Hillary Clinton should not become Obama’s
Secretary of State, but should remain in the Senate instead, working to preserve unity among Democrats.

Having her on board, working in the Senate to clear the health care initiative, is of far more importance than having her out of the country all the time — regardless of how politically expedient it would be for Barack Obama to have her out of his way.

When the new Congress convenes, Democrats will have a strong majority in both chambers. Not the filibuster-breaking majority they wanted, but still. However, the mere fact that the Democrats will not have such a majority, means that they will still have to make deals with some Republican members of Congress in order to get proposals passed. In that reality, it would be a smart move to have Reid work the Democrats on the left while Clinton works the Democrat ‘Blue Dogs’ and the moderate Republicans. (Okay, the few moderate Republicans that still remain after ‘Bloody Tuesday’ of last November 4.)

Of course, there will be times when Clinton will want to make a fist and celebrate her own, possibly vengeful victories over the Obama White House. So be it; that’s what you get when you essentially copy the old Roman ways of governance. You get a rowdy Senate, with senior Senators who see themselves as the Saviours of the Nation. Again, so be it. Obama will have to deal with it and he probably can, thanks to people like Rahm Emanuel.

The smart old lion of the Democrats, Ted Kennedy, probably sees things the same way and has therefore undercut the entire Secretary of State-game for Obama by publicly asking Clinton to lead the health insurance initiative.

By doing so publicly, Hillary can’t turn the offer down; thanks to her hard work trying to get her own failed health care initiative through Congress back in 1993, turning down Kennedy’s request would be equivalent to her erasing part of her legacy.

And if there is one thing the Clintons hold dear, it is their legacy.

Last week saw yet another victim of the war on two fronts that is coverage of political campaigning on one hand, and fighting off the competition on the other hand. The editor of Politico.com, a new political news website that shot to prominence, admitted that he allowed an article put up on the site which completely mischaracterized a candidate. Just as the original writer at the newspaper, which is vehemently opposed to the candidate, had intended. Said article in the New York Post took one sentence completely out of context, in an apparent drive to damage the candidate.

Without thinking, fearing that competitors would outrun them, Politico.com simply copied the story, without checking the facts. Later on, when the reporters did get to check the facts, they found out how slanted the story was.

So John F. Harris, a renowned reporter and co-editor of Politico.com, put up an apologetic article. Or so it seemed, because the article is hardly apologetic. If only it had been!

Call me whatever you want, but I could not resist writing Harris an email to explain how appalled I was.

Here it is, in full:

‘Dear Mr Harris,

I’m an avid reader of Politico, and I enjoyed your “The Way To Win:2008″ book
(with Halperin) very much.

But I’m also a journalist, and I thought your article ‘How small stories become big
news’ hair raising.

There is one scene in your article which I found particularly painful.

You describe how Jonathan Martin was “furiously typing away”, explaining to you what Clinton had said. Later on, you write that “Martin himself knew about Clinton’s remarks from the New York tabloid’s story”.

So let me get this straight: Martin wrote his story solely based on what he’d read on the NYP’s site? Or did he check another, less partisan source to back up the story?

And – the horror, the horror! – only after publishing the story on your site, did you and Martin sit down to see what Clinton actually said on the Argus video?

Seriously: are you guys journalists, or are you just automated copywriting machines?

Here is what I think truly happened, but what you fail (yet should have the honesty) to admit:

1.Politico violated Rule Number One from the Book of Journalism: one source is no source.

2.And even then the one source you did quote, was not one of the more objective news media. The New
York Post is not exactly a friend of Clinton, or anyone Democratic.

So it seems that, as you wrote it, you allowed Politico.com to report the “story” with the NYP’s (very much anti-Clinton, anti-Democratic) slant.

The NYP took one sentence, ripped it from it’s context completely, and started bashing Clinton with
it.

By basically copying what they wrote, you became part of the NYP’s agenda.

I think you’ve got your priorities all wrong. Sure, you’re looking for traffic but if you guys are writing the same stories all the others are writing, then what’s your unique selling point?

Trust me, there’s a huge audience out there that’s dying to read the stories based on facts, and on a neutral (well, as neutral as possible…) website.

I for one will, from now on, always have to second guess Politico. Who or what is the source of the stories? Did they check them before they put them up on the site?

There’s hardly a non-partisan news outlet left in America today. If I can’t trust Politico, who do I trust?”

