Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Transmissions from Planet Hillary Are Increasingly Surreal

After a bit of a lull, the ebag has received two curious email from the Clinton campaign. Yesterday Chelsea sent one under the subject "An Important Decision . . ." What, how long her mom will push her longshot campaign? Whether to tone down the negative rhetoric?

No, it's a T-shirt contest. That's right, according to Chelsea, "We need your help to make a critical decision -- our next official campaign t-shirt." The designs in the semi-final are nice and all, but a campaign on its last legs and tens of millions in the red probably has better things to commit money to than printing up a new set of Hillaryware.

Then today Hillary sends an email titled "How we win." No, she's not coming clean about her count-every-vote bait-and-switch. No, she's not even admitting to supporters that she is relying on the superdelegates to overturn the popular will. Instead, "We are depending on the voters of Puerto Rico in our fight to secure the nomination [emphasis in original]." This conjures up a mental reworking of the Dean Scream speech: "We're gonna go to Puerto Rico and Guam and the Marshall Islands and Montana and South Dakota. And then we're gonna go to Colorado and strong-arm the supers . . . Heeyaaaaa!!!"

Oh, but she's not talking about the supers. Not at all. In fact the email actually says, " It doesn't matter what the pundits say. You and I know this race is up to the voters, and I'm going to keep fighting for every last vote [Emphasis in original]." Please. If the race is actually up to the voters, game over, with or without MI/FL. The only reason she's still anywhere in the conversations is that it isn't ultimately up to the voters, it's up to the supers.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but the fundamental dishonesty of her campaign rakes my nerves. She talks voters, she talks democratic process, but she will ultimately make the case to the supers to overturn the result of that process to win.

On the bright side, if she succeeds, we'll have a really nice T-shirt for November.

2 comments:

Anthony Fossaceca said...

Pho, at the very least, I agree with you on the idiotic t-shirt email. Hell, even if this made sense to send out, the timing is bizarre. Why not do it in May of 2007? It seems a little late to be picking a campaign t-shirt.

If they come out with an Iowans for Hillary shirt, I'll join you on the O-Train.

Ben said...

I find it weird that Puerto Rico, who doesnt vote in the general, votes in the primary. Same with Guam. Makes no sense.