But sadly it is.

As a Dutch national, living in Sweden, but politically active in progressive politics since I was 16, I'm familiar with American politics, but not really an insider.

When I first heard Barack Obama speak after his victory in Iowa, the first thing I told my wife was : "I've just been listening to a speech of the next President of the United States" and I felt really good about it. The last couple of years have not really been nice to someone with progessive political opinions, who happens to like the US. But it looked like the times, they were about to be changing. My second sentence was : "If some nut does not kill him" and that thought really took a big bite out of my feelgood moment.

A big chunk of sunday's talking head time was taken up by the controversial comments Hillary Clinton made earlier in a USA Today interview.

When she said "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me", many people thought she (unintentionally) slurred non-white Americans.

Did she and her team get the chance to set the record straight ??? Big time. Terry McAuliffe on Meet the press, Howard Wolfsson on Fox and probably on a lot of other shows I didn't see.
Did they take the chance. Of course not, just like with the Bosnia flare-up it looks allmost impossible for the Clinton team to admit to a mistake. They still stick to the lame excuse that Hillary was simply quoting an AP story.

So, who did explain that it was simply a bad choice of words and absolutely not an intentional playing of the race card. You've guessed it. David Axelrod.

UPDATED:
Now also the NYT tells it like it is.

"We endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and we know that she has a major contribution to make. But instead of discussing her strong ideas, Mrs. Clinton claimed in an interview with USA Today that she would be the better nominee because a recent poll showed that “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.” She added: “There’s a pattern emerging here.”
Yes, there is a pattern — a familiar and unpleasant one. It is up to Mrs. Clinton to change it if she hopes to have any shot at winning the nomination or preserving her integrity and her influence if she loses."


I hope Hillary still reads the NYT


Eugene Robbinson has been cautiously more positive about Barack Obama than about Hillary Clinton for awhile now, but now he is, in his quiet, humorous, diplomatic way, really firing all guns at Hillary. He is not amused by her comments in an AP interview yesterday.
"that found how Senator Obama's support ... among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on."
And to be absolutely clear about what she was saying, in the polls she was referring to, there was no category "hard-working Americans" defined.
It must be so difficult for a man like Eugene to heara himself being disqualified from the hard working Americans category by Hillary. Of course she is dissapointed, of course she would have liked to get a bigger share of the African American vote, but for her to so bluntly disrespect non-white voters is really hard to swallow for me, and I am white.
I can imagine that for honest hardworking blacks like Eugene, it is impossible.

Bubba !!!

In an interview on Morning Joe Hillary blamed Bubba among others for the current energy crisis.
"you've had lousy leadership, American leadership in both parties for thirty years has ignored this crisis".
(6:30 min into the interview)

Wow this woman really has testicular fortitude.

I sometimes disagree with my wife in private, but bashing her on national TV, while flirting with the show host, would really put a dent in our relation.

Bye the bye, I think she should from now on stop whining if Barack criticises Bill on some aspects of his presidency.

Well, that tells enough about my forecasting abilties. In my previous diary I predicted a decent Clinton victory in the high single digits and a gracious exit of Hillary afterwards.

But this race continues to surprise us all. Hillary's win was actually a high single digit win (9.4 %), but it was all over the media as a solid double digit 10 % win (55 % for Hillary and 45 % for Barack). A bit of luck in the rounding of the results and psychology does the rest.

Although her win didn't even dent the delegate margin (a net gain of max 12 delegates), the record turnout helped to keep Hillary's hope alive to win the cumulative popular vote. In the real world she's still a solid 500.000 votes behind, but with some creative math Hillary can proudly announce that she has received more votes than Barack.

My forecast for Pennsylvania.
Hillary Clinton will score a decent win in Pennsylvania. She'll win high single digits.
On the other hand she will gain allmost nothing in the delegate count. That will make it even more impossible for her to catch up in the only metric that counts in his race.

Shortly after Pennsylvania she will take to the high road again. She will drop out of the race and start supporting Barrack Obama in an effort to build a huge coalition that will make her Senate majority leader in a very blue senate.

Hillary will conclude it's time to turn the page.

At first I was a bit disappointed. Why was Barack apologising for his "bad choice of words". He simply had described the reality of some areas and cities that have lost a lot off jobs and are in decay.
Of course some people are bitter. Some of these bitter folks cling to religion, some become gun-fetishists, some become rabid anti-immigration rednecks, and some off them do it all at once. He doesn't say the reverse, he doesn't say that all religious people are bitter, he doesn't say that all hunters are experiencing hard economic times. And he also explained in his SF-speech that this description is just a part of the Pennsylvanian picture. So why apologise for describing the reality ???

Barack is so unbelievably good at fighting back when he hits a rough patch. He really blows me away every he time he has to dig deep.

The first time in my life I was really moved by a politicians speech, was when I heard Martin Luther King's "I have a dream". I'm a wet blanket, I cry when I see "Sleepless in Seatle" for the third time. So listening to Rev. King drenched my T-shirt.

The second politician that really moved me was Nelson Mandela. I had been folliwing South Africa for a while, and I was against Apartheid, but I was so afraid it would end in a bloodbath. I was to afraid for that to be in favor of a handover of power to the ANC. Seeing the grace with which Nelson Mandela handled this complicated proces and being relieved by the loving strenth that he used to bring South Africa to the next level, made me cry again.

The third politician that touched my soul was Barack Obama, when he should have been down and out in New Hampshire.
The bildup was huge. He had enjoyed a great victory in Iowa. His speech afterwards was great, tremendous energy, all the polls were predicting a blowout, and it didn't happen. He lost, plain and simple.
But somehow he was able to dig deep within himself, find his inner strength and he spoke out so beautifully about hope and unity. Strength in being united, the positive aspects of the United States of America.