Clinton Fails Coffee Maker Test

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C9bkuJliMY]

It’s 3:00 a.m. at the White House and coffee is needed. Don’t call Hillary Clinton.

This video settles it. There’s no way I can vote for Hillary Clinton if she’s so out of touch that she doesn’t know how to use a coffee maker. This comes just after one of her supporters introduced her by bashing latte drinkers.

Bush Has Record High Disapproval Rating

George Bush just keeps on breaking records–for most unpopular president of all time:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president.

“No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president’s disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

“Bush’s approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon (22 percent and 24 percent, respectively) but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s,” Holland added. “The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 66 percent disapproval in January 1952.”

CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider adds, “He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974.” President Nixon’s disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 67 percent.

Stephanopoulos Remains a Loyal Clintonista

ABC apparently does not care about journalistic integrity anymore. The C in ABC must stand for Clinton, and unfortunately it doesn’t mean Anyone But Clinton. After hosting what was very likely the worst debate of all time in Pennsylvania, George Stephanopoulos has found an even more blatant way to whore for Hillary. He’s hosting a Town Hall for Clinton on This Week. Having Stephanopoulos hosting might even save Clinton the trouble of having to plant questions for this one, although she might not want to break from standard operating procedure.

Update: The Clinton apologists are claiming that there’s no problem here because Obama was invited to attend. First of all, such a last minute invitation is not very helpful as Obama’s schedule is undoubtedly pretty tight at this point making it difficult if not impossible to add on such an event if he wanted to.

More seriously, this totally misses the point. The problem is that there is a conflict of interest with George Stephanopoulos hosting such an event. It becomes more a televised Clinton campaign event than a legitimate news show. ABC should not allow this to air. This would be like Tony Snow hosting a Town Hall for John McCain a few days before the election, and then extending the Democratic nominee a last minute invitation. (The analogy would be even better if Bush was the Republican nominee but fortunately that cannot happen again.)

Hillary Clinton has already demonstrated that she prefers Bush-style manipulation of the news as opposed to answering real questions, including the use of planted questions. Having Stephanopoulos as host for such an event takes the sham to an even higher level. Clinton has also concentrated her campaign on poorly educated, low-information voters. She utilizes Rove-style attacks rather than campaigning on substance. When she does make an act of speaking on issues she resorts to ridiculous proposals which attract the interest of her uninformed supporters but which do not hold up to scrutiny such as with her support of the gas tax holiday and her proposals for the mortgage crisis. After Stephanopoulos’ conduct in the Pennsylvania debate, I bet he will only act to facilitate such strategies.

Trippi Thinks Edwards Should Have Remained in Race

Joe Trippi writes that he should have advised John Edwards to have remained in race. He writes, “He could have kept his agenda in the forefront by staying in the race and forcing Obama and Clinton to focus on those issues because he, John Edwards, would hold the key to the convention deadlock. And maybe, just maybe, a brokered convention would have stunned the political world and led to an Edwards nomination.”

It is doubtful that a brokered convention would have turned to a distant third place candidate, but its not impossible. Just as scary a thought is that Trippi might be right that having Edwards in the race could have affected the agenda. Its bad enough that we have a nanny-state loving big government junkie like Clinton as one of the remaining two candidates. The last thing the Democrats need (or depending on one’s perspective, the thing the Republicans could use to return to power) would be a Democratic battle based upon who could most appeal to the economic populist wing of the party.

Former Clinton Appointee to DNC Calls For Superdelegates To Back Obama and a New Brand of Politics

With Obama having an almost insurmountable lead in the pledged delegates the race increasingly centers around the superdelegates. Convincing the superdelegates to go contrary to the results of the primaries is the only chance Hillary Clinton has to win the nomination. Obama has gone into a prevent defense, attempting to get through the remaining primaries without a major shift in the race which could help Clinton. Hillary Clinton has no choice but to campaign more aggressively and to take advantage of opportunities which develop, such as the controversy over Wright. As a consequence Clinton shows some late momentum and it looks unlikely that Obama will be able to achieve a knock out blow in next week’s primaries. Some polls show Clinton leading in Indiana and North Carolina.

Despite the apparent shift in momentum and recent controversies, the superdelegates are not fooled. Obama continues to pick up more than Clinton, eliminating her lead in elected superdelegates and narrowing her lead in total superdelegates to sixteen. Today’s pick up for Clinton might be one of the more damaging ones, possibly shifting the momentum back in Obama’s favor in time for next week’s vote.

Joe Andrew, appointed to head the Democratic National Committee by Bill Clinton in 1999 has shifted his support from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama. Andrew is arguing that it is time for Democrats to unify around Obama and that “a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue this process, and a vote to continue this process is a vote that assists  John McCain.” He is calling on other superdelegates to also endorse Obama and put an end to the race.

Andrew was appointed by Bill Clinton and clearly knows the Clintons. He is preparing for the possibility that they will attack him personally, and uses this to make the argument as to why Democrats should nominate Barack Obama:

A New Era of Politics

My endorsement of Senator Obama will not be welcome news to my friends and family at the Clinton campaign. If the campaign’s surrogates called Governor Bill Richardson, a respected former member of President Clinton’s cabinet, a “Judas” for endorsing Senator Obama, we can all imagine how they will treat somebody like me. They are the best practitioners of the old politics, so they will no doubt call me a traitor, an opportunist and a hypocrite. I will be branded as disloyal, power-hungry, but most importantly, they will use the exact words that Republicans used to attack me when I was defending President Clinton.

