May 30, 2008

5/30: Look, Ma, No Math!

On the eve of the much-anticipated DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting, liberal bloggers continue to dispute Hillary Clinton's claim that she leads Barack Obama in the popular vote. Markos Moulitsas crunches the numbers from every contest that was held this cycle (including FL & MI, the TX caucus, and the unsanctioned primaries in NE, WA, and ID) and calculates that Obama actually leads Clinton by 82,115 votes. Moulitsas writes: "While Clinton may claim she's gotten more votes than Obama this year, fact is, that's not true under any scenario unless you start excluding elections." Meanwhile, The Huffington Post's RJ Eskow calls the popular vote "a meaningless metric from the start." Still, should Clinton win a sizeable victory in Puerto Rico on Sunday (which seems likely, based on the latest polls), you can bet that the Clinton camp will continue to push this popular vote argument in the coming days. Whether the superdelegates will buy it is another story...

CLINTON: I Thought You Wanted To Count All The Votes...

Liberal bloggers dispute Clinton's claim that she leads Obama in the popular vote:

• Moulitsas: "Since the Clinton campaign wants to count unsanctioned contests and include their votes into the popular vote tally ('I've gotten the most votes ever!'), here are a couple more unsanctioned contests that could be thrown into the tally: (1.) Nebraska: Obama +2,663 (2.) Washington: Obama +36,015 (3.) Idaho: Obama +7,869. Those are all from non-binding primaries conducted in those caucus states. Combined, they'd add 46,547 votes for Obama if we were stupid enough to think that votes that don't matter actually count. But that's not all the votes that were cast for either Obama or Clinton this year. There's the Texas caucuses, which aren't counted in any popular vote tallies. But since every vote matters to Clinton, and she's claiming that she's gotten more votes cast for her than any other Democrat in a primary, then of course we have to be intellectually consistent and, well, count every vote. Based on sign-in sheets at caucus sites, turnout for the caucuses was roughly 750,000. Obama won the caucuses 56-44. That 12-point spread is another 90,000-vote gain for Obama."
• Moulitsas continues: "That means that tallying EVERY single contest this cycle, even the ones that didn't count (since that's the Clinton standard), gives Obama an extra 136,547 votes. Now let's look at the popular vote tally if Michigan, Florida, and the caucus states are counted (and remember, this is with Obama getting zero votes in Michigan): Clinton has a 54,432-vote advantage. Now let's roll in the vote totals from every other contest that didn't matter, and we now have a 82,115-vote Obama advantage. So while Clinton may claim she's gotten more votes than Obama this year, fact is, that's not true under any scenario unless you start excluding elections. This post is absurd, of course -- there's no reason to count the votes of non-binding contests that had no bearing on the delegate selection process, and it's sketchy at best to double count Texas voters participating in their two binding contests. Still, this post is the logical extension of the Clinton argument. If you're going to count every vote cast this primary cycle, even those of contests that didn't count, then you count every single vote cast, including those of every contest that didn't count."
• RJ Eskow: "The notion that Clinton has won the most 'popular votes' is a meaningless metric from the start. Clinton people say Florida and Michigan Democrats shouldn't be 'penalized' for the errors of others, yet their argument punishes voters who stayed home in those states believing their votes wouldn't count. And it 'penalizes' Democrats in every single caucus state! Yet Clinton defenders insist on claiming they're fighting for the 'principle' of 'counting every vote.' Gen. Wesley Clark, who I respect (and would like to see nominated for VP), made this claim last night on Dan Abrams. But this so-called 'principle' disenfranchises Democrats in Iowa, Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Nebraska, Washington, Maine, Hawaii, Wyoming...and parts of Texas. Is that really a 'value every Democrat should support,' as Gen. Clark claimed?"

OBAMA: Pastorized

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama after Michael Pfleger, a white Catholic priest from Chicago, was videotaped mocking Hillary Clinton from the pulpit of Obama's church:

• Michelle Malkin: "Pfleger, who until recently was featured on the Obama campaign website as a spiritual endorser, was back at Obama's Trinity United Church this weekend mocking Hillary Clinton's 'white entitlement.' It's one thing to ridicule Hillary's sense of political and ideological entitlement as part of the Clinton dynasty. But the demagogic emphasis on her race from this hate preacher on the pulpit is quite another thing. You really have to see his performance to believe it."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Words cannot describe the surreality of watching a middle-aged white man in a priest's collar appearing like he is trying to imitate Jeremiah Wright at his most outrageous."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "Like Wright, Pfleger is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan. Post[ed] below is video of Rev. Pfleger preaching at Obama's church. Pfleger argues that whites must give up their 401(k) money in order to have any hope of atoning for the sins of their ancestors. He also maintains that Hillary Clinton's unhappiness over losing out to Obama is specifically related to his race. In other words, Clinton would have been less distraught had, say, John Edwards bested her. In this account, of course, Clinton is a racist."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Add Pfleger to the list of friends that Obama has to disown that includes Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and Tony Rezko."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "According to this CSM piece from last year, Barry O's known Pfleger since his early days in Chicago. Funny how these longtime acquaintances of his keep 'surprising' him with incendiary racial rhetoric."
• The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett: "Personally, I consider Father Michael Pfleger's oratory from this past Sunday at Obama's Trinity United Church less striking than Jeremiah Wright's. Nevertheless, it's still odd how Obama wound up in the company of so many people for 20 years whose true natures eluded him. By his own reckoning, the candidate is clearly a less-than-canny observer of human nature. I certainly hope he acknowledges this shortcoming before attempting mano-a-mano diplomacy with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadenijad."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "The reporting on Pfleger casts a new and disturbing light on Barack Obama. [...] It suggests, disturbingly, that Barack either agrees with -- or is all too willing to tolerate -- radical racial hate speech from the left. It's clear that Barack has accepted contributions from Pfleger, accepted his endorsement (although James Taranto reports that the campaign has since suppressed it) and directed a whole lot of Illinois taxpayers' money to Pfleger's projects. No doubt Barack will tell us that he supported Pfleger's good works, not his radical race-baiting. OK; there's a way to test that claim. Has Barack sought to support any good works by conservative pastors with whom he disagrees? Or does his tolerance for ideas he claims he doesn't share extend only to the left side?"

MCCAIN: Let The Googlebombing Commence

Several liberal bloggers are launching an effort to "Googlebomb" John McCain:

• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Searching for John McCain is a massive, online activism campaign designed to make at least ten million non-partisan, poll-tested, on-message voter contacts that reveal the damning truth about John McCain entirely through mainstream news reports and McCain's own words. Through mass blogger participation and the use of embedded hyperlinks, Searching for John McCain will connect millions of curious, low-information swing voters to negative, mainstream news articles about John McCain without 99% of those voters even knowing that Searching for John McCain exists. It is the more sophisticated, and hopefully more effective, 2.0 version of the Googlebomb the Elections campaign which, with only $1,500 and three days of work, reached 6% of the electorate in 47 swing congressional districts during the final two weeks of the 2006 mid-term elections. You can participate if you have a website of your own, if you make comments on other websites, or even if you are a registered user on a community website. It is quick. It is easy. It is free. And it is very, very effective. If it is done correctly, and if enough people participate, this campaign alone should cost John McCain 1% of the vote in November."
• Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher: "What do you do for an encore once your Googlebomb project causes Michelle Malkin to unleash her legion of shrieking howler monkeys on you? Well if you're Chris Bowers, you set your sights on John McCain. According to Pew, the number one way voters use the internet is to search for candidate information. Ergo, it makes sense to try and embed hyperlinks of telling McCain articles across the internet in order to raise their Google ranking. So here we go:

  1--McCain: US economic woes 'psychological'
  2--McCain housing policy shaped by lobbyist
  3--Bush, McCain plug Social Security
  4--McCain blasts Obama's and Clinton's attacks on NAFTA
  5--McCain in NH: Would Be 'Fine' To Keep Troops in Iraq for 'A Hundred Years'
  6--McCain: Bush right to veto kids health insurance expansion
  7--Senate passes expanded GI bill despite Bush, McCain opposition
  8--McCain says overturn the law that legalized abortion
  9--McCain Defends Bush's Iraq Strategy"

MCCAIN II: Vice President Palin?

Several conservative bloggers are buzzing about the possibility that McCain will select AK Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, following Wizbang's Kevin Aylward's report that the head of McCain's VP search team was recently spotted in Juneau:

• Aylward: "A tipster sent us word that John McCain's VP advance man Arthur Culvahouse has been spotted in Juneau, Alaska. There's only one reason he would be there -- to meet with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin about the Vice President position. [...] Governor Palin would (in my estimation) make an excellent VP candidate for McCain. Thomas Cheplick at The American Spectator makes the case that she's probably the only VP candidate who can balance the ticket against Obama. She's also a potential magnet for disaffected Hillary Clinton voters, many of whom are just looking for a reason not to vote for Obama."
• The Weekly Standard's Brian Faughnan: "In many ways, Palin is an ideal choice: a governor, a woman, a conservative, a Christian, a budget-cutting fiscal hawk known for opposition to pork-barrel projects. And even as an Alaska governor who favors drilling in ANWR, she is known for standing up to 'Big Oil.' Would McCain really make such an unorthodox selection? And does the fact that Governor Palin merits a clandestine visit, rather than an invitation to McCain's VP cattle call indicate that she is a more serious candidate than the others, or is it simply because Palin gave birth just over a month ago?"
• Allahpundit: "I'm cool to the idea of her on the ticket but less so than I used to be. The Spectator likes her as balance for our old-coot nominee, although I'm not sure why when the main line of attack on Obama this fall will be that he's not an old coot, i.e. that he's too young and inexperienced to handle the job. Palin's been governor for two years, which is longer than [LA Gov. Bobby] Jindal but still less time than Obama's been a senator. If he's not ready, why is she ready to inherit the presidency at a moment's notice if, god forbid, McCain's age gets the better of him? Needless to say, her home state's no electoral prize either, and given her approval rating (in the 80s, last I checked) can probably be delivered if she simply campaigns for him there as a regular ol' supporter. So why am I warming up to her? First because the GOP needs new faces, figuratively and literally, and as faces go you can scarcely do better than hers right now (figuratively and literally). [...] Second, obviously, having her on the ticket would steal some of Obama's media juice as the candidate with the Narrative versus the same old patrician Republican crap. And third, well, watch this. We're not going to win the woman vote, but there are surely some [Geraldine] Ferraros out there disgruntled enough about how Hillary was treated to give McCain/Palin a very close look."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Is It In Her DNA?

Open Left's Matt Stoller speculates about why Clinton appears committed to staying in the race:

"This is why I think Clinton is staying on despite repeated pleas to drop out. In 1998, insiders on both the right and left of the party were begging [Bill] Clinton to resign, and he refused. It was a great decision, possibly the best one in his Presidency. And so today, when insiders are begging [Hillary Clinton] to give up what she thinks is her Presidency, she is saying no and turning to the right. It's in her DNA."

LEST WE FORGET: Desperate Chives Marketing Board Launches 'Big Bowl O' Chives In The Mornin'' Campaign

From The Onion:

"NEW YORK -- In response to flagging sales and plummeting prices, the American Chives Council launched a last-ditch advertising campaign Monday urging consumers to increase their daily chive intake by 12,000 percent. 'There's nothing like a hearty, fragrant helping of chives to jump-start your day,' celebrity spokeswoman Jessica Alba says in one of the new 'Big Bowl o' Chives in the Mornin'' commercials, which feature the actress smiling broadly with chives stuck in her teeth. 'But that doesn't mean eating a big bowl of chives is just for breakfast. The American Chives Council recommends three heaping servings a day. The bigger the better. Get some chives in ya!' Despite the push, analysts predict that the chive industry will continue to struggle, citing the ongoing repercussions of the ACC's ill-fated 2005 split with the American Sour Cream Association."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:49 PM

May 29, 2008

5/29: The Rightroots Flex Their Muscles

Over the past few days, conservative bloggers have really proved their value in the GOP message machine. On Tuesday, a conservative blogger read a report about Barack Obama's Memorial Day speech and noticed that Obama's remarks about his uncle helping to liberate Auschwitz couldn't possibly be true, since Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets. Other righty bloggers immediately began writing about Obama's false claim; the RNC issued a statement criticizing Obama; and eventually the Obama camp was forced to issue a correction (Obama's aides said that Obama's great-uncle was part of the U.S. brigade that liberated Buchenwald, not Auschwitz). The ensuing media buzz completely overshadowed the content of Obama's Memorial Day speech. Furthermore, as one liberal blogger sadly noted, it distracted the media from the potentially damaging news that John McCain's economics adviser had been working as a registered lobbyist for a Swiss bank at the same time that he was advising McCain on economic policy. This whole affair illustrates the crucial role that bloggers play as providers of free opposition research for political candidates.

DEM FIELD: The Clintonites Are Going Down Fighting

Hillary Clinton's online supporters are reacting to reports that DNC lawyers believe that FL and MI must lose half of their delegates:

• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "So with this leak we know what the DNC is planning for Saturday, seating the Florida and Michigan elected delegations with half votes each and probably seating all the super delegates. [...] What will Hillary Clinton do in response to this? My advice, FWIW, is to accept this and or seek some type of caucus to seat the remaining delegate strength in Florida and Michigan. Sort of say OK, I take the half of the delegates you have given Florida and Michigan, now let's give them a chance to get the other half. Of course, she could also ask for a revote in Michigan on August 5. Indeed, that is an option for the DNC, grant Florida the safe harbor it deserved according to the DNC, fully seat the Florida delegation, seat the Michigan delegation with half votes and let the other half be chosen in the August 5 Michigan primary already scheduled, which would likely be a formality anyway. This likely, indeed almost certainly, is not going to change the outcome of the race. But it will help the Democrats in November. Which should be the DNC's most important consideration now."
• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt argues that the superdelegates shouldn't necessarily endorse the pledged delegate leader: "Pledged delegates are only part of the equation in a superdelegate's decision who to vote for. Superdelegates were intended to act as brakes on a system run amok. That's what we have here, and it will be further derailed if rumors about only seating half of Florida's delegates are true. The pledged delegate total is one argument for nomination. It is not a qualifying event. By itself, a majority of pledged delegates is not enough to win the nomination. This year, in particular, the legitimacy of the pledged delegate count is uncertain."
• Mark Rubin wants to pressure the DNC to seat the full FL and MI delegations: "[I've been] told that the DNC is in big trouble financially, down to $3.5 million against $35 million for the Republicans. One of the best things anyone supporting the full seating of Florida and Michigan can do, is call the DNC, finance committee in Washington and let them know they will never get another dime now or in the future unless all the Florida and Michigan delegates [are] seated."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas, who supports Obama, calls the report "an early defeat for Clinton": "The Clinton campaign won't like anything short of a full seating -- all of Michigan's 128 delegates -- with Obama getting zero delegates out of the Soviet-style, one-candidate election in Michigan. They won't be getting that."

