Clinton campaign needs a loan

From Hillary Clinton.

Some have criticized Mitt Romney for pumping his own money into his campaign--let's see if there's consistency on this point.

By the way, look for the Clintons to start playing rough (again) with Senator Obama, given how close the Democratic race remains after last night. As Maureen Dowd noted today:
"Tuesday’s voting showed only that the voters, like moviegoers, don’t want a pat ending. Even though Hillary reasserted her strength, corraling New York, California and Kennedy country Massachusetts, she and Obama will battle on in chiaroscuro. Her argument to the Democratic base has gone from a subtext of “You owe me,” or more precisely, “Bill owes me and you owe him,” to a subtext of “Obambi will fold at the first punch from the right.” Hillary’s strategist Mark Penn argued last week that because the voters have “very limited information” about Obama, the Republican attack machine would tear him down and he would lose the support of independents. Then Penn tried to point the way to negative information on Obama, just to show that Obama wouldn’t be able to survive Republicans pointing the way to negative information."

It'll only get rougher.

Iowa: the Democrats

It appears that the Clinton campaign, as its main, final, closing theme in Iowa, has settled once again upon the theme of experience: "Among the Democrats, the campaign ends essentially where it started roughly a year ago -- no histrionics, just candidates pushing forward with their messages. Clinton "asked voters at rallies and in a two-minute television commercial broadcast statewide, 'Who is ready to be president?'

Will she ever make up her mind?
Not long ago, the big story concerning her campaign was that she claimed to be the candidate of "change." Prediction (and I could be very wrong, so...): Senator Clinton will not be the winner of the Iowa caucuses tonight. Her campaign in the past few months has been all over the place.
UPDATE: Ben Smith of The Politico notices this very same thing.

Where's Senator Clinton's Des Moines Register big mo?

Not much sign of it in New Hampshire today. A long-time supporter of hers: "What I've seen these past few months isn't the Hillary Clinton I remember from her campaign visits here in 1991, when I first met her, or her several visits since and prior to this year," Splaine wrote last week in a lengthy posting on the blog Blue Hampshire. "Where has the 'conversation' gone that she said she wanted to start with her announcement last January? It seems as if she is talking 'to' or 'at' us, even 'down' to us. She needs to talk 'with' us..."

More trouble for Senator Clinton

Who would have thought it would get this bad for her this quickly.
The chairman of the Democratic Party in Wyoming says her nomination would harm all Democratic candidates in the west.

The Concord Monitor now shows Barack Obama with a slim lead in New Hampshire.

A new poll also shows Obama leading by 9 points in Iowa.

Senator Clinton's fading campaign?

Yet another poll, this time in New Hampshire, shows her lead disappearing--it's now a dead heat in the Granite state too, as it is in Iowa.

"Most of my opponents are more than happy to throw out all their ideas."

From ABC's The Note: "This is the kind of contrast Obama has in mind: On Thursday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., called it "a 'mistake' for her Democratic presidential opponents to outline specific plans to shore up the federal Social Security program. Any solution, she said, would come from bipartisan compromise," the Concord Monitor's Sarah Liebowitz writes.
Clinton: "Most of my opponents are more than happy to throw out all their ideas." (Proposing ideas as a presidential candidate? The horror!)"

That statement from Senator might just really, really come back to haunt her.
It reminds me of John Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it" line.

Why is Senator Clinton struggling?

Captain Ed has a good analysis point: "Candidates tied to Clinton don't worry about her liberalism, they worry about her (other) negatives, not least of which is her incompetence on the campaign trail. Clinton has never had to campaign in a contested race before now. She had no primary competition for her first run at the Senate, and faced walkovers in both races. Hillary now has proven herself the antithesis of her husband, perhaps one of the best natural politicians in the last generation. She has become so desperate that her official website now criticizes her toughest opponent for essays he wrote in kindergarten and the third grade."

