her private funds, which contrasts just a bit with the $32 million raised by Obama. Then, Hillary gets trounced in 6 primaries and caucuses over the weekend and her campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle ‘quits.’ Nothing says ‘desperation’ like firing your go-to-gal in the heat of battle. If voters were not convinced enough that the once overwhelming inevitability of a third Clinton White House was all but a memory, she gets a lashing in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia just a few days later.

What is most troubling about Hillary’s demise is her offensive against the nomination system, a system that has its pluses and minuses, but was adopted by the DNC to act as the rules of the game for this primary. Now that she is losing, Hillary does not like these rules very much anymore. Hillary’s excuses for failure wreak of desperation and a callous disregard for the rules of the game when they do not work in her favor. She must have learned this from her husband; a man who thinks he can get away with anything by questioning the definition of the word ‘is.’

According to Politico, Hillary “has sought to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the process by which pledged delegates are chosen, arguing that caucuses aren’t true reflections of the will of the people, and that the exclusion of Florida and Michigan voters because of a dispute over the primary calendar taints the official tallies.”

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