Convention dumpster might await Clinton and Obama
by Bob Hoig, Publisher
Midlands Business Journal
How many implosions can Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton absorb before the Democrat Party chucks them both and starts over at its Denver convention in August?
Whatever the limit, it’s getting close. This writer makes it near even that neither will be at the top of the presidential ticket in November.
Obama might hold on, no matter how incredible his stumbles, since African-American votes are so badly needed in Democratic congressional races.
Party leaders might prefer a certain drubbing in the presidential race rather than offend the party’s here-to-fore most loyal voting bloc by dumping one of their own. It would be doubly hard to ditch Obama were he to lead in the delegate count and the popular vote.
The same logic might apply to Clinton in view of her appeal to some women voters.
From the time he filed for president, Obama was off to a bad start as a general election candidate, thanks to his owning the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate.
He picked up another general election albatross when the “God damn America” rants of his minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, became public. Obama continues to make excuses for Wright and refuses to separate from him.
Another load on Obama’s shoulders is his association with Tony Rezko, the Chicago wheeler-dealer businessman who has helped the Obamas to bundles of cash and to their expensive Chicago home.
Obama’s show stopper came last Friday with release of an audio tape apparently made surreptitiously the Sunday before at a closed Obama fund-raiser in the San Francisco backyard of a wealthy donor.
Obama, the Democrats leading apostle of “hope,” was caught on the tape rather grandly attributing some unhopeful attitudes to people in rural America.
“….It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama said on the tape.
As we go to press April 14, he is back-pedaling from his words and might be scheduling a speech in explanation – modeled perhaps after his explanations for Reverend Wright’s various hatreds.
Hopefully, Obama will acknowledge that rural Americans worship or hunt or oppose illegal immigration for reasons other than frustration and bitterness.
Clinton’s whoppers seem destined to make her a running Saturday Night Live joke.
She was ridiculed anew during the week for claiming falsely that she and daughter Chelsea deplaned in the midst of sniper fire during a Bosnian stopover in 1996.
Sunday television programs aired oft-repeated TV footage of Clinton repeatedly describing the harrowing experience of arriving under fire. The reality, as shown by television footage on Meet the Press and other programs, was that Hillary and Chelsea were met at the plane by a large, smiling crowd, including children. No bullets popping anywhere.
What happens at the convention in August will depend on polls and how Clinton and Obama stack up against John McCain for November.
An ominous note for the party came with one poll quoted on Fox News Channel and NBC. It had the ticket of McCain and Condoleezza Rice beating any combination of Clinton and Obama by 5 points – and in New York of all places.
The arcane rules of the Democratic Party with all those “superdelegates” voting as they please, and even pledged delegates free to switch in the event of an impasse, make anything possible come August.
April 2008
