A bipartisan commission looks at the candidates "position papers" and finds:
While campaigns typically snow reporters with white papers and policy minutiae, many of the domestic policy plans of John McCain have been notably short on details.
Analysts caution that both McCain and Barack Obama have produced policy pronouncements that are just as much election documents as workable proposals; after all, that is what presidential candidates do. But when it comes to the metric of paper produced, McCain trails Obama in spelling out the nitty-gritty.
Read the article here. (Though if you've seen McCain actually try to discuss most of his policy proposals, you already
An article in today's Washington Post looks at some problems McCain has been having with defining his campaign:
...they are trying to walk this tightrope between creating distance from Bush and not angering the base," said a Michigan Republican operative who described himself as nervous about McCain's chances of victory in that swing state...Another Republican strategist, who worked for a rival GOP campaign during the primary and has ties to Bush's political team, said the McCain team has "not really figured out" how to present McCain to voters: as an experienced conservative leader or a reformer who wants change..."who John McCain is and what he stands for -- it's a little hard to connect all the dots."
It has indeed become difficult to understand what John McCain stands for:
- He fought the Bush administration on torture, and stated he wanted to close Guantanamo Bay, yet he voted AGAINST banning waterboarding, and called the recent Supreme Court decision establishing limited habeas corpus rights to detainess one of the worst decisions in the America's history (yes, worse than the ones that called slaves property, or that upheld segregation).
- He spoke out for years against the reckless Bush tax cuts, but now wholeheartedly endorses them as the bedrock of his economic plan.
- He was against offshore oil drilling before he was for it.
- He now states that he would not even vote for his own immigration plan, probably because he found that it was not supported by his conservative base.
- He speaks out against lobbyists and "pork" but has turned out to have a staff full of lobbyists. Just one recent instance: McCain had a large role in killing a wasteful government deal with Boeing to develop new planes for refueling. But it has recently been revealed that McCain is also being closely advised by lobbyists for the Boeing competitor that instead received the contract.
And perhaps most importantly, Frank Rich recalls some of McCain's biggest changes in judgment about Iraq:
Mr. McCain’s sorest Achilles’ heel, of course, is his role in facilitating the fiasco in the first place. Someone in his campaign has figured this out. Go to JohnMcCain.com and, hilariously enough, you’ll find a “McCain on Iraq Timeline” that conveniently begins in August 2003, months after “Mission Accomplished.” Vanished into the memory hole are such earlier examples of the McCain Iraq wisdom as “the end is very much in sight” (April 9, 2003) and “there’s not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shiites” (later that same month).
To finesse this embarrassing record, Mr. McCain asks us to believe that the only judgment that matters is who was “right” about the surge, not who was right about our reckless plunge into war. That’s like saying he deserves credit for tossing life preservers to the survivors after encouraging the captain of the Titanic to plow full speed ahead into the iceberg.
Anyhow these are just some flip-flops in what will likely be an ever expanding list. Or as this clip from MSNBC states "McCain Flip Flops on Everything": Keep Reading (if there's more)...
I'm not an expert on campaign finance reform, but I do understand the basics: the idea behind public funding of campaigns is to equalize the playing field so that donors with more money do not have outsized influence over campaigns.
Now Obama, despite having stated repeatedly he was considering public financing for his campaign has decided to forestall public financing and instead stay with his unprecedentedly successful fund raising, with over 1.5 million donors, most contributing less that $100 on the internet. His campaign claims having this many individual small donors is in itself a grassroots form of public financing. (Not to mention it allows him to raise money beyond public financing limits).
The McCain campaign has been harping on this in the hope they can use it to brand Obama as a candidate who will go back on his word, who "flip flops" based on the needs of the moment. This being unlike McCain - who's evolving positions on the Iraq War, offshore oil drilling, or George Bush's tax cuts (to just choose a few) - aren't position changes based on political expediency, they are principled leadership. They are "shocked, shocked!" that Obama is willing to do what is necessary to win.
Nice try. The decision may perhaps not be a pretty one, but it is a pragmatic one. And as Chuck Todd and MSNBC's "First Read" state:
...the decision was a no-brainer. As one very smart political observer told us yesterday, if Obama had stayed in the system -- bypassing the opportunity to raise about three times amount what the system offers -- then he’d question Obama’s judgment and ability to be president. Simply put, it would have been a dumb move.
"[I]...see no reason why public financing is somehow morally superior to hundreds of thousands of small donors. But if you want to see a Democrat prepared to take a short-term hit in order to score a real long-term advantage over his opponent, Obama's your man."
But to top it all off, harping on this issue cleverly obscures the fact that McCain himself is currently openly violating campaign LAW, after opting in to public financing to save his campaign, then spending beyond the agreed limits. Josh Marshall at TPM (tries to) explain "McCain Breaking the Law in Plain Sight":
People thing supporters of Obama are somehow going to be surprised to realize he's also a POLITICIAN. Well no shit. I think the these mindless zealots who believe he is some sort of messianic figure largely exists only in the minds of his detractors. (And to me, his FISA position is much more problematic than this one). The fact is he is liberal and a pragmatist, or as David Brooks states:
"This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside."
John McCain has been trying to put a lot of distance between himself and our ever-unpopular current president, while Democrats have been trying to proclaim that John McCain's election would mean Bush's third term. Well the New York Times takes a look today at where John is "McSame" and where he differs from Bush's policies. Take a look at their chart here.
One thing you might notice immediately: The "same" column is substantially longer than the "different column." And as I explored in an earlier post, some of the differences on foreign policy are quite troubling. The Times also has an accompanying article in which they state:
A look at Mr. McCain’s 25-year record in the House and Senate, his 2008 campaign positions and his major speeches over the last three months indicates that on big-ticket issues — the economy, support for continuing the Iraq war, health care — his stances are indeed similar to Mr. Bush’s brand of conservatism. Mr. McCain’s positions are nearly identical to the president’s on abortion and the types of judges he says he would appoint to the courts...while it would be hard to categorize him as a doctrinaire Republican or conservative, Mr. McCain appears to have ceded some of his carefully cultivated reputation as a maverick.
