Hillary won the popular vote in the democrat primaries by a margin of 300,000. She was behind only 130 votes of “pledged delegates,” but Obama was awarded 29 and a half Michgan votes from a primary in which he did not run by the DNC Rules Committee. Hillary had plenty of time before the August Convention to challenge that arbitrary allocation of votes, voiding the will of Michigan’s actual voters, in court.

If she won, Obama loses 29 and and a half and she gains 29 and a half for a total difference of 59. Now, Obama’s up by 71 pledged delegates, and Hillary and Bill need to move only 36 votes to her column.

Is it possible to believe there weren’t 36 superdelegates that a smooth talking guy like Bill Clinton couldn’t persuade, or induce with promised appointments to ambassadorships in sunny resort locations, federal pardons, or other considerations?

It strikes me that Bill would never have given up. When he lost Congress, when they had him dead to rights for perjury, whenever his political situation looked hopeless, you have to give Bill Clinton credit, he just picked himself up, dusted himself off, and counterattacked brilliantly. Bill understood a key fact of any conflict: you’re never beaten until you give up.

It was still in Hillary’s power to fight for the nomination, but she allowed democrat political leaders to persuade her to abandon the fight “for the good of the party.” Rush Limbaugh and I are certainly disappointed in her. We wanted to see Hillary and Obama slugging it out right through the convention.

But, even from a democrat perspective, I don’t think it’s at all clear that Hillary bowing to will of the media, and declining to fight really is good for her party. Obama is a moonbat from the extreme leftist fringe of that party. Sure, he’s as popular as a new pair of Calvin Klein blue jeans in the community of fashion, but he is never going to win the support of the blue collar democrats essential to that party’s ever winning.

Obama is a mostly unknown quantity, highly liable to destruction under intense scrutiny. He has no record of political accomplishment (beyond getting elected to the Senate by a fluke) whatsoever. Ideologically, Tom Delay was perfectly correct, Obama seems to be downright Marxist. He’ll do great in Berkeley and Brookline, and he’ll get slaughtered in the heartland.

Didn’t Hillary have an obligation to fight on, not only for herself, but to save her party from dashing over the cliff all over again? I think she did.

Hillary gave up when she didn’t have to, because she was too conventional, too conformist, too lacking in independent judgment to keep fighting.

Mark Steyn, who is currently facing charges in Canada for politically incorrect speech, admires his humility (and his chutzpah).

Sen. Obama has learned an old trick of Bill Clinton’s: If you behave like a star, you’ll get treated as one. So, even as his numbers weakened, his rhetoric soared. By the time he wrapped up his “victory” speech last week, the great gaseous uplift had his final paragraphs floating in delirious hallucination along the Milky Way:

“I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people … . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … . This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation.”

It’s a good thing he’s facing it with “profound humility,” isn’t it? Because otherwise who knows what he’d be saying. But mark it in your calendars: June 3, 2008 – the long-awaited day, after 232 years, that America began to provide care for the sick. Just a small test program: 47 attendees of the Obama speech were taken to hospital and treated for nausea. Everyone else came away thrilled that the Obamessiah was going to heal the planet and reverse the rise of the oceans.

2:05 video

Hat tip to Bird Dog and Meaningless Hot Air.

Barack Obama:

We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times, whether we’re living in a desert, or living in the tundra, and then just expect that every other country’s going to say okay, you guys just go ahead and keep on using 25% of the world’s energy, even though you only account for 3% of the population.

2:33 video

Hat tip to Nicola Karras.

Ben Smith (who’s obviously in the tank for Obama) credits the candidate with successfully dismissing the question, and links a Reason piece by David Weigel, wittily titled Everything’s Gonna Be All White, which pooh pooh’s it.

Sen. Barack Obama on Thursday batted down rumors circulating on the Internet and mentioned on some cable news shows of the existence of a video of his wife using a derogatory term for white people, and criticized a reporter for asking him about the rumor, which has not a shred of evidence to support it.

“We have seen this before. There is dirt and lies that are circulated in e-mails and they pump them out long enough until finally you, a mainstream reporter, asks me about it,” Obama said to the McClatchy reporter during a press conference aboard his campaign plane. “That gives legs to the story. If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it.”

Asked whether he knew it not to be true, Obama said he had answered the question.

But the rumor’s chief source, leftwing retired-Spook and Plamegame team member Larry Johnson retorts:

When a politician tap dances on nuance–Baby it is true. My sources have not backed off. They maintain they have a tape and will drop it on the Dems in the fall. Now if Barack said, “No, and hell no” I would be wondering about my sources. But he punted. He went for the weasel word. The non-denial denial.

Time will tell.

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What little evenhandedness exists in the mainstream media is found in the willingness of the press to report the substance of Republican attacks on democrat presidential candidates in the interested manner of an old-time radio broadcaster describing a heavyweight boxing match. “The Swift Boat Veterans just delivered a powerful right to John Kerry’s jaw, and he’s on the canvas!”

Conservatives like myself are always surprised, what with all the favoritism in coverage they get, that the left continually expresses outrage and indignation that the mainstream media is only 99% on their side. They know that they deserve 1000% support.

