March 31, 2008

3/31: Strange Bedfellows

The political blogosphere is a weird place these days. First, we have conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt (a John McCain supporter) and liberal blogger Jeralyn Merritt (a Hillary Clinton supporter) promoting the same Clinton press release about "[Barack] Obama's Record of Exaggerations & Misstatements." Next, we have conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds repeatedly linking to anti-Obama blog posts from the liberal blog TalkLeft. Finally, we have various conservative bloggers buzzing about a controversial anti-Obama ad that combines Jeremiah Wright's sermons with graphic images of the 9/11 attacks. The kicker? This ad was disseminated by a pro-Clinton diarist at the liberal blog MyDD.

It's highly unlikely that pro-Clinton bloggers and pro-McCain bloggers are coordinating their attacks on Obama. Still, this phenomenon has to be disconcerting for Obama's netroots supporters, which is probably why so many of them are calling on the uncommitted superdelegates to endorse Obama and end the race.

CLINTON: Can't Stop, Won't Stop

Most liberal bloggers reacted negatively to Clinton's Washington Post interview, in which she vowed to stay in the race until the convention if FL and MI aren't "resolved" before then:

"I know there are some people who want to shut this down and I think they are wrong. I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan. And if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention -- that's what credentials committees are for."

• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "One thing to note about Hillary Clinton's Florida and Michigan strategy is the utter selfishness of it. Her best shot at getting her way on this issue is to keep observing, in a meta kind of way, that if the DNC disses Florida and Michigan by not seating their delegates, that this could hurt Democratic fortunes in Florida and Michigan in November. There are, however, any number of solutions to this problem. One, if Clinton dropped out and endorsed Obama, the delegates could be seated no problem. Two, 50-50 delegations could be seated without controversy, again removing the concern about MI and FL lacking representation. Three, leaders of the Democratic Party from all factions could reiterate that everybody knew the rules going in and the voters of Michigan and Florida have nobody to blame but their own state party leaders for creating this situation. But instead Clinton has chosen path four of deliberately setting up a train wreck, hoping that by credibly committing to the idea that she's happy to sink the party's fortunes in FL and MI if she doesn't get her way, she can thereby get her way."


• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "It's bizarre, disturbing and, yet, weirdly fascinating to watch Clinton in action these days. She continues to make up new rules and new realities. And, the fact that she will destroy not just the Democratic nominee, but the Democratic party becomes more obvious every day."


• TPM's Josh Marshall thinks Clinton is playing for time: "What is this new gambit for her about? Is she really serious about taking her case to the convention's credentials committee -- which seems almost certain to have a majority of Obama supporters -- and trying to get them to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates on her terms? [...] I don't think whether Hillary means it or doesn't mean it is even really the point. In a sense, I suspect both are true. Like her earlier gambits along these lines, the point is to play for time. [...] From my view, saying she's in it till August isn't about August. It's not even about June. It's about stamping out doubts about her viability and determination to stay in so she can still be in the game in April and May."

CLINTON II: Leave Hillary Alone!

Pro-Clinton bloggers are pushing back against the calls for Clinton to drop out:

• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Does anyone think that these folks would be calling on Hillary Clinton to drop out if there was a string of primaries or even one that it looked like Barack Obama would win in the next 30 days? Of course not. [...] If Democrats who are concerned that Clinton will take this all the way to the convention really want to make sure this ends before July 1, as Howard Dean has now called for, they'll urge Barack Obama to back remedies for Michigan and Florida. The idea that Barack Obama can claim a clear win without two states that early in the process would have gone handily to Senator Clinton is absurd. This IS her rationale for taking this to the convention, so anyone who would like to avoid that eventuality should get behind an alternative for those states."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "It is quickly being proven that the Obama network (NBC), the Obama pundits (the NBC pundits, Ed Schultz, etc.), the Obama blogs, the Obama endorsers ([Pat] Leahy, [Chris] Dodd, [Bob] Casey) and the Obama campaign do not know how to close the deal in this race...The way NOT to do it is to attack Hillary Clinton at every turn. It does not exude inevitability. It exudes fear. It alienates the Clinton supporters who would have to accept and support Obama as the nominee. It is harmful and divisive. And more pragmatically, it STRENGTHENS Clinton. [...] What these Obama supporters, from [Keith] Olbermann on down, need to learn is that Obama needs to beat Clinton, not have it handed to him. What they suggest would be the absolute worst result for Obama."
• Taylor Marsh: "If the elite DC Dems keep trying to push Clinton from this race, Hillary's supporters will sit the November election out or worse, protest the party's actions by voting for John McCain."

OBAMA: The Wright Albatross

Conservative bloggers continue to hammer Obama over his relationship with Jeremiah Wright:

• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "In Dreams of My Father, Obama describes the very first time he attended Trinity and heard Wright preach. What was Wright's theme? A racist attack on white people. [...] By his own account, Obama wasn't repelled by Wright's racism, it was the very quality that drew Obama to Wright's church! It strikes me that Barack Obama is uniquely unfit to be President, or, for that matter, to serve in the Senate."
• RedState's absentee: "Twenty years ago, young Barack Obama was inspired by a message. That message is the same message the Wright Reverend has preached ever since, and its thematic elements are evident in all other aspects of the Senator's life. Senator Obama can't lead us to a more perfect union or bridge the racial divide. He doesn't repudiate or condemn Reverend Wright's divisive worldview. He has spent twenty years staking a claim to it, and figuring out pretty packages with which to deliver it to the White House."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "It's pretty clear that no form of Christianity other than black liberation theology had any chance of attracting Obama. Wright's sophomoric ranting was a perfect fit for Obama. It made him feel authentically black (see Shelby Steele on this subject), it fit the anti-American narrative Obama had picked up in the Ivy League, and it was the best church around for advancing Obama's career in Chicago politics."
• Townhall's Amanda Carpenter has a question for Obama: "With which elements, if any, of black liberation theology -- as represented by Reverend Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ -- do you strongly disagree? Do you think any of the core tenets of black liberation theology are racist? Are they consistent with, or fundamentally at odds with, your expressed desire to end racial divisions in this country?"
• NRO's Victor Davis Hanson: "Barack Obama is on his way to a [George] McGovern candidacy."

On the left, The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum is spooked by the conservative blogosphere's preoccupation with Wright: "I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the Jeremiah Wright controversy has shaken my confidence [in Obama] a bit. This has nothing to do with the substance of the thing, which I think has been wildly overblown, but by the conservative reaction to it. Go scan The Corner and you'll find Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson and the rest of the gang still in an absolute lather over Wright. Ditto for other conservative sites. They have no intention of allowing this to die, and I have no doubt that it will resurface with a vengeance in every last swing state this fall. When Obama continues to fail to denounce Wright thoroughly enough -- and believe me, no denunciation will ever be enough with this crowd -- then eventually the crossover Republicans who were singing Obama's praises after Super Tuesday will, sadly but inevitably, use this as an excuse to switch their support to McCain. [...] I think Hillary's folks are wrong to believe that Obama is doomed, but I'm not sure I think they're delusional any more. There's every sign that we have an ugly campaign ahead of us."

OBAMA II: I Only Did This To Show You What They're Gonna Do!

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about an anti-Obama ad that combines Jeremiah Wright's sermons with graphic images of the 9/11 attacks. Interestingly, the ad was disseminated by a liberal blogger, MyDD diarist Universal, who claims to have found the ad on the pro-Clinton website Hillaryis44:

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Apparent Hillary Clinton supporter Universal at MyDD wants the Democrats to realize the predicament they face in November if Barack Obama wins the nomination. He thinks the Republicans will create unfair and devastating advertising that will appeal to fear, using 9/11 imagery to derail Obama. Universal wants to protect the Democrats from this fate -- so he cranked out an ad to kneecap Obama first. [...] It's interesting to note that MyDD employed 9/11 footage that even the networks haven't used for years -- namely, the people jumping to their deaths in the minutes before the collapse. We finally get to see that again, and only in the context of one Democratic blogger attacking a Democratic candidate. [...] The 'GOP will use it' argument simply serves as a dodge for an attack on Obama over the Wright Stuff. Universal wants Obama out of the race, and has served up some fear mongering to suit that purpose."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Like the web video that mixed Wright with Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, I think it's gilding the lily. Wright, coupled with Michelle Obama's statement that she's only now proud of her country, and Obama's pledges to limit defense spending, are damaging enough. Footage of the 9/11 attacks is, in this context, a distraction at best and irredeemably exploitative and tasteless to most viewers. But the MyDD poster is left with in a strange role, using the most shocking images of the decade to try to warn the Democratic party not to buy into the idea that the Jeremiah Wright matter has come and gone with minimal damage to Obama."
• RedState's Moe Lane: "I am not going to say 'Thank You,' MyDD, for confusing what you'd do if you were us for what we'll do; particularly when it comes to using graphic 9/11 imagery to get John McCain elected. While I think that the footage from that day should be more public, it's not so that my Party can win elections. It's so that my country is reminded who we're currently at war with. Save your contempt for your bathroom mirror."
• Glenn Reynolds: "[This video] doesn't quite ring true to me, but I suspect it will create a stir among Democrats."

MCCAIN: An American President For Americans Who Love America

Liberal bloggers are very critical of McCain's new TV ad:

• Ezra Klein: "Note...the odd tagline, 'John McCain: The American President Americans Have Been Waiting For.' This is, presumably, in contrast to Barack Obama, 'the Kenyan Muslim President Whom Al-Qaeda Has been Waiting For.' Classy, classy."
• TAPPED's Kate Sheppard: "And so it begins. John McCain launches his first national television ad for the general election today, which in a single minute manages to refer to the U.S. as a 'she' that must be protected in that creepy-uncle kind of way, suggest that one must serve in the armed forces to be a true patriot, and insinuate that other presidential candidates are less 'American.' Soaring to new heights of class, that John McCain."

