Has Hillary Electable Anymore?

Geraldine Ferraro is of course the latest and greatest of Clinton surrogates pulling every dirty south racist political trick short of physical intimidation. Only a few months ago Clinton had a great base in the black community. It's all gone now of course, but the question is can it return? In her vicious struggle to stay in the race has she reached a point where if nominated she can no longer count on the black community in the general election?

She's getting closer and closer for sure, and would a democrat in 2008 have any shot of winning a general election without the black vote?

Unleashing the Monster

A high ranking Obama advisor calls Hillary Clinton a monster and is forced to resign with a swiftness. A short term smack down for Obama for sure. But one has to wonder what the long term effects are. Is the "Hillary is a monster" meme now out and free to roam? One has to wonder if she is going to regret calling attention to that comment at all. And it right after she just went brutally negative in the election no less.

When Hillary's 3am phone call ad runs, how many people now are going to think about a monster picking up a phone?

Who McCain picks for VP is suddenly becoming very interesting. Does he go left or right? I'm guessing going left would make him a very serious threat to Hillary. If she manages to beat Obama via the foul republican style tactics she's deploying now there are going to a be an awful lot of upset Obama fans McCain could sweep up with the right VP choice. Hell, imagine the political theater of him picking Obama...

And just for the record, if it isn't clear already, Hillary has managed to thoroughly and utterly obliterate any respect I had for her in the course of two months. There is plenty of time for her to do repair work before the election for sure, but the utterly selfish politics she's push right now are so down right repugnant it's a hard call. She's trying to win the nomination the way Kerry did in 04, by playing republican style backstabbing politics. Its an awful approach, and not just because it is so alienating. It's also just plain dumb, cause that shit only works against democrats, outsmearing a republican is about as bad a bet as you can take.

Meanwhile Obama needs to step up, he took a handful of nasty blows in the last week and he's not looking good. He needs to turn around and show some strength, which in his case basically means make a killer speech. If I were him I'd lay it on the table, make the choice real clear: do you want to vote for a unified country or a divided country?

A Lifetime of Experience..

Doesn't every single living human being have a lifetime of experience?

I mean I suppose if you were born in a coma, and never get out you might have a lifetime without experience, but really...

Brokered Advantage?

As the Democratic party barrels closer and closer to a brokered convention, conventional wisdom says it's a bad thing. Various superdelegates and party heavyweights without a horse in the race are probably strategizing and fantasizing how they can save the day and prevent just such an occurrence. Of course that just amounts to doing the brokering before the convention but they'll try to do it just the same. But what if a brokered convention is actually a good thing for the democrats?

The longer the democrats take to pick a nominee the less time John McCain and the Republicans have to campaign against them. Instead they'll have to go to battle against two opponents. Of course those two will be at war with each other, jostling for the nomination, the exact reason a brokered convention is so feared. But the battles at that point are internal, they are party politics, fought behind closed doors and viewed by the public as they leak to blogs and get warped by the tv and print news joints. In public both Hillary and Obama will be out trying to win votes. The elections for the nomination will be over, at that point in the process there are no more voters left to convince the other democrat is bad. In public both will be out trying to convince the world they are better than old man McCain. That's two candidates for the price of one, all the way up to the end of August.

Perhaps of course the bitterness of the internal battle will send them both down in flames. But is there any reason it should? Both will have the backing of a massive number of voters, the turnouts of these primaries have been well beyond the norms. What they are going to selling to the superdelegates more than anything is how well they can take on John McCain. And the old man? He's going to be fighting two fierce opponents the whole way along. He's got a lot of energy for his age no doubt, but he's going to have a hard enough time keeping up with just one...

The Spam King of Nigeria and Other Stories

Ordinarily I'd just post a like like this one on the side bar but :apophenia: a google horror story: what happens when you are disappeared is a crazy one. A couple years ago I did a scenario planning session that revolved around spammers hacking email accounts and impersonating people from your past. That's not exactly the story, but as "phishing" attacks get more and more sophisticated it's heading in that direction. And google's centralization of power sure is going to help in that process.

I've been terrified of google for a long while now for exactly these reasons. They just have too much power, too much information centralized in one location. (Or really centralized and multiplied across multiple locations) It doesn't really matter if google is good or evil, or both because that much info placed into one interface and virtual location ensures that bad shit is going to happen. You know like your entire digital identity being hijacked, used abused and then sold off as scrap to the highest bidders. Add in google's god awful customer service (and a company with engineers at the helm is almost always ensured bad customer service) and the you've got an awfully frightening entity.

