Should she stay or should she go?

Hillary Clinton - is it right for her to stay in the race at this point? I mean, come on now, this thing is taking forever - as herbsao sums up in the post below me. Think about it...it was just a few weeks ago when much of the Democratic party was urging her to drop out of the competition...not because they hated her, but because they felt by "prolonging the inevitable" - a Barack Obama victory - she was doing nothing but hurting the party's chances of winning at the end. Even Rush Limbaugh - the voice of the Republican party - urged Texas to vote for Clinton months ago when Obama looked like he was unstoppable, just so it would buy John McCain some time to better prepare for the presidential race that was around the corner.

In the midst of all that, Clinton held strong and compared herself to the likes of none other than Rocky Balboa.

But before you make a decision as to whether it is right or wrong for Clinton to still be in the race, take these things into consideration:
--> According to an Associated Press poll, when matched up head-to-head, Clinton now leads McCain by 9 points, whereas McCain and Obama are running about even. This bolsters Clinton's argument that she is more electable than her Democratic rival.
--> The governor of North Carolina, Mike Easely, recently endorsed Clinton saying that she "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy." She is gaining support from a number of elected Democrats around the country, which also shows how highly respected she is as the potential Democratic presidential candidate.
--> The potential gas tax holiday splits Clinton and Obama...Clinton, like McCain, for it...Obama against it. With the future of rising oil prices looming, it seems that voters will support anybody who supports cutting fuel prices, even if just for a little bit.

So now you have the facts. The only question that remains now is, do you think Hillary Clinton is just hurting her party and should drop out of the Democratic race?

Opinion Polls & Market Research

When is the end?

Seriously, when is this all going to end?

When will the Democratic Party at long last nominate its candidate for president? This niggling little super delegate war that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are waging is murdering their party's chances by the day.

It's getting out of hand. Sure, more and more super delegates are either leaving Clinton's camp and joining Obama's or are pledging their allegiances outright to the Illinois senator. Sure, Clinton still has a slim lead in the overall super delegate count. But last time I checked, Obama still had a commanding lead in DELEGATES! I mean the word "super" normally makes things better. Put it in front of simple words like "man" or "bowl" and they are magically transformed into comic book heroes and unofficial national holidays. Cool, I get it. Super.

But in the case of delegate counts, super does not mean better. Super just means diplomat, and the last time I checked, the American people elected presidents not supermen and women. And a majority of the American people want to see Barack Obama tango with John McCain. So give them what they want now. If the DNC waits until the convention, they may have vacillated their way out of a president.

It's like picking teams for a pick-up basketball game. Everyone selects a player from the playground, all of whom are equally qualified. But one team already has LeBron James . It doesn't matter who you pick up because LeBron James is better than anyone on the playground.

Get it? The American people is LeBron James. Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo is just some bum on the blacktop.

And another thing. Have you been listening to Karl Rove talk about Clinton lately.



When the Prince of Darkness (Rove was the devil that got Bush elected twice, remember?) starts paying compliments to a political rival, it means that he knows he can destroy them. When Stanford football coach Jim Harbaugh said at the beginning of last season that the '08 USC Trojans were the best team in college football history, he was being facetious. Remember what happened? He pulled off one of the biggest upsets ever by going in to the Coliseum and beating the best team in college football history. I was there. It was horrible.

Don't be fooled. The McCain camp knows they can beat Clinton one-on-one. And I believe them. Just because they share a party with the least popular president in modern history, doesn't mean the rest of the party isn't fed up with him also.

Meanwhile, Obama has done everything he can to distance himself from his former pastor Jeremiah Wright, his relationship with him being the only major sleight on his campaign. He has criticized Wright for his comments on a consistent basis, delivered possibly the most powerful and poignant speech on race ever by a major politician, he has even gone on the Today Show with his wife Michelle and talked to Meredith Viera about the issue.



Let go, people. Obama is not a racist and most know nothing about Wright besides the fact that he's an opportunist that likes to speak out of context.

Anyway, that's enough. This rant is getting subjective. All I want is a true, bona fide presidential contest. And I can't get that until the Dems have picked their horse.

Or donkey. Whatever.

LIVE! from the May Day march

Photos taken at the UCLA Labor Center pre-march rally. American Apparel's "Legalize LA"
and MIWON (the Multi Ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network) were represented by hundreds of protesters. A live band played raggaeton for an hour before the crowd gathered to march down Beverly Blvd. (1st St.) towards Broadway St. downtown, the epicenter of this year's May Day immigration march. By the way, the dude with the alien is wearing a shirt that says, "I don't want to be an alien. I want to be legal."


Close your eyes and you would think you were at a futbol match at the Estadio Azteca with all the whistling and the Spanish chants in unison.

Cover your ears and you would think you were at a city-wide picket. There are tens of thousands of screaming, singing, dancing, passionate people in front of you, all gathered in a single mass of angry solidarity.

If you took the latter choice, you'd pretty much have it nailed, although the former isn't that far off in terms of spirit. Instead of "Ole, Ole, Ole!" the chants here are "Si Se Puede! (We can do it!)"

