Before this big day in Scruggsiana gets started, I just want to share with you a passage in a blog-post at yesterday’s Baltimore Sun that’s knocked me a-windin’:
… Both candidates campaigned hard in the Democratic center of Northern Virginia today, with Obama staging a roundtable and rally at a high school in Alexandria and Clinton campaigning in Manassas. But today, Clinton sidelined her campaign manager, following a string of losses to Obama on Saturday and on Super Tuesday — compounded by today’s loss in Maine.
Patti Solis Doyle had been living on borrowed time as Clinton’s campaign manager following the disastrous showing in Iowa and the rockiness leading up to the New Hampshire primary.
“What happened today would have happened the day after New Hampshire had we lost,” one source said, adding that others may soon follow Solis Doyle’s departure.
Initially, Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, Maggie Williams, was brought in to run the campaign even though Solis Doyle was still there. The result was confusion and awkwardness for the staff, who weren’t sure who was really in charge.
But even more problematic was the campaign’s money crunch. Over the last seven years, Clinton had raised $175 million for her reelection and her presidential campaign. But Solis Doyle didn’t tell Clinton that there was next to no cash on hand until after the New Hampshire primary.
“We were lying about money,” a source said. “The cash on hand was nothing.”
In turn, Clinton didn’t tell Solis Doyle that she was lending her own money to keep the campaign afloat. Solis Doyle found out third-hand. And when she asked Clinton about it, the senator told her she couldn’t understand how the campaign had gotten to such a point. …
“We were lying about money”? What’s going on here?
The candidate who once tsk-tsked when her opponent said a President doesn’t need to be a good manager because that’s what a chief of staff is for — that candidate’s chief of staff is afraid to let her know that she’s gone broke on the way to losing, in one weekend, the states of Maine, Louisiana, Washington, and Nebraska by an average of 63-37 percent? And that candidate doesn’t tell her CoS that she’s loaned the campaign $5 million?
Who is it this candidate reminds you of?
Yep, Camp Clinton looks every bit as competent and effective as BushCo — and just as easy to blindside. They want us to let them decide everything important in the world come next January, let them run the bureaucracy just like they run their campaign. That’s what the MSM and DC establishments are trying to sell, placing the crown of inevitability upon Hillary Clinton’s head.
You buying?
Well then, how do you rate the management of Camp Obama? Find anything dysfunctional there? Seems pretty smooth-running to me; pretty good at getting the job done; rather alert, agile, and imaginative. And if Barack Obama isn’t personally handling all that, it sure looks mighty like he has an eye for people who can.
Hmmm.
Team Clinton doesn’t seem to have any pivot, that’s for sure. More like lurch.
You’ve gotta feel for Patty Solis Doyle – how would you like to be up close and personal on the receiving end of one of those shrewish harangues we’ve seen glimpses of during the debates?
“Lurch” is very good, op99. Just not as to one’s President, as we have, alas, learned.
I do believe we can stick a fork in it and call it done perhaps. Things are not going good for Billary!
Yes, irate, but they’ve learned so well from Karl Rove, I expect them to go down fighting dirty as can be.
Yes, they will it’s too close to do anything else. however, with all the bad press and the way the weekend went for Obama I think we may be on our way towards the first black president.
I think more in terms of our first WISE president in manymanymany years.
AMEN Sister Lotus.
You know, irate, I can see Barack Obama entering the pantheon of Washington-Jefferson-Lincoln. I really think he’s got that same stuff. And if there were ever a time it’s called for, ’tis now.
Here — a 48.5 minute tape of the SanFran Chronicle’s ed-board interviewing Obama recently — is what finished blowing me away. (What started it was reading Dreams from My Father a couple of years ago.)
my first question is: what is “cash on hand”? i suspect it is not the same as “money that can be had”. my spouse thinks this is just a ploy to help Hillary fundraise and to reinforce an underdog image.
great interview on the link you posted, lotus. with all the dickie drama, i had nearly forgotten about that $9 billion still missing. maybe that could be folo’s next project.
Shoot, ducky, I just tried to reply and got a dead connection. Let’s see if this works:
Think I was saying something like, “Oh yeah, ducky, that missing li’l ol’ $9 billion (as long as our subject is HMMMMs . . . “).
This is the video to the podcast of Obama’s interview with the editors of the SFChronicle:
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1381682549
I read that Baltimore Sun blog-post last night and I am still just gobsmacked by what it implies.
Sen. Clinton speaks of the people involved as being on her team for 16 years. What? And they couldn’t talk to her about money?
I have to wonder how many supporters will continue to send her money once they see how bad they’ve been at stewarding what they sent her before.
That could strangle her campaign pretty fast, no?
How lovely to be able to edit my comment!
ld
Thanks, meta 13! Yeah, LD 14, you’d certainly think it would. I sure wouldn’t trust ‘em with another sou.