N.H. Dems lambaste Clinton

http://news.bostonherald.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=151737


“Lying b**** . . . shrew . . . Machiavellian . . . evil, power-mad witch . . . the ultimate self-serving politician.”
No prizes for guessing which presidential front-runner drew these remarks in focus groups.
But these weren’t Republicans talking about Hillary Clinton. They weren’t even independents.
These were ordinary, grass-roots Democrats. People who identified themselves as “likely” voters in the pivotal state’s Democratic primary. And, behind closed doors, this is what nearly half of them are saying.
“I was amazed,” says Bennett. “I thought there might be some negatives, but I didn’t know it would be as strong as this. It’s stunning, the similarities between the Republicans and the Democrats, the comments they have about her.”
Bennett runs American Research Group Inc., a highly regarded, independent polling company based in Manchester, N.H. He’s been conducting voter surveys there since 1976. The polls are financed by subscribers and corporate sponsors.
He has so far recruited 410 likely voters in the 2008 Democratic primary, and sat down with them privately in small groups to find out what they really think about the candidates and the issues.
His conclusion? “Forty-five percent of the Democrats are just as negative about her as Republicans are. More Republicans dislike her, but the Democrats dislike her in the same way.”
Hillary’s growing brain trust in the party’s upper reaches already knows she has high “negatives” among ordinary Democrats. They think she can win those voters over with the right strategy and message.
But they should get out of D.C., New York and L.A. more often, and visit grassroots members.
Because we’re not talking about “soft” negatives like, say, “out of touch” or “arrogant.”
We’re talking: “Criminal . . . megalomaniac . . . fraud . . . dangerous . . . devil incarnate . . . satanic . . . power freak.”
Satanic.
And: “Political wh***.”
(Note: I don’t usually like reporting such personal remarks, but in this case you can hardly understand the situation without them. I have no strong personal feelings about the senator.)
There are caveats. Any survey can be inaccurate or misleading. And 55 percent of ARG’s sample was either neutral or positive about Sen. Clinton. Thirty-two percent currently say they plan to vote for her in the primary.
But Bennett says he’s never before seen so many N.H. voters show so much hatred toward a member of their own party. He’s never even seen anything close.
He believes top national Democrats are missing this grassroots intensity. Instead, he suspects, they are blinded by poll numbers, which give Hillary a big early lead based on her name recognition.

 

I'm surprised by this -- surprised that the Dems didn't see this coming.

Not sure that she is worty of such revulsion, but she sure gets it.

Maybe Geena Davis will run.

 

Contempt for the current occupant in the White House is higher than I can ever recall. Bush is blamed for everything from the weather to the gas prices to the economy. America's pissed to high heaven, and yet the Dems response is...to run Hillary, hated by all.

That'd be like winning the first eight rounds of a 12-round fight and spending the last four rounds standing still, waiting to be knocked out.

For fuck's sake, Al, please run again. And win the presidency for the second time.

 

If Hillary runs, it will be a Goldwater/Mondale type fiasco...all she would carry would be New York, California and Vermont. She probably doesn't deserve all this scorn, but too many people just don't like her. The Democrats need to find a nice moderate who can hold on to the base states in the Northeast and West Coast, while carrying Ohio, Missouri and Florida.

 

The more Al Gore sits back and the anti-Clinton sentiment comes to the surface, the more he becomes a viable alternative.

But whenever Al gets off the environment and starts, you know, running, people remember, "Oh THAT'S why he annoyed the hell out of us."

 

Bash away at Bush all you want. He's certainly fair game. But I get so tired of the "stolen election" myth.


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN.

NORC dispatched an army of trained investigators to examine closely every rejected ballot in all 67 Florida counties, including handwritten and punch-card ballots. The NORC team of coders were able to examine about 99 percent of them, but county officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to NORC investigators. In addition, the uncertainties of human judgment, combined with some counties' inability to produce the same undervotes and overvotes that they saw last year, create a margin of error that makes the study instructive but not definitive in its findings.

As well as attempting to discern voter intent in ballots that might have been re-examined had the recount gone forward, the study also looked at the possible effect of poor ballot design, voter error and malfunctioning machines. That secondary analysis suggests that more Florida voters may have gone to the polls intending to vote for Democrat Al Gore but failed to cast a valid vote.

In releasing the report, the consortium said it is in no way trying to rewrite history or challenge the official result -- that Bush won Florida by 537 votes. Rather it is simply trying to bring some additional clarity to one of the most confusing chapters in U.S. politics.

Florida Supreme Court recount ruling

On December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Florida Supreme Court ruling ordering a full statewide hand recount of all undervotes not yet tallied. The U.S. Supreme Court action effectively ratified Florida election officials' determination that Bush won by a few hundred votes out of more than 6 million cast.

Using the NORC data, the media consortium examined what might have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had not intervened. The Florida high court had ordered a recount of all undervotes that had not been counted by hand to that point. If that recount had proceeded under the standard that most local election officials said they would have used, the study found that Bush would have emerged with 493 more votes than Gore.

Gore's four-county strategy

Suppose that Gore got what he originally wanted -- a hand recount in heavily Democratic Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties. The study indicates that Gore would have picked up some additional support but still would have lost the election -- by a 225-vote margin statewide.

 

Well, he DID invent the very thing this website is on, ya know.

 

Yeah... and he showed so much fight and passion the last time...

Al needs to stay the hell away. For that matter, so does Hillary, lest the Democrats circular firing squad cues up again.

 

Certainly, the election wasn't "stolen" as in anybody rigged machines. But it's no myth to say that there's plenty of evidence Bush won because of error.

And it's rock-solid fact that Gore won the popular vote by nearly 600,000 votes, and Bush proceeded to rule like he had some sort of mandate, when he clearly did not.

 

Of course if all the states that certified their elections without counting every single solitary ballot had done so, Bush may very well have won the popular vote too.

If the DNC stops running shitty candidates maybe they'd win elections once in awhile.

 

Ah, the popular vote refrain.

The electoral college has been in place how long now?

All Al had to do was carry his home state, and he couldn't do that. Against a breathtakingly underwhelming candidate.

Al had the ball first and goal, an inch away from the end zone, and couldn't get it in the end zone.

As for Bush, well, he clearly ain't going to be a first-ballot inductee into the presidential Hall of Fame. But judging by Gore's inability to bring home what should have been a simple victory, neither would he.