Clinton is wrong about 1992

[Hope And Change]

Clinton is wrong about 1992


by http://kos.dailykos.com/">kos

Sat May 24, 2008 at 10:30:06 AM PDT

By now, we now that Hillary Clinton will do or say anything in her mad pursuit of power. It's her only motivation at this point, trumping concerns about party unity, this fall's elections, and even her family's legacy. It's sad, no doubt.

But as much attention and outrage has been generated by the RFK references, I'm still ultimately more bothered by her willful and repeated distortions of truth. If one is so inclined, the RFK thing can be chalked up to her misspeaking. Whether you want to be that charitable to her or not and give her the benefit of the doubt, at least the possibility exists that she didn't mean to say what she said.

But her distortions on things like Obama's electability, her "only big states matter" b.s., her "small states don't matter" b.s., her "the only swing states are the ones I won primaries in" b.s., her "I'm winning the popular vote" b.s., her "I was for punishing Florida and Michigan and signed a letter to that effect, but now changed my mind because it's politically expedient" b.s., and her "Obama can't win states in the fall in which lost the primary" b.s. Her rank and willful dishonesty drives me up the wall, because while it may show that Clinton will do and say anything to win, it also shows that she'll use Karl Rove tactics to make it happen.

While everyone was rightfully focused on her assassination analogy, she was also http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5963">lying about 1992.

What she said:

My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?

Reality:

The 1992 primaries ended on June 2, 1992, a day earlier than this year. Several states, including California, had primaries that day. It was not mid-June.

According to wikipedia: "Clinton effectively won the Democratic Party's nomination after winning the New York Primary in early April."

Clinton's chief rival was Paul Tsongas who dropped out of the race in mid-May, 1992.

According to polls, Clinton led in every remaining state except California where Jerry Brown was polling well (his home state). Brown was not going to catch Clinton for the nomination in any scenario.

From the May 11, 1992 New York Times: "Aides to Mr. Clinton say that in most of the remaining primaries he will ignore the former Governor of California, Edmund G. Brown Jr., and will try to give voters a clearer sense of his own personality and his positions on major issues, in preparation for a general election campaign against President Bush."

Add one more bullet item to this list -- in 1992, the first caucus, Iowa, took place February 10th, more than one month later than this year's January 3rd caucuses. Five weeks, in fact.

If Clinton wants to argue that she wants all the votes to be counted, that is a defensible position, but she's not really interested in waiting for the votes to be counted. She's hoping that she can scare or blackmail delegates into overruling the will of the electorate in all 50 states, DC, and the territories. Since the math has proved for months that she had already lost, arguing for all the contests to take place wouldn't make sense. So, like she has done for most of the campaign, she has to create an alternate reality to fit her spin.

Hillary isn't stupid. She knows all this. But it doesn't matter. I don't know about you guys, but after eight years of Bush rule, I'm sick and tired of politically expedient alternate realities.

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