Bottom line: Hillary can't control her staff. She's failing to exercise the one core duty of a chief executive, which is to make and enforce decisions. With at least three of the last four presidents -- Reagan, Clinton, and Dubya -- the candidate's campaign management style has been highly predictive of White House management style.

Strategically, the Clinton campaign seems to have settled on a few memes:

1. Obama not ready

2. How can he be the nominee with the Big Four (Michigan, Florida, Penn, Ohio)?

3. Superdelegates should vote for...whoever wins "The Big Four"

4. Ignore the pledged delegates from "undemocratic" caucuses, and then redo the math.

That's all they've got at this point. It's really pathetic. #1 is an endorsement of McCain. #2 is just plain stupid (and yet, people seem to be falling for it). If you fall for that, your IQ is somewhere in the 80-90 range (that means you, Tim Russert). #3 is as stupid as #2, because it won't happen, because superdelegates are from all 46 of the other states. #4 needs to be addressed effectively by the Obama people.

VC -- Agreed (yikes), but if she wins the popular vote she has a compelling case -- there's no reason to empower the undemocratic caucuses and gerrymandered district-based delagate system any more than the rules already empower them, and the Democrats have been committed to "all votes should be equal" since 2000 (in rhetoric at least) -- at least as a backup selection process should the elected/pledged delagate process fail.  What would be "pathetic" is if Obama, notwithstanding the rules, argues he's entitled to the nomination even if he can't win on pledged delagates and doesn't have the most votes.  

So, one more time, it's time for Obama to take care of his own business and stop carping about Clinton: win the popular vote and be done with it.  

PS -- yes, he can be the nominee without the "big four" but it would kind of be nice for the Dems if the nominee can win a single one of the large battleground states.  Just one.  Please?  

Though you have to admire the audacity of Hillary's Obama-as-VP trial balloon. The wealthy, powerful white person in second place offers the subordinate job to the black person in first place. If a white Republican did such a thing, particularly a white Republican with Southern roots who gained power by exploiting family connections with the (white) old-boy network, all right-thinking Democrats would be screaming about plantation mindsets and Trent Lott and whatnot.

lymon, you do realize that the primaries in what you call "the big four" were among Democrats, not between a Democrat and a Republican, right? It's simply false to suggest that one Democrat's ability to beat another Democrat in that state is predictive of either Democrat's ability to beat a Republican in the same state. The fact that Hillary won Texas _among Democrats_ doesn't actually make her likely to win Texas in November (the same can be said for Obama in several states as well).

Here's the math that matters in Ohio:

Hillary: 1,207,806

Obama: 979,025

McCain: 636,256

Even coming in second _among Democrats_, Obama beat McCain in California, New York and New Jersey. Texas, too, for what it's worth. In Michigan, "Uncommitted" finished just behind McCain, and Obama and McCain were close in Florida, too.

There might be good reason to believe that Hillary would run stronger than Obama in, say, Ohio. But the fact that Hillary beat Obama _among Democrats_ in Ohio is not one of them. So Ohio's votes should not get favored treatment among Democratic delegates any more than Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Virginia, to name critical swing states Obama has won among Democrats, should count extra on Obama's behalf.

lymon -

The problem with using the popular vote as a metric is that you discount the over a million voters who have attended caucuses...

And there's a stragic purpose for the "carping and whining". The Obama campaign (with the help of MoveOn and others) are building the case for the elected delegates to settle this thing. They've done a nice job. The media is ready to lynch Hillary if she tries to take it with superdelegates.

This may seem obvious to most folks, but the case needed to be made forcefully by the Obama campaign.

Rhubarbs, once again you have written exactly what I was thinking but couldn't quite articulate.  

RE: battleground states.

Leaving aside the issue that winning a dem primary in those states (or, for that matter, losing one) doesn't translate necesarily to the general. Remember that one of the earlier clinton arguments was against OPEN primaries, because they allowed non-democrats to vote, highlights this point. Clearly there's a difference between choices made among dems, and choices made between a given dem nominee and the GOP nominee. Either Dem is likely to win Michigan and Pennsylvania. Florida will be tough sledding for either one, and Ohio is likely to be a toss-up either way.

But how did these four states get to be the battlegrounds. Two of them are reliable dem strongholds (much more solid than, say, Wisconsin, which dems have won by less than a percentage point the last couple of times). And two of them are among several tossup states. Why not think of Virginia as a battleground state? Other states we are as likely to steal from the GOP as Florida/Ohio- Colorado, North Carolina. The media is completely buying the Clinton spin on the whole thing.

The Monster: A Loyal Clinton Soldier Turns in His Badge

www.huffingtonpost.com/.../the-monster-a-loyal-clin_b_90632.html

[She has no idea.

She has no idea how many times I defended her. How many right-leaning friends and relatives I battled with. How many times I played down her shady business deals and penchant for scandals -- whether it was Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Cattle Futures, Web Hubbell, or Norman Hsu. She has no idea how frequently I dismissed her husband's serial adultery as an unfortunate trait of an otherwise brilliant man. For sixteen years, I was a proud soldier in the legion of "Clinton apologists" -- who believed that peace and prosperity were more important than regrettable personality traits.

And then she ran for president.

After seven years of George W. Bush, America is hungry for change. Big change. And let's face it -- Hillary Clinton, the party standard-bearer and former White House denizen -- isn't it. But even after voters coalesced around Barack Obama, handing him eleven straight primaries (twelve, if you count Vermont), she refused to accept the possibility -though math, money and momentum were clearly against her -- that the Bush/Clinton Family Band might not be #1 on America's Billboard chart anymore.

So, rather than step aside and become the hero of her party, she made a strategy decision to go negative in advance of Ohio and Texas. Not just negative -- personal. She cynically chided Mr. Obama's message of hope. She played the victim card. The gender card. The Muslim card. She cried "shame on you, Barack Obama" for his campaign tactics, while (if we're to believe Matt Drudge) simultaneously floating a picture of him in Somali garb to stir up questions of his patriotism.

She accused Mr. Obama of his own shady business deals (the irony of which nearly ripped a hole in the fabric of space/time). She accused him of being two-faced on NAFTA, when it was her campaign that had winked at the Canadians. She demanded that he "reject" the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, but remained silent when Rush Limbaugh stirred up votes for her in Texas. And she crafted the now-infamous "3am" attack ad -- which used scare tactics to highlight Senator Obama's perceived lack of experience in foreign affairs. Straight out of the ol' Atwater/Rove playbook. Of course, all of this paled in comparison to her husband's patronizing, racially insensitive comments earlier in the primary season.]

Did any of you read Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals"?  Hillary's drawing a good analogy of herself to Lincoln -- especially RE: considering Obama for VP.  Very astute.

Okay, scottlooper, you can only say "astute" once a day.

Hillary's management style is proving to be very much like Bill's when he was in the White House.  Undisciplined, dysfunctional, and producing a screwup or a scandal weekly or even daily.

So, what's left?  She's not really experienced?  She's not really competent.  And she's not really buttoned down and organized.

But, I hear, when she's off camera, she actually does have a great sense of humor.

The point Rhubarbs is making was also made tonight by Stephen Colbert, during the "word" section of the show. It was perfect. I love that he is clearly, remorselessly biased. Unlike Jon Stewart, the handwringing kiss-ass.