Her changing positions, her need to tell each audience exactly what they want to hear, even if that message changes with every appearance, instead of standing on any type of principle about any issue.
All of this and more is what has lost her the air of inevitability.
If the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s 100 Club dinner is any bell weather – Barack Obama will handily win here. When Obama, the dinner’s last speaker, took the stage the crowd surged forward chanting “O-bam-a” and “Fired Up, Ready to Go!” So many people pressed toward the stage that an announcer asked people to “please take their seats for safety concerns.”
By comparison Hillary was twice booed. The first time was when she said she has always and will continue to work for "change for you. The audience, particularly from Obama supporters (they were waving Obama signs) let out a noise that sounded like a thousand people collectively groaning. The second time came a few minutes later when Clinton said: "The there are two big questions for voters in New Hampshire. One is: who will be ready to lead from day one? The second," and here Clinton was forced to pause as boos from the crowd mixed with cheers from her own supporters. "Is who can we nominate who will go the distance against the Republicans?”
Hillary has a problem and it is herself. Her personality, her unlikability, her arrogance in thinking she is "all that and a bag of chips", her decisions on how to run the campaign, which even has her own supporers questioning her strategy.
As Clinton flew from Iowa to New Hampshire, her supporters were divided over how she should handle the early defeat. Paul Begala, a campaign strategist for her husband and a Hillary Clinton supporter, said she could take one of two approaches: explain away Iowa by dismissing it as unfamiliar territory, diminishing its odd caucus system and portraying it as Obama's neighboring state; or accept responsibility for the loss, saying, " 'I've been knocked on my rear end. It's not fun, but the view from the canvas can be instructional.' "
"America loves an underdog," Begala said. "Candidates can show their character in defeat."
But the Clinton campaign did not appear poised to take the advice. The senator from New York and the former president started the day taking jabs at Iowa, justifying Clinton's third-place finish. And for those who counseled that she could not campaign both as an agent of change and the most experienced candidate in the race, Clinton had a clear answer: Her two-sided message would not be altered much.
Then we come to the mantra that we have been hearing from all the candidates on the left, the mantra of "change".
What the hell does that mean anyway?
Seriously!
What is going to change? Politics? The political bickering in Congress and the Senate? Does anyone think that if Hillary OR Obama for that matter, won the 2008 Presidential election that the next morning we would wake up and the sun would be brighter? Millions would suddenly be on a socialist healthcare plan, magically, over night? Everyone would simply put politics on the back burner and make nice with each other? Terrorists would all of a sudden stop trying to kill us? Peace would reign? Would poverty be gone? Will homelessness diappear overnight?
What? What? What???!!!????
What exactly would change? Would someone please ask them this question and force them to actually answer the damn thing.
I am truly curious.
Just like the Novemeber 2006 elections, everyone is promising "change", like that is some magical word, but no one is asking the candidates exactly how they would implement that so called change.
I will let you in on a little secret here, I like America, I love America, I am proud of America and I am proud to BE an American.
Are you?
When I asked that question in a post of mine a while ago, amazingly enough, the only people that could not say they were proud to be an American without a "but" afterward their answer.....were the far left Democrats.
That right there is the difference between Republicans, moderates and the far left of this country.
Nothing against any other country or their country's citizenry, I would hope that they are just as proud of their country and just as proud to be from their country.
To want certain things to improve is fine and dandy I could list dozens of things I would like to see run better, handled more efficiently, but improvement has a completely different meaning than "change" does.
As long as they hold onto that mantra of "change" America, I think 2008 might just end up being a race between those proud to be Americans and those that are not and I believe that the majority of this great country is, indeed, proud to be Americans, which is going to be a huge problem for the Democrats in the 2008 elections.
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