BernieHund: The Political Watchdog

This week has had its ups and downs. 

It all began last Sunday when things were looking up for Hillary Clinton… sorta.  She won Puerto Rico by a landslide.  Unfortunately, it mostly went without notice across the country.  There was commentary, of course, but none of the pundits seemed to put much stock in the win turning the heads of the superdelegates.  For once they were right.

Hillary Clinton’s convincing win in Puerto Rico’s  Democratic presidential primary on Sunday is adding fuel to her claims that the popular vote total should give superdelegates the guidance they need to select her as the nominee.

With 100 percent of the vote counted, Clinton received 68 percent to Barack Obama’s 32 percent, winning by more than 140,000 votes.

But lower-than-expected turnout could hamper Clinton’s argument that she can attract enthusiastic general election voters and is the better candidate than Obama in the fall race against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

Clinton made her speech, tried to sell her candidacy, but there were no takers.

On Tuesday the last two primary contests were held in South Dakota and Montana.  Clinton took South Dakota.  Obama took Montana.  Being a gentleman… and the obvious nominee… Barack Obama awaited Clinton’s concession speech.  It didn’t come.  Clinton sounded bitter as the superdelegates, one by one moved to commit to Obama.

Quite honestly, the first words out of her mouth were encouraging, but somewhere during her speech it seemed that Hill had a change of heart.  We can all understand the disappointment of not achieving a life long goal, but the speech sounded as bitter and divisive as any she has given during the campaign.  If it accomplished anything it moved the superdelegates to Obama faster than the trickle that had been going on all day.

The look on Barack and Michelle Obama’s face as they watched the Clinton speech reflected that of most Americans I’m sure.  But, in true style Senator Obama delivered one of those speeches that uplifted everyone… except the Clintons.

Oh, yeah.  John McCain tried to show what he’s made of by making a speech before that of Clinton or Obama.  It was his welcome to the real world speech to Obama, so to speak.  He offered challenges to the new nominee, but … well, to paraphrase Mark Shields on The News Hour… McCain is so bad at reading a teleprompter that he couldn’t get a job as a weatherman in Duluth.  (No disprest to Duluth.)

Okay, so it doesn’t take a great speech to make a great president, but think about this… if it were possible for McCain to be elected President we would have to listen to that boring tone of stumbling and rambling each year at the State of the Union Address.  That’s reason enough to vote for a Democrat!

Then the rumors started to fly and the rest of the week was like a rollercoaster ride.  One day Hillary was going to fight all the way to the convention.  The next day no one knew what she was going to do.  Some reports indicated that she would meet with her people and concede on Friday, then on Saturday.

Thursday night, Barack Obama sneaked off his plane heading to Chicago and met with Hillary Clinton in secret.  There has been speculation out the …. well, lots of speculation about the conversation.  But, it was private and I’m guessing it will stay that way.

In the meantime, back on “The Hill” the Farm Bill passed.  Bush will veto it if he hasn’t already.  And it will go back to the Senate.

Secreatry of Defense Robert Gates continued to flex the power of his position and fired the top TWO Air Force personnel, one military, once civilian.  Gates has realized that the DOD is in shambles, more evidence that Rumsfeld was totally incompetent.

Back to the political scene.  Hillary gave the best speech of her campaign today.  It was about time and most appreciated.  That brought the Democratic primary season to an end, and none too soon.