Some liberal bloggers think McCain is making a mistake by making his Vietnam experience a central part of this ad (and, presumably, his candidacy):

• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "McCain is obviously hinging his whole campaign on his POW time in Vietnam, with this spot closing with 'An American President Americans Have Been Waiting for'. This is a frequent tool he deploys when he speaks with the press, saying things like 'I haven't been questioned this hard since Hanoi'. I can't help but think that it's a foolish narrative. 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 all saw the candidate without military service elected over the candidate who had served, in several cases heroically."
• MyDD's J Ro: "It is doubtful John McCain's status as a 'war hero' will significantly boost his campaign. While America is indeed involved in a very bloody war in Iraq, I don't think many Americans feel a deep connection with it -- especially a positive one. Iraq is very unpopular, and on top of that, by and large Americans have not been asked to sacrifice for the war effort like they were during WWII and Vietnam. So, recently, while many Presidential candidates are veterans, they don't seem to get elected more often over their non-veterans opponents. For the American people these days, it's less about a candidate's war biography than their policies and how they run their races -- and that bodes ill for the old, unstable, and out-of-touch John McCain."

MCCAIN II: So When's The Next Barbecue?

Liberal bloggers continue to decry what they perceive to be the media's pro-McCain bias:

• Digby: "The 'special relationship' between John McCain and the press is particularly dangerous in one respect: he is not held accountable for his words on the stump, (while Democrats' are used against them as if they'd carved them in stone from Mt Rushmore) and he's not held liable for his gross and obvious panders and policy shifts. I'm not sure I've ever seen a politician have this kind of industrial strength teflon before. [...] When [McCain] gets 'angry' at lobbyists or rightwing ministers he's telling the truth. When he cozies up to lobbyists and seeks the endorsement of rightwing ministers, it's because he *has* to, (and he really, really hates doing it.) John McCain's heart, you see, is always in the right place, and oddly enough, everyone believes it's in the same place as is their own. I can't conceive of a greater advantage for a politician."
• Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher: "In the junior high popularity contest that this election has become, McCain is the Once and Future Prom King. On the other hand, the media have locked their sights on Obama, and he can look forward to more and more constant video repetition shitstorms of the Jeremiah Wright variety. Unless someone starts pushing the media to apply some equivalent skepticism to McCain, the slog to November will be one long foot massages for St. John the Divine."

Liberal bloggers are particularly angry that the media (in their view) isn't devoting sufficent coverage to McCain's FEC problems:

• Hamsher: "We all know that the New York Times would be having a full-on, head exploding meltdown if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were acting like complete hypocrites on their signature issue like McCain is here, and it would be on the front page for months. But nary a peep. So if you know any friends who you think might be interested in signing on too, please tell them by emailing them here. We'll be delivering signatures to the FEC on Monday."
• Sudbay: "McCain is a campaign finance criminal. [...] We'll see if McCain's pals in the traditional media can get this concept. They don't like to make McCain angry -- he's volatile. And, that might get them kicked off the bus."

MCCAIN III: A Hidden Advantage?

Yglesias thinks people are underestimating McCain's chances: "I heard a liberal Obama skeptic remark a couple of months ago that it would be a strange day in America when the correct answer to the question 'who's the most electable' was 'the black guy.' I think that's right, and it's a reminder that though the cliché is to say that Democrats are torn between two very strong candidates, in some ways we're torn between two very weak ones. At the end of the day, I do think 'the black guy' is the more electable of the two, because 'Bill Clinton's less-charismatic wife' is an almost uniquely poor choice to try to expand the Democratic Party's appeal at a time when George W. Bush has brought the GOP into discredit. But in a primary election, where Clinton has formidable strength, it would have been extremely difficult for anyone other than 'the black guy' to build a viable anti-Clinton coalition. Given the extreme strong underlying pro-Democrat fundamentals, it's very hard for me to imagine how a 'generic Democratic white dude' like Chris Dodd or John Edwards or, indeed, John Kerry would lose in this environment."

Open Left's Chris Bowers is worried: "It is very, very difficult for me to believe that John McCain can win this election, given the enormous structural advantages Democrats have this year (fundraising, partisan self-identification, the general mood for change). [...] However, another part of me also worries that what Matthew Yglesias wrote today is true, and that in terms of electability, we were always deluding ourselves that either a woman or an African-American were ever really all that 'electable' nationwide. [...] I don't know how likely it is, but the Rasmussen poll suggest that it is indeed possible that Obama does not hold a small lead over McCain, and instead actually faces a decently sized, 5-8% deficit at this point in the campaign. Might a live-interview 'Bradley effect' be inflating Obama's (and Clinton's) numbers outside of IVR polls? [...] It is certainly a possibility, and a worrying one to consider."

Open Left's Mike Lux still thinks the political environment favors Dems: "There is a trend I am increasingly noticing in focus groups where people perceive that Democrats are aligned with the future and Republicans with the past. McCain's age and irritability, Republican talking points which sound exactly the same as they have for a million years regardless of circumstances, Obama's age and multicultural background...all of it is adding up to a sense in voters that we are the future, and Republicans are the past. The future may feel a little scary, the past may feel more comfortable in some ways, but when they think about it, voters know the future is a better way to vote that the past. Now, the Presidential dynamics could still screw everything up, and drive the whole Democratic ticket down. My gut, though, is that the overall trends will weigh McCain down far more than McCain's advantages will allow him to change those trends."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Gory Prospects

NRO's Mark Levin:

"So, the Democrat party's answer to the split between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama might be to nominate Al Gore, who hasn't run in any primary or caucus. If that happens then none of the votes cast by any of the Democrat voters counted. They will all have disenfranchised. And how does a Gore nomination address all the talk by the Obama supporters that the convention must deliver the nomination to Obama as he has received (or will have received) the most popular votes and secured the most delegates? Finally, what about all the excitement over the possibility of the first woman or first black president? That goes down the tubes with the nomination of Gore. It seems to me that a Gore nomination creates serious problems for the Democrat Party. So, I would encourage the Democrats to do it."

LEST WE FORGET: Ted Danson Totally Nails Tonight Show Interview

From The Onion:

"BURBANK, CA -- Despite his initial anxiety, actor Ted Danson reported Tuesday that he 'totally nailed' an important five-minute interview aired at 12:15 a.m. with Tonight Show host Jay Leno. 'I really thought I was going to blow it, that I wouldn't know how to answer any of Mr. Leno's questions, but I somehow lucked out and had an anecdote for just about every single one,' said Danson, who claimed that he gave Leno a firm handshake when he came out, made a reference to a bit from earlier in the program to showcase his familiarity with the show, and even made Leno laugh out loud a number of times. 'Mr. Leno seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say, and at the end of the interview, he asked me to stick around.' Danson added, 'I think they'll have me back.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:56 PM

March 28, 2008

3/28: To Madame, With Love

As we reported yesterday, liberal bloggers are angry that a group of wealthy Hillary Clinton donors sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which they appeared to implicitly threaten to withhold future donations to the DCCC if Pelosi did not change her position on superdelegates. For many bloggers, this letter only confirmed their view that Clinton is willing to go to any lengths to win the Presidency, even if it means hurting the party. MoveOn.org and OpenLeft.com responded by circulating a petition declaring that they "support Speaker Pelosi and others who stand up for Democracy in the Democratic Party."

Righty bloggers, as usual, are sitting back and enjoying the show. However, they're also directing a steady stream of criticism at Barack Obama (whom most still believe will be the Dem nominee), focusing on his connections to Jeremiah Wright and his liberal voting record.

DEM FIELD: Hillary's Slipping?

Liberal bloggers are looking at recent polls conducted by Pew and NBC/WSJ and concluding that Obama -- surprisingly -- has had a better few weeks than Clinton:

• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "It's becoming increasingly evident that Hillary Clinton's strategy to raise doubts about Barack Obama's candidacy is backfiring. Yesterday, the latest NBC/WSJ poll showed that while Obama's positive/negative rating has dropped a bit recently, from 51-28 earlier this month to 49-32, Clinton's has absolutely plummeted from 45-43 to 37-48 today. Who would have thought that during a period that involved the [Jeremiah] Wright controversy that it would be Clinton's approval that would be the one to dip."
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "The problem the Clinton partisans face right now is that Obama didn't say what Wright said, and people are too smart to realize that just because you attend a church or are friends with someone, doesn't mean you agree with them 100 percent. (Just like you guys don't agree with everything I write, yet you continue to return.)...Note [Clinton's] 'phony' numbers [in the Pew poll], and that was before the Tuzla stuff exploded. [...] So Clinton sort of walked into a trap, reinforcing a trait that people already harbored against her. I wouldn't have called her a 'phony' a week ago, but now the evidence is mounting on that front."
• MyDD's Jerome Armstrong thinks the Wright controversy will hurt Obama in the general election, if not the Dem primary: "I just haven't seen any numbers though, aside from polls done right after this broke, that Obama suffers from his relationship to Wright in the Democratic primary. There have been many statewide polls though, which show a continued slide against [John] McCain, which is probably why Obama continues to try and figure out a way to end the story."

Bloggers are also discussing recent polls conducted by InsiderAdvantage and Public Policy Polling that show Obama leading Clinton by double-digits in NC:

• Moulitsas: "With Clinton looking past Pennsylvania to North Carolina and Indiana, it's tough to see how she can win the Tarheel state. [...] The problem for Clinton is that for the Democratic primary, the white vote will be skewed heavily by the Research Triangle's 'creative class' -- educated professionals who make up a significant chunk of Obama's base. [...] And given that African Americans are expected to make up a third of the primary electorate, I'm seeing a 20-point Obama victory in NC. Indiana, split between the half that's sort of like Illinois, and the other half that's sort of like Ohio, is more fertile ground for Clinton. But North Carolina? Not a chance."
• Armstrong: "Now that we've got a couple of recent polls out of NC, it definitely looks like a strong Obama state. [...] Again, Obama is not going to be hurt much by Wright in the Democratic primary. Black voters back him strongly, the [InsiderAdvantage] poll's wild card is that most of the undecided voters are white. [...] There would seem to be a bit of an opening for Clinton to at least close the margin."

