It’s exactly this kind of clumsy language that cost Mrs. Clinton the primary and it’s exactly this kind of clumsy language we hope she can avoid in the future in her role as the chief diplomat of the worlds last remaining superpower.

I understand what she’s saying – and even agree with it, to the extent that a failed world economy necessarily means more human rights violations around the world – but seriously? Without being a career politician, I can think of better ways to says this.

Now that Hillary is making plans to concede the Democratic Primary race on Saturday, there’s a lot of talk about how she should go about that – whether to simply suspend her campaign or end it outright.  Many people on the Obama side are clamoring for her to end it outright, fearing that she’s just laying in wait for some reason to turn her campaign engines back on again.

Well, suspending now wouldn’t leave much wiggle room for that type of thing, even if that’s what she’s considering.  But ending the campaign rather than suspending it is probably the worse choice for Barack Obama.  Because, of course, once she ends the campaign, all those delegates become free agents again.  They can fall in line with Obama or not.

And since there are likely to be die-hard Hillary fans and anti-Barack votes in their midst, it would make for a lot of unpleasantness if the Obama Campaign had to answer for every delegate who chose not to join his campaign when there is no other rival.  It’s not the kind of question he really wants to answer in the media, nor is it the kind of situation that’s going to breed much party unity.  All of this would be fodder for the Republican attack machine.  Better that Hillary concede the race, endorse Obama and quietly encourage her delegates to switch over to Obama if they want.  There’s nothing really wrong with delegates voting their conscience at the convention, as long as they accept the results and come together.

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There is also a fair amount of discussion about the role of the Super Delegates and whether that position should be eliminated from the Democratic Party’s primary process.  My view is that the Supers ultimately contributed very little to the race and thus the role is really the beauty contest prize we all thought it was.  Keep ‘em or get rid of ‘em, I don’t think it really matters.

It *was* Super Dels that put Barack Obama over the top.  However, that only happened once the elected delegates put him over the top.  In point of fact, Barack Obama won the Primary according to conventional count, and nothing short of a complete defection of Supers would have altered that outcome.  To put it another way, the only thing the Supers really contributed was four hundred extra votes in the “magic number.”  Instead of 2100+, the number could have been 1700+ and the results would have been the same.  The only time that the Supers *would* or *could* matter is in a primary at least as close as this one – and as it’s been deftly proven – in such a case the pols that are Supers would be entirely too fearful of negative reactions at home to bother declaring anything until the matter has been decided by the normal process.

So, here’s what I propose: keep the Super Delegates, but instead of getting an extra vote at the Convention, let’s just give them free car washes at Delta Sonic and nice, up-close seats at the Convention.

Now that there seems to be a relatively high degree of satisfaction amongst the Democrats and the media that Barack Obama is going to be the nominee – though we are constantly reminded that there is not a guarantee of anything – the discussions of whom shall be the vice presidential running mate of Obama and McCain can finally begin in earnest.  Oh, joy.

These are always discussions that, like a great many in the talking head media, stroke the egos of journalists more than enlighten the public; naming possible veep nominees is a great way to show you know a whole lot of crap about party politics that the rest of us don’t have time for.  Its a way to show you know every second-stringer and governor from fly-over country that matters, but none of it matters even as much as the discussions during the primaries, which wasn’t a lot either.

One trend that has proven somewhat interesting in the last week and a half has been the media’s setup for how they plan on covering the Clinton defeat.  They seem to be relishing it.

One track of the discussion has been whether or not Hillary will be a “sore loser.”  You hear that phrase quite a bit from a great many talking heads.  Where the discussion previously turned on whether or not Clinton would go to the convention floor and yank the nomination at the last minute, now it’s just a case of how nasty she looks when she loses.

The other major track has been the “Democrats don’t suffer losers” discussion.  Here, it is pointed out that while many Republicans have lost the nomination in one primary only to gain it back in the next, Democrats have never rerun a nomination.  The implication is that Clinton will not get a second chance at the presidency in the likely event that she loses the nomination this time.

So if you haven’t noticed those two themes, look out for them and how they evolve over the next few weeks. Like the Jeremiah Wright story and the noticeable lack of a Pastor John Hagee story, it will be these themes that dominate how the media attempts to shape our opinions.

Well, NY Senate Republicans, John McCain and Hillary Clinton seem to disagree, but even the Rochester Business Journal’s readers don’t buy into the “Gas Tax Holiday” garbanzo that they’re selling:

Rochester Business Journal – Snap Poll

Nearly two-thirds of respondents oppose a gas-tax holiday this summer.

It’s a shame the RBJ is so insistent on selling their papers instead of embracing new media with any kind of gusto. They don’t publish any internals to the polls, which would be helpful.

What the hell is this?

NYT: Options dwindling for Clinton – The New York Times- msnbc.com

And in Indiana, for example, less than half of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election, while one-third said they would vote for Mr. McCain. About one-fifth of Mr. Obama’s supporters in Indiana said they would vote for Mr. McCain in a general election should Mrs. Clinton get the nomination.

I realize that a lot of this is bitterness – and that there’s a lot of bitterness on the Obama side as well – but to publicly make the statement that you’d consider four more years of Bush doctrine in the world, more Conservative judges in the Supreme Court and the McSame Health Care Plan? I don’t believe it’s true, I don’t think they’ll really side with McCain. If anything, maybe a few will pout at home come election day and feel guilty about it later. But what kind of gaping asshole says things like this to pollsters?

But I think that more than anything else, it’s the Clinton campaign style that brings this out. She’s thrown every nasty bolt she could find his way, she has used every single excuse in the book to justify her campaign, she and her surrogates have used Republican playbooks and even Republican sources while pretending to want to lead us in a different direction, she’s even metamorphosed from Queen Wonk to Shot Slammin’ Anti-Intellectual Diva for the sake of a few Indiana votes. She has whipped up a virulent hatred that is unambiguous in blog posts, comments and now in exit polls.

And for what? A two-percent margin of victory in Indiana that contributes absolutely nothing to her delegate count. A double-digit loss in North Carolina that puts her at least fifteen or twenty delegates further into the hole. A supercharged hate machine that threatens – bluff or no bluff – to ruin the party and probably the country if it doesn’t get what it wants.

And ask yourself this, Electability Monkeys: has Barack Obama won against a good campaign or has Hillary Clinton lost to a lame campaign? Because neither answer bodes well for Hillary’s electability rationale.