Bill Clinton FINALLY Onboard!

Bill Clinton revved up a crowd on behalf of Barack Obama in Florida Wednesday, his first since the Democratic convention. And though he repeated his mantra that Democrats don't have to "say one bad word" about their Republican opponents to win the election, Clinton actually snuck in a dig against Sarah Palin. Watch:

Bill Clinton: Obama Will Win "Pretty Handily"

Barack Obama paid a visit to Bill Clinton at his Harlem office today, making a brief appearance outside with the former president as an excited crowd roared their approval. Clinton has agreed to campaign for Obama in any manner that he is needed. The pair discussed the campaign as well as how the world has changed since September 11, 2001.

Reporters were allowed in briefly before the meeting in Clinton's 14th floor office. Before they were ushered out, Clinton was asked where he sees the race between Obama and McCain.

"I predict that Senator Obama will win and win pretty handily," he said.

Obama interjected: "You can take it from the president of the United States. He knows a little something about politics."

Bill Clinton Delivers

Bill Clinton made it clear tonight that he's firmly behind Barack Obama and made a clear contrast between Barack's presidency and the failed policies of the current one. He masterfully compared the attacks waged against him 16 years ago which so closely parallel the ones used against Obama; youth and inexperience. Two nights. Two Clintons. Two home runs. ONE united party!

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton Phone Call Leaked

Old school finally patches things up with the new school:

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama: Great minds think alike?

Nico Pitney reports:

As the rumination continues over Barack Obama's comments about economically depressed small town voters, statements made by Bill Clinton on the same topic,uttered while he was running for president in 1991, have now surfaced.

"The reason (George H. W. Bush's tactic) works so well now is that you have all these economically insecure white people who are scared to death," Clinton was quoted saying by the Los Angeles Times in September 1991.

A couple months later, Joe Klein, writing for the Sunday Times, reported that Clinton made the following remarks:

"You know, he [Bush] wants to divide us over race. I'm from the South. I understand this. This quota deal they're gonna pull in the next election is the same old scam they've been pulling on us for decade after decade after decade. When their economic policies fail, when the country's coming apart rather than coming together, what do they do? They find the most economically insecure white men and scare the living daylights out of them. They know if they can keep us looking at each other across a racial divide, if I can look at Bobby Rush and think, Bobby wants my job, my promotion, then neither of us can look at George Bush and say, 'What happened to everybody's job? What happened to everybody's income? What ... have ... you ... done ... to ... our ... country?'"

Compare these remarks to Obama's statement, reported by Mayhill Fowler for Huffington Post's OffTheBus:

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter). [...]

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

What Hillary's saying RIGHT NOW:

DAMN it, Bill!

"One of the worst political meetings I have ever attended"

. . .that was the comment from one of the California superdelegates who met privately with Bill Clinton at last weekend's state convention there. Clinton went into a meltdown after a former Richardson delegate, who now supports Hillary, told Bill how "sorry" she was to have heard former Clinton campaign manager James Carville call Richardson a "Judas" for backing Obama.

The term being used is "as if someone pulled the pin from a hand grenade". . .

The former president became red-faced and angry, and stated "Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that". He continued on to bemoan the media's coverage of Hillary's campaign and even questioned the fairness of the votes in state caucuses, which have overwhelmingly gone to Obama. Clinton ended by asking delegates to imagine their reaction if Obama was trailing by just a few points and people were telling him to drop out.

When he finally wound down, Clinton was asked what message he wanted the delegates to take away from the meeting; it was a message of party unity.

"It was kind of strange later when he took the stage and told everyone to 'chill out,' " said one delegate. "We couldn't help but think he was also talking to himself."

Infiltrated

Bill Clinton spoke to a packed house at Penn State University Friday night and two smart Obama fans got some free publicity and made the former president look like a real ass.

"Bad Boy Bill" rides again!

Three of those fingers appear to be pointing back at him. . .

Quick! Somebody dial out on that "3 A.M." line, and tell Hillary that it's time to pull on the choker chain again:

As Senator Barack Obama folded his arms and looked on, one of his leading military advisers forcefully defended Mr. Obama's patriotism here Saturday and accused former President Bill Clinton of trying to employ "divisive attacks" to promote his wife's presidential candidacy.

Mr. Clinton, in a speech to voters in North Carolina on Friday, said "it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country."

At a town meeting here Saturday, retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, who is a co-chairman of Mr. Obama's campaign, read the quote from Mr. Clinton. A few members of the audience gasped and hissed at the former president's words.

"Let me say first, we will have such an election this year because both Barack Obama and John McCain are great patriots who love this country and are devoted to it -- so is Hillary Clinton," General McPeak said, speaking over loud applause. "Any suggestion to the contrary is flat wrong."

Mr. Obama, on his first trip to Oregon before the state's primary on May 13, did not address the comments from Mr. Clinton. He stood a few feet away from the retired general as he made his remarks before a crowd of more than 1,500 people in a Medford community center.

McPeak, later firing back a response , compared former President Bill Clinton to Joseph McCarthy in questioning Obama's patriotism. "It sounds more like McCarthy," McPeak said. "I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I've had enough of it."

Bill Clinton to appear in Ft.Wayne tomorrow

Bill Clinton is scheduled to appear at the Grand Wayne Center, 120 W. Jefferson Blvd, in downtown Fort Wayne tomorrow. The event starts at 6:45 PM in Center Hall "C". No tickets will be distributed for the event. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis for the “Solutions for America” rally in support of Hillary Clinton. Hillary supporters are holding a sign-making rally at Allen County Democratic Headquarters at the time of this writing.