DEM FIELD II: More Schadenfreude

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers continue to enjoy the Dem primary:

• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Schadenfreude is an exceedingly unappealing trait. It also is utterly and completely irresistible. [...] The chances are increasing that there will remain enough residual bitterness to make a difference in what has become not a runaway election that favors the Democrats, but rather a close election that may yet be won by the Republicans."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "This primary's length and even split is unique in the four decades of the current system. Only the Walter Mondale-Gary Hart race came close, and look how well that worked out for the Democrats in 1984. It didn't generate the kind of passions and identity-politics baiting that has taken place this time, either -- and it didn't last as long as this race appears it will. [...] The sight of [Clinton] begging her followers not to vote Republicans shows the disintegration of the Democratic campaign better than anything else. Have we seen McCain having to make a plea to Republicans not to vote Democratic?"

Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau urges caution: "It's hard not just to pull up a chair, pop up the corn and enjoy all the intra-party bickering between Obamaniacs and Clinton supporters, especially when there are polls that show that a significant number of Democrats might defect to McCain if their first-choice candidate loses the nomination. But let's remember that we're in a very heated period on the Democrat side. [...] It's highly possible, after all, that angry and disgruntled Democrats who are now threatening to cross party lines might reconsider once a final nominee has been selected and the race cools down. And couldn't this be especially true given the absence of any significant ideological differences between Barack and Hillary...?"

CLINTON: Threatening The DCCC = Not Appreciated

The netroots are angry that a group of wealthy Clinton donors sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi in which they appeared to implicitly threaten to stop supporting the DCCC if Pelosi did not change her position on superdelegates:

• Oliver Willis: "The more I read about the rich donors who told Nancy Pelosi to shut up, the more angry I get. I may not agree with her on quite a few issues, but Speaker Pelosi is second in line to the Presidency, the first woman to hold her position and a figure demanding of respect -- especially from people who are supposed to be her fellow Democrats. These guys seriously think that because they went to a fancy fundraiser or maybe played a round of golf with the ex-president that they really are better than the rest of us. They have every right to add their voice to the chorus supporting Sen. Clinton, but they have no place, no standing, no right to order the Speaker around."
• OpenLeft's Chris Bowers: "The funniest thing about the Liebercrat letter threatening Nancy Pelosi and the DCCC is the inflated sense of influence these donors think they have. 20 big donors threaten to pull their support for the DCCC, eh? Let's just assume for a moment that all 20 maxed out to the DCCC in 2005-2006, collectively raising $500,000 for the organization. [...] In 2005-2006, the DCCC raised $140,000,000, and $500,000 [is] a drop in the bucket. [...] If Nancy Pelosi and DCCC should really be afraid of something, it would be if MoveOn.org threatened to urge its members to withhold money from House Democrats. In the 2003-2004 cycle, MoveOn/org members contributed $180,000,000 in itemized, hard-money donations to Democratic federal campaigns. [...] The simple fact is that by this point, the netroots are far more central to Democratic fundraising efforts than Liebercrats. Someone needs to tell these donors that the 1990's are over, and ownership of the Democratic Party is no longer the province of a select few massive soft money donors."

MoveOn.org and OpenLeft.com responded to the letter by co-sponsoring a petition declaring that they "support Speaker Pelosi and others who stand up for Democracy in the Democratic Party."

• OpenLeft's Mike Lux: "We believe that the candidate who wins this election ought to be given the nomination. If the donors and raisers who signed this letter plan to take their money away from the DCCC, that would be a terrible thing, and if that's what they are implying with this letter, shame on them and on the Clinton campaign for encouraging that kind of threat. But, if they do take their money away, I believe those of us signing this petition can more than make up the difference through our collective efforts. More importantly, it will be up to us to make sure that the actions of a few do not change the course that Speaker Pelosi and our House members have been fighting for."
• Meanwhile, AMERICAblog's John Aravosis urges his readers to donate to the DCCC: "The DCCC is the body responsible for electing and re-electing Democrats in the House. By getting her rich super-donors to threaten to stop funding the DCCC, Hillary is threatening to severely damage our efforts to hold the House in the fall. [...] Ever single Democrat in the House, all 232 of them, are SuperDelegates. Perhaps it's time we asked those SuperDelegates who are supporting Hillary, and those who are undecided and inexplicably not choosing sides, whether they agree that it's appropriate for Hillary to threaten a boycott of the DCCC, effectively holding hostage every Democrat in the House."

TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat disagrees with his fellow netroots bloggers (as has frequently been the case lately): "[Pelosi] claims to be neutral when everyone knows she is for Obama. She claims to have to maintain neutrality because she is co-chairman of the Democratic National Convention. But she has repeatedly made statements betraying that neutrality, including saying a unity ticket is impossible and that the super delegates should overturn the popular vote in favor of the pledged delegate count. She argued against revotes in Florida and Michigan. [...] She has been as divisive and harmful as any other Democrat in this contest. She should do the honorable thing and formally announce what we all know -- she is an Obama supporter. She also should step down as co-chairman of the Democratic National Convention. And she should be quiet for a while. She has done enough damage already."

CLINTON II: Scapegoating Dean?

Liberal bloggers are criticizing another group of Clinton donors for circulating a petition urging Howard Dean to either recognize the FL and MI delegations or promise to hold new elections:

• Bowers: "The reason this really bothers me is just how misdirected it is. In particular, the petition is addressed to Howard Dean, and the guy running it wants 'the chairman to exercise come leadership.' That's all well and good, but did it ever occur to these geniuses to actually send the letter to the people with actual purview over the matter?...Instead of sending the letter to Howard Dean, they should send it to the rules committee which stripped MI and FL of their delegates, to the members of the credentials committee who will hold jurisdiction over the matter, or to Nancy Pelosi, who will chair the convention itself. You know, the people with actual power over the matter. Oh wait -- doing that would require sending the letter to people like Harold Ickes, a member of Clinton's campaign and the DNC rules committee who voted to strip MI and FL of their delegates. I guess it would look kind of strange for the Clinton campaign to be sending petitions to members of its own campaign. So, instead of sending the petition to people who actually hold purview over the matter, they have decided instead to scapegoat Howard Dean. Stay classy, Clinton fundraising team."
• Moulitsas: "The DNC is captive to its rules, and Dean is in fact exercising great leadership by refusing demands that the DNC bail out Florida and Michigan from its decision to break the party rules -- rules that all 48 other states decided to follow. If Michigan and Florida get to flout the rules, then no DNC calendar can ever be enforced, which means that there's no possible way to break the Iowa and New Hampshire monopolies. If candidates can't be assured that a rule-breaking state doesn't count, then they'll be forced to campaign on those states. Dean has already said that the DNC would recognize new contests in both Florida and Michigan. The fact that both states have passed on that option has nothing to do with Dean or Obama (he's not governor of either state, hence can't veto any such legislation). It has to do with the fact that the states which caused these problems for themselves were unable to clean up after their own mess."

CLINTON III: She Ain't Goin' Nowhere

Several bloggers on both the left and right are discussing Clinton's interview with FOX News' Greta Van Susteren, in which Clinton asserted that "she has no qualms about taking the primary fight all the way to the convention floor":

Jerome Armstrong: "Clinton sounds ready to throw down over MI and FL, all the way to the convention. The thing is, she may have an opening to go there. [...Obama's campaign] may have left an opening to Clinton by not fully cooperating with Clinton and the DNC to find a way to let MI and FL re-vote. They don't want to chance Clinton winning two more big states, but by not going along with it, they give Clinton a lifeline via her ability to count those states as they stand, and possibly, if Clinton manages to pick up enough pledged delegates, counting the FL and MI results from January, to claim she has the lead in pledged delegates."

Conservative bloggers were somewhat taken aback by Clinton's determination:

• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Good lord. Even I find her ruthlessness here creepy, and I'm pulling for her...[Listen to] the edge in her voice near the end -- 'I. don't. think. that. will. happen.' -- when she practically dares the party not to seat Florida and Michigan. It's of a piece with yesterday's brinksmanship by her donors in threatening to cut off, to the tune of $24 million, congressional Democrats if Pelosi doesn't stop shilling for Obama. Does she really want a relationship with the DNC that's openly adversarial by the time of the convention? We want that because it ratchets up the sore-loser effect on both sides, but why on earth would she? [...Also,] how's she going to campaign for a guy who, by her own standards, is bogus if Michigan and Florida end up getting the shaft? Think you'll be seeing this line in any McCain ads down the road?"
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "This is remarkable footage of Hillary Clinton making her case for allowing 'every vote to count' in Florida and Michigan. On the merits, Hillary Clinton has a point, of course. [...] But her steely determination, her simmering defiance to take this to the convention if needed is almost breathtaking. (You can just imagine that same venom: 'We will not resign the presidency!' 'We will not give them the Rose law firm records!') She is simultaneously impressive, and downright scary in her 'we will not be stopped' resolve."

OBAMA: You Can't Run From Wright

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama's recent statement that he would have left his church has Rev. Wright stayed on and not apologized for his remarks:

• RedState's Moe Lane tells Obama to "stop digging": "I understand that you're pretty much just another politician, which means (to quote Stephen King) that you lie when it suits you, but don't be this amateurish about it. [...] You chose to keep your mouth shut about your pastor's message for twenty years: don't go pretending otherwise to Fox News now just because your poll numbers took a hit."
• Jennifer Rubin: "With each new utterance on the topic of Reverend Wright, Barack Obama seems to confirm his own moral obliviousness. Worse yet, he seems to have disdain for those who are troubled by his own unwillingness, even now, to break with Wright. [...] Perhaps Democratic primary voters are immune to the implications of all this. Perhaps they still fancy Obama as a great ethical leader who is going to lead us out of our history of divisiveness and small-mindedness. Or perhaps they are just embarrassed to tell pollsters they are privately offended. But in a general election contest this is not going to go unnoticed. We will have to see if he can get any Republican votes and just how many independents will be irked by this moral obtuseness."
• Meanwhile, NRO's Stanley Kurtz thinks Obama's candidacy will bring the "mother of all cultural battles": "The transformation of the 2008 campaign into a full-fledged cultural battle is what is really emerging from the Jeremiah Wright flap. A president who identifies with Malcolm X? A man who grew up alienated from ordinary American life and determined to avoid becoming a 'sellout' by hanging with Marxist professors and radical feminists? [...] Even the Clintons can't compare with this sort of rearing in sixties-leftism and academic radicalism. This background guarantees a huge cultural dimension to the campaign. Pre-Wright, it looked like an Obama nomination would avoid the refighting of the sixties Hillary would inevitably bring. Post-Wright, post-[Dreams Of My Father], etc. it looks as though Hillary and Bill were only the warm-up act for the great culture clash of 2008."

