So if she gets elected, is her campaign going to have a garage sale at the white house to get her money back? Clinton lends herself $6.4M as Obama's lead grows WASHINGTON - A campaign aide says Hillary Rodham Clinton lent herself $6.4 million in the past month. Politically wounded and financially strapped, Clinton plunged back into the presidential campaign Wednesday even as Barack Obama declared that Tuesday's primary results left him with a "clear path to victory." Obama beat Clinton soundly in North Carolina and fell just short in an Indiana cliffhanger, a rebound for the Illinois senator that presented Clinton with fast-dwindling chances to deny him the Democratic presidential nomination. The loan more than doubles Clinton's personal investment in her bid for the Democratic nomination. She gave her campaign $5 million earlier this year. Clinton has been struggling financially behind the record fundraising of her Democratic rival, Barack Obama. Obama has routinely outspent her in primary after primary. Clinton's campaign reported raising $10 million online after her victory April 22 in Pennsylvania. But Obama has shown little difficulty tapping his vast network of donors. He spent more than $7 million on advertising head of Tuesday's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana to her nearly $4 million. But even as Obama planned to take the day off from the campaign trail Wednesday, Clinton showed no public signs of easing her pace. The campaign added a noon Wednesday appearance in Shepherdstown, W. Va., to her schedule. On Thursday, she planned to campaign in West Virginia, South Dakota and Oregon. Clinton backers appeared on early morning television programs to stress that she was still in the race and to urge party leaders and elected officials known as superdelegates not to flee to Obama. "This candidacy and this campaign continues on," Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said Wednesday on CNN. Obama was 184.5 delegates shy of the 2,025 needed to secure the Democratic nomination, his campaign finally steadying after missteps fiercely exploited by the never-say-die Clinton. His campaign dropped broad hints it was time for the 270 remaining unaligned superdelegates to get off the fence and settle the nomination. In a counter to Wolfson, Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said: "The delegate math gets exceptionally harder for Senator Clinton every day" In a memorandum to superdelegates, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe reminded them of the delegate math necessary to secure the nomination. He said Clinton would need to win 68 percent of the remaining delegates to win â an extremely unlikely scenario, made harder by her poor performance Tuesday. "With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days," Plouffe wrote. "While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or millions of supporters, volunteers and donors." It was in the superdelegate arena â even more than in the scattered primaries left â that the Democratic hyperdrama was bound to play out. Clinton vowed to compete tenaciously for West Virginia next week and Kentucky and Oregon after that, and to press "full speed on to the White House." But she risked running on fumes without an infusion of cash, and made a direct fundraising pitch from the stage in Indianapolis. "I need your help to continue our journey," she said. And she pledged anew that she would support the Democratic nominee "no matter what happens," a vow also made by her competitor. But her campaign schedule belied any immediate reconciliation. West Virginia holds its primary on Tuesday. Kentucky and Oregon hold their contests a week a later. Puerto Rico is scheduled for June 1 followed promptly by Montana and South Dakota on June 3. Her campaign is making the case that those contests are crucial to her and will press Democratic party officials to resolve disputed contests in Michigan and Florida, which she won but whose results the party voided because the primaries were held ahead of the schedule set by Democratic Party rules. Obama, addressing supporters in North Carolina Tuesday night, pivoted away from his contest with Clinton and made a general election appeal that singled out his biography and his call for a new brand of politics. Still, his message also had a partisan pitch. "This primary season may not be over, but when it is, we will have to remember who we are as Democrats ... because we all agree that at this defining moment in history â a moment when we're facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril â we can't afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush's third term," he said. McCain, the certain Republican nominee, has been running a general election campaign for weeks. He has reached out to independent voters and sought to secure his conservative base, as he did Tuesday with a speech on his vision of the judiciary. He was scheduled to deliver a speech Wednesday on curbing the international exploitation of children. The Obama-Clinton contest has been polarizing, protracted and often bitter, hardening divisions in the party, according to exit polls from the two states. A solid majority of each candidate's supporters said they would not be satisfied if the other candidate wins the nomination. Fully one-third of Clinton's supporters in Indiana and North Carolina went beyond mere dissatisfaction to say they would vote for McCain instead of Obama if that's the choice in the fall. Obama scored a convincing victory of about 14 points in North Carolina, where he'd been favored. Clinton squeezed out a narrow margin in Indiana after a long night of counting. Racial divisions were stark. In both states, Clinton won six in 10 white votes while Obama got nine in 10 black votes, exit polls indicated. It was a slightly better performance than usual by Clinton among whites, while Obama's backing from blacks was one of his highest winning percentages yet with that group. Clinton fell short of the Indiana blowout and the North Carolina upset that might have jarred superdelegates into her camp in a big way. They have continued trickling toward Obama despite the fallout over his former pastor's racially divisive remarks and Clinton's win in Pennsylvania two weeks ago. The impact of a long-running controversy over the Illinois senator's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was difficult to measure. In North Carolina, six in 10 voters who said Wright's remarks affected their votes sided with Clinton. A somewhat larger percentage of voters who said the pastor's remarks did not matter supported Obama. Obama and Clinton both planned to campaign in the next primary states starting Thursday, after a day in Washington. Obama headed to Chicago after his Raleigh speech before coming to the capital.
