Bill Clinton: Hillary is the underdog; the campaign is running on a shoestring

Say what you will about President Clinton, he's a loyalist, and he'll be out there plugging for Hillary until there is no one left to browbeat and armtwist...

It's all over except the wheezing? The Clinton campaign in tatters?

Maggie Williams: took control of the campaign

The Senator Still skinnin' and grinnin'

Harold Ickes: still in, on the hunt for superdelegates

Senator Hillary Clinton, in public at least, keeps right on whistling past the graveyard. Yesterday, she campaigned across South Texas trying out a more grass-roots sort of message in at attempt to staunch her recent string of eight straight lost primaries in one week.

Patti Solis Doyle: out

Deputy Campaign Manager Mike Henry: out!

Maggie Williams, a confidante of Mrs. Clinton when she was first lady, has taken control of the campaign since the departure last weekend of Patti Solis Doyle. Ms. Williams is running a daily triage on what ads to buy and is also expanding the inner circle of advisers to extend beyond the old Clinton crony network.

Communications Director Howard Wolfson, now charged with

making Hillary more likable

According to insiders, the campaign is in shell-shock.

And cork it, Senator Barack Obama's camp yesterday declared the Clinton campaign doomed. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said that Mrs. Clinton can't become the Democratic nominee without winning every remaining contest in "blowout form." In a conference call with reporters, he said that "even the most creative math" won't do it. Listening to the pundits on Hardball, I'd have to agree. Yes, Hillary has upset the pollsters and pundits over and over in this campaign, but this time it looks like there won't be any miracles; it's all over except for the wheezing.

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Jesus Christ struck by lightning!

click to enlarge...

The world's largest Christ was hit by lightning this week. A thunderbolt over Rio de Janeiro hit the statue Christ the Redeemer.

The 130 foot tall, 700 ton, concrete statue sits on top of 2,300 foot Corcovado mountain overlooking Rio.

I don't know if this is a meteorlogical quirk, or God was sending a message. Or both.
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Guy Brummet's Road trip/Or Growing up hillbilly, part 14

This is a verbatim transcript of an email from my brother Guy. The trip he describes happened last week.

"One of our more interesting vacations, if you like to spend lots of money.

"We started out leaving Friday at 2:30 after work, but both passes were closed, so rather than driving through Portland to get to Montana, I suggested going over White Pass, which worked okay, until my brother in-law, Harold blew his transmission ($4,000 to repair), so we called back home and had someone bring another truck and they would pick up the trailer on the top of the pass [ed's note: you have to love that back home they have all this spare rolling stock to deploy].

"Well that seemed like a good thing, but, I took my trailer to the top of the pass, unhooked it, and went to retrieve the trailer a couple of miles back to get it off the road. My brother in-law hooked it up (well he thought he did) then he noticed the lights went off on the trailer as I was towing it up the pass, well the light didn’t just go off the hole damn trailer broke away, broke the safety chains and went across a lane of traffic! Well luckily it ran into the bank, oh yeah, then I seen it going backwards down the pass so I drove my new truck backwards past it down the pass, got in front of it and just before I had to let it ram me, the trailer safety brake decided to work and it stopped about three feet in front of my truck.

My wife would have killed me if she seen me drive the truck and use it for a sacrifice, but I didn’t want to see the trailer go down the hill either.

"Well we realized he did a crappy job of hooking it up, I just got it re-connected and moving when a cop pulls up, I didn’t stop to chat, but my Harold told him I lost control but recovered. He was still waiting for me to tow his truck up to the top. 9:00 PM rolls around and we are finely on our way again, while Harold waits for a tow truck and the back up truck to arrive, 4 hours later the tow truck arrives and he spends the night in Yakima, and we arrive in Spokane at 3:00 AM.

"I guess this is a bit long, so here is a brief description of the rest, blew up one more truck engine in Montana on the way home, blew up two snowmobiles in Montana, but we brought two spares:>) got so much snow the last two day we couldn’t go anywhere, and the area we rode in had a broken groomer, so the trails were not very good. We did have a good time in the hot springs at out Lolo resort, but all that was, was a heated swim pool, they claim a hot spring heats the water. Of course the mountain passes were all closed coming home, so we sat in my truck on the pass until midnight when they reopened Snoqualmie, so we got back home Sunday at 2:00AM.

