Iowa Liberal

Holy. Smokes.

Personally, I couldn’t finish the first 1:30 interview, and made it 56 seconds into the second one. See if you or your friends can survive the challenge without clawing out your eyeballs!

-hw

p.s. Obviously, there’s shenanigans going on somewhere here…

On the possibility of Scott Brown winning in Massachusetts:

But it seems pretty clear to me that (Brown) will win, which means that the FNC/RNC machine has succeeded in perpetuating the meme that somehow Obama is a communist elitist out of touch with real Americans who want their government slashed, while they want no cuts at all in any entitlements, who want the budget balanced without any tax hikes or spending cuts, who demand access to unrestricted healthcare for ever, but refuse to support ways to reduce soaring costs. They want an end to crippling occupations overseas, but they also don’t want to retreat or surrender to terrorists. They want to restore America’s moral standing but retain the torture camp at Gitmo. And when told they cannot have all this, they vote for someone else who can promise it, however utopian their plans are.

I guess at this time we also have liberals who have convinced themselves to turn down a 1st and down because it’s not a touchdown, and that this is somehow about “principle.” Well, I don’t find many principles in abandoning Americans who need health care now so you can preen in front of the mirror with your beautiful liberal plumage, but America seems to be trapped in a conspiracy of idiots nowadays.

If Scott Brown wins in Massachusetts, campaigning on repealing health care reform for the nation while promising not to take away universal health care in his state, that’s one stroke of massive stupidity. But if the House refuses to pass the bill as is, and puts no stock in adding more to the bill via reconciliation, they’ll be serving up the bill for Scott Brown to kill.

The glory will be brief, and the cuffs will begin to dig deeper into our wrists. Soon we will know that things have gotten very much worse, but our ability to understand why will fail us, as it has failed us in the past year.

-jb

You’ll be shocked to hear that Sarah Palin is on the Iowa tea-bagger short list as a favored Republican primary candidate.

Chris Good had to call Ryan Rhodes to find that out?

-mg

Of course they were rigged for political effect.

The DHS became a member of the Bush re-election campaign. Therefore, Republicans are okay with it. When they are in power, they see every apparatus of the government as a tool to acquire more power.

Perhaps on health care rightwingers are trying to warn us away from what they would do if it were run by the government…Republican government. Deficits, insufficient revenues, funding for politically controversial procedures…Republicans in power would quickly seek to mismanage public health into the ground, so that they could claim it wouldn’t work.

That doesn’t exactly build confidence in their ability to provide any solutions. Only their ability to sabotage solutions.

-jb

P.S. Oh, and Ridge also…

…found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored.

So pretty much everybody knows Coleman is just keeping the case going so that Democrats have one less vote in the Senate, right?

I really can’t imagine, especially after Al Gore was pilloried for trying to get one decent recount, that a Democrat could cynically appeal over and over again without the right screaming from every outlet they possess, with the Beltway piling on. Alas, such is the way of things…

-jb

As power slips through your fingers, you may find yourself only able to squeeze tighter.

As we reported last night, the Minnesota recount is now complete. And Al Franken won by 225 votes. The Canvassing Board is slated to meet tomorrow when they’re expected to certify the result. Sen. Schumer (D-NY) just released a statement in which he, not surprisingly, said Franken is clearly the winner and that he should be seated — notwithstanding whatever post-recount legal challenges outgoing Sen. Coleman (R-MN) might attempt. That sets up a probable fight with the Republicans since Sen. Cornyn (R-TX) has promised to filibuster any effort to allow Franken to take his seat.

Dunno, but I would suspect that were the tables turned, Democrats would be slumped over resigned to defeat…being attuned to reality and all, and Republicans would be doing a victory dance. But the votes have been counted, every one scrutinized and contested, Franken is going to be certified, and Republicans are crying shenanigans. Over what? Ah, who knows.

-jb

AKA “Stop me, oh stop me…Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before…”

To get the full effect, you need to speak the following in a monotonous suburban Minnesota accent (only slightly more subtle than the infamous Fargo accent), removing all nuance and punctuation, except to raise the pitch of your voice at the end of the third paragraph to make it sound like a question.

Hello. I’m calling for John McCain and the RNC, because you need to know that Barack Obama used his position as a state Senator to give $14 million of our tax dollars to his long-time political donor, convicted felon Tony Rezko.

And Democrats’ solution to the financial crisis is to raise our taxes and give it to those who don’t pay a single penny in federal income tax.
[Ed.: She either said "And Democrats'...", or really slurred "And, the Democrat..."]

Barack Obama and his Democrat allies lack the judgment to lead our country.

This call has been paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain-Palin 2008 at 866-558-5591.

This aural gem landed in my cell phone’s voice mail over the lunch hour today. John McCain, thank you for obliging me to pay to hear your lies.

-JJB Mpls

Notice how calmly and logically he responds, if soporifically.

[youtube l63SRpGXBHE]

-jb

Not surprisingly, AIG gets the golden parachute.

Capitalism, as it is understood in contemporary American society, is a win-win however way you look at it. If there are profits to be made you get to keep them. If you make bad decisions and your company tanks the government will come in and bail you out. I wonder if this is what right-wing mouth-breathers have in mind when they’re constantly preaching their “free market” theology and its figure-head the “Invisible Hand”.

On the bright side we’ve finally shifted the focus of the election from wolf packs, lipstick and pedophilia to the economy; an actual honest-to-god ISSUE. Furthermore, the new penny shine is starting to wear off of Caribou Barbie (What’s the Bush Doctrine again?) because no degree of novelty can cover up her woeful ineptitude forever.

-mg

Hypocrisy is their bread, and chutzpah their butter.

“Sarah Palin, a commercial fisherman from Wasilla, told her husband on Tuesday she was driving to Anchorage to shop at Costco. Instead, she headed straight for Ivana. And there, at J.C. Penney’s cosmetic department, was Ivana, the former Mrs. Donald Trump, sitting at a table next to a photograph of herself. She wore a light-colored pantsuit and pink fingernail polish. Her blonde hair was coiffed in a bouffant French twist. ‘We want to see Ivana,’ said Palin, who admittedly smells like salmon for a large part of the summer, ‘because we are so desperate in Alaska for any semblance of glamour and culture.’ Ivana Trump, the former Czechoslovakian Olympic skier who found fame and wealth as the wife of the New York tycoon, came to Anchorage Tuesday to push her line of perfume.”
Then there is this from New York Magazine:

After Rudy Giuliani cartoonishly suggested that Wasilla, Alaska, wasn’t “cosmopolitan” enough for Barack Obama, we did some digging into his archives. Despite the air quotes and funny voice he used when saying the word, there was a time when a city’s “cosmopolitan” nature inspired him. From a 1995 address to the U.N.: “After several days of being confronted with New York City’s diversity, any resident or visitor will conclude that our many differences are vastly outweighed by our similarities. That’s why New York is not only the world’s most diverse city, but also the world’s most cosmopolitan and tolerant city.”

The Republican party of George W. Bush was ecstatic last night, once again over fictions that tell them what they already want to believe. Politicians stood up in front of them and freely made things up (or had somebody else make things up for them) and the Bush base went nuts. If you’re a know-nothing with an attitude and can put on some swagger, the Bush base is ready to hand the keys to the country over.

It’s important to keep in mind that without the support of people who still think George W. Bush did a great job, John McCain would have infinitesimal support. Among the ranks of the sane, he has been profoundly rejected.

One can take some potshots at Obama, but he’s an honest individual who is more interested in solving problems than satisfying anybody’s particular ideology. He takes a pragmatic, realistic approach to issues, which means looking at them square on. He doesn’t need to invent long lists of fictions in order to make the case for his election. He is more in tune with the facts than John McCain and, we can now safely say, Sarah Palin. He is more in tune with what Americans want and what they need. McCain has nothing but soundbites and bullet points crafted to mask a package of Bush policies. His best defense is that he took on most of his positions recently, so he’s unlikely to be trusted to enact any of them, expecially with a massively Democratic Congress, with an exception of the policies he’s cribbed from Obama.

It is telling that he’s been forced to mimic Obama’s campaign, an establishment candidate trying to talk about “change” because he tested which way the wind was blowing. His ultimate rudder is whatever it takes to become president. People who want power that badly must be kept from it, and if this nation didn’t learn that lesson from Bush II, we’re going to be stuck with more ineffective leadership and a Republican Party that gave us eight years of the worst president in history, and got rewarded with four more.

Obama raised money 8-to-1 over McCain after last night’s cheap piece of hackery from Sarah Palin. Keep it up. I’m making one more donation in October, and it just got doubled.

-jb

Further evidence that if presidential elections had anything to do with policies, Democrats would win every time.