Balloon Juice's John Cole, who also supports Obama, disagrees: "This is precisely the kind of ruling the Clinton camp wants. Seating only half the delegations per DNC rules will provide those in the fantasy land that is the Clinton camp the opportunity to file appeals, turn this into a credential fight, and allow them to fight bitterly all the way to the convention. Rather than ending this, this will assure us we will get more Florida 2000/Zimbabwe/Civil Rights gibberish from team Clinton over the next few months, as the Clinton team prepares to wrestle away the nomination somehow, anyway they can, at the convention. Or hope that 'something happens' in between now and then and the supers will abandon Obama. The only thing that will stop this is if the supers immediately swarm to Obama after the last vote on June 3rd, but I have seen nothing to indicate that will happen -- they have indulged Hillary's bullshit to date, why stop now? And even if they do rush over and put Obama over whatever new number the Clintons dream up, they still will not concede. They will continue campaigning, continue to make statements and raise money and tour the country and take potshots at Obama and suck oxygen out of the room and make her supporters more antagonistic towards Obama until he is officially the nominee at the convention. They don't care what the outcome is, this is about Hillary becoming President in 2008, and if that fails, in 2012."

CLINTON: She Was Against It Before She Was For It

Moulitsas joins The Washington Post's Harold Meyerson in criticizing the Clinton camp's "situational ethics": "Remember, Clinton supported the Michigan and Florida sanctions when she thought she'd coast to the nomination. And her main advisor, Harold Ickes, actually voted for those sanctions as a member of the DNC committee that levied them. But of course, neither Ickes nor Hillary could be bothered to uphold whatever democratic and feminist principles have magically appeared now that Clinton is desperately grasping at straws for the nomination. People were freaking out over the RFK stuff, but really, the most infuriating part of this campaign is Clinton's lack of intellectual honesty. The shifting rationales. The constantly moving goal posts. The disrespect for rules and the intelligence of the public. Its rank dishonesty and purposefully flawed readings of history. In short, the bullshit we've been subjected to the past four months. Had there been some intellectual consistency, then fine. But the 'against it before it was politically necessary to be for it' bullshit has been unbearable."

The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen agrees with Moulitsas: "I don't necessarily blame Clinton backers for trying to help Clinton out at the [DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee] meeting on Saturday, but I am curious how many of them are demonstrating because they're genuinely outraged over the dispute between the DNC and two state parties over convention delegates or because they're hoping to give their favored candidate an edge. [...] If we give the protestors the benefit of the doubt, and accept that they're outraged because of the DNC's punishment of Florida and Michigan, I have a couple of follow-up questions. How many of the protestors were outraged when the punishment was originally made last year, before we knew who won the non-binding primaries? How many denounced Hillary Clinton for saying these votes wouldn't count? How many protested some of Clinton's top aides for playing a direct role in making the decision against Florida and Michigan in the first place? How many criticized the 12 Clinton supporters on the DNC Rules Committee who voted to strip these two states of their entire slate of delegates? How many said anything at all when it was just a matter of democratic principles, unrelated to any specific candidate or campaign?"

Meanwhile, MyDD's Josh Orton objects to the notion that the controversy surrounding the FL and MI delegations is analogous to the disputed FL 2000 election: "The 2000 'election' in Florida remains one of our country's saddest and profound moments of disenfranchisement in recent history. Why? Because nearly all existing legal precedent was ignored for political convenience, all the way up to the Supreme Court. The comparison to this year's primary falls flat -- besides being within the scope of party procedure, in this case the rules and precedents were actually followed."

OBAMA: Tired Of Gotcha Politics

Liberal bloggers are slamming conservative bloggers and the RNC for attacking Obama after the IL senator mistakenly asserted that his great uncle helped liberate Auschwitz (Obama's aides said that he intended to refer to Buchenwald, not Auschwitz):

• Crooks and Liars' Steve Benen: "Obama said his uncle had liberated one Nazi concentration camp, when in fact, his uncle had liberated a different Nazi concentration camp. [...] There was no obvious intention to deceive anyone, a presidential candidate simply misidentified the specific camp his mother's brother liberated. An innocent mistake, barely worth raising an eyebrow over. And yet, Republicans instantly turned the Outrage Machine to 11, as if Obama had claimed to have liberated Buchenwald himself. [...] If Obama's uncle hadn't served in the military, or hadn't even left the country during World War II, I could see this being more embarrassing and newsworthy. Ronald Reagan, for example, boasted that he'd served in an Army unit that filmed recently liberated death camps. In reality, Reagan never left the U.S. during the war. That's controversial. Obama's inconsequential error was utterly meaningless. That this became a huge deal to the Republican Attack Machine highlights just how far off the edge these poor schmoes have fallen."
• Menachem Rosensaft, the head of the International Network of Children of Holocaust Survivors, writes a diary on the Huffington Post: "I never thought I'd see the day when the Holocaust would be used as a tool for 'gotcha' politics. But over the last two days, we have seen John McCain's supporters at the Republican National Committee and at Fox News launch tasteless attacks on Barack Obama. In their attempt to score a few political points, they have diminished the experience of those who suffered and died at Buchenwald, and disrespected the service of the heroic American troops who liberated them. [...] To those who continue to use this story to damage Barack Obama, I have a simple question: have you no shame? You attempts to diminish his uncle's service for your own political gain says a lot more about you than it does about Barack Obama."
• Firedoglake's Attaturk: "The Right-Wing Chorus, always focused on the 'BIG' things literally, burned up the internet over Obama mixing up Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. I'm going to to go out on a limb here and declare they were both hell-on-earth. But, somehow this minor error -- of a type that each of the candidates make regularly in some fashion the more they speak during the never-ending campaign, has to them suddenly become the biggest story EVAH! [...] Is there no end to the rings the right-wing clown show will add?"

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan thinks GOPers are pushing this story in order to portray Obama as gaffe-prone and unfit for the Presidency: "Obama is one of the least gaffe-prone politicians out there. The conscious effort to create this image -- fostered in part by [Charles] Krauthammer's dog-whistle -- is part of a campaign to define Obama as unready for high office. Resist this deceptive meme. It's propaganda."

Mark Kleiman thinks conservatives won the news cycle:

"Yesterday we learned:

1. That John McCain's chief economic adviser was a lobbyist (and is still a Vice-Chairman) of a bank that's loaded up with possibly worthless paper and hip-deep in criminal activity (facilitating evasion of U.S. taxes by rich Americans through the services of its 'private banking' arm).

2. That it wasn't Barack Obama's uncle who helped liberate one of the Nazi death camps; it was his grand-uncle. And that the camp wasn't Auschwitz, but Buchenwald.

Guess which one made news? It's not that the press actually bought the silly Republican spin that Obama is 'gaffe-prone'; but they let the RNC catch them up in the argument, distracting them from the Gramm story, which should have been devastating to McCain. We need to be relentless on calling the media on this b.s."

OBAMA II: Pants On Fire

Undeterred, some conservative bloggers continue to portray Obama's Auschwitz mistatement as a deliberate lie, not a gaffe:

• RedState's streiff: "We've grown used to the utterly pathological disregard for the truth of the Clintons. All of them. From her story of being named for Sir Edmund Hillary to her purported attempt to join the Marines to her using Sinbad and Chelsea [Clinton] as human shields to protect herself from sniper fire in Tuzla we've all come to expect Hillary -- and Bill -- to lie to us. Not for any particular reason. They are professionals. They lie just to stay in practice. Now we're seeing the same behavior on the part of Barack Obama."
• AmSpec Blog's Lawrence Henry: "Obama is not making 'gaffes.' He's been a myth-maker from the first. Isn't that the message of his books? He is basically nothing, with a mother who's a total flake and a father who's as absent as a father can be, no real other family to depend on. So he uses his brains (he has some), and he turns to literature of various kinds to assemble an identity. In a big part of that identity construction, as John Derbyshire has written, Obama gets 'hung up on his negritude.' And for all the rest, it's a Chinese menu, with two from Column A and one from Column B. He's Gatsby, he's the King (or the Duke) from Huckleberry Finn, he's Philip Roth's carefully constructed professor from The Human Stain. He is, in short, a creature of American literature, not really an organically developed person at all. He is an exemplar to the max of identity politics, or all politics is persona."

Other conservative bloggers think Obama's mistatement was a result of his ignorance of history:

• Little Green Footballs' Charles Johnson: "I've written several times that I suspect Barack Obama of being almost completely ignorant of world history. All it would take to reveal the depths of this ignorance would be a few serious historical questions from a reporter who isn't blinded by the messiah's halo -- but nobody seems to care."
• The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett: "Back in their school days, John McCain was a dreadful student where Barack Obama was a spectacular one. But for an aspiring commander-in-chief, John McCain knows what you have to know. It's becoming increasingly apparent that Barack Obama doesn't."

OBAMA III: Iraq Trippin'

Conservative bloggers are joining McCain in criticizing Obama for not having visited Iraq since 2006:

• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "I suppose one can argue about the value of seeing the situation on the ground with one's own eyes, but wouldn't the architect of a withdrawal want to see some of the circumstances himself? [...] And isn't Obama vulnerable to the argument that a man who's pledged to meet unconditionally, one-on-one, face-to-face with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really ought to meet at least once one-on-one with Gen. David Petraeus?"
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "If Obama hopes to retain respect from our armed forces and their leaders, he will have to visit Iraq before he abandons the country. But, depending on the situation in Iraq and what Obama learns on a visit, he could lose this respect if he abandons the country following a visit."
• AmSpec Blog's John Tabin: "Isn't it obvious that going to Iraq would be a major political risk for Obama? According to the Military Times poll, more than 60% of active-duty servicemen believe the US is either 'somewhat' or 'very' likely to succeed in Iraq. But less than 20% of them think 'the Iraqi military will be ready to replace large numbers of American troops' in 2 years or less. That suggests that a sizable number of the troops on the ground think that a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would amount to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Imagine if a soldier, marine, or guardsman were to express that opinion to Obama's face, in public, on the ground in Iraq."

After Obama said that he was considering visiting Iraq, conservative bloggers portrayed him as a pushover:

• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Just so we're clear, a 'political stunt' would be letting McCain cow him into a joint trip to Iraq. Letting McCain cow him into a solo trip? Not a stunt. [...] He's doing the right thing so I'll resist the hackiest spin on this ('if he's this much of a pushover for McCain, what will he be like against...'), but I am sincerely surprised that he'd bow to this sort of pressure so quickly. His flag-pin stance is stupid but there's a certain ballsiness to it if he's willing to stick with it and absorb the political consequences because he believes in it. Which...he isn't. Same here with him backing down after initially objecting to an Iraq trip..."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Obama may now go to Iraq after a bunch of right wing bloggers piled on his refusal to go with McCain. Obama backtracked on his Aushwitz story after a bunch of right wing bloggers piled on. Obama caved on his unilateral meetings after a bunch of right wing bloggers piled on. Obama caved on Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright after a bunch of right wing bloggers piled on. Obama caved on...well the list goes on and on. Every time right wing bloggers pile on an Obama statement or misstatement, Obama caves. If he'll kowtow to us right wing bloggers and cave so easily, how much faster will he cave to folks like [Hugo] Chavez and Ahmadinejad?"

OBAMA IV: The Webb Paradox

Liberal bloggers continue to debate the idea of VA Sen. Jim Webb as Obama's running mate:

• Open Left's Matt Stoller criticizes the idea of Webb as Obama's VP: "Webb has not been a progressive Senator. On Iraq, he has voted to fund the war, [and] on retroactive immunity for telecom companies, he sided with the telecom companies. [...] To be sure, his GI Bill is important, and he is a far better public servant than George Allen. I like Webb, I respect Webb, but I do not believe that Webb shares our values. A VP is a heartbeat away from the Presidency, and Webb will in all likelihood not be a progressive President. What's left is Webb's political ability to bring white working class voters to the Democratic side. And this is where the Webb-as-VP talk really falls apart. While Webb is seen as a candidate who appeals to the Appalachian white working class vote...there's actually no evidence he does. Today, he's far less popular in Virginia than [Sen.] John Warner, with a net disapproval rating among males of six points and eight points among gun owners. [...] Still, if he got elected in Virginia in 2006, who cares? Surely he can bring the same bevy of white working class voters he brought in 2006 to the Obama ticket in 2008, right? Well, no. His 2006 victory was based on a coalition of white liberals and African-Americans. Both his primary and general victories saw his marginal vote runups in Northern Virginia counties."
• TAPPED's Robert Kuttner defends Webb: "Kathy G. makes some devastating points in her list of all the reasons why Jim Webb's past sins disqualify him from being Barack Obama's running-mate (also see Ezra [Klein]'s article on the same topic). Webb evidently is a sexist pig. And in addition to all the 'women can't fight' statements over the years, as recently as 2000 he was calling affirmative action 'state-sponsored racism.' And in 2004 he circulated mendacious tripe about those who opposed the Vietnam War, including John Kerry. On the other hand, Webb is singing a very different song today. He came from nowhere to narrowly beat George Allen, Jr., mainly because along the campaign trail, after listening to ordinary Virginians, he metamorphosed from a Reagan Democrat into a New Deal Democrat, and won the votes of lots of good old boys (and gals) who were suffering economically. He is now just one of six members of the Senate Progressive Caucus. All of which puts me in mind of Michael Kinsley's astute observation that the right welcomes converts while the left considers them unreliable. [...] I, for one, believe in redemption. And I have to ask, how long is the statute of limitations for past sins of converts?"
• Conservative blogger Ross Douthat also defends Webb: "Were I Obama, I would look at the left-liberal case against Webb -- on the grounds that he's too anti-feminist, too pro-military, too skeptical about affirmative action and immigration, too hostile to Hollywood and academia -- as an advertisement for the pick. An Obama-Webb ticket wouldn't send just a message that people who share the same ethno-cultural identity as Jim Webb can have a home in the Democratic Party, the way Kerry and Edwards were supposed to show that veterans and Southerners could too be Democrats; it would send a message that people with Webb's views can have a home in the party. It would lend substance to Obama's thus-far insubstantial claim to be something other than a party-line liberal, and in the process it would have the potential to achieve at the national level what the Congressional Dems have successfully done at the local level - namely, expand the definition of what it means to be a Democrat."

Meanwhile, several liberal bloggers are discussing how to approach Obama's VP decision philosophically:

• Ezra Klein: "There's one school of thought which says Obama has real weaknesses, and he should admit them and choose a VP who compensates. [...] There's another school of thought -- and this is partly the direction in which I lean -- which says don't admit those weaknesses. Don't act like an 'other' who needs a compensating VP. Just as Obama has aggressively refused to view his foreign policy as a vulnerability, just as he doubled down on his opposition to the gas tax holiday, he should double down on the strengths of his candidacy. He should pick another obvious change agent, someone young and either personally or demographically exciting. I lean towards a woman in this spot, but there are lots of ways to meet those requirements. But they require a candidate who amplifies Obama's strength more than mitigates his weaknesses. It's the model of [Bill] Clinton choosing [Al] Gore -- another young Southerner -- rather than Kerry choosing [John] Edwards or [George W.] Bush choosing [Dick] Cheney."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias thinks people are over-emphasizing electoral considerations: "One really ought to look at the selection of a Vice Presidential nominee as something where the substantive merits are important. Of our eleven postwar vice presidents ([Richard] Nixon, [Lyndon] Johnson, [Hubert] Humphrey, [Spiro] Agnew, [Gerald] Ford, [Nelson] Rockefeller, [Walter] Mondale, [George H.W.] Bush, [Dan] Quayle, Gore, and Cheney), four have gone on to become president and three more have gone on to become a major party presidential nominee. That's by no means a perfect batting record, but generically speaking becoming vice president is the best means of going on to become president. Under the circumstances, it seems foolish to advocate for someone or other purely on the grounds of political expediency."

MCCAIN: He's Being Advised By Who?

Now that ex-Sen. Phil Gramm is under scrutiny for representing the Swiss bank UBS while providing McCain with economic advice, liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain's relationship with Gramm:

• Firedoglake's Christy Hardin Smith: "How exactly does John McCain answer the question of what he's doing handling Phil Gramm's Enron and UBS baggage in exchange for highly dubious economic advice? Is this what we could expect McCain to foist on the rest of the country -- a man who helped run energy and banking policy in the ground while he and his family pocketed millions? Is this the ethical distance from lobbyists McCain trumpeted while using the UBS lobbyist Gramm for banking and economic policy crafting advice? Using a lobbyist and officer of a troubled bank to craft banking policy in which it has an interest while, at the same time, using him to stump for you on the campaign trail? Does the word 'self-dealing' come to mind for you, too?"
• Mother Jones' David Corn: "Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Hillary, Feminism, and Manly Presidents

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait:

"Female candidates, especially female presidential candidates, have a double standard working against them. Ironically, I think Hillary Clinton's campaign has worsened this problem. Hers has been the campaign constantly defining the job of president as 'commander-in-chief' -- a more militaristic conception of the role. While Barack Obama has tried to reframe who is more qualified to conduct foreign policy as a question of judgment, Clinton has insisted that it's a question of toughness. That's a metric where she's arguably superior to Obama, but John McCain is clearly superior to her. (And, for that matter, Genghis Khan would be superior to McCain. It's a dumb metric.)

On other intangible ways to think about presidents, Clinton's campaign has defined the proper role of president in ways that are more conducive to male candidates. Men are usually going to appear more 'authentic' than women shooting guns or knocking back shots in a bar. Clinton advisor James Carville declared at one point, 'If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two.' This way of defining the proper character and style of a president may have been helpful to Hillary Clinton's efforts to beat Obama, but they're harmful to female candidate in general. To the extent that presidential qualities are defined as 'manly,' women have a harder time competing. Obama is trying to move the frame of debate away from the manly-tough guy stuff, but Hillary keeps dragging it back down."

LEST WE FORGET: Rachael, Michelle, and Whoopi

Radar's Sarah Horne:

"Rachael Ray's fashion sense can best be described as Mom Jeans meets bottom-of-the-barrel TJ Maxx. So when she showed up in a Dunkin' Donuts ad sporting a black and white keffiyeh, it was perhaps understandable that there'd be some sort of confusion. Had America's favorite midget chef suddenly ditched the mall and headed to Urban Outfitters in the throes of some kind of hipster fit? Michelle Malkin fumed, and not because she thought it looked retarded. The scarf, said Malkin, 'has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,' instead of, you know, Yummo! donuts and overly sweetened iced lattes.

Earlier this week, the coffee chain took the ad in question out of circulation, claiming it never intended any jihadist 'symbolism.' But while conspiracy theorists remain skeptical (Would you like an explosive belt with that Coolata?), there's buzz from some corners that suggests Dunkin' Donuts' actions were ill-advised. This morning on The View, Whoopi Goldberg claimed that the scarf also looked like a fashionable version of the Jewish prayer shawl, and that pulling the ad could be perceived as an anti-Jewish act.

We say, let Ray have her keffiyeh. If the Rachael Ray terrorist chic look was loosed on the wider world, the posers of Bushwick and Silver Lake might finally reject this semi-annoying fashion trend. If the perky chef is wearing them, they're surely, finally, thankfully over. (Take note, Olsen twins)."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:39 PM

May 28, 2008

5/28: Debating History

Although Hillary Clinton was the focus of the liberal blogosphere's ire this past weekend for her remarks about Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, she has once again faded into the woodwork (temporarily) as bloggers concentrate on the Barack Obama-John McCain battle. Conservative bloggers are hammering Obama for his false assertion that his great-uncle was part of the U.S. brigade that helped liberate Auschwitz (Obama's aides say that Obama intended to refer to Buchenwald, not Auschwitz). While some conservative bloggers are accusing Obama of deliberately lying in an effort to pander to Jewish voters, most accept the Obama camp's explanation that the IL senator simply confused one Nazi concentration camp for another. However, righty bloggers see this incident as further evidence that Obama has a "shallow knowledge" of history. Meanwhile, liberal bloggers continue their ongoing effort to link McCain with lobbyists and George W. Bush.

OBAMA: Creating His Own Bushisms

Conservative bloggers are portraying Obama as ignorant after he mistakenly asserted that his great-uncle was part of the U.S. brigade that helped liberate Auschwitz (Obama's aides said that he intended to refer to Buchenwald, not Auschwitz):

• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "I am rather forgiving on war memories, and if the uncle or Obama got a few facts wrong about where he served I am not one to grouse. However, Obama and his staff get a lot of history wrong (and a lot of other stuff wrong, too). Isn't Obama supposed to be highly educated, sophisticated, a great intellect? Shouldn't the media's bar be higher for this brilliant leader of the new age of politics? Had it been Hillary Clinton or Al Gore who made all these errors, we would have heard by now that the candidate was a fabulist. Had it been John McCain it would have been a sign of senility. Had it been George W. Bush..oh, you can imagine. So maybe Obama's gaffes are a sign of inexperience and shallow knowledge? Nah, couldn't be."
• The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett: "The mangling of facts here isn't a lie, just another misstatement and another surprising sign of Obama's historical ignorance. [...] Obama undeniably has a high level of cognitive ability. But it's becoming increasingly apparent that he either has read few books or retained very little from the books he read. Either that or he's spent his time reading books that don't help him understand history and won't help him carry out his tasks as president. [...] Obama has made a habit of coming across like a man who does't know what he's talking about. That's bothersome enough, but what's more worrisome still is how comfortable he is with not knowing what he's talking about, and how convinced he seems that his rhetorical flourishes will obscure his ignorance. That strategy may work on the campaign trail, but it certainly won't help him govern."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "This demonstrates again that Barack Obama has a gaffe problem, especially when speaking extemporaneously. If he's going to tell personal anecdotes on the campaign trail, he'd better demonstrate a passable knowledge of the subject matter when he does so."

Other conservative bloggers are arguing that Obama's reference to Auschwitz wasn't a gaffe, but a deliberate lie designed to win over Jewish voters:

• Townhall's Amanda Carpenter: "First, Obama was making up stories about his birth to strengthen his ties to the civil rights movement. Now, it looks like he's revised some family history about his uncle to get closer to the Jewish community he's been having problems with."
• RedState's Jeff Emanuel describes Obama's statement as "so profane that it borders on evil itself": "In a blatantly dishonest attempt to simultaneously pander to the military and Jewish votes, [Obama] decided to take ownership of the ending of the Holocaust and the liberation of Auschwitz. [...] Now, Barack Obama has never been known for having the best grasp of history, geography, or international affairs -- something that he demonstrates in nearly every speech and at nearly every event. However, a statement of that sort, while possibly attributable to sheer, monumental ignorance, rings far more of blatantly dishonest revisionism, complete with a healthy disrespect for the intelligence of his veteran and Jewish target audiences. [...] This capitalizing on the horror of the Holocaust and the Auschwitz liberation is, of course, inexcusable for countless reasons. The lying about familial involvement, though, is so profane that it borders on evil itself."

OBAMA II: A Non-Story

Liberal bloggers are defending Obama for his Auschwitz gaffe:

• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "[On Monday], Obama mentioned that his uncle, Charlie Payne, helped to liberate the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. The Republicans were hoping that they could catch Obama lying -- that maybe Obama never had an uncle who helped liberate the Jews in Europe. Well, in fact, Obama's uncle (his grandmother's brother) helped liberate the Nazi camp at Buchenwald (Obama mixed up Auschwitz and Buchenwald). So the Republicans (and a few Hillary fans emailed me as well) are trying to allege...what exactly? That Obama's family did in fact help save the Jews in Europe, but Obama got the name of the camp he liberated wrong? Okay. I'm not quite sure how that gives us any insight into Obama (other than his uncle is a hero). [...] I hope the Republicans keep talking about this story every day between now and the elections so every Jew in America learns that Obama's uncle helped liberate the Jews in Europe. Oh, and extra points for reminding Americans that Obama is a 'real American' too -- he has family who fought in WWII. If that's the best shot the Republicans have, well God bless them and give 'em a bigger microphone."
• Daily Kos' Scout Finch: "While talking about the service of his grandfather and uncle in WWII at an event, [Obama] said that his uncle had been devastated by the effects of war, particularly after helping to liberate Auschwitz. A minor mistake by Obama because it was, in fact, the Soviets that liberated Auschwitz. His uncle served in the 89th Infantry Division, which liberated Buchenwald, another concentration camp in Germany. [...] The Obama staff issued a correction the following day. [...] Not content with this correction, the RNC is attempting to pounce on the non-story and try to manufacture a brouhaha. Do they really want to go there? The Bush wagon that McCain's campaign is irrevocably hitched to is nothing more than a long series of gaffes, many with dire consequences. Remember the 'slam dunk intelligence' on Iraq? Those 'sixteen words' in the State of the Union address? You know, the gaffe that our soldiers are still dying for today? Remember the time when McCain and Bush partied together in San Diego, sharing a birthday cake....all while New Orleans was drowning? That was some blunder, indeed. And, of course the RNC would be sent to do the dirty work on this one. We all know that the last person wanting to draw attention to 'stumbles' would be John 'the gaffe' McCain. It seems like only yesterday that his aides were rushing in to correct him on the difference between Sunni and Shia....over and over, again."

However, pro-Clinton bloggers on the left are joining pro-McCain bloggers on the right in criticizing Obama:

• Taylor Marsh: "Obama Gaffes Multiply....And people wonder why Senator Obama isn't garnering raves from the Jewish community. They don't know him well enough to give this a pass. [...] Getting the concentration camp wrong reveals a lack of sensitivity to an issue and a community that doesn't know Senator Obama well in the first place."
• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "[Obama] makes a lot of mistakes about his family history. It's like he's retelling stories he's heard from third parties, including campaign staff who looked the stuff up. Maybe, aside from his grandparents with whom he lived for several years, he didn't know their side of the family that well -- including the great uncle who was one of the first at Buchenwald. In other words, he's telling stories he's learned on the campaign trail rather than ones he grew up hearing. [...] There's no requirement in my mind that a presidential candidate have close family ties. But if a candidate is going to tout his family values and family history as a reason voters should view him as 'just like us,' his stories should at least be genuine, not something he learns from campaign staffers."

OBAMA III: Those Who Cannot Remember The Past...

Conservative bloggers continue to argue that Obama is ignorant of U.S. history:

• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "As Charles Krauthammer noted last week, since the Democrats' CNN/YouTube debate last summer, Barack Obama has been touting the wisdom of presidential meetings with America's sworn enemies during his first year in office. In Portland on May 18, Obama placed President [John F.] Kennedy's summit conference with [Nikita] Khrushchev in Vienna as one of the presidential meetings that led to the triumph of the United States in the Cold War. By all accounts, however, including Kennedy's own, the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit in Vienna was a disaster. [...] Given the record, what are we to make of Obama's assertions regarding the Kennedy-Khrushchev summit? It seems to me that there are only two alternatives. Either Obama is familiar with the history and is deliberately exploiting the ignoriance of his supporters, or he has no idea what he is talking about. I incline to the latter view."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Obama's success at Harvard Law has persuaded most credential-driven MSMers that he is very, very smart, but a facility with the ways of law school and law exam test taking do not an educated man make. Because legal education values certain skills, success at it says almost nothing about a law student's wisdom or grasp of history. What is becoming obvious is that Senator Obama simply doesn't know a lot of what we take for granted in presidential nominees -- an understanding of how America came to be and why it is so special, so exceptional."

OBAMA IV: Battling The Webb Swoon

Although VA Sen. Jim Webb is a popular VP candidate in the liberal blogosphere, several liberal bloggers are arguing that Webb would be a poor choice as Obama's VP:

• Kathy G.: "Given Webb's shaky campaigning skills, his well-documented history of extremely poor political judgments, his johnny-come-lately status as a Democrat, his questionable ability to attract votes, and above all, his horrible record on gender, I do not think James Webb would be a wise choice for vice president. It's interesting to me that, though I don't know of a single woman who thinks Webb should be Obama's running mate, I know many men who positively swoon over the man. To the legions of Webb fanboys on the left, I'll say this: dudez, this race is not about your illusions about how an Obama-Webb ticket could somehow miraculously heal centuries' worth of racial wounds, or your fantasies about how Webb could somehow bring that all-important white working class male back to the fold. Most especially, it's not about the choice of the ultra-manly Webb as a vicarious endorsement of your masculinity."
• Ezra Klein: "James Webb has been a Democrat for about 30 minutes. A decade or so ago, his gender politics were, to say the least, retrograde, and his outlook was still shot through with anger at the dirty fucking hippies who had turned on his comrades in the military. I have more respect for that position coming from a veteran like Webb than I do from a chickenhawk like [Dick] Cheney, but it still speaks of certain tensions he's got with portions of the party. Additionally, Webb has also endorsed some of the Vietnam, stab-in-the-back revisionism that's come out over the past few years, opposed [Bill] Clinton for being too soft China during the 1990s, and In 2000, endorsed George Allen for the Senate. All of which is to say, there's a lot about what James Webb thinks that we simply don't know. I just read the guy's book, and while I really loved it, and am convinced that he's an important politician in the Democratic Party, he's a bit of a complicated, idiosyncratic figure to elevate to standard-bearer level."
• TAPPED's Scott Lemieux: "The risk of giving up a red state Senate seat has to create a strong presumption against [picking Webb as VP], and it just isn't the job for him. Under the circumstances, choosing someone with Webb's history of sexism seems like an especially bad idea. I have been skeptical that Clinton's supporters (as opposed to her staff) won't get over it if she's not on the ticket (which is good, because picking her has a lot of negatives), but surely many Clinton supporters wouldn't find Webb acceptable, and they'd have a point. Webb's past comments don't make him unacceptable as a red-state Senator, but in the wider universe of good VP candidates this should rule him out."

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan defends the idea of Obama choosing Webb as his running mate: "It seems to me that the meme that is strongest against Obama is the usual Fox-[Karl] Rove culture war stuff, a way to make Obama seem un-American. Webb destroys that meme and remakes the landscape of the race in ways that hurt McCain. Webb is also as close to a Republican as any Democrat will get -- viscerally, culturally, temperamentally. I do think that avoiding a female backlash after Clinton's withdrawal makes sense. But I don't think it rules Webb out. If Obama is partly about healing the culture war -- and it's a key element of his appeal to independents -- then Webb is proof that he can bring cultural rivals into his team."

The American Conservative's Daniel Larison disagrees with Sullivan: "The selection of Webb validates the attack on Obama by acknowledging that there is some sort of liability or vulnerability that Obama had to balance out by choosing Webb. Choosing Webb is another way of saying, 'Yes, Democrats must have a military veteran with culturally conservative attitudes on their ticket in order to demonstrate their fidelity to the United States, which is otherwise suspect.' Selecting Webb and selecting him specifically because of what he represents, rather than what he can do, accepts the judgement that Obama's patriotism and American-ness need bolstering. This has the risk of being every bit as self-defeating and embarrassing as John Kerry's 'reporting for duty' moment at the national convention."

MCCAIN: Running For Bush's Third Term?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about a Progressive Media USA report that finds that McCain voted with President Bush "100% of the time in 2008 and 95% of the time in 2007":

• Crooks and Liars' Logan Murphy: "McSame voted with George Bush 100% in 2008. [...] And yet there are still those in the media that call McSame a Maverick. That horse was put out to pasture long ago."
• Firedoglake's Cliff Schecter: "John McCain voted with George W. Bush 100% of the time in 2008. 2007, however, was a particularly 'mavericky' year, as he only supported President Bush 19 out of every 20 times (95%). Therefore, if you subract 5% from 82% (or the % who think things are headed in the wrong direction), McCain was only taking us in the wrong direction about 78% of the time in 2007."
• MyDD's Josh Orton: "On Friday, Todd [Beeton] alerted us to the fundraisers Bush was planning to attend for McCain -- and how they were scaled down and closed to press. Apparently the McCain campaign doesn't want video of Bush praising their candidate. [...] In simple political scorekeeping, every time McCain's people have to say, defensively, 'no no, he does sometimes disagree with the President,' it's a win for Obama. It's not an easy argument for McCain to make, especially considering that he voted with Bush 95% of the time in 2007 and a full 100% of the time in 2008."

MCCAIN II: Compromised

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the news that McCain economics adviser/ex-Sen. Phil Gramm was working as a registered lobbyist for the Swiss bank UBS at the same time that he was advising McCain on economic policy:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "As MSNBC reported, UBS deregistered Gramm as a lobbyist for the company on April 18th, though he continues to serve as a vice chairman of the bank. But that was fully a month after McCain's speech outlining his own approach to the [mortgage] crisis. Many of the lobbying connections the press has dug up on McCain have been embarassing. But I'm not sure any have really had teeth until this one. After all, how much does the average voter care that Charlie Black represented a lot of foreign dictators? A stench, yes? But finding out that McCain had a major subprime lender bank lobbyist whispering in his ear when McCain told the public that it was basically tough luck if they lost their houses?"
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "It just defies belief that McCain would have, as his main economic advisor and one of the people responsible for his plan to deal with the mortgage crisis, someone who was a paid lobbyist for a bank that was heavily involved in that crisis, a firm that has just advised some of its employees not to travel to the US for legal reasons, and that stands to gain or lose a lot depending on what the federal government decides to do about it. What's next: the revelation that McCain's policy on Iran is being written by a lobbyist for the makers of cruise missiles? [...] My best guess -- and it's only a guess -- is that there are certain things about himself that McCain is so sure of that he does not see how he could ever be challenged on them. He knows that he is a man of honor, so why would he need to keep people with obvious conflicts of interest away from his campaign -- even when he is taking their advice on topics that, by his own admission, he doesn't know much about?"

Meanwhile, Daily Kos' smintheus criticizes McCain's lobbyist connections: "McCain is up to his ears in lobbyists...including several registered as agents of foreign governments. Lobbyists raise much of his cash, they staff his campaign and serve as advisers. Some of his lobbyist-staffers ostensibly are on leaves of absence from their firms while they work without pay from McCain, while some others may in fact still be drawing lobbyist salaries. [...] It's hard to avoid the conclusion that McCain's ability to survive the Republican primaries is due to lobbyist support. His campaign is entirely a construct of his lobbyist pals."

MCCAIN III: Holy Joe

Liberal bloggers are slamming McCain surrogate/CT Sen. Joe Lieberman for agreeing to speak at a summit hosted by the controversial pastor John Hagee. McCain recently repudiated Hagee's endorsement after it was revealed that Hagee had described Adolf Hitler as an agent of God. The Huffington Post's Max Blumenthal reports:

"Senator Joseph Lieberman is scheduled to headline Pastor John Hagee's 2008 Christians United For Israel Washington-Israel Summit this July 22. In accepting Hagee's invitation, Lieberman became the most senior elected representative confirmed to appear at the annual gala. [...] As a key McCain surrogate who McCain may select as his running mate, Lieberman must know why Hagee is no longer welcome on the so-called Straight Talk Express. So why the silence? Why won't Lieberman, who is married to the daughter of Holocaust survivors, end his relationship with Hagee as well? Why, in apparent defiance of the McCain campaign, does he remain scheduled to headline Hagee's upcoming summit?"

• Marshall: "If John Hagee is too big a whacko for John McCain, why is Joe Lieberman headlining Hagee's annual shindig in July?"
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "When will top McCain supporter Joe Lieberman denounce and reject the extremist Pastor Hagee? And when will McCain denounce Lieberman?"
• Crooks and Liars' Jon Perr: "When it comes to Pastor John Hagee, John McCain and Joe Lieberman have a lot in common. Both men addressed the 2007 convention of Hagee's organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI). McCain and Lieberman each voiced support for a pre-emptive strike against Iran. But while John McCain aggressively sought Hagee's endorsement, only Joe Lieberman compared the Texas pastor to Moses. And judging by his agreement to speak at CUFI's upcoming 2008 conference, Joe Lieberman still believes it."
• Daily Kos' Kagro X: "We know that John McCain eventually became too embarrassed to continue his relationship with Apocalyptic Nutbar Pastor John Hagee. But as usual, if there's lowly but politically-expedient groveling that needs doing, Senator Joe Lieberman is available and up to the task. [...] It's disgusting enough to have to hear Lieberman say anything at all. But to have to hear him heap praise on McCain's leavings, I just can't stomach. The idea that he'll be there for a love-fest with the guy who says Hitler was doing God's work, though? That's just too damned much."
• Firedoglake's Phoenix Woman: "While even John McCain has finally rejected and denounced John Hagee (you know, the rabidly bigoted preacher dude whose endorsement McCain actively and humiliatingly sought despite his recent lies stating otherwise?), John McCain's good buddy Joe Lieberman is still embracing the guy and all he stands for. [...] I think we can safely say that Holy Joe just zapped any chance he had of getting the running mate slot on John Sidney McCain III's general-election ticket. He can wave buh-bye to any hopes of a Cabinet post, too."
• Tje Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "Ben Smith explained recently that Hagee's support for Israel is 'rooted in the belief that the Jewish state will -- soon -- be the site of Armageddon,' and his 'brand of Christian Zionism closely links support for Israel to the end of the world and the conversion of the Jews to Christianity.' [...] So, it's not that Hagee loves Israel, so much as he foresees a blood-soaked war in the Middle East that leads to Jesus' return, at which point the Jews who survive will become Christians. Lieberman is not only comfortable with all of this, but is even willing to headline one of Hagee's events?"
• Atrios: "The alliance between right wing Jews and Christian lovers of Israel until it is destroyed in a fiery apocalypse and all the Jews go to hell has always been a wee bit puzzling, but one would've thought that asserting that the holocaust was all part of God's divine plan would perhaps strain that relationship a bit."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Time Is Now

Open Left's Chris Bowers thinks Dems have an historic opportunity:

"The time period from 2009-2012, and maybe for two more years afterward, will probably be the only stretch of time over the next forty years when Democrats will have 60+ seats in the Senate. The odds of reaching 60 are pretty decent this year, since we are actually only 3-5% away in five different states from hitting 62 seats already. Now, throw in the 2010 picture, when Republicans will have to defend another 19 seats -- including eight freshman, [KY Sen.] Jim Bunning, [PA Sen.] Arlen Specter, and [LA Sen.] David Vitter -- compared to only 14 seats and two freshman (one of whom is Barack Obama) for Dems, and the number could rise into the mid-sixties. Almost inevitably, this number will begin to drop in 2012, and probably drop below 60 for good in 2014. There is no way that we can keep winning two-thirds of all Senate campaigns indefinitely. I mean, the Iraq war will end at some point (I hope). [...]

This is our big moment to really pass progressive legislation. The opportunity is on par with FDR's first two terms, and the first three years of the LBJ's Presidency. While the Senate is mainly crawling mainly with New Dems instead of Progressives, this is still going to be our best opportunity for a loooong time, and we need to make sure we have the Presidency in order to make it happen."

LEST WE FORGET: Obama Practices Looking-Off-Into-Future Pose

From The Onion:

"CHICAGO -- As the 2008 presidential election draws closer, Democrat Barack Obama has reportedly been working tirelessly with his top political strategists to perfect his looking-off-into-the-future pose, which many believe is vital to the success of the Illinois senator's campaign.

When performed correctly, the pose involves Obama standing upright with his back arched and his chest thrust out, his shoulders positioned 1.3 feet apart and opened slightly at a 14-degree angle, and his eyes transfixed on a predetermined point between 500 and 600 yards away. Advisers say this creates the illusion that Obama is looking forward to a bright future, while the downturned corners of his lips indicate that he acknowledges the problems of the present.

'The senator spends six hours a day gazing resolutely off into the distance,' said chief political strategist David Axelrod, who regularly analyzes video of the pose with Obama, pinpoints areas that need improvement, and makes necessary tweaks."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:54 PM

May 27, 2008

5/27: The Last Straw?

Hillary Clinton's invocation of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination while defending her decision to stay in the race further infuriated liberal bloggers, who were already disgusted by Clinton's campaign tactics. Bloggers called Clinton's remarks "disgusting" and "disqualifying" and declared that the NY senator "has ceased to be a viable, respectable candidate". Most bloggers find Clinton's rationale for staying in the race unpersuasive, and they're convinced that her recent conduct is detrimental to Barack Obama's fall prospects. For these reasons, many are eagerly awaiting her departure from the race.

CLINTON: And She's Reached A New Low

Liberal bloggers slammed Clinton after she invoked the June '68 assassination of RFK in defending her decision to stay in the race:

"Responding to a question from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader editorial board about calls for her to drop out of the race, she said: 'My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don't understand it,' she said, dismissing the idea of abandoning the race."

• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "The willingness to say such a thing in a cheap effort to sway superdelegates is disgusting."
• The Huffington Post's Bob Cesca: "Senator Clinton is embarrassing herself and the Democratic Party. She has ceased to be a viable, respectable candidate and has, instead, become a ghoulish, desperate shell of her formerly strong and admirable self."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "She basically invoked her opponent's assassination. What else does she need to do to convince the superdelegates that she ain't exactly presidential material?"
• Oliver Willis: "She is fracking crazy. [...] Seriously, who says this sort of thing? Your average person doesn't say it, let alone somebody running for president. Hillary Clinton didn't lose this race because she was a victim of sexism. She lost this race because people are tired of her clawing for power and running over everything to do it."
• MyDD's Josh Orton: "This is unacceptable. The United States has a history of profound political violence -- and the use of violence to oppress and coerce. And while I'm not quite willing to accept that Clinton spoke maliciously -- it doesn't matter. There is no excuse for flippantly referencing assassination, especially given the historic nature of Obama's campaign and our nation's grim history of racial oppression through violence. When Hillary Clinton speaks of our history, she is not reflecting academically or only in a vacuum -- her words and influence are real. To act otherwise is negligent, at best. [...] Even with the most charitable interpretation, I think her negligence is disqualifying."
• Firedoglake's Eli: "I really, really want to take Hillary at face value and not believe that she was actually using the prospect of an opponent's assassination to score political points -- hell, maybe the possibility of Obama getting shot simply didn't occur to her (it's certainly not on my mind very often). But even if her intentions were pure, it was still an incredibly careless and stupid thing to say."
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "It looks like many of Hillary Clinton's apologists and several political pundits claim that her assassination remarks can be explained because of fatigue. Perhaps. In fact, it's likely. But won't she be fatigued at 3 a.m. in the morning?"
• TAPPED's Sam Boyd: "If she really is trying to convince us that she's staying in in case Obama is assassinated that's nuts -- if he were assassinated she'd be the nominee almost certainly, whether she'd dropped out or not. And if that's not what she meant, why mention Kennedy's assassination at all? But really, this is just another example of throwing as much nonsense at the wall as possible and seeing what sticks. In order to stay in the race, Clinton needs to do whatever she can to hide the basic fact that there's virtually no way for her to win now. So distractions, like reminding voters that unexpected things like assassinations happen, are key. In this case, she went way way too far."

CLINTON II: Setting Off BS Detectors

In addition to criticizing Clinton's invocation of RFK's assassination, liberal bloggers are disputing her comparison of the '08 Dem primary to the '68 and '92 Dem primaries:

• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "The difference between the current race and other previous campaigns that may have lingered on into June is that given this year's primary schedule there simply aren't enough delegates left at stake for future primaries to make a difference. If [Clinton] were holding out for a June primary in California that she thought would let her catch up, that'd be a very different story from the actual 'waiting for Puerto Rico' scenario we're currently in."
• Atrios: "The various historical comparisons the Clinton campaign is making are in the 'isn't it great that people are so stupid that they'll swallow this horseshit' category. It did not take her husband until June to effectively have the nomination, and the 1968 primary season started much later than this one. We've had little but dumb arguments like this from the Clinton campaign for some time. I'm not entirely sure if they're stupid enough to believe them, or if they just assume we're stupid enough to believe them. Either way I'm tired of having my intelligence insulted."
• Open Left's tremayne: "The other part of what [Clinton] said should also be scrutinized. She said her husband didn't secure the nomination in 1992 until mid-June when he won the California primary. This is wrong. Here are the facts: (1.) The 1992 primaries ended on June 2, 1992, a day earlier than this year. Several states, including California, had primaries that day. It was not mid-June. (2.) According to wikipedia: 'Clinton effectively won the Democratic Party's nomination after winning the New York Primary in early April.' (3.) Clinton's chief rival was Paul Tsongas who dropped out of the race in mid-May, 1992. (4.) According to polls, Clinton led in every remaining state except California where Jerry Brown was polling well (his home state). Brown was not going to catch Clinton for the nomination in any scenario. [...] Summary: Hillary Clinton's reference to 1968 was accurate (that campaign was still in doubt) but tacky. Her reference to Bill [Clinton]'s 1992 race was wrong on the facts."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "The call to drop out [is] premature by the standards of the 1992 and 1968 race. But [Clinton's] staying in the race has no precedent, since in both of those cases the race was not decided. It's not like Hubert Humphrey was waiting around in case someone went off and shot RFK, or Bill Clinton was hoping he could convince superdelegates to override the will of the voters in a clearly losing strategy. There were still primaries going on that could have a significant impact on the outcome of the race. 2004 is a better analogy. Did John Edwards or Howard Dean wait around, musing that perhaps John Kerry would be killed, even though he was clearly going to lock up the majority of the delegates? Of course not. They lined up behind the winner."

CLINTON III: The Netroots' Patience Is At An End

Liberal bloggers are strongly condemning Clinton's campaign tactics and arguing that she is hurting Obama's chances of defeating McCain:

• Moulitsas: "By now, we know that Hillary Clinton will do or say anything in her mad pursuit of power. It's her only motivation at this point, trumping concerns about party unity, this fall's elections, and even her family's legacy. It's sad, no doubt. But as much attention and outrage has been generated by the RFK references, I'm still ultimately more bothered by her willful and repeated distortions of truth. [...] Her distortions on things like Obama's electability, her 'only big states matter' b.s., her 'small states don't matter' b.s., her 'the only swing states are the ones I won primaries in' b.s., her 'I'm winning the popular vote' b.s., her 'I was for punishing Florida and Michigan and signed a letter to that effect, but now changed my mind because it's politically expedient' b.s., and her 'Obama can't win states in the fall in which [he] lost the primary' b.s. Her rank and willful dishonesty drives me up the wall, because while it may show that Clinton will do and say anything to win, it also shows that she'll use Karl Rove tactics to make it happen."
• Ezra Klein: "Clinton can, and should, finish the campaign. She has come too far at this point to drop out. The issue is the content of her continuing campaign. Were she running on her issues and blasting [John] McCain, most would probably think that a boon -- more free media for Democrats, more focused criticism of McCain. But what Clinton is actually doing is giving wildly misleading speeches trying to poison the well in Michigan and Florida, opportunistically telling the voters of two major states that a decision she supported until it become inconvenient is a reason to believe that Obama and the Party dismiss or seek to repress their votes, and only Clinton cares for their democratic rights. As a message, it's a mixture of toxic lies and scorched earth campaigning. It doesn't help her win the nomination, but it makes the nomination worth a little bit less for the likely nominee."
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "Right now, instead of floating demands in the press and comparing herself to abolitionists and suffragists, she could be telling her supporters that she lost fair and square; that while there was a lot of sexism in the campaign, there was racism as well, and that sexism does not explain why a candidate with literally every institutional advantage over her opponent lost the nomination. She could be reaching out to the voters who supported her in places where Obama has had trouble, and urging them to vote for him. She could, in a word, be doing the right thing: trying to earn that respect she seems to want. Instead, she's throwing tantrums, making demands that she has no right to make, and threatening civil war. I can't imagine a better demonstration of why she should not be President or Vice President. Nor can I imagine a better demonstration of why some of us who are committed feminists are not happy with her as our standard-bearer. She lost. It happens. If she were an adult or a professional, she would deal with it. Apparently, she is neither."
• BooMan: "Clinton's recent comments about hardworking white voters and the RFK assassination have not improved her perceived electability. She would do better to stop antagonizing Obama supporters and undecided supers, and to get some rest and lay low for a while, than to continue what even the Governor of her state sees as desperate tactics. As it is, she has already ruined her chances of being on the ticket as vice-president and is rapidly losing her chance to be the second choice candidate, should something tragic happen. So, if we are judging things by how they help Clinton, she has not been too successful lately. But if we are judging things by how they hurt Obama, she has been all too successful. For these reasons, it really appears that one of two things is the case. Either Clinton is somewhat unhinged and is engaged in self-destructive behavior, or she is actively undermining Obama's chances, not of winning the nomination, but of winning the election in November. And in either of these two cases, it is necessary for responsible people to ask her to drop out."
• Aravosis: "It's far past the time for quiet little conversations urging Hillary to play nice. She lost the right to ask for 'the benefit of the doubt' ten racist eruptions ago. Dean, [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Sen. Harry] Reid should tell Hillary that she has till Monday to gracefully exit the race, or Monday afternoon they are publicly endorsing Obama and calling on her to concede. And then, if she doesn't concede, Dean, Pelosi and Reid should publicly call on all the superdelegates to immediately pick a candidate, or else."
• Atrios: "I know I'm not alone in the League of Mostly Nonaligned Bloggers in being rather puzzled by Clinton supporters. I don't mean all people who supported her, but the ones who are still pushing for her candidacy. As far as I can tell they want her to be the candidate and really just don't care how that happens as long as it does. At this point only a drastic rule change combined with a massive shift in support from superdelegates even gets her close to the nomination. In another words, cheating combined with the smoke-filled room residents overturning the outcome of the primary process."

CLINTON IV: Stop Overreacting, People!

Pro-Clinton bloggers -- who comprise a small but vocal minority of liberal bloggers -- are defending their candidate:

• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "Hillary is being treated unfairly here. The media and blog commenters are engaging in character assassination. She was making a historical statement on why she needn't drop out of the race by early June. Democratic nominations have gone past that before. Her emphasis was on the word 'June.' The leap that is required to think that her reference to the RFK assassination was in any way a statement or subliminal wish that it might happen to Obama is mind-boggling."
• Taylor Marsh: "What this obvious over-reaction to Hillary's RFK statement, for which she immediately apologized, has revealed is politically unseemly. It also shows how desperate the Obama camp is to stop Hillary's nomination hopes, given the onslaught of polls showing Hillary Clinton beats John McCain in November, while the 'presumptive nominee' cannot. [...] The Obama wing of the Let's Lose Another Election section of the Democratic Party simply couldn't wait to blast Clinton's comment across the web, complete with funereal implications. But in their frenzied commitment against all things Clinton they simply let slip they're freaked that Hillary might pull this off. [...] Overkill, meet backlash. Because all these feckless wonders are doing is further hardening Hillary supporters against any desire to support Obama if he actually does become the nominee. John McCain couldn't have asked for a bigger gift. Because note to the Obama team: You can't win without us."

OBAMA: Another Gaffe?

Conservative bloggers are accusing Obama of lying after he said in his Memorial Day speech that his uncle was part of the American brigade that helped liberate Auschwitz:

• Purple Avenger: "In one of his more egregious and easily demonstrated lies...Obama has rewritten WWII history such that the allies liberated Auschwitz. [...] Of course it goes without saying that the media has thus far failed to call the Messiah on this obviously outrageous lie. Unless Obama's 'uncle' was serving in the Red Army, its a pretty safe bet he was many hundreds of miles from Auschwitz on its day of liberation."
• see-dubya: "Either Obama's uncle served in the Red Army, or he's spinning Clintonesque lies about Auschwitz to sell his government programs. [...] I think the Obamessiah just out Tuzla'd Hillary. The man is...nefarious."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Look, we all know Obama has a problem with Jewish voters and veterans, but trying to use the holocaust for political gain is sickening -- especially when it is a bold faced lie. [...] Auschwitz is in Poland. It was liberated by the Soviets on January 27, 1945, not by Americans. Obama's uncle was either part of the red army or Obama is, again, lying for political advantage. Given what we know already about Obama, either option is plausible, but I'm going with this being another lie. What's worse is that he is using the freaking Holocaust to both ingratiate himself with Jewish voters and veterans while using the lie to justify expanding a federal program. [...] Its no longer about Obama having no shame. This man has no class."

Several conservative bloggers are complaining that the media isn't devoting sufficient coverage to Obama's gaffes:

• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "ABC News' Jake Tapper points out that Barack Obama has been a 'one-man gaffe machine' [...] Remember all the righteous media huffing and puffing over John McCain's one 'Islamic extremist'/Al Qaeda gaffe? Well, it seems that it's taken several gaffes ('of consequence' as Tapper puts it) to prod the MSM into reporting that Barack misspeaks -- and on a fairly regular basis."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "If the MSM would either A) be more forgiving of Republican officials who they don't like or B) be a little tougher on Democratic officials they do like, the world would be a better place. In this case, I don't think Barack Obama is deliberately lying, or trying to pull a fast one. It sounds like a family 'legend' in which the specific horrors of war witnessed by his uncle are mistaken as the years go by. It happens, and Obama only deserves the lightest of metaphorical slaps on the wrist for it. But it would help if his fans in the press actually paid attention to what he says."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Geraghty has the right read on Obama's proneness to gaffes. It's not that he shouldn't be indulged, it's that the press should be similarly indulgent of conservatives."

MCCAIN: Not Standing Up For Vets?

Liberal bloggers are slamming McCain for criticizing Sen. Jim Webb's GI Bill, which increases benefits for veterans:

• Digby mockingly paraphrases McCain's defense of his opposition to the GI bill: "We should be generous, but let's not go crazy. Those bastards who think they deserve to have the government pay for their college after just a few years in uniform simply don't deserve it. Sure, they may put themselves in the line of fire in Iraq or Afghanistan for a couple of tours and maybe they work for peanuts and their families are on food stamps while they do it. But that's no reason for them to cheat the taxpayers by taking a college scholarship when they are needed indefinitely in the war zones. They're nothing but a bunch 'o big babies."
• Firedoglake's watertiger: "Even though John McCain receives full disability benefits from the Navy, had (and still has) the best hospital care taxpayer money can buy, and bagged a sugar momma who would pay his way for the rest of his natural life (assuming he lives up to the terms of the prenuptial agreement), he doesn't seem to believe that any other soldier should be quite so lucky as he."
• Yglesias: "It's worth noting that not only did John McCain oppose Jim Webb's bill expanding educational benefits for veterans, but he has a long track record of fairly stingy behavior on veterans' issues. As Hilzoy puts it 'McCain has supported basic appropriations for vets. However, when there are two competing proposals, he generally chooses the cheaper one, and often, when only one proposal to increase benefits is available, he opposes it.' One sort of wonders why this is. McCain's clearly not some kind of dogmatic libertarian, and he certainly seems to have a great deal of emotional attachment to the military. I believe the particular military family in which he grew up was a bit idiosyncratic in actually being composed of life-long military officers rather than veterans...as such. Or maybe he just takes very seriously the idea that we can't make the benefits too generous lest it undermine our ability to endlessly prolong the war in Iraq."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "His media-driven reputation notwithstanding, McCain's record on veterans' issues is actually something of an embarrassment. [...] I'm glad to see Obama take McCain to task on the issue. There's no reason to cede this ground to McCain at all."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: An Opportunity For Mischief?

RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh wants to figure out a way to force Clinton onto the Dem ticket:

"Most people seem to think that the Vice Presidential selection process begins and ends with the Presidential nominee vetting candidates and making a decision. Not so! A Vice Presidential nominee will be selected by the presumptive Presidential nominee but for that candidate to become the nominee, he or she will have to be approved by the roll call of the delegates at the convention, just like the Presidential nominee. [...] Surely, there has to be some way that Republicans can engineer getting Hillary Clinton nominated at the Democratic National Convention as Vice President. Perhaps her husband can do it. Perhaps Joe Lieberman -- who is not a superdelegate because of his support for Senator John McCain, but presumably will still be allowed in Denver -- can do it. Perhaps Hillary can throw her own hat in the ring and force a vote even if Obama chooses someone else.

This is a can't-lose situation for Republicans. If Hillary wins, Obama will be seen as unable to control his own convention -- an expression of weakness that will be fatal in the fall by itself. Even if it isn't, the continued questions over how well Obama and Hillary will be able to work together if they are elected will cause the campaign to be off message many more times than it isn't. And if Hillary loses, her supporters outrage will be refreshed and will stay fresh during the fall, which may well serve to deprive Obama of the votes that he will need to win what may very well be a close race."

LEST WE FORGET: That Guy From That One Show Attempting Comeback

From The Onion:

"LOS ANGELES -- According to sources who caught the tail end of one of those Entertainment Tonight–type shows, that guy who used to be on that one show with all the ambulances is attempting a comeback by guest-starring as a waiter on one of those shows about rich ladies. 'Hey, it's that guy,' television viewer Gerard Lund said. 'Good for him. I remember I used to like him on that show about the karate doctor.' Lund added that he initially had trouble placing the guy because he got pretty fat in rehab."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:00 PM

May 23, 2008

5/23: Can She Be Stopped?

Following Hillary Clinton's aggressive push for the seating of FL's and MI's delegates -- in which she invoked the civil rights movement, FL's 2000 recount, and the fraudulent election in Zimbabwe -- liberal bloggers are denouncing her conduct in some of their harshest language to date. Markos Moulitsas calls Clinton's behavior "yet another nail in the coffin of what used to be Bill and Hillary's positive legacy to the party," while Ezra Klein accuses Clinton of "pursuing a political strategy meant to defeat [Barack] Obama and ensure the party regrets his nomination." But how can liberal bloggers stop Clinton from doing (in their view) further damage to Obama's fall prospects? Arianna Huffington suggests that her readers "stop yelling at Hillary to stand down and start yelling at the superdelegates to stand up," arguing that the supers could end the nominating process if enough of them endorsed Obama. However, it doesn't appear likely that superdelegates will endorse Obama en masse anytime soon -- at least not before the much-anticipated DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting on May 31st.

CLINTON: Estranged

Liberal bloggers continue to decry Clinton's recent rhetoric about FL and MI:

• Ezra Klein: "It's hard to overstate the cynicism of Clinton's effort to equate the DNC's decision to strip Michigan and Florida of their delegates to the Florida recount, Zimbabwe's brutal 'elections,' the fight for women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement. [...] She's now pursuing a political strategy meant to defeat Obama and ensure the party regrets his nomination. She will do this by convincing voters in Florida and Michigan that his campaign has wronged them and should be severely punished. It's an attempt to poison the well, to deny his campaign 44 electoral votes, or about 1/6th the total needed to win. That's a take I've resisted for a long time, but it's the only plausible explanation left. The Obama campaign has expressed a willingness to seat Florida and Michigan's delegates, and do so largely as the Clinton campaign wants. Yet Clinton continues to compare a procedural decision she supported to Zimbabwe and Birmingham. She continues to sow resentment and anger against the likely Democratic nominee over a decision she supported. Where I once was solidly dismissive of the idea that Clinton was setting herself up for a 2012 run, now I'm agnostic. In any case, it's clear she's trying to set Obama up for a 2008 loss."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "The evidence is simply overwhelming that Sen. Clinton didn't think this was a problem at all -- until it became a vehicle to provide a rationale for her continued campaign. Now, that's politics. One day you're on one side of an issue, the next you're on the other, all depending on the tactical necessities of the moment. But that's not what Clinton is doing. She's elevating it to a level of principle -- first principles -- on par with the great voting rights struggles of history. There's no longer any question that she's going to win the nomination. The whole point of the popular vote gambit was to make an argument to super-delegates. And that's fine since that's what super-delegates are there for -- to make the decision by whatever measure they choose. But they've made their decision. The super delegates are breaking overwhelmingly for Obama. They simply don't buy the arguments she's making. [...] What she's doing is not securing her the nomination. Rather, she's gunning up a lot of her supporters to believe that the nomination was stolen from her -- a belief many won't soon abandon. And that on the basis of rationales and arguments there's every reason to think she doesn't even believe in."
• Daily Kos' Moulitsas: "Yesterday I mocked Clinton's assertion that her battle is somehow akin to the civil rights struggle (as well as suffrage, Zimbabwe, and Florida 2000. Today, it doesn't seem so funny. [...This is] yet another nail in the coffin of what used to be Bill and Hillary's positive legacy to the party. She is now being openly mocked across the media and political spectrum. But I'm sure mentioning that is 'sexist', and that everyone criticizing the joke her campaign has become is sexist as well."
• The Huffington Post's RJ Eskow: "Hillary's rhetoric of the past 24 hours has gone from conciliatory to cataclysmic, turning on a high-speed dime like some UFO over the Florida swamps. An awful lot of Democrats are shocked and outraged at her use of civil rights rhetoric over the primary dispute, especially after winning two primaries with the help of some white voters who admitted their choice was influenced by race. [...] She knows these arguments won't sway the superdelegates to give her the nomination. What she's doing now is showing the Obama team and the Party's leaders that she has it in her power to cost them the election in November."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "This isn't an election anymore. This is a secret bet between Bill and Hillary ala Trading Places in which they bet how much bullshit they can make the electorate swallow. [The] Florida 2000 poison -- another bucket. And then the suffrage nonsense -- yet another bucket. And the co-option of the Civil Rights era after weeks of transparent appeals that whites won't vote for the black guy which JUST SO COINCIDENTALLY took form during the Appalachian primaries (which conveniently occurred after North Carolina, the last state with a large black population) -- buckets of bullshit over your head, in your face. And then Zimbabwe remarks, a bucket of bullshit so stupid that her audience probably didn't even understand it (I would kill to see video of the people in the audience during that). It just never stops."

As usual, TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat disagrees with his fellow liberal bloggers: "Just so I understand the Obama blog argument, they say that calling for counting the votes is the most vile, most outrageous, most heinous act in the history of politics. Did I get that right?"

CLINTON II: Vying For The Veep Spot?

Time's Karen Tumulty reports that Bill Clinton wants Hillary to be Obama's running mate:

"What will Clinton's terms of surrender turn out to be? Her husband, for one, seems to have a pretty clear idea what he thinks she should get as a consolation prize. In Bill Clinton's view, she has earned nothing short of an offer to be Obama's running mate, according to some who are close to the former President. Bill 'is pushing real hard for this to happen,' says a friend."

Meanwhile, The Field's Al Giordano reports that Hillary told Obama that she wants to be his running mate and he said "no":

"The Field can now confirm, based on multiple sources, something that both campaigns publicly deny: that Senator Clinton has directly told Senator Obama that she wants to be his vice presidential nominee, and that Senator Obama politely but straightforwardly and irrevocably said 'no.' Obama is going to pick his own running mate based on his own criteria and vetting process."

Pro-Obama bloggers think Giordano's report -- if true -- would explain Clinton's abrupt shift in tone over the past few days:

• Moulitsas: "In matters like these, I won't put much stock on anyone's secret sources -- whether it's Time or the always excellent Al Giordano -- since there's so much bullshit, misinformation, and rumors floating around that it would be impossible for anyone to sift between fact and fiction. There are probably only a handful of people who would know whether this is true, and they're not publicly dishing. But as a theory, Clinton's over-the-top outbursts yesterday really would fit the pattern of someone scorned of a prize they felt they had rightfully earned. In the stages of grief, we may have gone from 'bargaining' back to 'anger'."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Hillary's bizarre behavior of the past couple of days -- her return to a slash and burn campaign, seemingly intent on hurting Obama's chances against [John] McCain in the fall -- maybe be due to Obama having told Hillary directly (according to the latest rumor) that she won't be his VP. As I've written repeatedly, there's a certain illogic to Hillary's actions of late, and something is missing from the story -- something that would explain what she's doing and why. An irrational, emotional response to not getting the vice presidency is certainly one theory that explains her childish and destructive behavior."
• Mark Kleiman: "If [Giordano's report] were true, it would explain the otherwise hard-to-fathom nastiness of HRC's comparison of the situation in Florida, where the Democratic Party is acting according to previously-agreed-on rules, and the situation in Zimbabwe, where the ruling party is carrying out mass murder against the party that won the election. But one thing I'm sure of: HRC's behavior has made it virtually impossible for Obama to give her the second prize. What might otherwise have looked like magnanimity toward a defeated but worthy opponent would now look like appeasement. That has to be a deal-breaker."

MyDD's Todd Beeton, a Clinton supporter who believes that Obama should pick Clinton as his running mate, finds Giordano's report plausible: "I can't vouche for Giordano's credibility but I would buy it. Certainly, Obama's, shall we say, lack of enthusiasm for picking Clinton as his running mate has been made crystal clear by his surrogates in the media. Now that more people are reporting Clinton's interest in the number 2 spot, will the media pick up on it as conventional wisdom and will pressure mount for Obama to pick her?"

Other pro-Clinton bloggers are less keen on the idea of an Obama-Clinton ticket:

• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "I don't want a unity ticket. I don't think [Obama] should ride Hillary's coattails to a PA, Ohio or Florida win. If he is the nominee, I'll vote for him and support him, but he should win the election on his own."
• Taylor Marsh denies that Clinton wants the VP spot: "By asking 'What Does Hillary Want?', Tumulty once again reveals how dense the traditional media is about Clinton's motives. She's got one: to win. [...] Clinton is campaigning on counting every single vote. But also that every Democratic delegate should be focused on who can win in November. Obama is campaign on disenfranchising voters so he can win, regardless of whether he's got the strongest case for November, which he does not. [...] So Ms. Tumulty, get a clue. Clinton doesn't want the vice presidency. She's shooting for the top job. She wants to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. Are you hearing me now?"

CLINTON III: How To Deal With A Clinton Gone Wild

Open Left's Chris Bowers urges his fellow liberal bloggers to ignore Clinton: "We in the blogosphere need to do our part in stopping a focus on Clinton, and shifting toward the general election. Keeping the focus off McCain is not helping us define him. Keeping the focus on Clinton is simply rubbing old wounds, and making it harder to unite the party. The blogosphere drives media coverage more than we often realize, and our continuing obsession with Hillary Clinton is just not helpful in accomplishing the latter two tasks."

Arianna Huffington urges her readers to stop complaining about Clinton and start urging the superdelegates to endorse Obama: "Let's see if we can put the focus on those with the power to bring to an end this political equivalent of a 50s horror movie (The Campaign That Just Won't Die!): the superdelegates. There are currently 212 uncommitted superdelegates (not counting Michigan and Florida). What are they waiting for? I understand there are still three more primaries to go. But there is nothing that is going to happen in Puerto Rico or South Dakota or Montana that is going to convince Hillary Clinton to leave the race. [...] And there is also no reason for the superdelegates to wait until the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting on May 31st. Not even the Clinton camp is delusional enough to think it is going to walk away from the meeting with enough additional pledged delegates from Michigan and Florida to overtake Obama. So it's time for the uncommitted superdelegates to stop their dithering, come out of hiding, hop off the fence, endorse Obama and officially bring this nominating process to an end."

Aravosis agrees with Huffington: "Arianna declares war on the Superdelegates, and she's right. [...] If the Superdelegates aren't going to do their job, then we're going to make them do their job."

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, writing on the Huffington Post, argues that Clinton wants to fight all the way to the Dem convention: "Listen: you don't need a vivid political imagination to recognize that if what you really want is to be President of the United States -- a slim chance of becoming President (a fight at the convention) is better than no chance of becoming President (because you dropped out). The Clinton strategy, as best as I can tell, is to stay in the race. You can't win if you don't play -- conceding the nomination is sure defeat, not conceding means there's still a chance. The way for her to avoid conceding is for her to avoid conceding that the race is resolved. As long as the Florida and Michigan dispute is alive, and it is being used as the basis of Clinton's claim that the nomination is unresolved, we should expect that Senator Clinton will stay in the race."

Maddow concludes that enough superdelegates should endorse Obama by May 31st to allow for the FL and MI delegations to be fully seated: "So, how does the Democratic Party get a nominee before the convention? Seems to me there's two things that need to happen. [...] First, Obama's campaign should stop believing what most of the press says, and start believing what Clinton says -- she isn't budging. [...] Second, if the Democrats are to avoid a divided convention, the Florida and Michigan dispute will have to be taken off the table -- settled in a way that avoids the risk of a rules dispute that stretches the nominating contest out through the convention. I can think of only one way to do that, but there may be others. Here's my way: based on my read of NBC's delegate math, I think if the Clinton campaign won 100% of what they wanted on the Florida and Michigan dispute, Obama could still clinch the nomination -- even according to the most pro-Clinton math -- if 90 of the remaining 210-or-so undeclared superdelegates declared for Obama. If they so declared before May 31st, the Rules and Bylaws committee would have no reason to take up the Florida and Michigan dispute because it would be a moot point -- Obama's camp could concede every Clinton demand on the subject and still win the nomination."

MCCAIN: Throwing A Temper Tantrum?

Liberal bloggers are chastising McCain for skipping the vote on Sen. Jim Webb's GI bill, which passed the Senate yesterday:

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "Despite the fact that the vast majority of the Republican Senators who will be on the ballot this fall realized that it would be an act of extreme political malfeasance and tone deafness not to vote in favor of this important legislation, McCain not only would not vote for the measure, he went a step further and refused to show the courage or moral surety to even show his face on the floor of the Senate at the time of the vote to make his voice heard on the issue. Oh yes, this is a problem for McCain, one that will likely dog him all the way through election day."

Liberal bloggers are accusing McCain of throwing a temper tantrum after the GOP candidate released an "acidic" statement in response to Obama's remark that he "can't understand why [McCain] would line up behind the President in his opposition to this GI bill." Here is an excerpt from McCain's statement:

"It is typical, but no less offensive that Senator Obama uses the Senate floor to take cheap shots at an opponent and easy advantage of an issue he has less than zero understanding of. [...] I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans. And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did."

• Moulitsas: "Man, he isn't even under pressure yet, and he's already blowing his top? This election season won't be kind to him. [...] Can't you just picture the spittle flying from McCain's mouth as he dictated this to some poor sap of a staffer? Bottom line, McCain thinks if we offer our troops college education, they won't want to stay in the Iraqi killing fields. So the best way to 'protect our freedoms' is to keep our troops stupid and uneducated. [...] I'm not sure that's a winner, either politically or morally."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "I think Barack Obama has accidentally discovered the easiest way to defeat John McCain this November: make him mad. We've all heard the stories about McCain's legendarily cranky temper, and he sure showed where those stories came from on Thursday when he erupted after Obama had the temerity to disagree with him about Jim Webb's GI Bill extension. Get a grip, Senator."
• Kleiman: "Barack Obama, after acknowledging McCain's service, criticized him for opposing the bill. Obama was too polite, and too wise, to say what he could have said: that McCain, the son and grandson of Admirals and the husband of a multi-millionaire beer baron's daughter, never had to rely on the GI Bill for an education or the VA hospital system for his health care, and that McCain's opposition to the Webb bill reflected his constitutional incapacity for empathy with anyone less fortunate than he is. [...] McCain responded with an astonishingly intemperate blast at Obama. [...] McCain's speech is convincing only to those who haven't seen the Obama remarks it responds to, which contained no 'cheap shot' and did not impugn McCain's motives. The only cheap shot is McCain's attack on Obama's lack of a service record, hardly discreditable in someone too young to have served in Vietnam and too old to have served in Iraq. And also of course it makes a hash of McCain's famous reluctance to exploit his own military record for political purposes. [...] You tell me: Which candidate sounded Presidential today? And which one sounded like a cranky old man?"
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Seems that if John McCain is so worried, he should have shown up instead of sending bitchy press releases from his campaign."

MCCAIN II: His Turn To Denounce And Reject

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about McCain's repudiation of John Hagee and Rod Parsley, two controversial pastors who had endorsed him:

• Marshall: "I don't doubt for a moment that the McCain camp didn't know about this Hitler quote. But if you know Hagee's history, it's hardly surprising. And Hagee's statements about Catholics, his claim that God destroyed New Orleans because of an over-the-top gay pride parade, and his claim that God was using Muslim terrorists to create a 'bloodbath' in America because of US support for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine were right out there in the public domain. And certainly McCain's camp did know about them. [...] Given that McCain has now clearly rejected Hagee's endorsement, perhaps it's time that he, a la Obama, give a speech on the topic of Republican presidential candidates pandering to lunatic fringe right-wing preachers at election time. It could start a whole national conversation."
• Daily Kos' Hunter: "It's not like Hagee wasn't extraordinarily well known, before this election season, or somehow unvettable. I have Hagee's 2006 book, 'Jerusalem Countdown', sitting on my table; it's chock full of insulting statements, dire prophecies and interpretations of Scripture so, shall we say, 'unusual' that they bear far more resemblance to the ramblings of a UFO cult than to what many people would call Christianity. So here are the next questions. Will far-far-right evangelicals, of the sort that want to collect Jews into Israel so as to bring about the Apocalypse, forgive McCain for dumping one of their most prominent preachers under the bus? Will McCain learn anything from this about associating with far-right figures that use religion not just as little more than excuse for their own prejudices and bigotries, but as justification for violence and war? Will the media report McCain's repudiation with even one tenth as much vigor as they obsessed over Obama's 'preacher problem'? I predict the answers to be yes, no, and you've got to be kidding."
• TAPPED's Sarah Posner: "Although this may relieve McCain of having to answer for Hagee's extremist views, the fact remains that McCain sought his endorsement and needs to explain why he did that."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "McCain was all-too pleased to not only seek out the support of these religious extremists, but to accept their endorsements, praise their 'leadership,' and even campaign alongside them. McCain now claims he didn't realize how crazy Hagee and [Rod] Parsley really are, but that's unsatisfying -- neither he nor his campaign Googled them for the year in which they sought the preacher' support? More importantly, even if we accept the notion that McCain and his aides wooed pastors they knew nothing about, McCain has been confronted with Hagee's and Parlsey's radical record for months. The Republican presidential candidate continued to embrace their endorsements anyway, until yesterday when McCain's campaign ran out of spins."
• Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "Americans have seen the Parsley/McCain videos, and more importantly, Muslims worldwide are watching them too. No President should have a Rod Parsley anywhere near the White House if he/she hopes to deal with a billion Muslims. But McCain has no one but himself to blame that the men whose extremist views were well known but whose endorsement he deliberately sought are now revealed to everyone as intolerant extremists and morally repugnant demagogues."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "John McCain, who didn't mind Rod Parsley being a bigot when only smallish liberal publications were complaining about it, is now eager to ditch the man since the story's hit the MSM. McCain, it seems, still regards the reporters at major news organizations rather than the conservative rank-and-file as his real base."

MCCAIN III: Under The Bus

Several liberal bloggers are wondering why McCain only renounced Hagee (who has a history of making controversial statements) after it was revealed that Hagee said that Hitler was fulfilling God's will:

• Sudbay: "Apparently, that was finally enough for McCain to 'officially' break up with Hagee. The Catholic bashing wasn't enough. The gay bashing wasn't enough. All the other hate speech wasn't enough. It took something this outrageous to create distance between Hagee and McCain. If it takes Nazi comparisons to get kicked out of John McCain's orbit, does that mean Bush is getting bounced after invoking the Nazis last week in Israel?"
• Hunter: "[McCain] only rejected Hagee now for another one of his asinine theories, this one being that Hitler was part of God's plan for 'hunting' the Jews and driving them back to Israel. For that one, McCain finally pulled the plug -- apparently you can insult Catholics all you want, but once you start into the crazy-ass End Times pseudo-Christian anti-Semitism, then you've finally gone too far. Good to know."

On the right side of the blogosphere, Townhall's Matt Lewis accuses McCain of "throw[ing] Hagee under the bus": "The attacks on Pastor John Hagee are nothing more than an attempt at character assassination. Of course, it makes sense that the Left would want to find a way to seek revenge or a 'pay back' for the Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright scandal (though if they really wanted to do that, they'd go after Hillary Clinton's pastor). It's also an attempt to win back Jewish voters to the Democratic Party -- especially since Obama has his own problems in this area (as I write this, Obama is delivering a speech about Israel). While we cannot control the Left's attempts to mischaracterize Hagee and McCain, we can expect John McCain to display more toughness than this."

Hot Air's Allahpundit: "Between [Parsley] and Hagee, the Straight Talk Express is starting to look like its 2000 model. Repudiationmania! [...] How much further can he go in playing chicken with Christian conservatives? 'Outreach' ain't going to carry him through so be on the lookout for media appearances by [Mike] Huckabee, whom McCain doubtless would love to have as his point man in defending this. [...] Exit question: Since Maverick's on such a roll with rejecting people, how about rejecting [NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg], too?"

MCCAIN IV: Is Amnesty Back On The Table?

Several conservative bloggers are slamming McCain after McCain "joined [CA] Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in calling today for comprehensive immigration reform, including guest worker visas":

• Michelle Malkin: "Straight from the campaign trail with Arnold 'Move Left' Schwarzenegger, McCain has shed every last pretense that he 'got the message' from grass-roots immigration enforcement proponents and is back to his full, open-borders shamnesty push. No surprise to any of you. But his complete regression back to the 'comprehensive immigration reform' euphemism is a notable milestone."
• Townhall's Jonathan Garthwaite: "Regardless of whether McCain or Obama is elected in November, we're going to have another battle against amnesty in 2009. 'Agents of tolerance' talk?"
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins declares that he "will no longer support John McCain for President": "Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. He's a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration. Quite frankly, this is little different from George Bush, Sr. breaking his 'Read my lips, no new taxes pledge,' except that Bush's father was at least smart enough to wait until he got elected before letting all of his supporters know that he was lying to them. Under these circumstances, I simply cannot continue to support a man like John McCain for the presidency. [...] I genuinely regret having to do this because I do still believe the country would be better off with John McCain as President as opposed to Obama or Clinton. However, I just cannot in good conscience cast a vote for a man who has told this big of a lie, for this long, about this important of an issue. [...] I will defend John McCain when I think he deserves to be defended, excoriate Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton at every opportunity, and I will continue to stand behind the sort of Republican candidates who actually deserve conservative support. But, what I will not do is vote for John McCain in November."

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey criticizes Hawkins' post: "Hawkins called McCain a 'liar' and says that he will not vote for McCain in the fall. Both seem like overreactions to me, and John ignores some unpleasant reality. [...] McCain never pledged to give up comprehensive immigration reform. He pledged to secure the borders first, but even in the extensive quotes that John has in his post, he never promised to stop seeking a comprehensive solution for illegal immigration afterwards. Even in this sequence, he talks about border security first. I don't see this as 'breaking his security pledge', as John puts it. John and I have debated this before, and I know him to be an honest, impassioned, and effective advocate of strict enforcement policies, and opposed to any kind of normalization. If he chooses not to vote for McCain, he will make that choice with integrity and commitment. But not voting is a choice with consequences in a two-party system, and those consequences will impact a lot more than border security. [...] That is what voters need to keep in mind, especially given the likely Democratic victory in both chambers of Congress this fall. Immigration and border security are important issues, but they're not the only ones, and stark differences exist between Barack Obama and John McCain. That's what our vote should consider -- all of the consequences of the election."

NRO's Jim Geraghty: "I doubt this will mitigate the anger of bloggers like John Hawkins much, but Team McCain tells me there's been no change in his stance on immigration -- secure the border first, deal with other aspects of illegal immigration once the border is secure. Recently, McCain made comments that seemed to suggest he was eager to get to the second part, which conservatives and border security types are understandably wary about. [...] Team McCain tells me the senator's comments were poorly worded. There's been no discussion within the campaign of altering their stance on illegal immigration, and as far as everyone on the campaign is concerned, the policy is still, 'secure the border first.'"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: High Risk, High Reward

Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias sees McCain's repudiation of Hagee as a sign that the GOP candidate may pivot sharply to the center: "In one interesting possible future, McCain reaches the conclusion that he's got the GOP nomination and conservatives have nowhere to go so he brings back the 'agents of intolerance' talk, maybe picks a pro-choice running mate, and makes a serious high-risk high-reward effort to definitively separate himself from the mire into which the rest of the party is sinking."

Conservative blogger Matt Lewis thinks Yglesias might be onto something: "Are Yglesias and I observing the same phenomenon?"

LEST WE FORGET: Inside The Mind Of The Sports Guy

ESPN's Bill Simmons offers some random observations:

• Congrats to John Mayer for officially replacing Adam Duritz as this generation's token "sensitive musician who has bagged so many Hollywood babes that every other red-blooded male is rooting for him to get into a disfiguring accident, so when he turns into a sweaty, overweight guy 15 years from now, we'll all feel a sick sense of satisfaction about the whole thing." Big year for him.
• OK, I finally figured out why Tom Brady settled down with Gisele [Bundchen]: She's the only woman on the planet who could make him jealous at this point. Every time it seems like he's getting bored, she only has to say something like, "Hey, Leo's in town. You don't mind if I get coffee with him tomorrow for old time's sake, do you?"...and he's sucked right back in. No other woman on the planet could play the Leo card with Brady. And that's why they're together.
• So wait, the hottest summer movie is a superhero flick starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Jon Favreau, and I'm not supposed to be stockpiling canned goods right now?

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:08 PM

May 22, 2008

5/22: Burning Bridges

Liberal bloggers are furious that Hillary Clinton followed Barack Obama to FL yesterday in order to aggressively push for the seating of FL's and MI's delegates. They're accusing Clinton of shameless opportunism, noting that her campaign initially supported the DNC's decision to punish FL and MI for moving their primaries forward. What really liberal bothers bloggers about Clinton's tactics, however, is that they believe she's deliberately undermining the legitimacy of the likely Dem nominee and making it less likely that her supporters will back Obama in the fall. Bloggers are also disgusted by Clinton's provocative rhetoric (she compared her quest to seat FL's and MI's delegates to the civil rights movement and invoked FL's 2000 recount and the fraudulent election in Zimbabwe). Matthew Yglesias decries Clinton's "bizarre and reckless behavior" while Steve Benen writes, "I've never been so disappointed with a politician I've admired and respected." Right now, Clinton's relationship with liberal bloggers is as strained as it's ever been.

CLINTON: Zimbabwe? Seriously?

Liberal bloggers are sharply criticizing Clinton for following Obama to FL in order to argue that FL's and MI's delegates should be seated. They're also disgusted that Clinton "compared her effort to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to epic American struggles, including those to free the slaves and win the right to vote for blacks and women":

• The Carpetbagger Report's Benen: "I've defended Clinton, more than once, when people said she was putting her own interests above those of the party and the nation. But after seeing her tactics yesterday, I'm done defending Hillary Clinton. I'm 35, and have been following politics for quite a while, and I've never been so disappointed with a politician I've admired and respected. Yesterday's tactics weren't just wrong, they were offensive. For that matter, they seem to be part of a deliberate strategy to tear Democrats apart and ensure a defeat in November. For several weeks, I've appreciated the fact that Clinton considers herself the superior candidate, and has kept her campaign going in the hopes, from her perspective, of saving the party from itself. But after yesterday, it's become impossible for me to consider Clinton's intentions honorable. Her conduct is not that of a leader. [...] Instead of trying to help bring the party together -- Election Day is 24 weeks away -- Clinton went to Florida to argue that if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, his nomination will be illegitimate. And if the DNC plays by the rules Clinton used to support, it's guilty of vote-suppression -- comparable to slavery, Jim Crow, and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "So Obama's victory in getting the Democratic nomination is as illegitimate as Bush's stealing of the vote in Florida. She really is hateful. And she really is going to torpedo Obama's campaign. And our leaders won't do a damn thing about it because, you know, it would be mean. I wonder if they'd be so reticent were Joe Biden being this much of an idiot."
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "Okay, today we found out that counting the fake Florida primary is, according to Hillary Clinton, like Woman's Suffrage, Civil Rights, Florida 2000, [and] Zimbabwe. It's also like the Big Bang, Jesus, and cute kittens."
• BooMan: "[Clinton's] decision to make a huge issue out of Florida and Michigan that is probably the most dangerous aspect of her continuing campaign. When the DNC Rules Committee meets on May 31st, they will face the choice of giving Clinton everything she wants or furnishing the final blow that ratifies Obama's pledged delegate lead. It's clear that she will then rile up her supporters into some kind of Al Gore sense of outrage, and alienate them from our nominee. And, to be clear, Barack Obama is in no way responsible for the fiascoes in Michigan and, especially, Florida. I think this delegitimization of Obama's victory is the act she will be most remembered for. And if Obama does not win the election in November, Clinton will join Ralph Nader in the left-wing Hall of Shame."
• The New Republic's Jonathan Chait: "It's worth repeating: [Clinton] supported this 'disenfranchisement.' Here's a New York Times story from last fall, headlined, 'Clinton, Obama and Edwards Join Pledge to Avoid Defiant States.' [...] She decided to campaign to change the rules only after it became her interest to do so. [...] This gambit by Clinton is simply an attempt to steal the nomination. It's obviously not going to work, because Democratic superdelegates don't want to commit suicide. But this episode is very revealing about Clinton's character. [...] If she's consciously lying, it's a shockingly cynical move. I don't think she's lying. I think she's so convinced of her own morality and historical importance that she can whip herself into a moralistic fervor to support nearly any position that might benefit her, however crass and sleazy. It's not just that she's convinced herself it's okay to try to steal the nomination, she has also appropriated the most sacred legacies of liberalism for her effort to do so. She is proving herself temperamentally unfit for the presidency."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "What a contemptible wretch Sen. Clinton has turned out to be, and I find it stunning that many Democratic blogs who routinely bitch about the various and numerous violations of rules, law, and international agreements by the Bush administration sit by and swallow this nonsense from the Senator Clinton."
• The Atlantic's Yglesias: "At this point, I've reached the conclusion that further criticism of Hillary Clinton's behavior from people who everyone knows prefer Obama on the merits is useless and perhaps even counterproductive. What's needed is for people who prefer Clinton on the merits to defect now that her campaign has lost and is continuing to engage in bizarre and reckless behavior. But I suppose it is worth noting that comparing her situation to that of the opposition movement in Zimbabwe is a really offensive way of trivializing the work of some very courageous people."

CLINTON II: Insulting People's Intelligence?

Liberal bloggers are also hammering Clinton for repeatedly claiming that she leads Obama in the popular vote (which is true only if one awards Obama zero votes from MI, where his name wasn't on the ballot):

• Moulitsas:

  "One of the wonders of this primary season has been the ability of the Clinton campaign -- including Hillary herself -- and their supporters to engage in some of the most patently ridiculous and bald faced lies, knowing that everyone else knows they are engaging in patently ridiculous and bald faced lies. Chief among those lies is the fiction that Clinton leads in the popular vote. Aside from the idiocy of the argument itself -- (1) this is a delegate race, and (2) unlike the 2000 presidential election, you can't compare the popular vote from contest to contest since each state has different rules (caucus or primaries, open, closed, or hybrid) -- the way the Clinton campaign and its supporters shamelessly stretch this argument is almost embarrassing. Clinton is 'leading' the meaningless popular vote, but only if:

  1.) You count the unsanctioned contests in Florida and Michigan, where candidates were not allowed to campaign;
  2.) You give Obama zero votes in Michigan's Soviet-style election, where Clinton was essentially the only name on the ballot; and
  3.) You don't count the caucuses in Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington.

  In reality, Obama leads by over half a million votes, for whatever that's worth (not much). But don't worry, the Clinton argument is so asinine, it has gotten little traction among super delegates. In fact, it's so insulting to people's intelligence, that it's hurting the credibility of anyone stupid enough to use it."



• Scott Lemieux: "Unless you insult people's intelligence by counting North Korea-style one-major-candidate unsanctioned not-even-straw polls and not counting several contests actually sanctioned by the party (under standards [Terry] McAuliffe contemporaneously supported), the person who wins under the meaningless 'most primary votes in history' metric is...Barack Obama. Given that the Clinton campaign seems to think this crap will actually convince people, it's pretty easy why they thought that blowing off a month's worth of primaries and caucuses was an effective strategy."

CLINTON III: Playing A Dangerous Game

Liberal bloggers think Clinton's popular vote claims are dangerous, since they may turn her supporters against Obama:

• Lemieux: "I can understand people thinking this kind of thing is trivial. But I don't think that's right. It should be remembered that Clinton's campaign...is using these ridiculous Calvinball metrics to undermine the legitimacy of the Democratic nominee. If there was any significant chance that she could win, that might be acceptable. If she even had a credible argument that she was ahead in the popular vote -- one anyone would have accepted before the nomination, without knowing who it would benefit -- that would be a different issue. But to send flacks to rile up other Democrats against Obama under these circumstances is a disgrace."
• Atrios: "As Scott says, it isn't trivial and it's destroying the respect I once had for a group of people. It's weird, really, having in some sense started my political life defending the Clintons and now being rather fed up with them. I'm not important, but I'm not alone."
• The Huffington Post's Paul Loeb: "The superdelegates understand the real math, or they ought to. But given the 'bitterness' of so many Clinton supporters toward [the] reality that the woman they thought would be America's first female president will not be, the more they hear a story that suggests Obama's win is illegitimate, the more likely they are to bolt. If Clinton's voters embrace that story that 'a man took it away from a woman,' denied her a victory she rightly deserved, they're at risk of staying home come November, or holding back from the volunteering and the get out the vote efforts necessary for the Democrats to prevail. [...] Every time she claims she has a popular majority, she's shattering whatever ceasefire exists and making it that much more likely that her supporters stay home come November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop, and the media and the superdelegates need to hold her accountable."

CLINTON IV: I'm Tellin' Y'all, It's Sabotage

Several liberal bloggers are upset that Clinton is emphasizing the role that sexism has played in the Dem primary, as they fear that this will also make it harder for Obama to win over her supporters in the fall:

• Aravosis: "In the past week, we've been subjected to what appears to be a coordinated campaign by the Clinton people to convince their own followers, and much of America, that the reason Hillary lost to Obama is because of sexism. Even more, the Clinton campaign and its surrogates are arguing that Hillary didn't lose at all -- she actually won the election and it is precisely America's sexism that is stealing her victory away from her. In a nutshell, math is misogynist. Putting aside for a moment the mutli-layered lie that is any talking point coming from the Clinton campaign (yes, the great white hope is now a champion against bigotry), the more important question isn't whether Hillary faced and faces sexism, but rather, why is Hillary still trying to open more wounds in the party and the electorate?"
• The Huffington Post's Eric Deggans: "This is how the Clintons could pull the Democratic Party down to general election defeat alongside their fading presidential hopes: a pointless fight over gender politics. [...] Now that Clinton's hopes of winning the nomination are more distant than ever, this talk seems less about helping her campaign and more about hardening the attitudes of her supporters against Obama. More than one pundit has said the success of the Democratic nominee will be determined by the way the loser loses. Talk which encourages the loser's supporters to hold a grudge helps no one but the Republicans, who are hoping the record turnout for Democrats is diminished in the general election by ongoing discord over the primary results. Already, Clinton can blame her campaign for tarnishing her family's legacy of connection to America's black voters. Will she also risk taking blame for sinking the general election by losing badly?"

Digby, on the other hand, thinks Clinton is right to discuss the impact of sexism on her campaign: "Unfortunately, at this point I think the media is actually hurting the Obama campaign with their continued sexist coverage. He is trying to reach out to her supporters and the press is making it much harder for him by keeping this hostile, demeaning discussion --- particularly this endless call for her to drop out --- roiling in the ether. The party will work this out, but the media, as usual, is making things worse. [...] This ugly treatment of Clinton has left a bad taste in many people's mouths and at this point, it's probably necessary for her to see it through and leave the race on her own terms. Obama's campaign certainly seems to recognize that this needs to be handled respectfully and sensitively."

OBAMA: Veepstakes

After initially declaring that "it is essential that Obama choose a running mate who opposed the war from the start," Open Left's Chris Bowers changes his mind and tentatively endorses an Obama-Clinton ticket: "Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the most obvious way to combine the Clinton and Obama coalitions to put them both on the ticket? It isn't a perfect method, and it won't work out like the above map, but it is probably the best method available. And really, when one looks over the conservative crop of names that are being floated for VP, like [OH Gov. Ted] Strickland, [VA Sen. Jim] Webb, and [IN Sen. Evan] Bayh, isn't Clinton actually preferable to all of them, too? Not to mention that we are going to have to heal the party, and giving Clinton the VP slot is probably the fastest way to do so. I've been an advocate of a 'reinforcing' VP pick for a while now. I even arrived at [KS Gov. Kathleen] Sebelius by process of elimination, using my basic logic. However, as time goes on, I have to wonder if political concerns, not to mention the general weakness of other available options, actually makes Clinton the best choice for VP. It isn't ideal, but it could be the best of imperfect options."

TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat, a longtime advocate of an Obama-Clinton ticket, applauds Bowers' conversion: "Chris Bowers joins the burgeoning Unity Ticket Movement (by burgeoning I mean me, Chris, Todd Beeton and Ed Kilgore.) [...] Chris might get run out of the Creative Class for this one."

Moulitsas, on the other hand, suggests that Obama pick MO Sen. Claire McCaskill: "The more I think about it, the best presidential picks are 'chemistry' picks, those that put two nominees together who like each other and work well with each other (like Gore or [Dick] Cheney). Veep nominees that attempt to compensate for a weakness only serve to highlight that weakness (like [Joe] Lieberman or [Lloyd] Bentsen). And very few veep nominees can deliver geography (like Bentsen or [John] Edwards). But when the two candidates like each other and work well together in purpose and message, it's pretty powerful. And on that front, while she's not my favorite veep pick (which is still [Bill] Richardson), I think that Sen. Claire McCaskill would qualify brilliantly. She may be perhaps Obama's most loyal and hard-working surrogate, and she'd nicely complement Obama's message of change. And if you see them together, they are a great team. Normally, I'd flat out oppose it, given that she'd cost us a Senate seat. But the Missouri Governor is sworn in before the President of the United States, meaning that if McCaskill was our vice presidential nominee, her replacement would be chosen by Gov. Jay Nixon."

MCCAIN: Veepstakes

Several conservative bloggers are discussing the news that John McCain plans to host three potential running mates -- Mitt Romney, LA Gov. Bobby Jindal, and FL Gov. Charlie Crist -- at his AZ ranch:

• NRO's Jim Geraghty thinks the meeting is savvy p.r. move: "John McCain's 'social' get together with Governors Charlie Crist and Bobby Jindal and former governor Mitt Romney is a very good p.r. move, even if he doesn't end up selecting any of those three as his running mate. It generates buzz, it prompts folks to talk about the relative strengths of each one, and it feeds the media buzz machine. It will break through the Obama-Hillary fight like few other things he's done since clinching the nomination."
• RedState's Erick Erickson hopes McCain doesn't pick Crist: "Bobby Jindal -- I expect he'll say no, but you can ask. Louisiana needs him and he needs more time in office. But good choice. Mitt Romney -- absolutely, but he really doesn't get you as much as a few others could. But he'd be great. Charlie Crist -- are you kidding me? Seriously? Let me be blunt yet again: I will bolt so fast from supporting you if you pick this well tanned squish and all his baggage. Charlie Crist is totally and completely unacceptable. That's not even negotiable. I do not think I could say anything positive at all about the GOP ticket if that guy were on it. Go with Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee, but do not go with Charlie Crist. Senator, your problem is with conservatives, not with squishy moderates."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein isn't fond of any of the three choices: "Clearly, McCain owes a favor to Crist, who no doubt helped put him over the top in the crucial Florida primary, so this very well could be who McCain ends up choosing. The problem is he isn't particularly liked by conservatives. I also think McCain should be able to win the Sunshine State without him on the ticket. Jindal would, without a doubt, add instant conservative appeal to his ticket, as well as youth, and a brilliant mastery of policy. But the problem is that at 36, he's still quite inexperienced, and thus picking him to be a heartbeat away from the presidency will undercut the central argument McCain is making against Obama. [...] The same commentators who spent all of last year trying, without success, to convince the grassroots that Romney was the candidate for conservatives, are now arguing that McCain can instantly win over conservatives by picking Romney. That is ludicrous. If Romney had truly closed the deal with conservatives, he would have captured the nomination. [...] Also, good luck running a 'Straight Talk' campaign with Romney on the ticket. On top of the fact that he wouldn't win over conservatives, Romney would be an absolute albatross on nationally, because in the process of twisting himself in a pretzel on issue after issue in the primaries, the general public came to see him as a phony."

Meanwhile, NRO's John O'Sullivan thinks McCain should pick Romney: "[McCain] needs a Mitt Romney to testify that the GOP will know exactly how to handle the economic squalls that are assuredly coming our way. Romney is an executive from central casting. He is also distinctly young whereas McCain is, well, getting on. [...McCain] needs to persuade the American voter that someone will be there to catch him if he falls. Finally, Romney established himself in the primaries as the main conservative champion or at least as the last conservative standing. His selection would reassure the conservatives who are the main victims of 'Maverick John's' media-pleasing policies over the years."

MCCAIN II: Comment Trolls Wanted!

Both liberal and conservative bloggers are mocking McCain's new blog outreach program:

"Help spread the word about John McCain on news and blog sites. Your efforts to help get the message out about John McCain's policies and plan for the future is one of the most valuable things you can do for this campaign. You know why John McCain should be the next President of the United States and we need you to tell others why.

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you've commented on a post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points through the McCain Online Action Center."

First, liberal bloggers:

• The Huffington Post's Will Thomas: "That's right; the McCain camp wants to recruit online supporters and activists to serve as comment trolls. [...] Now, don't worry if you've never heard of a blog, or never written a comment, or heck, even used a computer. Because not only does the campaign tell you on which blogs to comment -- Redstate for right-wingers, Daily Kos for progressives (sorry HuffPo fans, we didn't make the list) -- it will even tell you what to say! Just click on the Blog Interaction page for 'Today's Talking Points.'"
• Moulitsas: "The McCain camp knows its supporters are blithering idiots who can't think for themselves, so they are helpfully offering daily talking points."

Next, conservative bloggers:

• Michelle Malkin: "In the spirit of transparency, if any of you leave pro-McCain comments in order to earn those 'points,' I request that you disclose that information when you post here. In the spirit of open dialogue and outreach, I encourage the rest of you all to reciprocate and leave your thoughts about McCain -- say, his decision to retain Juan Hernandez, speak at the the La Raza/The Race conference, embrace anti-assimilationist campaign finance co-chair Jerry Perenchio, and perpetuate global warming hysteria, for starters -- on the McCain campaign blog. The McCain blog is here. Sorry, I don't have any 'points' to give you. Standing on principle in defense of security, sovereignty, and sound science is its own reward!"
• Erickson: "WTH? Earning Points? [...] Feel free to say nice things about John McCain, but if you are doing it to accumulate points of some kind, I'd appreciate it if you disclose that fact. Do you really need points to say something nice?"

Unlike his fellow conservative bloggers, Townhall's Matt Lewis actually likes McCain's idea: "This is actually something I've long thought smart campaigns should consider. After all, comments can sometimes influence the bloggers -- or even change narratives, themselves. So it stands to reason a campaign would seek to influence the debate not only on the blogs, but in the comments, as well. [...] Political campaigns have always 'encouraged' supporters to do things like call-in to talk radio shows, etc. These efforts are usually conducted in a clandestine manner, of course -- while this is a very overt effort by the McCain campaign. In this regard, we should probably applaud the campaign for transparency."

MCCAIN III: Israel Ignores The Lessons Of Munich

Liberal bloggers are mocking McCain for criticizing Obama's willingness to meet with hostile foreign leaders after Israel and Syria announced that they have launched "serious and continuous" indirect peace talks:

• Obsidian Wings' publius: "Israel Ignores the Lessons of Munich. It seems Israel is appeasing Syria. I hope someone asks McCain about this wild and irresponsibly reckless behavior."
• Aravosis: "Israel is holding talks with Syria. Are they Hitler appeasers too? Time for the media to ask John McCain and George Bush whether they reject and denounce Israel."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "