Campaign shake-ups in Hillaryville – PLUS: Will Obama make age an issue of this campaign? And other news
Here’s a look at what’s being reported and discussed around the ‘sphere:
—- Signs of trouble? The big story of the day is the resignation of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, who is being replaced by former Hillary WH chief of staff Maggie Williams. The WSJ reports that Clinton’s recents losses (as well as her loss in Iowa) were being blamed on mistakes made within the campaign, so perhaps this is the reason that Doyle is “stepping down” (ahem). Doyle will remain a “senior advisor” to the campaign.
Who is Maggie Williams? Arianna Puffington writes about the Williams-Johnny Chung connection here. Let’s also not forget how, according to a Secret Service officer, Williams helped “clean out” Vince Foster’s office after he allegedly killed himself and before his office could be secured by law enforcement.
—- Even with the O-man’s O-mentum as of late, the AP reports that the “super delegate” advantage still belongs to Hillary. Or does it?
—- Sepaking of BO, will he make age an issue of the 2008 campaign? Mark Finkelstein reports on a comment Obama made about McCain’s years of service which could be interpreted a few ways. The jury is out as far as yours truly is concerned on this one, though. It’ll take more than just that one comment to convince me that the O-man plans on exploiting McCain’s age, should the junior Senator from Illinois with three years in the US Senate, a year and a half spent campaigning, be nominated by his party.
—- On top of his string of wins this weekend, comes word that Obama won a Grammy tonight for the audio version of his book The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream.
In the meantime, the cult-like mentality of the “Obamaphiles” continues to be examined – the latest to dive into the phenomenon is The Australian’s Washington correspondent Geoff Elliott, who travelled some with the Obama campaign last week.
The Illinois Review blog calls Obama, “Urkel with a Better Tailor.”
—- Patterico has the details about how LA Times columnist Tim Rutten told a whopper about Dick Cheney’s recent CPAC speech in a column that was published yesterday. This is nothing new, of course, but all the same, should you feel the need to sound off on the column, email the LAT and let them know what you think: ReadersRep@latimes.com.
—- Mike Huckabee is challenging Washington state’s caucus results from yesterday. McCain didn’t even have quite 2% of a lead in yesterday’s caucuses when, with 87.2% of precincts reporting, the GOP state chair announced McCain had won in WA. Stop The ACLU has video of Huckabee on Meet the Press, saying there were some “weird things” going on in WA. Stay tuned …
—- File this under “Well Somebody Had To Do It”: Chez Pazienza defends David Shuster.
—- ST reader Dana Pico makes a pretty convincing case that even though he has benefited from the Bush tax cuts, that he is not, in fact, an evil, wealthy individual.
—- Another ST reader, Karl, has posted video clips of a recent Berkeley City Council meeting that turned into a Bash-the-Marines fest (as you’ll note especially by watching the 4th video). Warning: If you have high blood pressure or heart problems, don’t click on that link.
— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling the Iraq war a “failure” and says there “haven’t been gains” in Iraq as a result of the surge.
—- Last but not least, and to end this post on a positive note, I have been (ashamedly) remiss in not blogging about Tim Blair’s return to blogging. He looks to be recovering well, and is blogging about all sorts of things, as usual, including some that male readers of this blog will sure to get a chuckle out of.