Reflections From a Murky Pond

On Tuesday night, the second night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Sen. Hillary Clinton stood up in front of the crowd of Democrats and delivered a speech. It has generally been hailed as a very good speech.

It was a concession speech!

Clinton never used the word  “concede,” but that is what the speech was all about – Hillary giving up the race and supporting Obama as the Democratic Nominee.

Now the Democrats will have to wait and see if Clinton can manage to sway her supporters. So far the response has been mixed, with some some Clinton supporters seeming willing to support Obama and others somehow seeing this as another example of mysogyny in America.

Any thoughts?

By now most of the Civilized World has heard of Jerome Corsi’s new book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. I’m fairly sure that most of the Civilized World also has an opinion about the work – a strongly held opinion for or against both the author and the book.

For the detractors of Corsi and The Obama Nation the anger and outrage has unsurprisingly spilled over onto the supposed “right wing attack machine.” This is of course a normal reaction for the Left in general and the Obama followers in specific. Anything that is derogatory about Obama must have been dreamed up by McCain and the GOP. Once again their knee-jerk emotional reaction was wrong.

Corsi’s The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality came straight out of the PUMA laden Clinton Campaign bag of dirty tricks. The book was produced by Mary Matalin, wife of long time friend of both Bill and Hillary Clinton and Campaign Consultant to both Clinton’s presidential campaigns.

I suppose that it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Hillary Clinton was involved with such an attack on her arch-enemy Barack Obama. I thought that as a GOP vehicle the book was released too early in the campaign to be properly effective. The release date is not too early though for Clinton since she’s forced her name back onto the DNC nomination and roll-call vote at that DNC Convention. It’s actually perfectly timed.

With a very unexpected H/T to Kayinmaine at White Noise Insanity.

Sen. Barack Obama has claimed victory in the race to be the Democratic Presidential Nominee, but has he truly crossed the finish line or is he merely claiming victory in the hope that doing so will cause it to be? The truth of how the Democrats’ nomination process works and the math involved side against Obama having secured being the the Presumptive Nominee.

As of Wednesday, June 4, 2008, Sen. Barack Obama has won 1,763 Pledged Delegates of the 2,118 total delegates he needs to secure the nomination. An additional 395 Superdelegates have indicated their endorsement of the Senator. This would seem to bring Obama’s total to 2,158 delegates – comfortably above the required 2,118 needed to be the Presumptive Nominee. So far, so good for Obama and his supporters.

Sadly for Obama and his supporters the Superdelegates don’t really count at this point. Their endorsement of Obama cannot end the race because their endorsement will not coalesce into votes until the Convention. With Hillary’s refusal to concede and suspend her campaign, this race will be going to the Convention.

Is Obama’s victory cry the truth or just the audacity of hope?