Month: January 2008

Grab your kevlar and watch your back, Barack.

Hillary Clinton was on Friday planning an increased campaign role for her husband and more direct attacks on Barack Obama’s political inexperience as she battled to prevent her rival for the Democratic nomination building up an unstoppable momentum.

Her supporters recognised that she was fighting for survival as she headed into next Tuesday’s crucial New Hampshire primary, which she must now win to stop the Obama bandwagon from building on its striking success in Iowa on Thursday.

She promised to “sharpen the contrast” between herself and Mr Obama, particularly on economic policy where Clinton officials believe Mr Obama’s agenda is “most vague”.

“The stakes couldn’t be any higher,” Mrs Clinton said in an e-mail to supporters. “Events couldn’t be moving any faster. With everything on the line, let’s show them what we’re made of.”

Like shrapnel from a IED, Hillary’s surrogates will flood the airways this weekend with every amount of flak they can drum up in an attempt to wound the Obama campaign ahead of the primary in New Hampshire. While Hillary strives to “warm up” her personality and strengthen her likability percentage, she’ll need to simultaneously plot the coordinates of her attack on Barack. It’s risky warfare, to be sure. Unfortunately for Hillary, it’s much easier for her to be nasty with a stone-cold look and monotonous tone than it is to be convincing with a smile and folksy remark. New Hampshire knows it, and so does most of America. If she can’t pull out a win on January 8, her “inevitability” will be “history”.

Tags:
2008 Election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire, Politics

When the truth comes out of the mouth of Bill Clinton, it’s worth noting.

ABC News’ Kate Snow Reports: Bill Clinton says his wife can be a “comeback kid” just like he was.

“Absolutely,” President Clinton said in a brief interview with ABC News.

“Remember I lost here,” Clinton added, referring to New Hampshire. (Bill Clinton placed second in New Hampshire in 1992 behind Paul Tsongas.)

He then quickly listed off his other losses from memory: “South Dakota, Maine, Maryland, Colorado, before I ever won a state,” he said.

So what can Hillary Clinton do to come back?

“Run that hard here,” said her husband. “She’s got a better profile here. They know more about her now than they did about me then. And I think she’ll be fine. We just get out and go.”

Bill Clinton did express one concern about the shortened time frame for campaigning in New Hampshire. New Hampshire’s primary is next Tuesday, January 8– just five days after the Iowa caucuses.

“I just wish we had ten days instead of five,” Clinton said.

And the truth is in that last sentence. In essence, Bill is signaling that New Hampshire could easily fall in the loss column for Hillary, and that there may not be enough time to turn that around. He has good reason to be concerned.

Tags:
2008 Election, Hillary Clinton, Politics, New Hampshire

Golllleyyyyy!

Gomer Pyle Mike Huckabee wins Iowa, which basically scares me to death. He’s vanilla pudding (see Stephen Green). I don’t think he’ll have much to work with after New Hampshire, and that scares me even more because it’ll mean we’ll have to hear about how John McCain is the second coming and all. Romney is toast. Which leaves Rudy. Ugh. Wake me when it’s over.

The best moment of the night? Hillary losing and having to resort to giving a speech about how great it is that Democrats won. Heh, too funny. And how about that lineup on the stage behind her? Bubba, looking grayer than normal, biting his lip and all. Gross. His stepford child standing next to him – did she even move during the speech? And then there was Albright – oooh, talk about a nightmare (remember her clinking glasses with Kim Jong Il?), and General Wesley Clark, who had this eerie frozen smile on his face. Yikes, no thanks.

Hillary is far from done though. The Clinton Attack Machine is just getting warmed up. Get ready to be wacked, Obama.

Tags:
2008 Election, Campaign, Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Huckabee, Iowa Caucus, Liberalism, North Korea, Politics, Republicans

Supreme Court Justice Bill Clinton, as reported by Clintonista Network News.

…nuff said.

Tags:
2008 Election, Campaign, Hillary Clinton, Supreme Court, CNN

Bill Richardson tells his supporters to go for Obama in the second round if he doesn’t achieve the needed 15 percent. Well, so much for sucking up to Hillary’s inevitability to guarantee a VP slot.

Tags:
2008 Election, Iowa Caucus, Politics, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Barack Obama

The rumor on the internets today is that Fred Thompson will likely drop out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination and push supporters to John McCain. All predictions point to a poor showing in Iowa. Couple this with a national campaign lacking spark, and it’s easy to believe Fred’s hours are numbered.

Thompson’s campaign, which last spring and summer was generating fevered anticipation in the media and with some Republican activists, has never ignited nationally, and there are no signs of a late spark happening here in Iowa, where even a third-place finish is far from assured.