OBAMA II: Time To Pick A VP?

Bowers thinks Obama should pick a running mate: "If Obama wants to be perceived as the presumptive nominee, then he needs to start doing the things that presumptive nominees do. Probably the most visible thing presumptive nominees do is choose a Vice-President, and so that is something he should probably do at this point. [Obama's staff should] make it known that the campaign is actively searching for a Vice-President. Leaks names. Hold closed door meetings with high-profile Dems. If Obama starts acting like the presumptive nominee, then more people might start to perceive him as such."

Moulitsas: "Here's my top three [VP] picks for Obama: (1.) Bill Richardson (2.) Kathleen Sebelius (3.) Chris Dodd. They've all got their plusses and minuses. But if we got any of those three, I'd be ecstatic."

MCCAIN: Forget It, Johnny, You're Out Of Your Element!

Liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain's proposals to deal with the housing crisis, as well as his economic expertise more generally:

• AMERICAblog's Chris in Paris: "Shouldn't McCain know what he's talking about on the economy? [...] He just parrots the 'let industry self regulate' rubbish until you want to scream. Come November, Iraq is going to be important but way down on the list of important topics for America and McCain has nothing to offer on the key topic that will be on the minds of voters. What about the economy? What exactly does McCain have to offer? I'm not seeing much of anything."
• Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "On Tuesday, John McCain attempted to address the economy by promising he would only do what makes sense and never be dogmatic. He then repeated standard Republican dogma by excusing the Fed's massive bailout of Wall Street investment bankers while offering nothing to its Mainstreet victims. [...] McCain is vulnerable on the economy, because the [George W.] Bush Administration has blown it big time and because McCain realizes he hasn't a clue what to do about it."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "McCain's mortgage 'plan' is almost staggering in its callousness. Keeping with the general sentiment on the right that what's needed to rescue the GOP from the depredations of Bushism is a more dogmatic form of rightwingery, McCain basically proposes federal intervention to save giant financial services firms and bupkis for anyone else."
• Ezra Klein: "[McCain's speech on the housing crisis] is a speech meant to show that he gave a speech on this crisis. It's not a set of solutions. Instead, he wants various pledges from kindly companies and to hold a series of meetings on the crisis. Hear that Wall Street? There'll be meetings! So calm down already! [...This] is the McCain approach: Straight talk from a guy who doesn't know what he's talking about."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The L-Word

Ezra Klein:

"George Zornick [of Media Matters] points out yesterday's Washington Post article asking whether Obama is...gasp!...a liberal. 'What's so strange about the story,' says Zornick, 'and others like it, is that it never attempts to define liberalism, simply presenting it as a self-evident insult.' Yep. There's never a moment in the article in which the reporter says that Obama believes liberal orthodoxy X, and liberal orthodoxy X is unpopular, and this will pose a problem for him in the election. Rather, it's the very fact that he can be called a liberal, no matter how popular or mainstream his policy ideas, that's the problem. [...]

Presumably, being 'a liberal' is bad because Americans disagree with liberal policies. But it's hard to find the policy plank of Barack Obama's that's wildly unpopular. That may make him timid -- (coughcoughmandatescough) -- but it doesn't make his ideas divisive. And if liberal just means broadly popular policy ideas, then it's obviously not a political danger. Yet it's still treated as a political problem, even though the word, in this article, is basically an empty container."

LEST WE FORGET: Dancer Risks Everything

From The Onion:

"CHICAGO -- Although she stood to lose her friends, her family, and everything she had worked for her entire life, classically trained dancer Cassie Lisbon, 18, put it all on the line Saturday night when she performed a highly controversial ballet/hip-hop-fusion routine at the Chicago Academy for the Arts' annual spring recital. [...]

'It was like my whole life was just preparation for that one moment,' said Lisbon, who added that everything had gone silent as she stood backstage before her routine and suddenly realized that it was this recital or never. 'I danced the only way I know how -- from the heart. Because in the 'hood and on the dance floor there are no second chances.'

'I don't care what they say,' Lisbon added. 'It's my life, and I'm playing for keeps.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:50 PM

March 27, 2008

3/27: The Rising

The blogosphere is abuzz over the new Gallup poll showing that 28% of Hillary Clinton supporters would vote for John McCain over Barack Obama, whereas 19% of Obama supporters would vote for McCain over Clinton. Conservative bloggers are delighted by this poll and see it as additional evidence that McCain is benefiting from the lengthy and increasingly contentious Dem primary. Liberal bloggers, on the other hand, are worried that voters' feelings are hardening and that it's going to be difficult to unite the party behind the eventual nominee. While Clinton certainly has her vocal defenders among the netroots, the criticism of Clinton in the liberal blogosphere is growing louder, as are the calls for superdelegates to end the race.

We are continually amazed by the shift in the netroots' feelings toward Obama. Just five months ago, at the height of the Donnie McClurkin controversy, it appeared that Obama's relationship with the netroots had been permanently severed. The influential liberal blogger Chris Bowers wrote a scathing "Obama Campaign Post-Mortem" in which he declared that "losing the netroots has been the downfall of Barack Obama's campaign." Yesterday, Bowers endorsed Obama and added him to the Blue Majority page on Act Blue (a fundraising project organized by Daily Kos, OpenLeft, and the Swing State Project). The surge in Obama's netroots support has been remarkable, and it's something that we never expected -- at least not while there was still a primary going on.

DEM FIELD: Holding A Grudge

Liberal bloggers are concerned about a new Gallup poll showing that 28% of Clinton supporters would vote for McCain over Obama, whereas 19% of Obama supporters would vote for McCain over Clinton:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "Whoever wins those numbers will flatten out considerably. But starting from such high numbers is a big, big problem."
• Ezra Klein: "If you want evidence that the Democratic primary is becoming cancerous for the party, look no further than today's Gallup poll [...] To be sure, this poll takes place in an odd context: These voters are exposed to a constant drumbeat exposing the ruthlessness of Clinton/naivete and reverse-racism of Obama. They're hearing nothing about John McCain's staggeringly regressive tax cuts, his plans for a 100-year war in Iraq, [etc...] These numbers will change no matter who captures the nomination. The only question is how long the Democrat will have to push out that message. If the campaign goes till August, that's two months of general election campaigning -- which is next to nothing."
• TPM's Greg Sargent: "You hear lots more media attention being paid to the idea that Obama's supporters would bolt to McCain than to the possibility that Hillary's would. It's worth keeping in mind that you can't take it for granted, as some pundits seem to, that Hillary backers will all support Obama. On the other hand, one problem with this poll is it doesn't account for how Hillary might win. If Obama won the pledged delegate count and popular vote, and the super dels put Hillary over the top, you could easily see the number of Obama supporters not willing to back Hillary spiking."
• Firedoglake's Attaturk urges calm: "Don't panic...There is no reason to think once this very competitive and now unduly nasty nomination campaign ends the winner will not be able to patch things up."

Pro-Clinton bloggers blame Obama's campaign and Obama's supporters for driving Clinton voters toward McCain:

• MyDD's Jerome Armstrong: "Seeing something like this...you would think that Obama supporters, and his campaign, confident as they are that it's 90% sewed up and in the bag, that they'd stop to think a bit about not alienating the Clinton voters that they'd need to win over McCain, wouldn't you? [...] I'll vote for the Democrat against McCain, [but] this will have to get resolved in a manner that both sides feel is legitimate if the hardcore supporters of the other candidate are to be expected to help out in November."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "Too many in the Obama campaign, Obama supporters and Obama-supporting blogs believe that their demonization of Hillary Clinton has had no ill effects on Barack Obama's image among the half of the Democratic Party that supports Hillary Clinton. They are wrong. At this point, without the active and sincere support by Hillary Clinton of his potential Presidential run against John McCain, Obama has no chance in November. [...] I believe a Unity Ticket is the only way to achieve this."
• In a separate post, Big Tent Democrat blames Obama and his supporters for "the negativity of the campaign": "The dirtiest politics practiced in this campaign was Barack Obama's blocking of the Michigan and Florida revotes. There is nothing uglier in politics, nothing dirtier, than blocking voters' chances to vote. The stain on Barack Obama for this will not wash away with me. [...] The Clinton campaign realizes that no matter what they do, they will be declared evil. They realize that no matter what Obama does, he will be declared a saint. In such an environment, both the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign will feel no restraint to their behavior. The Media and some of the Left blogs have created this climate."

DEM FIELD II: Delicious!

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, are delighted by the Gallup poll:

• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Awesome. [Let's assume] those numbers will decline by at least three-quarters after a bruising general campaign, but even so, seven percent of Hillary's base voting GOP would be a tasty treat on Election Day."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "John McCain must be pleased by the existence of a potential wedge against his likely foe."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Recall this next time you hear about 'Obamacans', or how Obama has a better chance of unifying the Democratic Party than Hillary."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "The Gallup is noteworthy on two levels. Clearly, it shows that the Democratic nomination battle is taking a toll on party unity. But what may be even more interesting is that contrary to the popular belief that a Clinton nomination would split the party more, in this poll, it is an Obama nomination that triggers more defections. I suppose, alternatively, that this can be viewed as Obama supporters being more willing to put what's best for the party above their personal bitterness. These numbers would likely drop once the heated primary campaign is over and the Democrats start attacking McCain as running for President [George W.] Bush's third term. But still, it's a bad sign for Dems."