This election and last one suck. Instead of voting for a good president. We have to vote for one that will do the less damage. None of them really talk about real issue that facing the country. Like how to control spending. Health care and medical expense are out of control. The depreciation of the dollars, and it does not look like it will bottom any time soon. And many more.
Everyone is acting like Obama is already the nominee. Clinton still has a chance. How can she lose to a marxist with ties to a black extremist?
Stock troll is probably a closet Obama supporter. Nice try, but your better at being A perma bull type troll.
It's about changing the future and creating hope where only dispair is today. Without change, there can be no hope. But if we do not have hope, then we can not change. We must change the future and empower individuals to come together to create a deeply caring community. This Brave New World will create even more hope and even more change snowballing into a virtuous circle of continuous improvement (and mixed metaphors). We need change so we can create hope that creates more change for our future, for our communities, for our children and for the world. They call it populist for a very good reason.
IT'S ALL OVER, SEN. CLINTON By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN "She lost hard in North Carolina, and barely held on to win Indiana. Hillary Clinton just doesn't have enough straws left to clutch. The best (or worst) she can hope to do the rest of the way is bloody Barack Obama enough to make him lose in the fall, allowing her to come back in 2012. In fact, Obama basically clinched the nomination with his string of 11 straight primary and caucus wins in February, many by wipe-out margins - giving him a lead in elected delegates that Clinton couldn't hope to close, especially given the nutty proportional-representation rules that govern the Democratic Party. Do the math. Last night's results leave him with a lead among elected delegates of 150 or so, and among all delegates of around 130. Only a handful of states are left to vote, with a combined total of about 230 delegates. She'll probably win West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico - and lose Oregon, North Dakota, and Montana. She most likely could pick up a net 10 delegates, leaving him with a lead of at least 130 (110, counting in superdelegates). If Hillary manages to get Florida and Michigan seated (which she won't), she'll net another 47 delegates. So Obama, worst case, will have a lead of at least 60 delegates. Most likely, it'll be more than 100. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Chairman Howard Dean have all made it clear that they expect superdelegates to decide who to support within (in Reid's words) "days, not weeks" after the last ballots are cast on June 3. In that environment, Obama - who'll be only about 100 delegates short of a majority - will be an irresistible choice. Few superdelegates will want to risk civil war by overruling the verdict of the voters - and almost all will want to climb aboard the victory bandwagon so as not to get shut out of the White House for four (or eight) years. In the past few months, Obama has closed Clinton's lead among superdelegates from 60 to 20. The trend will accelerate after popular voting ends; he'll probably pass the 2,025 threshold in the first two weeks of June. Clinton may stay in, hoping to can seat Florida and Michigan. But she won't win there, either. The Credentials Committee, which will make the key report, consists of three votes for each state or territory. The remaining contests will leave him with, at worst, a 10-state lead. Howard Dean names 25 committee members, but she can't prosper unless he stacks them all for her - and, if anything, he'll go the other way. Having lost there, her only option would be to appeal to the convention floor - where neither of the contested delegations can vote on their own credentials, virtually assuring an Obama victory on the credentials fight and the nomination. Clinton may well fight all the way - she's stubborn and dedicated. More, she's also farsighted and devious: She could hope to so bloody Obama that he can't beat John McCain. If McCain wins, she could get the Democratic nomination in 2012 - and, with McCain closing in on 76 and after 12 years of GOP rule, win."
IMAO: It's Not Over for Hillary! "So Obama had a huge win in North Carolina while Hillary had a tiny win in Indiana. It's looking pretty bad for Hillary, but there are still some scenarios that could lead to the superdelegates giving her the nomination: * Video emerges showing that Obama was not only present during a vile Jeremiah Wright rant, he was in the front row shouting, "Kill whitey!" (that's the Trinity church's version of "Amen"). * Obama, not realizing the mike is on, tells an aide how he really is secretly a Muslim and is only becoming president so he can nuke America with its own weapons to allow the jihadis to win. * It's found out that Obama sent Ayers a check for a large sum of money with the "For" line filled out with "More bombs." * He's hit by a bus. If I know Hillary, she's already working on making at least one of those happen."