Indeed. Also, there's this: I never liked Bill Clinton. But I could see how others could (they had to overlook a lot, in my opinion, but...) He knew how to work a crowd, how to turn on the charm, how to appear to connect with people. I don't see any of that charm with Hillary. She's not all that likeable. And now people are realizing she's not inevitable. There are alternatives.

Clinton faces a "crisis"?

So Senator Clinton would have you believe, along with some in the news media, too.
Fortunately Ann Althouse destroys the argument:

Oh, good lord, she was not facing disorder. The hostage-taking was over, and even when it was going on, she was not facing it. She was waiting for law enforcement authorities to deal with a troubled man, which they did, without anyone suffering a physical injury. Did she do anything? Other than canceling her appearances — which she had to do to show decent sensitivity — she made a lot of ineffectual phone calls. For 5 hours, we're told, she "continued to call up and down the law enforcement food chain, from local to county to state to federal officials." She says, "I knew I was bugging a lot of these people."Afterwards, she used the occasion to make a show of her emotions (or did you think she was cold and mechanical?). She said:
"It affected me not only because they were my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time."Is that what you want in a President? Someone who feels extra confusion because she's a mother? But I don't believe that for one minute. I think that was just what was considered a good script. I don't happen to think it is a good script, because I don't want a President to roil into a mommyesque ball of emotion when a few people are in danger. Yet that's not Hillary. The only question is why she thought a statement like that was a good one. She probably wanted to make sure not to confirm the widely held belief that she's unemotional, and, while she was at it, delight all the ladies out there who lap up emotional drivel.

Scandal afoot?

From Ann Althouse today: "Robert Novak tells us: 'Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.She's decided not to use it? Seems to me this is using it.' This word-of-mouth among Democrats makes Obama look vulnerable and Clinton look prudent. Prudent... devious... pick your adjective."

I choose devious.

Hillary's mojo still a no-go

There's still fallout from her non-answers at the October 30th debate.
Now news is that her lead in New Hampshire is falling, and her campaign has been "planting" friendly questioners at her town hall meetings.
Historically, in politics, nearly every candidacy has to weather a crisis. See for example Dwight Eisenhower and the tempest over whether his vice-presidential candidate, Richard Nixon, had a "scret fund." Ike and Nixon survived that.
Gary Hart on the other hand didn't survive the Donna Rice scandal.

Will Hillary survive this?
Her problem I think is that her wounds of the last two weeks are self-inflicted, and fit very well the negative narrative her opponents have established for her.

Continued Dem debate fallout

Senator Clinton's lead in New Hampshire, in a new poll, shrinks to 10 pts (it was 16).
Her approval rating among New Hampshire voters falls 9 points.
And I note the text of the report matter-of-factly refers to answer on driver's licenses at the debate as a "gaffe."

Continued Dem debate fallout

I'm seeing this a lot today (the previous link was one example):
That is: 1] That now that Senator Clinton has said she agrees with Gov. Spitzer on a program allowing illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses, polls show that 77% oppose such a program; and 2] astonishment at the near-hysteria with which Senator Clinton's campaign and defenders have greeted criticism she's received on this and her debate answer on it. Quote: "Hillary completely stepped in it on this issue. That's why Bill Clinton has to contend that the question to Hillary was akin to the Swift Boat Vets for Truth ads, Eleanor Smeal has to compare Hillary to Anita Hill, and contributors to The New Republic have to contend that Tim Russert is akin to Nazis. It's "all hands on deck" to change the narrative."

And the above is from someone who thought at first she'd won the debate.

Continuing Dem debate fallout: Hillary slipping?

So far, not much, but maybe just a bit. Quote: "I know the early sense is that the debate answer on driver's licenses hasn't hurt Hillary Clinton yet. But I note Rasmussen has her at 41 percent in his daily tracking poll. It's bounced around a bit, but she was as high as 47 percent on the 25th of October. But I notice that compared to the last Washington Post poll finished Sept. 30, Hillary is down four and Obama is up six. Maybe that did move the needle a bit."

Senator Clinton: it depends on what the definition of "withholding" is

Is Senator Clinton "withholding" most of her important White House First Lady papers until 2012? Her opponents say she is. It sure looks like she is. But her campaign has a different spin. What is it? "Three Iowa supporters of another candidate, Senator Barack Obama, of Illinois, sent Mrs. Clinton, of New York, a letter Saturday, urging that she expedite the release of documents, to “be as open as possible with the American people.” In a 2002 letter from Mr. Clinton to the National Archives, which controls his papers, Mr. Clinton wrote that documents including communication between the two Clintons “should generally be considered for withholding” until 2012. Experts on presidential papers, as well as advisers to Mrs. Clinton, say that “withholding” in that context did not mean the papers would be kept under wraps indefinitely. Rather, the word is a legal term in the Presidential Records Act requesting that the papers be subjected to review. The advisers emphasized that the papers involving the couple would likely be released once they were reviewed. In interviews recently, lawyers and experts on presidential papers said it was not unusual for a president to want a close review of documents that might have personal or political dimensions."

My take? Don't get sucked in by this argument. Yes, technically (and the Clintons love to make arguments like this) "withholding" papers doesn't mean they'll be closed off to the public forever. It means they have to be reviewed before being released. But make no mistake: it takes a long time to review millions of papers. It can take years. The Clintons knew that, and know that, and Bill Clinton had to know that when he wrote his 2002 paper asking that the First Lady's papers be withheld and, thus, reviewed.

This is Clinton campaign spin, trying to befog the truth.

Yet more Dem debate fallout for Senator Clinton

John Edwards uses debate footage for a very tough anti-Clinton ad. See it for yourself.
And I agree with NRO's Jim Geraghty: "My hat is off to Team Edwards. This is the toughest, most effective web ad I've seen this campaign so far. Somehow it manages to be simultaneously brutal and fair, contrasting Hillary's own words with herself, often only seconds apart."

Continued Dem debate fallout

I contend that Senator Clinton lost that Democratic debate of earlier this week. Today, she continues to take a pounding--not merely for her performance in the debate, but now for her campaign's post-debate spin. Good roundup here--some choice quotes:

A moment of silence, please, for Invincible Hillary. She left us at 11 am ET yesterday, in Wellesley, Mass., a victim of her own hand. She was 10 months old. She is survived by Victim Hillary. "In so many ways this all women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said yesterday at her alma mater, Wellesley College....

"Clinton essentially hid behind her pantsuit in response to a public shellacking," AP's Ron Fournier writes in his "On Deadline" column, noting that Clinton "is no stranger to 'piling on' " herself in playing the aggressor in political combat..."

"But Clinton's candidacy has always been about far more than being the first woman to launch a viable presidential candidacy. She's wanted us to view her as tougher than the other candidates in the race, the candidate equipped to handle the challenges of the job on Day One. She's been the candidate who's ready to "deck" her critics (and remember who dealt the first blow after Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said he'd meet with leaders of rogue nations?)."

Obama this morning, on the "Today" show: "I am assuming and I hope that Sen. Clinton wants to be treated like everybody else. And I think that that's why she is running for president. You know, when we had a debate in Iowa a while back, we spent the first 15 minutes of the debate hitting me on various foreign policy issues. And I didn't come out and say 'look, I'm being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage.' . . . We're not running for the president of the city council. We're running for the president of the United States of America."

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus isn't buying it. "Those other guys were beating up on Clinton, if you can call that beating up, because she is the strong front-runner, not because she is a weak woman. And a candidate as strong as Clinton doesn't need to play the woman-as-victim card," Marcus writes. "Using gender this way is a setback. Hillary Clinton is woman enough to take these attacks like a man."