When they use the same attacks made on me when I was defending them, they prove the callow hypocrisy of the old politics first perfected by Republicans. I am an expert on this because these were the exact tools that I mastered as a campaign volunteer, a campaign manager, a State Party Chair and the National Chair of our Party. I learned the lessons of the tough, right-wing Republicans all too well. I can speak with authority on how to spar with everyone from Lee Atwater to Karl Rove. I understand that, while wrong and pernicious, shallow victory can be achieved through division by semantics and obfuscation. Like many, I succumbed to the addiction of old politics because they are so easy.

Innuendo is easy. The truth is hard.

Sound bites are easy. Solutions are hard.

Spin is simple and easy. Struggling with facts is complicated and hard.

I have learned the hard way that you can love the candidate and hate the campaign. My stomach churns when I think how my old friends in the Clinton campaign will just pick up the old silly Republican play book and call in the same old artificial attacks and bombardments we have all heard before.

Yet, despite the simple and overwhelming pressure to do anything and everything to win, Barack Obama has risen above it all and demanded a new brand of politics. People flock to Senator Obama because they are rejecting the hyperbole of the old politics. The past eight years of George Bush have witnessed a retreat from substance, science, and reason in favor spin, cronyism and ideology. Barack Obama has dared not only to criticize it, as all Democrats do, but to actually reject playing the same old game. And in doing so, he has shown us a new path to victory.

Obama vs. The Clinton/McCain Party on the Gas Tax

John McCain has admitted he doesn’t know much about economics. That might explain his views on the gas tax, but what’s Hillary Clinton’s excuse? It must come down to the fact that she continues to attract the votes of the less educated, low-information voters who would see saving money as reason to vote for her. Unfortunately they won’t save very much.

Not only is this another case of Obama vs. Clinton and McCain, but most who have written on the topic agree that the gas holiday is a terrible idea. Jonathan Alter writes:

Hillary Clinton has now joined John McCain in proposing the most irresponsible policy idea of the year—an idea that actually could aid the terrorists. What’s worse, both of them know that suspending the federal gas tax this summer is a terrible pander, and yet they’re pushing it anyway for crass political advantage.

Clinton and McCain have learned a destructive lesson from the Bush era: as Bill Clinton said in 2002, it’s better politically to be “strong and wrong” than thoughtful and right. The goal is to depict Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist. By any means necessary.

I could highlight a long debate among economists on suspending the gas tax, but there is no debate. Not one respectable economist—and not one environmentalist or foreign policy expert—supports the idea, unless they are official members of the Clinton or McCain campaigns (and even some of them privately oppose it). To relieve suffering at the pump, send another rebate check or provide tax credits or something else, but not this.

Alter proceeds to give a long list of reasons why the idea  is bad, including that it helps the terrorists.

The New York Times has an editorial on the tax which makes me wonder if they regret their earlier endorsement:

Senators John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton have hit on a new way to pander to American voters: a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The proposal may draw applause and votes from Americans feeling the pain of nearly $4-a-gallon gasoline. But it is an expensive and environmentally unsound policy that would do nothing to help American drivers.

Leave aside that suspending the 18.4-cent-a-gallon excise tax would cost the deficit-burdened federal government $9 billion and that turning a tax off in May and on in September would be an administrative nightmare.

Even leave aside that nixing the gas tax would increase demand for gasoline — exactly the wrong response to global warming and rising energy prices. So wrong, in fact, that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain support policies that would cut carbon emissions and increase the price of energy. (Talk about voting for something before they voted against it.)

The fact is that drivers would, at best, see only the briefest reduction in prices at the pump. Gas prices rise during the summer season of heavy driving as rising demand pushes refiners to produce virtually at full capacity. If a suspension in the excise tax reduced the price at the pump, it would encourage even more driving. This would simply push prices back up. Oil companies would be grateful, drivers less so.

The gas tax isn’t the only case where Clinton is trying to obtain votes by misleading the voters. McClatchy reports on how Clinton is attacking Bush for not stopping a program which cost Indiana jobs. There’s one problem with her attack on Bush. It was Bill Clinton who approved the project.

Kerry Takes On MSNBC Over Wright Questions

John Kerry really gave it MSNBC’s Alex Witt when she asked about Reverend Wright:

WITT: Okay. He said it. A 20-year relationship. Reverend Wright married him. He is the one who baptized a god parent. How personally painful is this for him?

KERRY: Can I say something to you? Obviously it is painful and he said it. You folks need to let go of this. Television needs to stop dwelling on something that is in the past. I thought Barack Obama yesterday gave America his second big presidential moment of this campaign. The first when he spoke out about the issue of race. The second yesterday, when he made it clear, every one of the statements of the minister are just unacceptable. They’re not the person that he knew before. Now let’s move on to how we’ll put people to work. How are you going to give people health care? How are you going to create jobs in america? What Barack Obama is offering in this gas price issue is real leadership. I mean, do we want people who sort of put their fingers in the wind and throw out an idea for the short term that is sort of politically pleasing, or do you want a here who stands up and says, no, what we need is to really lower gas prices by having a real energy policy, an intelligent policy that puts in place the incentives for renewable fuels and alternative fuels. That’s what Barack Obama is doing. And it is you guys have to focus on the thing that really matter to the American electorate. The other thing is just worn out, old history now. This guy had his narcissistic moment and it is finished.

WITT: Okay. Point well taken. Did I say to begin, can I just say, sir, I knew you weren’t going to like that question. On the record.

KERRY: Let’s move on to the thing that really matter to people. I think people in America are tired of this stuff.

WITT: Okay.