Obama’s Diary

No matter what happens in the voting today in Pennsylvania, it ain’t over until the fat lady cries. The fat lady is Hillary. She cries when I win.

The last Democratic primary elections are in Montana and South Dakota in June. By then I will have more delegates pledged to me than Hillary. I will have won more of the popular vote and more states. It is likely that I will have more SuperDelegates pledged to me than to Hillary.

Then it will be time for the fat lady to sing. And eat some crow. I’ll be at the convention just so I can watch her do both at the same time.

Eating crow and singing at the same time. Hillary is one talented woman.

Hillary Clinton is something else. Now she accuses me of being a sympathizer of terrorists because I know a terrorist.

William Ayres was a Weather Underground terrorist in the 1960s. A bomb blew up. People died. He and his wife were on the run for a decade or so before going legitimate. I served on a charity when he was director seven or eight years ago. That’s about all I know of the man.

So what does Hillary do? She says I’m a terrorist sympathizer. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t sympathize with Hillary at all.

Ayres is an aging, over-the-hill, hippie college professor whose last hurrah was in the late 1960s. I was born in 1961. If I’m not mistaken it was President Bill Clinton who commuted the sentences of two other Weather Underground members.

I should have mentioned that during the debate but I forgot.

I cannot be the only politician in Washington, D.C. who has had enough of polls. Numbers go up, numbers go down. It’s about time that pollsters looked for work elsewhere.

My case in point is a recent poll which shows John McCain even with me in a national poll. The only problem there is that Americans don’t vote nationally. We vote in neighborhoods, then state-by-state, so a national vote total, even in a poll is meaningless.

Ask Al Gore what he thinks about winning the popular vote over George W. Bush. Gore did alright. Nobel. Oscar. Emmy. Bush? Worst. President. Ever.

Polls don’t tell the real story. For example, most polls show that I’m closing the gap on Senator Clinton in Pennsylvania. In reality, I’ll get beat pretty badly there. Too many white folks. We’ve already started to tone down the expectations. Indiana is up for grabs but North Carolina is mine for the taking. If you believe the polls.

Once I’m President I’ll ask congress to forbid polls within six months of an election. Let the voters decide on their own who to elect. Within six months of any election, federal, state or local, no polling.

Hillary doesn’t know it, but she’s doing me a big favor with her latest round of attacks. She’s doing what the Republicans will do in the general election this fall– try to beat me up. 

It won’t work with Hillary. It won’t work with John McCain.

Still, I had to laugh when I saw Hillary packing a six gun at a campaign rally, just so she could get on the good side of gun owners. Hillary probably believes that people kill people, not guns. She drank a beer, too. Then the bartender challenged her to a shot– she grabbed a glass of whiskey and tossed it down like Annie Oakley.

Hillary didn’t even know she was drinking Canadian whiskey. She just doesn’t know her whiskey like I know whiskey.

This campaign is entering the final days of silly season. It’s politics as usual for the usual characters in politics. Sometimes I wonder why I chose this profession. Hanging around people who lie, cheat, and steal for a living cannot be good for the soul.

So the Clinton’s are worth $100-million? That’s only the amount they’re telling us they’ve earned. They are probably worth more. Hillary will get another book deal or two, and both will go on the speaking tour and earn millions more.

I thought Michelle and I were doing well, having earned a few hundred thousand a year each for the past few years. That’s chump change compared to what the Clinton’s are knocking down. What does that $100-million announcement say? What’s between the lines?

Hillary and Bill know how to make money. After all, they presided over the strongest and longest prosperous economy in the country’s history. Clinton and Gore actually balanced the budget, something Republicans haven’t done since, well, have they ever done it?

I scratched Hillary from my Vice President list a few months ago. She’s back on the list. Anyone who knows how to make that kind of money in a few short years is deserving of a chance to help right the wrongs promulgated by the Bush Administration.

Suddenly, Obama-Clinton has a nice ring to it. Cha-ching!

I just got a call from Mark Penn, one of the campaign strategists on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He wants to defect. 

That would be a crushing blow for Senator Clinton, a trusted insider calls it quits and heads to the other side. I’m not so sure that’s such a good idea. First, it could be a Trojan Horse. Maybe Mark Penn just wants to find out what we’re doing, how we do it. Like I really know. Michelle handles all the campaign strategy. David Plouffe just checks items off her daily do list. It’s really that easy.

Second, why would I want Mark Penn to work on my staff? I had to tell my staffers to consider what he did with Senator Clinton’s campaign for President. A few months ago Clinton was leading everyone by 20-points. Her campaign, under Mark Penn, can’t raise money as fast as it gets spent. Clinton is losing delegates left and right. Sure, she won some of the bigger states but that’s because her husband is so popular there.

I think we’ll tell Mark that we’ll consider his offer, then we’ll get back to him. Soon.

Maybe even before the election.

I asked Claire McCaskill to start working on lowering expectations for the Pennsylvania Primary. We have a couple of weeks to go before the election and I am closing the gap between me and Hillary Clinton, but not enough to matter.

Expectations are a wonderful thing. If you expect to win big and you win little, then expectations are not met. If you expect to lose big, and lose by a little, then expectations are exceeded. It’s funny how that works.

Claire is very good at setting expectations the way we expect. She comes across as sincere and authoritative, she’s partisan but everyone can identify with her, so she has unmistakable credibility. I like that in a woman. She’s also blonde and white.

I raised over $55-million in February, so there was disappointment when I only raised $40-million in March. Senator Clinton raised a mere $20-million, barely half what she raised in February. The expectation for raising more money was higher, so neither of us met expectations.

What happened? The press thinks it’s fallout from Pastor Wright’s racist comments. How does that explain Hillary’s drop in fundraising?