"here is such a thing as protesting too much. Lashing out at her critics "contradicts a central part of Clinton's own message: The notion that she is a battle-tested veteran ready for anything the Republicans can throw at her," Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh writes. "If so, she should prove it by engaging with her rivals and defending her positions -- not by having her campaign protest each and every time another Democrat says something critical about her."

Fallout from the Dem debate dept

There was an odd thing yesterday---many on conservative blogs, such as National Review Online and the like, disagreed with the conclusions of much of the mainstream media. The MSM unanimously said Senator Clinton bombed at the most recent debate. Some conservatives thought she won.

I disagree---she lost. The kind of wandering, trying-to-mislead answer she gave on the driver's licenses/illegal immigration issue is the main story that came out of that debate, and that's not good for Hillary. Today, we continue to see evidence of this. See for example her campaign in spin/damage control mode; see them blaming Tim Russert for her failures. From a campaign conference call with supporters: "One caller from Oklahoma City said that “the questions … were designed to incite a brawl,” and that Russert’s and Brian Williams’s moderating was “an abdication of journalistic responsibility.”Another said Russert “should be shot,” before quickly adding that she shouldn’t say that on a conference call."

Blame the media. Pretty old shtick--good luck with it.

A Paul over Hillary's polling numbers

Meaning--how does she do in a hypothetical matchup with Ron Paul?
Well: "The Influence Peddler and Patrick Ruffini think yesterday's revelation - that Hillary gets 48 percent against Ron Paul, including 48 percent among those who know who Ron Paul is, and 48 percent against those who don't know who he is - is worth more attention.
The middle number probably ought to concern Hillary backers the most. Ron Paul doesn't have the highest name recognition. Among those who do recognize him, they probably have some idea of his, uh, eclectic collection of views: get out of Iraq, withdraw troops from Afghanistan, abolish the Federal Reserve, legalize narcotics, issue letters of marque and reprisal for al-Qaeda, repealing the 17th Amendment allowing for direct election of Senators, eliminate the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, FEMA, DHS, withdrawing from the United Nations, and "ending the legal monopoly of the U.S. Postal Service on first class mail delivery"......and she still can't break 50 percent against that?"

Those who are against her--are really against her.
It will be tougher for her in the general election than many think.

Outrage of the day

And remember, when you read this, that Senator Clinton rips the Bush administration for its "secrecy." But guess who's really hiding secrets:

Nearly three years after the Clinton Library opened—and more than 21 months after its trove of records became subject to the Freedom of Information Act—barely one half of 1 percent of the 78 million pages of documents and 20 million e-mail messages at the federally funded facility are public, according to the National Archives. The lack of access is emerging as an issue in Hillary's presidential campaign: she cites her years of experience as First Lady as one of her prime qualifications to be president. Like other Democratic candidates, she has decried the "stunning record of secrecy" of the Bush administration; her campaign Web site vows to bring a "return to transparency" to government. But Clinton's appointment calendar as First Lady, her notes at strategy meetings, what advice she gave her husband and his advisers, what policy memos she wrote, even some key papers from her health-care task force—all of this, and much more documenting her years as First Lady, remains locked away, most likely through the entire campaign season. With nearly 300 FOIA requests pending for Clinton documents, and only six archivists at the library to process them, Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper says it is "really hard to predict" if any of this material will be released before the election.

She'll never change

Senator Hillary Clinton gives an interview to the Washington Post. Towards its end, she's asked why former Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger, who after all not longer was prosecuted for, and admitted, improperly purloining classified documents from a federal archive, was part of her campaign. Typically, she evaded: "Asked about reports that Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, who was one of President Bill Clinton's national security advisers, had been brought in to advise her campaign, despite his conviction on charges of stealing national security documents, Clinton said his role is strictly unofficial. "I've known him for 30-plus years, and he is one of many people who offers ideas, but he has no official role in the campaign," she said."

Yes, right, it depends on our defintion of "role" and of "campaign." But not of "is" this time.
She'll never change.