Reason Magazine - Topics > Hillary Clinton

Are You Glad Hillary Is Gone?

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:49:00 EDT

From an AP account of the end of the line for Hillary Clinton's White House bid:

There was also an overwhelming need for closure, odd for a very close race even in the context of recent history, when Gary Hart and Ted Kennedy took losing nomination fights to the summer conventions. As one veteran political reporter wondered recently: why would journalists seem so eager to see the best story of their life end?
"I've always felt that it was not the job of reporters to be like `The Gong Show' and hoot candidates off the stage," said John Harris, editor in chief of the Politico Web site.
Between the fascination of many reporters with Obama and constant counting of his slow march toward the required number of delegates for the nomination, the Clinton campaign has some legitimate gripes about the way they were covered, he said.

What say you, Hit & Run readers?

More here.

reason on Hillary Clinton.

John Edwards: Rhetoric, Flatulence Not Enough; WSJ: Copyediting, Proofreading Not Enough

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:09:00 EDT

From the Cato Institute's David Boaz comes this hat tip about an anti-Barack Obama debate point made many moons ago by presidential sweepstakes loser John Edwards:

"Rhetoric is not enough. High flatulent language is not enough," says Edwards from a debate appearance.

Read that, from a Wall Street Journal blog, here.

Sadly, and like too many really great stories, this one is simply wrong. In the video clip the Journal embeds right there, Edwards plainly says "high falutin.'"

And that's your Thursday morning comedown.

Somos Los Perdedores

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:16:00 EDT

I usually try to sidestep self-mutilation, but the lure of a two-minute punditry slot on a Bay Area radio station was enough to make me sit through three (3) prime time speeches by the last still-standing candidates from the two 19th century political parties that have proven even harder to kill than Abe Vigoda. I swear to you it's not the bitterness of being put on hold and ultimately skipped over while listening to a competitor prattle on about John McCain that's guiding my voice when I say to you that watching the cream of America's political crop was about as uplifting as witnessing Luciano Pavarotti and Lou Reed's skeleton croak out a version of "Perfect Day." Which is to say, not much.

You can read Dave Weigel's real-time reactions here. Me, I'm not a big fan either of McCain or of political stagecraft, but is it really too much to ask of a distancing-yourself-from-Bush speech in the New Orleans area that you include in your audience, I dunno, some black people? As for its content and delivery, well, let's go to one of the few National Review writers who actually liked the thing:

McCain's speeches don't have to sound this bad, and don't always sound this bad.

As usual, I liked some of his talk about trusting Americans to make better decisions with their money, yadda yadda, but then it would just devolve into a Bill Clinton-style State of the Union Address where no chicken pot would go left unfilled (or unmentioned). Try reading this section without snoring loud enough to get you evicted from the Quiet Car:

The right change recognizes that many of the policies and institutions of our government have failed. They've failed to keep up with the challenges of our time because many of these policies were designed for the problems and opportunities of the mid to late 20th Century, before the end of the Cold War; before the revolution in information technology and rise of the global economy. The right kind of change will initiate widespread and innovative reforms in almost every area of government policy − health care, energy, the environment, the tax code, our public schools, our transportation system, disaster relief, government spending and regulation, diplomacy, the military and intelligence services. Serious and far-reaching reforms are needed in so many areas of government to meet our own challenges in our own time. The irony is that Americans have been experiencing a lot of change in their lives attributable to these historic events, and some of these changes have distressed many American families − job loss, failing schools, prohibitively expensive health care, pensions at risk, entitlement programs approaching bankruptcy, rising gas and food prices, to name a few. But your government often acts as if it is completely unaware of the changes and hardships in your lives. And when government does take notice, often it only makes matters worse. For too long, we have let history outrun our government's ability to keep up with it. The right change will stop impeding Americans from doing what they have always done:

Last sentence intentionally cut off at the colon as a plea to McCain's speechwriters to bring something better than their C-minus game next time around.

Hillary Clinton? A nightmare. After her barftastic statement that "every vote [for me] was a prayer for your country," Ken Layne of Wonkette summed up my feelings exactly: "I never even hated REAGAN like this." Watching this elite lawyer-for-life over these past few months claim eternal sisterhood with the nation's voiceless "truckers" and "miners" was enough to make me want to graduate from college, hook up a lifetime supply of Pinot Grigio, and listen to Klaus Nomi records all day long while wearing my trusty top-hat and monocle. The pathology is certainly not unique to Yes Hill Can, but is there a political tic more nauseating, more unintentionally telling, than a stump speecher wowing the crowd with heartwarming tales about how some poor Iraq vet, or three-job-having pensioner, or one-armed child eating Puppy Chow straight from the bag, pooled together enough pennies with their last usable fingers to donate to a fucking millionaire's political campaign? If any of these stories are remotely true, it says something mildly worrying about the priorities of certain po' folk, but something straight-out monstrous about the egos of politicians who'd rather pocket the 37 cents (and the infinitely more valuable anecdote) than fold the copper back into the helping hand and say "You know what? I've got enough, thanks. Anything I can help you with?"

As for Barry Obama: All you people who claim to be "tired" of the Democratic campaign, realize that we've got six more months of these bland, lefty-econ platitudes, delivered with all the measured, stentorian gravity of Leonard Pinth-Garnell, making trade restrictionism and laments for the death of the vanishing middle class respectable again for NPR listeners.

I have a sneaking suspicion that after another half-year of this, many Americans who (unlike me!) felt at least a spasm or two of prez-politics excitement and hopey-ness this spring will end up feeling not unlike Purple Rain-era Prince did the morning after in "Darling Nikki." As interpreted by a fake Weimar German lass with an accordion.

(Last link from So Quoted.)

The Politics of Basketball

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:42:00 EDT

Brilliant:

Some in the media are declaring the series over because the Boston Celtics have won four of the six games played so far. But I don’t understand why, with a series this close and hotly contested, anyone would want to shut it down before we play a seventh game and have all the results in. As anybody who follows the NBA knows, a seven-game series would be good for the league, and the added competition would make the eventual victor, whomever it might be, a stronger opponent against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals....

