First Door on the Left

No, I’m not talking about George W. Bush’s reaction to Scott McClellan’s book. I’m talking about what you can expect to hear from a lot of Clintonistas in the coming weeks. Perfect example:

Rendell: Clinton ‘Very Unlikely’ To Win

Ed Rendell

Staunch Clinton campaign supporter Gov. Ed Rendell said Wednesday that his favored candidate is “very unlikely” to capture the Democratic nomination, and said that will mean the Democratic Party will nominate the weaker candidate for the fall campaign against Sen. John McCain.

Rendell, D-Pa., told Bloomberg Television that he believes polls that suggest that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is a “far better candidate” than Sen. Barack Obama in swing states. But he added that he’s a “realist” who recognizes that superdelegates are likely to continue to flock to Obama until he clinches the nomination.

“I’m a realist, and I think most likely the superdelegates will give Sen. Obama the votes he needs,” Rendell said. “I don’t think the DNC is going to fairly adjust what happened in Florida. . . . I don’t think they’re going to fairly adjust it. So I think it’s very unlikely that Senator Clinton can prevail. I think that means we’re not going to field our strongest candidate.”[..]

Rendell, who has been discussed a potential running mate for either Clinton or Obama, joked that the fact that he wears a flag pin could make him a good match for Obama.

“I kid around and say I’d be a great running mate for Senator Obama. I wear a flag pin, so [it would] be a balanced ticket,” he said.

Ha ha funny. Especially that last part about the flag pin. Hill-arious. [sic] Click on the good governor’s picture (above) and have a closer look at that pin he is wearing. It doesn’t look like the United States flag I’m familiar with.

I hope Mrs. Clinton’s worshipers can get over their hurt feelings quickly so this kind of ridiculous babble can stop. It’s not doing anybody any good. Except perhaps Johnny McCain. (But maybe that is their intention?)

Too late…

Former press secretary’s book bashes Bush

WASHINGTON (AP) – Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that President Bush relied on an aggressive “political propaganda campaign” instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war, and that the decision to invade pushed Bush’s presidency “terribly off course.’

The Bush White House made “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed” – a time when the nation was on the brink of war, McClellan writes in the book entitled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”

The way Bush managed the Iraq issue “almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option.”

“In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s advantage,” McClellan writes.[..]

McClellan called the Iraq war a “serious strategic blunder,” a surprisingly harsh assessment from the man who was at that time the loyal public voice of the White House who had followed Bush to Washington from Texas.

“The Iraq war was not necessary,” he concludes. “Waging an unnecessary war is a grave mistake.”

McClellan admits that some of his own words from the podium in the White House briefing room turned out to be “badly misguided.” But he says he was sincere at the time.

“When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the president and unable to comment,” he said. “But I promised reporters and the public that I would someday tell the whole story of what I knew.”

The former press secretary – the second of four so far in Bush’s presidency – explained his dramatic shift from loyal defender to fierce critic as a difficult act of personal contrition, a way, he wrote, to learn from his mistakes, be true to his Christian faith and become a better person.

“I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be,” McClellan writes. He also blames the media whose questions he fielded, calling them “complicit enablers” in the White House campaign to manipulate public opinion toward the need for war.

McClellan said Bush loyalists will no doubt continue to think the administration’s decisions have been correct and its unpopularity undeserved. “I’ve become genuinely convinced otherwise,” he said.

The book is scheduled to go on sale June 1.

I’d have been impressed if he had come out with this in 2003 or even early 2004 when it might have done some good. As it is, it only appears that he is trying to save his own skin. He seems to think that, in some way, by writing this book his name will not be associated with the most corrupt and deceitful presidency and administration in American history.

Too late, Scotty. You should have spoken up sooner. What you write may come as a revelation to a few people, but most of us have been aware of the truth for quite a while now. We won’t be wasting our money on your sniveling attempt to save your own soul. Good luck with that, by the way.

P.S. Circle this date on your calendars, kids. Today I actually agreed with something Karl Rove said. That does not happen often.

“If he had these moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them.”

It appears that Hillary Clinton will probably get some, though not all, of what she wants when the Democratic party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meets on Saturday…

Dem lawyers: Fla., Mich. can’t be fully restored

WASHINGTON (AP) – A Democratic Party rules committee has the authority to seat some delegates from Michigan and Florida but not fully restore the two states as Hillary Rodham Clinton wants, according to party lawyers.

Democratic National Committee rules require that the two states lose at least half of their convention delegates for holding elections too early, the party’s legal experts wrote in a 38-page memo.

The memo was sent late Tuesday to the 30 members of the party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which plans to meet Saturday at a Washington hotel. The committee is considering ways to include the two important general election battlegrounds at the nominating convention in August, and the staff analysis says seating half the delegates is “as far as it legally can” go.

Saturday’s meeting is expected to draw a large crowd, with Clinton supporters among those encouraging a protest outside demanding that all the states’ delegates be seated. Proponents of full reseating have mailed committee members Florida oranges and pairs of shoes to get their attention.

There is a lesson to be learned here, kids. You can disregard the rules and, if you scream loudly and often enough, still get most of what you want. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

The question now becomes will the Clintonites be content with what they are given Saturday? Since it’s not going to be enough to get Hillary the nomination, I doubt that they will be. They have the option of appealing the committee’s decision all the way to the convention and it would not surprise me in the least if they do exactly that.