Monday, June 02, 2008 - Posts
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Hillary Clinton released a new TV spot on Sunday touting the 17 million people who have voted for her in the Democratic primaries. That's "more than any primary candidate in history," the narrator tells us.
Well, sort of. Over at Slate V, we've got a remix of the ad pointing out the big old asterisk next to Clinton's claim that she's winning the popular vote. Watch it here.
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Saturday’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting had so many smack downs, cheap shots, hissy fits, and highfalutin lectures, it’s pretty much guaranteed that the episode will be turned into a Recount-style TV movie.
We felt obliged to cast the inevitable film. Click the links to see the resemblances.
DNC Chairman Howard Dean: Dennis Quaid
RBC co-chair Alexis Herman: Maya Rudolph
RBC co-chair Jim Roosevelt: Jeffrey Tambor
Florida DNC member Jon Ausman: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Florida DNC member Allan Katz: Jeremy Irons
Donna Brazile: Queen Latifah
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson: Fred Willard
Florida State Sen. Arthenia Joyner: Tim Meadows
Tina Flournoy (no photos): Jada Pinkett Smith
Florida Rep. Robert Wexler: John Travolta
DNC Vice Chair Mark Brewer: Brendan Gleeson
Clinton adviser Harold Ickes: James Cromwell
Michigan Sen. Carl Levin: Danny DeVito
DNC Secretary Alice Germond: Frances McDormand
Clinton Chief Strategist Howard Wolfson: Bradley Whitford
Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe: Luke Wilson
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Among John McCain’s proposals in his speech to AIPAC today was a “wordwide divestment campaign” against Iran. The idea has picked up steam in the past couple of years, with state governments from California to Maryland to McCain’s own state of Arizona passing divestment bills. But those bills mostly deal with investment through pension funds, which alone isn’t going to crush Iran. The campaign is really about international pressure, since U.S. companies are already banned from doing business in Iran. (President Carter froze Iranian assets during the hostage crisis in 1979. President Clinton issued an executive order in 1995 banning trade with and investment in Iran.)
But the small amount that the United States can do—calling attention to foreign companies that do invest in Iran and pressuring them to stop—was proposed by Obama back in 2007. And as the Obama camp was quick to point out, McCain did not sign on. Obama’s bill, co-authored with Sam Brownback, would create a list of businesses that invest more than $20 million in Iran’s energy sector, to help investors know which companies they may want to divest from. Thirty-three senators signed on as co-sponsors, including John Kerry, Trent Lott, Ted Kennedy, Mel Martinez, and Joe Lieberman—but not McCain. His campaign didn’t respond to e-mails asking why.
The bill is currently held up in the committee on banking, housing, and urban affairs. The committee’s ranking Republican member, Sen. Richard Shelby, claimed to have some procedural beef with the bill—he says any bill dealing with a monetary issue must pass through it. But some people think he’s holding it as a favor to the Bush administration, which doesn’t want to alienate anti-divestment allies at the moment.
McCain may have been smart to stay away. When he and Obama agree on something, like anti-torture laws and immigration reform, McCain likes to be out in front. Signing onto Obama's divestment bill would make it look like he’s playing second fiddle. Then there’s the risk of alienating the current administration. McCain has walked a fine line between courting Bush (see last week's photo op) and distancing himself (see Katrina, global warming). On Iran, where the two have all-but-identical positions, he’d probably prefer to toe the party line.
Update 5:03 p.m.: Worth noting is the timing of McCain's call to divest. Last week, TPM reported that campaign manager Rick Davis once worked for a Ukrainian billionaire with ties to Iran. And today, Huffington Post revealed chief strategist Charlie Black once lobbied for a Chinese oil conglomerate linked to Iran back in 2005.
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The more things change, the more they stay the same. Hillary Clinton
scored a win and a loss this weekend. She claimed a 2-to-1 victory in
Puerto Rico on Sunday but netted only 24 delegates from Florida and
Michigan in the decision passed down by the DNC's Rules and Bylaws
Committee. Yet neither of these events changes the landscape of the
race. Obama remains fewer than 45 delegates away from the new magic
number of 2,118, which keeps Clinton's chances at a near-conclusive 0.4 percent.
Clinton won
the Puerto Rico primary in just about every possible way. Women and
men, young and old, rich and poor, educated and unschooled—all favored
Clinton. (The only demographic that favored Obama was people who
sympathized with indicted Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila,
who endorsed Obama.) An early estimate showed Clinton winning 35
delegates to Obama's 15, with five still unaccounted for. The Clinton
campaign is spinning the results to suggest Obama has a "problem" attracting Hispanics.
But on Saturday, Clinton had problems of her own. ...
Read more at the Hillary Deathwatch.
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