Saturday April 19, 2008, 2:16 pm
With the Pennsylvania primary only days away, the New York Times delivers a look at the challenges the Clinton campaign faces with regards to maintaining support among past supporters and increasing its fund-raising capabilities.

Support From Former Supporters:


After nearly two decades building relationships with a generation of Democrats, Mrs. Clinton has recently suffered a steady erosion of support for her presidential campaign from the party stalwarts that once formed the basis of her perceived juggernaut of "inevitability."



Some of it is just business, practical politicians putting aside ties to the Clintons to follow the will of the voters in their states or making a calculation about who seems best positioned to win.[...]

But there is something more wrenching at work as well, a reckoning of whether the Clintons, on balance, have been good or bad for the party. It has the feel of a very personal testing of loyalties to a former president who once always seemed to be adding to the "Friends of Bill" list, and to a sitting senator who, if not so driven as her husband to win over everyone, used her fame to help elect other Democrats.



Fund-raising:


Senator Barack Obama is swamping Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton with television advertising in their prolonged battle for the Democratic nomination, putting fresh pressure on Mrs. Clinton's fund-raising machine to find new sources of money to help her keep pace.



But her big-dollar fund-raising apparatus that was once the envy of the political world is encountering obstacles as many of those in its regular networks of donors have reached the maximum on their personal contributions or grown tired of the relentless press for donations.

The campaign is actively hunting for new wellsprings of cash, while tapped-out donors who want to give more are contemplating financing independent efforts on her behalf that are not bound by contribution limits. So far, however, the independent efforts have been halting at best.

Saturday April 19, 2008, 4:38 pm
For Clintons, a Time to Find Truest Friends

Another reason Hillary Clinton is losing may be explained in tomorrow's NY Times. The Clinton campaign seems to spend a lot of time figuring out which disloyal Democrats to hate -- and to what degree they should hate them. The Clinton campaign is on life support and they are busy making an enemies list.

Last year, word was that Team Clinton basically went around to donors and others with a clear message, which I'll paraphrase here:
Get on the bus, NOW. If you don't get on the bus, NOW, you will never get on the bus. This is the winning bus and we're going to remember who didn't get on early because when you try to get on, there won't be any seats left.
Despite the warnings, a lot of people took a different bus.

It does sound like the crew at the Clinton HQ puts a lot of time into tracking who, in their minds, has screwed them over. John Kerry is currently at the top of the hate list (a top Clinton supporter says Kerry is now "dead" to the Clintons):
Mr. Kerry, his top aides and family members have received varying degrees of tongue-lashing from Clinton surrogates, chiefly two top fund-raisers — John Coale and Peter Maroney — with previous close ties to Mr. Kerry.

(Quick aside: Mr. Coale is married to Greta Van Susteren from FOX News. Oh, and for what it's worth, they're both Scientologists.)

Now, I'm just saying that it might have behooved the staffers, fundraisers and consultants associated with Team Clinton to put some time into being decent to those who could have helped them. However, Team Clinton took a different approach -- and look where it got them. The arrogance of that campaign, and the sense of entitlement, permeated everything they did. John and I learned first-hand that if you weren't 100% with them every step of the way, even if you went far out of your way to help them on numerous occasions, you were persona non grata - not needed. Not that we ever wanted to be needed by Team Clinton, but we saw how they treated people who ever strayed from the reservation. And we weren't the only ones to experience the special charm that is Team Clinton. Lots of political types -- and reporters -- we've spoken to have similar stories of how they too were mistreated by the campaign. It's a window into the character of the campaign, and its leader - and it isn't pretty.

This arrogance and vindictiveness of the Clintons is important to understand. It helps explain why Hillary won't get out of the race even though she can't win it. The world revolves around Hillary and Bill. They're willing to destroy anyone who gets in their way. And if the majority of the Democratic voters, the majority of the states, and the majority of the delegates get in their way, then they'll be on the top of the list. Right after John Kerry.

Labels: hillary clinton

Saturday April 19, 2008, 5:56 pm
Report: Hillary Clinton Slams Democratic Activists at Private FundraiserSen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) had harsh criticism for the "activist base" of the Democratic Party during a private fundraiser for her campaign

"We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party," said Clinton, heard on an audio clip at Huffington. "MoveOn didn't even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers.

"[T]hey are very driven by their view of our positions," continued Clinton, "and it's primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don't agree with them. They know I don't agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me."

Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org, which officially endorsed Obama's candidacy this February, released the following statement to Huffington in response to the report:

Senator Clinton has her facts wrong again. MoveOn never opposed the war in Afghanistan, and we set the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim. Senator Clinton's attack on our members is divisive at a time when Democrats will soon need to unify to beat Senator McCain. MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points.

Reaction among progressive bloggers has been swift.

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake writes that she's "tried to stay out of the [Clinton-Obama] pie fights of late, but as a long-term defender of MoveOn and other progressive organizations -- this is completely unacceptable. 'MoveOn opposed military action in Afghanistan' is a Republican talking point, articulated specifically and purposefully by Karl Rove."

Quips Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (a.k.a. Kos) at Daily Kos, "Well, for a campaign that has morphed into nothing but 'Republican talking points,' it shouldn't come as any surprise."

Jonathan Singer at MyDD says that "even more astounding than Clinton's specific attacks on MoveOn, a grassroots organization founded to defend her husband against the Republican power-grab that was the 1998 impeachment, an organization that is made up of more than three million activists, most of whom are diehard in their loyalty to the Democratic Party, is the fact that Clinton is maligning the Democratic base, specifically those who have been driven to the polls at least in part in response to the Iraq War."

Oliver Willis writes, "You don't become the nominee of the Democratic/progressive movement by undercutting the Democratic/progressive movement."

The full story is available at this link.

Monday April 21, 2008, 8:36 am
Good going Blue! I'm real tired of her.
Louise B.