Poll | 05/13/2008 6:31 am

Should Sen. Clinton pack it in?

Read more about: Election, Hillary Clinton, Politics

185 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Mugsy- I could give a fig what you or frank thinks is tiresome….this is a stunningly revealing comment “it will be a very cold day in hell before I see the African-American churches marching for gay rights in this country, or for the ERA.” And am not interested in your opinion, you’re right.

By zut alors on 05/13/2008 11:59 pm

e-mail alert

ça alors !

By Mugsy Peabody on 05/14/2008 7:51 pm

e-mail alert

REPUBLICANS, Suzanne. Throughout the entire Nomination process…what else can they do? Let them have their fun, while it lasts!

By Renata on 05/14/2008 3:51 am

e-mail alert

No!! The woman has a right to fight to the “bitter end.” (We have friends who had a yacht slip named “the bitter end.” Story there.)

By Bella Mia on 05/13/2008 7:49 am

e-mail alert

Our country has dropped “President Elect” in favor of “President Select.” Whether in June, July or at the convention in August, Democrats have a brokered candidate. In 2000 we had President Select Bush selected by the Supreme Court. In 2008 we have the Democrat Select selected by superdelegates rather than by voters. Why can’t we elect our president rather than have this infernal Presidential Selection?

By A B on 05/13/2008 12:53 pm

e-mail alert

Couldn’t agree more AB. And every time this question of Hillary throwing in the towel comes up (which is pretty much daily on wowOwow) and all the Hillary haters spew off “quit, quit, quit” I get so irate I log onto HillaryClinton.com and begin making phone calls on her behalf. I’m like Pavlov’s dog now. If Obama’s such a gall darned great candidate why can’t he just stay in and beat her fair and square instead of needing to win by forfeit.

By Buh- Bye on 05/13/2008 1:08 pm

e-mail alert

My Alias- Obama hasn’t asked her to quit…..superdelegates and other party leaders and the NYT etc are the ones exerting the pressure because the MATH isn’t there…and the drain of $$ and time and division continues with the outcome the same and that puts the Demos behind in the general election against gramps. Even Bill Clinton supporters/advisors/appointees have said she can’t win and this is hurting the party. It has nothing to do with Hillary “haters’ that’s a really small way to characterize those with another POV as if they didn’t come to their decision rationally but by vindictiveness. Does that make you an Obama hater? I thought Democrats were supposed to be the smart ones.

By zut alors on 05/13/2008 11:07 pm

e-mail alert

Suzanne: LOGIC doesn’t guide HRC supporters at this juncture and, haven’t for quite some time. Once HRC fused her interests with Conservatives — because her $100million Campaign was MISMANAGED and required mid-air restructuring TWICE — and she further compromised already compromised principles by telling LIES ABOUT BOSNIA and took the race-baiting low road — LOGIC and RULES totally went out the window. Anything goes! Many HRC supporters are actually Republicans interfering with the Democratic Nomination process, which is WHY her coffers are perennially EMPTY and she has self-funded (from questionable and possibly conflicted sources) her Campaign since JANUARY 2008. The “support” isn’t reflected in a tangible way…in MANY ways. Centrist Democrats (Lieberman/Clinton/DLC-wing) have been defacto fused w/Republicans since 1992. So, nothing they do as their LAST breath on HRC’s life-support tour of their POWER and INFLUENCE, should come as a surprise. Bush/Clinton dynasties are two sides of the same coin, and the results when fully analyzed and vetted — not shut down by people like those you have witnessed on this site — will be something. There is REAL FEAR about an honest evaluation of how the interests of Americans have been SOLD by these two dynasties. They are fighting for survival and future commitments BOTH have made — at our expense. We are in the way. This is BIG BUSINESS and BIG MONEY. You can always tell when the talk about “African-Americans and gays…” is drug out. Lee Atwater and Karl Rove won for 30 years on that currency. Very transparent. Our kids CAN see right through it. Their values are not defined by W. Virginia, thankfully. Barack is redrawing the map/value proposition, so the influence of the values of W. Virginia do not dominiate the political zeitgeist any longer.

