Hillary just gave a feisty speech following her come from ahead (ahem) victory in Ohio. The speech was notable in a few ways: first, it wasn't at all gentle. She continued to slam Barack without using his name, saying "the American people deserve a president who is tested and ready on day one," making allusions to the White House being no place for "on the job training," and deriding the notion of "change" without works.
You could see the Harold Ickes camp rebound in the latter part of the speech, in which Hillary attempted to coopt both the change message, and the historical/inspirational campaign theme that have been so successful for Barack. She talked about a mother of two little girls who told her that she wants her daughters to believe that they can "be anything." She mused that the question facing the country is not "whether we can make changes, it's whether we will," and she completely ripped off Barack's signature line, enjoining the crowd to call out the answer: "yes we will!" (The crowd contributed liberal chants of "yes SHE will!" throughout...)
Hillary may have a new campaign theme going forward, and its an amoebic send-up of Barack Obama's campaign: "together we will promises into actions, words into solutions and hope into reality."
This is no doubt a big night for Hillary, who won by a significant margin in Ohio (though again, not the 60 percent plus that she needed.) And she has pulled ahead in Texas, making an Obama victory there increasingly doubtful as the night drags on.
Howard Fineman claimed earlier tonight on MSNBC to have found "no joy" in the Clinton inner circle, and a sinking feeling that without Texas, some in the sanctum would want her to drop out. Well there will be no dropping out, clearly, and what Hillary displayed on the stump tonight was, if not joy, a certain smug satisfaction. This is clearly a woman who wants not just to beat Barack Obama, but to crush him under her stilettos.
It's strange for me, as someone who, seemingly ages ago, was a fan of Hillary's. But the manner in which she and her bully boys, Howard Wolfson and Mark Penn, have run this campaign has left me cold. She clearly is very much in this race, and could very well strong-arm the super delegates still undeclared into giving her the nomination. But I predict that if she does win it this way -- by scorching the earth with Barack Obama, belittling his campaign and declaring him more unfit to be president than her GOP opponent, many Democrats, particularly younger folks, Black voters and those new to the process -- and I'm shocked that I'm even saying this because I am a super-voter in every sense of the word -- myself included, will feel rather disinclined to stand in line on Mrs. Clinton's behalf in November. This campaign has become, not about putting a Democrat back in the White House, but about putting Hillary (back?) in the White House, all else be damned.
We've seen this movie before. Bill Clinton won back to back presidential campaigns, and the Democratic party was not left the better for it, particularly in Congress, which they lost. Now, Hillary Clinton appears poised to break the party if she has to, in order to get what she wants. During the last few weeks she has fed the innuendos about Barack's faith, (as far as she knows...) declared him unfit to be commander in chief, and accused him of nefarious associations with indicted folk (pot ... kettle...) all while he stands closer to becoming the nominee of her party than she does. It's not an attractive quality, and it's not mitigated, for me, by her feel good appearances on the comedy show circuit. My only hope now, is that Harold Ickes' wing really does wrest control of the campaign from the Wolfson gang, so we don't spend the next seven weeks being fear mongered, bullied and bludgeoned into a new Clinton era.
Update: Barack is speaking now, and he has finally begun to tie Hillary and McCain together, and to defend himself against their tag team campaigns.
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dim done
done = request.form("done")
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done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
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End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
