Thursday, July 10, 2008

Barack Obama Forgets About Hillary Clinton At Joint Fundraiser

One thing not to do when trying to unify a political party is to forget the reason you are holding a joint fundraiser. Barack Obama gives his speech, ends it, music starts to play, then he remembers he forgot something.

The something Obama forgot was that one of the purposes for the joint fundraiser was to help retire Hillary Clinton's debt and he forgot all about mentioning that.



Barack Obama brought Hillary Clinton from Washington to New York on his jet so they could appear together at two fundraisers to promote unity.

They both know the drill. Hillary introduces Obama, he gives his speech and then he encourages people to contribute as well as to contribute to help retire Clinton's campaign debt which, depending on what reports you believe, ranges from $10 million to $23 million.

Everything was going good, Obama made his spiel, says thank you, waves to the applauding crowd and the music starts to play.

Then he comes back and motions for the music to stop playing so that he can say something else, something he forgot all about.... encouraging people to help Hillary retire her debt.

So The Times' Louise Roug was at the Hyatt in the crowd of 1,000 who'd each paid $1,000 (what a coincidence!) so they could also pay cash at the bar. She dutifully listened to his familiar, 30-minute talk about promise. The crowd applauded. "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" blasted out of the sound system and Obama bounced off the stage to work the rope line and shake hands, not looking nearly as weary as The Times story says he is.

But about two minutes later Obama bounces back onto the stage. Waves his hands. Had he forgotten to mention about the jobs program?

The music stopped. Or maybe he neglected to praise his distant cousin Dick Cheney?

"Hold on a second," he shouted. "I got one more thing." Oops! It seems Obama had forgotten to mention the part about giving money to Hillary Clinton in the spirit of unity, the whole reason they were gathered there in the first place.


In the spirit of unity at a time when Obama is trying to win over Clinton supporters, it isn't exactly going to endear him to them when he forgets all about her and then treats Hillary as an afterthought.

Then again, people should cut Obama some slack, it isn't every day that a man has to see clip after clip on every major news show, with Jesse Jackson saying he would like to cut his nuts off.

That can be a tad distracting for a man.

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