Palin Pushes Hillary Voters To Obama

Now we get some truth. Turns out the PUMAs were just a vocal group of people who bought into the Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim-terrorist bit. But the REAL Hillary supporters know better:

It wasn't primarily the work of Hillary Clinton, though by her count she has made more than 50 public appearances for Barack Obama. Nor was it the work of Obama, who has kept Clinton and her advisers at arm's length. No, the one who put the Hillary Clinton voters in Obama's column was John McCain -- with his choice of a running mate.

"Palin -- God forbid! Where did they find her?" Evelyn Fruman exclaimed Monday before a Clinton speech at a Jewish community center here.

"God forbid!" Gail Silverberg chimed in. "Hockey moms and lipstick on a pig and six-packs? I don't want that stuff."

Nearby, Rina Jampolsky was wearing a "Hillary Sent Me" button next to a pin saying "Barack Obama" in Hebrew. "I thought I wouldn't vote at all when Hillary left the race," she said. "But as soon as McCain selected Sarah Palin, my decision was made."

Obama Needs to Start Pandering

This is a valid request. 
I connect with Obama's hope message and I know his specific plans for the economy, healthcare, education... because I've read all of his documents and books and watched most of the town halls.

But the average person, who doesn't connect with hope and hasn't made it a point to read up on Obama, needs more meat. All they've seen is Obama the celebrity. They don't know why he's popular. They don't connect with the local-global economy message. They don't necessarily care that Europe likes the U.S. 

They need the: What-are-you-going-to-do-for-me details. Obama needs to pander, to roll up his sleeves and pander, pander, pander. He could also use a lot more help from the democrats because Hillary has been countering much of the work Obama is trying to do. Hopefully, after the convention, we won't have to hear about sore Hillary supporters.

I hope her supporters get everything they want at the convention, find catharsis, and move on. I hope it's a moving event for them. 

NYT: These Democrats — 15 governors, members of Congress and state party leaders — say Mr. Obama has yet to convert his popularity among many Americans into solutions to crucial electoral challenges: showing ownership of an issue, like economic stewardship or national security; winning over supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; and minimizing his race and experience level as concerns for voters.

Mr. Obama has run for the last 18 months as the candidate of hope. Yet party leaders — while enthusiastic about Mr. Obama and his state-by-state campaign operations — say he must do more to convince the many undecided Democrats and independents that he would address their financial anxieties rather than run, by and large, as an agent of change — given that change, they note, is not an issue.

“I particularly hope he strengthens his economic message — even Senator Obama can speak more clearly and specifically about the kitchen-table, bread-and-butter issues like high energy costs,” said Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio. “It’s fine to tell people about hope and change, but you have to have plenty of concrete, pragmatic ideas that bring hope and change to life.”

Or, in the blunter words of Gov. Phil Bredesen, Democrat of Tennessee: “Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.”

Hillary Supporters Bombarding Isenhour with Hate Mail

Who are these diehard Hillary supporters? They're the kind of people that send hate mail to a woman who ran Hillary's Pennsylvania campaign.

The executive director of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party said she has been blitzed with written and verbal assaults from Hillary Clinton supporters after asking the state’s Clinton delegates this week to hold off on trying to get the New York senator on the nominating ballot at the upcoming convention.

“I had hate voicemails and hate emails,” said Mary Isenhour, adding that all of the responses have come from out-of-state Clinton supporters who had caught wind of her e-mail, not from the 90-plus delegates who her note was addressed to Monday. [Hat tips: Daily News' Philly Clout, Keystone Politics]

Isenhour, who ran Clinton’s campaign in Pennsylvania during the primary campaign, said she sent the e-mail at the request of Gov. Ed Rendell. The note asked delegates to refrain from signing a petition circulating to get Clinton on the ballot “until we know what Senator Clinton and Senator [Barack] Obama have worked out” regarding Clinton’s potential nomination at the convention.

Another misnomer is that they keep referring to themselves as 18 million strong but most of Hillary's supporters have moved on. The fact is, Hillary encouraged these people by not shutting them down. She served her own ego (she wants to be in history books) and nothing else.

CNN Still Pushing Hillary for Vice President

CNN has a new poll out -- their own -- that says:

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Friday, the number of Clinton supporters who plan to defect to Republican Sen. John McCain's camp is down from one month ago, but -- in what could be an ominous sign for Obama as he seeks to unify the party -- the number of them who say they plan to vote for Obama is also down, and a growing number say they may not vote at all.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey completed in early June before the New York senator ended her White House bid, 60 percent of Clinton backers polled said they planned on voting for Obama. In the latest poll, that number has dropped to 54 percent.

You'll note, that the first sentence says that the number of Clinton supporters who plan to defect is down, so that's good, right? But the second sentence contradicts the first and it doesn't really make sense, and where are the numbers? 

What they don't say is how many Hillary supporters are left. Who are they polling, the PUMAs? I suspect there aren't many, just those diehards who turned democrat to vote for the first woman president.

Then the poll goes on to say that 43% of democrats still want Hillary as president and goes on to question whether Obama can win without her as vice president. So the CNN really polled two groups? Registered democrats and a Hillary supporter pool. 

For one, they don't need to be polling Hillary supporters anymore. That race is over. The most telling polls are individual state polls. 
The poll is just BS.

Hillary as Robert E. Lee

hillary's supporters have been duped. hillary has used power irresponsibly-- not a good sign of a capable president. bill clinton is still running around saying she can win. now we know why.

the long but certain exit, as predicted, is getting uglier by the day. i could understand if she's staying in the race for some moral reason, but she seems to be aimlessly hacking at everyone along the way, enlisting her diehard supporters to accelerate the madness. it doesn't make any sense anymore, which is why we all keep asking: what is the REAL reason she stays in?

could it be that she just wants to raise enough money to pay off her debts?
here's a very good post that you should read in its entirety.

tpm: Here's an Memorial Day appropriate analogy for the historically minded. By the time Robert E. Lee got to Appomattox, the Army of Northern Virginia was down to about 25,000 diehards. These were men who stuck it out because of personal devotion to Lee, to the Noble Cause of continued slavery or just because they didn't want to say they left before it was over. Around the campfires, there was a lot of dark crazy talk being bandied about over their starvation rations, talk of guerrilla warfare that could have set the South, and maybe the whole country, ablaze with murder and bushwhacking and, inevitably, assassination, for generations. That talk had to have pushed a lot of guys who'd been with Lee since the Seven Days into desertion on that last march which only had the effect of removing voices of reason from the circle.

Sound familiar, anybody?

The one signal service of Robert E. Lee to the United States and the world, after succession occurred in April, 1965 when he firmly put all of his almost supernatural prestige with these men on the line to put a stop to that talk. At Appomattox, Lee recoiled from the vision of an endless guerrilla war and told his diehards that it was over, that what they were talking about was futile and repulsive, and that they should go home. And they did.

There was no fairy tale ending to that war, of course. The violence and the anger were turned from the Yankees to the freed slaves, both metaphorically and actually, for another century and more. But it could have been far worse for everyone. Look at the Congo or Afghanistan or Columbia, and then scale up, if you want to see how much worse.

My point here is that if you are a real leader and a person of character and you are losing the fight, you don't fan the flames of grievance among the diehards, you stamp 'em out. If you are leader and a person of character, you face it when the greater good you wanted to accomplish is irretreivably lost and put the best good available over your own personal interests and ego.