Do you think she regrets exaggerating/lying-about this so blatantly now?

Oops. Damned reporters and their video cameras.

In order to decide who gets the super delegates Evan Bayh suggested that they consider the electoral votes of the states that each of them has won.

The Times goes on to point out that:

Many Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bayh, have opposed the Electoral College in the past, particularly after 2000, when Florida’s 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush, who became president, even though Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, had won the popular vote nationwide.

At the time, Mrs. Clinton, who had just been elected to the Senate, said, “I believe strongly that in a democracy, we should respect the will of the people and to me, that means it’s time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.”

Hmmmm.

Personally, I think Hillary should step down. It's pretty obvious that she's desperate and knows that her ship is sinking. We all know that that's probably not going to happen though. She wants a brokered convention. It's not what's best for the party, but she doesn't care about that.

I say we just leave it to the delegates' judgment. It's not cut and dried like the popular vote, the polls, number of delegates, or states won (all of which gives them to Obama), but I think that they'll all see which way the wind is blowing and make the right choice. Richardson does and hopefully Edwards does. I agree with a local radio host here that says if Edwards throws his endorsement Obama's way it's over. What say you?

Hillary responded to questions about what happened on that tarmac in Bosnia:

Clinton acknowleged [sic] today for the first time that it was a "misstatement" when she said in a major prepared foreign policy speech last week that "I remember landing under sniper fire" but also tried to brush off the entire issue as "a minor blip." She also gave a revised account of her airplane landing and her tarmac greeting at the Tuzla Air Force base 12 years ago -- seeking to explain a picture re-published this weekend in the Washington Post showing her and daughter Chelsea calmly greeting an 8-year-old girl.

Hillary in Bosnia: The Video Game!

HT: onegoodmove.

David Brooks on Meet the Press this morning:

I think she should slow down the campaign, run what Mike Huckabee ran, a dignified campaign, not attacking her opponents, go through North Carolina and then get out. She really has very little opportunity to win. The Jeremiah Wright thing was big, the big scandal, the biggest thing Barack Obama's faced really in months. It didn't hurt him. We now have the polling results from poll after poll. It's clear it didn't hurt him. The voters were not shaken off him. The--Michigan and Florida are not going to revote, the superdelegates are never going to overrule the pledge delegates, so her chances are really small.

Why is this a good idea? First off, it would engender some good will toward Senator Clinton within the party and among Obama's supporters. Second, it would leave a better taste in the mouths of those who might consider backing Clinton in 2012 should Obama lose to McCain. And most importantly, it allows her to stay in the game in case something catastrophic occurs. Brooks and Peter Beinart, Tim Russert's other guest today, both agreed that Clinton's chances were no more than 5%. That seems about right. And a lot of that 5% can be explained by the possibility of a huge scandal--never out of the question in politics. Since she is not going to win without a giant event, what does she gain by an ugly, divisive contest?

I hadn't seen much of the male half of Billary in the news lately and there's seems to be a "strategy" behind that. According to Hillary's Secret Weapon For Rural America he's pimping her out on the back roads of rural America.

Mr. Clinton is effective in such settings because rural Americans relate to the former president, said Steve Jarding, a Democratic political consultant who has focused on rural areas.

"It's the 'boy from hope' stuff, the fact that he grew up in a small town," Jarding said. "Someone like John Kerry, and I mean this with respect, looked to people in rural America like a blueblood. With Clinton, I really do get a sense that they believe he feels their pain."

I guess she gets to have her cake and eat it too. With Bill in the background it's less likely (in theory) that he'll open mouth and insert foot. It's also quite possible that this angle is indeed playing to his strengths. Personally I think it's more the former.

Dick Cavett has some advice for Clinton and McCain (Obama already has it down, apparently).

I tried to reach the Clinton campaign to suggest that she could get a big, heartwarming laugh if she came onstage wearing a flak jacket.

I’m not sure the sight gag would have guaranteed her the nomination, but a laugh never hurts and is worth a thousand straight lines. And it’s certainly funnier than the leaden, anti-Obama Xerox line someone saddled her with a while back. If that gag came from a staff member, he or she should have been busted to the rank of gofer. Or gofeuse, I suppose.

If I were running a campaign, I’d urge taking the mountain of money reportedly squandered on pizza, coffee and bagels and spending it more wisely — on a talented young comedy writer. Remember Twain’s “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand”? All candidates should post this on their shaving mirrors. Or make-up mirrors. (This clumsy gender thing has to stop.)

It’s a pleasure to watch Obama’s mastery of the technique. And Clinton — and I didn’t say “even Clinton” — uses it much better than McCain does. And just about everybody does it better than the capering loon who does soft-shoe in the White House while young Americans are dismembered and splattered in Iraq. Sometimes when he speaks I can forget who he is momentarily and find myself actually pulling for him; probably from misplaced performer empathy. His speechifying has a strong odor of remedial reading about it, combined with an apparent fear that there might be some hard words ahead.