Of course, I’m still waiting for a reply. Naturally, I realise full well that I’m just one blogger, out of the millions out there, and I’m sure that the email server of Politico.com was smoking in the hours after Harris put up his article.

But surely, the points I made in the email are valid?

Hillary Clinton is going to lose the nomination battle. If not the delegates, then most certainly the Democratic ‘hearts and minds’. Should she win the battle, it will be because what Obama did and got was too little, too late. But once the Democratic convention comes rolling along in 6 months, most Dems won’t want her to lead the party into battle with the Republicans — even if she’s got most delegates. However, it may not even come to that; Obama is getting a LOT of traction as his momentum keeps building, and he just might be able to tip the scale. Clinton may win New York, but if Obama wins California, then that will be the ‘watershed moment’ Team Clinton won’t be able to explain away, much less spin. Then it will be over.

And guess what? Zogby et al are already polling an Obama win in California.

Memo to pundits, political junkies and reporters: with less than three weeks to go to the Iowa caucuses, expect the Clinton campaign to start downtalking the importance of Iowa while beefing up New Hampshire. The reasoning: the Clintons were never that strong in Iowa, but New Hampshire has always been the ‘litmus state’ for any Clinton campaign since 1992. And contrary to Iowa, losing that state in the primary is not an option.

So forget Iowa, the Clintons are going after New Hampshire. Bill Clinton in the past few days has within the campaign thumped on the importance of New Hampshire for everything Clinton ever since his second-place ending in the state in the 1992 Democratic nomination campaign. That pivotal feat revived his campaign and kick-started his succesful run for the presidency.

As Alex MacGill of the Washington Post pointed out in this excellent report, the Clintons have cultivated their ties to the state ever since, so much so that New Hampshire is seen as almost synonymous to Clinton’s destiny and political standing among pundits, commentators and — yes — national media journalists. Because of the state’s importance and the significance the Clintons themselves always attributed to it, losing that state in the primary would make Hillary Clinton’s star fade faster than you can say “implosion”.

And so the game that is being played for New Hampshire is one of expectations. Since Bill Clinton’s succesful run for the presidency, New Hampshire has always been high up the political expectations ladder, whilst Iowa — where he never campaigned — was mostly off the pundits’ radar screen when it came to the political fortunes of the Clintons.

In 1992, Iowa senator Tom Harkin had such a strong local following for his nomination campaign that Clinton was smart enough to not even bother trying to get caucus votes there, and in 1996 he didn’t need Iowa. But unfortunately for Bill Clinton, whose reputation is pretty much on the line now that his wife is campaigning for the presidency, the Hillary campaign has put considerable importance on Iowa, so much so that expectations are running high.

And if there is one thing Bill Clinton dislikes, for all his political mastery, it is uncertainty, and Iowa has become a huge question mark. The campaign has realised that all the extra efforts in Iowa of late have been too little, and definitely too late. Hillary Clinton has simply been unable to stem the Obama tide in the unpredictable midwestern state. And even though Hillary’s team pounces on each individual Iowa poll that shows Hillary one or two percent ahead of Obama, the campaign knows full well that the majority of polls are showing the reverse picture.

And so the new strategy will be as follows. Bill Clinton is still probably the single, most popular politician in New Hampshire. Thus, the coming weeks shall see Bill and Hillary — but especially Bill — tour New Hampshire while ensuring as much local media coverage as possible. Hillary will be projected as a Clinton once again bringing the message of ‘change’, much like her husband succesfully did in 1992. Realising the mistake made in Iowa, where there was a big disconnect between Hillary and Iowans, the campaign will get down to the good old nitty-gritty of traditional campaigning, including having her go door-to-door, which she has already started doing.

Meanwhile, the campaign will start what the Russians would call a ‘maskirovska’-campaign, or masking; having everybody believe that they’re still going full-steam for a win in Iowa, while in reality they aren’t. The goal is no longer to win in Iowa but to force Obama to concentrate most of his resources there while the secondary goal is to try to come in second, above Edwards. Look for Bill Clinton and other surrogates to start talking down the importance of Iowa in the last week or so before the caucus there takes place, while at the same time becoming New Hampshire cheerleaders.

He’ll never admit it until the proper time comes — which could be any time of his choosing — but John Edwards in the back of his mind must know by now that he’s not going to win the nomination to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for the US presidency in 2008. In Iowa, New Hampshire and even South Carolina, Edwards has fallen back to third place in the polls. If he comes in third in Iowa, his entire strategy will have failed and he will have no other option than to drop out. And so the $1 million question then is: who will John Edwards endorse? Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?

As I write this, pundits seem to be missing that Edwards’s star appears to be fading, blinded as they are by focusing entirely on the brutal violence of the Clinton-Obama battles, which obviously makes for good headlines. By doing so, they are missing out on the one factor that is likely to decide the Democratic Party’s nomination: the approximately 10 to 15% of the Democratic primary and caucus Edwards-votes that would be up for grabs by either Clinton or Obama, should the former Senator from North Carolina decide to give in.

His campaign will deny it until the very last second of the Iowa caucus, but as January 3 comes closer the issue will slowly but surely be pushed to the forefront. There’s a big chance that Edwards will come in not second but third in Iowa, and the polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina do not look very good either. There’s an equally big chance he will lose in those two states as well, and since his campaign was obviously based on coming in on top in Iowa, where he has been campaigning virtually non-stop since 2004, the loss in Iowa is likely to destroy his entire nomination campaign.

When that happens, Edwards has two choices. Either stay in the campaign, knowing that after losing in Iowa, the press will ignore him completely as they focus even more on ‘Clinton versus Obama’. In fact, chances are that he will move to the back pages of the newspapers, amid the Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse freakshow. His ego won’t be able to stand much of that ridicule, which will also virtually guarantee that he stands no chance of getting the vice-president nod from whoever wins the nomination. (Edwards isn’t coveting that position anyway.)

So the second, only rational and face-saving choice would be to throw the hat into the ring almost immediately after the Iowa caucus results come in (providing, of course, that he finishes third) and thus before the New Hampshire primary, which is held 2 days after the Iowa caucus. And if he does, then the question is whether Edwards will endorse another candidate. As Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Christopher Dodd are seen dropping out quite quickly after their Iowa loss as well, it stands to reason that Edwards will have to choose between Obama and Clinton. Who of the two is he likely to endorse?

It is no secret that the Clintons have always held somewhat of a special place in their calculating hearts for Edwards; if anything, they were closer to him than to Obama. Bill Clinton has at times hinted that he backed John Edwards more than he did John Kerry during the presidential campaign of 2004 and there is no reason to think that Edwards has forgotten about that support. Naturally the Edwards and Clinton campaigns have traded barbs every now and then in the run-up to the nomination campaign of this cycle, but these were more superficial than anything hard-hitting.

However, despite those warm feelings for each other, one of Edwards’s nomination campaign themes has been ‘change’, not ‘continuity’ in the shape and form of extending the Clinton dynasty. So in that respect, and when purely looking at Edwards’s platform, perhaps a choice for Obama instead of Clinton would be more logical for Edwards. But then Edwards’s platform places much more emphasis on the ‘One America’ theme, invoking the image of an increasingly deeper rift between the rich and the poor, which (until recently) wasn’t one of Obama’s main platform themes.

Perhaps the answer lies in the kind of voters Edwards is popular with. Edwards has always been trying to reach out to unions and voters in the lower to lower-midde-class income brackets. His target audience therefore has a lot of overlap with Clinton’s, whose campaign has also been reaching out to unions and other representative organisations. Another target audience is women, which are quite obviously also a Clinton target. Another main overlapping theme that recently attracted voters to the Edwards camp was his plan for a national health insurance, which looks more like Clinton’s plan than Obama’s. Edwards has also criticised Obama’s plan more than he has Clinton’s.

But even though there is a lot of overlap, there is also a reason why so many people have been rooting for Edwards ever since Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy: a lot of Edwards voters simply don’t like Clinton. More often than not, Edwards voters are disgusted at the idea of having to vote for Clinton during the national election. Still, though, if they don’t want a Republican taking the White House again, they know they’ll have to as regardless of what polls and pundits are saying now, chances are that the presidential election is going to be very, very close again, just like in 2000 and 2004. If Edwards himself then implores them to vote for Clinton durong the nomination process, it might just be enough to decisively tilt the balance in her favour.

However, regardless of all these rational parameters, the decision lies entirely with Edwards personally. It is the second time that he is seeking presidential office, first as the Democratic vice-president nominee and now as a candidate for the top job. Losing out once is painful, losing twice is a disaster in political terms, not just because of the loss of face in the public arena (resulting in a lot less support should he ever try to run for president again), but perhaps even more because of the sense of personal failure.

