PolitiPorn™

by Duke, PolitiPorn Int’l Bureau Chief

 

Sunday Talk Roundup – Are we having fun yet?

 

Dainty featured George Stephanopoulos hosted a pretty motley crew of guests in his two on two Hillary vs. Obama debate. The Clinton team featured class act Evan Bayh, the democratic senator from Indiana. You may recall that during the Iraq hearings a few weeks ago, when Ambassador Crocker blew the dust off the oft-referred to quote about Bin Laden focusing on Iraq, Bayh was the one who knocked two teeth out of Crocker’s mouth with…

“We shouldn’t be taking our marching orders from Osama Bin Laden”

The weaker side of the Clinton squad was the rarely-coherent Representative from Texas, Sheila Jackson-Lee. How big Sheila gets to Washington from North Mexico is a mystery, but she sure as hell doesn’t fly Continental Airlines after being banned from travel on the airline after berating flight attendants and staff.

Sticking up for Obama were two dubious figures in the form of Alabama Representative Artur Davis and former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Artur Davis has not only consistently misspelled his own name, but also voted in favor of correcting the constitution to include homophobia and won a hard fought re-election campaign in 2006 against absolutely no one. Daschle, a former majority and minority leader of the Senate, is believed to be a key advisor to the Obama campaign and endorsed FISA.

During the dust-up the Bayh/Nutsy team tried to make chicken salad out of chicken shit by citing overwhelming primary turnout and the virtues of historically irrelevant states having a say in the nomination process. These seem to be pretty good points, but they don’t make up for the damage that Hillary is doing to the party by staying in.

At one point in the spirited debate Big Sheila stopped blowing bubbles long enough to grace us with a few pearls of wisdom… for starters she wants to “rename Superdelegates to unpledged delegates,” she doesn’t know why negative ads are called negative ads (thinks they should be called “Informational Ads,” and lastly she called angel dust smoking, but brutally beaten Rodney King a great philosopher. She actually did have one good point about both candidates having real voting records, rather than make-up votes, and she did slap Artur’s remark about Obama beating Clinton in every poll against McCain back in his fat face by citing a poll that showed the opposite.

The Obamanites had a pretty hard time with convincing arguments, but they pointed out that Obama actually has more experience than Clinton and can sway the electorate with his message and life story.

Artur Davis actual threw some leather on the gas tax holiday (that McCain and Clinton support) by saying that Obama is trying to solve the issue, rather than throw simplistic band-aids to get votes, and pointed out that Obama has more experience in public office and invoked the memorable Bill Murray hit by warning that if democrats rerun the 2004 debate it will look like groundhogs day.

Artur also used the term “Let’s call a spade a spade” prompting Daschle to assume a Karate Kid, Crane Kick, position and Big Sheila to flip the table over before both realized that Artur was black.

Evan Bayh thought he had a point with making the popular vote the key indicator for super unpledged delegates, until Daschle ate his lunch for him by mentioning that the caucus states don’t count individual votes.

 

Meet the Press held its own by booking quintessential frat boy Howard Dean to spend 25 minutes of church time defending the nomination process, begging Superdelegates to shit or get off the pot, and tearing John McCain a fresh one.

Dirty Howard Dean made some pretty compelling points about America needing the money that goes to Iraq right fucking now and debunking the pollyannic notion of maintaining a troop presence in Iraq for 100 years that won’t be under constant attack from militias and suicide bombers.

After plenty of sweet talking to the voters of Florida and Michigan he turned a little ugly, lashing out at them for “jumping ahead in line” and “thinking that they are more important than anyone else.”

 

Facing the Nation on Sunday were the official campaign staffers Obama Chief, David Axelrod and Clinton’s Communications Director, Howard Wolfson. This was almost the same matchup as last week’s Meet the Press, but Hillary replaced Chief Strategist Geoff Carin with Wolfson. I actually liked Carin in the previous exchange, but admittedly, after being under the impression last week that Hillary was going to be defended by funnyman George Carlin… I was devastated.

The tone was uncharacteristically cordial for these two, but Axelrod ultimately had another strong showing. At one point Wolfson was asked about the prospect of a dual ticket and actually said that it was premature to talk about running mates! Sounds like someone needs to check with the home office; we have had a new moon since Hillary threw herself at Obama. Wolfson actually parroted Obama’s line.

Wolfson also threw out electability, not a closer, etc etc, but Axelrod was waiting for it putting Wolfson on the canvas by pointing out that a candidate that has gone from inevitable to mathematically defeated shouldn’t do much talking about electability.

Big Bad Bob Schieffer asked two good questions about the effect of Bill Clinton and Rev. Wright… ok the Clinton question was good, the Wright question was a gross misrepresentation of comments to Bill Moyer, but relevant nonetheless.

Wolfson handled the negativity surrounding Bill smoothly by admitting that he fucks up sometimes, but the counties he visits turnout and vote for Hillary. On the Rev. Wright question Axelrod gave the line of the show by saying that Obama “didn’t go to church to worship a pastor, he went to church to worship God”… doin’ the bull dance, feelin’ the flow.

Roundtable Chatter

Points from the Meet the Press and This Week Roundtables

(Face the Nation doesn’t have one)

 

Rev. Wright

Rev. Wright is hurting Obama with his fucking speaking tour, but if McCain doesn’t give this a wide berth and reel in the 527 ads he will get burned as well.

 

Pennsylvania

Obama didn’t have any fun in Pennsylvania and it showed. He isn’t comfortable rolling around in the dirt with Hillary. Bill won the suburbs for Hillary.

 

Superdelegates

Superdelegates are still queasy, but Obama has gotten four endorsements since PA, to Hillary’s three. Clinton needs 60% of remaining undecideds.

 

Obama Campaign

Obama is on a losing streak having not won major victory since Wisconsin, even neo-fascist Karl Rove says Obama has to restart.

 

Clinton Campaign

Clinton wants needs a debate before Indiana and North Carolina, but Obama has said that 21 are enough (plus he sucks at debates). She won’t win but she’ll burn the motherfucking house down.

 

Length of Primary Season

Everyone agrees that this is hurting the democrats. The nomination has turned into trench warfare and a Clinton nomination will kill the youth, black and new democrat vote.

 

Here are some numbers from the Sunday Shows

 (This Week with George Stephanopoulos)

	Obama	Clinton
Popular Vote	14.3	13.8
States	26	15
Delegates	1726	1587
Electoral	202	240
Money	$226m	$148m

 

 

(Meet the Press)

	Obama	Clinton
Elected Delegates	1491	1334
Superdelegates	249	263

 

 

(Meet the Press)

	Obama
Pledged Delegates Left	408
Uncommitted Superdelegates	292
Pledged delegates needed by Hillary to take over	69%
Campaign is too negative (Now)	50%
Campaign is too negative (Feb)	19%
Campaign going too long	57%

 

 

(Meet the Press)

	Bush	Democrat
Pledged Delegates Left	9%	90%
Uncommitted Superdelegates	11%	88%

 

 

(Meet the Press)

	Obama	Clinton
National Democratic Poll	48%	41%
South Bend Tribute Poll	48%	47%
Indianapolis Star Poll	41%	38%
North Carolina (Two Weeks Old)	47%	34%