The Times of London is reporting Al Gore to broker convention deal

[IndianaGreen]

Al Gore, the former vice-president, was revealed yesterday to be waiting in the wings to broker a deal should the “superdele-gates”, comprising 796 party figures, end up with a casting vote.

The New York Times reported that he had held talks with Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the former presidential candidates John Edwards, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd over how to avoid a bruising party battle. Tempers have been running high within the Clinton camp.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3382295.ece

Original thread by babylon sister in Editorials:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=338678&mesg_id=338678

[saigon68]

1. "Tempers have been running high within the Clinton camp."

Hmmm

[TexasObserver]

11. Success has a thousand fathers (and mothers) but failure is a bastard.

[eppur_se_muova]

38. I think JFK said "orphan" there, but your version is more pungent. ;^) nt

[LisaL]

2. What exactly does it mean?

[Yael]

3. That article is scathing

:wow:

They are all but laughing at her campaign.

[TexasObserver]

12. It's gong to be like one of the Addiction Intervention's on A&E. Hillary walks in thinking ...

... thinking it's going to be a party for her, and they're all there to say "it's over Hillary, time for rehab."

[K Gardner]

21. omg.. ROFL ! That mental picture is priceless ! Wonder if we could make a TeeVee

series out of it?

[TexasObserver]

24. Imagine Dr. Drew leading it. "Hillary, we're here because everyone here cares about you."

[TexasObserver]

33. From Amy Winehouse, a new song for Hillary ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD5sahXoj0U

[HereSince1628]

4. The DLC was created to organize and exploit superdelegates

Now that a DLC candidate is on the ropes do you REALLY expect the elitists will allow popular vote to counter their candidate?

If they let this happen their organization is doomed. DOOMED!

Decades of brown-nosing would be lost. FOR NOTHING!

No politician would ever enlist again, the DLC will not gladly let this happen.

[jackson_dem]

27. Why is the DLC split in support between Obama and Hillary?

Is it because its members know both candidates are "New Democrats" as Al From has publicly stated?

[HereSince1628]

36. Maybe because Hillary is a past chair for DLC initiatives.

Maybe because Bill is one of the founders of the DLC.

[Mme. Defarge]

5. I think this is very telling ...

"Despite Solis Doyle’s legendary status as a second daughter to Clinton, she did not have the nerve to tell her the campaign was haemorrhaging cash at an alarming rate, a troubling sign of the fear and apprehension that Clinton inspires among staff. Clinton repaid the favour by not telling Solis Doyle she was going to put $5m of her own money into propping up her campaign."

[IndianaGreen]

9. It gives us a hint of what a Hillary White House will look like

The gods know what that will do to policy, since Hillary is incapable of ever admitting mistake.

[TexasObserver]

13. Good executives have people that give them bad news immediately. Bad ones, the opposite.

[IndianaGreen]

17. Hillary has the Nixonian trait of keeping enemies list

Hillary’s narrative echoes W.’s: After the scalding partisanship of the ’90s, she became a senator and turned the other cheek, working on legislation with Republicans who had pursued the impeachment case against her husband. She has supposedly learned from her White House mistakes on health care, Travelgate and legal issues, from her battles with the right and the press. She knows now that being obstructionist and secretive don’t work.

An appealing arc, but is it true? Her campaign shake-up showed that she continues to rank loyalty and secrecy above competence and ingenuity. She is still so guarded that she began answering questions from the press and voters only after she lost Iowa.

All of us have known big shots who keep a check on their real feelings and dark tendencies until they get the top job. Then they throw off the restraints and revert to their worst instincts, bullying others and insulating themselves with sycophants.

Hillary could be ready on Day 1 — to make up her Enemies List and banish Overkill Bill to a cubbyhole in the Old Executive Office Building. But it’s Day 2 that I’m really worried about.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

[TexasObserver]

25. When she loses, it's going to be a sequel ... "KILL BILL III"

bill's gonna pay, you know it

[IndianaGreen]

29. It can be argued that Bill has made Hillary look weak and dependent on him

I can't imagine a woman officer relying on her hubby when she gets in trouble, or a woman executive in the government or private sector having her hubby come in and run the organization for her.

Hillary is not a good role model of what makes a woman in a leadership position.

[TexasObserver]

30. Hard to tell who the addict is and who the enabler is.

She has tried to ride his rep, but he went too far in his surrogacy.

[Hekate]

6. Holy moly

:kick:

[Metric System]

7. What a bullshit article. For example:

"Media Matters, a watchdog organisation sympathetic to Clinton"

Um, Media Matters is unbiased and also takes up for Obama.

[Sulawesi]

8. Is that the best tidbit you pluck out to discredit the article??

[apocalypsehow]

14. See, if it's not a direct press release from Clinton campaign headquarters it "doesn't count" as

legitimate news, just like the primaries, caucuses, and straw polls she loses. Get it?