Yes, Boston has won four games and Detroit only two. But it's hard to imagine a more arbitrary and undemocratic way to determine this series’s outcome than "games won." It is, after all, a bedrock value of the game of basketball that all points must be counted. But how can that be the case when every point beyond the winning point is ignored? There are literally dozens of layups, jumpers, free throws, and (yes, even) dunks that our opponents want to say don't count for anything at all. We call on the NBA to do the right thing and fully count all of the baskets that were made throughout the course of this series.

Once you abandon the artificial four-games-to-two framework that the media has tried to impose on the series, a very different picture emerges, with the Celtics leading by a mere 549 points to 539. Yes that’s right, the margin between the two teams is less than one percent -- a tie, for all intents and purposes. This is probably the closest Conference Finals in NBA history, though I will thank you not to check on that.

There's more. Read the whole thing.

The Birth of Hillary Nation

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:39:00 EDT

Sam Stein collects some comments from Clinton's die-hard supporters at last weekend's Rules & Bylaw Committee meeting:

"[Obama] is a cult. His campaign is an anti-woman cult."

"I will actively campaign against him."

"You know who is backing him is George Soros. It'll be George Soros, not Obama, who is running the country."

"South Dakota is totally rigged for Obama because of Tom Daschle. Obama's going to win South Dakota because he's buying it and rigging it."

"[Obama] is a socialist! You know what the Nazi Party was before it was the Nazi Party? It was the Socialist Party."

The intensity of this fear and venom shouldn't have blindsided me -- I'm the guy who says paranoia appears everywhere on the political spectrum, including the center -- but it did. It makes me take Hillary more seriously, not as a probable president but as a cultural phenomenon: Anyone who attracts that sort of passion is innately interesting. Even if it turns out that the passion was already floating around before it attached itself to a politician.

Bonus video: A rabid Clinton supporter is thrown out of the RBC meeting. On her way out, she calls Obama "an inadequate black male who would not have been running if had it not been a white woman that was running for president."

On a related note, here's a sneak peek at the Clinton campaign's next commercial:

Clinton to Dems: "I Want to Be Next in Line When Obama Gets Shot"

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:26:00 EDT

Well no, that isn't what she said, but it sure as hell sounded like it:

Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

This comes on the heels of Mike Huckabee's assassination joke, but at least that gaffe felt like an actual joke. Clinton sounds like she's strategizing. And her apology isn't very helpful. After claiming she merely meant that campaigns sometimes drag all the way to June -- as though the nomination process in 1968, a year when it was still possible to enter the race at the convention itself, has much to tell us about the 2008 election -- she apologized to...the Kennedys:

“I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever.

“My view is that we have to look to the past to our leaders who have inspired us, give us a lot to live up to, and I’m honored to hold Senator Kennedy’s seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York and have the highest regard for the Kennedy family,” she said.

Of all the reasons someone might be put off by her remark, the possibility that RFK's family might be offended is not exactly at the top of the list.

For the Love of Godwin...

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:28:00 EDT

This is mean-spirited, unfair, and profane. I loved it.

[Via Andrew Sullivan.]

Friday Funnies

info@reason.com (Scott Stantis) — Fri, 09 May 2008 07:00:00 EDT

Why Does Aspirin (and Hillary Clinton Supporters) Work?

matt.welch@reason.com (Matt Welch) — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:19:00 EDT

Hillary Clinton is well on her way to becoming the most reviled politician in the country. Not because she's resisting establishmentarian calls to step aside and let Prince Obama stride toward coronation − hell, I'd keep competing too, if I was that close to the mechanical rabbit. No, it's more that she will leave no faux-populist-bullshit-hardhat-Scranton-antitrade-what's-an-economist-Pabst-in-my-lunchbucket-Obama=Jesse stone unturned in her (and her husband's) quest to debase each and every molecule in their bodies, and snuff out every last positive memory we might have had of the way the federal government managed its affairs in the 1990s (when we, meaning me, never really liked her to begin with, and never voted for her husband).

The latest from Hitlery:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Yes, there is. When mincing little twerps like Paul Begala posit this rancid crew of Beltway power-mongers as the too-legit-to-quit anti-"egghead" faction representing the vast non-latte-drinking values of Real America, it's almost enough to make a guy pine for the authenticity of John Edwards.

I sincerely hope Hillary takes it all the way to the convention, even if that means I won't be able to watch cable TV for a few months. Few prospects would delight me more than seeing the Clintons stand up on a national stage in front of the political party they've long dominated and then get showered with richly deserved boos.

New at Reason

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:20:00 EDT

Science columnist Ronald Bailey does the math and exposes the Clinton (McCain) gas tax holiday fraud. Then he asks: Are voters stupid enough to fall for it?

Read all about it here.

Are Voters Stupid Enough to Sell Their Votes for Just $27 and Change?

rbailey@reason.com (Ronald Bailey) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

During the 1992 Democratic presidential primaries, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas denounced rival Gov. Bill Clinton (D-Ark.) as a "pander bear" who "will say anything, do anything to get votes." Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) is clearly following in her husband's electoral footsteps by proposing a "gas tax holiday" for the summer driving season. When primary votes are at stake, who needs to heed the laws of economics or even good sense?

Clinton's idea, which is also endorsed by Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), is to suspend the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax for three months in order to give cash-strapped motorists relief at the pump. Assuming that dropping the tax would actually lower the price per gallon by the full 18.4 cents, how much would this actually save the average family?

Let's make a rough calculation, using an average commute of 20 miles per day in an automobile with a 15 gallon tank getting the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) mileage of 27.5. A commuter would then fill up every 20 days. There are 98 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day, so that means five fill-ups over the summer. Five 15 gallon fill-ups at 18.4 cents per gallon less would mean that motorists would save a total of $13.80 for the summer. Let's double that for vacation driving and shopping and that comes to a grand total of $27.60 in savings. About enough to buy five Big Mac Combos.