CLINTON: Yes, Nancy, That's A Threat

Liberal bloggers are angry that top Clinton donors sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which they "chastis[ed] her for publicly saying that the super-delegates should support the winner of the pledged delegate count" and explicitly mentioned their past support of the DCCC:

• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "Certain people still think they can bully politicians by waving their checkbooks in their faces. [...] One side is looking to build a consensus and win on the strength of voters, the other side is looking to divide and harm the party. It's easy to see which is which."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "I have to say that I doubt threatening Nancy Pelosi to take their toys and go home if she doesn't urge superdelegates to do what they want is really the smartest way for Hillary Clinton supporters to try to win this election. It sort of re-enforces the case that the Clintons and their close allies are selfish people willing and ready to destroy the party in order to maintain control over it."
• Josh Marshall paraphrases what he perceives to be the donors' message to Pelosi: "You want the money or not?"
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "This isn't just about superdelegates. Clinton's donors are directing Pelosi to go public and endorse Hillary's comments from a few days ago, when Hillary said that the elected delegates, the ones YOU voted for already, don't have to support Obama even though YOU voted for him. In their world, those delegates can just vote for Hillary anyway. That's what this letter is about. It's about extorting Pelosi to hand Hillary the election by stealing Obama's delegates."

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, are delighted by this latest development in the contentious Dem primary:

• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Not content with the current state of internecine (it's just such a good word) warfare currently going on in the Democratic Party between the Clintonites and the Obamaniacs, various Clintonites have decided that Nancy Pelosi deserves a talking to. [...] In related news, Republicans are debating what is the best brand of popcorn to pop and munch on while this spectacle unfolds."
• Allahpundit: "Awesome: Hillary donors threaten to cut off DCCC if Pelosi doesn't shut up about pledged delegates. [...] Now all we have to do is sit and wait for the letter from the Obama donors threatening to cut the party off if they don't follow the pledged delegates. Exit question: Let's say [Clinton] does, somehow, win the nomination. How many bridges will this sort of hardball crap have burned in the aftermath? Note the numbers, please."

CLINTON II: The Thrill Is Gone

Liberal bloggers continue to slam Clinton:

• The Huffington Post's Ari Emanuel questions Clinton's veracity: "The real experience Hillary Clinton gained during her years in the White House has finally been revealed: she learned, just like her husband, how to manipulate words to cover up her lies. Just as Bill [Clinton] used 'It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is' in front of the grand jury to mask his lies about Monica Lewinsky, Hillary is now using 'sleep deprivation' and 'misspoke' and 'it proves I'm human' to soft sell her hyperbolic tale of ducking sniper fire in Bosnia. [...] Do we really want to subject ourselves to this verbal abuse for the next four years?"
• Daily Kos' DHinMI questions Clinton's electability: "For anyone who was sentient in 2000, [Clinton's] exaggerations and fabrications should evoke memories of Al Gore fending off the 'flip flop' charges and looking silly as he was accused of plenty of silly comments he never made, like claiming to have discovered Love Canal or having invented the internet. Unlike Gore, who in a few individual instances made ill-advised comments that then got blown out of proportion, Clinton has made the questionable claims numerous times. [...] If the serial exaggeration accusation sticks to her, it will further solidify the emerging media narrative that the only major question left in the Democratic contest is when Hillary Clinton will concede that she has lost and that Barack Obama will be our presidential nominee."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller questions Clinton's political orientation: "[Clinton subscribes to] the TV model of politics. The characteristic of a TV politician is that they assume that (a) the electorate has no memory, (b) short-term image is everything, (c) liberal politics get you destroyed, and (d) the audience can't talk back. That's why Clinton lied about Bosnia, wouldn't admit it, stabbed [Jeremiah] Wright in the back, won't go back on her obviously stupid war vote, and appears completely overwhelmed by the criticisms she's getting from the non-advocacy group liberal audience on the internet."

Other liberal bloggers are arguing Clinton has no reasonable shot at the nomination and should get out of the race:

• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "The superdelegates have every right to vote any way they want. But I can't see them deciding to give the nomination to a candidate who isn't ahead either in pledged delegates or in the popular vote absent some genuine disaster befalling the Obama campaign. Provoking that disaster is, therefore, Clinton's only remaining winning strategy. [...] If the party leadership won't stage an intervention and try to get her to withdraw, that's just one more reason to conclude that we need new leadership."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "Let's put it this way: when Hillary Clinton is sitting alongside Richard Mellon Scaife and on the same day her campaign is distributing an article from the American Spectator, you know there's a problem. [...] The 'Tonya Harding option' is probably doing more harm than good."

CLINTON III: An Honesty Gap?

Conservative bloggers continue to criticize Clinton over her false statements about her '96 trip to Bosnia, which they see as additional evidence of Clinton's "mendacity":

• Allahpundit: "The beauty of the Tuzla story lies not in catching [Clinton] in a shameless lie but in the fact that it opens up everything else she's ever said to re-examination. [...] Just as the human brain can only handle nine-digit phone numbers, so too America's collective imagination can only juggle five or six egregious Hillary fabrications at a time. Right now, offhand, I can recall the Edmund Hillary lie, the Yankees/Cubs vacillation, the 'I almost joined the Marines' tall tale, the bogus southern accent, and of course Tuzla. But beyond that? Total blank. How much mendacity has spilled over the sides of the gallon-jug that is my mind and into oblivion? You've overwhelmed us, Hillary."
• Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "Aside from the 'I never had sexual relations with that woman' lie, how many can you think of? These are the ones I'm thinking about this morning: Hillary's lie about the Bosnia trip; Hillary's lie she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary; Hillary's lie she was always against NAFTA; Bill's lie that he was always opposed to the Iraq war; Hillary's lie that President [George W.] Bush 'misused' her Senate vote to go to war; Hillary's lie that she opposes drivers licenses for illegal aliens..."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Like her Sir Edmund Hillary fable, Hillary's statements about sniper fire in Bosnia are lies that aren't even politically 'necessary'...They're just something she's said because it's expedient -- they sound good at the time or she perceives them as bringing her some momentary advantage. In a sense, they're 'optional' lies. That's what's so unsettling about them. Someone who resorts to 'optional' lies is someone who really doesn't mind lying at all and does it without a second thought -- a disturbing trait in a would-be president."

OBAMA: Bloggers Used To Diss Me, Now They Write Letters 'Cause They Miss Me

Influential liberal blogger Chris Bowers endorses Obama and adds him to the Blue Majority page on Act Blue:

"Ever since the Blue Majority page was launched nearly one year ago, we at Blue Majority knew that we would add the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to the page. [...] Barack Obama has become the presumptive Democratic nominee, and it is time to start supporting him.

Importantly, my rationale for endorsing Barack Obama goes beyond his status as the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination. As a progressive, there are two key ideological markers that I believe make Barack Obama a better choice than Hillary Clinton: the Iraq war and the DLC. First, Barack Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq from the start, and rejected the neoconservative principle of pre-emptive warfare as one of his main reasons for opposing the war. Being able to identify the invasion of Iraq as a colossal mistake makes Barack Obama far more qualified to lead our country than candidates who both were, and still are, unable to recognize why the war was such a bad idea. [...Second,] while Hillary Clinton is a member of the DLC's leadership, Barack Obama has repeated refuses to be associated with the group. [...]

It is for all of these reasons that I am happy and proud to endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States. I gave my first donation to his campaign today, and I urge you to do the same."

Moulitsas adds: "So today the Blue Majority sites (dKos, Swing State Project, and Open Left) added Barack Obama to our ActBlue fundraising page. All three sites held votes of their readership. Daily Kos passed the super-majority threshold a few weeks ago, SSP and Open Left did it yesterday. It's clear our communities have become heavily pro-Obama, especially as Clinton's only path to victory is via coup by super delegate and civil war, and she doesn't give a damn."

Obama hasn't won over every prominent netroots blogger, however. Moulitsas' friend and co-author, Jerome Armstrong, believes that Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright has damaged not just Obama's own candidacy but the Dem party as a whole. Armstrong argues that a recent Rasmussen poll of MO reveals "fall-out from Wright, not against just Obama, but also Clinton, and most likely against the Democratic Party in general. It's branding of Democrats Obama, and Clinton, as anti-American. [...] In a month, a 1 point McCain lead over Clinton is now 9, and a lead of 2 by McCain over Obama has become 15 percent...If McCain already has MO locked up by April, we are in deep trouble. Nevertheless, I don't think that Obama has been hurt much by Wright in the nomination contest, for a number of reasons. He's already branded himself strongly with most Democrats paying attention, and there's seems too much emotional investment on both sides, for even something as radical as this revelation, to shake up that dynamic much, but the GE match-up is another matter."

Meanwhile, The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan has been one of Obama's most vocal supporters in the blogosphere, but he may support McCain in the general election: "I am still open to supporting McCain this fall, primarily because of character and decency. [...] This election, I feel, is less and less about ideology. It is more and more about conscience and judgment."

OBAMA II: No, Marc, Obama Does Have A Jewish Problem

Conservative bloggers are criticizing The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder for asserting that "there is no evidence that Barack Obama has a 'Jewish' problem":

• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "Barack Obama has no imperfection or shortcoming that can't be glossed over by liberal pundits. The latest gloss: he has no Jewish problem and all this 'guilt by association' is terribly imprecise and unfair. [...] Will American Jews stick by a Democratic candidate who surrounds himself with the type of advisors Obama has, who feels unable to reject his pastor even after vile anti-Semitic remarks become known...and whose foreign policy embraces the notion of meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? [...] But everything is fine, perfectly fine, say the liberal media Obamaphiles."
• Mirengoff: "Ambinder's reasoning is questionable. He compares Obama's association with [Tony] McPeak to John McCain's association with John Hagee, an anti-Catholic. But McPeak is Obama's campaign co-chair and one of his go-to guys on national security issues. Hagee has no such status in the McCain campaign. [...Furthermore,] McPeak is just the tip of the iceberg. It consists not only of Jeremiah Wright, but also of a string of policy advisers and ex-advisers (Samantha Power, Robert Malley, Zgibniew Brzezinski, and now McPeak) who are known to view Israel negatively and in some cases are unhappy with with American Jews who support Israel. It's this pattern of associations -- a spiritual adviser, a former employee with strong ties and access to Obama (Power), and several advisers -- that is problematic for Obama."
• The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb: "[Ambinder's point is] fair enough. But there comes a point when one looks at the people Obama has surrounded himself with and begins to wonder. On Israel, Obama has no real track record, so voters can judge him only by his words and the words of those who advise him. Will Gen. McPeak, whose 'odious' statements on Israel have drawn condemnation from supporters and foes alike, have Obama's ear on such issues? We don't really know. But if their association is insignificant in degree and quality, why doesn't Obama toss him overboard?"
• Philip Klein: "Obama has given supporters of Israel have every reason to fear he would be the most hostile president toward Israel since Jimmy Carter."

MCCAIN: So The FEC Won't Let Me Be...

A group of liberal bloggers recently filed a complaint with the FEC, charging McCain with violations of campaign finance law:

"By his own admission, John McCain is breaking the law. His latest spending report has him $4 million over the limit he imposed on himself when he accepted public financing. We're not about to let this stand, so on Tuesday we filed an FEC complaint against the McCain campaign [...] Now we're set for a second larger delivery, on behalf of the thousands of Americans who won't stand by while John McCain breaks the law."

These bloggers are now urging their readers to join the effort by signing the petition:

• Firedoglake's Christy Hardin Smith: "The hypocrisy of the so-called 'maverick' violating a law which he championed because it suits his purposes this time around is horrifying. Even worse is the relative silence of the press on this, given the rank hypocrisy of violations of McCain's 'signature' issue and all. Does it get to be your signature issue if you are blatantly violating it in an in-your-face maneuver after being warned not to by the head of the FEC? I think not."
• Moulitsas: "Jane Hamsher filed a complaint with the FEC charging John McCain with violations of campaign finance law for spending beyond limits imposed by his decision to take public financing. McCain has claimed he is backing off that decision, and justifies it with the fact that he never received any of that public money. However, the law clearly states that he is bound by those limits if he uses the promise of those funds in order to secure campaign loans -- something he absolutely did."
• Digby: "John McCain is a fugitive from justice. He spoke at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council as a man on the lam. With every passing day, every fill-up of diesel for the Straight Talk Express, every sandwich, every long-distance phone call to a lobbyist friend, he is further breaking the campaign finance laws. He has overspent federal limits while remaining in the public system for the primaries. And the netroots is doing something about it."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Return Of The '70s

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat compares contemporary cinema to '70s cinema:

"I do think that our neo-Seventies moment has produced movies and (especially) television shows that rival the best work done in that decade -- not only highbrow work like The Wire and The Sopranos, Zodiac and No Country For Old Men, but thrillers like the Bourne films (the first two, especially) and B-movies like 28 Days Later. (I think Danny Boyle's zombie film is a vast improvement on the work of George Romero, in fact, though that's a minority opinion.) But it's certainly true that the more explicitly politically-infused material is considerably weaker this time around, often to the point of embarrassment."

LEST WE FORGET: Awww

McSweeney's Kathy Salerno lists "Titles of Love Songs I Would Write for People Like Me":

"A Friend Again, Naturally"

"Hopelessly Inexperienced Sexually"

"Mind Boyfriend's Back"

"Wishing, Hoping, Checking Your MySpace Relationship Status"

"Never Gonna Ask You Out, Never Gonna Make My Move"

"Give Me Just a Little More Time (By Then You'll Surely Be Dating Someone Else)"

"Are You That Anybody?"

"Let's Give Them Something to Prove I'm Straight"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:47 PM

March 26, 2008

3/26: Pinned Down By Blogger Fire

Hillary Clinton's rough stretch in the political blogosphere continues, as she is now under assault from both liberal and conservative bloggers for falsely claiming that her plane came "under sniper fire" during a '96 trip to Bosnia. Liberal bloggers think this controversy illustrates the flimsiness of Clinton's claim that she possesses significantly more foreign policy experience than Barack Obama. Conservative bloggers agree that the difference between Clinton and Obama's foreign policy experience is minimal, but they also think that this incident reflects Clinton's lack of veracity. Should Clinton emerge as the Dem nominee, it seems likely that conservatives will seek to paint her as a "serial fabulist" with a "life-long adversarial relationship with the truth", in the same way that conservatives portrayed Al Gore as a serial exaggerator during the 2000 campaign.

Liberal bloggers are also criticizing Clinton for her decision to weigh in on the Jeremiah Wright controversy, which they see as a transparent attempt to change the subject from her Bosnia misstatements. It is becoming increasingly clear that most (but not all) liberal bloggers believe that Obama will be the Dem nominee, and they want Clinton to leave the race before she inflicts too much damage on the IL senator. Unfortunately for them, Clinton does not appear willing to comply.

DEM FIELD: Where Do We Go Now?

Open Left's Chris Bowers summarizes the state of the Dem race: "A consensus seems to be forming that Hillary Clinton has only a very slim chance to win the nomination. Recent articles in The New York Times and The Politico are examples of this. Further, the consensus is not only that Clinton has a very small chance, but that what chance she does have requires creating a civil war in the Democratic Party by suing superdelegates to overturn the popular vote, deny the nomination to the candidate with the most grassroots support in the history of the party, and cancel out the overwhelming choice who are the most loyal Democratic voting group of all. In other words, Clinton's only longshot hope is to win the nomination while creating an intra-Democratic civil war that could drive a wedge down the coalition for years."

Bowers continues: "While I agree with this perspective, I also think it would be bad for Clinton to drop out when she holds an average lead of 16% in the upcoming, major primary of Pennsylvania. Momentum in the general election is often determined by momentum in the primary campaign, and as such it is essential that Obama is not seen as 'backing in' to the nomination. [...] Between now and June 4th, there are four chances for Obama to earn the sort of victory that would knock Clinton out of the campaign, and provide him with the momentum he needs for the general election. [...] An absolutely slam dunk scenario for Obama to clinch the nomination on May 7th would be to put up a decent showing in Pennsylvania, sweep Indiana and North Carolina, reach 1,627 pledged delegates on May 6th, and at least draw even with Clinton in superdelegates by May 6th. If he can pull off all four, be will become the presumptive nominee in just six weeks time."

The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias likes Bowers' scenario: "Chris Bowers sketches out a plausible and appealing scenario in which Barack Obama wraps up the nomination on May 6. Among other things that would be good about such a scenario, it's worth noting that at this point the main obstacle to a satisfactory resolution of the Florida/Michigan situation is that Clinton continues to be in the race. If she drops out and endorses Obama on May 7 or shortly thereafter, it'll be easy for Michigan and Florida to be 'forgiven' in late May and allowed to fully participate in a rubber stamp convention in exchange for promising to never do it again."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas agrees that Obama could end the race by winning NC and IN: "This may be were it all comes down -- two weeks after Pennsylvania on May 6. Both Indiana and North Carolina should favor Obama. If he can't close the race out there, then it gives Clinton an excuse to fight on, no matter what the math (and accordant reality) have to say."

MyDD's Todd Beeton thinks NC will be crucial for Clinton: "The other day I saw Chuck Todd on TV speaking about a Bill Clinton event in North Carolina during which the former president told North Carolina voters, as he had done to Texas voters weeks before, that it's in their hands, that if Hillary Clinton wins North Carolina she'll be the nominee. Chuck Todd's assessment of that statement: 'and you know what, he'd be right.' [...This] is why the Clinton campaign has dispatched Ace Smith, who spear-headed Clinton's California and Texas victories, to North Carolina and not Pennsylvania. While PA is touted as must-win for Clinton, it's actually become a will-win and [NC] is becoming Clinton's latest must-win."

DEM FIELD II: Can We Wrap This Up Already?

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers are growing increasingly impatient to take on John McCain:

• Crooks and Liars' SilentPatriot: "The longer we allow John McCain to run unopposed -- while at the same time bashing each other over the head with petty insults and attacks -- the worse our chances are in the fall. I sincerely hope the Democratic leadership realizes this."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "We really need to be focusing our energies on John McCain. That guy is getting a free ride -- and he's dangerous. [...] Let's figure out a way to wrap up the Democratic nomination now so we can get to work."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "[Clinton]'s been voted off the island. It's time for her to go."

CLINTON: Netroots Wars

Yesterday we linked to Jerome Armstrong's and Big Tent Democrat's reactions to Moulitsas' claim that Clinton seeks to win the nomination via "a coup by superdelegate." Yesterday afternoon, Moulitsas posted a follow-up response:

"Given that Clinton cannot win the pledged delegate count, and that it would essentially require Obama to quit the race to lose the popular vote count, the only route to the nomination for Clinton would be one that would have [Big Tent Democrat] 'up in arms'. Nowhere have I said that this would violate the rules...All I have said is that it would be a coup by super delegate -- the overturning of the popular results by the party elite.

The rules state that Michigan and Florida don't count. The rules state that all other states -- even the small ones, the ones with blacks, and the ones which have coffee drinkers -- matter. The rules state that this is a delegate race, with voters directly electing pledged delegates at (mostly) the congressional district level. None of this helps Clinton out, so she and her surrogates have set out to make arguments that seek to minimize and belittle the system we have now, whether it's the caucuses, or 'small states', or 'black people', or whatever.

While a coup by super delegate wouldn't violate the rules, the arguments that the Clinton campaign are advancing to those super delegates, the media, and their supporters make a mockery of them. Makes sense. When your only path to victory requires making a mockery of the rules, I suppose you have nothing left but to mock the rules."