[Tom Rinaldo]

19. It is slanted against Clinton, from start to finish

It might even qualify as Exhibit "A" for slanted media coverage of Clinton. Of course there are real matters being talked about in this story, just like there are real matters being talked about in most of the threads in this forum. However most of the threads in this forum have a distinct view point and are not peddled as objective.

This a perfect example of a minimally disguised "hit piece". The sympathies of the writer are blatantly against Hillary Clinton. It is easy to write a negative story if that is the goal, and this is one of a long progression of negative stories on Clinton that are rarely balanced out by critical coverage of Obama.

It is hard to find a more obvious tip off than in the headline itself "Hillary turns bully". "Bully" is not a word used in anything resembling objective political journalism - let alone in the headline. "Negative", "Attacking", "hard ball", those are the terms sometimes used when a campaign becomes "Aggressive" - which is another standard term. "Bully"? No. And the text of the story doesn't even provide any case in points to remotely justify the use of "bully". The fact that Hillary is campaigning to energize and turn our her base is not "bullying", it is standard politics. Obama did the same in South Carolina. And I dare anyone to explain what is "bullying" about saying: "“Speeches don’t put food on the table. Speeches don’t fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night.” Critical? Sure. And Obama is just as critical toward Clinton - they are after all competing for the same audience.

"The story is laced with negative adjectives and imagery, such as "a troubling sign of the fear and apprehension that Clinton inspires among staff." Funny, what I usually hear about Hillary Clinton's staff is the fierce loyalty they have for her, how they have stuck with her for years and vice versa.

"THERE is an air of desperation in Hillary Clinton’s camp"

"a door-die mission to hector and bully her way to victory"

"staff blew through a mind-boggling $130m"

"precious resources are being spent on a blast of negative advertisements"

The negative spin is constant in this story, it reads like something that any one of a dozen serial Hillary blasters at DU writers composes twice a day here.

You can always recognize a piece written with the intent to sell a subjective point of view by the tone and pattern of adjectives and descriptive terminology being used; "mind boggling" "blast of negative" "hector and bully" "fear and apprehension" etc. This piece would would earn about 28 reccomendations at DU and would fit right in if were composed fresh for DU readers.

[Sulawesi]

34. many of the "negative slants" ring perfectly true.

did the staff blow through the funds and end up with a money crunch or not?

are resources precious and are they being spent on a blast of negative ads or not?

if people can call support for obama a cult, get off the high horse about a headline calling HRC a bully...a term that could be applied to many past instances of her capricious management style.

i find the support for HRC at this point to be "mind boggling". I am not the only one. Some people here think the electorate is blind and controlled by the media, but HRC is losing this for reasons that are perfectly clear to me.

[TexasObserver]

10. Translation: It Takes a Village ... of high ranking Democrats to tell Hillary it's over.

[JVS]

16. LOL

[elixir2]

23. Why don't you let the voters decide this race?

[tekisui]

28. I think that is what they are trying to ensure.

[Bluebear]

15. Good, hope he brokers a deal to make GORE the nominee.

[caligirl]

37. If it were Cheney we could count on it.

[David Zephyr]

18. K&R.

Fascinating reading.

[Tatiana]

20. Funniest damn thing I've read all day!!!!!

Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, got into a slanging match with the media consultant Mandy Grunwald at Clinton’s campaign headquarters. “Your ad doesn’t work,” he fumed.

“Oh it’s always the ad, never the message,” Grunwald shot back. Insiders say the atmosphere is dark, even though the fight is not over yet. Loyalty to Clinton remains strong, but there have been too many chiefs and not enough Indians, they complain.

<snip>

The latest polls put Obama ahead by 47% to 43%, but this weekend Clinton was fighting a rearguard action to restore her standing in the hope of pulling off a comeback reminiscent of the first primary in New Hamp-shire, which revived her fortunes after she finished third in the Iowa caucuses. Bill Clinton is also campaigning with begging bowl in hand for funds.

[ORDem]

22. Maybe it'll be like how Cheney advised Bush on his VP pick?

Gore will just say the hell with it, I'll be the nominee!!

:spray:

[harun]

26. Gore/Obama (n/t)

[kristopher]

31. No way Gore is on the ticket.

He can't be on the top of the ticket without having been in the primaries, and he certainly isn't interested in being VP again. He has made his mark in a different way. I can easily see him as US Ambassador to the UN.

[ulysses]

32. Go-Gobama?

[City Lights]

35. It's boys versus girls inside Hillaryland.

:wow:

The friends of Bill or “white boys”, as Penn and Terry McAuliffe, the campaign chairman, are known, have long viewed “Hillaryland” – the closed circle of female friends – with suspicion.

Interesting. Very interesting.