But would prices actually go down by 18.4 cents? Not likely. As the Tax Foundation reports, most economists assume "that a temporary gas tax holiday would merely increase the profits of the oil industry due to the inability of domestic supply to respond to increased demand in the short run."

In addition, if the federal gas tax is dropped for the summer, the highway trust fund that pays for the upkeep of our crumbling roads and bridges will be short $10 billion. Not to worry, says Sen. Clinton: We'll make up for that fiscal shortfall by taxing the excess profits of Big Oil.

Clinton clearly hopes that primary voters will want to stick it to the greedy oil companies. After all, Exxon Mobil just announced $10.9 billion in profits for the final quarter of 2007. So Sen. Clinton says she'll take away some of those profits to pay for her gas tax holiday. And Clinton's not alone. Her Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is also calling for a windfall profits tax on oil companies. But will it work?

The last time the United States imposed a windfall profits tax on oil companies was in 1980 and it lasted until 1988. The result, according to a 1990 Congressional Research Service analysis, was that the tax on oil company profits decreased domestic production by 3 percent to 6 percent and increased dependence on foreign oil by 8 percent to 16 percent. Keep in mind that the big private oil companies actually control only about 6 percent of the world's known oil reserves—the rest are owned by gigantic foreign national oil companies. And just where do private oil companies get the billions they invest in projects to increase supplies? That's right; their profits. In other words, Clinton actually ends up sticking it to consumers when she tries to stick it to Big Oil.

Sen. Clinton may be feeling the pain of motorists right now, but once she's in the White House, she plans to inflict more pain at the pump. In fact, all three presidential hopefuls plan to do this. Why? Because Clinton champions "the most aggressive approach to reducing global warming out there." She wants to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases that warm the planet by 80 percent by 2050. To do this she favors a cap-and-trade market on carbon dioxide emissions. The Progressive Policy Institute has calculated that a relatively modest $15 per ton price for carbon dioxide emissions would boost the price of gasoline by 15 cents per gallon. But Sen. Clinton is counting on voters failing to connect the dots between gasoline prices and her global warming policies.

This past weekend, on ABC News' Sunday talk show, "This Week," Sen. Clinton was asked by host (and former Bill Clinton aide) George Stephanopoulos, "Can you name one economist, a credible economist who supports the suspension?" Sen. Clinton replied, "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists." For their part, economists are certainly not putting their lot in with Clinton. According to Bloomberg News, 200 prominent economists, including four Nobelists, have signed a petition denouncing Clinton's gas tax holiday as a "bad idea." Even the New York Times' Clinton votary economist Paul Krugman grumbled that her ploy is "pointless, and disappointing."

We will find out soon if Democratic Party primary voters are really stupid enough buy into this cynical Clinton pander.

Ronald Bailey is reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.

Hillary Rising

info@reason.com (Jeff Taylor) — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

One month ago Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) faced an uphill climb in North Carolina. A few days from Tuesday's primary, Clinton has clearly closed in on Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and there are now whispers of a Clinton win among her state-wide supporters.

The Clinton campaign continues to set the bar low, intending to spin even a close loss to Obama as proof that superdelegates cannot trust the party's nomination to such a weak candidate. However, keep in mind how Clinton managed to make up ground in a state where some polls had her trailing by as much as 20 points. The Clinton campaign has largely lucked into its recent momentum.

Clinton must first thank the state's Republican Party. It's decision to put the most strident anti-Obama ad, one with a heavy dose of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, into the mix two weeks ahead of the primary has rebounded to Clinton's advantage. The ad was ostensibly directed at the two Democratic contenders for the governor's race, both of whom have endorsed Obama.

But a TV ad featuring Rev. Wright damning America from the pulpit presented rural white voters with an uncomfortable image of Obama while at the same time freeing Clinton from having to do that job herself. It was win-win for the Clinton team.

Incidentally, state conservatives will not soon forget John McCain's sanctimonious heartburn over the NC GOP ad. They did not like the Republican nominee much on the issues before the flap, and now they find him pandering—and soft to boot.

Better still for Clinton, Rev. Wright decided to drop by the National Press Club this week to reamplify his previous remarks. This kept the story fresh for another few days and led Obama—prodded along, rumor has it, by spot polling in NC showing the Wright issue sapping his support among well-educated white voters—to finally denounce his former pastor.

Still, the potential for huge numbers of newly registered voters to turn out for Obama next week has clearly troubled the Clinton camp. They were not likely to be turned off by the 24/7 focus on Wright. They were on a mission to vote. But the Clinton network had an answer for that.

The Institute for Southern Studies (ISS), a left-liberal outfit in Durham with a hair-trigger on all voting rights issues, claims that the answer was good ol' voter suppression courtesy of a group with connections to the Clinton campaign. A Beltway non-profit with the tongue-twisting name of Women's Voices Women Vote has made robo-calls around the state—as it did ahead of other primaries—telling potential voters that the "packet" they must sign to be eligible to vote will soon arrive in the mail.

But no such "packet" exists, and the deadline for registration has long since passed. As such, ISS finds this calling effort "misleading"—and with good reason. Turns out one of the group's executives is a frequent contributor to the Clinton campaign, amid other interesting connections:

Women's Voices Executive Director Joe Goode worked for Bill Clinton's election campaign in 1992 as a pollster; the group's website says he was intimately involved in "development and implementation of all polling and focus groups done for the presidential primary and general election campaigns" for Clinton.

Women's Voices board member John Podesta, former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, donated $2,300 to Hillary Clinton on April 19, 2007, according to OpenSecrets.org.

What is a Clinton campaign without a little funny business? The size of the turnout among black voters remains the great unknown for Tuesday; anything which dampens that turnout will be to Clinton's advantage.

One above-board factor the campaign can claim credit for is turning Bill Clinton loose to do his Bubba routine among small towns of displaced blue-collar workers. The former president remains popular with the NASCAR crowd and he never fails to skewer the Bush administration, noting, for example, that he left office with a federal budget surplus.