I must admit I am glad to be at work!
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Barack Obama, Kevin Curran, & All This Is That

Jack and Kev, in non-debate mode -- click to enlarge

If you are a regular reader, you will know that we frequently engage in verbal fisticuffs with reader and frequent participant Kev. We have tilted frequently on the viability of Obama v Hillary. One thing we do agree on (aside from most of our core values) is Mario Cuomo. And we are slowly perhaps coming to agreement on Senator Obama. An exchange from today:

Kevin said...
You've been slogging him pretty hard and long now, Jackie. What do you have against the guy? And don't say it's his supporters cuz you have been steadily negative since right after you called him tougher than dirt and figured his experience to be roughly equivalent to your gal, Hil's. That goes back a year or more. I'd bet a quick review would show you've steadily ragged him since then.

Jack Brummet said...

OK. Are you calling shenanigans?

I was absolutely stunned and humbled by the speech he made at the Democratic convention in 2004. And he was a huck; an Illinois legislator. His keynote address was extremely good. Maybe not quite at the Cuomo level of speechification, but the best I'd heard in years.

He was elected to the U.S. Senate that fall with 70% of the vote. In thr Senate, he co-sponsored bipartisan bills on controlling conventional weapons and on tightening accountability in the expenditure of federal funds (a position you have to admit is not so different from that of Ronald Wilson Reagan). In the current session of Congress--contrary to my frequent claims of near total absenteeism--he sponsored legislation on lobbying, electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and medical and psychiatric care for returning military basket cases.

In ways, I've been fighting against Obama because I don't think it's his time (and boy I know he's tired of hearing that old saw). And I don't want him to waste his shot. Because he does deserve to be President, and in my booklet, solely because he has the love and the strength and the passion to draw this country together. And if we had to wait four or eight or even twelve years for that, that would be OK. If we run him now, you have to guess we only have one shot. But I'm not so sure we have those four or eight or twelve years to sparel

On the other hand, I guess, I am willing to sacrifice Obama now, because I am not at all sure there will be a second chance. I don't want a sacrifice...I want him to win.

Will I fight for Obama? Of course. But I also worked for Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry (well, with Kerry my involvement was only through checks). I hope Obama supporters have the stomach for the compromises their candidate will need to make to be elected. Hey guys, it's not the 60's! Ok. Maybe he won't nominate Lieberman, but whoever he does nominate will not likely sit well with his core supporters.

Yeah, I've been very tough on Obama. But he needs that. He has just about shown he can take anything that gets hucked at him.

So, at this late date, I too, am about to join the Obama bandwagon; he is my fourth and final choice.

I started out with John Edwards, and hung with him for a long time, and in the last couple of months, leading up to the first primaries, I settled on Joe Biden--even at that point a hopeless long shot. Then it was straight into Hillary's clutches. So, I come to Obama as my fourth (and final) choice. What spooks me the most is that Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry were also my fourth choices. But even at this (comparitively early) date, I feel far more positive about the prospects of Barack Obama than I did with any ot those other three disastrous candidates.

Jack Brummet said...
Let me also note that I am all for Obama making the Supreme Court nominations that will surely come his way. There will likely be at least 2,3, or 4 in his first term alone. I'd be fine with Hillary's choices too. However, I also do not think Hillary will get the same kind of honeymoon as Obama. If he really is the uniter, and the vector of change we hope he is, Obama will be able to move mountains. And in my heart, I know that when Hillary tries to move mountains, she encounters the proverbial irresistable force. . .
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Obama selects ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman as Vice President/running mate

The new partners discuss the finer points of the ongoing
campaign for the White House.


Birds of a feather

Senator Barack Obama today stunned Democrats and even his own staffers by announcing he would select Senator Joe Lieberman (now an independent) as his running mate. The statement sent shockwaves through the Obama network of supporters.


It wasn't so long ago that Obama praised the turncoat former Democrat Senator. There is no question, Obama has long been a Lieberman fan...click here for more on that.

"I know that some in the party have differences with Joe," Senator Obama said, all but silencing the crowd. "I'm going to go ahead and say it. It's the elephant in the room. And Joe and I don't agree on everything. But what I know is, Joe Lieberman's a man with a good heart, with a keen intellect, who cares about the working families of America." Then, with applause beginning to build, he finished the thought: "I am absolutely certain that Connecticut's going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the United States Senate." That time, people cheered loudly.
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The Messiah problem: how does Obama take it to the end of the line?

Geoff Elliott, an Australian political correspondent, writes a fascinating article on some obstacles facing Barack Obama (whom I now move into the presumptive nominee column, having seen his effect on literally thousands of people at my local caucuses). Click here to read the entire article....

"It was early 1994 when Nelson Mandela gave a speech in a slum outside Cape Town and spoke in grand terms of a new beginning and how when he was elected president every household would have a washing machine.People took him literally. A few months later he became South Africa's first black president. That's when clerks in department stores in Cape Town had to turn people away demanding their free washer and dryer.