Of course, our presidential elections have become Prom coronations. Republicans are no doubt overjoyed to see Hillary Clinton supporters defecting from Obama to McCain for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and are gladly stoking the fires. Even what Hillary herself says matters no more. The election is now in the hands of a tiny minority of “Democrats” consumed with senseless anger and completely deprived of logic, ready to vote against Hillary’s positions and advice, for John McCain who calls his wife a cunt in public and laughs when somebody calls Hillary a bitch. Are they going to be fooled into thinking that people like Bill Kristol are suddenly feminists who care what they think?

Just witnessed on CNN, Democrat at the convention vs. a Hillaryite ready to burn the house down:
“Democrats like you are the reason we lose elections!”
“Blame the Democrat party for picking losers!”

Well, Hillary lost, you fool. This should have been dead and buried already. By the end of this week, it had better be.

-jb

My favorite come back so far:

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said in response: “Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people ‘cling’ to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who’s in touch with regular Americans?”

ZING! See how loud they scream when you have the audacity to punch back?

Hawaii is now the destination of the ultra-rich elite and arugula, produce that can be found in even the shabbiest mixed bag of salad greens, graces the palates of kings!

Of course, air-headed, snark-meister Sharon and the Righteous Indignation Brigade are predictably clutching their collective pearls and decrying “LIBRUL HIPPOCRISY!!!” as if the damage hasn’t already been done. The amen corner can wave their arms about Rezko (a sound bite that the networks are already tired of “reporting” on) and try to muddy the waters but the one key bullet-point that voters are going to walk away with is that Obama owns one house and McCain owns enough houses that he doesn’t have the right to lecture anybody on being an out of touch elitist. He’s also a man who isn’t above hiding behind his wife’s skirt when he’s caught in a pinch.

-mg

PS – I don’t know whether you folks are aware of this but McCain was a POW! Who knew?

Conservatives, to use the term loosely in describing America’s rightwingers, have seen most of their essential arguments against Barack Obama widely yawned upon and ignored. Very little gets their juices flowing anymore, except one thing nowadays: OMIGOD OBAWMA WILL TAX YOU INTO THE POORHOUSE! If you visit our friends over at Common Sense Political Thought, it’s the only topic they can muster any excitement over.

Now, first of all, it should be a matter of common sense at this point that McCain talks about Barack being all “tax and spend” while his plan is “borrow yet even more and boy I got me some spending plans you wouldn’t believe!” But specifics can help illuminate the scale of this difference.

Hilzoy, my favorite policy wonkster, dives into the Center for Tax Policy analysis of the tax and spend plans proposed by John McCain and Barack Obama.

The short version: over ten years, the proposals McCain actually makes on the stump would cost $2.7 trillion more than the policies his campaign describes, for a total cost of nearly $7 trillion over ten years. Over the same ten years, the proposals Obama makes on the stump would cost $367 billion less than the policies his campaign describes, for a total cost of a little under $2.5 trillion. (The main difference between what Obama says on the stump and what his campaign describes is his proposal to levy Social Security taxes on income over $250,000/year.)

Here’s a chart showing the effects of both candidates’ tax proposals (the ones they describe on the stump) on people in various income brackets, from p. 46 of the report. Note that while this graph shows taxes going up for people in the top quintile under Obama’s plan, a more detailed breakdown (p. 45) shows that taxes only go up for the top 5% (incomes over $226,918/year.) People in the 95th-99th percentiles ($226,918-$603,402/year) would pay $799 more a year, on average.

Now this is the complete destruction of everything McCain has to say about the economy. Well, as Hilzoy notes, what McCain has to say about his plans vs. the reality is quite a disparity…McCain underrepresents his spending by the total amount of Obama’s spending. That should be front page news, repeated over and over until it registers with our lovely swing voters. There is a choice between McCain’s $7 trillion in extra spending vs. Obama’s $2.5 trillion. What’s the conservative choice there? That should also be constantly repeated until November. And you see that it isn’t until the top 25% of earners where McCain’s plans start to benefit incomes more than Obama. When it comes to the top 1%, of course, we see who McCain is really interested in helping: the same people George W. Bush and his GOP have been about helping all along. Keep lowering taxes on them, keep spending like a drunken trophy wife (or one hopped up on prescription meds, ZING!), and hope that the public never asks, “Who, besides our grandchildren, will be the ones paying for all this?”

Now the problem is that if this analysis actually became mainstream information, the election would skew so far for Obama that McCain would have to shoot somebody to get the public’s attention. No amount of screaming “Wealth redistribution” would cut it, as McCain is continuing Bush’s policy of distributing the wealth of future generations to our fat asses today. People recognize more than ever I think that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, something you learn on your first day in Economics 101. Bush’s policies have a price tag, and McCain’s have an even bigger one. Somebody has to pay for it. And if your remind people they were doing better in the 90′s paying Clinton’s tax rates, it’s a complete no-brainer.

The Republican Party simply has no case for John McCain as president. The best argument for him is that he’s only slightly less insane than the average rightwinger, but from foreign policy to economic policy, he is at odds with the public and all reason. With our nation facing some hard times ahead, putting McCain in office is by far the riskier choice.

-jb

p.s. It’s a little known fact that a paper copy of the analysis will actually burn the skin of Grover Norquist.

p.s.s. Despite my poor phrasing, these numbers are about net cost once spending and tax revenue are figured in….those numbers are basically what would be added to the deficit.

…another nugget about McCain that would be a fatal deal-breaker ultimate gaffe for Obama. From his autobiography:

I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president.

And it got only worse, since McCain abandoned virtually every position he held before then to be a good and proper George W. Bush Republican candidate to keep the dittoheads calm.

-jb

I’m totally digging Balloon Juice nowadays. John lays the fuckin’ facts out on the table:

Forcefully and confidently defining yourself and what you believe in, while defining your opponent and his ideas is not “dirty politics,” it is politics. Obama did not launch into numerous attacks on John McCain the person, he didn’t raise questions as to whether McCain is in league with the terrorists, he attacked McCain on the issues, over his ideas and his policies. Again, that is not dirty politics, although it is a “new kind” of politics for a party that too often has let the opponent frame the debate with the esoteric hope that “the people are smarter than that” and “will see through the Republican attacks.” Rather than worrying about the Obama campaign, Democrats should be cheering what happened yesterday. It was the first time I remember a Democrat forcefully engaging Republican ideas, explaining why they are wrong, and providing an alternate vision.

Exactly. Exactly. EXACTLY. “A new kind of politics” doesn’t mean Barack Obama has to nod his head and agree with everything John McCain says, triangulate, or timidly demur. It means sticking to the arguments, premises, conclusion and all. It means being unafraid to point the finger, say, “You’re wrong, and here’s why.” Barack Obama pays John McCain the personal respect that he’s due, if not more. And then he goes toe to toe and argues without blinking why McCain isn’t right for the country. John McCain is happy to mutter shit about Hamas loving Obama, or blather about Obama not signing up for the Armed Forces (when there was no war!), or keep calling him inexperienced. All that gets shredded to shit when Obama repeatedly makes the case that McCain has no case. Substance and style vs. no substance and tired, worn out style.

Go watch some UFC, folks. Everybody talks their shit outside of the ring, talks about how fuckin’ badass they are, how they’re going to deconstruct the other guy and become his worst nightmare, etc. etc. But none of that matters once the ref says, “Fight!” And nobody roots for the guy who spent three rounds getting his face pounded to a bloody pulp to win the decision.

I welcome John McCain to try fighting back on the issues, point for counterpoint. I welcome people sitting down, ignoring all the flash, and keeping score. Because I’ve always seen that when liberal/progressive/libertarian types go up against somebody trying to please the rightwinger crowd and don’t back down, the opponent crumbles and runs. McCain can’t stand up in a fight because he’s stuck to Bush, and if he tries dumping Bush his corner will throw in the towel. His argument is fundamentally handicapped, and Barack Obama should use every day from here til November taking McCain on directly, diligently, and fearlessly. McCain will start to whine, the wingers will start to whine, the media will echo the rightwing talking points (“Is Obama unfairly attacking John McCain?”), and some new personal smears will be attempted before the election, but if Obama persists, the crowd will see who is winning, and the media, smelling McCain’s weakness, will go into a blood-frenzy.

This is the simple message I’ve wanted Democrats to get for a long time. When you fight, you win. When you react out of fear, back off and triangulate, you lose. If you think wingers don’t seize on the moment and go for the kill the second they smell blood, you haven’t been paying attention for fifteen years.

-jb

If Hillary works as hard to unite the Democratic Party as she did to get herself elected, we’re going to be sitting pretty in November. Today she takes the first step:

“The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States,” she said in a speech before cheering supporters packed into the ornate National Building Museum, not far from the White House she longed to govern from.

“Today as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him and I ask of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me,” the New York senator said in her 28-minute address.

All things must end. With grace, endings become beginnings.

-jb

Plot your candidate’s path to great victory! How I’m running it right now: start with the year pulldown (north of Lake Ontario) at 2008 and the starting view (south of the Gulf of Mexico) at “2008 swing states.” Now swing the states you think your candidate will swing. For extra fun, if you’re trying to swing the election blue, as I am, give yourself an additional handicap: presume OH & FL as incontrovertibly red. (And don’t get your damn undies twisted about this handicap, either, it’s just a game.) So your job is to swing enough states blue to get to 270.