Well, the left is mad at the media, and they’re not going to take it anymore. From now on, you journalists mess with their candidate, and they are going to mess with you.

Media Matters reports.

The Associated Press last week got a preview of how this presidential season is going to unfold, and how online liberal activists aren’t going to stand down when the press takes cheap shots at Democratic front-runners.

After AP reporter Nedra Pickler wrote a news story highlighting how some fringe Republican operatives were raising questions about Sen. Barack Obama’s patriotism, angry readers dispatched nearly 15,000 electronic letters protesting the piece. Why? Because instead of providing balance and context, which is what good journalism does, the article simply offered a platform for Obama’s opponents to roll out their smears, to broadcast their dark doubts about the senator’s character.

That kind of media shortcoming has become predictable; reporters love to quote partisan Republicans about how deficient Democrats are. And in the past it would have likely produced angry denunciations online within the liberal blogosphere — a blog swarm, perhaps. …

But nearly 15,000 letters sent in just a matter of days in response to a single news wire article? That’s something else entirely and could mark the dawn of a new era in progressive media activism. The phenomenon has received very little mainstream media attention (journalists probably don’t want to encourage this sort of thing), but make no mistake: It was a very big deal.

Hat tip to LGF.

Ann Coulter remarks in Human Events on the irony of media’s “Shut-up-and-go-away!” approach to Hillary’s primary popular vote victory.

When Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election by half a percentage point, but lost the Electoral College — or, for short, “the constitutionally prescribed method for choosing presidents” — anyone who denied the sacred importance of the popular vote was either an idiot or a dangerous partisan.

But now Hillary has won the popular vote in a Democratic primary, while Obambi has won under the rules. In a spectacular turnabout, media commentators are heaping sarcasm on our plucky Hillary for imagining the “popular vote” has any relevance whatsoever. …

After nearly eight years of having to listen to liberals crow that Bush was “selected, not elected,” this is a shocking about-face. Apparently unaware of the new party line that the popular vote amounts to nothing more than warm spit, just last week HBO ran its movie “Recount,” about the 2000 Florida election, the premise of which is that sneaky Republicans stole the presidency from popular vote champion Al Gore. (Despite massive publicity, the movie bombed, with only about 1 million viewers, so now HBO is demanding a “recount.”)

So where is Kevin Spacey from HBO’s “Recount,” to defend Hillary, shouting: “WHO WON THIS PRIMARY?”

Results:

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over 300,000 votes. Barack Obama has 130 more pledged delegates.

POPULAR VOTE (all primaries and caucuses)
Hillary Clinton: 17,785,009
Barack Obama: 17,479,990

PLEDGED DELEGATES
Barack Obama: 1766.5
Hillary Clinton: 1639.5

And, on that basis, Hillary is reported “by informed sources” to be planning to drop out of the race and concede on Friday or Saturday.

The mystery is why “pledged delegates” are assumed to be set in stone.

Suppose Patrick Fitzgerald follows up his recent conviction of prominent Obama supporter (and real estate subsidizer) Antoin Rezko with a pre-August indictment of B. Hussein himself?

Suppose the Michelle Obama “Whitey” tape is produced pre-August, and provokes scrutiny revealing intimate ties on the part of the media’s preferred candidate to Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam?

Barack Obama has been a national figure for a very short time, his relatively obscure career in Illinois politics is only now gradually becoming known, and there is a real possibility that the microscopic and intense attention inevitable in a presidential campaign might any day pop open one of his personal closet doors revealing a deal-breaking skeleton.

Short-circuiting the convention process and conducting a media-led instant coronation doubtless gratifies the infantile democrat party base, which can happily worship, and fantasize over the New Age and Socialist Utopia soon to be created by the arrival of their redeemer and god/king, but wasn’t the whole idea of having superdelegates supposed to be preventing these kinds of democrat party swoons? Weren’t superdelegates supposed to be wiser, more politically astute party leaders who would stop the crazies from charging over the cliff and nominating George McGovern II?

So here we are, and they’re apparently ready to line up behind the most leftwing democrat in the Senate, a candidate with no record of meaningful political accomplishment beyond miraculously getting elected to the Senate, who lost the popular vote in the democrat party primaries, and who already seems to have a great deal of disadvantageous personal baggage against a war hero with strong cross-party-lines appeal. Those democrats obviously have a death wish.

Conventional Liberal Republican versus wacky leftwing democrat who opposes national defense, it’s 1972 all over again. Quick, somebody hand B. Hussein a shovel, he’s going to need it to dig himself out from underneath the landslide come November.

Kathy Grimes say Giuliani has it.

The word is that one of the Republican candidates no longer in the race (Rudy) acquired the tape. Republicans will most likely hold the tape until the fall. Because if Hillary had it, she’d let it out now to get rid of Obama.

Things will only get more interesting. Either way, Michelle Obama has using her own mouth, put her husband’s foot in it.

