Free Republic

Women are not fungible. I don’t know if anyone sitting around with John McCain in the last few days has explained that to him; frankly, I don’t know if there even were any women sitting around with John McCain in the last few days. But, I think I understand a few things about Hillary’s base in the Democratic party, and why so many women have been so loyal to her, and if John McCain thinks that simply picking another person with similar anatomy is going to win their votes, he’s about to learn a very important lesson in gender politics....

ust tell me, my friend Kath wants to know, what would have happened if their roles were reversed. If Hillary had won the nomination and Obama had come in a close second, would he have gotten a prime-time speech one night, and Michelle another? Would his name have been placed in nomination right after Michelle’s speech, followed by a roll call vote that will be on Wisconsin before the inevitable winner goes over the top? Would Oprah’s production company be doing his video introduction, without any input from the Clinton crowd that would be controlling every second of the convention?...

Now that it's broken out into the open, there's something about the Edwards-Hunter affair that makes it impossible to ignore. I know all the arguments about how the private lives of politicians should remain private, and that if it's OK with the spouse or spouses, why should we inquire. Truth is, it wasn't so long ago that I was making all those arguments myself. And I'm the first to acknowledge that as much as some of us in the media might like to claim that what's at issue here is not the sex but the lying about it (not to...

Spare me the true believers. I don’t mean the people who support Barack Obama for president. I support Barack Obama for president. I mean the people who worship him to the point that anyone who says anything raising questions about the inevitability of his rise to sainthood, much less the perfection of him and his wife and his campaign, is deserving of damnation. I wrote a column last week about how the Obama campaign needed to guard against the arrogance that many people tell me they have detected in dealing with them. I didn’t condemn the candidate. I didn’t say...

Say it ain't so Joe. I mean, Hillary. I don't believe it. But my friends in Obama-land, the place where all good Democrats are, or are heading to, are worried. The concern is that Hillary could take a page from the book of one Joe Lieberman, once and former good Democrat, and decide that having lost out on his party's nomination to someone he couldn't see winning a general election, the better option (for him) was to run himself in the fall. Which he did. And won. Beating the liberal Democrat who had beaten him in the primary.

I don't believe it. But my friends in Obama-land, the place where all good Democrats are, or are heading to, are worried. The concern is that Hillary could take a page from the book of one Joe Lieberman, once and former good Democrat, and decide that having lost out on his party's nomination to someone he couldn't see winning a general election, the better option (for him) was to run himself in the fall. Which he did. And won. Beating the liberal Democrat who had beaten him in the primary. Of course, in Lieberman's case, it was his senate seat,...

A few years ago, the National Abortion Rights Action League, as it was then called, or NARAL for short, changed its name to NARAL Pro-Choice America. The idea, as I understood it, was to put the emphasis on "choice" rather than "abortion." This week, the organization announced its own choice in the Democratic primary contest, and as best as I can tell, it had absolutely nothing to do with preserving abortion rights and everything to do with their own sense of self-importance. Many women I know who have given generously of their time and efforts and money to the organization...

LOS ANGELES — There is good news and bad news for Democrats in the wake of Tuesday’s voting in West Virginia and Mississippi. The good news is that Democrats are now three-for-three in the contests for open House seats, adding Mississippi to the list where a Democrat, albeit one running as pro-life and pro-gun, defeated his Republican opponent in a traditionally Republican, conservative district. The bad news is that Barack Obama, who has been crowned by the media as the "presumptive nominee" of the Democratic Party, got trounced in a state that every Democrat to be elected president in recent...

LOS ANGELES — It is a thought that sends shivers down the backs of Democrats, a name that brings to mind memories of an election lost that might have been won, against a war hero once referred to in headlines as a “wimp” who won not so much by his own strengths but because of the skill of his operatives in painting his lesser-known opponent as an out of touch “liberal” who refused to salute the flag or admit his mistakes, not to mention his supposedly unpatriotic wife. Could Obama be another Dukakis? It isn’t just die-hard Clinton supporters who...

LOS ANGELES — McCain’s Men... While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continued to fight it out for the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, John McCain was waging a fight of his own within his party, for the support of the hard-core Republican base who aren’t quite sure they trust the man who discussed running with John Kerry in 2004 and reportedly told Arianna Huffington that he didn’t vote for George Bush in 2000. With attention focused elsewhere, it was a perfect day for McCain to appeal to the base he will be spending less time reassuring when the lights get hotter....

