Catching Up With The Empress

Here's a refreshing bit of candor that you don't see every day:

Nothing worries financial advisers more than the prospect of a Democrat's being elected president in November, according to a quarterly poll by Brinker Capital Inc.

The fourth-quarter edition of the Brinker Barometer, which polled 236 advisers in December, found that 22% indicated that a "Democrat in the White House" worried them more than all other economic or geopolitical concerns.

Rounding out the list of concerns was "global unrest" (15%), "U.S. economic growth" (15%), "a terrorist attack" (13%) and "a recession" (13%).

They could actually lump "US economic growth" and "a recession" in with "Democrat in the White House," since the latter will crater the first and guarantee the second.

You know what they say about putting your money where your mouth is.  I hope they've counted the cost of opening their mouths on the incoming Rodham administration, which will undoubtedly settle this score sooner rather than later.

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Another of Senator Clinton's big bankrollers covers himself in glory:

Mauricio Celis is linked to the Mexican drug trade in a search warrant the state used Friday to raid his law offices and gather computer files, according to financial documents and other business records. The warrant includes a sworn statement by a Texas Attorney General's official accusing Celis of money laundering. ...

The state searched a U.S. Treasury database and border crossing data to determine that Celis went to Mexico frequently after withdrawing large sums of cash, according to an affidavit accompanying the warrant.

"Celis is rumored to be associated with questionable criminal element (sic) possibly related to drug trafficking," the affidavit states.

The affidavit, by Captain Alex Pena of the Attorney General's Office, states that Pena "believes that Mauricio Celis has committed the felony offense of money laundering."

A document the state obtained from Frost Bank showed a joint account signed by Celis and Raul Armando Winder, a Mexican citizen and former police officer who has been employed as a pilot by individuals linked to narcotic trafficking, according to the affidavit. The account was for a business called Pegasus Air Services, which Celis owned from 2002-05, according to the Texas Secretary of State. Winder is listed as vice president on the bank application.

Do you want to say "Hsu Who?" or shall I?  How about how "Celis" rhymes with "sell us"?  And how long until he disappears down the Enemy Media midden hole just like good ol' Norm?

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After making a conspicuous public showing of burying the hatchet over Barack Obama's making a mountain out of Mrs. Clinton's molehile of a comment about Martin Luther King, LBJ, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the eventual Donk vice presidential nominee learned once again that Her Nib doesn't get mad, she gets even:

Barack Obama is a member of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan.

Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan "epitomized greatness." For most Americans, though, Farrakhan epitomizes racism, particularly in the form of anti-Semitism. Over the years, he has compiled an awesome record of offensive statements, even denigrating the Holocaust by falsely attributing it to Jewish cooperation with Hitler - "They helped him get the Third Reich on the road." His history is a rancid stew of lies.

It's important to state right off that nothing in Obama's record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan. Instead, as Obama's top campaign aide, David Axelrod, points out, Obama often has said that he and his minister sometimes disagree. Farrakhan, Axelrod told me, is one of those instances.

In this column, Richard Cohen does acknowledge that Senator Obama doesn't share Reverend Wright's fanship of the infamously anti-Semitic, de facto Islamist Calypso Louis.  Which, of course, raises the question of why he writes this piece at all, if not to try and somehow hold B.O. accountable for his pastor's views.

It's also technically true that this is an(other) example of a Clintonoid lashing out at his mistress' chief rival for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination, rather than the campaign itself doing it.  But that's Clinton SOP, and follows previous examples such as....

Billy Shaheen explicitly suggest[ing] that Barack Obama may have dealt drugs without any evidence supporting that allegation. BET chief Robert Johnson allud[ing] to Obama's admitted drug use as a teenager to suggest something similar. Both of them had direct ties to Hillary's campaign, which made Hillary responsible for their behavior.

As massive retaliation goes, this salvo fizzled, to euphemize generously.  Senator Obama's designedly public criticism of Farrakhan today only underscored the proxy attack's more or less total ineffectiveness, as well as providing a small PR boon to the Generalissimo as well.

Of course, it could also be the case that this was precisely the Clintonoids' intention, in the long-term interest of grooming him as Hillary's running mate.  Given the concerns expressed by some about Muslim aspects of Obama's upbringing and how his failure to embrace Islam may generate hostility against him in the Arab world were he to eventually become president, this could have been a contrived PR "innoculation" against those potential liabilities.

A tad conspiracist, perhaps.  But with the Clintons, oftentimes convoluted plots are the only things that make explanatory sense.

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In their most recent advertising campaign, Burger King stopped selling Whoppers at one of their restaurants (in Las Vegas, Nevada, I believe) for a day, and captured patrons' incredulous responses on hidden cameras.

I don't know how successful BK has been with this gimmick, but it does settle one question: the Clinton Machine is now officially the home of the whopper:

Bill Clinton, who carried Nevada in two general elections, urged voters Tuesday to buck labor endorsements for Senator Barack Obama and support his wife in Saturday's hotly contested presidential caucuses as the only Democratic candidate with the experience necessary to change the country.

The former president trumpeted New York Senator Hillary Clinton's accomplishments while painting Obama as the "establishment" candidate who would bring only the "feeling of change."

"One candidate says you should vote for me because I've not been involved at all in the struggles of the past and therefore we need to turn over a new leaf and (try) something absolutely new. And if you want the feeling of change, then that is the person you should support," Clinton said in a 75-minute speech to about 300 people in a YMCA gymnasium.

"The other candidate says vote for me because I spent a lifetime making change, raising hopes and fulfilling dreams for other people," he said about the former first lady.