Much less important—indeed, bordering on the insignificant, despite the spin given it by consultants with the ear of gullible reporters—is Clinton's endorsement by North Carolina Governor Mike Easley. On paper Easley is a four-time statewide winner, including two wins as attorney general before his current run as governor.

But Easley's lame-duck year has been marked by political scandal in Raleigh, with one Democratic ally after another under investigation, and the former Speaker of the House now serving time in the federal pen. Add in the fact that governor's office is institutionally weak and that Easley has no campaign for another office in the field, and Hillary gets very little bump out on the campaign trail from this backing.

However, there is no denying that whatever the cause, Clinton is on the upswing while Obama seems to be treading water and is focusing on the insider game of locking down superdelegates. Weekend events and news coverage will be crucial for both candidates. As improbable as it seemed 30 days ago, Clinton has a shot to deny Obama a big victory. This would send the Democrats a loud-and-clear message: Pick me, I can win this thing.

Jeff Taylor writes from North Carolina.

Joe Trippi's Gut-Check Failure

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:39:00 EDT

From the current issue of Politics (formerly Campaigns & Elections and outlet for two damn fine cover stories by reasoners [about Mike Huckabee and the coming libertarian era]), Joe Trippi turns on the waterworks thinking about his experience with presidential washout John Edwards:

For the first time in thirty years of political work, I didn't go with my gut.
I didn't tell him what I should have told him: That I had this feeling that if he stayed in the race he would win 300 or so delegates by Super Tuesday and have maybe a one-in-five chance of forcing a brokered convention. That there was a path ahead that would be extremely painful, but could very well put him and his causes at the top of the Democratic agenda. And that in politics anything can happen-even the possibility that in an open convention with multiple ballots an embattled and exhausted party would turn to him as their nominee. I should have closed my eyes to the pain I saw around me on the campaign bus, including my own. I should have told him emphatically that he should stay in. My regret that I did not do so-that I let John Edwards down—grows with every day that the fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continues....
My mistake was not seeing more clearly then what is so obvious to me now: He could have kept his agenda in the forefront by staying in the race and forcing Obama and Clinton to focus on those issues because he, John Edwards, would hold the key to the convention deadlock. And maybe, just maybe, a brokered convention would have stunned the political world and led to an Edwards nomination.

Whole thing, worth reading for many reasons (including real insight into campaign guys' heads), here.

Me, I'm glad John Edwards is out of the race—he's the Mountain Dew of phoney-baloney pols (to the extreme!) and while a brokered convention would be a good deal of fun (whether it'll ever happen is a very different question), Edwards' dumb Big Gummint ideas were cutting edge back when LBJ was taking craps in front of his cabinet members. Do we really need another moneybagged populist egging Obama and Clinton to go Ralph Nader on an already-flagging economy?

reason on Joe Trippi here.

Obama and Wright...

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:52:00 EDT

Atlanta-based columnist Ron Hart on Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright:

I am no stranger to what is said in a black church, which, since revealed by the Rev. Wright, can shock and amaze most whites. It is the same feeling of disbelief that blacks and whites grappled with when O.J. Simpson was acquitted in his trial in Los Angeles.

The Rev. Wright is simply ripping the scab off race relations, yet to be reckoned with by political leaders. Politicians pander to race for their own benefit, but they don't intend on getting past it because it is an effective tool. Without race and class envy, the Democrats really have no campaign tools.

The media continue their fascination with Obama, but this new religious stumble toward Obama's coronation clearly troubles them. Politicians bring religion into politics at their own peril. Yet somehow the media will spin it for Obama, and probably tie it to their belief that Obama was born in a manger.

Whole thing here.

Clinton's Endearing Fictions

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:00:00 EDT

During the Pennsylvania primary campaign, Barack Obama made a rather charitable gesture not only toward his Democratic rival but toward the presumptive Republican nominee as well. "You have real choice in this election," he told a crowd in Reading. "You know, either Democrat would be better than John McCain, but ... all three of us would be better than George Bush."

That was all it took to set off Hillary Clinton. She rattled off a list of McCain's misguided positions, asking her audience over and over, "Is that better than George Bush?" She concluded, "We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain, and I will be that nominee."

It came as a revelation to hear that Obama, who I thought was plotting to become president, actually has been shrewdly maneuvering himself in position to lead the pom squad at McCain's inauguration. But there was something else that struck me as strange about Clinton's reaction: Obama was not the first of the two Democrats to say something nice about the Arizona senator. He was the second.

A few weeks ago, campaigning in Texas, Clinton sounded downright glowing about McCain. Referring to those 3 a.m. phone calls at the White House, she said, "I think you'll be able to imagine many things Sen. McCain will be able to say. He's never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Sen. Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002."

Let's review. Clinton criticized Obama for ranking McCain No. 3 in a four-person assessment, ahead of Bush. But Clinton herself put McCain No. 2—or maybe even in a tie for No. 1—in her evaluation of the three candidates.

She thinks McCain is better than Obama and McCain is no better than Bush. Which can mean only one thing: Bush is better than Obama!

Of course that's probably not what she actually believes. But it's a tribute to her talent for bold deceit and bizarre logic that she can attack Obama for doing something that she herself had done so recently, and more fervently.

And it brings me to my real revelation about Clinton. In the wake of her Pennsylvania victory, I pondered what it is about her that appeals to so many voters, even when she looks hopelessly out of the race. And I decided only one thing can explain it: A lot of us like our politicians to lie and fudge—the more flagrantly, the better.

Why would that be? For the same reason women enjoy hearing that their eyes are like sapphires and guys like to be told they resemble Greek gods—even when they know full well that the person talking is not being entirely candid. If a politician won't mislead you to get elected, it seems as though he or she doesn't care enough to deserve the office.