How I reached the promised land: first I swung Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin all blue. Not so tough there; all of these appear in the map view you can select by toggling “2004 very close.” Per our ground rules here, I gave PA & OH to McCain, and then I did the same with Florida and Michigan: lost causes this year for the Democrats, I’d guess. (NB: how one feels about this isn’t at issue here.) Swing Colorado to McCain (ouch, I know, but let’s be honest), New Mexico to Obama (hopeful, I know, but Richardson will be campaigning nonstop and has pull with the voters there). Now let’s get a little bolder and swing Virginia to Obama, and, hoping as hard as we can, do the same with Nebraska. Give NJ to Obama, the whole state’s sick to death of the GOP.

What’s left? North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Missouri. If McCain’s anti-immigrant politics impacted Nevada, the state’s income would suffer, and everybody there knows it. Swing Nevada blue. I live in North Carolina, and the western part of the state’s going to vote McCain, but the population surge in Raleigh and in the Triangle (and probably in the Triad for all I know) has been huge and the governor’s a fairly well-liked Democrat. I’m marking it blue.

Now swing New Hampshire, who’s voted Democrat the last four elections in a row. That puts the tally at D-264 and R-263, and leaves Missouri as-yet unswung.

I think I speak for all current and former Iowans when I say that if the 2008 election comes down to Missouri, I’m going to stay drunk for the rest of the decade.

-TT

Republicans really are stuck with a turd with John McCain. They’re faced with a Democratic candidate who, the popular narrative suggests, is a master of style and presentation, while their man, John McCain, is a wheedling, stilted eyesore feeding off his opponent’s best lines. What to do?

First instincts kick in, and immediately it is concluded that they must turn it into a style vs. substance debate. Every yin must have a yang, no? It must be so. It needs to be so. Rightwingers tell themselves, this is what we want, what we need, what we will do. Initiate action.

Reverse and retreat, MY FRIENDS. Code Red: McCain is the style vs. Obama’s substance.

…in any contest between Obama and McCain, Obama is the substantive, policy-oriented candidate, while McCain is the one offering mostly pious bromides about victory, service and being American. If style often beats substance, Obama is in trouble because, as his supporters tirelessly remind us, Obama does have a substantive policy agenda (even if he doesn’t spend as much time talking about it and a lot of his boosters don’t care what it is) and McCain’s entire campaign has been even more driven by biography and character than Obama’s.

Daniel Larison feels free to joke about Obama fearing McCain on style. The mis-match is indeed near farcical.

-jb

It’s going to be great watching the opposition get buried this coming November. Numbers like this must make the RNC weep:

A review of campaign finance data offers not one ounce of good news and barely any hope for the McCain campaign’s ability to compete with Obama’s fund raising prowess.

To make matters worse, Obama’s campaign, which raised $272 million through April for the primary, now is reaching out to Clinton’s fund raisers, who raised another $200 million through April, in an effort to unite forces and bury the historically deep-pocketed Republicans.

Take a look at some of the numbers:

• If each of Obama’s donors gave him a modest $250, he’d have $375 million to spend during the two-month general election sprint. That’s $186 million a month, $47 million a week.

• During the same September to Nov. 4 period, McCain will have about $85 million to spend since he has decided to take taxpayer money to help finance his campaign activities.

• The Republican National Committee, which is charged with closing the gap between McCain and Obama, has $40 million in cash. Obama raised almost as much — $31 million — from just his small donors in the month of February. His total for the month, $57 million, exceeded the RNC’s cash balance.

Old Man McCain: no momentum, no message and more critically, no money.

We sure would like to move on with the election to Obama smacking McCain around, but somebody keeps insisting it isn’t over yet…though we’ll be blamed and attacked for listening to her, the question must eventually be answered: When is Hillary Clinton responsible for her own actions?

Right now, instead of floating demands in the press and comparing herself to abolitionists and suffragists, she could be telling her supporters that she lost fair and square; that while there was a lot of sexism in the campaign, there was racism as well, and that sexism does not explain why a candidate with literally every institutional advantage over her opponent lost the nomination. She could be reaching out to the voters who supported her in places where Obama has had trouble, and urging them to vote for him. She could, in a word, be doing the right thing: trying to earn that respect she seems to want.

Instead, she’s throwing tantrums, making demands that she has no right to make, and threatening civil war.

I can’t imagine a better demonstration of why she should not be President or Vice President. Nor can I imagine a better demonstration of why some of us who are committed feminists are not happy with her as our standard-bearer. She lost. It happens. If she were an adult or a professional, she would deal with it. Apparently, she is neither.

Feminists should document and take note where Hillary Clinton was subjected to sexism, but this woman is not a victim. She lost on the merits and plenty of women know it too. To be judged on one’s merits rather than one’s sex…what more could one ask for? Hillary’s work for female equality has been done, and if she doesn’t exit quickly and reasonably and unite behind Obama, she risks doing more harm than good for the cause.

-jb

Says headline on MSNBC.com:

If not now, when can a woman be president?
Women face letdown of seeing Clinton’s shot at presidency fall short…

For clarification, see headline from alternative universe where Clinton won the primary:

If not now, when can an African-American become president?
Blacks face letdown of seeing Obama’s shot at presidency fall short…

It’s very simple…it’s too bad that race and gender got pitted against each other, but it was incredible progress that a woman and a black man were the top contenders for the Democratic presidential nominee. Somebody had to lose, but that didn’t have to mean one was more or less important than the other. And hey, I still see no reason Hillary can’t run in 2016. Or any other woman, perhaps in 2012 if the Republicans dare to enter the 20th century sometime before the 22nd rolls around. The mold has already been broken, and despite Hillary coasting by on being Bill Clinton’s wife, she deserves the credit.

-jb

Republicans are getting really nervous lately, for things are not as they have been ad nauseum.

Some analysts suggest that North Carolina and Virginia may even be within reach for the Democratic nominee, and they point to the surprising result in a Congressional special election in Mississippi this week as an indicator of things to come.

With the strong support of black voters, a conservative white Democrat, Travis W. Childers, scored an upset victory in that race, in a district held by Republicans since 1995. Kelvin Buck, a black state representative who helped the Childers campaign, said he saw a “level of enthusiasm and energy” that he had not seen before from black voters — significantly motivated, he said, by a recent Republican anti-Obama campaign.

Supposedly safe Republican elections are falling out of their hands. Bush is trying the usual horseshit and getting clobbered immediately back by Obama, which is fucking terrific news for Democrats in November. The more Obama is seen as running against Bush, the more clearly the lines are drawn for Americans. And John McCain is helplessly pinned, forced to come out defending Bush and making Obama’s case to America that he represents a continuation of Bush’s policies. The election is Obama’s if he can keep talking like this:

“What’s reckless is continuing the Bush-McCain foreign policy that has cost us thousands of lives and a trillion dollars in Iraq, strengthened Iran, enabled Hamas to take Gaza, took our eye off al Qaeda, failed to capture Osama bin Laden, failed to finish the job in Afghanistan, and left us less safe and less respected in the world. No amount of utterly predictable fear-mongering and tough talk can change the fact that John McCain is running to continue the most disastrous foreign policy in recent American history,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

And, of course, once again McCain is caught doing something the GOP just hates to death, flip-flopping. He simply cannot hide that he did not think a few years ago the things he supposedly thinks today, and that he wants to have it both ways: George Bush’s boy for the base, and the straight-talkin’ maverick for the independents. In the end, he can make neither happy. He can’t escape the fact that a few years ago he thought Bush was dumb as a stump, and now he’s forced to get Bush’s back every time Obama fires off a few shots.

Obama just took down Bill and Hillary Clinton. After that dogfight, taking on Bush and McCain, people he has much sharper differences with and dramatically stronger arguments against, is a fight he’s apparently been eager to dive into.

“The debate we’re going to be having with John McCain is how do we understand the blend of military action to diplomatic action that we are going to undertake,” he said. “I constantly reject this notion that any hint of strategies involving diplomacy are somehow soft or indicate surrender or means that you are not going to crack down on terrorism. Those are the terms of debate that have led to blunder after blunder.”

Obama said he found that the military brass thinks the way he does: “The generals are light-years ahead of the civilians. They are trying to get the job done rather than look tough.”

I asked him if negotiating with a theocratic/ideological power like Iran is different from negotiating with a nation that’s primarily pursuing material interests. He acknowledged that “If your opponents are looking for your destruction it’s hard to sit across the table from them,” but, he continued: “There are rarely purely ideological movements out there. We can encourage actors to think in practical and not ideological terms. We can strengthen those elements that are making practical calculations.”

In this fight, Obama is able to float like a butterfly and sting like a Gatling gun. As he continues, virtually able to strike at will, I’m suspecting America will enjoy cheering him on greatly.

