Is The Hillster hoping for an October Surprise a few months early? Tonight, Showtime is running
BOBBY (R) (2006)
On June 5, 1968 the lives of nearly two-dozen people are changed irrevocably by the sudden assassination of Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. An ensemble cast recreates the momentous day in this drama written and directed by Emilio Estevez, with Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Shia LaBeouf, Lindsay Lohan, Helen Hunt, Laurence Fishburne, Joshua Jackson, Heather Graham and Nick Cannon.
The Hillster has to hope that a Sirhan Sirhan wannabe materializes to give the Dumbos the last option: She Who Must Be Obeyed. The reaction to The Hillster's state of denial (the last state in this damnable slog) ranged from The Cobra (No more a fan of The Sleazeball Clintons than she is of The War Criminal Bushies and that's why this blog likes her.) to The New Republic's Michelle Cottle weeping feminist tears. (Cue up "Evita" — "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina.") If this is (fair & balanced) kicking a woman when she's down (using both feet), so be it.
Anti-Hillster
[x NY Fishwrap]
She’s Still Here!
By Maureen Dowd
He thought a little thing like winning would stop her?
Oh, Bambi.
Whoever said that after denial comes acceptance hadn’t met the Clintons.
If Hillary could not have an acceptance speech, she wasn’t going to have acceptance.
“It’s never going to end,” sighed one Democrat who has been advising Hillary. “We’re just moving to a new phase.”
Barry has been trying to shake off Hillary and pivot for quite a long time now, but she has managed to keep her teeth in his ankle and raise serious doubts about his potency. Getting dragged across the finish line Tuesday night by Democrats who had had enough of the rapacious Clintons, who had decided, if it came to it, that they would rather lose with Obama than win with Hillary, the Illinois senator tried to celebrate at the St. Paul arena where Republicans will anoint John McCain in September.
But even as Obama was trying to savor, Hillary was refusing to sever. Ignoring the attempts of Obama and his surrogates to graciously say how “extraordinary” she was as they showed her the exit, she and a self-pitying Bill continued to pull focus. Outside Baruch College, where she was to speak, her fierce feminist supporters screamed “Denver! Denver! Denver!”
Even as Obama got ready to come out on stage for his victory party, the Clinton campaign announced that it had won a Wyoming superdelegate and Terry McAuliffe introduced her at Baruch as “the next president of the United States.” She gave a brief nod to Obama without conceding that he was the nominee before rushing through a variation on her stump speech. She clung to her fuzzy math about winning the popular vote, and in one last fudge she said: “Thanks so much to South Dakota. You had the last word” — even though the Montana polls still had 25 minutes to go.
“What does Hillary want?” she mused, in her most self-aware moment in some time. “I will be making no decisions tonight,” she concluded, asking fans to go to her Web site to share their thoughts.
And, even though Democrats were no longer listening, Hillary’s camp radiated the message that Obama was a sucker who had played by the rules on Florida and Michigan, and then reached an appeasing compromise, and that such a weak sister could never handle Putin or I’m-A-Dinner-Jacket.
As he was reaching the magic number of delegates, she was devilishly stealing the spotlight. First, her camp vociferously denied an Associated Press report that she would concede and then, in a conference call with the New York delegation, she gave a green light to supporters to push for her to be on the ticket.
Clintonologists know that Hillary is up to something, but they aren’t sure what. Theory No. 1 is that it’s the Cassandra “I told you so” gambit: She believes intensely that he’s too black, too weak and too elitist — with all his salmon and organic tea and steamed broccoli — to beat her pal John McCain. But she has to pretend she’ll do “whatever it takes,” even accept the vice presidency, a job she’s already had and doesn’t want again, so that nobody will blame her when he loses on Nov. 4. Then she can power on to 2012.
Theory No. 2 is that it’s a “Bad stuff happens” maneuver, exemplified in her gaffe about the R.F.K. assassination, that she figures that at least if she moves a few blocks from Embassy Row to the Naval Observatory, she’ll be a heartbeat away from the job she’s always wanted.
Either way, by broadcasting that she’s open to being Obama’s running mate, she puts public pressure on him similar to the sort of pressure Walter Mondale was under from rampaging feminists when he put Geraldine Ferraro on the ticket. Mondale ended up seeming henpecked, as Obama would seem if he caved to the women who say they will write in Hillary’s name or vote for anti-choice McCain before they’d vote for Obama.