Clinton has always been willing to do just about anything to win, which apparently endears her to many voters. Biographer Carl Bernstein, who made his name uncovering President Nixon's monumental dishonesty, judged her guilty of "Jesuitical lying, evasion, and ... stonewalling." The Bosnia sniper tale was unusual only in that her campaign actually admitted that what she said was not, uh, true.

And with Clinton, you get a double dose—one from her and one from her husband. For anyone who's forgotten his memorable performance of 1998 ("I did not have sexual relations with that woman"), he recently provided an encore. He told a radio interviewer that the Obama campaign "played the race card on me." Then, when a reporter asked him about the comment, he replied, "When did I say that and to whom did I say that?" before wagging a finger and insisting, "That's not what I said."

It was a vintage Billary performance. Say something false, then deny you said it, while blaming the person who's telling the truth. It may not be convincing, but it's mighty entertaining.

Some people are of the same mind as the rock band Monday In London, which sings, "Lie to me, baby, and I'll let you get away with it." And if Hillary Clinton gets elected, they are going to have a blissful four years.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

The Paranoid Style Is American Politics

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:30:00 EDT

On Tuesday the lesbian assassin of Vince Foster won Pennsylvania's presidential primary. In the larger contest for the Democratic nomination, though, she still lags behind a jihadist sleeper agent who is simultaneously a secret Muslim, a secret Communist, and a secret Republican. Whoever wins their race will go on to face a brainwashed puppet of the Viet Cong, and whoever wins that race will then get on with the modern president's central task: serving the interests of Mexico. It must be true, I read it in my email.

There's a persistant political myth that paranoia is only a feature of the fringe, something common among alienated radicals and reactionaries but rare in the great American center. In fact, paranoia has been ubiquitous across the political spectrum. You can find it in nearly every faction and movement at every point in American history, not least among those establishment figures who think they're immune to conspiracy theories. (The most lurid and destructive tales of Waco were not told by militiamen after the raid was over. They were told by the media and the government while the siege was underway.)

In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, the historian Bernard Bailyn showed that the worldview of the patriots who would soon revolt against England included a strong belief, in the words of one colonist, that "a deep-laid and desperate plan of imperial despotism has been laid, and partly executed, for the extinction of all civil liberty." At the same time, Bailyn notes, British administrators "were as convinced as were the leaders of the Revolutionary movement that they were themselves the victims of conspriatorial designs." Colonial governors such as Thomas Hutchinson—a man John Adams accused of "junto conspiracy"—believed, in Bailyn's words, that "the root of all the trouble in the colonies was the maneuvering of a secret, power-hungry cabal that professed loyalty to England while assiduously working to destroy the bonds of authority."

After independence was won, the victorious patriots quickly found plots in their own ranks. If you didn't think the Jeffersonians were Jacobin pawns of the Illuminati, you probably fretted that the Federalists were conspiring to establish a monarchy. Nor did the hunt for subversive cabals end with the death of the revolutionary generation. The historian David Brion Davis has pointed out that the lead-up to the Civil War can be viewed as a clash between two conspiracy theories, one featuring a fearsome network of abolitionists and the other a hungry Slave Power.

And no, these passions haven't limited themselves to periods as violent as the war for American independence and the war between the states. It's telling that the 1990s, a time of relative peace and prosperity, were also a golden age of both frankly fictional and purportedly true tales of conspiracy. There are many reasons for this, including the not-unsubstantial fact that even at its most peaceful, America is still riven with conflicts. But there is also the possibility that peace breeds nightmares just as surely as strife does. The anthropologist David Graeber has argued that "it's the most peaceful societies which are also the most haunted, in their imaginative constructions of the cosmos, by constant specters of perennial war." The Piaroa Indians of Venezuala, for example, "are famous for their peaceableness," but "they inhabit a cosmos of endless invisible war, in which wizards are engaged in fending off the attacks of insane, predatory gods and all deaths are caused by spiritual murder and have to be avenged by the magical massacre of whole (distant, unknown) communities." Many bloggers with comfortable lives spend their spare time in a similar subterranean world.

Why all the paranoia? In part, of course, it's because there really are conspiracies out there. Power does attract the power-hungry. No, Hillary Clinton did not murder Ron Brown—but her explanations for her good fortune trading cattle futures do not bear close scrutiny. John McCain is not a deep-cover Manchurian Candidate, but he was a charter member of the Keating Five. Barack Obama is not a closet Islamist, but there are legitimate questions about his ties to the corrupt developer Tony Rezko. If politics is the art of compromise, then politicians will inevitably be compromised.

It also is often in a movement's interest to paint the opposition in the darkest possible colors, even when the stakes are small and even when the allegations involved are not completely true or relevant. More importantly, it is natural for the members of a movement to find such suspicions believable and to conjure up such theories themselves. It's always easy to think the worst about people outside your group, especially if they're already consciously working against your goals. This tendency becomes even stronger when a hierarchy is involved. The lower orders are inevitably suspicious of the elite, and the elite are always worried about the proles.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that one poll showed 15 percent of voters believing that Barack Obama is a Muslim. It shouldn't be a surprise that the stories anti-McCain conservatives used to whisper, that perhaps he collaborated with his captors in Vietnam, are now surfacing on the left as well. If Hillary Clinton somehow manages to take the Democratic nomination—an outcome that would probably require a conspiracy itself—you shouldn't be surprised when all the stories you heard about her in the '90s come roaring back, be they plausible or nuts.

Above all, you shouldn't be surprised when you hear these tales not just from that creepy-looking fellow manning the LaRouche booth near the bus stop but from ordinary, middle-class relatives and neighbors with ordinary, middle-class views. Welcome to America. Paranoia is a part of the political process.

