Originally Posted By: whomod
I honestly think the best moment of this campaign was in how the voters last Tuesday soundly rejected Hillary's pandering to them, and frankly, insulting their intelligence by proposing the gas tax free summer.

It seemed like such an easy political move that was sure to pay dividends. Never mind that it would certainly not pass in Congress nor would there be enough time, even if there was support for it to pass it by summer nor would th President sign it. But there she was, promising free gas! And Obama was there making a dry policy argument and people actually stopped to listen and agreed with HIM!

That's pretty much unheard of in todays sound byte media (Hillary promises free gas! Obama says No!) and only goes to show what a different type of election season we're in now. It's a whole new type of electorate and it's a whole new ball game and the pandering and strategies of yesteryear aren't working today.

And this was the straw that broke Hillary's back. And as I said, it's insulting to people. Jut as lying to them about sniper fire was. I's playing on lowered expectations of the American public and expecting them to swallow a carefully managed campaign image and talking points.

Who knows, maybe she should have thrown in a free X-Box 360 along with the promise of a gas tax holiday.


This crap Hillary strategy goes back to the polling that showed that a majority of voters felt she only said what they wanted to hear and that she was untrustworthy. Couple that with people not being the stupid saps that Hillary's campaign thought they were and ding dong the wicked witch is dead.

I've already posted the TIME magazine list of the top five strategic mistakes Hillary Clinton made during her unsuccessful bid for the White House (to deafening silence from MEM BTW), and while in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter why she went from "inevitable" to "also-ran", there is one point in the article that deserves some attention:

 Quote:
As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all.


It should be noted that Penn denies the story, so we'll just have to take him at his word that he isn't that stupid. But if it's true it does raise the question, was this the stupidest thing said or done by a Clinton surrogate over the course of her campaign? Because Penn had some stiff competition. Who could forget:

* Geraldine Ferraro's claim that Obama has an unfair advantage because he was black.

* Bob Kerrey's happiness that Barack Hussein Obama attended a madrassa and had all that experience with Muslims.

* Billy Shaheen's concern over Obama's use of drugs and possible questions on whether he was ever a drug dealer.

* Andrew Cuoma saying that "You can't shuck and jive," in reference to Obama.

* And of course the First Surrogate, Bill Clinton, comparing Obama's win in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson's wins in the 1980's, and then being shocked at the suggestion that he was trying to paint Obama as "the black candidate."

Here's throwing Mark Penn a lifeline here and proving that he wasn't the worst of the Clinton surrogates. But still, Don't let that door hit all these people's asses on the way out.