Big Tent Democrat responds: "If Obama is the pledged delegate leader and the popular vote leader (as me, Kos and a cast of a thousand bloggers, NBC, etc, expect), then any action by the super delegates to subvert such a result would be outrageous and wrong...but as Kos acknowledges, NOT against the rules. [...However,] revotes were planned for Michigan and Florida -- revotes that were completely within the rules and more importantly, completely in the interest of the Democratic Party (but NOT in the interest of Barack Obama's chance to win the nomination, though certainly in his interest in winning the general election.) Barack Obama blocked the proposed revotes in Florida and Michigan. To my way of thinking, this means Obama needs to have a margin in the popular vote that exceeds 500k, the amount of margin one could reasonably argue Clinton may have gotten from revotes in Florida and Michigan."

BooMan agrees with Moulitsas that the consequences would be disastrous if Obama won both the popular vote and the pledged delegate race and superdelegates gave the nomination to Clinton: "Provided that Obama receives the nomination after winning the pledged delegate count, there is no reason for 'Latinos, perhaps part of the Jewish and Catholic vote, certain women and working-class Democrats' to lose confidence in the process. Their preferred candidate simply lost. It happens. But if Obama wins the pledged delegate count and still does not gain the nomination, his supporters (most especially but certainly not limited to African-Americans) will be deeply, deeply disillusioned with the process. [...] If Jerome Armstrong cannot anticipate the rift such an outcome would create in the Democratic Party, then he isn't qualified to opine on American politics. African-American turnout in the general election will be severely depressed, and the damage will be lasting."

CLINTON II: Duck And Cover

Liberal bloggers are mocking Clinton's claim that she was "sleep-deprived" and "misspoke" when she falsely claimed last week that she landed under sniper fire during a '96 trip to Bosnia:

• Moulitsas: "If Hillary Clinton lied about snipers in Bosnia because of sleep deprivation (doubtful, given it's a lie she's said at least four times), then what will she do when she gets that call at 3 a.m.? Remember, she's clothed and wearing makeup at that hour, so chances are, she's not getting much sleep."
• Yglesias: "So apparently Hillary Clinton was 'sleep-deprived' when she forgot that she'd never dodged sniper fire while running from a plane in Tuzla. All 'misspoke' theories of the case seem to me to founder on the fact that the version of the story that got her caught was only the most extreme version of a narrative of danger she's mentioned repeatedly throughout the campaign."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "[Clinton] said it four times over four months. She sent out scores of aides to defend the comments -- comments she said FOUR TIMES. And now expects us to believe that she only said it once a week ago, so it was a slip of the tongue (mind you, it was a minute long slip of the tongue)?"

Meanwhile, The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen explains why this controversy is a problem for Clinton: "The point about [Clinton] 'inflating' her foreign policy experience is a genuine problem. Clinton's claims about playing key policy roles in conflicts in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and Rwanda also appear to have been exaggerated, in some instances, quite a bit. But it's this Bosnia anecdote that's likely to cause the most trouble, in large part because there's a video of her talking about the danger she overcame, and another video showing very little danger at all. [...She] exaggerated one of the underpinnings of her entire candidacy."

CLINTON III: Pants On Fire

Conservative bloggers are also mocking Clinton for her Bosnia story:

• Michelle Malkin: "This is how a Clinton -- take your pick: Hillary, Bill, or Chelsea -- makes it through the day. Better living through self-delusion. Seeking to burnish her foreign policy leadership credentials, Sen. Clinton has repeatedly peddled a harrowing anecdote about dodging sniper fire during a trip to Tuzla, Bosnia in 1996. [...] When Sinbad, the Washington Post, and every fact-checker on the Internet and under the sun debunked her tall tale, Sen. Clinton doubled down. She dissed Sinbad as a mere 'comedian'. (He just tells jokes. She is a joke.) She asserted that she and her compatriots ran for safety with 'our heads down'. She clung to her story that she 'had to be moved inside because of sniper fire'. And she embellished further [...] Behold the Democrat choices for president: One candidate whose twenty-year spiritual guru has an adversarial relationship with America -- and another who has a life-long adversarial relationship with the truth."
• RedState's absentee: "Could there be a more clear-cut case of lying? [...] There's no way she simply got mixed up. This was a description of an event that never occured. Could you honestly mix up being told about being shot at and actually being shot at? I know I couldn't. Could you mix up 'no ceremony' with 'they moved the ceremony'? I couldn't. She didn't merely exaggerate a threat, she described literal events that never occurred. I know a word that perfectly describes such an act: LIE. Hillary lied about Bosnia."
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "The Clintons are, after all, accomplished 'embellishers,' and it should come as no surprise that reality does not match her tales of grandeur."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "The NY Times headline today on the series of lies Hillary Clinton has told about her trip to Bosnia reads, 'Hillary Seeks To Soften Impact of Misstatement.' By not even putting 'misstatement' in quotes, and by making it singular when Clinton told multiple lies, the Times is buying into the Clinton spin that it was just an innocent mistake. As these priceless videos show, that's just not very credible."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey wonders if Clinton is a "serial fabulist": "Has Hillary Clinton's Tuzla fantasy opened a bigger can of worms for the presidential aspirant? [...] The collapse of her credibility this week, after repeating the story at least four times during the campaign, calls into question her personal anecdotes, especially those that paint her in the kind of crusading light as this does. Hillary can expect greater scrutiny of her claims, especially since the media got burned by its credulity on Tuzla."

CLINTON IV: Hillary Goes There

Liberal bloggers were very critical of Clinton's decision to weigh in on the Wright controversy. Many saw it as a transparent attempt to change the subject from the Bosnia controversy:

• Benen: "It's hard to overstate how disappointing this is. Clinton waited until the story had died down and then decided to make her first public comments on the controversy, going after Obama for staying with his church. I know Clinton is willing to fight as hard as possible for his nomination, but tactics like these are pretty low. This may sound cynical, but my guess is that media interest in Clinton's debunked Bosnia story had become too great a distraction. [...] What's more, we now have a situation in which John McCain defended Obama against Wright-related charges, and Mike Huckabee defended Obama, but Hillary Clinton sat down with editors of a conservative newspaper to reignite a fire that had already largely gone out."
• Sudbay: "Clinton [is trying] desperately -- and I mean desperately -- to change the subject from her lies about the Bosnia trip. [...] But what they don't get is that it just looks extremely desperate and pathetic for Hillary to evoke Rev. Wright now. The Bosnia trip scandal isn't going away. Clinton made that trip a centerpiece of her campaign. There's too much video and too many lies told by the candidate herself."
• The Huffington Post's Greg Saunders: "Here we are, in the tail end of a primary season in which the losing challenger for the Democratic nomination has sunk to reinforcing right-wing smears against her party's likely nominee in a transparent attempt to distract the media from the fact that she's been caught in multiple lies about her experience."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "You can always tell when a scandal story has peaked and is ebbing, almost down to the minute: when your political opponents start to raise it explicitly against you. That was the minute I knew Bill Clinton was going to weather the Monica [Lewinsky] story -- the moment when Republicans first started hitting him over it. It took a few days. And I remember rejoicing about it at the time. Same thing here with Wright. The Clinton camp can see that it's drifting. So they're deciding to stoke it. Also useful to get the Tuzla stuff off the front page."

Other bloggers thought it was foolish and divisive of Clinton to question Obama's religious choices:

• Bowers: "Do we really need to be telling other people where they are praying? Is that a pandora's box we really want to open in this country? Does a country built on religious freedom need one of the three people vying to lead the country comment on where one of the other two candidates should be praying? Really? That's a good thing for the country? That's a good thing for Democrats?"
• BooMan: "[Clinton] should be defending Barack Obama against unfair attacks, and defending and contextualizing the tradition of black sermonizing. In his speech, Barack Obama sought to educate and bring reconciliation. Clinton's response is to throw it all back in his face and suggest that there is something wrong with him for attending his church. If Clinton succeeds in pushing this racial polarization to the point that white people will not vote for Obama, the black community will never, ever, forgive her. This is especially true because she can only win on the backs of the superdelegates."
• Ezra Klein: "If Clinton is to have any chance, any chance at all, African-American voters need to feel comfortable with her ascension. If they don't, and if Obama is rendered unelectable, than the convention will sooner choose a third candidate ([John] Edwards, Gore, etc) than elevate Clinton and risk a schism with one of the party's key voting blocs. Clinton, for her part, could have scored some points with this group by forcefully defending Obama on Wright. But every time she takes a shot at one of these racially-charged controversies, she makes her own nomination less likely."

OBAMA: Not Kosher?

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about The American Spectator's Robert M. Goldberg's article about Obama foreign policy advisor Merrill McPeak, whom Goldberg describes as "anti-Israel and anti-Jewish":

• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "Why does Barack Obama have so many foreign policy and national security advisers whose statements about Israel and American Jews are problematic? We've written at length about Samantha Power, perhaps his closest foreign policy adviser until she was forced to resign for insulting Hillary Clinton. We've also touched on Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Malley. And by now everyone who follows these things realizes that Obama's long-time spiritual adviser Rev. Wright hates Israel passionately. Now comes evidence that Gen. Merrill 'Tony' McPeak...is also hostile towards Israel, viewing its positions as preventing peace from breaking out in the region."
• Morrissey: "The animus towards Israel among Obama advisers has begun to form a distinct pattern, one that shrugs and wan, partial denials cannot hide."
• Philip Klein: "I do not think that everybody who is critical of Israel is an anti-Semite, nor do I think that Obama should be considered an anti-Semite because of McPeak's derisive remarks toward Jews in New York City and Miami. However, I do think there are plenty of reasons for anybody who is a supporter of Israel -- Jewish or not -- to be concerned about Obama based on hispublic statements and the companyhekeeps ."

