Prometheus 6

I've been saying for weeks that Hillary will retire from public life after her senate term is complete. No politician thinking about their future would act in her manner. She will never be anywhere near the ticket. Nancy Pelosi has confirmed this more than once and again last week on national TV. Sen. Clinton has no political capital remaining. And Bill Richardson's endorsement of Obama was a pass for all other potential debtors who owe Bill Clinton to crossover to Obama without ill effect. The Clintons will be relegated to the same purgatory occupied by Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter and your grandmother's cousin's brother-in-law's nephew at a wake. And after rediscovering his Orval Faubus, George Wallace roots, all talk, even in jest, of Bill Clinton as the first black President must cease.

Just exactly  WHAT would make Hillpatine's loss that much more devastating than any of the other Senators since 1960 who lost The Presidency, thus making her return to the U.S. Senate impossible? I have to ask. Need someone to explain it to me.

She's taking it as a personal insult. That's all.

Petty... 

What Hillary has done to Obama is unprecedented. She has run as a Republican in a Democratic primary. She has used racial code as a weapon to divide longstanding alliances. She has openly condemned Barack on national security and overtly endorsed McCain over him. Strangely enough, even if she were to gain the nomination McCain could simply use her own words and logic against her. After all, she said he crossed the commander-in-chief threshold which is basically a euphimism for willingness to go to war with Iran. And he has a greater abundance of experience.

The party elites like Pelosi and Richardson who don't want to go this route see her for what she is. No would presidential hopeful from Adlai Stevenson to Eugene McCarthy ever isolated the leadership and threatened the party apparatus in the way HRC has done. The defection of Bill Richardson is a particular marker for her withered political fortune because he is the ultimate Clinton insider. So she is done. If Obama loses folks will blame her. If he wins then she will be persona non grata and can't claim a stake in helping Barack gain the White House because of all the obstacles she placed before him.

I haven't monitored New York politics since I moved to Baltimore five years ago but I expect that before Spitzer's demise, if Mike Bloomberg wanted her seat he could win it. Who knows he may decide to pass at a shot for the governorship and seek a senate position instead. I doubt that he would choose this route but it's possible. And I think that a young, charismatic figure along the line of the old Mark Green could take her seat as well. After all her confabulation during this primary she will be ripe for a takedown by a disciplined, moderate Republican challenger in a senate race.

What is Hillpatine?

Someone over at BookerRising had the nickname Hillpatine for her, and the moment I heard it, I thought it was accurate.

Palpatine is a fictional character in George Lucas' science fiction saga Star Wars. Palpatine is Darth Sidious, a powerful lord of the evil Sith sect who practices the dark side of the Force. He initiates and manipulates the Clone Wars to destroy the Jedi and usher in the totalitarian Galactic Empire.

Lucas' original scripts of Star Wars characterize Palpatine as a cunning but weak politician under the control of powerful bureaucrats. However, in Return of the Jedi, the prequels, and Star Wars literature, the character is depicted as the personification of evil and heavy-handed authoritarianism. Palpatine was incorporated into the Star Wars merchandising campaigns that corresponded with the theatrical release of Return of the Jedi and the prequel films. He has since become a symbol of evil and sinister deception in popular culture, particularly in the United States.

If I had an ounce of talent in the graphic design area, I would have long superimposed her face in Palpatine's garb.

Here's the wikipedia reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palpatine

The Clintons will be relegated to the same purgatory occupied by Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter

Lawdy, I hope not. The Carters deserve better. In any case, the Carters have acted with more concern and regard for the troubles visiting other folks than the Clintons would ever show. 

I don't mean to diminish or disparage the humanitarian achievements and concerns of the Carters. I use purgatory to describe the sense of Jimmy Carter's marginalization to the political process which is contrasted against Bill Clinton's relationship with the elder Bush both in and out of office.

Dowd is certifiable.

In that whole column, there wasn't a single thing that wasn't something Dowd just made up. "It's hard to imagine..." Ms. Dowd writes. "A Clinton pal says..."

Bah.

But this one takes the cake: "If McCain only served one term, Hillary would have one last shot. On Election Day in 2012, she’d be 65."

