She won in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania but She Blew It

What is Hillary thinking? What are the professional political operatives around Hillary thinking?

She may have been able to dispatch Obama. But, she and her crack team ASSUMED (ass of u and me) the race would be over on February 5. Accordingly, she spent almost all of her money on the races up to and including super Tuesday and never organized for any race thereafter. Sometime during Obama's 12 primary run after super Tuesday, the top brass of Hillary's campaign must have had a meeting to discuss that --- - He's built up so much of a lead that she CANNOT catch him in pledged delegates, popular vote, or states won. Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania can't change anything. What to do? First choice - change the rules (Florida and Michigan). Second choice (or maybe co-first choice), destroy Obama. On this point, Obama has provided a helping hand (Rev. Wright, bittercling, no short, cogent, coherent answers to either, and a very poor debate performance).

Hillary's crack campaign KNOWS it will not go into the convention leading in (what everyone thought was) the only relevant metric- pledged delegates. How can Hillary claim she's ready from day one when she cannot run a primary campaign without losing to the newest of newcomers? Will the political operatives that are creating and carrying out this brilliant strategy put this campaign on their resumes to prove their great skill?

Amazingly, the Democrats are putting on a demonstration of how even when the sun, the moon, and the stars are aligned they still can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The issue is not that Obama should not be challenged; of course he should. Maybe he's not ready. But, effectively, Hillary now can win only by having the super delegates overturn the primary results or by having the DNC change the rules after the fact. Quite simply, she blew it and she has no one to blame for that but herself! I'll be supporting Hillary's opponent when she runs for reelection to the Senate in 4 years.

The White House Principals and 24

From Andrew Sullivan (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/04/ap-confirms-abc.html)

AP Confirms ABC News

Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned. The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

They knew what they were doing. The law was "fixed" to back up what was already decided.

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This White House acts as if it believes that Fox's TV series 24 is real. But, when the Principals' hero, Jack Bauer, takes matters into his own hands, he knows and accepts if he is called to task for his actions, he will go down. The cowards in the White House aspire to emulate Jack Bauer but, unlike their hero, they hide behind the skirts of dubious legal opinions drafted after they've made their decisions to protect their backsides.

ABC and AP report that the CIA came to the Principals for approval of interrogation techniques. It seems the CIA wanted cover from the White House for what it believed to be illegal. Astonishingly, the CIA got what it asked for from the Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense of the United States, the Secretary of State of the United States, the Attorney General of the United States, and the National Security Advisor of the United States, all with the approval of the President of the United States. What a sad time for the United States.

September 11 shook the Bushies to their core. They came into office knowing, yes knowing, that because the United States was the biggest and strongest in the world, no one was stupid enough to really try to hurt us. The Bushies came into office knowing that the United States needed no allies. So, they told the rest of the world, we're us, we don't care what you think or want, we are so important, so strong, so us, you must endure whatever we want to do and do whatever we want you to do. September 11 proved the Bushies wrong and they were terrified. Their reaction to their fear will take generations to overcome and may well haunt the United States forever.

Why Florida and Michigan are like the Subprime Mess

The Florida and Michigan train wreck created by the DNC is like the subprime mortgage mess. Lets compare. In the subprime mess, purportedly smart people on Wall Street made foolish assumptions that simply are not true. They assumed that home values would increase at an unsustainable rate forever. The result of this is assumption is that millions of people, many of whom knew they could not afford to repay their debts, will lose their homes and investment banks, investors, insurance companies, etc will lose more than a half a trillion dollars. Plus there is an incalculable cost to the economy of the credit market sclerosis.

In the Florida and Michigan mess, the DNC assumed that the primary race would be decided easily without Michigan and Florida. The result of this assumption is that Democrats are left with a Hobson's choice: alter the rules that all agreed to abide by mid stream to the potential benefit of Hillary or refuse to count the votes of 2.3 million voters. The consequence of this is likely a loss in November and, for those of us who care, a generation of a very very conservative dominated Supreme Court.

The Clinton campaign has figured out how to back the Obama campaign into a corner by exploiting the unfairness. It is trying to force the Obama campaign to argue implicitly that being fair to Obama is more important than being fair to 2.3 million voters.

What happens if the Clinton campaign succeeds? Florida's delegates are allocated to Clinton based on the results in the Florida primary. And Michigan - who knows, presumably Clinton believes she should get all of Michigan's delegates (this would be best for her and that is all that matters). Then, maybe she will have more pledged delegates than Obama. But, she still will not have enough delegates to win the nomination. I suppose then her campaign immediately will reverse course and argue that the Super Delegates should vote for the delegate leader. Cool huh?

But....then what? Half the primary voters are outraged. Already we see polls that 48% of the voters in this country hate Clinton so much they never would vote for her. How many Democratic votes can she, one of the most polarizing figures in American politics, afford to lose? It seems to me that the answer is close to none. So, in her efforts to win by ignoring the rules, what does she win? The right to run for President and lose.

What if after fighting to the wire and making disenfranchising Florida and Michigan Democrats her central argument, she loses the nomination because Obama has more pledged delegates? It seems likely the Democrats will lose Florida and Michigan in the general election. Can a Democratic candidate win the Presidency in 2008 without those two states? Its a long shot.

So like the subprime homeowner who loses his or her home because its value did not increase forever and the subprime mortgage company that goes out of business because it has no access to capital, the Democrats lose the Presidency and the Supreme Court for a generation because the DNC could not imagine a close primary race. Can we find a way to regulate the DNC so this never happens again. Or perhaps, like Bear Stearns, the DNC and the Democratic Party should go away by being absorbed into a new party.