OBAMA, THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE? YES HE CAN!
By DICK MORRIS
Published on DickMorris.com on February 11, 2008.
I believe that Barack Obama will defeat Hillary and win the Democratic nomination. I think that this weekend's victories in states as diverse as Washington State, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Maine illustrates his national appeal and demonstrates Hillary's inability to win in states without large immigrant and Latino populations.
Hillary's results on Super Tuesday, which amounted to a draw with Obama, will be her high water mark and will represent the closest she will ever come to the party nomination.
Right now, CBS has Obama ahead in elected delegates with 1134, while Hillary has only 1131.By the time Virginia, Maryland, DC, Wisconsin, and Hawaii vote during the next week, Obama will have a lead over Clinton of about 100 delegates, even counting the super delegates who have thus far committed themselves.
March 4th will, at worst, be a wash for Obama with his probably wins in Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont offsetting his probable defeat in Texas. (Although in Texas' open primary, Republicans and Independents may flock to the Dem primary to beat Hillary).
And then come a list of states almost all of which should go for Obama, including likely victories in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana. By the convention, he will have more than enough delegates to overcome the expected margins Hillary may rack up among super delegates.
And don't bet on all the super delegates staying hitched to Hillary. These folks are politicians, half of them public office holders who are really good at reading the handwriting on the wall and really bad at gratitude for past favors.
Since 2004, I have predicted that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee. But, given the consistently amazing performance of Obama, his superior organizational and fund-raising skills, his inspiration of young people, and the flat and completely uninspiring performance by Hillary, it looks to me like it will be Obama as the Democratic nominee.
FOLLOW HILLARY CLINTON'S MONEY!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Saturday, February 16, 2008
WHY HILLARY WILL LOSE
WHY HILLARY WILL LOSE
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com
Hillary Clinton has blown an almost sure shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. Having surrendered the lead to Obama, she is not likely ever to regain it. It is a fantasy that the Ohio and Texas primaries will be a “firewall” to contain the flames of enthusiasm for Obama and reverse her defeats of February. Just as with Giuliani’s supposed Florida firewall, Hillary’s will crumble as Obama’s momentum carries him forward to the nomination.
Before Hillary lost her first primary or caucus, she lost the dialogue with the Obama campaign vis-à-vis the totally misguided decision to focus her message on experience, surrendering the ground of change to her opponent.
The more she tried to emphasize Obama’s inexperience, the more she seemed to fence herself into the status quo. That it was the status quo ante of the Clinton years, not the status quo of the Bush administration, made less and less difference as the campaign progressed.
She ran on a message perfect for a Republican primary — experience — and abandoned the key to winning a Democratic primary — the message of change — to Obama.
Her decision to rely on special interest political action committee and lobbyist contributions and to seed her war chest with the checks of maxed-out donors gave substance to Obama’s contrast of the status quo vs. change. With her chief strategist a lobbyist and her top campaign team all in the business, she was awash in associations that crippled her ability to fight for change.
Obama became the attraction in the race while Hillary recited her laundry list of proposals with a deadening monotony.
She could have waged a grassroots, small-donor, Internet campaign of change based on being the first woman running for president with a serious chance of victory. The charisma could have been hers, the excitement hers and the novelty hers. But by embracing experience and pretending to be safe and tested, she deadened the excitement her candidacy could have generated.
She got a reprieve by winning in New York/New Jersey and in California/ Arizona largely on the strength of Latino and immigrant voters. Their concentration in five key states (75 percent live in California, New York, Illinois, Florida and Texas) gave her a draw on Super Tuesday. But too many of her votes come from Hispanics who fear blacks and from older whites who harbor residual racial feelings. Her and Bill’s heavy-handed attempts to polarize the election racially died on Super Tuesday in an avalanche of votes from white states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, North Dakota and the like.