The Killer Elite

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:15:00 EDT

At this point in the news cycle, it is perhaps unnecessary to reprint Sen. Barack Obama's continuously reprinted comments about those bitter, clingy, armed, pious, and disaffected voters of Pennsylvania. But in case your interest in this never-ending race waned upon the exit of Mike Gravel, here is, once again, the Illinois Democrat explaining why the rural poor are supposedly swayed by conservative—rather than liberal—populism: "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Now, let's ignore that last bit of hypocrisy—if anyone has fanned the flames of anti-trade sentiment, it's Obama—and say that it's not too difficult to agree with The Economist's characterization of these comments as a bit "snooty." The claim that religious zeal (the Christian fundamentalism is implied) or gun ownership correlates to the number of shuttered Pennsylvania factories is pretty thin gruel. Recognizing this, both Obama's current opponents, Sens. Clinton (D-N.Y.) and McCain (R-Ariz.), pounced, calling the comments "elitist" and accusing their fellow senator of being hopelessly "out of touch" with the real America.

For its part, many in the media—excepting the conservative-leaning Fox News, of course—jumped into the breach to defend their beloved frontrunner. Consider the reaction of the pundits on CNN's The Situation Room, hosted by Wolf Blitzer, to the charge that Obama displayed a hidden contempt for the armed and religious. First, CNN's house windbag Jack Cafferty denied that Obama was trading in elitism. Rather, explained Cafferty, Obama was simply acknowledging that Pennsylvania is the Saudi Arabia of America. "What happens to [unemployed] folks like that in the Middle East, you ask? Well, take a look. They go to places like al Qaeda training camps." Regardless of whether gun ownership and economic desperation are causative, Cafferty (who has his own problems with inflammatory comments) denounced previous American leaders—cough, Bill Clinton, cough—that "shipped the jobs overseas and signed phony trade deals like NAFTA."

U.S. News & World Report Contributing Editor Gloria Borger weighed in with wrist-slap for Obama's "inartful" terminology. "But," she continued, "I think he's expressing a sentiment of mad as hell voters not going to take it anymore that we've seen throughout this election." The McCain and Clinton campaigns, Borger said, were after the same thing, which is to "portray Obama as this sort of effete elitist who doesn't understand the real working class people or Independent voters."

And, finally, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin sputtered that the whole thing was taken out of context. It was, he proclaimed, a "fake issue. I think [Hillary Clinton] is completely distorting what Obama said. And I think it's just shocking, frankly... I think [Clinton's attack] ad is a disgrace." Toobin declared that by dint of his family background, Obama was incapable of elitism: "Well, I just think it's remarkable that Barack Obama, this guy who grew up in a single family household with no money, who lived in Indonesia, who, you know, was—came from very modest upbringings, somehow he's the elitist." (While certainly not rich, it's worth reminding that Obama, the son of two university-educated parents, attended an "exclusive and prestigious" private school in Hawaii, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School.)

So in The Situation Room, there was consensus. The story was silly season stuff; a prototypically Clintonian diversion from the substantive issues.

While CNN scoffed at the thought of Obama not understanding the rural, white working-class voter, a number of pro-Obama bloggers and pundits were turning on his accusers. At The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan linked to a column by New Criterion editor Roger Kimball, and directed readers to "check out the photo" of Kimball wearing a bowtie and sporting turtle-shell glasses. What does this elitist buffon know from elitism?

Writing in The New Republic, Jonathan Chait railed at the "hypocrisy" of certain elite media figures, saving special ire for "George F. Will [who] decided to leap to the defense of the proletariat. Yes, that George F. Will."

In case you didn't immediately understand the source of Chait's sarcasm, he clarified that Will is "the fabulously wealthy, bowtie-wearing, pretentious reference-mongering, Anglophilic fop who grew up in a university town as a professor's son, earned two advanced degrees, has a designated table at a French restaurant in Georgetown, and, had he dwelt for any extended time among the working class, would be lucky to escape without his underwear being yanked up over his ears." Oh dear. Rumor has it that, in his Georgetown estate, Will has a shelf devoted to the novels of Evelyn Waugh, that poncy, ascot-wearing Brit (boo!) who wrote florid novels about fox hunting and buggery, which Will reportedly reads while consuming expensive French food!

So here we have a class-war version of the "chickenhawk" charge. Don't advocate for war unless you have served, don't speak for the peasants if you wear a bowtie and recommend Chesterton novels to your (probably foreign) friends. Members of the right-leaning bourgeoisie are incapable of spotting and deploring such condescension directed at those who typically vote for right-leaning candidates.

Chait writes that populist, fist-shaking pundits such as Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly, who bully guests and interviewers with references to their "real America," blue-collar credentials, "are multimillionaires who retain only the most remote connection to blue-collar life." This is true enough. But Obama's defenders use the very same line of argumentation in explaining away his "bitter" comments. So when critics such as Toobin tell Wolf Blitzer that Obama "grew up in a single family household with no money," it is perhaps worth mentioning that it should also be tough for Obama to retain his working-class connections—if he ever had any—when he earned $4.2 million in 2007.

Though it likely had little or no effect on yesterday's loss in Pennsylvania—potentially insulted voters were leaning largely toward Hillary Clinton anyway—it is not outrageous to think that Obama's extemporaneous bit of pop sociology was indicative of a generally condescending attitude towards the Other (that was the basic point of Will's column, which found precedent for such feelings in Adlai Stevenson's failed presidential runs in 1952 and 1956). That attitude will surely be revisited in the general election.

The inclusion of guns in Obama's complaint is, I think, especially revealing. A convincing argument can be made that xenophobia is more appealing to the dispossessed and downtrodden—They're taking our jobs! They're invading our country!—and a convincing case can be made that Obama has employed similar, though not explicitly xenophobic, language when railing against NAFTA stealing American jobs. But what does any of this have to do with guns, other than to signify that these are bitter country rubes that, to paraphrase What's the Matter with Kansas author Thomas Frank, foolishly vote against their own interests?

Nevertheless, Jeffrey Toobin told CNN viewers, what Obama said "was factually accurate." But is it? As Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "It turns out [gun owners] have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group. Nor are they ‘bitter.' In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were ‘very happy,' while 9% were ‘not too happy.' Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy."