The May Day march, an annual Los Angeles event, has been the largest immigration reform protest in the country, probably the world the last several years. Last year, the march ended in violence, as many protesters were beaten and shot with rubber bullets by members of the LAPD riot squad. The fallout caused a public protest and the LAPD (and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa) had to stage another more peaceful rally a month later.

By all accounts, the events of last year are a thing of the past, as police have been acting nothing but courteous (if not, too
courteous) for this year's marchers. Some of them are in skin-tight 70's style NBA short shorts and smiling. It's kind of surreal.

It would also seem that last year's events have made this year's march even bigger. I would estimate that several thousand more have crammed their way onto Broadway this year. Even more are expected to come to the 4 p.m. rally as many will be getting off of work or school then.

This is also an election year, and immigration reform is one of the hot button issues, making this rally a bit more involved.

Organizers of the march have not lost sight of the importance of the rally in an election year.

"I think [immigration reform] is very important this year," said Strela Cervas, a community organizer with MIWON and the Pilipino Workers Center. "The candidates have proposed some comprehensive immigration reform. It depends on our mass movement to push the issue further. We need to show them this immigration system is broken and it effects everyone."

She said that there are 12 million undocumented workers that are paying taxes and boosting the economy. But they have been afforded no status and therefore cannot participate in the economy they contribute to.

As of now, there has been no appearance by Obama or Clinton, although John McCain was loudly presented at the UCLA LC rally by a man identifying himself as Melrose Larry Green or the Howard Stern Show fame. Who knows if it was really him, but he was certainly crazy enough to fit the part.

"You're much prettier than Hillary Clinton," he cooed to a police horse at the rally. "Much prettier."

I don't care about Hillary Clinton anymore

As it stands right now, it’s impossible for Clinton to win with pledged delegates. She’s too far behind Obama, and she has plum run out of time. It’s not going to happen. This matters a lot, of course, least of all because no Democratic candidate has ever won the nomination without leading in pledged delegates.

Unfortunately, Clinton’s campaign – who I will hereafter refer to as the Hillary truthers – is having none of this. On Tuesday night of last week, campaign chairman and head truther Terry McAuliffe instead trumpeted the popular vote as a new measure of victory. However, even if the popular vote decided the nomination – and it doesn’t – the math isn’t looking too favorable here, either.

Unless McAuliffee is counting the outlawed Michigan and Florida primaries, Clinton’s likely too far behind on this metric to win as well. She is still 600,000 votes behind Obama in the popular vote, and he is looking to make up a good chunk of the 200,000 or so votes he lost in Pennsylvania in the upcoming North Carolina and Indiana primaries.

That is the stark math of defeat. And with that laid out in front of them, Clinton and the Hillary truthers may want to take a long, hard look at the three options they have left. Of the three, only one leaves her with a modicum of dignity at the end. She would do well to choose wisely.

In the first scenario, she trudges on to Indiana and North Carolina, running a tame, respectful campaign. Then – after losing in North Carolina and, likely, Indiana – she drops out of the race, licks her wounds, and makes up for her scorched earth strategy by campaigning relentlessly for Obama in the general.

This is obviously the best scenario for her, Obama, and the party. As for her, it leaves open the option of running again in the future (whether for president or another higher office), and she can finally get to patching together some of the relationships she and Bill have spent the past few months laying waste to. Obama benefits too – he can start campaigning against the Republican he’s supposed to be campaigning against. And the party can begin the long, arduous task of mending itself.

In the second option, Clinton hangs in the race and ratchets up the attacks, continuing to thwack Obama with the heavy, well-used pages she has wrenched so readily out of the Republican playbook. The race lurches towards the finish line, with Clinton eventually losing because, well, that’s what happens to candidates who don’t win more pledged delegates than the other candidate. Hillary truthers, take note.

This scenario offers little in the way of merriment or viability, though. Clinton effectively ends her career, and she and Bill are left on the sidelines of a Democratic party that they once, for all intensive purposes, ran. Obama, on the other hand, slumps into the general election against McCain, who will pick up right where Hillary left off with the slander and innuendo and race-baiting and prevaricating. Then, if Obama loses, America stumbles through another four years of tragedy, this time with Calamity John at the reins.

And what, pray tell, lies beyond door three? The candidates continue to beat each other up as the primaries lumber on, and we end up in a Denver deadlock. There, Clinton is able to sway enough superdelegates over to her side to usurp the public’s will, and she – and the truthers – manage to wrest the nomination away from the first legitimate African-American presidential candidate in history. The Democratic Party is likely torn asunder, with the millions of new or rejuvenated voters that Obama brought into the campaign disenfranchised by their own party.

The general election will proceed, and Clinton will likely lose for a couple of reasons. First is that she will have alienated the (more than) half of the voters that wanted Obama to win, and deserved to have their voices heard. The second is that she will have yanked the race so far to the right that McCain – being, after all, a Republican – will simply outflank her, especially on national security, sending her career to an ignominious conclusion. And if she wins, we get at least four more years of reinvigorated partisan bickering, and burrow deeper into a status quo that’s not working for anybody.

So there are three options right now, two of which could charitably be called disastrous. So what will it be? As we slouch towards Denver, will things fall apart, or can the party hold together? Will we be able to look back on this race with fondness, or regret?

It’s in lil' Hill's hands now.