If I were McCain’s adviser I would shock everyone by having him come out carrying his script, and saying — not “ladies and gentlemen,” as we just learned, but launch right into, “You know, I don’t use these teleprompters very well. I guess I’m just not one of those people who can fool you into thinking I’m making it up as I go along . . . which these things are supposed to do. I don’t even fool myself. I cringe when I watch myself trying to bring off that ‘electronic deception,’ you might call it . . . Anyway, here’s my speech [shows it] and I’m going to read the damn thing to you. Surely I can’t make even that look phony. [slight pause] Can I?” [laughter]

but I don't think this is the best way to court superdelegates. Keep in mind that this alleged incident happen right before Bill took to the stage to tell us all to "chill out."

"It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended," one superdelegate said.

According to those at the meeting, Clinton - who flew in from Chicago with bags under his eyes - was classic old Bill at first, charming and making small talk with the 15 or so delegates who gathered in a room behind the convention stage.

But as the group moved together for the perfunctory photo, Rachel Binah, a former Richardson delegate who now supports Hillary Clinton, told Bill how "sorry" she was to have heard former Clinton campaign manager James Carville call Richardson a "Judas" for backing Obama.

It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade.

"Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that," a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted.

The former president then went on a tirade that ran from the media's unfair treatment of Hillary to questions about the fairness of the votes in state caucuses that voted for Obama. It ended with him asking delegates to imagine what the reaction would be if Obama was trailing by just 1 percent and people were telling him to drop out.

"It was very, very intense," said one attendee. "Not at all like the Bill of earlier campaigns."

HT: The Plank

Mark Penn, aka Hillary's Sockpuppet, has been dumped into the fire by the most hilarious means.

Finally, some real dirt comes out.

From Reuters:

Mark Penn, chief campaign strategist to the New York senator, has apologized for meeting with Colombia's U.S. ambassador in his separate role as a lobbyist hired by the South American country and close U.S. ally to win congressional approval of the trade deal with the United States.

But the issue poses problems for Clinton for political reasons as well as diplomatic ones as she vies with Obama to become the Democratic nominee to run against Republican John McCain in the November election. Anxiety about free trade runs high with the working-class voters, while Clinton and Obama both strongly oppose the deal with Colombia.

As if that conflict of interest isn't enough, it gets 100x better:

The controversy also prompted an angry reaction from Colombia, which took offense at Penn's statement in which he called his meeting with the country's ambassador "an error in judgment."

"The Colombian government considers this a lack of respect to Colombians, and finds this response unacceptable," the Colombian Embassy in Washington said in a statement on Saturday. The embassy announced it was ending a contract with Penn's firm, Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, which had been hired a year ago.

Now the Clinton campaign has stated that their CHIEF STRATEGIST, Mark Penn's dealings with the Columbians were above-board and independent of the campaign, but really, how many people honestly believe that. The Chief Strategist of the Campaign who lobbies FOR a thing, campaigning AGAINST the same thing with no recourse??

It's obvious he's raking in some obscene amounts of money from this situation, but what of the implications to the presidency, if she were to (however unlikely) get elected? What sway would his lobbying have over her decisions at 3am?

She needs to detach herself from him and work on repairing the great breaches that are starting to tear open from the tax releases this weekend too.

We now have a countdown to the end for her. And it begins with this.

-- Update 04.06.2008 by Patrick:

And the circle is complete.

From Reuters:

"After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign," Clinton's campaign manager, Maggie Williams, said in a statement.
...
Over the weekend, Penn decided he should step down, and "Sen. Clinton agreed with him," the campaign source said.

This, according to Politico:

The Democratic-leaning advocacy firm the Glover Park Group, former home to Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson, signed a $40,000 per month contract with the government of Colombia in April of 2007 to promote the very agreement that Clinton now rails against on the presidential campaign trail.
...
Several other Glover Park employees have deep connections with the Clintons, including founding partner Joe Lockhart, who served as the White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton, and Joel Johnson, who was a senior communications adviser in the Clinton White House.

Six employees of Glover Park Group contributed a total of nearly $20,000 to Clinton’s campaign in 2007, according to data kept by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Wolfson, who is set to take over many responsibilities from the departing Penn, resigned from Glover Park last year to avoid conflicts of interest but retains an equity interest in the firm.
...
According to the Glover Park Group contract, which was disclosed to the U.S. Department of Justice last year, the firm was to work with ProExport Colombia, an entity of the Colombian Government Trade Bureau, in developing a strategy to promote the free trade agreement.

The contract called for Glover Park to identify the key concerns of members of Congress, develop a comprehensive government relations strategy, and pinpoint reporters, academics, and business leaders who could help make Colombia’s pro-free trade argument, all in close coordination with Colombian government officials.

This is some fine investigative-reporting.

This might become a regular thing...

Politico: Where did the tables turn?

Where did the Hillary Clinton campaign first go wrong? How did she go from inevitable to in trouble?

I think it all began with the very first contest: Iowa.

