MSNBC or the Matthews Secures Nomination for Barack Campaign Network is hosting the last democratic debate before the Ohio & Texas primaries tonight at 9:00PM eastern. As a special treat I compiled some of the best Matthews moments for the last year to get you revved up for the totally unbiased coverage we are sure to see tonight.
Texas State Senator Kirk Watson and Obama supporter was asked by Chris Matthews to name on of Barack’s legislative accomplishments in the Senate. He didn’t have an answer.
The latest in the Clinton v. Obama saga is a battle over plagarism. Clinton aide Howard Wolfson noted in a conference call claimed that the Senator had taken rhetoric from Obama supporter Gov. Deval Patrick without attribution. A comparison clip of the rhetoric is making its way through YouTube:
Patrick issued a statement to the New York Times defending Obama (noted on CNN):
“Senator Obama and I are long-time friends and allies. We often share ideas about politics, policy and language,” Patrick said in the statement. “The argument in question, on the value of words in the public square, is one about which he and I have spoken frequently before. Given the recent attacks from Senator Clinton, I applaud him responding in just the way he did.”
Patrick also talked to other media outlets, check out The Swamp for more.
Meanwhile Obama himself recognized during a press conference that he should have given credit to Gov. Patrick and also leveled a charge against Clinton saying the NY Senator often takes lines from him. (Update: The Obama camp has released the following list of lifted lines.
In 1988 a similar incident occurred with Senator Joe Biden who plagiarized a speech by British Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock. Biden had correctly attributed the speech, which he delivered with minor changes, on many occasions but video existed and was distributed to reporters by his rival Michael Dukakis’ campaign. The issues ended Biden’s campaign for the presidency.
I found this at Talking Points Memo and it comes with the same caveat I am going to give it to you with. Howard Fineman reported on MSNBC that internal talk within the Obama and Clinton camps believe it is “highly unlikely” she will ever lead with pledged delegates. In fact Fineman calls it “virtually impossible”.
The caveat is that “Fineman is something of a paragon of the mainstream media” as TPM puts it. I will go further and say that when it comes to Clinton and Obama Fineman has been anything but unbiased. Fineman, like many others at MSNBC, is clearly supporting Obama and because of it the “analysis” he gives is not only layered with opinion but has often turned out to be wrong. With that said, like TPM, numbers are different than pure opinion plus Newsweek has a lot of resources and so it might well be true that both camps see a major shift occurring.
Again the ending of Fineman’s comments are a clear attack on Clinton’s hope that superdelegates will sway her way rather than tie themselves to the voting. The delegate information is major news if its true, I just feel bad it has to come from this source and with this much questionable commentary surrounding it. But there you go!
It seriously took me a couple minutes to figure out if this was an actual ad or a spoof or who knows what. Check out Hillary Clinton reaching out to the YouTube generation. Apparently this ad has been around awhile and I haven’t noticed it.
I actually think its a pretty cute ad but probably too little too late. If they had followed up the Soprano’s spoof with a series of these it would have had much more legitimacy.
One thing unified all the candidates last night, they declared victory. Every one of the candidates found something to celebrate and here is what they had to say.
It seems radio host and political powerhouse Rush Limbaugh wasn’t too happy about John McCain’s win in Florida. Limbaugh gave a “non-concession” speech in which he refuted the media idea that conservatives like him are on “the demise”.
“All the candidates on our side, for various reasons, are uninspiring or worse and so just as I predicted the base has fractured. Some going here. Some going there.â€
Is this a sign of overall and potentially growing conservative hostility toward McCain.
“Senator McCain has been able to cobble together enough votes to win in a few states. Fine. He deserves credit for that. But to pretend that Senator McCain is the choice of conservatives when exit poll data from every primary state show just the opposite–he is not the choice of conservatives as opposed to the Republican establishment, and that distinction is key,” the conservative talker said. “The Republican establishment, which has long sought to rid the party of conservative influence since Reagan, is feeling a victory today as well as our friends in the media, but both are just far-fetched and wrong.”