If and when he gets to take a decision, he will know from private polls provided by his campaign that some of his voters in the last weeks of the Iowa campaign moved to the Obama-camp because of the ‘Anybody But Clinton’-vote that holds sway among the more leftist Democratic activists, and the inevitable ‘Oprah-mojo’ of the Obama campaign. Yet some of his voters will also have crossed the bridge (back) to the Clinton camp — the voters that are afraid that Obama is indeed too unexperienced to stand up to the Republican Character Assassination Machine in a national election.

And when deciding whether he should take a decision at all, there is another factor that will certainly be on his mind, which is: securing an important role in the Democratic party in the future. Edwards is someone who thrives in the spotlight; it’s a gene he seems to share with Bill Clinton. By simply accepting defeat and walking away, he will also walk out of many people’s minds, forever tainted as a loser.

The mere thought is anathema to Edwards. He understands that making a choice for one of the two candidates will at least ensure him a spot in the Democratic pantheon and who knows, perhaps he will be invited for an important position in Obama’s or Clinton’s administration. If not that, then White House support while running for governor of North Carolina would certainly help.

With all that in mind, and looking at the national polls in which Clinton still has a double-digit lead over Barack Obama in the nomination process and also leads possible Republican opponents in most polls, Edwards would be hard-pressed to give the nod to Obama instead of Clinton.

It isn’t often that one gets to see an example of hatred that is so blinding that spouters of political bile jump into a trap with eyes wide open. Yet that is the case with the right-wing extremists who have thrown themselves like a pack of howling wolves onto Graeme Frost and his family. Like hideous vampires mad for blood who have found a new born baby in its crib, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and the other Undead are feasting on middle-class flesh while their hideous laughter and screaming fills the humid air. But all this time they don’t realise that many, many people who identify with the Frosts are learning a valuable lesson: the right-wing extremists of the GOP hate white, middle-class American familes.

Graeme Frost, as a short reminder, is the 12-year-old son of the Frost family, a quite average, suburbian middle-class American family. Dad has his own job and isn’t doing bad (considering the size of the family), mom is putting all her energy into the family, and the kids all go to school. So far, no problem. But the Frost family allowed the Democratic Party to use Graeme Frost in the party’s denunciation of president’s Bush veto of State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) legislation. The Democrats in Congress wanted the SCHIP scheme expanded to allow more children to be covered by it, but president Bush stood ground on principle, arguing that by expanding it the way the Democrats wanted, the states’ program would become a “federal” program.

Instead of putting a senator or a governor up for the task to rebut the president’s move during the weekly Democratic rebuttal by radio, the Democrats set Graeme Frost front and center, claiming that the boy would have been dead had it not been for SCHIP. The boy has had a life-threatening disease and survived, making Graeme Frost a Democratic poster boy for the Democrats.

True to fashion, the messager was attacked, and not the message itself. The werewolves threw themselves on Frost immediately, yelping that the Frost family was making more than enough money to pay for Graeme’s medical bills themselves. They live in a $260,000 home in Baltimore, Malkin and Limbaugh and the others of Dracula’s Castle pointed out, and daddy Frost even has three cars. To the vampires, this is is proof that the Frosts — and thus many American middle-class families — don’t need the SCHIP money. And even if they did, surely the Frosts could have made do with just one car, selling the two others?

The trap set out for the Undead had big neon signs that were flashing “TRAP!”, but to no avail – the vampires fell right in and are now in fact aiding the Democrats. Because ever since Graeme Frost’s appearance before the Democratic microphone, Malkin and Limbauhg and their ilk have been trashing the average, white, American middle-class family. What’s more, they have been after a family of which the husband and father is self-employed. Hmmm – white, middle-class, self-employed, hard working, some debt there, more than 2 kids — wait a minute! That’s one of the GOP’s most beloved demographics in elections! So far, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has jumped on the matter, putting up a vigorous defense for Frost while Giuliani and Romney’s campaigns seem to have seen the neon signs – and are thus far keeping a distance.

Hee-hee. What a laugh. Not only have the Democrats got most Republicans with a brain cornered because they know that going after a 12-year-old does not look good, the right-wing extremists are — in the name of their beloved GOP — bashing away at your average, middle-class, voting white family. If I were the DNC’s national campaign strategist, I’d put the name ‘Graeme Frost’ right up where with Iraq, social security and health care for the coming presidential election. The Vampires are eager enough to help out the Democratic campaign, it seems, so why not?

So, what’s next. Ummm, how about… An 11-year-old girl called Juanita from Nevada? Or – no, Arizona? Wait wait, even better – Florida!