As the election turned from Super Tuesday to the heartland, where there are few Hispanics or new immigrants, Hillary’s campaign has lost its momentum and its prospects of victory. Obama’s victories in Maine, Nebraska, Louisiana and Washington state, and his probable wins in Virginia, D.C. and Maryland, show how complete is his mastery of states without immigrants blinded by the Clinton name to sustain it. Hillary’s hopes for victory in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina are a fantasy. The Latino population in those states is well below 10 percent and not enough to carry her to victory.
The super-delegates will not be enough to reverse Obama’s primary and caucus victories and they will run for cover and join the Obama bandwagon anyway.
Besides losing the rhetorical battle, Hillary will have nowhere near the money that Obama will have. Her preparations for a short war based on maxed-out donors and old politics were disastrously shortsighted, while Obama wisely cultivated online contributors who can regenerate with the click of a mouse.
When Barack Obama beat Al Gore to the punch and jumped into the presidential race while the former vice president was still deciding what to do, it seemed that Hillary had virtually wrapped up the nomination. While Gore could have beaten Mrs. Clinton, it seemed unlikely that a senator with two years’ service under his belt could do so.
But the mistakes and strategic errors of the Clinton campaign gave Obama an opening that he exploited masterfully. It is Obama’s charisma that is winning this election, but it was Clinton’s mistakes that opened the door.
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com
Hillary Clinton has blown an almost sure shot at the Democratic presidential nomination. Having surrendered the lead to Obama, she is not likely ever to regain it. It is a fantasy that the Ohio and Texas primaries will be a “firewall” to contain the flames of enthusiasm for Obama and reverse her defeats of February. Just as with Giuliani’s supposed Florida firewall, Hillary’s will crumble as Obama’s momentum carries him forward to the nomination.
Before Hillary lost her first primary or caucus, she lost the dialogue with the Obama campaign vis-à-vis the totally misguided decision to focus her message on experience, surrendering the ground of change to her opponent.
The more she tried to emphasize Obama’s inexperience, the more she seemed to fence herself into the status quo. That it was the status quo ante of the Clinton years, not the status quo of the Bush administration, made less and less difference as the campaign progressed.
She ran on a message perfect for a Republican primary — experience — and abandoned the key to winning a Democratic primary — the message of change — to Obama.
Her decision to rely on special interest political action committee and lobbyist contributions and to seed her war chest with the checks of maxed-out donors gave substance to Obama’s contrast of the status quo vs. change. With her chief strategist a lobbyist and her top campaign team all in the business, she was awash in associations that crippled her ability to fight for change.
Obama became the attraction in the race while Hillary recited her laundry list of proposals with a deadening monotony.
She could have waged a grassroots, small-donor, Internet campaign of change based on being the first woman running for president with a serious chance of victory. The charisma could have been hers, the excitement hers and the novelty hers. But by embracing experience and pretending to be safe and tested, she deadened the excitement her candidacy could have generated.
She got a reprieve by winning in New York/New Jersey and in California/ Arizona largely on the strength of Latino and immigrant voters. Their concentration in five key states (75 percent live in California, New York, Illinois, Florida and Texas) gave her a draw on Super Tuesday. But too many of her votes come from Hispanics who fear blacks and from older whites who harbor residual racial feelings. Her and Bill’s heavy-handed attempts to polarize the election racially died on Super Tuesday in an avalanche of votes from white states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, North Dakota and the like.
As the election turned from Super Tuesday to the heartland, where there are few Hispanics or new immigrants, Hillary’s campaign has lost its momentum and its prospects of victory. Obama’s victories in Maine, Nebraska, Louisiana and Washington state, and his probable wins in Virginia, D.C. and Maryland, show how complete is his mastery of states without immigrants blinded by the Clinton name to sustain it. Hillary’s hopes for victory in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina are a fantasy. The Latino population in those states is well below 10 percent and not enough to carry her to victory.
The super-delegates will not be enough to reverse Obama’s primary and caucus victories and they will run for cover and join the Obama bandwagon anyway.
