I feel compassion for Chelsea and what both her parents have put her through, especially her father. It's too bad they want to put her front and center in the political world.

I had to privilege to hear Chelsea Clinton speak at the DPO platform convention today in Eugene. Those in attendence (or at least those I overheard and/or talked to) all could agree, despite their chosen candidate in the primary, that Chelsea is, well, very smart. She was funny and self-depricating. In Eugene she was passionate, perhaps by the time she made her way up I5 to Portland she was a bit tired and the passion didn't shine through. Hillary Clinton was on Jay Leno the other night and when asked by Leno about Chelsea's recent remark that she felt her Mom would actually be a better President that her Dad - Hillary smiled and said, "Well, Chelsea is a very intelligent young woman."

The hopes and dreams of many women around the country are coming true with the Hillary Clinton campaign. To suggest that the mere fact of being able to vote for the first female President is not hopeful just doesn't seem right to me.

Everytime I hear Chelsea speak I'm always impressed with how well spoken and intelligent she is. I'm not suprised at her refusal to do media interviews, I recall how well the media treated her throughout her early teen years.

Since someone mentioned Jay Leno it reminded me of why I quit watching him years ago, the night he built his opening monologue around the "homliness of the first daughter" was enough for me.

I found this narrative of her appearance pretty laughable. The authors biggest complaint is that she wasn't lively enough, unlike the great speech reading Obama's.

I was also at the PSU event for Chelsea and you're not the "lone Obama supporter" in there. I'm supporting Obama as well. I'm a political guy, so I'll go to just about any political event...especially one by Chelsea, as my path has crossed hers once before but I never got a chance to talk with her. Tonight I did, which was cool.

The thing that most impressed me about her is that she has a command of facts and can speak at length on a number of topics in a way that I've yet to hear Bush speak. The way Chelsea has turned out speaks volumes about the Clinton's as parents. For all the talk of "family values" that Republicans focused on in the 1990s, it shows the difference between talking versus action. Given a choice to hear a speech between Chelsea or both of the Bush twins, I'd choose Chelsea any day. She's articulate, smart, funny, and engaging.

FACT: Chelsea is not being forced to campaign for her mother.......she does so because she truly believes that her mother is the best candidate for the nomination and she truly believes she CAN win. Chelsea is adorable and she is steadfast in her convictions to help her mother to PA. Ave. She is the kind of daughter that any mother would be proud to have.Do not insult her with ignorant questions......she is far to BRILLIANT to waste her time on those.

It's too bad they want to put her front and center in the political world.

You do realize that she is a grown woman don't you?

I have serious doubt that you will do half as good as Chelsea if you were in the same position as her. Considering your age compared to her, that said something a lot of how extraordinary is Chelsea.

Chelsea hasn't done anything extraordinary. She was well trained to speak in front of a crowd from a script, but that's a trick. Anybody with enough practice can do that. What has she done for anybody? She made a lot of money through jobs that her parents supporters gave her, nothing wrong with that. But that's it. What has she offered to the world?

I also heard Chelsea at PSU, I was pretty much leaning towards Obama, b/c many of my friends were, but now all my friends, who went to the event to see if Chelsea would mess up, are REALLY impressed with her.

Now, I and my friends aren't so commited to Obama anymore, especially after Obama dissed my small-town grandparents with HIS "BITTER" COMMENTS...I mean com'on....and this Obama wants to be president??? Show some class dude!!! don't go around insulting people!

Sam said:

I also heard Chelsea at PSU, I was pretty much leaning towards Obama, b/c many of my friends were, but now all my friends, who went to the event to see if Chelsea would mess up, are REALLY impressed with her.

Now, I and my friends aren't so commited to Obama anymore, especially after Obama dissed my small-town grandparents with HIS "BITTER" COMMENTS...I mean com'on....and this Obama wants to be president??? Show some class dude!!! don't go around insulting people!"

