I have little doubt that Senator Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Nominee had it not been for her caving to right wing talking points and voting for the Iraq War. Being on the wrong side the the biggest foreign policy disaster in a generation is what advanced her career from inevitable nominee to junior senator. At the time, many of us in the netroots were flabbergasted, we knew it was a disastrous course of action and came to the conclusion that those who sided with George Bush and the neocons either had no grasp of the situation or were doing it for as a purely political calculation (and a poor one at that as Clinton discovered).

Iraq was the single biggest foreign policy decision, but when it comes to the global climate crisis, I'm getting a sense of déjà vu from the positioning and language used by San Francisco Mayor and 2010 California Gubernatorial hopeful Gavin Newsom as to why he's siding with PG&E against the Sierra Club on clean, renewable energy.

Senator John McCain is playing the, candidate Senator Hillary Clinton game with the media.

When Hillary’s campaign began complaining about the way the media ‘loved’ Senator Barack Obama and was picking on Hillary, most Obama supporters said, "it won’t work Hillary"; but it actually ‘did’ work.

Marc Ambinder, Spencer Ackerman and Keith Olbermann have done a wonderful job exposing John McCain's shocking distortion of Iraq's history.

But how does this affect McCain politically? Is it just a gaffe like Iraq-Pakistan's border?

No way.

This is John McCain's Tuzla moment. It's about the self-aggrandizing lying.

I am an unabashed Obama supporter who has advocated for an Obama/Clark or Obama/Biden ticket in the past.  I still would love to see one of those two tickets, but looking at the race as it exists today I believe that Clinton is at the top of Obama's list.  Further I believe that the Obama campaign had her highly ranked since the beginning and will realize that strategically it is Obama's best choice.

This is my first diary.  Reading the Kos post about the KS woman who felt hopeless and the diary about WV, I thought I'd share my perceptions re: neighbors and friends here in KY.  I'm not much of a writer, but I wanted to try to share my perceptions for what their worth.

I've been watching FOX over the last few days regarding Obama's trip. Their main strategy seems like it's going to be, "Don't believe anything you hear from anyone in MSM, but us.  It's ALL liberal bias. Don't listen to anyone, but us. We are fair and balanced.  Don't let those elitist lefties make fools of you."  Living in KY, I think the faux-news' message may just work, again, unless we can learn to actually stand beside and with one another.  

Hi all -- wanted to pass along this bit of reporting from my colleague Seth Colter Walls.

By now, most political junkies know that Barack Obama raised a lot of money in June.

But his campaign's $52 million dollar take for the month becomes all the more impressive when considering the utter lack of help he received from Hillary Clinton's high-dollar fundraising machine. When comparing Obama's full FEC filing for June with a list of 311 "Hillraisers" -- or supporters who bundled more than $100,000 in contributions for Sen. Clinton -- the Huffington Post found only eight names in common between the two lists. Not all of those donors maxed out, either, making for a relatively paltry figure of $19,250 in direct, hard-money contributions from Hillraisers for the month.

This really surprised me, honestly -- most of the previous reporting has suggested that only a tiny number of Clinton supporters were resisting getting behind Obama.

You can read Seth's full story here.

Obama has raised in excess of $54 million dollars in June, a staggering amount of money considering that the Hillraisers donated a whopping $19,250. Obama's supporters continue to be a tour de force, standing by their man through thick and thin. Many Hillraisers continue to sit on the sidelines with their bats and balls refusing to play. But this diary is not meant to be bitter or to spend more time ruminating about divisive, petulant folks. I want to express my amazement and congratulations to voters who have put their money where their mouths are. They continue to heave themselves up of their rear ends, burn up shoe leather, and break sweat for their candidate. They refuse to be complacent. By doing so their are changing the political game. They refuse to let the powerful, chosen few dictate to the millions of Democratic voters all over the country their choice for president. They refuse to let the power brokers and insiders set the agenda. They intend to show the Democratic Party that 'we the people' call the shots. This is a great moment in history.

McCain has found a line of attack against Obama with which he's very comfortable: he used it repeatedly against Bill Clinton. Here it is, as expressed on Jul. 20 by advisor Randy Scheunemann:

Barack Obama says he wants a 'safe and responsible' withdrawal from Iraq, but is stubbornly adhering to an unconditional withdrawal that places politics above the advice of our military commanders, the success of our troops, and the security of the American people.

