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There was a strange mixture of stalwart support and utter abandonment at U.S. Rep. William Jefferson's election party Saturday night as the indicted congressman claimed a primary victory in his 10th election campaign for the 2nd District seat. The party was at Flavorz by Mattie, a little-known restaurant in an eastern New Orleans neighborhood ravaged by the post-Katrina jack-o'-lantern effect. The room was half empty, with only about 35 supporters and family cheering on Jefferson and eating a late dinner of jambalaya and croissant sandwiches. There were no big political names in the crowd. Supporters appeared to be outnumbered by...

More relevant are the baroque delegate rules and strong-arm tactics that helped him to victory. A recent Associated Press story glibly proclaimed that “deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House.” The story relied on an AP-Yahoo poll that posed questions regarding race to white Democrats. One is left to wonder why questions regarding race were not posed to black Democrats ... It’s quite troubling, really, that mainstream media outlets are focusing upon “racial misgivings” factors, while all but ignoring the major divides among voting constituencies that occurred during the nominating contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama....

NASHVILLE - The Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee has voted to declare state Sen. Rosalind Kurita's thin primary victory invalid. The panel voted 33-11 on Saturday to declare Kurita's 19-vote August victory "incurably uncertain" after her opponent, Clarksville attorney Tim Barnes, alleged heavy Republican interference in the Democratic nominating contest. A joint convention of the Democratic executive committees in Cheatham, Houston and Montgomery counties will now determine who the nominee will be. There is no Republican running in the general election. Barnes' candidacy was boosted by Democrats who were upset that Kurita helped unseat John Wilder, a Mason Democrat, from...

Just before the big summer hiatus, I wrote this column for National Review, which we never got around to posting on line. Its observations about the weakness of the Obama candidacy still seem relevant: The conventional wisdom on the Clintons was promulgated by my then senator, Bob Smith of New Hampshire, back at the end of the impeachment trial. “He’s won,”' said Senator Smith, after dutifully if vainly casting his vote to nail Slick Willie’s puffy butt. “He always wins. Let’s move on.” They won through the Nineties. The Clintons’ Democratic Party was great for the Clintons, lousy for the...

"We believe that the The Democratic National Committee (DNC) made a grave error by depriving American voters of their choice of Hillary Clinton as Democratic nominee. Senator Clinton, by all accounts, except caucuses, won the Primary Election and, therefore, should be the 2008 Democratic Nominee. That didn't happen, due largely to illegitimate and illegal acts. . . . This documentary is about the disenfranchising of American citizens by the Democratic Party and the Obama Campaign. . . . We want to be heard and let the country know how our party has sanctioned the actions of what we feel are...

Posted on Sat, Sep. 6, 2008 Biden gets mixed welcome in Northeast Local Dem leaders say race is issue for many voters By DAVE DAVIES Philadelphia Daily News daviesd@phillynews.com 215-854-2595 DEMOCRATIC vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden went stumping for votes yesterday in Northeast Philadelphia, where Democrats need to earn the love of Democrats who voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the April primary. He worked a diner, gave a rousing speech on bread-and-butter issues at a union hall, and reeled off a memorable line tying the Republican candidate to the unpopular team in the White House. "My friend...

All eyes will be on former presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton when she speaks tonight at the Democratic National Convention. Clinton's every word, inflection and facial expression will be dissected. The world will also be looking at what she's wearing. Specifically, what color pantsuit will the New York senator pull out of her closet for this crucial speech?

A Look Back at Hillary's Year in Pantsuits Glamour Magazine Salutes Hillary Clinton's Rainbow Coalition of Pantsuits By JONANN BRADY Aug. 26, 2008 — All eyes will be on former presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton when she speaks tonight at the Democratic National Convention. Clinton's every word, inflection and facial expression will be dissected. The world will also be looking at what she's wearing. Specifically, what color pantsuit will the New York senator pull out of her closet for this crucial speech?