True Conservatives

When uber right wing pundit Ann Coulter stated she'd campaign for Hillary Clinton over John McCain I was quick to write it off as a play for attention from one of the worst media whores in the business. Coulter loves to take extreme positions and run with them as far as possible. But the continued hate for John McCain spewing from the likes of Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson is fascinating.

Politically I've never gotten McCain's rep for being centrist. He's a right wing warmonger in my book and his vote record is deeply right wing. But when Coulter says Hillary is more conservative than McCain, she's not really talking policy and shockingly enough she's actually right. Policy wise of course Clinton is moderate but far to the left of McCain. But personality wise, Clinton couldn't be more conservative.

At it's core conservatism as a philosophy is about maintaining the status quo, keeping the power structure intact. Clinton has climbed her way to the top of US politics and she has no interest in sharing that power or letting it slip away. McCain on the other hand has spent years cultivating an image as a maverick, a man who will think for himself and won't take orders. For people like Rush Limbaugh and Coulter who value blind obedience to the power structure this is a threat of the highest order. There is no space for mavericks in their world view, free thinking undermines their values to the core.

It's exactly because of this that voters tend to flock to Obama in the days leading up to their primaries, yet a substantial number break to Clinton at the last second. As inspiring as Obama may be his message of change is scary to the conservative minded. Hillary is the safe path, the choice of the risk adverse, the people who regardless of how they stand on policy are scared of new.

No matter how much conservatives hate Clinton personally, there must be a huge comfort in the pattern, they did Bush then Clinton before, why not keep it going. They wanted Bush as king, but Hillary as queen is far more palatable then a maverick or change agent as president.

Union Experience

Despite being part of "Super Tuesday" New York still hasn't gotten much of the full court political press. Judging from the conversations overhead at the Time Warner repair center today it seems like plenty of New Yorkers just heard the name Barack Obama this morning. Meanwhile the only people I've seen actively campaigning for Clinton are union members outside Grand Central.

It's a pretty remarkable contrast really, gruff teamsters pushing Hillary's tepid literature. It's certainly a sign of progress on one level that the gasp of blue collardom in New York City is out pushing for a female president. But at the same time it's not quite the coalition of the future is it? The hands on down and dirty politics the Clintons love to play certainly fits right into to an old school union hall. But for better or worse it's not really that clear that the hall itself is ready for the 21st century...

Notes on Yahoo Microsoft

Couple quick notes on the Microsoft- Yahoo deal:

- Yahoo and Microsoft are two of perhaps only four companies, the other two being Google and Amazon (via it's Alexa purchase) that have massive databases of information spidered from the web. Given how much effort now goes into gaming these same spiders that historical database just might be extremely valuable. The spidering infrastructure they have is probably even more valuable, except Microsoft already has much of that built via their MSN search already. How much value is there in keeping this out of other's hands?

- Microsoft going into debt for the first time? Signs of a financial empire finally crumbling? There cultural clout of course has been plummeting, but they still have a near monopoly on business desktops so who knows.

- Apple + Yahoo rumors = very interesting.

- The US tech world is always so US centric. Where do the foreign search engines stand in all this? Are there other datamining powerhouses that are below the radar but with a whole lot at stake in Yahoo's fate?

Hype Uncheck

I knew I left something out in my little musical Hype Check, but I couldn't remember what for the life of me. That can't bode to well for the band, but they still got some hype in them... Anyway, the Virgins? The Strokes if the Strokes were actually any good...

What More Can I Say, Top Billing

When Bill Clinton started going after Obama it sure made it easier to see my the right wing hates him so much. But man when he shifts back to attacking the right, it's pretty easy to remember what was so great about him. His praise of John McCainfor instance, is such a deft and subtle political maneuver that it brings a smile to my face. The Clintons clearly have identified McCain as their biggest threat in a general election and by tying him publicly to Hillary, they are striking right where it will hurt him most in his attempt to win the Republican nomination. So nasty but so clever...

"They Thinking Short When They Should be Thinking Long. Shameful Sheeit"

You can't fault Hillary Clinton for not doing everything in her power to win this election, but man you have to wonder when that line between making power grabs and seeming power mad gets crossed. I'm a registered independent and for this election at least I'm voting for whoever the Democrats toss up. And I was quite happy with the three options until a week or two ago. Heck if anything I maybe leans a tiny bit in Hillary's direction. And she's doing everything in her power to make me hate her. Maybe that's what it takes to win the nomination, but is that what it takes to win it all?