-jb

John Aravosis:

She makes me yell at the TV like she’s George Bush, and no one other than George Bush makes me yell at the TV – until now. I actually can’t stand her or her husband any more. I defended her. I defended her husband. And now I’m actually wondering if the Republicans weren’t right about them. That’s how bad she has damaged her reputation. People who actually liked you, who actually helped you, who actually defended you, LOATHE you now. Call me a Clinton-hater all you like, but people like me were the ones who had your back. And we never will again.

I will disagree with the last statement. I would again, perhaps. If Hillary Clinton were being attacked unfairly, I would defend her. But she is not being attacked unfairly. She is having the truth told to her, repeatedly.

It saddens me to think of her and Bill Clinton now, and what the future holds for them. I guess I was always neutral towards Hillary, admiring her at her best but never being particularly excited about her. But Bill, whoo boy. That one stings. I still remember the excitement I felt in 1992 when he ran against Bush I. I loved the man. I loved the way he ran the country, although I came to understand later that many of his policy decisions were heavily flawed and sacrificial of what made Democrats different from Republicans. But on the whole, it was good government that looked out for those trying to get ahead, balanced our books with long term prosperity in mind, and didn’t get us into an endless clusterfuck of a war. Bill’s intelligence was dazzling, and the nation was infused with a sense of well-being in no small part due to his skill behind the wheel. Flaws were there to be seen, no doubt, but in the end it was the first Presidency in my lifetime that I felt good about.

I don’t feel that anymore when I look at Bill today. Today he seems irrelevant and obsolete, a gas-station attendant trying to get everybody to remember when he was the Homecoming King who fucked the Prom Queen. And Hillary, who started out passionate and strong, has fulfilled her years-long mission of erasing the scars caused by her honesty and turning into the ultimate robo-candidate, a plastic automaton devoid of integrity, sensibility, or principle, existing only to pursue and accumulate power. While every once in awhile you sense her saying, “But it had to be done so I could get the things accomplished I cared about…” she revealed the damage done once she was cornered and saw defeat approaching. She had made the sacrifices necessary to be comfortable saying whatever it took to get elected, and so it became the path of least resistance.

I want to feel sympathy for Hillary and Bill now, as they look to the future and see their hopes die. I want to think of them possessed of their old humanity, and feel their frustration as they say to themselves, as I’ve often said to myself, “But I did my best…” But they sacrificed that humanity to attempt destroying a candidate who still possesses that quality.

Hillary voters, I do not know how you can continue maintaining any sense of idealism or affection for the Clintons after the past couple months. I do not know how you cannot see how she has offended the majority of Democrats and lost the race. I do not know how you can act indignant about perceived insults from Barack Obama when he has been as gracious and restrained as possible in dealing with her scorched earth campaigning. I do not know how you could let her Republican tactics turn you off on Barack so much that so many of you claim you’ll vote for McCain instead, although that is rather improbable. You people have not explained yourselves well.

But this is the time to put these things behind us. The Clintons can earn some respect back, depending on how they act over the next six months, although Hillary is clearly not ready to rehabilitate herself yet. But Barack Obama has done plenty enough to earn your respect and cooperation to put an end to the ways of George Bush and his adoring GOP. And, having defeated Hillary Clinton while polling consistently ahead of John McCain, he’s done more than enough to assuage your fears that he won’t get the job done. The time to fear and fret is over. If you make the decision to support the Democratic nominee all the way til November, it will happen. Hillary’s claims are self-fulfilling prophecies borne of no rhyme or reason. We must all put at the forefront the mission of getting a Democrat in the White House, so that we can pursue the vital work of remaining vigilant and staying on top of that Democrat to stick by us all until the last day of office.

-jb

Number Of Acceptable Things Candidates Can Say Now Down To Four

“At the beginning of 2007 there were 38 things candidates could mention in public that wouldn’t be considered damaging to their campaigns, but now they are mostly limited to ‘Thank you all for coming,’ and ‘God bless America,’” ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos said on Sunday’s episode of This Week. “There would still be five phrases available to the candidates if the Obama camp hadn’t accused Clinton of saying ‘Glad to be here’ with a little tinge of sarcasm during a stump speech in North Carolina.”

Our world grows increasingly Onion-esque…

-jb

Empty crap like this:

Clinton retorted, “Instead of attacking the problem, he’s attacking my solutions,” and ran an ad in the campaign’s final hours that said she “gets it.”

It’s called pointing out that your “solutions” are no such thing. That’s logic, Hillary. You do the same thing every chance you get.

As for what Hillary “gets,” it seems to be only that she can say whatever she wants without paying too many penalties from voters. What she doesn’t get is that it hasn’t been good enough to win, and that the high road was the one to take against Obama. She didn’t get that, and right now Obama is closing in on the nomination and pulling in superdelegates left and right.

Obama only needs a minority of the remaining superdelegates to clinch the victory, and throughout these past few “rough” weeks he’s still been getting the majority. This means Hillary’s hopes are resting upon something so terrible happening that virtually all the remaining superdelegates swing for her.

This isn’t going to happen, and she doesn’t get that either. All the negativity, the slime, the Republican race she’s been running, has been for naught, except to battle-test Obama and see he’s doing just fine. Hillary had her argument, briefly and tenuously, and now it rests punctured and bleeding.

The only question is, when will she get it?

-jb

So McCain didn’t vote for Bush. So says Huff, anyway. McCain’s response? He asks us to “consider the source”. Here’s Huff’s rebuttal:

My sentiments exactly — because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry’s ’04 running mate — then later admitted he had, insisting: “Everybody knows that I had a conversation.”

He denied admitting that he didn’t know much about economics, even though he’d said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.

He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.

He denied that he’d ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.

And those are just the outright denials. He’s also repeatedly tried to spin away statements he regretted making (see: 100-year war, Iraq was a war for oil, etc.).

So, yes, by all means, “consider the source.”

I have no doubt that the online devoted are willing to make excuses for any number of verbal blunders that are sure to come out of McCain’s pasty gob during the run-up to his certain defeat in November but how is it going to make them look when the only way out is to tell people that they’re stupid for misunderstanding what he’s saying? Elitist, indeed.

-mg

If this rebuttal makes sense to you, then you do!

Take, for example, the post-9/11 “chickens-coming-home-to-roost” sermon. Wright may have been ill-advised and impolitic in giving this sermon on the Sunday after 9/11, but he certainly was neither wrong nor alone in the view he expressed.

American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, has engendered enormous anger among people who don’t have the wherewithal to fight back on a regular battlefield. Should it surprise us that some of them resort to weapons of the weak—what we call terrorism. (Does an errant bomb dropped from a screaming jet inspire terror?) Do we suppose those fellows released from Guantanamo after years in a Kafkaesque nightmare are all just going to go home and say, “Let bygones be bygones”? Do we Americans think we are the only ones who get angry enough to strike back when attacked? Or is it that we think we’re the only ones entitled to get angry enough to kill?

Love harder! Love until your answers are yes, yes, yes, and yes! And don’t you dare think that “love” is more about giving our government carte blanche than actually loving the country and its people.

-jb

Hating Newsweek’s cover this week, but the essay within demolishes the madness about “elitism,” both through historical examples of presidents past who served the people fine while having some aristocratic airs, namely FDR, and Obama’s own personal history:

He was raised by a single parent, his mother, who lived on food stamps for a time. He graduated from an Ivy League college—Columbia—but worked as a low-paid community organizer in Chicago. After Harvard Law, he turned down the high-pay, high-prestige jobs in corporate-law firms to work in a small civil-rights firm, mostly on voting-rights cases. He talks about his experiences helping the poor in the shadows of shuttered steel plants in Chicago. “Politics didn’t lead me to working folks,” he says, “working folks led me to politics.” His wife, Michelle, is more emphatic. “I am a product of a working-class background,” she says. “I am one of those folks who grew up in that struggle. That is the lens through which I see the world.” (A close read of her Princeton thesis suggests where her heart lay even after four years in the Ivy League: the paper is a paean to staying in touch with her black working-class roots.) “So,” Michelle recently told a high-school audience in Evansville, Ind., “when people talk about this elitist stuff, I say, ‘You couldn’t possibly know anything about me’.”

Obama’s chief campaign adviser, David Axelrod, bridles at the elitist charge: “In terms of his personal habits, this is a guy who is an ESPN sports fanatic, who plays basketball for relaxation. When he’s out and about, he’s more solicitous of the people around him, the people on the street and the kitchen workers and the police officers than almost any politician I have known. Anybody who advances the argument that he’s an elitist simply doesn’t know the guy. It’s generally the elite who advance the argument.”

Bingo.

-jb

Who’s the fiscal conservative here?

Mr. McCain’s plan would appear to result in the biggest jump in the deficit, independent analyses based on Congressional Budget Office figures suggest. A calculation done by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington found that his tax and budget plans, if enacted as proposed, would add at least $5.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

Fiscal monitors say it is harder to compute the effect of the Democratic candidates’ measures because they are more intricate. They estimate that, even taking into account that there are some differences between the proposals by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the impact of either on the deficit would be less than one-third that of the McCain plan.