Iowa is where Clinton needed to strangle the Barack Obama campaign in its crib. [Gotta love that imagery, hm?]

She needed to do him in at the very beginning, while her inevitability argument still had credibility.

Hillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to decide the nomination based on who can coolly and competently run the country. She had better hope they don’t study her recent campaign too closely for the answer.

Clinton has overseen two major staff shake-ups in two months. She has left a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy vendors and had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it afloat in January. Her campaign badly underestimated her main adversary, Barack Obama, miscalculated the importance of organizing caucus states and was caught flat-footed after failing to lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday.

It would be easy to dismiss all of this as fairly conventional political stumbling — if she hadn’t made her supreme readiness and managerial competence the central issue of her presidential campaign.

Remember that whole Bosnia-sniper fire flop Hillary got herself into, and how it arguably hurt her poll numbers, and how the whole issue faded away and how most people forgot about it?

Apparently, Mr. Clinton didn't think it was dead enough.

He might have even made it worse by saying that the comments were made "one time late at night when she was exhausted," even though she said told the story at least three times in morning speeches...

You know, I got tickled the other day. A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me. But there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated — and immediately apologized for it — what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995 [sic]. Did y'all see all that? Oh, they blew it up.

Let me just tell you. The president of Bosnia and General Wesley Clark – who was there making peace where we'd lost three peacekeepers, who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way — both defended her, because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flak jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went, they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony.

Now I say that because what really has mattered is that, even then, she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you woulda thought, you know, that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them, when they're 60, they'll forget something when they're tired at 11 at night, too.

What is it with this family and the truth (or lack thereof)?! Even while defending his wife's apparent lies, he lies!

See the video here.

via Politico.

Hillary Clinton appeared on Countdown last night and posited the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction (a la Eisenhower), though not in as many words. While I see what she's getting at, I don't think such a strategy would work this time around. The Soviets and the the Extremolamicerrorists (or whatever we're calling this nebulous enemy) are two radically different threats. While the Soviets could be counted on to do what was in their best interests -- i.e., not destroy themselves -- the current enemy cannot. We are currently dealing with a group who has no regard for their own lives and in fact, in many cases, pursue death with frightening zealotry. I shudder to think of what might happen if the US adopts a neo-MAD policy. What quicker way, in the minds of our enemies, to meet those 72 virgins and send the infidels to hell (or rather, the Islamic equivalent), than to start a nuclear war?

"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," Clinton said when asked to name an economist who backed her proposal.

"We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans," said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.

Okay now maybe I get why creationists and ID folks drive you guys up the wall when they talk about scientists that way.

Is Hillary Clinton the psycho ex-girlfriend of the Democratic Party? (Click the link for the full conversation)

It's 2:31 AM. The Democratic Party is sleeping peacefully when it hears its phone buzz on the night stand. It rolls over and sees "Hillary" on the caller ID. It pauses briefly, considering pushing "END" and not dealing with this shit tonight. The thought is appealing but the Democratic Party knows that if it doesn't take this call, another one is only minutes away.

DEMS: ...Hello?

Hillary: Hey baby.

DEMS: C'mon Hillary. Enough with this.

Hillary: Don't you get it? You NEED me.

Now in the comments on Wil Wheaton's site, a commentor points out that we should let this run out to the end of June. Personally I don't understand why all the states don't just do their primaries at the same time. As it is I get why candidates usually step down and why the season is usually abbreviated. Ultimately though I guess I just want the whole thing to be done. Whether Clinton is psycho, power mad, or just stubborn (yeah I don't think there's a good option) I'm just tired of her.

My initial prediction for Hillary to drop out of the race was June 10th. I'll still stand by that prediction, as I think that after tomorrow, she'll give a little time for the superdelegates to make their decisions. But, Marc Ambinder presents a good case for her dropping out (or at least suspending her campaign) tomorrow:

(1) She's going to speak Tuesday night from New York, not from South Dakota or Montana.

(2) The Politico reports that members of her advance staff are being recalled to New York and being given hints that their employment is over; yes, Clinton won't have any more states to campaign in, but the Obama campaign is not shedding its advance staff after Tuesday

(3) Cheryl Mills, a very senior Clinton adviser, intends to return, full-time, to her job as senior vice president at New York University. (Note: aides say I am making way too much out of this news; Mills would surely stay on board Clinton's campaign if Clinton continues. And truth be told, I did not contact Mills before I wrote this item, something I should have done.)

(4) Junior members of the staff are making plans for vacation, and they're not receiving any push-back from their bosses.

What do you think?

Was out all night, so I missed Hillary's speech, but I'm watching it now and I'm scratching my head, trying to figure out what she hopes to gain by staying in this race, even for one more day. Is she seriously considering the Vice-Presidency? It would seem to me that appearing with Obama tonight would help her to that end...

What do you think? I'd like to hear from some Hillary-supporters on this one. Any ideas?

But this commercial put out by the RNC is still pretty painful to watch.

ht: Marc Ambinder