Besides losing the rhetorical battle, Hillary will have nowhere near the money that Obama will have. Her preparations for a short war based on maxed-out donors and old politics were disastrously shortsighted, while Obama wisely cultivated online contributors who can regenerate with the click of a mouse.
When Barack Obama beat Al Gore to the punch and jumped into the presidential race while the former vice president was still deciding what to do, it seemed that Hillary had virtually wrapped up the nomination. While Gore could have beaten Mrs. Clinton, it seemed unlikely that a senator with two years’ service under his belt could do so.
But the mistakes and strategic errors of the Clinton campaign gave Obama an opening that he exploited masterfully. It is Obama’s charisma that is winning this election, but it was Clinton’s mistakes that opened the door.
HILLARY CLINTON GOOFS AGAIN!
HILLARY CLINTON GOOFS AGAIN!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FOXNews.com on February 15, 2008.
Who was it that defined neurosis as repeating the same mistake again and again, and expecting a better outcome each time? That’s really what the Clinton campaign is doing in its post-Chesapeake primary strategy. Now Hillary defines Obama as the candidate who makes speeches, while she is the one who provides “answers” and “solutions.”
Why is Hillary embracing this new line? It’s not that she has any great record of solutions or answers of which to boast, but rather that she wants to highlight Obama’s lack of a legislative record. Once again, she and her campaign geniuses are making the same mistake they made when they decided to use the experience as their defining difference with Obama. It’s not that she had much, but they sensed an opportunity to highlight that he had even less.
Of course experience not only didn’t work. It backfired massively. By co-opting the experience tag, Hillary bought into the status quo and left Obama to be the agent of change. A candidacy that could have excited tens of millions of women, the first serious prospect of a female president, became merely a boring part of the status quo, shorn of its novelty.
Hillary’s claim to be the solution-person won’t work either for the same simple reason: She hasn’t passed any. If she were McCain, she could tout a long history of legislative success on key issues and herald her ability to pass bills and engineer progress. But she hasn’t done that. She hasn’t walked the walk so now she cannot talk the talk.
As a first lady, Hillary’s sole important legislative involvement came during the first two years of her husband’s presidency when she sought to pass her ill-conceived health care reform, an effort that failed so miserably that it cost her party control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Between 1995 to 1997, she was largely absent from the White House, traveling the world, promoting her best selling book and helping to raise funds. She never attended strategy meetings and her only intervention in the singular legislative achievements of Bill’s administration — welfare reform and the balanced budget deal — was privately to urge a veto of the former and to oppose the latter because it provided for a cut in the capital gains tax. Hillary returned to the White House in 1998 to oversee the defense to the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment attempt, but the Clinton administration essentially folded its legislative efforts during those years and hung on for dear life. No portfolio of accomplishments there.
In the Senate, she has largely spent her time raising funds for herself and other Democrats (in hopes of attracting the votes of super delegates) and promoting her best selling memoir Living History. In part because of a lack of attention and also because of the Democrats’ minority status during much of her Senate tenure, she has passed very, very little of note.
Her legislative accomplishments in her first term in the Senate were almost entirely symbolic. She renamed a courthouse after Justice Thurgood Marshall. She passed a resolution honoring Alexander Hamilton and another celebrating the win of a Syracuse University lacrosse team. She renamed post offices, founded a national park in Puerto Rico and expressed the sense of the Senate that Harriet Tubman should have gotten a federal pension 150 years ago.
Her only actual legislation included one bill to increase nurse recruitment, another to aid respite time for Alzheimer’s care givers and another to expand veterans’ health benefits, a paltry output for six years’ service.
In her second term, she has spent full-time campaigning for president and has the worst attendance record of the three senators now still in the presidential race.
So who is she kidding? If she wants to hit Obama with a negative based on his inexperience and limited legislative record, she should go right ahead. But to pretend that she is the “solutions” and “answers” person while he gives speeches is absurd.
EVEN IN TEXAS: ADVANTAGE OBAMA
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on February 15, 2008.
While polls still show Hillary leading Obama in Texas and also in Ohio, her lead will likely fade and likely disappear by the time their primaries are held two weeks hence.