So this is the crime of the century, saying that a lot of people in the so-called rust-belt are bitter? And now we have Hillary to the rescue, touting herself as a hunter. (I guess supporting the Iraq War wasn't enough.)

Can someone please wake me when we have a Democratic Party that is progressive, and not just a poor-man's Republican Party that is poised to win Presidential elections every 12 years or so. Frankly, the real beneficiary of the Clinton campaign is John McCain, who gets closer to the White House with every Clinton-manufactured Obama-scandal, but if you're more offended by someone saying that people are bitter than by someone lying or advocating unnecessary killing, then you might as well vote for McCain anyway. At least the guy is more honest than Bill and Hillary.

Sam said:

I also heard Chelsea at PSU, I was pretty much leaning towards Obama, b/c many of my friends were, but now all my friends, who went to the event to see if Chelsea would mess up, are REALLY impressed with her.

Now, I and my friends aren't so commited to Obama anymore, especially after Obama dissed my small-town grandparents with HIS "BITTER" COMMENTS...I mean com'on....and this Obama wants to be president??? Show some class dude!!! don't go around insulting people!"

So this is the crime of the century, saying that a lot of people in the so-called rust-belt are bitter? And now we have Hillary to the rescue, touting herself as a hunter. (I guess supporting the Iraq War wasn't enough.)

Can someone please wake me when we have a Democratic Party that is progressive, and not just a poor-man's Republican Party that is poised to win Presidential elections every 12 years or so. Frankly, the real beneficiary of the Clinton campaign is John McCain, who gets closer to the White House with every Clinton-manufactured Obama-scandal, but if you're more offended by someone saying that people are bitter than by someone lying or advocating unnecessary killing, then you might as well vote for McCain anyway. At least the guy is more honest than Bill and Hillary.

I feel compassion for Chelsea and what both her parents have put her through, especially her father.

All parents do the best they can, and all parents screw up. It is an immutable rule.

Mr. Barnhart's piece is a breath of fresh air. It's nice to read a post by another Obama supporter who demonstrates how to be respectful to the "opposition" candidate. Either Obama or Clinton is going to be the nominee, folks, so let's quit eviscerating fellow Democrats who happen not to support the same candidate that you do.

It's really something what Clinton, someone who is a living model of elitism starting with her belief that the nomination was hers and no one had the right to challenger her, has become. The latest little slimeball tactic about Obama's comment, which was anything but elitist when read in it's full context:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Clinton has slimed herself to a new low by taken a page out of Rove's play book. To deflect legitimate charges of being an elitist, Clinton and her morally corrupt campaign took a comment out of context, and context in which a true statement demonstrated compassion and understanding, and then twisted the meaning of "elitist".

Chelsea's ultimate lack of character is that she did not have the personal moral integrity to say that Obama had been taken out of context. But that's because her mother's campaign has been devoid of any trace of moral leadership. Instead she --- who in the ultimate act of true elitism voted to send poor and minority kids to a war that she knew her privileged, Oxford-educated daughter would never have to fight --- lashes out at anything that would show her for the grasping, venal, power-lusting politician.

Here's a profile of Chelsea in New York Magazine that I think says all that needs to be said why it is elitist to talk about her as anything more or less than as just another hack member of the Clinton grasp for power: http://nymag.com/news/features/44454/index1.htm.
By the way, Stanford and Oxford educated Chelsea has put herself out there as a lead political surrogate for her mother, but she refuses to condescend to speak to anyone in the press who, whether we like it or not, is the only surrogate we have on the campaign trail. Textbook calculating Reagan, Rove, and Shrub elitism.

By the way, in this article take note of her career choices: First McKinsey & Co, a management consulting firm to corporate American where she started at $120K plus signing bonus and is reported to have specialized in "financial-services consulting as well as advising businesses in the health-care and pharmaceutical fields". Then she went to Avenue Capital a hedge fund that says it has a little over 300 employees and just got a $2bil investment from Morgan Stanley. (In February, despite her six-figure salary she famously tried to make political points for her mom by whining about how bad her health insurance plan is http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0208/Note_to_Avenue_Capital.html).
For those who don't know hedge funds are financial predators who manage the money for the true elite. They look for apparent disparities in valuations between different equities and make trades to funnel that money into the pocket of their most well-healed of the well-healed investors. It is that kind of attitude towards our society that is responsible for what Obama talked about, and what makes the Clintons the true elitist and hypocrites.