By Renata on 05/14/2008 4:17 am

e-mail alert

My Alias- I’ll post yet another article FILLED WITH FACTS by lots of political wonks with much more insider knowledge than you or I will ever have saying essentially, why doesn’t she leave??? It isn’t that the questions posed by WOW are stupid—-they are what is posed all over the major sites and media—and oh I know dismiss all of that. It’s that there are a lot of lazy, ill-informed, complaining, UNIMAGINATIVE people here. IF WOW poses a lighter question then they are accused of feeding us fluff. Whatever is posed will never be right because there are people here who complain at everything without contributing anything value added. _______ “As the odds get longer and longer, the obvious question is: Why doesn’t Hillary Clinton gracefully concede defeat and throw her support behind her party’s defacto nominee, Barack Obama? As my colleague at Salon, Walter Shapiro putsit: “What motivates her? Is it ambition, pride, feminism, vindication, public service or ideology? Or is it some combination of all of them?” Mary Sanchez, writing for the Kansas City Star, is more blunt: Hillary should scram: ‘A lady always knows when to leave the party.’ Or so my mother used to say. It’s time for Hillary Clinton to take a tip and leave - not the party, of course, but the presidential race….She should save her political future and concede the nomination to Obama. The Democratic Party’s chances to win the White House are at stake now, not just her own career. Or her husband’s ambitions, if it is he who is pushing her to continue in a race she cannot win. The decision, Peter Keating, former senior writer for politics at George who now covers sports business for ESPN, suggestsis “how much she wants to hurt Obama. And when she equated ‘white Americans’ with ‘hard-working Americans’ in attacking Obama last week, she signaled that she’s still willing to campaign destructively. As long as Hillary is playing with her knife collection, she can make Obama bleed.” Michael Crowley has his own interesting take: [O]ne gets the overall impression that the Clintons feel Obama shouldn’t be here in the first place—that this ‘young man’s’ very claim to power is itself questionable. In this sense, the Clintons may be victims of their own sense of victimhood. The vileness of the Clintons’ past enemies seems to have convinced them that their enemies always are, by definition, in the wrong. And that Obama’s candidacy is almost like another illegitimate attempt to steal a White House that, in some sense, belongs to them. Speculating on the Clintons’ motives and what they hope to achieve has become the media parlor game of the moment. To add my own two cents worth, I suspect, but have no way of knowing, that she is: *Praying for a devastating anti-Obama story — Jeremiah Wright-Tony Rezko squared - to surface and turn the Illinois Senator into an unacceptable candidate in the eyes of the media and convention delegates. This is clearly a long-shot, and presumably her aides have no such story in reserve or it would have already seen the light of day. *Convinced, correctly, that after running a lousy campaign she has finally hit her stride as reflected in her solid victories in Texas, Ohio and, on Tuesday, in West Virginia. These victories, in her eyes and in the eyes of many of her aides, demonstrate that Obama is an empty suit weighed down with general election liabilities that are only coming to light at the close of the nomination process. *Psychically unable to accept defeat — after first believing she was the anointed candidate, and then, after losing her superstar status, clawing her way back into contention in an extraordinary display of grit. Opinions on this subject are a dime a dozen. Just go to RealClearPolitics and get your fill for free. The more important issue is that Hillary’s continued battle for the nomination, no matter how futile and no matter what the motivation, has consequences. One of the best analyses of the likely consequences is by June Kronholz in the Wall Street Journal. “What is clear,” Kronholz writes, is that “when challengers refused to concede and instead pursued the nomination into the convention,” their party’s nominee got beaten in November. She cites Ronald Reagan’s 1976 challenge to Gerald Ford, Senator Edward M. (‘Teddy’) Kennedy’s 1980 bid to unseat Jimmy Carter, and Senator Gary Hart’s insurgency against Walter Mondale in 1984. Ford, Carter and Mondale all faced uphill general election struggles, no matter what kind of primary fights they had, while this year the “Democrats have the electoral winds at their back,” she notes. But, Kronholz concludes, “a long, ugly nominating battle that splits the party still could cost it the White House.” {NOTE THIS UNWINNABLE BATTLE OF HRC WILL COST THE DEMOS THE WH} For Hillary, there may be very little downside in staying in the race until the bitter end, or at least until the final delegates are selected on June 4. Under once scenario - Obama gets the nomination but loses to John McCain - Clinton could begin her 2012 campaign on November 5, 2008, as a vindicated politician, using the narrative that she was the better candidate. Under the alternative scenario - Hillary promptly concedes and Obama wins the presidency - she may well have lost her one shot at the highest office in the land, and the White House and the power, prestige and status that goes with it, will be forever out of her reach - a intensely painful prospect. _______

