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In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 18, 2008 / 17 Menachem-Av 5768

The Clinton convention

By Dick Morris & Eileen Mc Gann


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Hillary and Bill have hijacked the Denver convention, making it into a carbon copy of what it would have looked like had she won until the last possible moment. By the time Obama gets up to speak and put his stamp on the convention, Hillary will have had one prime time night all to herself. Bill will have pre-empted a second night. Hillary will have had all the nominating and seconding speeches she wants. And the roll call of the states would record, in graphic detail, how the voters of state after state rejected Obama's candidacy in the primaries. Only then, after three and a half days of all Clinton all the time will the convention then, finally, turn to its nominee and allow him to have an hour in the sun!


And what leverage did the Clintons have to achieve all of this? None! Hillary could not have taken the convention by storm and any show of party disunity would marginalize her forever in the Democratic Party. Had she or her supporters tried to pull off distracting demonstrations or to recreate Lafayette Park in Chicago in 1968, she would have paid a permanent price among the party faithful for sabotaging Obama's candidacy.


This Clintonian tour de force raises a key question about Barack Obama: Is he strong enough to be president or can he be pushed around? His failure to stand up to the Clintons makes one wonder how effective he will be against bin Laden, Iran, Chavez, or Putin.


And now word emerges from the Obama camp that Indiana Senator Evan Bayh is on the short list for vice president. To select Bayh would bring Obama's nemesis, Mark Penn, in through the campaign's back door. Penn and Bayh are an item. Mark's second (and current) wife, Nancy Jacobson was the key fund raiser for the Senator during his Senate campaigns. Penn has always been Bayh's consultant and chief advisor. Penn played the key role in 1996 in getting Bayh a slot as the convention keynote speaker. Bayh has always marched to Mark Penn's tune.


This, of course, the same Mark Penn who structured the vilification of Barack Obama as a marginal American and orchestrated the campaign to summon the white working class in opposition to his candidacy. How much will Obama take?


His weakness, if the face of the Clinton demands coupled with his refusal to debate McCain in the town forum meetings raise the question of whether he is tough when the teleprompter is turned off. Why is he afraid or unwilling to do tough interviews? It is not enough for him to say that he is the front runner and ask why he should risk such confrontations. In case he hasn't noticed, he's not the front runner. The tracking polls all suggest a tied race where taking certain risks would be reasonable, unless his handlers worry about his vulnerability in difficult or extemporaneous situations.


Is an unscripted Obama a pushover? Will foreign leaders conclude that he is not up to the job, just as Khrushchev did with JFK at his 1961 Vienna summit that presaged the Cuban Missile crisis? If he does so poorly in negotiating with the Clintons, how will he do with the Russians?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Fleeced: How Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies ... Are Scamming Us ... and What to Do About It". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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