John McCain is officially irrelevant...   This is Madness, Not Snark

McCain would be most comfortable running in accord with his particular notions of political virtue while emphasizing character, national security, and a few pet causes such as earmarks. If he wants to win, he has to leave his comfort zone. He should take a page from Hillary Clinton. She did not, of course, defeat Obama, but she road-tested a strategy that cost him support among crucial constituencies—and that strategy is even better suited to McCain’s general-election run than it was to her primary campaign.

McCain ought to be encouraged by how close she came. She was a plodding speaker lacking pizzazz, drew smaller crowds than Obama by an order of magnitude, and was outspent and out-organized. McCain will have all the same deficits. Yet she fought Obama nearly to a draw, and after February—when she had finally figured out how to run against him—beat him soundly. That was too late for her. But it is not too late for McCain.

This is a rant against a fellow Democrat. If you can't stomach it please don't read any further.

There is an old  joke about a guy  running down the street with his clothes on fire. Another  man comes up to him with a cigarette  and asks

Hey, Buddy. Can I have a light?

That is Sen. Clinton for you.

Gas is $4.50. Banks are failing. People are struggling.  We are in a tough race against John McCain for President. It is not an exaggeration to say that the fate of the world hangs in the balance. At the very least the fate of thousands of our soldiers and many more Iraqis.

McCain is exploiting loopholes in the law ( which he wrote) toget supporters to pay as much as $100K per person. The RNC has a 2 to 1 advantage in fundraising over  the DNC.  In the midst of all this, what does Hillary Clinton want us to do?

Pay off her campaign debt!. Talk about selfish. Ran a spendthrift campaign, always spending more than she raised. Is worth at least $100M. And she wants the small contributors to Obama's campaign to pay her bills.

Raising $20M  to pay Clinton's  bills is not our priority.

Pay your own bills!

A few weeks ago, when it became clear that Barack Obama was our nominee, I suddenly had a place in my heart for Hillary Clinton.  I realized that a long, tough primary was just part of the process, and that I could forgive Hillary.  I even wrote a few diaries considering the possibility of Hillary Clinton as a VP running mate.

I have since deleted those diaries.

Not good.

Alex Castellanos of subliminal message fame is now an "outside advisor" to the McCain campaign, according to the New York Times:

Alex Castellanos, formerly the top advertising strategist for Mitt Romney, has been a regular guest on CNN’s bipartisan panel on Democratic election nights. Mr. Castellanos is also now an outside adviser to Mr. McCain’s advertising team.

Readers may remember him as the perpetrator of the infamous RATS commercial. (Here's a YouTube video of it.)

Of course Castellanos's checkered past as a negative advertising specialist and dirty trickster goes way beyond...

http://www.creators.com/...

Support women = Support Sebelius = Snub Clinton = Snub Clinton supporters = Snub women? I think something slipped there.

NYT:

Democrats said they thought it was less likely now than it was a month ago that Mr. Obama would choose Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York as his running mate, though they said she remained in consideration and that she was being vetted.

If he does not choose Mrs. Clinton, several Democrats said, it would be difficult for him to name any woman — like Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, someone for whom he has had warm words. Both Clinton and Obama advisers said such a move could create a backlash among women who supported Mrs. Clinton.

Help me understand this theory. Women, and let's be clear that they are not talking about "Clinton loyalists" they said "women", who voted for Clinton would be upset if Obama was NOT a sexist?

I could hardly add anything to this email sent to major donors to the Clinton campaign. Kudos to Don Fowler and Alice Germond.

My son is a huge fan of Hillary Clinton and took it pretty hard when she lost to Barack Obama. He's even threatened to vote for John McCain. Well, Saturday the DNC and Howard Dean brought their cross-country "Register for Change" bus tour to Baton Rouge. So we attended.

On the way there Miss Julie had an idea.

Because dailykos was started as the Bush administration was preparing to send this country to war, I've decided my first diary entry will start with my own story from that time.

In August 2002, I began my third year of college. One of my courses was Politics of West Asia, and for this class I was required to keep up with all stories relevant to this region in the New York Times. At the beginning of the semester, I opened my Times every day and inevitably found an update of the US operations in Afghanistan.

At some point in September, I started noticing a change in the Times' stories. The coverage of Afghanistan was now on page 2, 3, 4...and on the front page appeared strange articles about Iraq. I say "strange" because they often did not follow the normal Times protocol of having front page stories cover distinct and recent events. Iraq was not complying with the UN Security Council Resolutions—just as it hadn't for years. Sometimes based on vague White House statements, these articles otherwise did not seem to describe any new developments, but had the effect of replacing "Afghanistan" with "Iraq" in the top news items in newspapers around the country.