This reality — combined with a fundraising drought — left well-connected friends and advisers of Thompson Wednesday evening predicting that he will pull the plug on hype and hope before the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary.

Thompson’s departure could shake up the race more than his continued presence. Friends and advisers said they have long considered it likely that if the lobbyist-actor is forced from the race he would endorse John McCain, his former Senate colleague who lately has been staging a political revival in New Hampshire.

“Without a solid third-place finish, there’s no point in going on,” a Thompson adviser said Wednesday. “It was an honorable race, and he turned out to be a good candidate. The moment had just passed.”

Let’s face the facts – Fred’s heart just hasn’t been in this thing. I don’t know what he expected, but it sure looks like he thought he’d be automatically nominated with little or no effort. Soon as he found out he’d have to actually shake a few hands, eat at a couple drive-ins and make appearances at a dozen county fairs, he mentally checked out of the race. All that talk of Fred constantly running for protection in his air conditioned trailer now start to make sense. Ah, those actor types…too bad his conservative talk was just a good script.

Update: Liar liar pants on fire.

Tags:
2008 Election, Politics, Republicans, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Iowa Caucus

Oh boy.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) made a last-minute decision to appear on “Late Night with David Letterman” on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, campaign sources said. Wednesday is Letterman’s first night back since the writer’s strike. “They reached out to us yesterday and we agreed to do it,” a Clinton aide said.

It’s not all that surprising that Hillary would consider an appearance on Dave’s show a safe move. Dave stopped being funny right around 2003 at the start of the Iraq war. While he may have always been a liberal, he’s really become a tool for the Democrats these days. Now Letterman is nothing more than a tired cranky old man.

Tags:
2008 Election, Campaign, Hillary Clinton, Iowa Caucus, Liberalism, Politics, David Letterman

For tens of thousands of ditto heads, Rush hit the nail in the Huckabee coffin today.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Gov. Huckabee, mighty fine man and is a great Christian, is not a conservative, he’s just not,” Limbaugh said. “If you look at his record as governor, he’s got some conservative tendencies on things but he’s certainly not the most conservative of the candidates running on the Republican side.”

Rush has been in a feud with Huckabee since before Christmas.

While calling Huckabee’s now-famous Des Moines presser Monday “Clintonesque,” Limabugh said he would not “join the chorus” of those saying it would damage the Republican’s chances.

“It’s quite possible people will see Huckabee’s press conference as an attempt to be honorable, that the drive-bys [in the mainstream media] have now sabotaged him on,” Limbaugh observed.

“And they can easily conclude, ‘Look, he didn’t air the ad, you guys did.’ The people that are looking at Huckabee in a supportive way are not analyzing Huckabee, this is what you have to understand. They are not picking apart his policy, they’re accepting him for what he is based on his identity politics. So I don’t think they’re going to take it to the nth degree the way the drive-by pundits are.”

Limbaugh, who has previously offered warm words for Fred Thompson, appeared to be dissatisfied with at least three of the top GOP candidates.

…and that’s not good for those three candidates. While he often pushes his listeners to be “free thinkers”, it’s undeniable that most of them take their cues from the words of the mighty El Rushbo. It’ll show at the polls, for sure.

Tags:
2008 Election, Campaign, Huckabee, Politics, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh

From Midnight to 4 AM, the London Ambulance Service dealt with over 1,825 emergency calls from revelers who were too drunk to function.

Tags:
Happy New Year, London, United Kingdom, Drunk, Binge Drinking

Camp Hillary is sending the message that a third place Iowa win is really a first place win. Huh?

As the presidential candidates engage in furious pre-caucus spin, one of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s most prominent Iowa supporters said Wednesday that she’s already accomplished what she needs to in Iowa and can declare success even if she finishes in third place.

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack told ABC News that Clinton has shown that she can appeal to a wide swath of Democrats, which is what she came to Iowa to do.

“She has done what she needed to do here,” Vilsack said shortly before a Clinton campaign event in Indianola. “When she started the process she was way behind — it’s now by all standards a competitive race.”

Asked if the order of finish matters, Vilsack deflected the question.

“She absolutely had to be competitive, and she’s accomplished that,” he said. “Obviously, everybody’s interested in winning, and I think we’re going to do well. It’s tight. There’s no question about that.”

If Hillary loses Iowa, what does it mean? While it might not mean much in the delegate count, it will mean a lot to her aura of inevitability. The national media will will effectively call January 3, 2008 as the official time of death of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign. It will be hard for the Clinton political machine to beat back the frenzy that will result.

Tags:
2008 Election, Hillary Clinton, Iowa Caucus