By zut alors on 05/13/2008 11:22 pm

e-mail alert

Suzanne: FACTS don’t enter into the equation for HRC “supporters.” Quite the opposite. The media is drowing in FACTS and RULES — but, these standards do not apply when it comes to HRC and her supporters — or Clinton Inc. THEY don’t honor RULES and FACTS are something for others — not them. In fact, if you’ll pardon a pun, the more FACTS you proffer — (i.e. George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004?) — the less responsive to facts and rationale, logical information processing they become. Centrist Democrats (Clintons/Lieberman) and Republicans have an ideological pivot — from which they navigate and see the world. American politics has been held hostage to that pivot — to the world’s amazement — since Ronald Reagan’s ascendancy and “city on a hill” narrative. That narrative is the focus and a mythology has been spun to support our view of ourselves — and Republican/Conservative “principles” as defining who we are. The FACT (there’s that word again) that the majority of Americans are not in alignment with this Narrative or its principles/principal players — is irrevelant — as long as the MEDIA INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX and tragically mediocre educational systems comply w/proffering this false Narrative and flawed leadership. The FACTS, as you and I understand them, have nothing to do with our political discourse — until now, the Internet and blogs that bypass establishment MEDIA and its corporate, profit doctrines. Communism had its flaws and failed. We have yet to identify (to ourselves, at least) the flaws of Capitalism if the underpinnings FDR wisely put into place — are eroded and Americans are left w/a 1920s-style free market w/NO SAFETY NETS except for Wall Street/investor bailouts. We are about to ALL be introduced to those FACTS…

By Renata on 05/14/2008 4:31 am

e-mail alert

sometimes I think Renata and Zut Alors should get a room. ;-/

By Buh- Bye on 05/14/2008 8:37 pm

e-mail alert

You better be nice, because you know Renata knows some of the founders and she’s writing an article and she’s friend’s with somebody’s father and she might leave this site and then doncha know, the whole thing will just turn to chicken salad and… and we all be sorry!

By Deni G on 05/14/2008 10:27 pm

e-mail alert

Why is it that we expect her to drop out? Is it because she’s a woman – suddenly she’s a spoiler. Clinton demonstrates a lot of the grit and determination we’d expect a president to possess. She believes that she is the best person to clean up this colossal mess Bush has created – and lets face it we likely don’t know the half of it yet. If Obama is to be the candidate – let him earn it. He’s shifting attention to McCain instead of today’s primary - he doesn’t expect to win and hasn’t campaigned for those votes – perhaps that indicates he doesn’t care. Will he care when he’s the democratic nominee – will those votes suddenly start to matter? Obama’s feathers ruffle easily, he angers easily, he doesn’t seem to respect the views of those who differ from his own. How will he hold up in presidential campaign or will he be constantly defensive? Clinton is strong, she knows who she is and what she wants. Don’t drop out because it will make the boys feel better.

By Kennedy Wilson on 05/13/2008 8:22 am

e-mail alert

Oh give me a break, I’m a feminist but women trying to cite sexism is obnoxious. She ‘s not the winner, she and Bill will have to accept defeat. But I don’t think graciously is in either of the vocabularies. They define to me what “sore losers” are and frankly I expected better of both of them. What a shining example for young people , even though you’re beaten, don’t accept defeat graciously, keep on saying you’re the winner. How do you declare someone a winner when they haven’t started voting yet in West Virginia, exit polls as we’ve seen don’t always tell the truth, but they haven’t started to exit yet. You know I’m beginning to like Canadian Parliamentary elections more and more. I’m with Lily Good Grief.

By Liz Seger on 05/13/2008 8:36 am

e-mail alert

Liz: Thank you…and, from what I can see, we don’t have to worry about our children interpreting this conduct as something to admire. They see it as a desperate hold onto POWER for the sake of it and are enrolling as Obama Fellows — despite (or, maybe because of) the open MOCKERY of HRC/Bill and their supporters — by the millions. They are also putting their MONEY and TIME/WORK EFFORT where their mouths are. They are no longer going to accept boomer platitudes and giving us the benefit of the doubt. Their quality of life and opportunity is receding by EVERY metric — and the Bush/Clinton dynasties are responsible. They are not interested in name-calling or making things “nice” for HRC. That is not their priority, nor should it be. They are putting their educations and superior (computer/Internet-driven) analysis and communication SKILLSET to good use. They are ignoring traditional media filters and talking heads, who they viewed as enablers of the status quo (think George Stephanopolous’ ABCNews - (and, perhaps the LAST DEBATE in that forum that Barack will ever participate in) or the fact two Editorial Board members of the NYT are former Clinton employees — and Karl Rove joining FoxNews commenting on the Democratic Nomination process, or HRC hanging out w/Rupert and Richard Mellon Scaife, etc. — and they KNOW they can no longer TRUST what was once called JOURNALISM — Constitutionally protected. No…our children are marching into THEIR future. HRC never understood — it’s about THEM, not her. Barack Obama understood, understood them and understood the zeitgeist. Denial and CONTROL are no longer an option or attractive. Now, we boomers know what our own parents felt like in the 1960s. We should remember that and see if we can do better by helping our children — and Barack — make this transition. And, the Clintons now need to go out into the REAL world and make a living the old fashioned way — not leveraging the Government of the United States of America and the interests of Americans ourselves, as THEIR CURRENCY or COMMODITY in undisclosed DEALS. Ditto, the Bushes.

By Renata on 05/13/2008 10:20 am