Excerpt - In May 2006, Clinton herself had interviewed another experienced campaign consultant, Steve Hildebrand, but had turned him down. The time was not right. And she had plenty of time. But it would prove to be a costly mistake. A few months later, Steve Hildebrand would play a key role in persuading Barack Obama to run for president. Hillary still was not worried. She would put together a great campaign team, a Dream Team. It did not turn out that way. “Happy families are alike,” Leo Tolstoy famously wrote. “Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Party leaders want to regain control of the primary calendar and reduce the number of superdelegates through a new commission announced Wednesday. They also want to review the caucus system, which presumed nominee Barack Obama used so successfully this year. The commission would work over the next year and make recommendations by January 2010

Deal: Clinton's Name Will Be Placed in Nomination at Dems Convention August 14, 2008 11:09 AM ABC News' Kate Snow reports: A deal has been brokered between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that will allow Clinton's name to be placed in nomination at next week's Democratic nominating convention, sources close to the Clinton camp told ABC News. "Both sides agree that it is in the best interest of party unity and making sure that everyone's voice and vote is honored to make sure her name is put into nomination," a person close the negotiations said. "It's to honor everyone...

The result demonstrates that paranoid dysfunction breeds the impulse to hoard. Everything from major strategic plans to bitchy staff e-mail feuds was handed over.

While Obama was spending three hours watching “The Dark Knight” five time zones away, and going to a fund-raiser featuring “Aloha attire” and Hawaiian pupus, Hillary was busy planning her convention. You can almost hear her mind whirring: She’s amazed at how easy it was to snatch Denver away from the Obama saps. Like taking candy from a baby, except Beanpole Guy doesn’t eat candy. In just a couple of weeks, Bill and Hill were able to drag No Drama Obama into a swamp of Clinton drama. Now they’ve made Barry’s convention all about them — their dissatisfaction and revisionism...

Hillary Clinton's former chief political strategist said in a memo during the U.S. presidential primaries she should challenge Barack Obama's American roots. Strategist Mark Penn was the New York senator's chief political adviser until April. In a 2007 memo, Penn said of Obama: All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared toward showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050, CNN reported. Penn wrote that Obama's past exposes a very strong weakness for him, noting that the Illinois senator's roots in America are...

Sen. Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic presidential nominee if John Edwards had been caught in his lie about an extramarital affair and forced out of the race last year, insists a top Clinton campaign aide, making a charge that could exacerbate previously existing tensions between the camps of Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton supporters at Democratic meeting fail in bid to end caucus system The party's platform committee sets aside the caucus amendment, saying the rules committee will deal with it. The new draft party platform is a mixed bag. By Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer August 10, 2008 PITTSBURGH -- Hillary Rodham Clinton loyalists tried Saturday to kill off the caucus system that proved so damaging to her presidential bid, but were beaten back by a Democratic Party leadership firmly under the command of her former rival, Barack Obama. Democrats who supported the New York senator's candidacy pushed to...

A racially charged Democratic primary campaign ended Thursday with an incumbent congressman trouncing the opponent who ran an ad linking him to the Ku Klux Klan. Early, unofficial results showed Democrat Steve Cohen with 79 percent of the vote to 19 percent for Nikki Tinker, a black corporate lawyer who was his chief opponent in the district that covers Memphis.

Will Hillary outsmart Obama and take the nomination at the last minute? Many of us familiar with Hillary Clinton's approach to achieving her goals refused to believe that she ever gave up all hope of winning the nomination and the presidency. Her words and actions on the subject of the convention itself always left the door open for a return, should Obama falter or suffer some calamity.  Her artful evasions were enough to lull journalists and (more importantly) Obama and his supporters into the presumption of inevitability. No further rumblings of a mass protest in Denver should the first black candidate be denied his...

Senator Hillary Clinton asked the question herself on the night of the last primaries in early June: “What does Hillary want?” That’s still a bit of a mystery, particularly as she and Senator Barack Obama negotiate over her role, and possibly that of her husband, at the Democratic convention in Denver and beyond. Mr. Obama has given Mrs. Clinton a speaking role on the Tuesday night of the convention. But she made it clear in a recent chat with supporters — which is now on YouTube — that she is steeped in negotiations over how to salve the wounds...

Will she? Won't she? And what if she does? That poll Matier and Ross published in The Chronicle showing Sen. Dianne Feinstein beating out all the other Democrats hands down in the governor's primary for 2010 is driving all the other wannabe candidates crazy, especially Attorney General Jerry Brown. I know Dianne has talked to at least one person about the governor's race. But she will never say so publicly, because if it got out that she was even "looking" at a possible run for governor, it would be the same as saying that she's in. But trust me, Dianne...