Sunday, June 01, 2008

Clinton Stomps Obama In Puerto Rico

Proving just how little appeal Sen. Barack Obama has among Hispanic voters, Sen. Hillary Clinton is beating Obama by a better than two-to-one margin in the Puerto Rico primary today. The Puerto Rican vote will add at least another 100,000 votes to the 162,000 vote-lead Clinton holds over Obama to date in the popular vote. Clinton should pick up about 35 delegates with today's win, leaving Obama still a few dozen votes short of the 2,118 votes needed to cinch the nomination. Clinton is about 173 votes shy of what she needs to win. Network news observers are saying today that they expect Obama to announce on Tuesday, when voters go to the polls in Montana and South Dakota for the final contests of this primary election season, that he has secured a majority of the votes necessary to win the Democratic nomination.

Pay attention to a developing story in the Democratic race. I've previously reported on Larry Johnson's claim that a videotape exists of Michelle Obama going off on a racist rant against "whitey" at the Trinity Church of Christ, from which she and her husband resigned on Friday. Yesterday, Johnson said on his blog that he expects the story to begin unfolding on Monday. This afternoon, during an interview by Fox News' Geraldo Rivero of GOP political consultant Roger Stone, Stone claimed that he had been contacted by seven news organizations about the tape and that he now believes at least one network news organization has obtained a copy of the videotape. Rivero said he doubted Stone's claim, but he noted that Stone was the first to break the news of Elliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So what time today should we expect the "Whitey" video you have been speaking of for some time now? I have been on the edge of my seat waiting for its release.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Here's what Larry Johnson said today about the "whitey" videotape:

"I learned over the weekend why the Republicans who have seen the tape of Michelle Obama ranting about “whitey” describe it as “STUNNING.” I have not seen it but I have heard from five separate sources who have spoken directly with people who have seen the tape. It features Michelle Obama and Louis Farrakhan. They are sitting on a panel at Jeremiah Wright’s Church when Michelle makes her intemperate remarks. Whoops!! When that image comes out it will enter the politcal ads hall of fame. It will be right up there with the little girl plucking daisy petals in the famous 1964 ad LBJ used against Barry Goldwater."

Gary R. Welsh said...

Apparently, Obama's campaign is denying the existence of the videotape at the same time they are circulating a doctored transcript of it. Larry Johnson writes:

The Obama campaign is telling reporters from major news organizations that the videotape of Michelle Obama railing against “whitey” at a panel alongside Nation of Islam maximum leader Louis Farrakhan is nothing but a “scurrilous lie,” according to one of those reporters who called for an answer.

But at the same time the Obama campaign has disseminated either a doctored or concocted transcript of the supposedly nonexistent videotape. Major Obama donors went to the campaign demanding explanations after the posting of my story on No Quarter about the contents of the videotape confirmed to me by several reliable sources, all Republicans with access to knowledge but who do not know each other.

So the campaign created a would-be transcript of the video it says doesn’t exist. In the Obama campaign produced transcript Michelle says “why’d he” instead of “whitey.” Very clever. Then the campaign sent this transcript to key Obamaton bloggers to circulate. And the campaign sent it to the donors to prevent them from having a nervous breakdown.

In other words, the Obama campaign is a two-faced operation, telling the national press one thing and using eager little bloggers as propaganda stooges. But now they’ve been caught in obvious dirty trickery. Will the press play along? The Obamaton bloggers who happily allowed themselves to be exploited have exposed themselves as just junior media whores.