In a show of solidarity with Markos, I will not be in attendance. Up until the events of this primary season, I considered Bill Clinton to be one of my generation's greatest presidents. He may still deserve that ranking, however, I find serious faults with the means to his ends these days. According to an AOL "Hot Seat" Poll, 69% of my fellow Hoosiers have agreed with me that Mr.Clinton's image has been damaged by his role in his wife's campaign. Negative campaigning and dirty politics are what we normally expect from across the aisle, not from our own, and especially not from our "heros".

It comes as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I am a strong supporter of Barack Obama. I truly believe that he is a clean break from the past, and an instrument of change. Mrs.Clinton, although an obviously better choice than John McCain, is neither of the above. As with Mr.McCain, she represents more of the same. A kinder, gentler more of the same, but more of the same nonetheless. I care not about "experience" after having experienced it. I prefer honesty. I want vision. I desire to be hopeful once more. Mr.Obama does that for me. . .

He offers a new campaign style. One that obviously caught you off guard, even though it was introduced by Howard Dean four years ago. It's a strategy that rightly decides that it's insane to continue doing the same thing while expecting different results. The Clinton strategy is to grab several large states and catapult to victory. The Dean Obama 50-state strategy steamrolls all over the old way, and places wins for Democrats not only in the normal strategic battlegrounds, but in solid red states such as Wyoming and Montana and many others. The winds of change are blowing, sir. And the skinny little kid with the funny name, that you laughingly and erroneously wrote off, set your wife's campaign back onto it's very heels during the Super Tuesday contests where you expected to wrap up her nomination.

Mr.Clinton - I respect you for the positive things you accomplished during your tenure. We'll not discuss NAFTA or Clear Channel in this post. And I respect Mrs.Clinton for what she endured via your other "accomplishments". But I cannot forgive your dismissal of Ronald Reagan's first rule (as applied to OUR party) : Thou shalt speak no ill of your fellow Democrats. How ironic that I should serve up such a reminder to America's "first black president" after his attempts to use the politics of racial division against the possible REAL version. . .as you once uttered in reply to another group, "How DARE you". . .

The Failed Clinton Strategy

An "incumbent" candidate in a race about change:

The December 2007 cover story for The American Prospect asked "Has Hillary Locked It Up?". The article lauded the "strategic and tactical brilliance of her campaign" and "her political adeptness," concluding that Clinton had pulled so far ahead that the race might be over once the first votes were cast. Now that she's fallen behind Barack Obama, her campaign is being vilified by some supporters who say that she made the strategic mistake of believing that she was inevitable, allowing herself to be positioned, in effect, as an incumbent in an election about change.

Indeed, the Clinton camp seemed to be running on the assumption that the nomination would be locked up by the Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5, when more than half the states would have voted. And that was about it - there doesn't appear to have been any game plan for after Super Tuesday. There was no cash on hand or even planned for primary fights after that date. This has allowed the well-heeled and more nimble Obama campaign to steamroll it's way through 8, soon to be 10, straight wins.

In contrast to the shortage of funds and post February 5th plans, the Clinton camp had a surplus of loose talk by her husband. Bill Clinton's negative attacks on Barack Obama were likely the biggest mis-step of the campaign thus far. After briefly reigning in the former president, the New Hampshire win gave them renewed confidence in his "help", and he was dispatched to South Carolina where his racially tinged remarks turned out black voters in record numbers. What likely would have been a 10 point win by Obama became a 30 pointer, thanks to Mr.Clinton.

Bill Clinton's efforts have only served as a reminder that the Clinton campaign model is very old-fashioned and inefficient. It's based on what they did in the '90s, not what works today. Obama, on the other hand, has maximized his cash intake via the netroots, and planned to fight in every single state. He had agents in nearly every state one year ago, setting up offices and laying groundwork. The Clinton's by contrast, focused on the Super Tuesday states, and are once more pinning their hopes on a few large states while Obama racks up wins in every other state that "wasn't worth Clinton's time". That model served them well in the 1990's, but what the Obama camp has done to it's advantage is to win states not even considered to be in play for a Democrat, and by large margins. In many of those states, his primary votes surpassed the vote totals cast by Republicans in the same contests. Those kind of wins could turn November's electoral map into a reverse image of the 1980 results.

Clinton is running on a flawed premise: that superior experience is what party voters are looking for. The 2006 elections signalled that change was in the air. Obama focused on that from the start, while Clinton didn't start using the word "change" until December of last year. By then it was obvious that she was merely attempting to jump onto a train that had long since left the station. Thousands of new voters, highly energized youth, and inspired voters are on board that train, and Barack Obama is at the controls.

Word's don't matter?

Clinton channels Cheney at MLK Tribute

Bill Clinton, extremely worn out from his exhausting schedule of trashing Obama, nodded off during a MLK tribute today at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church in Harlem:



The "first black president" dozed off during a remembrance for the "black prophet" after a week of attacking the "first viable black candidate for president". OH, the irony!

It's been 10 Suckin' Years!

The Daily Show's John Oliver looked back at Jon Stewart's coverage of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky on last night's show to mark the scandal's 10th anniversary and to celebrate the fashion of the late-90's Stewart. The hair! The blazers!



And, yes, I DO still recall where I was when this all unfolded. My wife and I were staying in a vacation home of family friends in northern Wisconsin. I can recall to this day watching it unfold on the tv in that house.