if Hillary’s people had known how to organize in a caucus state …

I don’t think it was organizational problems. In 2002, Hillary had high negative numbers among Democratic voters. the AUMF vote was the tipping point for a majority of Democrats. Before the vote, Hillary might have won a deeply divided primary in 2008. her vote for bush in 2003, which most people now recognize as an act of political cowardice, sealed the deal against her

the only suspense for me in this primary season was figuring out who would dethrone Hillary (I knew she wouldn’t get the nomination) Obama took advantage of the opportunity. If he hadn’t run, somebody else would have defeated Hillary*. Barack Obama was the favorite new face, but any other Democrat could have beaten Hillary this year. The only reason Hillary was able to pull out a close race at the end was probably more related to the color of Obama’s skin than the content of Hillary’s heart

(*thank GODDESS I didn’t get my wish, I was favoring Edwards)

I am glad that Wolfson finally had the opportunity to relax and actually witness a live Obama event, and get something of the attraction, but given his relationship with his employer, he should have taken the time out to do it a year earlier. But they didn’t, and it was Hubris.

By spending more time and resources speaking in detail to significant needs in several areas, the Clinton campaign could have dared to risk being called too wonky; they could have called out the Obama campaign every time Obama would not engage on specifics of an issue, possibly with considerable success. They could have done better than the reductionistic, oversimplified demographic breakdown that shaped their strategy and informed their language. They could have refrained from making extreme attacks concerning Barack Obama’s experience and personal readiness, and from making puffed-up claims of Hillary Clinton’s experience and personal readiness. They could have chosen not to rely on favorable opinions of the Bill Clinton presidential years, instead going for a freshened-up public image. They could have gone easy on playing the victim when caucus and primary results, and treatment by journalists and bloggers, were not as they expected.

Hillary Clinton could have been much more formidable as a candidate. Guess what—we needed that, we including those of us who at no point favored her as a candidate but who felt the need for every candidate’s campaign to thoroughly address the issues facing us. Better competition in addressing those issues would have helped the voting public, and would have tested and shaped-up the winning candidate.

Minneapolis and St. Paul have a long history of one-upping each other, though both are now essentially liberal-progressive DFL strongholds. They just have different styles, and thus ways of continuning this now more than 100 year competition as two cities that are part of the same metro. And yes, there once was a time when Minneapolis blockaded all the streets that link the two cities — back during the Teamsters Strike of 1934. But the labor movement in both cities contributed to manning the baricades. I was reminded of that bit of Minnesota History as I watched the rockets fly in the current TV ad. I don’t know if whoever created the ad had any knowledge of the cities’ history, but superimposing the Middle East issues on our metro seems to me a bit gross. Look — St. Paul has a Winter Carnival — they celebrate Frozen Water. Minneapolis has the Aquatennial, they celebrate Liquid Water. We have lots and lots of both.

Lets’ go over this carefully. To “knock down rumors” of a scandal, we are served another scandal.

Yup.

That’s kind of a hybrid between a non-denial denial and a pointed redirection of attention.

I remain skeptical; I have seen nothing yet that instills in me a feeling of trust in regards to Palin.

I was making a reference to ew’s post about palin, where I predicted that palin had more scandals to come

WORSE THAT EAGLETON

and I stand by my statement

discussing hillary’s campaign, I wanna know if any of her campaign workers figured out that her campaign died in October of 2003, or made the connection between Obama’s rise and hillary’s demise

and I wanted to find out how hard people are laughin at mcsame at the same time

This smells like the frustration we had with Kerry in 2004, their blindness to problems we could see readily with the internet-mediated tools we had at our disposal, the Kerry machine’s top-down only approach to communications bottlenecking valuable opposition research from supporters while throttling back Kerry’s humanity.

That you can point to an internet resource as a place where Obama’s supporters could be heard exemplifies the shift that has taken place since 2004. Wide open, no bottlenecks.

Why couldn’t Wolfson see or hear the Obama supporters? because he was unfamiliar with all our internet customs, all snark aside. He did not know where this nation of digital tribes resides; he is not (yet) one of us.