The majority chose "She is a woman" - the loyal answer - but there were still some takers for each of "Obama is more charismatic" , "Attacked Obama" and "Cried in public". Nobody went so far as to opt for "Negative personality".More in Red State:
(...) Mrs Clinton finally turned to the big question. "A lot of people are asking, 'What does Hillary want?'" she said. "I want what I have always fought for: I want the nearly 18 million people who voted for me to be respected and heard."
"Now the question is, where do we go from here? And given how far we've come and where we need to go as a party, it's a question I don't take lightly. This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight," she told delighted supporters.
"In the coming days, I'll be consulting with supporters and party leaders to determine how to move forward with the best interests of our party and our country guiding my way."
So I guess a lot of people didn't see it coming that Hillary Clinton would refuse to concede tonight and would urge her supporters to go to her website, presumably with the idea of encouraging her to keep on keeping on. Pundits on television who are clearly in the tank for Barack Obama--Jeffrey Toobin, I'm looking at you!--are outraged almost to the point of stark, raving incoherence. And now all of the commentary is raging--what does Hillary want? It seems obvious; she wants power. Either she is hoping that somehow, someway, some sort of scandal will come up that will sink Barack Obama even after he has clinched the nomination for the Democratic Party, or she is positioning for the Vice Presidential nomination. And she thinks that she has enough leverage to force Barack Obama to pay attention to her and to perhaps make some sort of concession to her that will make her happy and leave her satisfied that politically, she has gained more than she may have lost. In any event, while the nomination fight has ended, the Democratic Party's hostage crisis continues and there is a very real danger that Hillary Clinton will yet be able to make Barack Obama weak enough to lose in the fall, thus opening the way for the Clintons to run again in four years.
Over the next five months, a fragile economy and an ongoing Iraq war, as well as matters of age and race, will shape the monumental contest to succeed President Bush and become the 44th president.McCain — 71, white and a veteran of Congress who vows never to surrender to al-Qaida — would be the oldest first-term president ever elected.Obama — 46, black and a Senate newcomer who pledges to end the Iraq war — would be the first minority to achieve the White House."No matter who wins this election, the direction of this country is going to change dramatically," McCain said Tuesday in New Orleans. "But, the choice is between the right change and the wrong change; between going forward and going backward."Obama countered in St. Paul, Minn.: "There are many words to describe John McCain's attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush's policies as bipartisan and new. But change is not one of them."Among the biggest questions to be answered by Nov. 4:_Will McCain be able to overcome the country's intense desire for change by separating himself from the unpopular Bush while sticking close on issues of war and taxes?_Will Obama be able to overcome the country's unsavory history of slavery and lingering bigotry that deeply divides the public to be elected the first black president?
And part of that decision will certainly be questions surrounding the one man in America who could upstage the presidential candidate. Bill Clinton has angered Obama supporters with his blatant use of the race card as well as his pointed criticisms of the candidate on everything from health insurance to the Iraq war. His outsized personality makes bringing Hillary on board a gamble of immense proportions. In the end, Obama will have to decide if he can win without Hillary Clinton on the ticket. The only reason she would be there is if he felt he had no other choice.
Grumbling from John Edwards’ camp that he should not have quit so soon emphasizes one of the probable legacies from Clinton’s never-say-die campaign: in the future it will be harder to get candidates to give up, and thus harder for parties to rally around one winner early in the process. But with Obama on the verge of sewing up enough delegates, with party leaders starting to beg for unity, the time has come to end the campaign.
this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.Well, whose ideals are those? Reverend Wright's? Or that shame for Catholic Church (and Jesuit's) Father Pfleger's?
What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon—that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize.Hmm, yeah, of course... and soooo, Wright was what??
"Lo que no encontraréis en esta campaña es a ese partido que usa a la religión como cuña y al patriotismo como una cachiporra -que ve a nuestros competidores no como competidores en un desafío si no como enemigos a demonizar".
"So numbed have I become by the endless replay of the fatuous clerical rantings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that it has taken me this long to remember the significant antecedent. In 1995, there appeared a documentary titled Brother Minister about the assassination of Malcolm X. It contained a secretly filmed segment showing Louis Farrakhan shouting at the top of his lungs in the Nation of Islam’s temple in Chicago on “Savior’s Day” in 1993. Farrakhan, verging on hysteria, demanded to know of the murdered Malcolm X: “If we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours?” His apparent admission of what had long been suspected—that it was the Black Muslim leadership that ordered Malcolm’s slaying—is not understood or remembered (or viewed) as often as it might be.
[W]hy should a thinking black member of the working class want any truck with a Farrakhan fan or with a moral idiot who thinks that the drugs and disease in the black community are imposed by an outside conspiracy? I don’t need any condescending liberal to explain to me why black Americans are inclined to be touchy about the way their forebears were treated any more than I require a patronizing former Harvard law student to guide me through the anxieties of the gun-owning and hunting community. I can quite easily understand these points without pedagogic assistance. What I won’t be told is that Tawana Brawley was right, or that AIDS is the fault of the government, or that Jews were behind the slave trade, or that there is a secret Masonic code in the dollar bill. And the apologist for murder “Minister Farrakhan” and his big-mouth Christian friends flirt with this kind of half-baked garbage every day."
(Thanks to John for the more than interesting tip.)