First Reactions To Oprah In Iowa

Was it me or was Oprah yelling?

 

She (Oprah) should stick to daytime gab fests instead of stumping for candidates — she is not good at it.

 

Her (Oprah) speech was not as good as the expectations that the campaign had built up.

 

I was left a little disappointed.

 

It also seemed that everyone in the audience was more interested in hearing Oprah and not Michelle or Obama.

 

What a flop! Obama’s speech afterward was so disjointed that I hope people did not watch.

 

For all the hype, I was not impressed. I hope they retool Oprah’s speech or scrap her appearances altogether.

 Are we so culturally degenerate that we need a talk show hostess (Oprah) to tell us who’s best qualified to run this once-great country? ” I am so tired of Politics.” Why then is she (Oprah) involved up to her eyeballs in it?  Good speeches by Michelle Obama, Oprah and Barack himself. As Michelle Obama’s been telling people on the campaign trail, “the game of politics is to make you afraid so you don’t think… We’re asking you, please *don’t* base you votes this time on fear. Base it on hope.”  

Bill Clinton Blacker Than Obama, So Says Andrew Young

ATLANTA (AP) – Civil rights icon Andrew Young says Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is too young and lacks the support network to ascend to the White House. In a media interview posted online, Young also quipped that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has her husband behind her, and that “Bill is every bit as black as Barack.” “He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack,” Young said of former President Clinton

Edwards, Hillary,Obama – 3-Way Tie In Iowa

Edwards’ Internal Poll Shows Three-Way TieA new internal poll for the presidential campaign of former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) shows the race in Iowa a three-way dead heat with just 27 days left before that state’s crucial caucuses.The survey, which was completed by Edwards pollster Harrison Hickman on Wednesday night, shows Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) leading among likely caucus participants with 27 percent, followed by Edwards at 24 percent and Sen. Barack Obama with 22 percent. The race is even tighter when only definite caucus participants are included — with Clinton at 26 percent, Edwards at 25 percent and Obama at 23 percent.“When sampling error is taken into account, support for the top three candidates is so close that it is impossible to distinguish among them with the commonly accepted level of statistical confidence,” writes Hickman in the polling memo.The poll, which was included as part of an email sent by Edwards Iowa director Jennifer O’Malley Dillon to supporters in the state, is consistent with other recent results. The Post’s own Iowa poll showed Obama leading with 30 percent to Clinton’s 26 percent and Edwards’ 22 percent. The Des Moines Register survey, conducted by highly respected pollster J. Ann Selzer, had Obama at 28 percent to 25 percent for Clinton and 23 percent for Edwards.The conclusion to be drawn from this mass of data is that — in the words of Dan Rather — it is “tight as a tick” in Iowa. As we wrote this morning in the Line, the idea that Iowa is or will be a two-person fight between Clinton and Obama is simply not born out by the available data. While Edwards doesn’t enjoy the level of support he did prior to the entrance of Clinton and Obama, he has maintained a solid and loyal following in the state that seems unlikely to defect from him in the final days of the race.Remember that polling over the next 27 days will show Iowa results all over the map. We urge you — if you haven’t already — to go back and read our discussion of the difficulty of polling the Iowa caucuses.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/12/edwards_internal_poll_shows_th.html

Why Liberal Women Hate Hillary

They are like her, but they don’t like her.

Such is the curious phenomenon of many educated, professional, liberal women of a certain age when it comes to Hillary Clinton, the Los Angeles Times reports. In fact, upper-middle-class women on the left are “historically her toughest crowd,” the paper reports.

Why is this? The Times offers a handful of possibilities:

1) They’re not as worried about job security as their more blue-collar peers (who are more pro-Clinton), so they feel free to judge the New York Senator as a peer.

2) They’re disgusted by the fact that, while they struggled to break through barriers in the workplace, Clinton hitched her star to her man and followed him to the top.

3) They’re disappointed by her support of the Iraq war and the fact that she has recreated herself as a centrist.

4) Women hold each other to an unrealistic standard.

5) She’s trying to act too much like a man.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/07/the_skinny/main3588217.shtml

Dick Morris, “Bill Hurts, Not Helps, Hillary’s “Campaign

Once again Dick Morris nails the Clintons in this article where he make the case that Bill’s support for Hillary really hurts Hillary. 

Bill Clinton’s poll ratings are very high so Hillary figures he can be of great help to her on the campaign trail. So far, so good — but then they extrapolate that view and conclude that he would be a good person to make her negative attacks on opponents, to answer charges against her and to take the media to task for their coverage. And that’s where they are wrong.Bill’s high ratings are largely due to his nonpolitical activities in recent years. His book Giving, although largely a payoff to those who have given to him or to his wife’s campaign, portrays him as a philanthropist par excellence. Combined with the kudos for his role in helping tsunami and Katrina victims, and his annual September conference to organize and help to third world countries, he is acquiring the statesmanlike reputation that eluded him when he was a working politician.But when he gets down and dirty, defending his own record, rebutting attacks on Hillary or excoriating the media or his wife’s opponents, he acts very political and brings down the very ratings that made his intervention seem useful in the first place.He and I spoke right before the 1994 Congressional elections about where he could campaign to help to re-elect Democrats. He had just returned from the signing of the peace accord between Jordan and Israel and his approval ratings, for once, were pretty high. “You should go back to the Middle East,” I told him.“But you don’t understand, my ratings are high now because of the trip to the Middle East and I can do candidates a lot of good,” he answered.“No, you’ll lower your ratings because you won’t appear presidential as you campaign and you’ll end up doing the candidates for whom you campaign more harm than good,” I replied.Bill couldn’t help himself. He ran out and campaigned all over the U.S. for the congressmen and senators who had backed his economic package and anti-crime bill, and most of them ended up losing in the GOP sweep of 1994. In the meantime, he lowered his rating by 10 points by campaigning and seeming political.When Bill takes the stump for Hillary and speaks in bland generalities, he does her some good and no harm. But when he emerges as a cut and burn politician, flipping and flopping over his past position on Iraq and attacking media coverage of Hillary, he lowers his ratings and ends his usefulness to Hillary’s campaign.The best thing for Bill to do is to stay home. Or better yet, leave the country on some charitable or philanthropic mission while his wife runs for president. His job is to keep his own ratings high. Her job is to exploit those ratings for her own advantage, no matter how little she deserves them.Hillary’s entire campaign, like her whole legal and political career, is entirely derivative of Bill’s. By using her lynchpin as a bludgeon to hammer her opponents, he destroys his effectiveness and hurts her own campaign.That is not to say that left to her own devices, Hillary will do herself any good. She seems incapable of waging an effective negative campaign. She hits Obama with stupid charges like her campaign’s comment about his kindergarten remarks or throws pitty-pat punches that do no real damage like her attack on his health care proposal. Absent real dirt, Hillary is facing an almost impossible task in trying to besmirch Mr. Clean, and as she tries, she undermines both the perception that she is a winner and the idea that she is an effective fighter.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316070,00.html