For months, Hillary has been trying to emasculate Obama with the sort of words and themes she has chosen, stirring up feminist anger by promoting the idea that the men were unfairly taking it away from the women, and covering up her own campaign mistakes with cries of sexism. Even his ability to finally clinch the historic nomination did not stop her in that pursuit. She did not bat her eyelashes at him and proclaim him Rhett Butler instead of Ashley Wilkes.
She just urged her supporters to keep the dream alive, and talked privately about what she would settle for. She has told some Democrats recently that she wanted Obama to agree to allow a roll call vote, like days of yore, so that the delegates of states she won would cast the first ballot for her at the convention. She said she wanted that for her daughter.
Obama supporters are worried that it’s a trick and she’ll somehow snatch away the nomination. Just as Hillary supporters have hardened toward him, many of Obama’s donors and fans have hardened against the Clintons, saying it would be disillusioning to see them on a ticket that’s supposed to be about fresh politics.
“It would be,” said one influential Democrat, “like finding out there’s no tooth fairy.”
[Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary (on the Clinton-Lewinsky Affair), became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page in 1995.]
Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company
Pro-Hillster
[x The New Republic Blog — The Plank]
A Farewell to Hillary
By Michelle Cottle
Right up until the end, a part of me really wanted her to pull it off. Oh sure, I grant the Obamaniacs everything: Hillary's divisiveness, her baggage, her "likeability issue"-all fueled by her special blend of moral flexibility and arch moralism. On a good day, Hillary Clinton rubs approximately half the country the wrong way. And as her fading primary prospects made the good days ever rarer, the candidate, her team, and most particularly that unhinged husband of hers pulled a variety of stunts that reminded all of us exactly how fatiguing the Clintons can be.
Still it breaks my heart to see her laid low.
Part of it, I suspect, is the feminist within. Deep down, I believe there's a snowballs chance of a woman being elected president in my lifetime, and I'll admit to having enjoyed watching Hillary push the system. More specifically, I've always thought Hil has gotten a raw deal: Conservatives demonized her for embodying shifting cultural mores. Many of the rest of us seemed to fault her for being pricklier and less charming than her husband. He may have been grasping, rapacious, slippery, and vulgar, but he was just so effusive and homey and hard to hate (until recently--in service of her campaign, it is certain to be noted). She, on the other hand, always struck us as too obviously cold and calculating.
And yet Hillary is the one who has collected a militantly loyal circle of friends and followers over the years. It is easy to poke fun at the cultishness of Hillaryland gals, with their locked-lipped, obsessive devotion to the group's namesake. But the women themselves are an exceedingly likeable, unnervingly impressive lot, all of whom hold Hillary--and specifically her humanity--in the highest regard. For all her flaws, it says something about the much-maligned Senator Clinton that she has inspired such enduring loyalty and affection.
This is not to say that the Hillaryland family in particular hasn't been a nightmare to cover. It is the nature of the beast that journalists see the dark side of their subjects. And while chronicling the campaign's foibles, I was repeatedly accused by staff and supporters alike of being out to get their gal. (My favorite moment was when now-campaign manager Maggie Williams huffily accused me of calling her a liar--as she was blatantly lying to me about how smoothly things were going in her service as a mere "utility player" to then-campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle.) But I always got the sense that these women cared about their candidate, which made the ass-chewings more comprehensible, if not any more pleasant.
There's little doubt that it is time--arguably well past time--for Hillary to cede the field. Lingering would only damage the party in which she clearly aspires to have a future. More selfishly, I'll admit to being exhausted of listening to Hil's outraged critics imbue her every word and action with the most venal motives imagineable. (Oh my God! She must be hoping some nutjob supporter will take the RFK hint and assassinate Obama!)
But even now I am sad to see her go. Or rather, I am sad that things turned out such that she so clearly has to go. I emailed a handful of her advisors today about what they considered to be the highlights of this primary-what moments made them the proudest of their campaign or candidate. Only a few responded, and only one response stuck with me. Referring to this evening's much-discussed presser, and on the clear assumption that Hillary will concede, an advisor wrote back: "I think I will be incredibly proud of her tonight."
It's enough to make a grown woman cry.
[Michelle Cottle has been a senior editor at The New Republic since February 1999. She is a 1992 magna cum laude graduate of Vanderbilt University with a B.A. in English and a minor in European Studies.]
Copyright © 2008 The New Republic
Get an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Reader at no cost from Google. Another free Reader is available at RSS Reader.
