January 8, 2008
A bridge back to the 20th century?
Rumors abound that the Hillary campaign is turning to veterans of Bill's 1990s campaigns James Carville amd Paul Begala for help. From the Time blog at Real Clear Politics:
NASHUA - In addition to the as yet unconfirmed rumors that Carville and Begala are returning to try and save the Clintons' bacon (UPDATE: Major Garrett says it's a done deal according to senior advisers in the Clinton camp, which he called "solid" sources), Tom Edsall at the Huffington Post reports that the special interest groups backing Clinton are throwing around the idea of consolidating resources into an "anti-Obama" 527 group in an effort to try and "Swift Boat" the Illinois Senator turned Presidential front runner. Edsall writes:Three groups conducting independent expenditure campaigns in behalf of Clinton - Emily's List, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) - have explored the possibility of trying to put together a multi-million dollar effort privately dubbed the Anybody-But-Obama 527 Committee, but they have run into problems finding any Democratic operative willing to become the director of a campaign against the man who now is the odds-on favorite to become the party's nominee.
The Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that the most powerful union in Nevada is set to endorse Obama. So, we have a neat schism--between the public employee unions for Hillary and the private sector employees for Edwards or Obama.
The old line feminists, typified by Emily's List are all for Hillary. They wheeled out creaky warhorse Gloria Steinem today on her behalf prompting this response from Tom Maguire
Women Are never Front Runners (But They Can Be Whipping Boys)
Gloria Steinem rants about Hillary and sexism; Ann Althouse does a good job noting the absurd, self-refuting nature of the presentation but let me belabor this from Ms. Steinem:"I'm supporting Senator Clinton because... she has... an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House"
Which is it? Either women (with Hillary as their proxy) had eight years of access to power and there is much less of a women's crisis of empowerment than we might imagine, or those eight years don't count, in which case, why mention them
Hat tip: Matt May