Richardson to Carville: Clintons "Clinging to the Throne"

Gov. Bill Richardson and an antagonistic James Carville traded barbs in a heated discussion on Larry King last night (video above and below the fold). They tangled about the results of the Pennsyvania primary, where the race now stands and what it's doing to the chances for a Dem presidential win.

Richardson was once again highly critical of the negative campaign tactics of Hillary Clinton, and accused the Clintons of "clinging to the throne" instead of facing the realities of the contest at this point in time. You know, we're America, not Monaco," said Richardson, adding, "We've had enough of [the Bush and Clinton] famlies running the country." Carville countered that Richardson's remarks were "idiocy."

Richardson also called into question the Clintons' push to go against the DNC rules that disqualified the primaries in Michigan and Florda -- rules that all the candidates long ago pledged to uphold. "You're changing the rules and this is what I'm saying about the Clinton campaign, they're changing the rules" said Richardson. "And they're basically saying about Obama that he can't win in November when he is obviously the strongest general election candidate winning battleground states and his message with independents, and now the presidency is slipping away and they'll do anything to keep it." Richardson termed the Clinton's attempt to use the Florida and Michigan results to claim they are ahead in the popular vote as "lunacy."

Just for fun, Carville also said the people on the New York Times editorial board "don't know anything about politics" in response to yesterday's editorial that came down hard on Clinton and its use of right-wing framing and tactics to bash Obama.

Carville accused the Obama campaign of "whining" and "namby-pambyism" and then proceeded to whine about the disqualified Florida and Michigan primaries and Obama's reluctance to add two more debates to the 20 that have already been held on the Dem side. The unasked question? Why would Obama want to debate a candidate who can no longer win the nomination via pledged delegates, the popular vote, states won, money raised or any other conventional measure?

The latest twist in the Clinton spin is that more people voted for Hillary than for Obama. The problem? It's blatantly untrue. To concoct their new brag, the Clinton camp eliminates the votes Obama received in the caucus states and adds in her totals from Michigan, where she was the only candidate on the ballot, and Florida, where it's been widely reported her surrogates campaigned for her despite the agreed-to disqualification of the race. Moreover, Clinton's campaign doesn't count any of the votes in those contests that didn't go to her in the totals for Obama.

It's obvious that all the Clintons have left is the weakest of arguments about results, and the hope that the Obama campaign implodes or they can tarnish him enough with Rove-style smears to claim he's "unelectable." Then they can push for the superdelegates to overturn the will of the people.

Richardson called for the winner to be determined after the June 3rd primaries -- based on the pledged delegate count, popular vote, total states won, battleground states won and success with independents. "The worst thing we can do is continue this negativity, this backbiting, these negative ads all the way till August," said Richardson. "The ending if fairly clear, that  Senator Clinton is gonna need 70% of all future delegate votes to even come close. That's not gonna happen," said Richardson.

You can see more of the discussion in the above videos. The first includes some footage from the video at the top of this post, and then continues beyond it. The second continues from there to the end of the discussion.

Technorati Tags:Bill Richardson, James Carville, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, Pennsylvania, primaries, Democrats, Larry King, New York Times