I have nothing profound or even deeply political to say, however I did have a chuckle over (since I am over 30) remembering the "awkward" Chelsea from my past. Chelsea did make an impromptu appearance at last night's Red Dress Party here in Portland (2,000 people all in a red dress - and it's for charity!) and I got the chance to briefly meet her. Awkward Chelsea is LONG gone. In her place is an attractive and self-confident woman. And good for her for stopping by such an alternative, crazy event and showing some support.

Sister Krissy, I think you have just delivered a scoop. Chelsea Clinton, representing her mother's campaign, went to the RED DRESS PARTY! How cool is that!

For the love of Darcelle, would the Clinton campaign please start posting some of this news so we don't have to read about it in anti-Hillary accounts on BlueOregon!?! And maybe the Obama people could show a little class by allowing Clinton people to post on Clinton visits.

Can't help but noting that we wouldn't even need the Red Dress Ball if the pro-corporate social welfare and health care policies of Bill and Hillary hadn't just continued us on the path that started with the election of 1980 so that we have ended up with exactly the kind of working class reactionarism Obama talked about (A reactionarism I venture to say that many attendees at the Red Dress Ball look down their genuinely elitist noses at if they don't slam Clinton for taking Obama's comments out of context).

So the only important question to me is whether PDXers think the superficiality and elitism of theatre like the Red Dress Ball is actually more important than the substance of holding elitist candidates like the Clintons accountable for their significant role in the actual conditions giving rise to the need?

And maybe the Obama people could show a little class by allowing Clinton people to post on Clinton visits.

Yea, if only the Clintons were a class act rather than just classless McCain-lite.

And just so some jerk doesn't take what I said out of context about the Red Dress Ball like Clinton did with Obama: There currently is a need for the Red Dress Ball and fundraising events like this, and those who put it on and do it deserve credit for that portion of what they do that meets that need.

The question is whether we and they wouldn't actually be doing more for the people the Red Dress Ball and other private fundraising events help if we focused on holding politicians accountable so there is much less need for those events. Or do people get actually get more personal strokes out of the public approval and among their elitist class peers for their role in such high visibility private fundraising activities (the research evidence strongly suggests this is the case), than the hard and much less visible work of actually reducing the need for this kind of private entrepreneurial "charity" of rebuilding our public institutions. The latter starts with rejecting the kind of self-serving pols who've been committed to tearing them down since 1980 no matter how much they and their campaigners show up for the spectacle of these kind of private fundraising events.

Those personal strokes come at a cost, and the evidence of the last 3 decades is now irrefutable that it comes at the cost of dramatically increasing the actual needs of those who supposedly are being served.

I watched a piece several months ago on PBS with a hisorical biographer that writes on the children of presidents-can't remember her name-but she said of all the previous presidents children-chelsea was the most well rounded,intelligent, thoughtful and she said-"no matter what you think of the Clintons, they did a wonderful job of raising a child".

This am on Meet the Press, the republicans were so gleeful, they could barely contain their celebration over Obamas "small town bitter americans" He said it-now he has to own it and so do you-don't insult us twice by trying to make us swallow it twice with your posts, if you want to be credible-quit blaming Hillary for his mistakes. He calls middle class working people having a tough time-bitter-She called them frustrated and angry but optomistic-she understands america more clearly. And what she said in the article about guns was" my Dad was a hunter and taught me how to shoot..Which is the way of life growing up in small town america...I also learned how to shoot as a girl that grew up in an Oregon town of 529-where i learned small town values-like helping your neighbor,looking out for each other, never knowing the meaning of fear, yes opportunities were less, I don't remember people feeling bitter, they were all working at blue collar jobs to try to send their kids to college to have a better life, Obama sees this thru the eyes of the black community where Bitterness is what they feel they live in the events of the past, and guns, religion,race hating are an expession of that bitterness