And regarding how McCain's contradictory energy policy strains to seem "different" than Bush, check out this clip (more on this later):
One of the few actual diplomatic achievements of the Bush administration was to negotiate a solution to the North Korea's nuclear weapon program. After an initial hard line stance, It was one of the only times they showed the willingness to engage, rather than saber rattle or threaten military action. (Yes, I just threw half a bone to the Bush administration).
John McCain wants to put a stop to that. Seriously. The one single time this administration actually had a diplomatic solution to a problem, and McCain doesn't like it, he thinks they're being soft.
Its just another aspect of McCain's perverse view of international relations, shaped as it by the scary neoconservative philosophy (which I explored in this earlier post). In fact, this and other policies serve to not only distance us from North Korea, but also threaten to push us away from more powerful players like China and Russia: McCain proposes a "League of Democracies" to bypass Russia and China's role in United Nations activities, alienating them and putting them in a much more adversarial relationship to us. He proposes expelling Russia from the G8 group of world powers, again, isolating them. His policies on nuclear deterrence could potentially lead to more nuclear build up in China and Russia, and to greater nuclear proliferation.
What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war...The neoconservative vision within the speech is essentially an affirmation of ideology. Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies. It proposes a League of Democracies, which would presumably play the role that the United Nations now does, except that all nondemocracies would be cast outside the pale. The approach lacks any strategic framework. What would be the gain from so alienating two great powers?
McCain's supposed strength is his foreign policy experience. But only a little investigation reveals his foreign policy as not only a continuation of some of the Bush administration's reckless policies, but even charting a more disastrous course. So I will dedicated several of these "Why Not McCain" entries to take a more extensive look at some of these foreign policy issues. This, the first, will focus on McCain's overall problematic foreign policy, as explored in several important articles.
Here's an overview from the "The Militarist" in the American Prospect:
Despite neoconservatism's close association in the public imagination with the Bush administration, and despite McCain's image as a moderate, a look at the record makes clear that McCain, not Bush, is the real neocon in the Republican Party. McCain was the neocons' candidate in 2000, McCain adhered to a truer version of the faith during the early years of hubris that followed September 11, and as president McCain would likely pursue policies that will make what we've seen from Bush look like a pale imitation of the real thing. McCain, after all, is the candidate of perpetual war in Iraq. The candidate who, despite his protestations in a March speech that he "hates war," not only stridently backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq but has spent years calling on the United States to depose every dictator in the world. He's the candidate of ratcheting-up action against North Korea and Iran, of new efforts to undermine the United Nations, and of new cold wars with Russia and China. Rather than hating war, he sees it as integral to the greatness of the nation, and military service as the highest calling imaginable. It is, in short, not Bush but McCain, who among practical politicians holds truest to the vision of a foreign policy dominated by militaristic unilateralism.
In an extensive profile in the New York Times Magazine, "The McCain Doctrines," Matt Bai comes to similar conclusions as he discusses with McCain potential military interventions in Burma or Zimbabwe.
McCain is known for being a gut thinker, averse to overarching doctrines or theory. But as we talked, I tried to draw out of him some template for knowing when military intervention made sense — an answer, essentially, to the question that has plagued policy makers confronting international crises for the last 20 years. McCain has said that the invasion of Iraq was justified, even absent the weapons of mass destruction he believed were there, because of Hussein’s affront to basic human values...Most American politicians, of course, would immediately dismiss the idea of sending the military into Zimbabwe or Myanmar as tangential to American interests and therefore impossible to justify. McCain didn’t make this argument. He seemed to start from a default position that moral reasons alone could justify the use of American force, and from there he considered the reasons it might not be feasible to do so. In other words, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, while most politicians looked at injustice in a foreign land and asked, “Why intervene?” McCain seemed to look at that same injustice and ask himself, “Why not?”
...the enemy described in his speech is an undifferentiated "radical Islamic terrorism." It is less an entity than a metaphysical concept -- existing everywhere and without distinction. McCain draws no distinction between the puny Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. Interestingly, the U.S. military in Iraq does: it recently gave a briefing that described Al Qaeda in Iraq's foot soldiers as brainwashed twentysomethings rather than fanatical murderers. It should go without saying that an inability to even properly diagnose the enemy can only lead to counterproductive, astrategic overreaction.
Matt Yglesias, again from "The Militarist," sees a similar tendency:
While Bush has been criticized for advancing an unduly broad conception of the terrorism problem, allowing Iraq, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah to all be swept together with al-Qaeda, McCain sees a need to go even bigger. In a May 2007 speech to the Hoover Institution, McCain explained that the so-called war on terror is merely part of a "worldwide political, economic, and philosophical struggle between the future and the past, between progress and reaction, and between liberty and despotism." The despotism problem, in McCain's view, goes beyond the traditional axis of evil and requires us to not only "not put pressure on dictators in Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma, and other pariah states" but also to fret that Russia and China have joined forces to block such pressure. At a time when the Bush administration has to some extent backed away from rogue-state rollback, McCain has decided to double down, concluding that the rogue-state problem can't be resolved until all autocratic powers are brought down.
Barack Obama is not a Muslim (not that there's anything wrong with that), as this blog has previouslyindicated, but some folks still haven't heard that fact, or think he's a Muslim in "secret" (why his entire staff would be complicit in covering this up is beyond me).
Now there are some easy links to refer people who have been receiving certain email smears (especially those living in say, Boca Raton):
Many democrats and left or moderate independents still remember the John McCain of 2000, the irascible rebellious Republican who was not frightened to say what he thought, even if it went against his own party. I liked him too. Two things: 1) He doesn't exist anymore - John McCain got close to being the presidential nominee in 2000 and made some big personal and moral compromises in order to ensure he had republican support to become the nominee in 2008 and 2) Even then, he still was VERY conservative on many core principles, and has become even moreso since. You might think you like him, but you might not be fully aware of where he stands on things, because you have the memory of that "maverick." (okay i used it, once, never again I swear!).
Many say to me "Well, McCain wouldn't be that bad, he'd be better than Bush." Firstly, I think this is setting the bar pretty damn low. But additionally, we can't afford another Republican term with NO major change in direction from the failed policies of the last 8 years. So this will be the first in a series of posts looking at some of McCain's policies, beliefs, and history, to let you know why McCain WOULD be that bad, and why it is so important that the Democrats, and Barack Obama, win this election.