So Obama's gun analysis was not only incoherent (how does one "explain their frustrations" by shooting skeet, anyway?), but based on lazy presumption and stereotype that's not that backed up by any data. And George Will might well be a fop, but his distillation of Obama's argument strikes me as reasonable: "Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program." In other words, Barack Obama thinks that, whether they know it or not, the gun-toting plebes of America are in desperate need of "change."

Michael Moynihan is an associate editor of reason.

Zogby Says It's Hillary in Penn by Ten

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:38:00 EDT

Today's Democratic primary in Pennsylvania is underway. Yesterday, pollster John Zogby released a survey showing that among likely primary voters in the Keystone State, Hillary Clinton was up 10 points, 51 percent to 41 percent, over Barack Obama.

More here.

Over at Real Clear Politics, the average of polls has Clinton up by 6 percent:

Polling Data

Poll	Date	Sample	Clinton	Obama	Spread
RCP Average	04/17 - 04/21	-	49.3	43.3	Clinton +6.0
InsiderAdvantage	04/21 - 04/21	712 LV	49	42	Clinton +7.0
Zogby	04/20 - 04/21	675 LV	51	41	Clinton +10.0
Rasmussen	04/20 - 04/20	722 LV	49	44	Clinton +5.0
Suffolk	04/19 - 04/20	600 LV	52	42	Clinton +10.0
PPP (D)	04/19 - 04/20	2338 LV	46	49	Obama +3.0
Strategic Vision (R)	04/18 - 04/20	1200 LV	48	41	Clinton +7.0
Quinnipiac	04/18 - 04/20	1027 LV	51	44	Clinton +7.0
SurveyUSA	04/18 - 04/20	710 LV	50	44	Clinton +6.0
Mason-Dixon	04/17 - 04/18	625 LV	48	43	Clinton +5.0
See All Pennsylvania Democratic Primary Polling Data

The cable show chatter over the past couple of weeks has been that Hillary needs a double-digit win to pull super delegates her way. Not sure how much that matters but there's this non-bombshell all over Fox News this A.M.: Michael Moore, the documentary filmmaker who is not liked by genre pioneer Frederick Wiseman, has endorsed Obama.

Hit & Runners, do you care who wins Pennsylvania? Why or why not? In one sentence or less.

Update: Libertarian Democrat and reason contributor Terry Michael says no matter what happens today, it's over for Clinton. Read about it in the Wash Times:

A rush toward Mr. Obama will get underway in the early morning hours of April 23, before we elitist Democrats grab our caramel macchiattos at Starbucks. By the time we reach Whole Foods in the late afternoon of the day after, and before we can put those French lentils with baby carrots into the microwave, the march of super delegates toward ObamaLand will be viewable on our 47-inch flat panel displays, presented by the best political teams in the cable babbling cosmos.

More here.

Beer Drinkers Are Split in Pennsylvania

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:55:00 EDT

Via Extreme Mortman comes this poll from the Keystone State that shows Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) well ahead of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) among gun owners, bowlers, and hunters, but only tied among beer drinkers in Tuesday's Democratic Primary.

What explains that? Or any of this?

Zogby, btw, is touting a poll which shows Clinton up 6 points (48 percent vs. 42 percent, with 6 undecided).

Hillary and the Holy Ghost

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:39:00 EDT

"I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the Holy Spirit was there with me as I made a journey...You know, it could be walking in the woods. It could be watching a sunset."—Sen. Hillary Clinton.

More here, in a Wall Street Journal col by Daniel Henninger which is mostly about "culture war" stuff. (The only truly indispensable resource on culture war stuff, by the way, is Morris P. Fiorina's Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America.)

Hat tip: To a reader whose email pointing to this picture I inadvertently deleted.

Presidential Surveys Say...

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:28:00 EDT

From an AP/Yahoo poll:

In last November's Associated Press-Yahoo News poll, people preferred an unnamed Democratic White House candidate to a Republican contender by 40 percent to 27 percent. In this month's survey, McCain was essentially tied with the two Democratic rivals: It was McCain 37 percent to Hillary Rodham Clinton's 36 percent, and McCain 36 percent against Barack Obama's 34 percent....
Overall, 57 percent in this month's AP-Yahoo poll found Barack Obama likable, compared with 47 percent who said so about John McCain and 37 percent who thought so about Hillary Rodham Clinton. That's an increase since November of 8 percentage points for McCain and 6 points for Obama, while Clinton is 3 points lower.

More here.

McCain on Mortgage Bailouts

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:34:00 EDT

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has gone from knowing nothing about the economy to becoming a free-enterprise guy to sounding like an interventionist. Reports the LA Times:

McCain, in a campaign stop at a windows business in Brooklyn, said, "There is nothing more important than keeping alive the American dream to own your home, and priority No. 1 is to keep well-meaning, deserving homeowners who are facing foreclosure in their homes."

Well, you know what's coming next: McCain has announced a mostly detail-free plan to unburden deserving folks (of course!) of "a burdensome mortgage for a manageable loan that reflects the market value of their home." His plan, details to come sometime next week, will cost less than Hillary Clinton's or Barack Obama's, won't be a bailout for speculators or banks, blah blah blah.

That sort of turn is totally predictable. What's truly strange in the Times piece is this bit from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who was campaigning for McCain:

Bloomberg...recalled a visit several years ago to McCain's retreat outside Sedona, Ariz. He joked that the home and surrounding property were "relatively small" to be called a ranch and recalled that McCain's trademark ribs, which he grills himself, "were slightly on the well-done side." But Bloomberg said he "loved them anyways."

Question: How would McCain know if Boomer was campaigning against him?

Whole LAT piece here.

Reason Foundation's Mike Flynn on mortgage and big-bank bailouts here.

reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch wrote the book on McCain. Buy Myth of a Maverick now!

Friday Funnies

info@reason.com (Chip Bok) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:00:00 EDT

The New Franklin Roosevelts

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:00:00 EDT

FDR lives!

Last night Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the speaker of the House of Representatives and the majority leader of the Senate, received the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Distinguished Public Service Award at a dinner dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the New Deal. The organizers praised the politicians for "the parallels to be drawn between their present leadership and the New Deal period, when so much important and progressive legislation was pioneered with the cooperation of Congress."