"At a political event, he goes out as a politician and says what he has to say as a politician," Reverend Jeremiah Wright told Bill Moyers in their well-publicized interview last week. "I continue to be a pastor. He's a politician. I'm a pastor." As my mother used to say, with friends like these.... If anyone thought that the Barack Obama campaign had any control over Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the controversial former pastor and "uncle figure" whose fiery speeches reeking of anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment provided at least a jolt to the Obama campaign, the pastor has proven conclusively in...

LOS ANGELES — Judging from my e-mail lately, quite a few people are angry at me, including some of my closest friends. All of them, I should note, are supporters of Barack Obama. They’re not angry at me for criticizing Obama, for insulting him in any way, which is something I try not to do; while I make no secret of my longstanding relationship and friendship with Hillary Clinton, and my belief that she would be an excellent President and that having a woman in the White House would itself be the sort of major change that I have always...

LOS ANGELES — I’ve been to this movie before. Act one: Hillary is way ahead. She’s supposed to win. Big. Then comes the Obama surge. That’s the beginning of Act Two. Instead of writing off the state, he plunges in headlong, spending time and money, collecting a few key endorsements, and great press. The polls start closing up, or at least that’s the way it gets played. Obama people start talking about not only finishing close, but actually winning, knocking Hillary out, how the whole thing could end, right here. In New Hampshire. In California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio or...

LOS ANGELES — I had to laugh last weekend watching New Mexico Governor and superdelegate Bill Richardson, who was everywhre endorsing Barack Obama, taking a moralistic stance on superdelegates respecting the will of the people. Come again. Which people? Would that be the people of his home state, who he will actually be “representing” at the convention, or the people of the 48 states that will be allowed to vote on the first Credentials Challenge, or the people of the 50 states who will be voting if Hillary ultimately has even one more vote than Obama on the question of...

I had to laugh last weekend watching New Mexico Governor and superdelegate Bill Richardson, who was everywhre endorsing Barack Obama, taking a moralistic stance on superdelegates respecting the will of the people. Would that be the people of his home state, who he will actually be “representing” at the convention, or the people of the 48 states that will be allowed to vote on the first Credentials Challenge, or the people of the 50 states who will be voting if Hillary ultimately has even one more vote than Obama on the question of seating Florida and Michigan? High-minded moral questions...

LOS ANGELES — I hate to say no to Neil Cavuto. I consider him a friend, a great host and a truly fine human being. ... But, even a pretzel can only twist around so much. And no matter how I twist it, there is just no way I can argue, with an even remotely straight face, that the Spitzer scandal helps the presidential candidate he endorsed, Hillary Clinton. The short answer is: it doesn’t. The only real question is how much it hurts. But you can’t look at Silda Wall Spitzer, standing by her man, at least behind the...

A Commentary by Susan Estrich A funny thing is about to happen to Barack Obama. No matter how much he thinks he's ready for it, he isn't. No matter how many people warn him, he'll be surprised. And hurt. And angry. His friends in the press are about to turn on him. They may not even know it yet, but they will. They can't help themselves. They've been caught fawning, made fun of for favoritism, become the subject of their own scrutiny. Which means they won't be able to resist. There's an old parable about a scorpion that asks a...

Susan Estrich either wants to build credibility as a satirist, or her latest column provides a long-overdue look in the mirror for Democrats. Detecting more a whiff of the so-called Bradley Effect in primaries where Barack Obama holds solid polling leads only to mysteriously fall short of Hillary Clinton, Estrich diagnoses a latent racism in her party. No kidding! But, the fact is that there is a long pattern of what we in California call the "Bradley problem" in polling, after the former Los Angeles mayor who was elected governor in every poll, including the exits, except that he lost...

I have to hand it to the Republicans. They might not want the hand, but they deserve it. If things continue the way they’ve gone, they’re on the verge of nominating the candidate many of them like least and many of my friends like most as their nominee for president... I’ve always liked John McCain. I’ve liked him because I think he’s smart and independent, and because his willingness to work with folks on the other side of the aisle to get things done reminded me of the way Washington used to function, in the good or bad old days,...

Susan Esterich & Greta Van Sustern are assuring us that Governor Mike Huckabee is “NOT the CANDIDATE that Republicans want. LOL!!!!!! Hillary Clinton congratulated Republicans for seeing the light" obviously to sow more dischord among us. Oh, thank you so much Susan for your genuinly altruistic advice. I am so glad that you Democrats want us to get the best candidate we can procure! I have no doubt that those who are already inebriated with the Ingraham, Coulter & Hannity Kool-Aid are credulous enough to believe that those DEMOCRATS are unselfishly looking out for the best interest of the REPUBLICAN...