Reason #1: The Supreme Court. At least two justices could retire during the next president's term, with the possibility of tipping the balance of the court entirely to the conservative side - and McCain is for repealing Roe v. Wade. Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker takes a close look at the coded language in McCain's judiciary policy speech, and finds that he is using cloudy language to mask the bones he is throwing to the extreme right of his party.
The question, as always with McCain these days, is whether he means it. Might he really be a “maverick” when it comes to the Supreme Court? The answer, almost certainly, is no. The Senator has long touted his opposition to Roe, and has voted for every one of Bush’s judicial appointments; the rhetoric of his speech shows that he is getting his advice on the Court from the most extreme elements of the conservative movement...
And a reminder of what Bush's court has already wrought:
...in just three years the Roberts Court has crippled school-desegregation efforts (and hinted that affirmative action may be next); approved a federal law that bans a form of abortion; limited the reach of job-discrimination laws; and made it more difficult to challenge the mixing of church and state. It’s difficult to quarrel with Justice Stephen Breyer’s assessment of his new colleagues: “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.” And more change is likely to come. John Paul Stevens, the leader of the Court’s four embattled liberals, just celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday; Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seventy-five; David Souter is only sixty-eight but longs for his home in New Hampshire. For all the elisions in John McCain’s speech, one unmistakable truth emerged: that the stakes in the election, for the Supreme Court and all who live by its rulings, are very, very high.
The Obama campaign has mobilized a grass roots group that is also part of his core message: he's not running the typical "campaign only in the few swings states you need" strategy we're so used to from recent elections. He plans on mobilizing as many people in all 50 states, so that he has a large and involved citizenry to help him keep on the pressure as president to get the reforms he's proposing through. The NY Times discusses his 50 state strategy today here.
This clip from shows Obama talking to a small group of Indianans about his views of government transparency and how his presidency would be more open and accountable: from continued town hall meetings, to outreach from the cabinet members, to posting all government activities on the internet to make it easy to monitor and get involved in causes you deem important.
And here's a recent clip where Obama rally's his campaign staff in their office following his winning the nomination reminding them that now that they've won the nomination, they HAVE to win the election, its too important (its longer, but worth watching the whole thing - the end is the best).
Hey all, been a while since I've been posting - mostly because I felt as far as the primary goes I had reached who I was going to reach and done what I could do. But I'm thinking I will probably start back up, though probably a little less frequently, with more information, clips and articles about the general election and more specifically - John McCain.
Also, I'm posting because I wanted to share Steven Colbert's hilarious summary of the Michigan Florida situation (hopefully finally resolved this weekend):
A great Op-Ed in today's Washington Post, "Wright and Ridiculous" points out the contradictions between all the attacks narratives being thrown against Obama (thanks to my dad and Teresa for forwarding it!):
First Obama was accused of anti-religious elitism. Then he was accused of identifying with the underclass anger of his spiritual mentor. Excuse me, but which is it? Am I supposed to believe that Obama is a supercilious elitist or a menacing ghetto radical? Is he contemptuous of religion or too close to a religious leader? Obama's critics don't bother to say. Meanwhile, real character issues go relatively unheeded.
And questions whether these issues honestly reflect a leader's character:
The real character issue, in this campaign as in others, comes down to one thing: Does a candidate have the guts to espouse positions that are not politically expedient? Here there are serious questions about Obama, who pledges to pull out of Iraq no matter what, and who promises both to increase spending and not to raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year, ensuring the perpetuation of crippling federal deficits. For that matter, there are serious questions about Hillary Clinton, who proposes an irresponsible gas-tax holiday, and about John McCain, who couples gas pandering with a flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts, which he once (correctly) viewed as unaffordable. But these genuine character issues have been shunted aside by the spectacle of Obama's falling-out with his preacher.
And also consider this: - There are 264 undeclared superdelegates. - Since the Pennsylvania primary: It's Obama +21, Clinton +11. - Since Super Tuesday, Feb. 5: It's Obama +88, Clinton +13. - Since Junior Super Tuesday, March 4: It's Obama +45, Clinton +20.
Judge not lest thee be judged: Two articles in the New Yorker and the Nation take a look at Hillary's own past and find that it is far from having been thoroughly "vetted" for attack material and how vulnerable she would be to similar attacks as she has made on Obama's association with William Ayers or Reverend Wright.
Also, below, regarding Hillary's electability: the Boston Globe criticizes the reckless, Bush like saber rattling of her "obliterate Iran" statements (let us not forget she was a HAWK on this war before she was against it), and I do an object lesson on how difficult/impossible it is for Hillary to win this race with CNN's fun little Delegate Calculator (try it!).
...She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.
Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists". Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. (All these citations can be found in Carl Bernstein's sympathetic 2007 Clinton biography, A Woman in Charge.)
All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?
It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.
My point is that Hillary Clinton has not, in fact, survived the worst that the Republican attack machine (and its pilotless drones online and on talk radio) can dish out. We will learn what the worst really means if she is nominated. The Commie law firm will be only the beginning. Many tempting targets—from Bill’s little-examined fund-raising and business activities during the past seven years to the prospect of his hanging around the White House in some as yet undefined role for another four or eight years to whatever leftovers from the Clinton “scandals” of the nineteen-nineties can be retrieved from the dumpster and reheated—remain to be machine-gunned. The whole Clinton marital soap opera, obviously off limits within the Democratic fold, will offer ample material for what Obama calls “distractions.” To take the most obvious example, the former President’s social life since leaving the White House will become, if not “fair game,” big game—and some of these right-wing dirtbags are already hiring bearers and trying on pith helmets for the safari. Is this a “there” where the Democratic Party really wants to go?
MORE AFTER THE LINK! Let alone the fact that if Clinton is the nominee the Republicans will have us going over every aspect of the Clinton presidency a la Fox News (why didnt you stop Osama Bin Laden when you could?) over and over.
In other issues regarding Hillary's electability:
The Boston Globe slams her comments about "obliterating Iran" (they dub her "Hillary Strangelove!"):
...Rambo rhetoric like Clinton's only plays into the hands of Iranian hard-liners who want to plow ahead with efforts to attain a nuclear weapons capability. They argue that Iran must have that capability in order to deter the United States from doing what Clinton threatened to do.
While Clinton has hammered Obama for supporting military strikes in Pakistan, her comments on Iran are much more far-reaching. She seems not to realize that she undermined Iranian reformists and pragmatists. The Iranian people have been more favorable to America than any other in the Gulf region or the Middle East.
A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran - and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran - should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night
And finally, take a look at this. CNN has a fun little Delegate Calculator. I did an experiment allotting the final few races: I gave Hillary HUGE margins in states she's expected to win (Kentucky and West Virginia - turns out Appalachia is the most resistant to the idea of a black preisdent), I gave her a big victory in the current battleground of Indiana, I gave Obama a smaller than expected margin in North Carolina, and, split the remaining super delegates 50-50.
So even with all that: Obama hits the 2025 delegates needed (though the Clinton campaign is pushing to move that bar to 2200 by including MI and FL). Hard to see how she can win without Obama just dropping out.
In other words, possibly by early June this will all be moot.
How many delegates might each candidate win in Pennsylvania, which is the most populous of the states and territories that have yet to vote?
...a CQ Politics analysis of the political circumstances in Pennsylvania’s congressional districts, detailed below, projects an edge to Clinton — but by just 53 district-level delegates to 50 for Obama under the Democratic Party’s proportional distribution rules.
These numbers suggest that Clinton, even with a victory in Pennsylvania, would make only a small incremental gain against Obama’s overall lead in the delegate race.
Yup that's right: a net of 3 delegates for Clinton from Pennsylvania, that's it.Trimming Obama's lead by....barely nothing (especially when we hit North Carolina the next week).
Washington Post's Eugene Robinson has a a hilarious-if-it-weren't-so-true take on Hillary's ridiculous all out push to capitalize on Obama's "bitter" comments. (poll numbers are showing the media - surprise- are blowing the significance of this whole thing out of proportion, see what Robert Reich said about that yesterday.)
The Daily Show covered the entire "controversy" last night (bits about Hillary start at 3:20 or so):
Hillary "Shot-and-a-Beer" Clinton has given us the perfect illustration of what's so insane about American politics: the philosophical dictum that could be summed up (with apologies to Descartes) as "I seem, therefore I am."
Clinton spent the weekend bashing Barack Obama for not seeming to be enough of a regular guy -- not for any actual deficit of regular-guyness, mind you, but for giving the impression that such a deficit might exist.
The former first lady, whose family has made $109 million since her husband left the White House, then made a show of demonstrating that she's actually just a regular gal. The point wasn't really to convince anyone that she, Bill and Chelsea commute between their two lavish mansions in a five-year-old Ford F-150 pickup with a gun rack and a "Jesus Rocks!" bumper sticker. Her aim was to prove to the nation -- or at least to Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana -- that she's better at feigning regularness than Obama.
This is how we pick a president?
(His kicker after the link!)
Clinton's argument assumes that "regular" is a synonym for "unsophisticated" -- that to communicate with voters who have not attained a certain income or education level, a candidate has to put on an elaborate disguise and speak in words of one syllable.
Been a while since my last post (heck, this election is running out of states) but I have to talk up a bit about this so called "Bitter-gate" brouhaha. Clearly Obama made a clumsy statement, but his central point is still a valid one. More to come, but check out what Bill Clinton's friend and former Cabinet member, Robert Rubin has to say about Obama's comments and his own background in rural Pennsylvania:
I was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, 61 years ago. My father sold $1.98 cotton blouses to blue-collar women and women whose husbands worked in factories. Years later, I was secretary of labor of the United States, and I tried the best I could – which wasn’t nearly good enough – to help reverse one of the most troublesome trends America has faced: The stagnation of middle-class wages and the expansion of povety. Male hourly wages began to drop in the early 1970s, adjusted for inflation. The average man in his 30s is earning less than his father did thirty years ago. Yet America is far richer. Where did the money go? To the top.
Are Americans who have been left behind frustrated? Of course. And their frustrations, their anger and, yes, sometimes their bitterness, have been used since then -- by demagogues, by nationalists and xenophobes, by radical conservatives, by political nuts and fanatical fruitcakes – to blame immigrants and foreign traders, to blame blacks and the poor, to blame "liberal elites," to blame anyone and anything.
Rather than counter all this, the American media have wallowed in it.
It's already been revealed the Empress has no clothes, but this is just out, and video speaks so much louder than words.
When this is some of the key experience you are claiming qualifies you for office instead of your opponent, and the other claims are similarly suspect, there's clearly a credibility problem.
Registering Voters! Just on Saturday in the county I was in, we registered almost 3000 new voters or people switching parties to vote in the Democratic primary. Obama still is unlikely to win in PA, but hopefully we got him some new voters.
Democratic voter registration in Pennsylvania has hit a record of more than 4 million voters.
“It’s kind of incredible,” Harry A. VanSickle, the state’s elections commissioner, tells The Caucus as his office prepares to post the new numbers. “It’s the first time we know of that a party in Pennsylvania has gone over 4 million.”
A total of 4,044,952 people are now registered to vote in the Democratic primary; a total of 3,215,478 are registered for the Republican primary.
Some of the biggest numbers of those who switched to become Democrats were recorded in the Republican suburbs of Philadelphia, which are likely to be an important battleground in the primary. [thats where we were canvassing]
Democratic enrollment is up by more than 110,000 since last year’s election, an increase of roughly 3 percent, state election officials said. It is likely to surpass the record of 4 million by Monday. Republicans lost about 14,000 voters in the same period.
More than 58,000 registered voters have changed their affiliation to Democratic, with about 10,000 changing to Republican. Voters must be registered in a party to vote in the state’s primary.
And jeez, its a sappy local news kind of story, but c'mon its nice - check out how a high school student was inspired by Obama to set up a voter registration table at her school. Keep Reading (if there's more)...
Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. It cuts to the heart of traditional Democratic timidity. "It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right," Obama said in a January speech. "It's time to say that we are the party that is going to be strong and right." (The Democrat who counseled that Americans wanted someone strong and wrong, not weak and right? That was Bill Clinton in 2002.) ...I spoke at length with Obama's foreign-policy brain trust, the advisers who will craft and implement a new global strategy if he wins the nomination and the general election. They envision a doctrine that first ends the politics of fear and then moves beyond a hollow, sloganeering "democracy promotion" agenda in favor of "dignity promotion," to fix the conditions of misery that breed anti-Americanism and prevent liberty, justice, and prosperity from taking root. An inextricable part of that doctrine is a relentless and thorough destruction of al-Qaeda. Is this hawkish? Is this dovish? It's both and neither -- an overhaul not just of our foreign policy but of how we think about foreign policy. And it might just be the future of American global leadership.
Are the Democrats on the path to giving us a McCain administration? Noam Schreiber of the New Republic explores (and looks at parallels to the 1980 Democratic race):
The problem is that each day Clinton and Obama spend consumed with the other is a day that moves John McCain closer to the White House. McCain's biggest asset is his political brand, which evokes a straight-talking, party-bucking reformer. Among his biggest liabilities is the suspicion he inspires among conservatives thanks to these same attributes. McCain apparently plans to spend the next few months making nice with his base. But anything he accomplishes on this front clearly diminishes his swing-voter appeal and, therefore, his chances in November.
Ideally, the Democrats would be exploiting this tension like mad. They would highlight the anti-Catholic, anti-gay ravings of John Hagee, the evangelical minister whose endorsement McCain recently accepted. They would ridicule his chumminess with supply-side Neanderthals like Jack Kemp and his flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts. They'd dwell on McCain's less-noticed association with crony-capitalists during his tenure as Commerce Committee chairman.
Instead, something close to the opposite is happening. McCain's courtship of the lunatic right and his ties to K Street have largely been hidden from view, while the Democrats' dirty laundry has been aired for swing voters. The upshot for Democrats has not been good. In late February, a Gallup poll showed Obama leading McCain among independents by 15 points. By March 6, a Newsweek poll put McCain up ten points among this group--and that was before Jeremiah Wright weighed in. Hillary went from down five to down 15 among independents during the same time.
Bill Richardson, '08 presidential candidate, Bill Clinton's Ambassador to the UN and later Secretary of Energy, and current Governor of New Mexico endorsed Obama today in a speech far more rousing than any I saw from him during the campaign (hey Bill - I like the beard too!) He was clearly inspired by Obama's speech earlier this week.
In a statement released earlier today, he said:
My affection and admiration for Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton will never waver. It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall...Barack Obama will be a historic and a great President, who can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad.
Also - significantly from the '08 Democratic candidate with some of the most extensive foreign policy - he takes on Hillary's "commander-in-chief" threshold argument:
"There is no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama has the judgment and courage we need in a commander in chief when our nation's security is on the line," Richardson said. "He showed this judgment by opposing the Iraq war from the start, and he has shown it during this campaign by standing up for a new era in American leadership internationally."
In a speech today on Iraq, Hillary Clinton said the following: "Senator Obama holds up his original opposition to the war on the campaign trail, but he didn't start working aggressively to end the war until he started running for president. So when he had a chance to act on his speech, he chose silence instead." And implied that Obama would be dependent on advisors, and won't match "words with actions."
Obama's campaign produced a video response:
Whether the vote was a vote for war or not I recapped in this post, along with headlines from that day.
I myself would add: Hillary herself not only was originally for the war, but only came out strongly for withdrawal in the midst of democratic primary, when it was necessary to do so. Keep Reading (if there's more)...
In the interest of debunking the bogus Clinton campaign's "Big State" talking point, the first in a continuing look at some general election "big state" polls:
In Florida, both Clinton and Obama right now would lose to McCain, Obama by less: FL-Pres Mar 16 Rasmussen McCain (R) 47%, Clinton (D) 40% FL-Pres Mar 16 Rasmussen McCain (R) 47%, Obama (D) 43%
In NY, both Obama and Clinton would win, though interestingly Obama would outperform Clinton (a wee bit) in her home state. NY-Pres Mar 16 Rasmussen Clinton (D) 50%, McCain (R) 38% NY-Pres Mar 16 Rasmussen Obama (D) 51%, McCain (R) 38%
In CA, both Obama and Clinton would win, Obama by more. CA-Pres Mar 14 Rasmussen Obama (D) 53%, McCain (R) 38% CA-Pres Mar 14 Rasmussen Clinton (D) 46%, McCain (R) 39%
In OH, both would lose to McCain by the same amount. OH-Pres Mar 14 Rasmussen McCain (R) 46%, Obama (D) 40% OH-Pres Mar 14 Rasmussen McCain (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 40%
In PA, both lose to McCain right now - Obama though is almost even PA-Pres Mar 13 Rasmussen McCain (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 44% PA-Pres Mar 13 Rasmussen McCain (R) 44%, Obama (D) 43%
You also have a choice: to believe that this is a sincere message given by a sincere person; or a phony message delivered by a fraud. The only way to really know which is to look at his record. It seems to me that Obama has been motivated by the same themes from the very start, and still offers the same hope of unity that has been the core of his campaign for president from the beginning.
Those who ask questions and seek answers about the influence of Wright are doing their democratic duty. It is equally Obama's duty to answer them as candidly and respectfully and precisely as possible. But those who do not want to hear an answer that gives hope and reconciles our divisions are betraying themselves and this country's potential. Reveling in cynicism and partnisanship is the act of those who truly do not love America.
A revealing look at Obama from University of Chicago constitutional law colleague Cass Sunstein in the Chicago Tribune. Highly recommended!
Not so long ago, the phone rang in my office. It was Barack Obama. For more than a decade, Obama was my colleague at the University of Chicago Law School.
He is also a friend. But since his election to the U.S. Senate, he does not exactly call every day.
On this occasion, he had an important topic to discuss: the controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance of international telephone calls between Americans and suspected terrorists. I had written a short essay suggesting that the surveillance might be lawful. Before taking a public position, Obama wanted to talk the problem through.In about 20 minutes, he and I investigated the legal details. He asked me to explore all sorts of issues: the president's power as commander in chief, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force and more.
Obama wanted to consider the best possible defense of what Bush had done. To every argument I made, he listened and offered a counterargument. After the issue had been exhausted, Obama said he thought the program was illegal, but now had a better understanding of both sides. He thanked me for my time.
This was a pretty amazing conversation, not only because of Obama's mastery of the legal details, but also because many prominent Democratic leaders had already blasted the Bush initiative as blatantly illegal. He did not want to take a public position until he had listened to, and explored, what might be said on the other side.
This is the Barack Obama I have known for nearly 15 years -- a careful and evenhanded analyst of law and policy, unusually attentive to multiple points of view.
Here's another excerpt, read the whole thing here:
The Obama we know is no rhetorician; he shines not because he can move people, but because of his problem-solving abilities, creativity and attention to detail.
In recent weeks, his speaking talents, and the cultlike atmosphere that occasionally surrounds him, have led people to wonder whether there is substance behind the plea for "change" -- whether the soaring phrases might disguise emptiness and vagueness. But nothing could be further from the truth. He is most comfortable in the domain of policy and detail.
I do not deny that skeptics are raising legitimate questions. After all, Obama has served in the U.S. Senate for a short period (less than four years) and he has little managerial experience. Is he really equipped to lead the most powerful nation in the world?
Obama speaks of "change," but will he be able to produce large-scale changes in a short time? What if he fails? An independent issue is that all the enthusiasm might serve to insulate him from criticisms and challenges on the part of his advisers -- and, in view of his relative youth, criticisms and challenges are exactly what he requires.
Fortunately, the candidate's campaign proposals offer strong and encouraging clues about how he would govern; what makes them distinctive is that they borrow sensible ideas from all sides.
He is strongly committed to helping the disadvantaged, but his University of Chicago background shows he appreciates the virtues and power of free markets. He is not only focused on details but is also a uniter, both by inclination and on principle.
If you've never seen an Olbermann Special Comment, they usually call to light hypocrisies of the Bush Administration. This is the first time he's said anything about the Democrats, in this case regarding the Clinton campaign and Geraldine Ferraro's comments and its a MUST SEE
Obama's Not Going to Win Pennsylvania: That according to the calculations of website "The Field." But he will still win the nomination without it - she can't catch up in delegate, he just can't play into the Clinton narrative that it is the last stand:
The press will try to make a race of it. There will surely be polls showing the race tightening, perhaps even suggesting that Obama could win it. But that’s just part of the predictable song-and-dance to sell newspapers and up ratings (and hit counts, for the political blogs and news sites that sell ads). The way the odd-numbered delegate districts break down, the demographics, the fact that it’s a closed primary (no Independent voters allowed), and its long border with the senator’s New York state make it a lead-pipe cinch for Clinton; to the extent that Obama supporters enter the “no, but yes, we can win it” narrative they’ll be walking into a trap.
Clinton has now moved 250 staffers (about 13 for each of Pennsylvania’s 19 Congressional districts) into the Keystone state and is opening two dozen field offices. She has the support of Governor Ed Rendell and his considerable machine, not to mention a phalanx of mayors including Michael Nutter of Philadelphia. They’re carrying a straight flush and they’re betting everything on it. That makes it tempting for Obama fans to seek a knockout punch, but all their candidate really needs to do is survive to the next round – North Carolina, two weeks later – without having fallen into a rigged expectations game to clinch the nomination.
Have discussed this before here and here, but the NY Times looks at how Hillary has managed her campaign organization as an indicator of what kind of leader she is, finding some frightening parallels:
“She hasn’t managed anything as complex as this before; that’s the problem with senators,” said James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University who is an expert on presidential management. “She wasn’t as decisive as she should have been. And it’s a legitimate question to ask: Under great pressure from two different factions, can she make some hard decisions and move ahead? It seems to just fester. She doesn’t seem to know how to stop it or want to stop it.”
Even more troubling, however, is how her own tendencies toward loyalty, sound horrifyingly similar to our current president's management:
Still, interviews with campaign aides, associates and friends suggest that Mrs. Clinton, at least until February, was a detached manager. Juggling the demands of being a candidate, she paid little attention to detail, delegated decisions large and small and deferred to advisers on critical questions. Mrs. Clinton accepted or seemed unaware of the intense factionalism and feuding that often paralyzed her campaign and that prevented her aides from reaching consensus on basic questions like what states to fight in and how to go after Mr. Obama, of Illinois.
Mrs. Clinton showed a tendency toward an insular management style, relying on a coterie of aides who have worked for her for years, her aides and associates said. Her choice of lieutenants, and her insistence on staying with them even when friends urged her to shake things up, was blamed by some associates for the campaign’s woes. Again and again, the senator was portrayed as a manager who valued loyalty and familiarity over experience and expertise.
The morning after Tuesday's primaries, Hillary Clinton's campaign released a memo titled "The Path to the Presidency." I eagerly dug into the paper, figuring it would explain how Clinton would obtain the Democratic nomination despite an enormous deficit in delegates. Instead, the memo offered a series of arguments as to why Clinton should run against John McCain--i.e., "Hillary is seen as the one who can get the job done"--but nothing about how she actually could. Is she planning a third-party run? Does she think Obama is going to die? The memo does not say.
The reason it doesn't say is that Clinton's path to the nomination is pretty repulsive. She isn't going to win at the polls. Barack Obama has a lead of 144 pledged delegates. That may not sound like a lot in a 4,000-delegate race, but it is. Clinton's Ohio win reduced that total by only nine. She would need 15 more Ohios to pull even with Obama. She isn't going to do much to dent, let alone eliminate, his lead.
That means, as we all have grown tired of hearing, that she would need to win with superdelegates. But, with most superdelegates already committed, Clinton would need to capture the remaining ones by a margin of better than two to one. And superdelegates are going to be extremely reluctant to overturn an elected delegate lead the size of Obama's. The only way to lessen that reluctance would be to destroy Obama's general election viability, so that superdelegates had no choice but to hand the nomination to her. Hence her flurry of attacks, her oddly qualified response as to whether Obama is a Muslim ("not as far as I know"), her repeated suggestions that John McCain is more qualified. And here is the rest of it.
The reason so many people have re-engaged with politics this year is because many sense their country is in a desperate state and because only one candidate has articulated a vision and a politics big enough to address it without dividing the country down the middle again. For the first time in decades, a candidate has emerged who seems able to address the country's and the world's needs with a message that does not rely on Clintonian parsing or Rovian sleaze. For the first time since the 1960s, we have a potential president able to transcend the victim-mongering identity politics so skillfully used by the Clintons. If this promise is eclipsed because the old political system conspires to strangle it at birth, the reaction from the new influx of voters will be severe.
