Category: The Dish

You want to know why Clinton is suddenly talking guacamole and chips? One of her pollsters, Sergio Bendixen, tells Ryan Lizza:

"Hillary’s fire wall would be Hispanic voters in the largest states, such as California and New York. It’s one group where going back to the past really works. All you need to say in focus groups is ‘Let’s go back to the nineties.’… The Hispanic voter—and I want to say this very carefully—has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates."

So Clinton may now find herself pivoting her campaign on Latino racism. Lovely.

Do the Clintons know any other model for politics? It may explain Senator Clinton’s misreading of the civil rights movement. There’s there this kind of condescension:

"We treat these problems as if one is guacamole and one is chips, when … they both go together."

If you’re not signed up with the Clintons and you want to defend minority rights, you are in a "fairy tale."

Hard to believe, but then Joy Behar says something like this:

"I think that the old days the saints were hearing voices and they didn’t have any thorazine to calm them down. Now that we have all of this medication available to us, you can’t find a saint any more."

Jim Martin comments.

Say it, girl:

A reader writes:

We have all been witnessing some Clinton campaign carping about the Democratic nominating process since this became a political horserace rather than a coronation.  According to the campaign principals and surrogates, the Iowa caucuses were disenfranchising (notwithstanding record participation fueled by the Obama campaign message), the New Hampshire primary (when it didn’t look good for team Clinton) followed Iowa too closely and allowed, gasp, independents to participate (notwithstanding desperate party-building needs for Democrats), and now the Nevada caucuses (now that the Culinary Workers have had their say) are disenfranchising.

If I recall correctly, over the past four years, Clinton allies — including Terry McAuliffe and Alexis Herman — were largely responsible for the front-loaded primary calendar.  To be fair, Terry McAuliffe started the stampede under pressure from anti-NH and IA supremacy constituencies (i.e., populous states) and legitimate concerns about minority participation.  Harry Reid and the House of Labor pushed for NV’s slot.  Also, Clinton ally Harold Ickes fought against SC’s continued enhanced status — on John Edwards, not Barack Obama grounds — but lost to Jim Clyburn’s forces. 

But the overriding conventional wisdom in Clinton circles was that a front-loaded primary and super-duper Tuesday would make it cost- and time-prohibitive for anyone to challenge the Clinton political machine.  I guess that’s a new spin on the old political chestnut, "you’ve gotta dance with the one that brung ya."

Only in Texas, I guess.

A reader writes:

Is it wrong for me to want to smack the shit out of the Clinton advisor who provided that quote?  You would think by the way Hillary barely won in New Hampshire, she’d go the extra mile to make sure that no one in her staff says some asinine comment that can only serve to alienate the very same voters that cost her Iowa.  Oh, I forgot, she’s become inevitable again.

I’m a 29 year old third generation veteran with plenty of real hip black friends.  I pay out the ass in medical insurance.  My father died from exposure to Agent Orange.  There are plenty of causes for which HRC could latch her boat onto with people like me.  Instead, the vile hubris that flows like a river in her camp from the top down has sickened me beyond belief.  Hey campaign adviser, I support Obama for his real, tangible principles, you pompous dick.

Hey: Huckabee isn’t the only holy roller with a sense of humor.

"Americans are a religious people and, Christopher Hitchens notwithstanding, that is a good thing. Religion has fostered empathy and instilled social responsibility among many believers. But while we are a religious people, we are a secular nation. To equate American leadership with a commitment to any single religion is a dangerous departure from the constitutional principles which underlie not only American law but American conservatism," – Mickey Edwards, national chairman of the American Conservative Union.

Ambers:

Giuliani’s national finance chair, Roy Bailey, no longer has that position with the campaign. Bailey was not only Giuliani’s finance chair, he was one of the founding partners of Giuliani’s consulting firm.