By the numbers, Bill Clinton was one of the most fiscally conservative presidents of the last half century. Both Democratic candidates are more fiscally conservative and more responsible with taxpayer money, than John McCain, who is happy to add $5.7 trillion more to the national credit card.

Why? Because today’s GOP is George W. Bush’s GOP trying to sell themselves with Ronald Reagan’s soundbites. But the two no longer intersect. They have utterly embraced Bush/Cheney’s complete disregard for financial responsibility, and gleefully believe they are avoiding tax dollar waste as long as they can charge it off. Yes, it’s insane, stupid, and reckless, but so it goes when you have a cult of personality around a team of idiots and schemers, and a not-so-principled candidate irrevocably hitched to them.

-jb

UPDATE: It’s Bush, stupid!

43 percent of respondents are concerned about the 71-year-old John McCain’s close ties to George Bush.

36 percent have concerns about Clinton’s political opportunism, and 27 percent are concerned about Bill Clinton being back in the White House.

34 percent have problems with Obama’s “bitter” remarks and 32 percent give a damn about Jeremiah Wright.

McCain can’t disown Bush. That’s why he’s still getting beat by either Democrat in most match-ups. Democrats must unite soon and stand up against the past 8 years.

What’s really going on here? Andrew Sullivan says that we’re seeing a subtle weighing of the scales, where the old-timey dynamics come into play: White women trump black men in the pecking order.

I don’t believe that racism explains all of it at all. To my mind, the kind of tactics deployed against someone like Obama were deployed against Kerry and Gore and Clinton. Class and gender and age also weighed in the balance. And the fear of another Carter has motivated some. But the insane hysteria over Wright, the racist incidents in Pennsylvania that are only now being aired fully, the “Hussein” and “Muslim” memes, the sense of white entitlement that is so embedded in the Clintons that they don’t even fully see it: you have to be blind not to see the impact of race. Imagine if John Edwards had achieved what Obama has achieved. Imagine if he had won more delegates, votes and states than Clinton. Would Clinton have ever offered him the veep slot? Of course, race has affected this campaign, if only because the white entitlement that infuses the Clintons is invisible to most.

A reader of his pipes in:

The greatest dogwhistle of the Obama campaign so far is his ability to lay out this urgency to our generation. Viewed in this light, the only thing Obama has to tell me about yesterday’s election is that Pennsylanvia has the second oldest population in the country. After hearing that fact, I get it. He was never going to win.

A lot of statistical games are going on, but the striking differences between the voters over 40 versus the under-40 crowd encompasses a lot of subdivisions. Hillary isn’t just a woman, she’s a boomer, so she gets not only the older more racist voters, but the narcissistic boomers who can’t yet imagine they aren’t the center of the universe. In most states that hasn’t saved her, but it’s frequently created a demographic lump that won’t budge for Obama, and Pennsylvania was just one of them (Iowa, proudly, was not. When will the rest of the nation learn to listen to Iowans who aren’t named Steve King?) Had it been a Super Tuesday state, it would have gotten lost in the mix. Hillary’s had much bigger wins, and Obama’s had many more bigger wins. It’s a strange symptom of our news cycle that every new race is SO IMPORTANT because Hillary’s camp says it is. Is North Carolina important? Unlikely. And with Obama highly favored to win Indiana, Indiana isn’t so important either. Unless Hillary wins it, then it’s tha most important state EVAH!

I guess one could derive all sorts of lessons from Pennsylvania, it’s such a muddled mix…a 9.2 point lead, straddling the line between underwhelming win and double-digit victory…an interminable and stupid length of time until the next primary, when this one will be forgotten except that it gave Hillary license to keep torturing us with her slow loss, hoping somebody’ll just give her the nomination to shut her up…Obama’s need to step up his game fighting gossipy tabloidish junk that has nothing to do with the presidency…

…I mean, honestly. What is crap like Jeremiah Wright and whoever Obama shook hands with? Some image deal? And we’re listening to this after 8 years displaying to the world a President who’d be the loudmouthed guy at the end of the bar sloshed on Budweiser working at the chicken feed plant if it weren’t for his rich daddy? Apparently having a retard as President is okay, but we can’t tolerate one who doesn’t wear his flag pin because he thinks patriotism is something that deserves more than being worn on one’s sleeve!

America has from now until November to grow the hell up, consolidate support behind Obama and give him a nice 5-10 point lead over John McCain. While Republican hacktaculars like Sharon, Dana Pico, and Brian Pickrell are quaking in their boots (and let us not forget the Republican arm-wringing that went on before Bill Clinton won in 1992), in 2012 Barack Obama can run for re-election and we can simply say, “See? He didn’t enslave the white race!”

In the meantime, I’m considering taking up a new hobby, preferably something that involves gin or vodka every night.

-jb

Delegate count from the PA primary:

Clinton: 52
Obama: 46

Total delegates for each so far:

Clinton: 1,556
Obama: 1,694

And it’s not just the delegate count that clearly spells Hillary’s fate. The popular vote tells the exact same story. It is to be expected that regardless of the margin, the Clinton camp will trumpet tonights win of Hillary’s home state as a devastating defeat. The cable news outlets will play along because the continuation of the Democratic Party candidate selection process affords them a few more weeks of lazy horse-race narration. But at what cost?

Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.

On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.

The pattern has become all too familiar. Clinton is the presumed winner in the upcoming caucus/primary because of wide early margins amongst all demographics. The Obama campaign moves in, organizes, and the gap rapidly narrows leading to either a win or a close second despite the Clinton campaigns repeated willingness to immediately go negative. In contest after contest, Clinton has blown huge margins yet we’re supposed to believe that come November she will not repeat the same performance when facing John McCain? And after putting up with months of the type of abuse from his Democratic rival (the nature of which my eight-year-old niece would be ashamed of) we’re supposed to believe that a knock-kneed Obama, when facing a Republican slime-machine that the Clinton campaign has shown no hesitation in aping, will be too overcome by Rovian shock-and-awe to mount an effective campaign? We already know how the Republican Party is going to attack Obama because we’ve seen it from the Clinton campaign. Obama’s performance in handling Clinton’s slash-and-burn tactics should be more than enough evidence that he’s got what it takes to face a light-weight like John McCain head-on.

I do not want to see Hillary Clinton on television after the November elections explaining that regardless of the fact that she lost the delegate count and the popular vote she is still the best candidate (just like she is doing right now). I would much rather place my bets on a battle-hardened Obama candidacy with a track-record of effective campaigning and driven by a fierce work-ethic.

-mg

These are some unlucky times.

It’s unlucky that after 232 years of white male presidents, a political party is forced to choose between a woman or a black man for their first presidential mold-breaking nominee. In a just world we would have had many female presidents and presidents of all races by now. This is not a just world, and our nation has been afflicted with irrational prejudices since before its inception that we have long struggled to shed. Could an atheist Asian-American woman run the country? Of course, to new heights even. Could she get elected? The odds are currently impossible.

Our current female candidate has gotten to her position largely on the coattails of her husband and shamelessly crass triangulating plastic politics. Our current black candidate rose to the top through powerful virtues few presidents have been lucky enough to possess, and has faced an onslaught of racially tinged attacks from every direction (amazingly, much of it from the campaign of the female candidate). It is progress that they are here, but as prevalent are the signs that we haven’t quite gotten “there” yet.

I feel that given the choice between a female candidate and a black male candidate, one must turn the question to their merits and leave the identity politics behind. Either one would be a historic president breaking a centuries-old pattern of injustice, paving the way for future candidates. Either one benefits the other’s cause, because our nation will now recognize that things need not remain the way they were. If we can elect a female president, then we can also elect a non-white one, and vice versa.

Sadly, this idea has not caught on. Some have simply gravitated to the candidate most like them, understandably since that’s what people do. However, some have chosen to take sides and argue that gender trumps race or vice versa. This conflict was avoidable, yet we did not swerve away. (more…)

The battle lines are drawn, says Andrew Sullivan:

Last night (at the debate) was not Obama’s finest hour. But when you look back and see what he has already accomplished by the manner and content and care of his campaign, he is obviously on the right side. Key elements of the MSM establishment, the political establishment and the ideological right and cynical left know how big a threat he is to them. That’s why Hannity can join forces with Stephanopoulos and Clinton can channel Rove. Because in this issue, they are all on the same side.

They’ll call the candidate funded by the people elitist, they’ll portray the biracial man who tries to bring blacks and whites together as a Black Panther, they’ll call a champion of America’s greatness unpatriotic. They’ll do it because they think you’re stupid, not because they believe it. And then they’ll tell you Obama thinks you’re stupid.

The wagons are circling. Do we give up?

-jb

You decide: Politicians displaying genuine outrage on behalf of the people (who are so kind to remain silent), or willing to say anything for political advantage?