If Obama wins in Wisconsin, he’ll probably also carry Ohio, a state with very similar demographics. Neither state has much in the way of Hispanic voters (Only 2% of Ohio is Latino) or recent immigrants, the two key groups that gave Hillary the edge in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Go to DickMorris.com to read the rest of this blog!
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on FOXNews.com on February 15, 2008.
Who was it that defined neurosis as repeating the same mistake again and again, and expecting a better outcome each time? That’s really what the Clinton campaign is doing in its post-Chesapeake primary strategy. Now Hillary defines Obama as the candidate who makes speeches, while she is the one who provides “answers” and “solutions.”
Why is Hillary embracing this new line? It’s not that she has any great record of solutions or answers of which to boast, but rather that she wants to highlight Obama’s lack of a legislative record. Once again, she and her campaign geniuses are making the same mistake they made when they decided to use the experience as their defining difference with Obama. It’s not that she had much, but they sensed an opportunity to highlight that he had even less.
Of course experience not only didn’t work. It backfired massively. By co-opting the experience tag, Hillary bought into the status quo and left Obama to be the agent of change. A candidacy that could have excited tens of millions of women, the first serious prospect of a female president, became merely a boring part of the status quo, shorn of its novelty.
Hillary’s claim to be the solution-person won’t work either for the same simple reason: She hasn’t passed any. If she were McCain, she could tout a long history of legislative success on key issues and herald her ability to pass bills and engineer progress. But she hasn’t done that. She hasn’t walked the walk so now she cannot talk the talk.
As a first lady, Hillary’s sole important legislative involvement came during the first two years of her husband’s presidency when she sought to pass her ill-conceived health care reform, an effort that failed so miserably that it cost her party control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Between 1995 to 1997, she was largely absent from the White House, traveling the world, promoting her best selling book and helping to raise funds. She never attended strategy meetings and her only intervention in the singular legislative achievements of Bill’s administration — welfare reform and the balanced budget deal — was privately to urge a veto of the former and to oppose the latter because it provided for a cut in the capital gains tax. Hillary returned to the White House in 1998 to oversee the defense to the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment attempt, but the Clinton administration essentially folded its legislative efforts during those years and hung on for dear life. No portfolio of accomplishments there.
In the Senate, she has largely spent her time raising funds for herself and other Democrats (in hopes of attracting the votes of super delegates) and promoting her best selling memoir Living History. In part because of a lack of attention and also because of the Democrats’ minority status during much of her Senate tenure, she has passed very, very little of note.
Her legislative accomplishments in her first term in the Senate were almost entirely symbolic. She renamed a courthouse after Justice Thurgood Marshall. She passed a resolution honoring Alexander Hamilton and another celebrating the win of a Syracuse University lacrosse team. She renamed post offices, founded a national park in Puerto Rico and expressed the sense of the Senate that Harriet Tubman should have gotten a federal pension 150 years ago.
Her only actual legislation included one bill to increase nurse recruitment, another to aid respite time for Alzheimer’s care givers and another to expand veterans’ health benefits, a paltry output for six years’ service.
In her second term, she has spent full-time campaigning for president and has the worst attendance record of the three senators now still in the presidential race.
So who is she kidding? If she wants to hit Obama with a negative based on his inexperience and limited legislative record, she should go right ahead. But to pretend that she is the “solutions” and “answers” person while he gives speeches is absurd.
EVEN IN TEXAS: ADVANTAGE OBAMA
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on February 15, 2008.
While polls still show Hillary leading Obama in Texas and also in Ohio, her lead will likely fade and likely disappear by the time their primaries are held two weeks hence.
If Obama wins in Wisconsin, he’ll probably also carry Ohio, a state with very similar demographics. Neither state has much in the way of Hispanic voters (Only 2% of Ohio is Latino) or recent immigrants, the two key groups that gave Hillary the edge in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Go to DickMorris.com to read the rest of this blog!
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