Speaking of Samantha Power, The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports that Power defended some of her past statements during a speech at the Columbia Univ. School of Law: "Former Obama aide Samantha Power may be repentant for calling Sen. Hillary Clinton a political monster, but on the other issue that marked her resignation, she is not conceding an inch. [...] Power called Obama's willingness to meet, without preconditions, world leaders with whom America did not always see eye-to-eye, one of the turning points of the Democratic primary [...] She emphasized that, unlike President [George W.] Bush, Obama would put greater focus on the general welfare of the Iraqi people (looking at population displacements, health conditions, economic insecurities), when considering U.S. policy in that country. She also drew a picture of an Obama administration that was filled with different viewpoints and congenial debate."

MCCAIN: Come On And Take A Free Ride

Liberal bloggers, who are convinced that the media takes it easy on McCain, are praising Free Ride: John McCain and the Media by Media Matters' David Brock and Paul Waldman:

• Atrios: "While we all have a general sense of the degree to which the national press will bend over backwards to excuse anything St. McCain does, Free Ride documents this history with horrifying but entertaining detail. More than that, it shows how at odds the national media, who worship Saint McCain, are with the local media in Arizona, who know a bit more a bit the real senator. [...] Even more than other campaigns, this presidential race will pit the Democrat against McCain and his 'base,' the mainstream media. Combatting and shaming the media into covering McCain and his past accurately will be the job all of us have."
• MyDD's Natasha Chart: "You had always known, more or less, that John McCain's natural constituency was the Beltway media. With press darling Joe Lieberman, it's been the buddy movie that never ended. Did you know how extensive it was, though, or did you sort of wonder if it was just you and your liberal friends imagining things? Wonder no longer. Media Matters' David Brock and Paul Waldman decided to investigate McCain's relationship with the press, cataloging just how much slack our Gotcha! journalistas have cut the Smooth Talk Expressionist."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: To Err Is Human, To Forgive Is Divine

NRO's Byron York:

"It caught my eye as a flash on Brit Hume a few moments ago, but here is a photo from Hillary Clinton's visit today to the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In this picture, she is seen talking to none other than Richard Mellon Scaife, the owner of the paper and the man who once said that the death of Vincent Foster was the 'Rosetta stone' of the Bill Clinton administration. (He also funded the so-called 'Arkansas Project' at The American Spectator.) We've heard reports of a rapprochement between Scaife and the Clintons of late, and the Pennsylvania primary is fast approaching, but this is still a pretty striking picture."

LEST WE FORGET: Hillary Says She 'Misspoke' About Wrestling Bin Laden

The Huffington Post's Andy Borowitz:

"...In an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Sen. Clinton told host Tim Russert, 'I wrestled bin Laden in his cave in 1998 and had him pinned to the ground before the bastard got away.'

But a review of Sen. Clinton's official White House schedule from that period revealed that the then-First Lady was nowhere in the vicinity of Mr. bin Laden on that day, but was instead greeting a group of honor roll students at Disney World in Orlando.

'I may have misspoke about what went on that particular day,' Sen. Clinton said today. 'But it was a very busy time for me, what with having that knife-fight with Kim Jong-Il and all.' [...]

'Everything Hillary Clinton says is true,' said her new spokesman, the author James Frey."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:45 PM

March 25, 2008

3/25: Mounting Frustration

As the contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton grows increasingly heated, so do the arguments in the liberal blogosphere. Several prominent liberal bloggers were annoyed when Clinton supporter/IN Sen. Evan Bayh suggested that superdelegates consider "who carried the states with the most Electoral College votes" when deciding whether to support Clinton or Obama. These bloggers perceived Bayh's Electoral College metric as yet another attempt by the Clinton camp to spin the results in order to show that Clinton is ahead. Pro-Clinton bloggers responded by arguing that all proposed metrics for superdelegates to consider are necessarily arbitrary -- including selecting the candidate who's won the most pledged delegates.

These debates between pro-Obama bloggers and pro-Clinton bloggers will undoubtedly continue for the next few weeks, if not months. However, primary fatigue is clearly setting in among many of the leading liberal bloggers, who feel that the Obama-Clinton race is no longer benefiting the party and is in fact benefiting John McCain (as polls suggest). But is there anything the netroots can do to stop the Dem race from lasting until June (at the earliest) or the convention? Right now, the matter appears to be out of their hands.

DEM FIELD: Running On Fumes

Several liberal bloggers think the Clinton-Obama race is no longer constructive:

• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "OK, I'll say it: the nomination campaign is played out. [...] Basically, after fourteen months of hashing out the differences between the candidates on virtually every other metric, with four weeks until the Pennsylvania primary, with no revotes in Florida and Michigan, and with less than 20% of the voting actually remaining, it seems that all we have left is a long argument about electability. That is a problem because, let's face it, long arguments about electability are really boring because they are ultimately unprovable and go nowhere."
• Bowers continues: "Barring something shocking, like the Michigan delegation being seated as is, the delegate math is clearly laid out before us, and Obama will slowly slog toward clinching the nomination sometime between May 20th and June 21st. For now, unfortunately, we are stuck in a holding pattern of an endless electability argument. I don't think that this sort of campaign will carry with it the benefit of the first two months of the year, where an intense, high-profile Democratic nomination campaign was largely helpful to the party. That is demonstrable by McCain taking the lead in general election matchups over the past two weeks. Without any voting to maintain interest between Mississippi and Pennsylvania, the void has been filled with electability and race (with the latter really being about electability). That is not the kind of discussion that Democrats need to win."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "It seems to me that the real reason the Democratic primary race has gone from heated to vicious (at least among the candidates' supporters, if not the candidates themselves) is precisely because we're in this awkward seven week hiatus in which there are no actual elections being held. [...] Without [elections], we are stuck with the same, unchanging stubborn set of facts: Obama has a relatively narrow lead which, under the DNC's rules, is nevertheless extremely difficult to overcome. And each side is left cycling over into more and more heated iterations of the same arguments, like a cascade into mounting levels of mania [...] That doesn't mean that both side's arguments have equal merit. For my part, I think the Obama campaign has far the better part of it. But I think it does explain why we're now in this self-escalating spiral."

DEM FIELD II: Like A Train Wreck In Slow Motion

Conservative bloggers are enjoying the increasingly nasty Clinton-Obama race, and they're convinced that McCain is benefiting:

• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "While the Republicans warm up their veepstakes, the greatest show in town is still the Democratic primary race. On one hand we have the Lady Macbeth of politics. She's proven ready to burn down the Democratic party if that's what it takes to grab the nomination. On the other hand we have the rookie who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his life other than convince about thirteen million people to vote for him [...] At this rate McCain (who already attracts independent voters that detest this sort of mud wrestling) may have a double digit lead over both of them by the beginning of the summer. So to these ill-mannered Democrats, their Republican adversaries can only say: Keep up the good work! Ain't it grand?"
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Perhaps the Democrats should listen to the Cassandras forecasting disaster. According to Rasmussen, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have begun to melt down in the crucible of an increasingly nasty primary fight. McCain leads Hillary by seven and Obama by nine, well outside the margin of error. [...] Clearly, the negative campaigning from both Democrats has proven remarkably effective...for McCain."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Back in 1992, when George Bush the Elder and Ross Perot were killing each other, Bill Clinton used what was called 'The Manhattan Project' (in light of the Democrats' decision to hold their convention in New York City that year) to rehabilitate an image that had taken a battering during the course of the primaries. John McCain, it would appear, is ready to undertake the same kind project himself. And Democrats are giving him the time to do it."

CLINTON: Spinning Into Oblivion?

Several prominent liberal bloggers were annoyed by Sen. Bayh's suggestion that superdelegates consider "who carried the states with the most Electoral College votes" when deciding whether to support Clinton or Obama:

• Marshall: "The system is based on pledged delegates and super-delegates. Period. There's a set of rules everyone agreed on. The wisdom of those rules is irrelevant at this point. The Clinton campaign is entitled to do whatever it wants to get superdelegates to come over to her side to even out the pledged delegate deficit. My take is that whatever the arguments, the superdelegates aren't going to go against a clear pledged delegate leader. And I think they'd be extremely ill-advised to do so. But the superdelegates do have this power under the rules. But these constant efforts to say the rules aren't fair are just silly, and truth be told I think they're more undermining of the Clinton campaign than they realize."
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "Josh [Marshall] is right, of course. The Clinton campaign has realized that the rules don't work in their favor, that if we follow the rules as agreed upon before the first caucus vote was cast in Iowa, that they have no chance of winning. Part of me is bitter about this, since I've been railing against our stupid primary system (and the caucuses) for years, but that never mattered to the Clinton camp at the time. It only mattered after she lost the election based on the rules. The media narrative is finally starting to reflect this reality. Again, as I noted before, the only way Clinton can win this race is with a coup by superdelegate, which would necessarily create civil war in our party. And of course, Hillary Clinton doesn't care. That's the bottom line. All the other noise in this contest are just ex post facto justifications for that coup attempt."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "It's just not credible to keep searching for new ways to juggle the results to get the conclusion one wants. If the Clinton campaign had recommended this metric tally in, say, December, it'd be easier to take it seriously now. As it stands, though, it starts to look like the campaign will keep looking for new counting methods until it's pleased with the one that shows its candidate ahead."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "I believe that by the Duhem-Quine thesis there are actually an infinite number of arbitrary criteria we could devise to prove that our preferred candidate is 'really' winning. For example, Obama's leads in delegates and votes are relatively narrow, but I bet that if we counted by mass his disproportionately male base of support would have a much larger edge."
• Atrios: "I do my best (though it's hard) not to judge the candidates by their campaigns or surrogates. [...] But for several weeks now there's just been this steady stream of downright insulting stuff coming out of the Clinton campaign. It's the kind of stuff that would come out of Ari Fleischer's mouth back in the day. Stop it!"

CLINTON II: Time To Pack Up And Go Home?

Several liberal bloggers are echoing Moulitsas' call to end the primary campaign as quickly as possible:

• A