This is about the sickness of our modern political culture and its inability to be intellectually honest. Neither Clinton, McCain, nor-Quist believe what they’re saying. Three intelligent Washington veterans? Please. They simply recognize Obama’s words as something that can be easily misconstrued, so they leap to be the loudest one to do so. Via said action, they reveal their own contempt for the intelligence of the electorate, trying to punish Obama for, once again, talking to the public like they’re adults. And, in another indefensible move that should surprise nobody at this point, Hillary Clinton is actually sending out e-mails with soundbites from Republicans attacking Obama.

Obama’s strength, however, is that he doesn’t easily play this game, and keeps sticking to the truth:

So I made this statement– so, here’s what rich. Senator Clinton says ‘No, I don’t think that people are bitter in Pennsylvania. You know, I think Barack’s being condescending.’ John McCain says, ‘Oh, how could he say that? How could he say people are bitter? You know, he’s obviously out of touch with people.’

“Out of touch? Out of touch? I mean, John McCain–it took him three tries to finally figure out that the home foreclosure crisis was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he’s saying I’m out of touch? Senator Clinton voted for a credit card-sponsored bankruptcy bill that made it harder for people to get out of debt after taking money from the financial services companies, and she says I’m out of touch? No, I’m in touch. I know exactly what’s going on. I know what’s going on in Pennsylvania. I know what’s going on in Indiana. I know what’s going on in Illinois. People are fed-up. They’re angry and they’re frustrated and they’re bitter. And they want to see a change in Washington and that’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.”

Jack Cafferty, displaying his usual common sense, notes a hint of self-defensiveness in the motives of Clinton and McCain:

And what Barack Obama was suggesting is not that the people of Pennsylvania are to blame for any of it. It’s that the jerks in Washington, D.C., as represented by the ten years of the Bushes and the Clintons and the McCains who have lied to and misled these people for all of this time while they shipped the jobs over seas and signed phony trade deals like NAFTA are to blame for the deteriorating economic conditions among America’s middle class. I mean, I’m a college dropout and I can read the damn thing and figure it out.

This is the kind of rotten bullshit that does turn people bitter about D.C. And when threatened, it coordinates its own defense with stunning rapidity and collaboration. Trust Clinton, McCain, and co. on this and you’ll deserve the knife you find jutting out of your back.

-jb

UPDATE: This sounds to me like a more authentic reaction:

I’m a white guy. I live in upstate NY. I make like 18k a year right now. I can you right now that Obama has a lot of heads nodding along with him on this, and most of don’t belong to his elitist supporters, or the elitist bloggers who make up the A-list of the blogosphere.

What Obama said is unvarnished truth. Its a truth many of us have waited our lives to hear a real politician say. THAT is what has the media so rabid to try and cast these comments as some devil’s screed. They know damn well that people are more likely to agree with them than disagree, and they’re woring over time to make people dismiss them automatically without ever thinking on them. That isn’t going to happen. 20 years of this shit is too long already.

Virtually anybody who considers themselves at least a mild political junkie has noted the shenanigans of the vile chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Mark Penn. A man covered in sores and pustules filled with the pus of Beltway poison, he is a walking epitaph on the tomb of humanity in America’s public sphere. He was even hated within the Clinton camp of grade-A phonies like Harold Ickes, despite being entirely akin to them in authenticity, if kicked up a notch. Nevertheless, being chief strategist his tenure outlasted any sensible measure of accountability:

He should have been fired after Super Tuesday, and fired after the 11 contests that followed. He should have been fired before Texas and Ohio, and fired twice after. Instead, he wasn’t fired until April 6th, two weeks before the Pennsylvania primary, when no change in strategy could possibly change the outcome.

Incompetence and cronyism leading to catastrophic failure…wow, after eight years of George W., Hillary is offering a breath of fresh air, isn’t she? I’m relieved to note that the Obama campaign is pointing out the logical conclusion here:

In the days and weeks ahead, the Barack Obama campaign is going to pose a simple question to the undecided voters and undeclared superdelegates who will decide the Democratic nomination for president: If Hillary Clinton can’t run a good primary campaign, how is she ever going to run a good campaign against the Republicans?

And while she says she is ready from Day One to be president, she is at something like Day 430 into being a presidential candidate and her campaign seems to be going from bad to worse to train wreck.

Is this a coincidence that Hillary is displaying some of Bush’s worst qualities, blundering forward at the urging of a tight circle of yes-men despite all sense or consequence? Of course, not. A clumsy triangulator, she has too long admired and envied the election victories of Bush and the GOP over the years, and has internalized the forces that Democrats should be opposing. It is no surprise that we see her here after grabbing onto flag-burning amendments, voting for the Iraq War, voting to rattle sabers against Iran and possibly enable further misguided adventures, applauding the surge, adopting W.’s policy on negotiating with enemies, sucking up lobbyist money, etc. Mangling Bill’s (former) political deftness, she has simply surrendered so often to Republicans that she has lost perspective of where the line is drawn. She has come to believe that Karl Rove style campaigning mixed with DLC corporatism is what can save the Democrats against the Republicans in November, but it is what threatens to destroy the party for another generation.

It is tempting to dream that Hillary might have been able to offer us something nobler had Penn been squeezed out months ago, but this is precisely what she has proven herself capable of here. No one else is to blame. And no free pass should be given for hiring such an individual up front. We should be able to expect better from such an experienced, battle-tested and vetted candidate, shouldn’t we? Or should we realize we’ve been getting snake oil poured down our throats the entire time?

-jb

UPDATE: A demotion rather than a departure. Just too much accountability to expect from the Clinton campaign, it seems.

From a letter to the editor in The Washington Post:

James Carville can be obnoxious on some issues, but with regard to Bill Richardson, he was right on the mark. If there really was a Judas 2,000 years ago, he could not have outdone Mr. Richardson. I previously had the highest regard for him, but he has become a world-class traitor. I would be furious if he were my state’s governor.

Bill Richardson, in supporting Barack Obama, outdid Judas, who turned in Jesus to be executed. Makes sense.

Meanwhile, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy [front page, March 29] should refrain from calls to anoint Sen. Barack Obama as the party’s savior and let those at the Democratic convention decide, if necessary, who will be the nominee.

Barack Obama wins by the number of states, delegates, and the popular vote. Hillary could only win by superdelegates going against that and choosing her. Naturally, Barack could only claim the nomination by anointment.

a·noint (-noint)
tr.v. a·noint·ed, a·noint·ing, a·noints
1. To apply oil, ointment, or a similar substance to.
2. To put oil on during a religious ceremony as a sign of sanctification or consecration.
3. To choose by or as if by divine intervention.

Oh, and Senator Leahy shouldn’t express his opinion, because this prevents those at the Democratic convention from deciding things. Well, maybe not directly, but just think, if he speaks, he may risk influencing the opinions of others! I can only wonder if the reader agrees that Nancy Pelosi shouldn’t be expressing her opinions either, as free speech can also influence other people to develop similar opinions.

My faith in Democratic voters dies a little bit every day this madness persists. One could call this letter the work of one lone freak, but please tell me, how is this substantially different from anything coming from the Clinton camp these days? Complete gibberish with one thematic consistency: Hillary rulez, shut up!!! Is it any stupider than Carville’s comments, or anything Harold Ickes says?

-jb

Kevin Drum drops from the ceiling ninja-style and lances the cloud of puffery around McCain. Who’s the smoke and mirrors candidate running on platitudes again?

-jb

Got this email from an Obama delegate in Cedar Rapids:

I just wanted to let you know that I talked to over 7 pledged Obama delegates at yesterday’s Democratic County Caucus who received robocalls from the Hillary campaign to help support her at the county caucus. This is clearly a flip-flop on the statement given by the Hillary campaign as linked above. I talked to people within the Obama campaign and it didn’t really gain any ground. Maybe you can bring this up on iowaliberal?

She recently remarked that pledged delegates can switch. Unfortunately, Iowans haven’t bought into her sales pitches over the last 3 months because Obama gained 7 yesterday. There are a number of counties that once carried Hillary that changed to Obama yesterday as well. I guess the robocalls didn’t work. Too bad.

The article that was mentioned in the email can be found here.

-mg

That besides Wyoming, Mississippi is also another state that doesn’t really matter.

-jb

p.s. Kos notes that Texas didn’t really count either.

Seems quite a few Ohio Republicans became Democrats for one day to do the bidding of Oxycontin-addled Rush Limbaugh and vote for Hillary, or whatever Democrat they thought Mephistopheles McCain would have an easier time beating.

A staggering 16,000-plus Republicans in Cuyahoga County switched parties when they voted in last week’s primary.

That includes 931 in Rocky River, 1,027 in Westlake and 1,142 in Strongsville. More than a third of the Republicans in Solon and Bay Village switched. Pepper Pike had the most dramatic change: just under half its Republicans became Democrats. And some of those who changed – it’s difficult to say how many – could be in trouble with the law.

At least one member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections wants to investigate some Republicans who may have crossed party lines only to influence which Democrat would face presumed Republican nominee John McCain in November.

Those who crossed lines were supposed to sign a pledge card vowing allegiance to their new party.

In Cuyahoga County, dozens and dozens of Republicans scribbled addendums onto their pledges as new Democrats:

“For one day only.”

Furthermore:

Lying on the pledge is a felony, punishable by six to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.

I don’t want to scare away independents or Republicans from switching their registration to Democrat, as long as that’s what their intention really is. But where there is evidence of deliberate voter fraud, it would at least have been nice if the pollworkers had bothered enforcing the law.

Anderson, 76, and her husband, Donald, 78, served as poll workers on Tuesday and both helped fellow Republicans change parties all day; when it was time for them to vote, they crossed over, too.

Aren’t Republicans supposed to be concerned about voter fraud?

North Ridgeville Republican Hazel Sferry said she was kicking herself all day Tuesday after voting for McCain.

Don’t get her wrong. Sferry supports McCain.

But after she voted, she ran into her niece who told her about “the plot.”

Her niece…crossed over Tuesday after hearing Limbaugh. Newell said she voted for Obama because she thought McCain had a better chance against him.

Regardless, Sferry said she thought it was a great idea to mess with the other party if it helped McCain win.

“I don’t mind being deceptive to politicians,” she said. “They are deceptive to us.”

Oh, okay.

I guess I’d have something to say about “Say anything, do anything” Republicans, but Hillary Clinton is (or was) considered a major contender for the Presidential nomination, and millions of Democrats keep cheering her on, either fooled by or condoning her shenanigans, and Jeebus knows I’d better not suggest Barack Obama is any better because that means I think he’s the Messiah, so I’ll just leave it there…

-jb

Somedays it’s good to just listen to people talk and feel out a situation. Last night Hillary Clinton was declared the winner in 3 states, including the closely watched Ohio and Texas primaries. What that means is being hotly debated, somewhat. Some things I’ve grabbed and chewed on:

1. The Clinton campaign has had no choice but to try to paint this as the greatest victory ever. The news cycle today is undoubtedly going to lean in the Clintons’ favor for a bit, but the fact that Hillary didn’t hardly scratch Obama’s delegate lead is casting a shadow over the celebration. Seven weeks until Pennsylvania? She may win PA as well, but by then the fact that last night didn’t provide any gains for her will have sunk in. The question remains, how does this person believe she can still catch up, much less win?

2. The Obama campaign is aware that the Clintons are pursuing a Bush-style campaign and is gearing up to provide the jiu-jitsu. It seemed to me that Obama made a decent pushback against the “3am” horseshit, namely that there’s nothing to suggest she’d be any better equipped to handle an emergency than Obama, and plenty to suggest she’d be worse. The ad seemed designed to rely on Hillary’s name recognition and boldness in declaring herself the fear candidate to sway voters. Obama fought back with a reasoned argument. While I will always believe this is the correct response, it hasn’t proven the most effective in general elections. Sadly, it didn’t prove to be enough in a Democratic primary. Some people like my good friend Thomas Tallis point to our politicians as scumbags, but at some point one must observe that we vote these people into office, and we get what we deserve. The Democratic electorate is letting me down here. Hillary has been all too willing to blur the line between the Democrats and Bush, but for the voters to reward her…sad. Really, painfully disappointing.

That said, it does seem to me that it is time for Barack Obama to expand, deepen, and truly circumvent Hillary Clinton. I wouldn’t say that he needs to “go negative” as the horse-race lingo of today frames it. I’d say he needs to go assertive, with a dash of relentlessness. Some of it will be called negative regardless, but he can rise above that oversimplification. If Obama can stay cool, and simply go after every single argument or smear Clinton makes with rebuttals that are factual and logical, it’s fine to draw the necessary conclusions about her campaign: opportunistic, bankrupt of ideas, and divisive.

Obama’s camp needs to be firm on the fact that Hillary is still firmly behind, but that needs to be supplementary information, rather than primary. I got an email in my inbox titled simply, “The math.” I didn’t bother reading it. I know what the goddamn math is. Obama still needs to keep winning. Call Texas a virtual tie, talk about Vermont, and talk about what states you’re going to tackle next. Tell me what the ground game in Pennsylvania is. Something. If the races from now on keep vacillitating between Clinton and Obama, Obama maintains the lead and still gets to celebrate some more victories. If Clinton can come out of the night with virtually no gains in delegates screaming like she bloody won, Obama can throw a party for every victory too.

3. Strategically, this is bad news for the general election. Turn on some rightwing radio today or read some of their blogs. How do they sound? Like they just got their biscuit buttered, right? Some have speculated that Rush Limbaugh imploring his listeners in Ohio and Texas to go vote for Hillary worked. Obama’s camp has circulated the idea that Hillary Clinton hasn’t really been vetted, as she so frequently claims. And it’s true. If Hillary thinks she’s dishing out everything on Obama that the GOP can, she hasn’t been given an ounce of the guff the GOP will give her. The fact that she’s struggling so hard to win without Obama really going after her weaknesses is telling.

Make no mistake, the Republicans want to run against Hillary more than they do Obama. Right now, anyway. But if Obama cannot effectively demonstrate that he can outwit Hillary’s Rovian shtick for once and all, the GOP might start warming up to the idea of running against him. I heard on Michael Medved’s show that the GOP can essentially throw everything at Obama and say, “What, Hillary did it first!”

Can Obama do it? Sure he can. He’s been good on the rapid fire responses, but he needs to beef it up.

As for the general election, one can only hope that if Hillary manages, somehow, to slash and burn a path to the nomination, that she’ll go nuclear on McCain. But how would she? “3am” ads against McCain? Ludicrous.

Vote your conscience. I just ask how the destructive and likely futile Clinton slimefest against Obama appeals to your conscience. What reason is there to prefer Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama besides wanting to see a female president? Experience? Please, if she can claim she has 35 years experience, Obama has 20. Democrats need to stand up and differentiate themselves from those that gave George W. Bush four more years in office and vote with their principles for the best candidate for President. A quasi-victory based on following Bill Kristol’s advice to “run on fear” tells me that Hillary Clinton is indeed the emperor with no clothes in this race.

-jb

Disagree? You do the math.

-jb

Personally, I’m not sure how anybody could have avoided pegging Bush II for an idiot the first moment they laid eyes on him…but surely if they didn’t, he’s provided endless fodder for them ever since. I can only imagine that one could fight off a sense of burning shame that this stooge was put in charge of the United States of America for eight years via great effort and excessive willingness to say things like, “You’re just afflicted with Bush hatred!”

From Republicans I’ve been taught to expect such things, but can anyone believe that a person could nearly nab the Democratic nomination for the Presidency falling for this kind of reasoning?

Warming to the subject, Bush continued: “Sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raul Castro, for example, lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him. He gains a lot from it by saying, ‘Look at me. I’m now recognized by the president of the United States.’”

I’m stunned. This is our leader? The great man that Republicans look at and get misty-eyed over? The tragically misunderstood genius that only 30% of the nation can recognize?

Here’s a tip: There is not a single dictator on the planet who has had his grip on power loosened because he didn’t have the ability to strut around like a rooster crowing, “Look at me and despair, people! I’m recognized by the POTUS!” Coming at the end of Fidel Castro’s forty-nine year term, this is beyond ludicrous. It’s dangerously delusional.

Now we can expect this from the authoritarian logic-deprived rightwingers who worship Ronald Reagan but no longer remember that he sat down with the Soviets. But from one of our own?

Hillary Clinton has been given a considerable amount of slack from Democrats for somebody who has done little to differentiate her record from not just Bush’s foreign policy, but the most ill-conceived portions of it. Her vote to support the Iraq war should have been a disqualification, especially after the horrendous time John Kerry had in 2004. She was another Democrat politician fearful that the war would be over in a few months and she’d be on the wrong side come future elections. Democrats have gone too far letting her have it both ways. She ended up on the wrong side. And she still is, coming at Barack Obama for daring to follow the sound pragmatic brand of foreign policy that says keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

When people see George W. Bush trying to take a shot at Barack for the same reasons, it should remind them that his (stupid) words sound awfully familiar. We’ve been hearing this stupidity from Hillary.

The only reasonable response from Democrats is to applaud Obama. He has distinguished himself from Hillary Clinton in the most crucial areas where she has failed us, and Bush’s bellering has served to remind us where the line is drawn. Bravo, Obama.

And bravo to Bush, for coming out and saddling both Hillary and McCain with the burden of being on his side. After dispensing with Bush/Clinton policies, he merely needs to convince the public to take a pass on Bush/McCain policies.

I suspect they’ll find the choice relatively stark, and easy to make.

-jb

Michigan and Florida move up their primaries when they’re not supposed to. Democrats vote not to count their primaries. Democratic candidates agree not to campaign there. Barack Obama doesn’t even put his name on the Michigan ballot. Surprise, Hillary wins, as she tends to start out ahead in most states due to name recognition and familiarity. Oh, and yeah, Barack Obama didn’t even put his friggin’ name on the Michigan ballot, did I mention that? Hillary falls behind. Hillary’s campaign suddenly believes it needs those delegates to stay competitive. Problem? They have no argument and are blatantly asking to cheat.

Ickes also called upon DNC Chairman Howard Dean to broker a compromise to seat some or all of the delegates from Florida and Michigan, states which were stripped of their delegates.

He dismissed criticism he had voted to deprive the states of their representation at a DNC meeting in 2007, saying, “As we all know in this city I have a very short memory.”

Hillary’s campaign cannot disguise its shamelessness, nor its incompetence. Did I miss something?

-jb

The Huffington Post has a video of Hillary Clinton getting a bit salty over the Obama campaign rhetoric.  What demographic this type of behavior is supposed to appeal to is a mystery to me. 

-mg

Well, probably not, but what the heck is going on with Mike Huckabee?

[youtube hac-UHi56Xc]

This is hilarious, but it sure is a unique way of announcing to the public you’ve essentially thrown in the towel…but I guess in today’s era if political campaigns can begin on late night talk shows, they can end on Saturday Night Live. Man, Huckabee is without a doubt a charismatic and likable fellow. I kind of wish he’d beaten the rest of the GOP crowd because he was so obviously unqualified to be president, we could have just relaxed and enjoyed his presence on the campaign trail without ever fearing him. Unfortunately that dynamic manifested itself too early, and now we’ve got to deal with obviously unqualified sourpuss McCain.

-jb

It’s been fun watching the media tip-toe around words like “affair” and “infidelity” when it comes to the latest revelations regarding St. McCain and his past associate Vicki Iseman.  The only two angles I’ve been seeing are that his aides were “greatly concerned” about his closeness to Ms. Iseman (as if what his aides think of the situation is the meat and potatoes of the story) and that, even though nothing (may or may not have) happened, whatever is/was/being/may have been implied, it is a smear.

Our local FOX affiliate, FOX 28 out of Cedar Rapids, even felt compelled to air their piece with a snippet from Brent Bozell (?!?!?) castigating the NYT for printing such a vile rumor.

Truth be told, had the NYT published what they had before hot, hunky Romney decided to call it quits it would have undoubtedly caused McCain a lot more problems.  It would have likely cost him the nomination.  If the NYT waited until later on this year it would have done even more damage.

McCain should be thanking his lucky stars that the NYT released this story when it did. 

-mg

…but the reality is that if Clinton doesn’t take Texas and Ohio in landslides, Obama is still the front-runner. Pollster has the digits.

-mg

PS – Is it just me or does Hillary’s “we’re just going to concentrate on the states that matter” line of rhetoric remind one of a certain Republican candidate that has since gone down in flames?

After 8 years of rigged and stolen elections in the USA, I thought the readers may like to hear about one happy ending.

A happy ending to the tragic death (assassination or accidental) of the charismatic Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan.

The elections, in which she was supposed to have run, took place yesterday, and her party won an overwhelming majority of the National Assembly seats.  But not without incident and trepidation in some areas.  The party that came in second (Nawaz Sharif’s), had its own casualties.  Although they didn’t lose their leader like Benazir, some of their candidates were murdered right before election.  Because of that voter turnout was very low and cautious.  It was especially low and quiet in the capital Islamabad, although slowly but surely people did end up coming out and voting.  In the larger urban areas, there was a much more of a turnout with women taking risks to come and out vote, showing solidarity with the murdered, Benazir.  The biggest shock or upset, was people coming out in the tribal areas (where the Taliban supposedly have control), near the border with Afghanistan where heavy fighting is supposedly taking place.  There were some bomb blasts with quite a few casualties up until election day.  Yet the people still voted out the Islamic fundamentalists and gave all their votes to the secular liberal parties.

Despite these odds, at least there is now some balance of power, with the democratic liberals being now in the majority and with the power to impeach the dictator.

John Kerry (himself a victim of stolen elections) was there to ensure that free and fair elections did actually take place.  Since I trust his word over at least, the current US administration, I’ll take him on his word.

There was a huge turnout by women, this time around.

What is interesting that the 2 parties that got the majority of the votes were 2 of the current dictator’s nemeses.

1) the party of Benazir Bhutto (an obvious adversary)

2) the party of Nawaz Sharif (the guy who was ousted by the current dictator in a bloodless coup and forced into exile).

Another great victory was the province that borders Afghanistan, where supposedly the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are running wild in orgiastic abandon.  All the Fundamentalist parties lost their seats there.  This is very important, because this is the region of the world where the media portrays as illiterate; and that they accept the Taliban and fundamental Islam into their doors, and that their 5 and 6 year olds willingly learn to blow off the white devils’ heads with an AK or Kalashnikov.  It’s these people who in an overwhelming majority chose a democratic moderate party to represent them in the National Assembly.

 So my dear readers, democracy won the night last night, at least on paper.

Here’s a piece by a British journalist who’s been living in Pakistan for many years:

–aa

This really shouldn’t be necessary to write, but there is a slowly building concentration of defensive spin targeting Barack Obama coming from Clinton supporters, Beltway MSM hacktaculars, and people willing to vote for McCain (because watching one president decline into old age and senility wasn’t enough). So it is with profound regret that I have to say this.

Yes, you bleeding nitwits, I do understand that Barack Obama is not Jesus Christ.

Maybe taking into account that I don’t even think Jesus was Christ would have helped those who know me better avoid such accusations, but as one surveys the news scene it can be readily witnessed that the anti-Obama crowd thinks they’ve found a line of attack against him that will finally stick. Yes, Clinton fans, you’ve aligned with the likes of Charles Krauthammer and Jake “Ass” Tapper around this cynical joke: upon witnessing the American people daring to be halfway inspired and moved by a presidential candidate, even after they’ve suffered through two terms of President Clusterfuck, the only logical conclusion is that 22 states and the majority of Democratic voters now belong to a cult, and they think Obama is the messiah.

It would be worth it to consider these charges, and to make sure they aren’t valid. But what do we have? On one side, you have people who have decided Obama would bring a fresh approach to the White House and speak in non-divisive language that would bring independents and weaken rightwingers enough to get a practical progressive agenda carried out. They aren’t signing loyalty oaths, a Bush II practice that went virtually ignored. They find him, much like those who oppose Obama politically, to be charming and likable. If one can reasonably determine Dick Cheney to be the bastard lovechild of Darth Vader and Dr. Strangelove, deciding Obama’s a good fellow isn’t much of a stretch. Indeed, trying to find anybody in Obama’s past dealings that hates him is a fool’s quest. You have a readily available stack of policy positions that is almost universally described as being the same as Hillary Clinton’s (or, rather, former candidate John Edwards’…or even more accurately, a rough consensus of modern progressive liberal views). You have praise coming from centrist pragmatic folks like Michael Bloomberg (who really must get this idea of running for president out of his mind):

In his answer, he praised Democrat Barack Obama for the plan the Illinois senator outlined on Wednesday that would create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to rebuild highways, bridges, airports and other public projects. Obama projects it could generate nearly 2 million jobs.

In response to another growing meme that if one has impressive style, it must be at the cost of substance, Obama has been reminding voters that he has more than enough wonkiness to do the job. No doubt, this is an urgent concern after two terms of having a president literally unable to understand or explain his own policies, but Obama has put it to rest.

One would think this picture would be a rather positive foreshadowing of a presidency this nation could really benefit from. Yet the flak flies. Of course, this raises the question, could any candidate really get away with all this and not get flak?

Yeah, I know, rhetorical question. The flak is a given. The question is, who’s giving it and what’s their motive?

And, of course, it all flies apart instantly. The Clintons believe Hillary is due the presidency and will say anything towards that end, party or country bedamned, and their supporters aren’t far behind. The contortions required to paint her as the better candidate for office aren’t pretty. Beltway twats like Jake Tapper sit in their ivory towers completely divorced from the rest of the country, so entrenched in Washington cynicism that they must reflexively shit on anything which threatens that. And the eight Republicans supporting John McCain are basically stuck, resigned to making noise until November in a candidacy which will go down in history as Dole II.

Years of GOP attack politics wore me down to the point where I finally said, “Hey, wait…who are YOU fuckers to talk shit about anybody?” The country ducked and jumped to every cry of the rightwing noise machine, believing every word impugning others, yet we never looked at who we were listening to and wondered why we were doing it. The roster of characters was composed of some of the most pathetic men and women who have ever entered the public sphere. How can you really care what George W. Bush says about anybody? Karl Rove? Dick Cheney? Rush Limbaugh? Sean Hannity? Ann Coulter? These people have their motives and incredible faults splashed all over their faces. Hypocrisy seemed to be a requirement to talk, not a disqualification.

And here we are again. Yep, there are some monkeys flinging their feces…but that’s what monkeys do. What else is there to say?

-jb