It might sound odd coming from a libertarian, but I wish the Pelosi-Reid Democrats had more in common with Franklin Roosevelt. Not the Franklin Roosevelt who occupied the White House from 1933 to 1945, but the Franklin Roosevelt who aspired to the White House in the election of 1932. The Democratic platform of that year is a remarkable document, considering the way the party's candidate went on to govern. It isn't a libertarian manifesto—it endorses several subsidies and regulations—but it hardly embraces the enormous expansion in federal power that FDR would achieve. The very first plank calls for "an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance to accomplish a saving of not less than twenty-five per cent in the cost of the Federal Government." (It also asks "the states to make a zealous effort to achieve a proportionate result.") Subsequent planks demand a balanced budget, a low tariff, the repeal of Prohibition, "a sound currency to be preserved at all hazards," "no interference in the internal affairs of other nations," and "the removal of government from all fields of private enterprise except where necessary to develop public works and natural resources in the common interest." The document concludes with a quote from Andrew Jackson: "equal rights to all; special privilege to none." It sounds more like Ron Paul than Pelosi.

FDR's campaign reflected that platform. He accused Herbert Hoover of "reckless and extravagant spending," and he further denounced the Republican incumbent for believing "we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible." Even when he called for interventions in the economy, he generally couched his words in the old liberals' language of equal treatment rather than the new liberals' vision of enlightened central planning. In his famous Forgotten Man speech of April 1932—itself a sustained allusion to an essay by the pro-market sociologist William Graham Sumner—the Democratic candidate pointed to the wave of foreclosures sweeping the nation. Noting that Hoover had created a "two billion dollar fund...put at the disposal of the big banks, the railroads and the corporations of the Nation," FDR averred that the government should "provide at least as much assistance to the little fellow as it is now giving to the large banks and corporations."

Once in office, the new administration did indeed repeal Prohibition, and it eventually lowered some trade barriers as well. The rest of Roosevelt's anti-statist rhetoric resembles his actual policies about as closely as the last seven years reflect George W. Bush's promises to give us a smaller federal government and a "humble foreign policy." In 1932, a classical liberal could easily conclude that Roosevelt was closer to his views than Hoover, an old progressive who had displayed a lifelong love of central planning and government-enforced cartels, a man who bragged during the campaign that he had responded to the Depression with "the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic." Among other things, President Hoover had jacked up spending, installed agricultural price-support programs, pressured businesses to follow Washington's wage dictates, and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. But by the time a cerebral hemorrhage cut short FDR's fourth term, the federal bureaucracy's power had grown so enormously that Hoover was widely remembered as the last apostle of laissez faire.

Seventy-six years after Roosevelt's first presidential victory, we're again faced with the task of weighing a candidate's campaign promises and wondering what, if anything, they tell us about how the politician would actually govern. This isn't simply a matter of avoiding ill-informed projection, though both Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have a talent for attracting supporters whose views are diametrically opposed to the stated opinions of their candidate. Nor is it just a matter of sussing out dishonesty, though that's obviously a part of the equation as well: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has lied brazenly about everything from NAFTA to Tuzla, and it's hard to believe she's being upfront about her views on Iraq.

The truth is, would-be presidents don't always care about the issues that turn out to be most important. How did Bush flip his foreign policy views so easily? By not having strong convictions on global affairs in the first place, allowing neoconservative advisers to fill the void after the 9/11 attacks. It's easy to imagine, say, John McCain doing something similar during an economic crisis, given that he has already radically reinvented his economic philosophy twice in the last decade, shifting leftwards in 2000 and back to the right in 2008.

Come 2012, President Obama might be explaining why he is sending more troops to Tehran; or President McCain could be preparing emergency legislation to nationalize the banks. If so, our leader's former self will join Bush the humble non-interventionist and Roosevelt the budget hawk on the fringes of the nation's memory. A candidate's campaign persona: There's the true Forgotten Man.

Jesse Walker is the managing editor of reason and the author of Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America.

Sir Elton Comes Out for Hillary; Guess Which Song She Mentions

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 07:19:00 EDT

As someone who genuinely enjoys pre-knighted Elton John music from his '70s heyday, I can think of any number of Reggie Dwight-Bernie Taupin tunes that might cover this situation. None is mentioned below, though Sen. Clinton's invocation of "I'm Still Standing" below is the worst mention of a song by a politico since Sen. Bill Bradley once announced lunch for a bunch of New Jersey high school newspaper editors circa 1981 by announcing to the Springsteen-savvy crowd that "everybody has a hungry heart."

Sez the BBC:

Pop star Sir Elton John has raised $2.5m (£1.3m) for Hillary Clinton's US presidential campaign with a concert at New York's Radio City Music Hall.
Former president Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea joined the former first lady at the gig.
Senator Clinton, who is fighting Barack Obama to become the Democratic party's candidate, said: "I'm still standing"—a nod to Sir Elton's 1983 hit song.
The singer told the crowd: "There is no-one more qualified to lead America."
He also accused people who think Mrs Clinton is an unsuitable candidate of being sexist.
"I'm amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some of the people in this country, and I say to hell with them," he told the crowd.
"I love you Hillary, I'll be there for you."

More here.

I mention this story because a) I find celebrity endorsements/anti-endorsements genuinely hilarious (how many votes did David Crosby throw Bush's way by announcing he'd leave for Canada if the Texan beat Al Gore in 2000)?; b) I am genuinely interested in what sort of dinosaur rawk stars will come out for Barack Obama and John McCain (what are The Spokesmen up to these days?); c) I genuinely would have voted for Hillary if she had quipped instead, "I get high in the evening sniffing pots of glue," and d) It's a genuine opportunity to link yet again to the ultimate Shatnerian triumph of style, substance, and schmaltz, a.k.a. his dramatic reading of Elton John's "Rocket Man" (pronounced rock-IT maaan):