Wednesday, February 20, 2008

An Overseas Perspective on the Dem Primaries

If you listen to the regular gaggle of talking blatherheads on CNN and MSNBC -- many of whom I like most of the time -- you might think that the campaign for the Democratic nomination is now all about the latest picayune verbal misstep, and all Hillary has to do is catch Barack in some epistomological hiccup (or his wonderful intelligent wife Michelle, who has five times the speaking skills that Hillary has; if you doubt my estimation, just go review her amazing speech at UCLA on Feb. 4 on YouTube).

Well, time to turn off the local so-called analysts. Only Howard Fineman and Bill Schneider have the good sense to see this race with an even temper. The more Hillary goes negative, the more it boomerangs on her. The Clintons are daily spoiling their 90s legacy with too-clever-by-half snide comments and knowing looks. She should have kept crying. It worked better.

Here's a well-considered editorial from Britain's Guardian this morning. Mull this over a cup of coffee, and then tell me that Barack Obama doesn't have the experience or the acumen to handle the presidency. He's beat the pants off of Billary on every level of the three-dimensional chess game they thought they were playing in this campaign. And I think the American people simply grok all of it very clearly.

I will leave you with this thought: none other than Pat Buchanan pointedly noted last night on MSNBC that Obama had accrued more votes by himself than the entire Republican field together in Wisconsin Tuesday. In fact, by midnight, the Dems had together received more than 1 million votes. The Republicans earned half that all told. The same was true in Virginia last week. In Virginia. Shall I say that again?

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Lost in Wisconsin
US elections 2008:
Hillary Clinton's campaign has made a series of strategic and tactical blunders that will ultimately cost her the presidential nomination

by Richard Adams
February 20, 2008 4:00 AM

If Hillary Clinton loses the Democratic presidential nomination - and after another hammering at the hands of Barack Obama in Wisconsin, it's increasingly looking as if she will - then it didn't just happen overnight.

Nor did she lose it last week, when she was devastated in the "Potomac primary" of three big losses in one day. Nor was it the series of defeats she suffered in states such as Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska. No, the day when the first nails went into the Clinton campaign's coffin was exactly two weeks ago - on February 6.

Read the rest of the article http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_adams/2008/02/lost_in_wisconsin.html">here.

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