Of Course not-I meant to include you too!!!! It was in the context of the conversation I know plenty of white, pink and blue people who are just plain Bitter people and plenty of them are wealthy-it's not a product of having less, In the black community, it is generational, as Obama said-and no-not all blacks feel that way_Bill Cosby was attacked verbally from the black community for suggesting the community move out of the past so they could be a part of the future....If you live in, the past nursing grevienceses you will become bitter, if its about your ex,your job ect I'm saying Obama projects the way blacks feel and react onto small town america-and we in general see it different

No I said it right -you just want to take it in a different way-to turn every disagreement or critisism of Obama as a racisist comment-Its a right brain left brain thing-a closed mind is a thing of beauty--I thought Obamas candidacy and the Rev Wright conterversy was supposed to open dialogue on the issue, guess you missed that part of his speech

and by the way if you want to quote me continue with the rest of the sentance: " and quit blaming Hillary for his mistakes"

Sandra, as someone whose entire extended family grew up in small town America, and who is in a position to know exactly how Obama's statements are in fact empathizing with working people who have been dumped on by Republicans and the elitist Clinton DLC Democrats, you really are a piece of work. Your efforts to spin this anyway except as one time Goldwater Girl and WalMart boardmember Clinton taking remarks out of context --- textbook Rovian tactics --- IS the story and yet another desperate effort by Clinton and "supporters" like you to sleazily spin things really has reached the point of being embarrassing to watch.

No one is twisting your words, they are just not buying into your ineffectual attempt to discredit them because they do not see things in the truly distorted way that you do. You yourself are doing nothing here but employing the most elementary propaganda tactics of simply repeating unfactual and counterfactual accusations to delude people into believing they are fact by simply repeating them. Throwing in meaningless pseudo-scientific comments about left-versus-right brain again demonstrates the the condescending attitude of the Clinton and supposed supporters have towards the rest of us, which is the real nature of elitism,

At this point, you have managed to only convince me that you may not even support Clinton. You may just want to further her Republican-style divisive tactics, and subtle racism, to weaken Obama. I am optimistic the rest of America, and particularly average folks who well understood Obama was saying he knows they've been ignored and left behind by self-serving, pro-corporate Republicans and the corrupt Clinton faction of our party, and in that knowing lies the beginning of at least the hope for change.

Clinton just wants to continue to drive working people down by doing things like taking even more money from us and giving it to private health insurance companies because she lacks the concern and the ability to actually do the right thing, like getting out front to build a public health insurance system. At least if Obama is not going to do something as principled as taking the lead in building things like a public health insurance system and restoring a public education system, he's not going to be complicit in shaking us down for the private health insurance industry.

Sandra:

"I also learned how to shoot as a girl that grew up in an Oregon town of 529-where i learned small town values-like helping your neighbor,looking out for each other, never knowing the meaning of fear, yes opportunities were less, I don't remember people feeling bitter"

*** That must have been pre-NAFTA, and other blue-collar job export programs, right? Please check your calendar... we're now in the 21st Century and things are a little different now.

Awkward Chelsea is LONG gone. In her place is an attractive and self-confident woman.

Perhaps showing Bill and Hillary didn't do so bad afterall.

t a Barnhart....Great save. Too bad he didn't say that in the first place. He had to wait until one of his speech writers gave him the right words. Obama gives a great speech using someone else's words. He doesn't too well when he has to think for himself.

Why has a post about Chelsea Clinton turned into yet one more mud-slinging match between supporters of the Clinton and Obama campaigns?

Geez Louise.

Perhaps someone ought to locate and then link to Rush Limbaugh comparing Chelsea Clinton to the White House dog, because the tone of the "debate" here is heading that direction anyway.