Outside The Marietta Bill Clinton Event
I’m standing outside in the cold waiting on the doors to open for the Marietta Bill Clinton rally. Despite getting here over 90 minutes early there was already a huge line and I seriously doubt I’ll make it inside. It also sounds like Clinton is (not surprisingly) running over an hour behind. I also unthinkingly stuffed my voice recorder in my pocket and worry it’ll be confiscated or that I’ll be denied entry.
To top it all off, the Paul Nazi’s are walking beside the line waving signs.
As an Obama supporter, I’m starting to crack under all the pressure and thinking about giving up.
Doors open at 8:15 (50 minutes).
8:05 Update
I made it inside. There’s no obvious Secret Service (yet) and no metal detectors, just a sign in sheet and plenty of local cops.
Full write-up available here.
February 18th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Glad you made it in. I’ll be interested to see your write-up.
I heard that all of the candidates have been hampered by bad weather. One even reported into a meeting by cell-phone because his plane was delayed (Kennedy?).
February 18th, 2008 at 10:43 am
I hadn’t heard that, but it doesn’t surprise me. Up North they always get hammered with lake effect snow. Down here in the Southeast it was 50 degrees with a little rain in the morning and some strong (but hardly severe) wind gusts in the evening.
I was actually amazed at how early they got there for it being the last stop of the day and how little time they left between events.
February 18th, 2008 at 11:33 am
[...] over the weekend, David of Ohio Valley Politics succeeded in getting into a Bill Clinton event in Marietta, but Lisa Renee was not as lucky with [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I’ve been thinking this through for some time now and I’m pretty certain I’m right about this (as you read me, you’ll find that I rarely say anything that I haven’t thought pretty well through, and refrain from speaking if I do not have a pretty solid rationale for something):
It would be best for the Nation, and the Democratic party if Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee for President in 2008, and Barack Obama in 2016. I know this will hit Obama supporters right between the eyes and stimulate an emotional response, but take a second to think about this and it’s hard not to agree with this point of view. Also, understand, I’m not a Clinton insider of any kind. I haven’t campaigned for her, I haven’t sent her money, I’ve just been in deep thought on this for a few months now.
So, here is what swayed me;
It is clear to me that we need a prolonged period of Democratic rule to fix the various socio-economic structures that are nicked up right now. (I’d just like to point out that I don’t believe I’m understating in saying “nicked up.” For the most part we are still a very strong country and very rich, so we really aren’t in the disaster recovery mode that some make us out to be.) I believe that we need twelve or sixteen years of Democratic balance of power, primarily to clean up corporate (executive pay, rules abuse, outright fraud) and social corruption (abuse of government programs by free-riders and worthless bureaucrats must be included in the clean-up), regain our moral authority in the international community, realign religion with home-life instead of government influence and rebuild the middle class through a comprehensive education initiative at the youngest levels.
Next, it appears to me that the Democrats really do have two good candidates for the first time in a long time. Each has a flaw however. Hillary Clinton’s flaw is the extreme dislike of her from the Evangelical and red-neck right (they like labels, so let’s label). Barack Obama’s flaw is a little more serious, but more fixable; he’s woefully inexperienced, as are his barely tenured advisors. His flaw would likely cause him to lose to McCain in the fall, Hillary’s wouldn’t.
So, how do we solve our little issue between two good candidates, and get the prolonged period of Democratic balance of power. We need to elect Hillary now, and Barack later. We can do it easily by having the ticket be Clinton/Obama (I don’t care if they like each other or not). We can in one fell swoop solve a lot of problems if we run Hillary with Barack as the VP. This would all but guarantee a victory in the fall, and, it would create a presumptive successor to the White House.
http://www.RealWisconsinNews.com