Posted on 02/21/2008 3:20:08 AM PST by kingattax
It's Hail Mary time.
Battered by 10 straight losses, Hillary Clinton launched a desperate drive to save her sinking candidacy Wednesday, pleading with wavering voters to stick with her and stop Barack Obama in the big primary states of Texas and Ohio on March 4.
"Please," she beseeched in one of many TV interviews yesterday. "Look at a candidate who is ready, willing and able to do it.
"Don't give up on this."
But never have the New York senator's odds of winning her once-indomitable White House bid looked so long. Her hard-stumping husband Wednesday acknowledged the grim reality: March 4 is her last chance.
"If she wins in Texas and Ohio, I think she'll be the nominee," Bill Clinton said at a rally in Beaumont, Tex., yesterday. "If you don't deliver for her, I don't think she can be."
Actually, even if Hillary Clinton wins March 4, she will remain the underdog. All that would do is keep her in the game.
She must stagger the seemingly unstoppable Obama at the Democratic debate tonight and set him up for a knockdown in the 11 days before the March 4 primaries.
Clinton enters the debate in Austin, Tex., intent on raising questions and sowing doubts about Obama that will linger, and will try to land the knockdown blow at Tuesday's debate in Cleveland.
Her two-round debate gambit will be buttressed by her campaign's aggressive attacks against the front-runner, bashing him in TV and radio ads, direct mail and leaked opposition research to the press, insiders explained.
Clinton will also get a boost from a nominally independent political group unbound by campaign finance limits, the American Leadership Project, which plans to launch an aggressive advertising campaign in the Lone Star and Buckeye states favorable to Clinton.
"If speeches could create jobs, we wouldn't be facing a recession," begins one ad, jabbing not so subtly at Obama. Most recent polls showed her clinging to leads in Texas and Ohio, but Obama still owns the momentum. Four more superdelegates jumped on his bandwagon, and the 1.4 million-member Teamsters union endorsed him. He even got cheered by a crowd of 17,000 in Dallas when he blew his nose.
It's a stunning spot for her to be in. When the former First Lady started her quest in January 2007, Obama looked like a flash in the pan and she sported one of the most fearsome political machines ever built, with the ultimate campaigner, Bill Clinton, as one of the architects.
But the man from Illinois has chipped away at her base, swaying independents, affluent Democrats and intellectuals with his message of change. His win in Iowa convinced black voters. Now, even Hillary Clinton's bedrock of female and poorer voters is starting to shift to Obama.
Hillary Clinton tried to play down her string of losses.
"A lot of those were predicted and we're going on," she told a TV station in Vermont, which, like Rhode Island, also votes with the mega-states March 4.
She cast Obama as strong on speeches but weak on follow-through. His programs on health care and the mortgage crisis are "short of solutions," she said. "I would call them half-hearted attempts."
Plaintively, she went on, "I know it's very attractive to have the fresh and new, but I think I'm tested and true, and I hope the people would consider that."
Obama pushed back in Dallas.
"It's not a choice between speeches and solutions," he said. "It's a choice between politics that offers more of the same divisions and distractions that didn't work in South Carolina and didn't work in Wisconsin and will not work in Texas."
Mifhigan
Florida
Fort Marcy Park
I'm not counting any chickens yet. Bubba was the Come Back Kid. Shudder the thought of the Come Back Cankle.
And the price of victory over the beast would be heavy indeed, with Obama at the helm, or if we're 'lucky', McCrazy. Dark days ahead. With that in mind, we might as well enjoy the show.
She won't go quietly. If it isn't victory, it'll be a scorched earth or Samson Option.
“A lot of those were predicted and we’re going on,” she told a TV station in Vermont
gosh...I think she should have gone for it and offered them all a test drive. I'm being facetious...but not quite. I think that's part of her problem...that even her husband decided after a few thousand miles...to test drive other models.
Identifying a candidate as "qualified" is a minimalist expectation, and in no way suggests that I think a delusional overweight carbon emitter should be elected.
That’s what a lot of Germans said about a certain Corporal in 1932...
I’m scared to death of the destruction that can be wrought by a demagogue like obamessiah.
Look at the film “Triumph of the Will” and compare it to one of Hussein’s rallies.
Yep, it's in the "Whatever it takes to win" chapter, right after lying, cheating, stealing and murder.
Other than planning the Vince Foster murder and hiring goon squads to smear and intimidate Bubba’s rape/sex-harassment victims this campaign is the first thing The Bitch has ever actually organized and run on her own.
And in the immortal words of Richard Gephart, her leadership was a MISERABLE FAILURE.
She ASSUMED she would clinch victory on Super Tuesday and when she didn’t she had NO plan B.
As a campaigner, she is a MISERABLE FAILURE.
As a president she would be, of course, a MISERABLE FAILURE.
The scary thing about CommieObama is that he has done such a better job at running his organization and with his Commie Background he just might be successful instituting REAL CHANGE (the kind none of us want) in America.
People have ALREADY HAD a fifteen-year test drive... which is why they are booting her out.
Look for her to be a potential republican ally in the senate, just for vengeance sake.
“If she wins in Texas and Ohio, I think she’ll be the nominee,” Bill Clinton said at a rally in Beaumont, Tex., yesterday. “If you don’t deliver for her, I don’t think she can be.”
if the queen had balls she would be king.
She needs to put on her pink dress and go on ABC to blame a black-wing conspiracy out to get her and her husband!!!!!
I saw the clip of him saying this to a group of people, jabbing his finger at them as he said it. If anyone ever spoke to me like that, it would make me vote AGAINST him/her.
I hear you Jim.
Regards
Don't count on that.
I think you'll get your wish. Now, how does the GOP unite behind McCain when so much of the party detests him?
DooDahhh you are oh so right.
The Clinton crime syndicate is the worst thing to have happened to the U.S. in my lifetime including Nixon.
We need to get them out NOW and worry about the socialist obamma later.
Well...it's true, isn't it?
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