Hotline After Dark -- Back To School
Barack Obama was on the "Hardball" college tour last night.
MSNBC's Matthews asked him: "What it's like to be a black kid with a white mom?"
Obama: "What I think it did for me was to give me a perspective that maybe is broader on some of the misunderstandings that people go through, but also an appreciation of everybody's cultures. It is not just the fact that I have a black dad and a white mom. It's, I have got a sister who is half Indonesian, who is married to a Chinese Canadian. I have got a niece who looks like, you know, she's all mixed up."
Obama, on quitting smoking: "I fell off the wagon a couple times during the course of it, and then was able to get back on. But it is a struggle like everything else."
Asked if he should be the nominee if he has the most pledged delegates when the primary process is over: "If I have the most pledged delegates, meaning after all the votes have been cast in caucuses and primaries, -- I also think we will have had the most popular vote and we will have won the most states. Then I think most of the super delegates who have not yet decided, I think, will recognize that we've earned this nomination. That's not guaranteed and I don't take it for granted. But I think at that point, I will have shown myself to be the strongest candidate to run against John McCain."
After the jump, more from Obama on the influence of party "Poobahs" and the role of Super Ds. Also, Hillary Clinton talks economy on CNBC, Bill Richardson defends his Obama endorsement and NBC talks with Roberta McCain:
(EMILY GOODIN)
Matthews: "Is that the only legitimate result of this campaign? The one who gets the most elected delegates is the nominee? Could you imagine Senator Clinton being nominated in Denver in the last week of August, not having won the battle for elected delegates and you would support her?"
Obama: "I'm not going to worry about that right now because what I want to do is to make sure that I've won as many contests as possible, won as many delegates as possible, and then I'll let the Poobahs of the party make a decision in terms of how they want to deal with it."
Matthews: "Do you trust the Poobahs?"
Obama: "What I know is that we've excited the electorate. We've brought people out. We have won every state -- every kind of state all across the country. And I think, in that circumstance, I will be the strongest nominee to go up against John McCain and serve as a sharp break and contrast from the failed policies of the last seven years" (MSNBC, 4/2).
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Hillary Clinton sat down with CNBC's Cramer:
Asked about Wall Street fearing a Dem in the WH, Clinton: "Well, all I would say is ask what happened during the 1990s. You know, best thing that happened to the economy was a Democratic president who actually understood something about economics, who realized you've got to find a balance. People, as I recall, did very, very well."
Cramer: "Yeah. We made a fortune in the '90s. It was darn good."
Clinton: "One hundred percent."
Cramer: "We didn't get a lot after NAFTA, though."
Clinton: "But it wasn't just you guys who did it. The whole economy was lifted up. ... We had 22.7 million new jobs, and it wasn't just middle class people who thankfully had rising incomes, poor people got lifted out of poverty. That's the way America's supposed to work" ("Mad Money," CNBC, 4/2).
MAYBE IT WASN'T FIVE TIMES
ABC's Stephanopoulos: "There is no question that President Clinton and Senator Clinton are making passionate arguments. In fact, I was just able to confirm with sources who have direct knowledge of the conversation between Senator Clinton and Governor Bill Richardson that she made the most stark argument you can make. She said flatly: 'Barack Obama cannot win Bill. Barack Obama cannot win.'" The Clinton campaign is starting to make very, very direct arguments in these conversations with superdelegates" ("World News," 4/2).
Bill Richardson: "The Clintons should get over this. I mean I did this endorsement 10 days ago. I've tried to stay above it."
Asked about ex-Pres. Clinton saying Richardson told him "five times to my face" he wouldn't endorse Obama, Richardson: "No. No, I never did. And I never saw him five times. I saw him once when he came to New Mexico to watch the Super Bowl with me. And we made it very clear to him that he shouldn't expect an endorsement after that meeting. And at one point, I was very close to endorsing Senator Clinton, but I held back. I waited. I felt the campaign got nasty. I heard Senator Obama. He would talk to me continuously. I feel that he brings something special to bring the country together. And I endorsed Senator Obama. And I called Senator Clinton and told her. It was a tough conversation, but I think I've been totally upfront."
Asked if he's spoken to B. Clinton since his endorsement: "No, I haven't. No, I haven't. He's probably upset" ("Situation Room," CNN, 4/2).
MOTHER KNOWS BEST
NBC's K. O'Donnell talked with McCain's mother Roberta McCain:
R. McCain, on her son: "He was a cute little boy."
Asked if McCain is too old to be president: "Well we're going to find out."
R. McCain, on thinking about the "little things" while McCain was a POW: "I kept thinking they're never let him brush his teeth. They'll never have toothpaste. They'll never let him read and what was he going to do?"
On McCain's homecoming after Vietnam: "We didn't discuss his captivity at all. It never did come up. The children were around."
Asked if they ever discussed it: "Never and it's too late now" ("Nightly News," NBC, 4/2).
As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying. The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary’s history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes. Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27-year-old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who was also Sen. Ted Kennedy’s chief counsel in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career. Why? “Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”
URL: ://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2008/04/01/hillary-was-fired-from-congressional-job-for-unethical-behavior/trackback/
They are the only ones who are trying to fuel a Gender & Racial divide and get us to turn on each other. It is despicable! Every day Hillary supporters are speaking out in way which continues to inflame race and gender, divide and conquer -- that is no way to run or win a race!
Barack's trying bowling shows he is human and not afraid to try something new just because he is not good at it -- that he does not have to be Mr. Perfect. Yet some made fun of him for their own agenda and turned something human into political sabotage!
Fact Check:
In a column circulating on the internet Jerry Zeifman alleges that Hillary was fired from her job on the House Judiciary Committee in the 1970s.
This is false. Hillary was not fired.
Here is how the Washington Post reviewed his 1996 book "Without Honor: Crimes of Camelot and The Impeachment of President Nixon.":
"[The book] will surely excite conspiracy buffs on the lookout for sinister coverups in high places. But those wary of such unsubstantiated theories (myself included) will find Zeifman's book an unconvincing, if imaginative, tale of intrigue…The lack of evidence makes this theory hard to swallow. Zeifman's most reliable source -- his diary -- contains few revelations and seems little more than a chronicle of his suspicions and speculations." [Washington Post 2/18/96]
Previously, Zeifman said he would have liked to fire her, but didn't have the authority. "If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her," he said. [Sacramento Bee, 11/4/98]