Election 2008

You end up getting burned:

The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar.

We will just file this under the GOP chapter of "profit trumping life".

There is a big debate going on if John Edwards said "I voted for him" or "I voted for 'em" on MSNBC this morning. Here's the video and the entire interview is damn good.

More at the HuffPo

If their numbers hold true, then what excuse does Hillary have now? He has won the most states, the most popular vote, the most pledged delegates and now the most super delegates. Perhaps she should have looked at getting rid of Mark Penn earlier, like when he thought Democratic primaries were "winner take all".

Here's the latest tally:

Yet another nice pickup for Obama. Why is Clinton still in? Oh yeah - she is wanting the poor people to pay off her debt. Talk about an elitist stance.

George McGovern has switched to endorsing Obama and is urging Clinton to drop out. Even though the Clinton campaign is vowing to "fight on", things are looking very bad for them. As I said earlier, I think her fighting on is just in order to raise money in order to help bail her out of debt.

The AP just reported that Hillary Clinton loaned her campaign $6.4 million last month.

That's not the words of some pundit or blogger, that is the word from past and present GOP leadership:

Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money.

The double shot of bad news had one veteran Republican House member worrying aloud that the party’s electoral woes — brought into sharp focus by Woody Jenkins’ loss to Don Cazayoux in Louisiana on Saturday — have the House Republican Conference splitting apart in “everybody for himself” mode.

Gingrich also has a message for them - watch going negative:

Gingrich said Republicans cannot rely on the popularity of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, to carry them to victory in November. And he warned that attacks on Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor, could backfire.

“The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti-Rev. Wright or, if Sen. Clinton wins, anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail,” Gingrich said. “This model has already been tested with disastrous results.”

Perhaps the Clinton campaign should have listened to Gingrich. People are tired of these sideshows in politics - they are worried about things that really affect them.

It sounds more like Clinton is facing the fact she can't win, without screwing over the process. Even if Michigan and Florida get seated as is, Obama wins the popular vote, and she has no way to catch up with pledged delegates.

A lot of speculation has gone on that Clinton has been holding on, waiting for some big controversy to emerge about Obama. Well following Rev. Wright, Obama has shown he can muster through the controversies.

What happened last night was the exact opposite of what Clinton needed. For it to have been a good night for her, Indiana needed to be called early with a decisive lead and North Carolina needed to go on into the wee hours of the morning, and end up being a nail bitter. That didn't happen. All her arguments for winning are now moot.

It also looks like some of her supporters are starting to think the same way. I kind of expect to see more super delegates declare for Obama in the next couple of days. They may wait a couple of days, to see what Clinton does, but the party wants this thing over with so we can focus on John McCain. The DNC doesn't want to dump all it's money into ads against McCain, and having the Obama money machine will be of great benefit.

Finally, speaking of money, Clinton may not actually drop out. Instead she will probably do a suspension of her campaign so she can continue to try and raise money. She is in major debt, and this would give her a path to nibble away at that.

The missed story tonight might be coming from the Republican race in Indiana. The presumptive nominee, and the only one left in the race, is winning by only 78%. That doesn't speak too well for John McCain.

If Obama wins North Carolina and Indiana, do you think Clinton will do the proper thing and concede to Obama? I highly doubt she will. She seems determined to cheat and steal her way into being the nominee, even if that means John McCain becoming the next President.

It's not shock that she is willing to go against the rules:

With at least 50 percent of the Democratic Party's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee committed to Clinton, her backers could -- when the committee meets at the end of this month -- try to ram through a decision to seat the disputed 210-member Florida and 156-member Michigan delegations. Such a decision would give Clinton an estimated 55 or more delegates than Obama, according to Clinton campaign operatives. The Obama campaign has declined to give an estimate.

Using the Rules and Bylaws Committee to force the seating of two pro-Hillary delegations would provoke a massive outcry from Obama forces. Such a strategy would, additionally, face at least two other major hurdles, and could only be attempted, according to sources in the Clinton camp, under specific circumstances:

Without the Obama supporters, Hillary has no way to win the general. That's the same as without Clinton supporters, Obama can't win. This is the exact reason why any decisions on Florida and Michigan must be done in such a way to cause minimal damage to the party.

Just another example of how McCain says one thing and does another:

Given Senator John McCain’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field.

But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.

Mr. McCain’s campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates.

Straight talk takes another hairpin curve. Of course the MSM will brush this under the rug. I guess it's just another "senior moment".