Posted on 06/09/2015 12:25:40 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Every week brings a new narrative about how Hillary Clinton, the breakaway favorite in the 2016 presidential race, is blowing it. This weekend we learned from the New York Times that she’s thoughtlessly abandoning her husband’s 23-year-old political strategy, which relied on luring white working class and southern voters back to the Democrats, in favor of Barack Obama’s “far narrower path to the presidency.”
The headline frames the magnitude of her blunder: “Hillary Clinton traces friendly path, troubling party.” So even Democrats are troubled by the Clinton campaign’s calculus? That’s bad.
Well, no. A few red state Democrats are troubled. But more people are probably troubled by the venerated New York Times claiming that Barack Obama, the first Democrat to win more than 50 percent of the vote twice since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, traced a “far narrower” electoral path than Clinton.
Obama won 69 million votes in 2008 and 66 million in 2012; Clinton won 45 million and 47 million in 1992 and 1996. Obama won 365, then 332 electoral votes; Clinton did better, with 370 and 379. But turnout in 2012 was a remarkable (for the U.S.) 58.2 percent, compared with 49 percent in Clinton’s second race. Obama won bigger margins among African Americans, Latinos, Asians, young voters and women than Clinton did. Both Democrats lost white working class voters overall, though Clinton lost more narrowly.
By what metric, then, could Obama be said to have cut a “far narrower path to the presidency” than Bill Clinton did? Only if the only voters that matter are white.
On Twitter, Maggie Haberman (a writer I admire, for the record) defended the piece by noting that she and Jonathan Martin were merely reporting the concerns of prominent red state Democrats. That’s fine, as far as it goes. By all means, let’s hear West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s thoughts on how Democrats should run for president.
“Go ask Al Gore,” Manchin told the Times. “He’d be president with five electoral votes from West Virginia. So it is big, and it can make a difference.” Actually, Gore would be president if he had one more vote on the Supreme Court, or if Florida counted all of its voters. It pains me to say, but there are many viable Democratic paths to the presidency that are easier than winning back West Virginia.
Haberman and Martin also tip their hands with folderol like this: “This early in the campaign…forgoing a determined outreach effort to all 50 states, or even most of them, could mean missing out on the kind of spirited conversation that can be a unifying feature of a presidential election.”
Notice how Democrats are responsible for “unifying” a divided nation. Nobody is asking when we’ll see even one of the 19 and counting Republican candidates visiting, say, Harlem during this campaign cycle. It’s another example of how well-meaning journalists ignore the rightward drift of the Republican Party – and the troubling fact that, in the age of Obama, white southern voters have become so thoroughly hostile to Democrats that Hillary Clinton couldn’t reassemble her husband’s coalition if she tried.
Oh, by the way, later the story reveals that Clinton actually has organizers in all 50 states already, a fact shared by “senior Clinton campaign officials” in that controversial briefing last month. We also learn that “Senate Democrats are hopeful that she will lift their prospects, because there is considerable overlap in crucial states: The results in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin will almost certainly determine both who wins the White House and which party controls the Senate.”
So she’s got organizers in 50 states, and her campaign is targeting the seven crucial swing states listed above. What exactly is her campaign doing wrong?
Well, apparently she’s “taking advantage of polarization” and thus ceding “some of the authority that comes from the civic exercise of appealing to much of the nation,” Haberman and Martin tell us. They quote University of Texas historian H.W. Brands, who says: “The president is the one person who potentially could be the unifying figure in the country. And if the president or a presidential candidate basically writes off 40 states, then how in the world do the people in those 40 states feel like they have a stake in that person or that election?”
Of course, nobody is writing off 40 states. Obama won 28 states plus DC in 2008; Hillary Clinton expects to do at least that well in 2016. It’s true that her campaign is no longer floating ideas about “redrawing the map” electorally, a notion we’d heard last year. (I wrote about the politics and the policy behind these decisions here.) But the campaign says she will work for white working class voters in swing states, with a particular voter on unmarried women.
There are so many tired Clinton narratives on display here. We’re told Clinton is pursuing this “narrow” path to the presidency “even though a broader strategy could help lift the party with her.” That’s the Clintons: always out for themselves! But today, the once-warring Clinton and Obama tribes are united – and everyone can see the numbers. The path to 270 electoral votes involves consolidating the so-called Obama coalition, and moving out from there when possible. It’s trolling to suggest Clinton should have any other bottom line.
"The late Saul Alinsky, the father of the community-organizing model that inspired both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, would be delighted. The man who championed moral relativism in tearing down the establishment (“In war, the end justifies almost any means”) is calling the tune of the Democratic party on voting issues.
