First she tried to market the image of herself as a fearless first-lady-caught-in the-line-of fire with her exaggerated claims of narrowly missing sniper fire while on a visit to Bosnia in 1996, but now she’s trying to dupe the public into thinking she possesses the same die-hard, give-it-your-all, not-going-down-without-a-fight personality as…Rocky Balboa? In her most recent public appearance, Senator Clinton compared herself to the legendary Sylvester Stallone character in a speech given to the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia today. "When it comes to finishing the fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up.  And neither do the American people.” Couldn’t she have picked a better person to compare herself to? Did she wake up and say, “Screw every other politician who gets compared to JFK and FDR. I’m going to compare myself to Rocky Balboa!” I wonder if she knows that Stallone is currently backing McCain. 

― Stacey Gallotta

4/1/2008 1:36:05 PM by phloggist | Comments [0] |  

    The suggestion by Ma and Pa Clinton that Barack Obama become vice president on their ticket is amusing and inventive. It is an act of creative desparation, designed to obscure the fact that Obama leads -- at least for now -- in popular votes and in the all important delegate count. But don't be too dismissive of desparation. The Clintons do their best work when it looks as if they are finished, or at least up against a wall: surviving the various bimbo eruptions up to and including impeachment are cases in point. When the Clintons get desperate, Obama should get worried. It's a Clinton thing.

3/10/2008 11:54:15 AM by Peter Kadzis | Comments [0] |  

Even the hacks at Fox News got the bulletin after last night's victory speeches: John McCain can stoop to stealing Barack's stump taglines, but nobody -- American hero or no -- wants to follow Obama. Yes, Hillary is losing the ground game . . . hard. But, as you can see above, what we're really all agog about is MSNBC enabling embeds on their news video. ALL YOUR VIDEOSES BELONGS TO US.

This morning's storylines:

- Obama steamrolls Clinton. Women, white dudes, lunchpail Dems: fired up, ready to go. [NYTimes, WashPost]
- In Virginia, a possible Ohio-of-2008, Obama picks up swing voters while McCain hemmorages indies [The Nation]
- Progressive women no longer feeling the "tug" of Hillary? [Slate]
- Why Black women vote Obama [The Root]
- Inside the Clinton campaign shakeup [Atlantic Monthly]

2/13/2008 1:36:57 AM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  

Unless there's busloads of uncounteds out there, Massachusetts looks like a rout. We'll leave the post-mortems to the guys on staff who know this stuff better than us, but you don't have to be Karl Rove to read this as a blow for Ted Kennedy -- of those polled, less than half of Massachusetts Democrats said Kennedy's endorsement of Obama was important -- and also a significant boost for Tom Menino, who stuck by the Hillz to the end. CNN's maps are solid light-blue in Boston, Worcester . . . hell, just about everywhere. The unofficial exit polls make it sound a lot closer than it actually turned out -- Obama edged out Clinton among young voters, but lost women by about the same margin. Significantly, though, 18- to 29-year-olds made up just 14-percent of the Democratic vote, while women comprised 58 percent of the Democratic vote. Also, in case you were wondering, Hillz beat Obama, 49 to 47, in votes by "all other races."

 

 

2/5/2008 9:52:44 PM by Carly Carioli | Comments [0] |  

I’m back in Boston after spending a couple of hours in Manchester, New Hampshire and must say that I’ve never encountered anything like the surge of interest in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Topic B was would McCain beat Romney? Although the men and the women in the street and at the polls seemed to think that the Republican race would be tight, their sense was that McCain would win.

That’s telling because, as David Bernstein has reported in his Talking Politics Blog, Hillsborough County is ground zero for the Romney Campaign. There were more Romney signs in evidence than for any other candidate, Republican or Democrat.

Topic A was Obama.

Talking to Democrats and Independents at the Red Arrow Diner and on the streets downtown the interest -- and excitement -- about Obama was so real that you felt like you could touch it, taste it.

In all my years of writing about politics I’ve never encountered anything like this before. When I was in high school I volunteered for Gene McCarthy. He was greeted as a breath of fresh air when LBJ’s war in Vietnam was sucking the life of national politics. But he never touched the emotional cords that Obama seems to strum.

Howard Dean came a bit closer. But Dean’s support was limited to college students and those with an activist frame of mind. He too was greated as a new breeze and certainly had more emotional appeal than the sometimes chilly and cerebral McCarthy.

Obama’s appeal seems akin to Bobby Kennedy’s. It is charismatic. It transcends the ordinary and cuts across the divides of age, income, and gender.

I mention gender because I was struck by the number of people I spoke with who were voting FOR Obama, not AGAINST Hillary Clinton. In fact, a number of people said they hoped that the press wouldn’t be too hard of Hillary. It seems that however ClintonNew Hampshire voters. does, she won the respect of a sizable number of

Obama, however, seems to have won their heads and their hearts.

 

1/8/2008 1:18:34 PM by Peter Kadzis | Comments [0] |