Didja get all that?  Nevada Donks should vote for Hillary because she has more experience (her eight years as The Power Behind The Throne even more than her seven years in the Senate), but it's the callow rookie Barack Obama who's the "establishment" candidate.  Anybody who can follow that Byzantine "logic," stand on your head.

One could make the argument that the Queen of Mean is far more of an "establishment" candidate than the at-the-time unknown Mr. Bill was in his first White House run sixteen years ago.  One could also make the argument that, having been governor of Arkansas for a decade, he had more relevant experience for the job than either his wife or B.O. have now (a little factoid that David Broder appears to have just discovered).

On the other hand, one can make the argument, as George Neumeyr does, that both Clintons are, you should pardon the expression, pond scum:

The Clintons, having bred their own PC destroyers, now scramble to use the bluntest weapons possible against them.

The low tactics are beyond parody. For example, the Clintons' planned MLK weekend festivities include trying to disenfranchise black culinary workers by encouraging a lawsuit against them for holding caucuses at their place of business. (Noting this irony on television, the head of Nevada's Culinary Union said the suit is nothing more than payback for its endorsement of Obama.)

"Count every vote"?  Not if any of them aren't going to Hillary, it seems.  Concludes Mr. Neumeyr:

The most formative period in the Clintons' lives were the 1960s -- years of fairy tales, drug use, and empty eloquence. But at the end of their march they find before the final door an incarnation of the dream which they must destroy in order to enter it. The essential egotism of their project from the beginning is exposed for all to see: raw power, not idealistic principle, fueled it, and it is altogether fitting that these icons of a destructive generation choose as their last victim one who embodies its best hopes.

No one is more authoritarian than a successful revolutionary, to which this most corrupt couple in American political history provides vivid proof, displaying an ugliness greater than that of the establishment figures they overthrew.

Which, in turn, makes the unaccustomedly meager results of their trademark "ugly tactics" that much more remarkable.  I mean, for heaven's sake, Sick Willie - Mr. Donk Rock Star himself - actually lost his audience at a recent campaign appearance, and even drew a smattering of boos.  If he's jumping the shark, what's that say for his wife's PR viability?

But then again, she doesn't need viability, because she's already got power.  The Clintons own the Democrat Party, lock, stock, and barrel.  Sure, they purchased it with everybody else's money, but they own it nonetheless.  And besides, Barack Obama isn't really any different from them; he's demanding that they turn the whole shebang over to him like the proverbial passing of the baton.  She's just trying to beat him over the head with it like an old lady trying to swat a bee with a broomhandle.

Gotta make sure the lad knows his place before bequeathing him the privileged role of heir apparent, after all.

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And yet the Empress, running functionally unopposed in Michigan, outpolled "Uncommitted" by only 56%-41%, underperforming across the demographic board according to exit polls.  It's probably no coincidence that Obama (and Opie Edwards) poured a lot of resources into the "Uncommitted" campaign to drive down Senator Clinton's numbers and embarrass her.

Will that, plus the fallout from the Clinton Machine's minority-vote suppression (and anti-union!) efforts damage her chances in Nevada this Saturday?  The current polling composite is Rodham 32.5%, Obama 32.0%, Edwards 27.0%, versus Rodham 39.5%, Obama 22.0%, Edwards 11.5% a month ago.  Sixteen and a half points in a month could certainly be considered a "collapse."  In South Carolina she trails B.O. 42.3%-32.8%, but in Florida it's still a Hillary blowout (48.6%-30.2%).  And she figures to have the advantage in most of the February 5th states.

Bottom line?  Just what I've been saying: Obama can't beat Mrs. Clinton, but he can fight her all the way to Denver this summer and signficantly weaken her.  Given the weakness she's already showing amongst minority voters (70% of black voters in Michigan chose "Uncommitted"), it will become abundantly clear (I'm sure it already has behind the scenes) that she'll be far stronger in the fall with Obama on the ticket than snubbed and sniping from the sidelines.  Or, as another old saying goes, "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

Not that Hillary wouldn't blow out whichever poor bastard emerges from the Republican side in November in any case.  But anybody who thinks that this woman is going to leave anything about her lifelong ambition to chance simply has not been paying attention.

UPDATE: Speaking of Sick Willie jumping the shark, did you ever think you'd see the day that the media master himself would go postal on a reporter?:

During a campaign stop for his wife in Oakland a day earlier, Clinton became visibly annoyed when KGO-TV reporter Mark Mathews asked him whether Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign should take a stronger stand against a union's lawsuit to keep casino workers from caucusing at special precincts in Nevada.

"I had nothing to do with that lawsuit and you know it," said Bill Clinton, who had been in the Bay Area talking to residents and real estate professionals about home foreclosures.

"Get on your television station and say, 'I don't care about the home mortgage crisis,'" he berated Mathews.

My, my, my.  Talk about a Freudian slip.  The axiom "Methinks thou dost protest too much" comes to mind.  It's so unlike Mr. Bill to answer a question that hasn't been asked.  It is, however, completely like him to assume that every question has to be about him.  In this case, it has produced a sardonic convergence that must have the Clintonoids ordering several additional pallets of Tums and Alka-Seltzer.

The fact that a Nevada judge today threw out the anti-worker, minority-vote-supressing lawsuit probably isn't doing much for Boris & Natasha's dyspepsia, either.

Maybe we should start a pool to estimate how long it will be before some Clintonoid, or the campaign, or even the power-mad couple themselves, slips and utters the "n-word" in the same vicinity as the name "Barack Obama".  If the ebony JFK takes Nevada and South Carolina, that betting line may move toward even money.