If anyone at all served two terms, Ms. Clinton would still be younger than McCain is today. Is Ms. Clinton trying to tilt the election in McCain's favor? I don't know and neither does Dowd.

I don't mean to diminish or disparage the humanitarian achievements and concerns of the Carters.

Yes, I did not think that you were putting the Carters down. BTW, I've grown to admire Carter more since he became an ex-president than I ever did when he was president. I can't say the same for Br. Bill either during or after his stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Is Ms. Clinton trying to tilt the election in McCain's favor? I don't know and neither does Dowd.

Yes, Clinton is trying to tilt the election in McCain's favor since there is no way that she can win the nomination. I can't recall in my lifetime, for example, a Democratic primary race in which one of the Democratic contenders publicly praises the Republican nominee and in the very same sentence trashes the front running Democratic candidate. When Obama is the nominee the Republican noise machine will use that clip over and over again. 

Trust your own perceptions.

But heed my warning: hold your applause for anything written by Ms. Dowd. She has and will write far worse things about Mr. Obama.

If a black person were to become president wouldn't this be the pattern? Given my reading of American history, no field has ever treated blacks fairly upon their entry. Sports, politics, music, business, or the miitary, you name it and black folks aren't accorded the usual deference and privilege associated with the position. So I would not expect a black candidate to garner the same support that is typical for the role. As we've known all along, white Dems are quite skilled at playing political soccer with black people as the ball. Hillary and Bill are just keeping it old school.

I'm not defending Dowd. She is part of the problem both in Washington and this country. Dowd is not on our side.

Quaker in a Basement

Your thoughts on Dowd have caught my attention.  Earlier in the election, Dowd did a mild hit job on Michelle Obama, lambasting her for speaking about her husband's imperfections on the campaign trail.  They were basically mild insights that any wife would make about her husband.  I thought Dowd's criticism of this was somewhat strange.  What makes you think there will be more of these criticisms from Dowd and that they will increase in magnitude?    

As we've known all along, white Dems are quite skilled at playing political soccer with black people as the ball. Hillary and Bill are just keeping it old school.

And the game worked as long as no one rose to challenge the prevailing paradigm. Obama's campaign and the support it has generated from a younger generation of African Americans has worked hard to change the rules of the game. The Clintons and their black supporters never saw it coming because they were stuck in the older paradigm. I think that the masses of black folks - Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights generations - were ready for a change. That is, a change in terms of our relationship as part of the black electorate with the Democratic Party.

What we can't forget, however, is that the prize is not Obama in the White House. The prize, in my opinion, comes when we learn how to effectively use black political capital to leverage vitally needed resources to improve the lives and life chances of the American people. If Obama is elected president, we will see a huge uptick in the number of African Americans seeking poliitcal office. Many of them will challenge existing black incumbents from the left and, occasionally, from the right. What we should not lose sight of, however, is where these candidates really stand on the broader issues. We don't need to replace one Albert Wynn, for example, with another Albert Wynn who happens to have a different name.

"What makes you think there will be more of these criticisms from Dowd and that they will increase in magnitude?" 

Dowd hates all Democrats. She feminizes the men and masculinizes the women. She's already demonstrated this in her previous writing about Mr. Obama.

On several occasions, she has tagged him with the name "Obambi" to portray him as naive and inexperienced.

Just last month, she characterized him as a "Hollywood starlet":

Just like Hollywood starlets, he works out religiously and he can make a three-course meal out of a Nicorette.

She also likes to pretend to read his "body language" so she can invent things he "must be thinking," like this:

With so much at stake, she had to do it again in Vegas, this time using her voice, gaze and body language to such punishing effect that Obama looked as if he had been brought to heel.

Dowd is also the writer who invented the "Breck Girl" moniker for John Edwards. During the 2000 campaign, she wrote--in the pages of the New York Times--about the conversations she imagined between Al Gore and his own bald spot. She wrote that he was so feminine, he was "practically lactating."

Why do I think there will be more like this? Because people as troubled as Ms. Dowd don't improve without treatment.

You'll note this is the very first link Ms. Dowd has ever seen from here.