Last March, President Obama rhapsodized about what would happen under mandatory voting: “If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.” Obama once served as the lawyer for the disgraced and defunct voter-registration group ACORN, and he is still toeing its line.
Then last week, Hillary Clinton demanded that the federal government override state laws and automatically register everyone to vote and then offer at least 20 days of early voting, turning Election Day into an Election Month. Both would dramatically complicate the job of already-overburdened voter registrars and make it harder to catch potential fraud. In the case of New York v. United States (1992) and other cases, the Supreme Court has clearly ruled that it is beyond Congress’s power to do what Hillary wants.
But her policy proposals were merely a way station on the path to Clinton’s goal: lambasting Republicans as inheritors of the Southern Democratic tradition of Jim Crow and firing up a liberal base that isn’t yet enamored of her. She accused Republicans of “fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of voter fraud” and accused Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, and Scott Walker by name of taking part in “a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people, and young people.”
Ohio governor John Kasich wasn’t amused. While Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign’s general counsel, is participating in legal challenges to Ohio’s voter laws, his candidate doesn’t seem to follow the news in Ohio much. In discussing Clinton’s call for an early-voting period of 20 days, Kasich told Fox News:..........."
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has filed lawsuits in Wisconsin and Ohio to fight voting rights laws passed by Republicans, and some say those lawsuits could be read as a sign that Clinton is worried about winning those states in 2016.
In 2012, both Wisconsin and Ohio went blue for President Obama. But they're considered swing states now, and with Midwestern GOP contenders such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker poised to enter the presidential race, Clinton may have turned to her superstar lawyer to help eliminate her GOP competition.
Marc Elias serves as general counsel of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. He has filed lawsuits in Wisconsin and Ohio, and more may be coming.
The Clinton campaign has insisted it had nothing to do with the liberal legal warfare, but Elias typically intervenes on behalf of Democrats in desperate need of assistance. He "emerged as the star" of the 2008 recount battle that resulted in Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, a "Saturday Night Live" alum, upsetting a Republican incumbent by just 312 votes.
And when Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., suddenly appeared vulnerable in last year's midterm elections, Democrats called on Elias to ensure that Roberts would square off solely against one liberal opponent, independent Greg Orman, by removing the Democratic candidate from the ballot. A favorite of the outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Elias reportedly helped Democrats sneak a provision into a spending bill late last year that raised the maximum amount of money that donors can provide to Democrats and Republicans......"
"Washington (CNN)Hillary Clinton accused four potential GOP presidential rivals by name of being "scared of letting citizens have their say" as she called Thursday for every American to automatically be registered to vote.
Clinton told an audience at the historically black Texas Southern University that she supports the concept of signing every American up to vote as soon as they're eligible at age 18, unless they specifically opt out. She called for expanded access to polling places, keeping them open for at least 20 days and offering voting hours on evenings and weekends.
For the first time in her campaign, she attacked her likely opponents by name as she laid into four GOP governors -- Texas's Rick Perry, Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Florida's Jeb Bush and New Jersey's Chris Christie -- telling them to "stop fear-mongering about a phantom epidemic of voter fraud."
"All of these problems voting just didn't happen by accident," she said. "And it is just wrong -- it's wrong -- to try to prevent, undermine and inhibit Americans' right to vote."....
Them people...
Crackuhs...
~~~Bible toting, gun owning, under-/unemployed, America loving whites/blacks/browns/etc.~~~
The angry WEDGE is necessary for the Left to have any chance.
They’re losing state after state to majority Republican legislatures and governors - the Left has a lot of grievance groups to nurture but their bench is empty and there are scant few coming up from the local and state ranks.
I don’t know the name of the guy who won “Bush v Gore” but, I understand he was a mediocre student and one hell of a drunk...
The setup is Castro 2024...
If “Her Thighness” actually prevails this cycle then one of the twins will be a cabinet member with his brother groomed for the 2024...
From the NYT piece mentioned (linked) in Walsh’s piece:
“.......By emphatically staking out liberal positions on gay rights, immigration, criminal justice, voting rights and pay equity for women, Mrs. Clinton is showing core Democratic constituencies that she intends to give them a reason to support her.
The stoke-the-base approach is a hallmark of Mrs. Clinton’s young campaign manager, Mr. Mook. He used similar tactics to lift Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia to victory in 2013, in a race both Clintons watched closely....
.....Mrs. Clinton’s strategic intentions are also evident in her focus on organizing. Mr. Mook noted twice in an interview that her campaign already had supporters in all 50 states mustering volunteers to register voters and ensure Mrs. Clinton is on the ballot. That is partly why the campaign postponed her first rally: so her team could have time to make it more of an organizing event.
That kickoff in New York next Saturday will be an important test of enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy, and of her campaign’s ability to use big events to build the machinery that will identify and turn out voters.
What Mrs. Clinton says there will matter. But the organizing around the rally, and around the events her campaign is holding that night to build a volunteer network, will be just as consequential.
It is a far cry from her husband’s campaigns.
“The highest-premium voter in ’92 was a voter who would vote for one party some and for another party some,” said James Carville, Mr. Clinton’s chief strategist in 1992. “Now the highest-premium voter is somebody with a high probability to vote for you and low probability to turn out. That’s the golden list. And that’s a humongous change in basic strategic doctrine.”
Yes. The Castro twins have been groomed for political power.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2012/09/04/julian-castro-a-radical-revealed/
Whatever...”Chad”....
LOL
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/06/besmirching_the_party_of_lincoln.html
“For six years now and counting, whenever Democrats can’t run on issues or their one-size-fits-all mainstay ideas of bigger government bureaucracies, tax-and-spend, and the Obama wrinkle of wealth redistribution (à la Obamacare), they resort to spewing slimy fictions and the old political standby of demonizing Republicans. Hillary Clinton – the only serious Democrat for president and a lock for her party’s nomination – is a shrewish, polarizing figure wrapped in a paper-thin resume absent any accomplishments (save losing 6 billion dollars during her disastrous tenure as secretary of state, the failed Russian reset, and the still unresolved Benghazi scandal resulting in the deaths of four Americans) with a 40-year history of serious infractions when it comes to her personal and public veracity. She of Server-gate malfeasance and Charity-gate corruption has some nerve pointing wrongdoing fingers and venomously calling out Republican competitors by name.
Who else would have the unmitigated gall to accuse Republicans – the abolitionist party of Lincoln, the great emancipator of Afro-Americans and ender of the Civil War – of tacit racism through outright minority voter suppression? Liar, liar, pantsuit on fire! For the record, it was a Republican Congress that supported the 13th Amendment en masse, enfranchised the slaves, and freed their unborn generations 150 years ago. The severely truth-challenged Mrs. Clinton needs to get her history straight: on April 8, 1865, with 63% Democrats opposed, only four Democrats alongside 100% of Republicans supported the measure. The amendment passed 119 to 56, by the merest margin of 7 votes above the necessary two-thirds majority. Per the 1860 U.S. Census, approximately 4 million slaves were freed. On the wrong side of the argument – a position typical of them then as now – were the lion’s share of pro-slavery Democrats.
Fast-forward almost a century later to the Civil Rights movement of 1964. Once again, the bill that both prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin and ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in public facilities, schools, and the workplace was passed, by a Republican Congress over strident Democratic objections. Specifically, most notable chief opponents were Albert Gore, Sr. (father of Hillary’s hubby’s same-name vice president) and former avowed Klansman Robert Byrd (who led an unsuccessful 14-hour filibuster, and whom Democrats still revere as “the conscience of the Senate”). This is the deplorable Democratic record on voting and minority rights. ..................................”
Castro wrote fondly of those early days and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am–Chicano.’
funny, because blacks, in Cuba, are part of the caste society and really, at the bottom of the shit pile called Castro’s regime...
“........While Hillary gave lip service to the notion that “every citizen” should vote, her Democratic allies are in court trying to stop every reasonable means of verifying a voter’s citizenship. That’s no surprise because, according to a recent Rasmussen survey, a majority (53 percent) of Democrats believe that non-citizens, including even illegal immigrants, should be allowed to vote.
Hillary’s commitment to voting by “every citizen” is belied by her earlier promise to “go even further” than Obama on amnesty for illegal immigrants. By “go even further,” she explained, she would include all 11-plus million (not just Obama’s 5 million), and she would give them full citizenship with voting rights, not just “legal status” with permission to work....”
http://www.wnd.com/2015/06/hillarys-plans-to-stuff-the-ballot-box/
K, K, K!!!
you got a problem with these people...
Not that there’s anything wrong with that...
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/wisconsin-straw-poll-surprise-a-narrow-clinton-win-118727.html
Wisconsin straw poll surprise: A narrow Clinton win
Bernie Sanders shocks with 41 percent of the vote.
By Jonathan Topaz
6/8/15 12:02 AM EDT
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