"Having spent some time as a reporter in South Africa watching the Mandela presidency I was reminded of that story this week when I travelled with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the campaign trail.

"How does a cult figure, in the eyes of some something akin =to a messiah, make the transition to a political frontrunner - president even - where disappointment will soon crush what seemed to be a journey to a promised land?

"Looking into the faces of a more than 16,000-strong crowd in a basketball stadium in Hartford, Connecticut this week, the Mandela magic I'd seen before was there too. Black and white, and the youth; they appeared in a state close to rapture watching Obama speak. Here and there one could see women crying and the some men wiping away tears too. "

To read the rest, jump from here...
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The day I was blown by the TSA: new security measures being deployed

If you ever saw the movie Total Recall, you've seen airport security as it will be. As The Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, walks through a tunnel an X-ray machine projects his skeletal frame onto a wide screen in an nearby control room.

Returning to the USA last week from Mexico, our plane landed in San Francisco, where we would go through customs (and security). In Mexico, the security at the airport could best be described as perfunctory. Yeah, I set off the metal detector as I always do, but instead of the frisking, questions and patdown, I just got a quick pass with wand. No liquids out, no computer out, no shoes or belt or jacket off. It was almost like the old days.

In San Francisco, going through the gauntlet to get back to the US, I was placed in an entirely new (to me) machine. It's an extremely sleek and futuristic looking booth. I told my traveling partners it looked like something the Nazis might have dreamed up in 2000, if they'd been around. This booth smells you!

You step inside. The doors silently slide closed and the machine begins blowing air around you and directing jets of air at spots on your body. It stops, analyzes the air for explosive residue, and flashes a little green light to say you can proceed. I was blown by the TSA.


The Sentinel non-invasive walk-through scanner that can screen
more than 400 people per hour for explosives or for narcotics
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And So It Goes: Clinton Takes A Shellacking in Washington State & The Senator Weeps Once Again

click to enlarge

In an interesting sidebar, The Senator turned on the waterworks again today. I don't really mean "turn on." There is nothing wrong with becoming misty-eyed. It is a little unsettling that this person, who, thirty plus years, has shown nerves of steel, is moved to tears in public three times in the last month. But you know, maybe this is the result of hitting it hammer and tong in the hustings. If you spend that much time in the field, with the people, it's likely that you will hear horror stories of citizens thrown to the wolves. It doesn't offend me at all that Hillary has choked up at some of these questions. In fact, I have actually found it moving that this tough cookie could afford herself an unscripted moment, where we got to peek under the covers, if only for the moment. While I very much enjoyed listening to Obama's speech at Key Arena (a couple of miles from my house). . .it was, in the end, his standard stump speech, but leavened for the high tech crowd, the biotech community, Boeing, and praising Starbucks, Microsoft, McKinstry, and other businesses. My son Del (age 15) was at the speech and came away a believer.



Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., wipes her eye
as she listens to a disabled U.S. veteran's story
during a campaign stop in Lewiston, Maineon Saturday.
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BH Obama/BA Baracus

click image to enlarge
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The Barackus Caucus in Seattle

We went to our local caucus as we usually do. One difference this time around--instead of 18 people, our caucus had 94 people.



In our precinct, the vote went 72 for Obama and 22 for Clinton, or, five delegates for Obama, and two for Clinton. The majority of the undecided later went for Clinton, although not enough to give us an additional delegate to the county convention.

Interestingly--and this may be an anomaly--of the 72 Obama voters, about 15 were women. On the Clinton side, about 12 of our 22 voters were women. Keelin made a good speech for Hillary Clinton, and even brough up my Joe Lieberman argument. A lot of Obama supporters seem to think he will nominate George Clooney for VP, rather than the tired old hack or wardheeler he will inevitably have thrust upon him. They also seemed to believe he would end the war January 21st, fix the economy within a few months, and become fast friends with many of the other world leaders.

In the end, of course, we'll all pull for whichever candidate ends up on top. At the moment, Obama definitely has momentum. But all it takes is one little F**k-up to reverse that momentum. He's been pretty steady so far, but that only means he's due for one. This time, 'though, all of our skin will be in the game.
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Automatic Daddy - a blog worth reading

image stolen from Tom Dougherty
copyright (c) 2007 by Tom Dougherty

A friend, Tom Dougherty, is a Seattle area writer and artist (he's pretty damned good at both) who has a varied, weird and interesting blog, focused on art and pop culture. He always has a great sense of humor, and he has lots of articles and links on things I've either missed, ignored, or of which I've been shamefully unaware [ed's note: you ever notice how sometimes when you try to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition that the result is far more awkward than actually ending with the preposition would have been?].

So, check him out. And check out his "side project" blog--the Grump Blog.
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