The "Dream Ticket." Today, Bill Clinton was out promoting the idea of a Clinton-Obama ticket, following Hillary's floating the idea over the past few days. As Greg Sargent at Talking Points Memo states, "Hillary floated this yesterday, and, now, Bill today -- and it's hard to imagine that both Clintons would be talking this up in tandem by accident. " I also doubt they are, and to me this is one of the most crassly cynical, desperate, condescending and devious ploys their campaign has tried yet. Why?
First, this discussion neglects the most relevant fact at hand: OBAMA IS WINNING. After their resurgence in Ohio, and their popular vote win in Texas (they actually got less delegates because Obama won the caucuses), they are trying to relaunch their campaign with a massive PR pitch. But most of all they are trying to make people forget these pesky facts:
-Obama is beating them in delegates (1366 to 1227 according to MSNBC) -Obama is beating them in states won (28 to 14 with Wisconsin today) -Obama is beating them in the popular vote (13,000,655 to 12,411,705 according to Real Clear Politics)
They are still losing, and there is no mathematical way for them to catch up. But they are trusting people aren't paying attention, that they are just catching an occasional headline or two - and now think she is winning. And if you're undecided - you don't love Hillary, you kind of like this new "hope and change" guy, well this way you can get both! C'mon, though he's run a more efficient, effective and successful campaign against the largest name in Democratic politics and outplayed and out-earned them, you can't actually be SERIOUS about this guy right? But we can give him a place on the team. As a friend stated, its almost as if saying Obama "should know his place."
This is her ploy to steal undecided votes from Obama by implying you get two for one - clear and simple. And if you don't think that's so, or think I am being too cynical about the Clinton's, think about the guy they have running their campaign, and how he does things.
Or think about this: Bill was out talking up the idea to Mississippi voters today because they are voting on Tuesday. The only thing is, Obama said this - THE DAY BEFORE: "You won’t see me as a vice presidential candidate -- you know, I’m running for president."
Of course that only matters if you know that Obama said that. Otherwise maybe it sounds like a great idea.
Please, float that shit someplace else.
UPDATE (3/10): Obama discusses the rumor, saying the Clintons are trying to "hoodwink" voters.
All the talk of "post-9/11" world, and how the Republicans will attack on national security: the Clinton campaign seems to think their role is to act like Republicans? Rush Limbaugh sure thinks they'll do a better job on it then his guys will.
Obama and Hillary, Hillary and Obama. There's still a Republican they're destroying their party competing to run against (ok one of them is doing most of the destroying). And that Republican is John McCain. And there's some new stories that take a hard look at him.
Salon brings up Hillary's "3 AM" experience gambit and points out John McCain wins on this argument. But should he?
In interviews with Salon this week, several experienced military officers said McCain draws mixed reviews among military leaders, and they expressed serious doubts about whether McCain has the right temperament to be the next president and commander in chief. Some expressed more confidence in Obama, citing his temperament as an asset.
It is not difficult in Washington to find high-level military officials who have had close encounters with John McCain's temper, and who find it worrisome. Politicians sometimes scream for effect, but the concern is that McCain has, at times, come across as out of control..."I like McCain. I respect McCain. But I am a little worried by his knee-jerk response factor," said retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004 and is now campaigning for Clinton. "I think it is a little scary. I think this guy's first reactions are not necessarily the best reactions. I believe that he acts on impulse."
"I studied leadership for a long time during 32 years in the military," said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, a one-time Republican who is supporting Obama. "It is all about character. Who can motivate willing followers? Who has the vision? Who can inspire people?" Gration asked. "I have tremendous respect for John McCain, but I would not follow him."
And Matt Yglesias looks at McCain's education policy and determines:
Strolling through John McCain's policy proposals is a fascinating experience . . . lurking behind every link is a nearly-astounding level of vacuity
The Chicago Tribune looks at Hillary's claims of experience handling foreign crises one by one, and doesn't find too much there:
But while Hillary Clinton represented the U.S. on the world stage at important moments while she was first lady, there is scant evidence that she played a pivotal role in major foreign policy decisions or in managing global crises...
"How does going to Beijing and giving a speech show crisis management? There was no crisis. And there was nothing to manage," Rice said.
I won't point out the irony around the fact that one of her "acts" of crisis management was a speech.
But what's most needed is temperament, maturity and judgment. Detailed expertise can come from advisors...Others think it's precisely the expertise that's needed...Hillary Clinton seems to think she's a strong contender in this latter category. But that's a joke. She's starting her second term in the US senate, where, yes, she serves on the Armed Services committee. Beside that she's never held elective office and she has little executive experience. I think she can argue that she'd make and would make a strong commander-in-chief. But she's pushing a metric by which she's little distinguishable from Barack Obama. I'm honestly surprised she's not drawing chuckles on this one.
...Texas contests are actually both a primary and a caucus.
Clinton won the primary with 51 percent of the popular vote to Obama's 47 percent, according to the Associated Press. Those results earned her 65 delegates to Obama's 61 delegates.
But allocating delegates in the Lone Star State takes a "Texas two-step." After the polls closed, more than 1 million Texans also attended caucuses, the results of which determine how about one-third of the state's delegates get awarded.
The state Democratic Party estimates that Obama will come out ahead: 37 pledged delegated to Clinton's 30 delegates. But the official tally of the Texas caucus won't be ready for months.
So before Tuesday's elections, right wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh urged his audience to vote for Hillary - to keep the Democratic race going and to allow her to continue to attack Obama because he doesn't think the Republicans have the stomach to do it.
[RUSH]: I want Hillary to stay in this, Laura. This is too good a soap opera. We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically, and it's obvious that the Republicans are not going to do it and don't have the stomach for it, as you probably know. We're getting all kinds of memos from the RNC, saying we're not going to be critical there. Mark McKinnon of McCain's campaign says he'll quit if they get critical over Obama. This is the presidency of the United States we're talking about. I want our party to win. I want the Democrats to lose. They're in the midst of tearing themselves apart right now. It is fascinating to watch, and it's all going to stop if Hillary loses.
