...and she's doomed to lose. I don't dislike Hillary. In fact, she'd probably be a good president -- and my heart actually lifted at the prospect of seeing a return to 1996-2000. One good thing you can say about a Hillary administration: Her first term would not be a first term. She wouldn't make a first-termer's mistakes.
But she can never prevail in November, 2008. Too many people despise her. The fact that she is obviously the Republican party's favored choice for the Democratic nomination is the best argument against her candidacy. Her support will crumble at the first whiff of manufactured scandal, which means that the Republicans will keep their anti-Hillary oppo research in check until she secures the nomination.
Tactically speaking, General Clark remains the strongest opponent of McCain. Not my first choice, but I'd be happy to vote for him.
10 comments:
I respect your position. Even so, I cannot see Hillary winning. I agree that there is probably nothing substantive the Republicans have on her -- but Whitewater taught us that allegations merely have to SEEM substantive, at least where the Clintons are concerned.
I've been resistant to the Obama charm. But the recent slur against him made me view him more favorably.
I used to like her a lot, back ten or so years ago. I don't dislike her now because she is a woman or a Democrat!
In 2008, I want to see someone in the WH who isn't a Democrat or Republican, as in, in the pocket of either.
That means I will vote for whomever got the most money from regualar folks.
That test would eliminate Hillary. And that's the way it is with me folks.
It appears that Hillary announced early to blunt Obama's rapidly growing support. Right now, it is hard to imagine anything other than a Clinton/Obama ticket. And that is perhaps a combination that can win the election. Although it is bizarrely counterintuitive, I think running a young black man for VP softens the negatives that Hillary usually stirs up. The contrast makes her seem even more whitebread, mainstream, stable, and reliable. There's symmetry in the pairing, and I think that the American public is just desperate enough to say, "Hell, how can they make things any worse?
A lot depends on how well they run between here and 2008, but Hillary is a canny politician, and Obama doesn't seem to be any slouch.
Obama, well he is not that well known to me.....he is black....I don't give a damn.
He is a man..... a few points off....He is a democrat.. a few points added.......what and who is behind the"what do we know about this dude/madam?"
I learned a long time ago, what you see isn't always what you get.
With Hillary, I know what I get (not my cup of tea by a long shot) with Obama...well I havan't any Idea!
I am not a sure shot for either!
A question for Joseph - Is it possible for a person to be moral and President? My belief is that this is not possible. Morality and the daily decisions of a president seem to be mutually exclusive. I simply can not accept the proposition that any of our presidents show moral underpinnings. The demands of the office require venality. ?
sofla said...
If Harry Truman could win in '48, and Nixon could win (as the peace candidate???) in '68, I suspect Hillary could win in '08. Both of those two prior winners looked like wholly improbable victors after major poll or electoral setbacks for themselves and/or their party (the GOP had been waxed with Goldwater as the '64 candidate), yet they prevailed. By contrast, Hillary actually looks in relatively good shape, coming off a strong political win for her in NY, and with the new ascendancy of the Democratic Party (no Republican won any new seat that the party didn't already control).
After saying that, the likely replaying of many of the Clinton era pseudo-scandals would be dispiriting, even if most didn't actually involve HRC. The most directly troubling to her was her cattle futures profits, which she apparently flat out lied about when she attributed all the gains to her 'reading the WSJ,' when instead they resulted from insider broker manipulation by the guy later convicted of just such practices.
Maybe HRC already copped to that deception, I forget.
HRC did not cop to that deception because there was no deception. At the time the scandal of "Hillary's cows" became public, I asked a former professional stock broker how (presuming the deal was unethical) it could be done.
His answer: It can't be done. Cattle futures cannot be gamed. There is no insider info that would put you ahead of anyone else doing research with publicly-available resources.
Does that sound naive? Well, in all the years since, I've kept an eye out for some right-wing Hillary hater to explain just how such a thing might be done.
Look it up for yourself on Google. Go to the right wing sites. You will read that the guy who guided her ("Red" Bone) had a very questionable history. You will read that Bone waived margin calls for his favored clients. You will read that only "the naive" believe that the thing was done legally. You will read endlessly about the amounts of money involved. You will read allegations of backdated orders -- a trick that does not work, or everyone would be doing it.
What you will NOT read is a detailed description of how Hillary gamed the cattle.
From Wikipedia:
According to the Washington Post, "[w]hile Clinton's account was wildly successful to an outsider, it was small compared to what others were making in the cattle futures market in the 1978-79 period."
At the same time, all of this is a good reason not to give the primary nod to Hillary. If this stuff even bamboozles progressives, it will bamboozle the general public, once again.
I'm for experience and IQ.
I'd vote for Hillary if I didn't like Edwards so much. I was very impressed to see Edwards come so close in the Cheney/Edwards debate in 2004. Cheney is such a forceful slimwizard and Edwards didn't fall short in any respect. Even when "insider" information came up. (When I say "forceful" I really mean Cheney framing issues by using words like, "clearly..." and, "and I still think that..." and, "there is no doubt"...)
I'd probably like to see an Edwards/Clinton ticket. After 8 years I'd like to see a Clinton/? ticket.
Miss P.
Welp, I think she's going to tank in the primaries--and tank hard, and I don't outright despise her or anything (...exactly...)--but I was interested to see a major spike in the anti-Billary radio traffic around here lately. Certain stations are even drudging up absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel Starr era slurs about dresses and cigars. Desperate. Or maybe it's just par for their paranoid little course, I dunno.
sofla said...
Joe, HRC WAS being deceptive about the cattle futures profits. She did NOT trade her own account with simply what she gleaned from the WSJ pages (except perhaps in her later, so-so trades that did not create much if any profit).
Instead, she had given trading authority to the attorney who duked her into these opportunities, and it was his trading, under his discretion, from which her profits derived. (And perhaps she has acknowledged the role of that attorney since her original false claims). She flat out lied to claim that she was 'lucky' and/or in any way the author of those profits, by her own acumen in reading the financial pages, because those were instead gifted to her.
How were they gifted to her? Have you really not heard of this mechanism (you know, the thing that the broker was later CONVICTED OF, or pled guilty to)?
It's quite simple. The broker had trading authority on multiple accounts. He or his agent would make two trades, identical but opposite from each another (buying and selling the same contract). One of those transactions would go up, and one would go down. WHO it was who bought the profitable trade (well, who it was who would be given credit for that trade in their account) was a matter of of the broker steering the profits their way.
So, no, a normal individual trader, or even a typical brokerage trader doing this for someone, wouldn't have the power to make these things happen. Your source was correct. However, the BROKER himself, because of his control of the backroom, the paperwork, and his ability to decide later which trades to put into which accounts, did have that ability. Which we know because of his conviction on just that (or the equivalent in a consent decree on the civil side).
So complete was the attorney/broker control of her account, evident times when she should have been subject to margin calls (which if not met would have sold out her position) were simply finessed over, no margin calls, to her or even covered by them, just fixed with an adequately profitable trade(s) by the time they closed out the business day books.
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