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From JET Magazine, July 26, 2004

Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Holds 33rd Annual Conference In Chicago

CAPTION: Picture 11, Rev. Willie T. Barrow, chairman emerita, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, enjoys the Women’s Luncheon with Michelle Obama, wife of U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama of Illinois and executive director of community affairs, University of Chicago Hospital, Shoshana Johnson, the nation’s first Black female POW and former Iraqi captive, and Mrs. Jamell Meeks, wife of the Rev. James Meeks, vice president, Rainbow/PUSH, and Rev. Dr. Barbara King, Mother Khadijah Farrakhan, wife of Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, and Judge Arnette Hubbard.

HillBuzz suggests the devastating tape containing Michelle Obama’s “Whitey” speech wasn’t terribly hard to lay hands on. Trinity Church was selling it on DVD up until this last March!

Here’s what’s known so far:

The Michelle Obama Rant Tape was filmed between June 26th – July 1st 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference at Trinity United Church: specifically the Women’s Event.

Michelle Obama appeared as a panelist alongside Mrs. Khadijah Farrakhan and Mrs. James Meeks.

Bill Clinton spoke during the Conference, as did Bill Cosby and other speakers, but not at the panel Michelle attended.

Michelle Obama spoke at the Women’s Event, but referenced Bill Clinton in her rant — his presence at the conference was the impetus for her raving, it seems.

For about 30 minutes, Michelle Obama launched into a rant about the evils of America, and how America is to blame for the problems of Africa. Michelle personally blamed President Clinton for the deaths of millions of Africans and said America is responsible for the genocide of the Tutsis and other ethnic groups. She then launched into an attack on “whitey”, and talked about solutions to black on black crime in the realm of diverting those actions onto white America. Her rant was fueled by the crowd: they reacted strongly to what she said, so she got more passionate and enraged, and that’s when she completely loses it and says things that have made the mouths drop of everyone who’s seen this.

The “tape” is a DVD that Trinity United sold on its website, and possibly offered free for download up until March 2008 when Trinity’s site was scrubbed and the DVDs were no longer offered for sale.

This outburst happened just one month before the 2004 Democratic Convention, when Barack Obama delivered the keynote address.

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But I guess they were mistaken.

Apparently, delegates informing reporters of their intentions months from now permanently commits them, and the mainstream media can then immediately count the votes and proclaim the winner. The nominating process is conducted by the media.

NYT:

A last-minute rush of Democratic superdelegates, as well as the results from the final primaries, in Montana and South Dakota (Obama won Montana, Clinton won South Dakota -DZ), pushed Mr. Obama over the threshold of winning the 2,118 delegates needed to be nominated at the party’s convention in August.

According to the media, it’s all over, Obama has won decisively, despite his losing 8 of the last 15 primaries, and despite his being defeated by Clinton in the popular vote: 13,243,919 to 13,104,492.

But Hillary is not conceding, and Andrew Sullivan sums up the indignation of all the Obama-infatuated moonbats everywhere.

The speech tonight was a remarkable one for a candidate who has lost the nomination, though not remarkable for a Clinton. It was an assertion that she had won the nomination and a refusal to concede anything to her opponent. Classless, graceless, shameless, relentless. Pure Clinton.

Maybe it’s not over yet, Andrew.

BooMan (whose server was swamped yesterday, and inaccessible all afternoon) attempted some preemptive damage control concerning the alleged still-unreleased Michelle Obama “Whitey” tape.

From what I understand, it is a tape of Michelle Obama criticizing the Bush administration.

Why’d he cut folks off medicaid?
Why’d he let New Orleans drown?
Why’d he do nothing about Jena?
Why’d he put us in Iraq for no reason?

How Larry Johnson wants you to hear it:

Whitie cut folks off medicaid?
Whitie let New Orleans drown?
Whitie do nothing about Jena?
Whitie put us in Iraq for no reason?

Today Larry Johnson retorts:

The Obama campaign is telling reporters from major news organizations that the videotape of Michelle Obama railing against “whitey” at a panel alongside Nation of Islam maximum leader Louis Farrakhan is nothing but a “scurrilous lie,” according to one of those reporters who called for an answer.

But at the same time the Obama campaign has disseminated either a doctored or concocted transcript of the supposedly nonexistent videotape. Major Obama donors went to the campaign demanding explanations after the posting of my story on No Quarter about the contents of the videotape confirmed to me by several reliable sources, all Republicans with access to knowledge but who do not know each other.

So the campaign created a would-be transcript of the video it says doesn’t exist. In the Obama campaign produced transcript Michelle says “why’d he” instead of “whitey.” Very clever. Then the campaign sent this transcript to key Obamaton bloggers to circulate. And the campaign sent it to the donors to prevent them from having a nervous breakdown.

MyTownTalks adds:

I’ve had several Obama supporters admit to its existence and say what was on it. I also have an email I was sent last night that had some potential verbiage.

MyTownTalks’ email:

Well this is total rumor and I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but I was sent an email with part of the alleged speech of the reported Michelle Obama words where she mentioned Whitey. …

Reported verbiage from Michelle Obama’s tape

“Once again, the white man keeps us down, what’s up with Whitey, Why’d he attack Iraq, Why’d he let Katrina happen, Why’d he leave millions of children behind. This is the legacy the white man gives us”

Hat tip to AJStrata.

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