Now I just find the idea of this frightening - the eternal enemy of the Clintons telling his folks to vote for them - but according to some calls to his show and other accounts, it may have actually had some effect:
In Wisconsin, Republicans made up 9 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Obama won them 72-28 over Clinton. Just as tellingly, 14 percent of primary voters said they were "conservative," and Obama won them 59-40... Now, look at Ohio. Once again 9 percent of voters were Republicans, but Obama and Clinton split them evenly, 49-49. Once again, 14 percent of voters were "conservatives," and Obama and Clinton split them 48-48...It's a similar story in Texas, where Limbaugh has the most listeners of any of these states. Obama won the Republican vote 52-47, but conservatives (22 percent of all voters, up from 15 percent in the Kerry-Edwards primary) went against Obama.
I read this before I was blogging, but Nicholas Kristof had a great column dissecting the role "experience" actually plays in presidential successes, and in terms of Obama and Clinton. Read the whole thing!
It might seem obvious that long service in Washington is the best preparation for the White House, but on the contrary, one lesson of American history is that length of experience in national politics is an extremely poor predictor of presidential success.
Looking at the 19 presidents since 1900, three of the greatest were among those with the fewest years in electoral politics. Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress....
...The Democrats with the greatest Washington expertise — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson — have already been driven from the race. And the presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him.
To put it another way, think which politician is most experienced today in the classic sense, and thus — according to the “experience” camp — best qualified to become the next president.
Hillary said this yesterday, and its caused some hubbub:
I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know that Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.
Besides being unfair to Obama's actual record, the problem is that here is that she has just given John McCain a bite he can use in every ad he might have to run against Obama showing he doesn't have support of his own party. Its one thing to attack, its another thing to be willing to throw your party's potential candidate under the bus.
But it also hinges on the "experience" issue which Hillary has banked so much on, and which I have repeatedly discussed and dissected on this page. (Not to mention that if she goes into a general election against McCain with experience as her argument - he wins!)
But someone's found a classic Hillary clip that shows how that experience doesn't necessarily lead to good decision making.
Jonathan Alter of Newsweek does a breakdown of the math: even if she wins Ohio and Texas, and almost every state after that (many of which she will NOT win), Hillary can't catch up to Obama's delegate lead.
Hillary Clinton may be poised for a big night tonight, with wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. Clinton aides say this will be the beginning of her comeback against Barack Obama. There's only one problem with this analysis: they can't count.
I'm no good at math either, but with the help of Slate’s Delegate Calculator I've scoped out the rest of the primaries, and even if you assume huge Hillary wins from here on out, the numbers don't look good for Clinton. In order to show how deep a hole she's in, I've given her the benefit of the doubt every week for the rest of the primaries...
...no matter how you cut it, Obama will almost certainly end the primaries with a pledged-delegate lead, courtesy of all those landslides in February. Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people. Even coming off a big Hillary winning streak, few if any superdelegates will be inclined to do so. For politicians to upend what the voters have decided might be a tad, well, suicidal.
Q. Can you be more specific? Is it mathematically possible for her to win the nomination? A. Yes.
Q. Is it likely that she will win the nomination? A. Based on the math alone and a reasonable projection of external events, no.
Q. But you said it's possible. A. Yes. But lots of things have to break her way. If, say, voting ends and the press discovers that Obama has a secret second family in Idaho and all his superdelegates abandon him; if, for some reason, she wins 75% of the popular vote in the states after Ohio and Texas and half the remaining superdelegates; if, by slow attrition, he closes the delegate gap to about 70 and picks off two thirds of the remaining superdelegates; if the pledged (Obama) delegates concur with the credentials committee and seat the (Clintonian) Florida and Michigan delegations) -- then, yes, it's possible.
The LA Times asks "How did the Clinton campaign get here?" trying to understand how the candidate, who was once assumed to be the inevitable nominee, has reached the point she has. Their answer: leadership, or a lack therof.
Hillary Clinton may be one of the most disciplined figures in national politics, but she has presided over a campaign operation riven by feuding, rival fiefdoms and second-guessing of top staff members
...Already, some in Clinton's senior staff are pointing fingers over what went wrong, with some of the blame aimed at Clinton herself. As the race unfolded, neither Clinton nor anyone else resolved the internal power struggles that played out with destructive effect and continue to this day...
Joe Trippi, a senior advisor to John Edwards' now-dropped Democratic campaign, said: "At some point the candidate has to step in and bust heads and say 'Enough!' "If there's fighting internally, the candidate has to step up and make it clear what direction she wants to go and stop this stuff dead in its tracks. Otherwise there's going to be a struggle for power and control right until the end. It's crippling."
In a recent article in the UK's Sunday Times, Obama revealed he is planning on including prominent Republicans in his cabinet:
As Barack Obama enters the final stages of the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, he is preparing to detach the core voters of John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, with the same ruthless determination with which he has peeled off Hillary Clinton’s supporters.
The scene is set for a tussle between the two candidates for the support of some of the sharpest and most independent minds in politics. Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee.
Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain’s closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defence secretary. Some regard the outspoken Republican as a possible vice-presidential nominee although that might be regarded as a “stretch”.
Asked about his choice of cabinet last week, Obama told The Sunday Times: “Chuck Hagel is a great friend of mine and I respect him very much..."
I stopped at the intersection of Lovers Lane and Greenville this afternoon, and immediately noticed people standing on each corner (and on a couple of the medians) holding Hillary Clinton signs. Another thing immediately apparent, especially because of the race and gender issues in this presidential election, was that each person holding a sign was black.
I rolled down the window to ask one of the men what group the sign-holders belonged to, and he told me Southern Fried Marketing. I asked if they supported Hillary Clinton for president, and he replied: "Paid for."
I've found myself emailing a lot of articles I've found on my internet travels around recently, especially as the elections are upon us. I'm pretty pro-Obama, made more so by some of the divisive political hijinks the Clinton team have been up to the last couple of weeks, which have really angered me. If you're up in the air, or find yourself asking "what hijinks is he referring to," or are unconvinced by Obama (as I was until recently), please check back here to at least read (or watch) some of these links. I hope to be a good source of info for someone who doesn't have the time or energy to look up stuff themselves.
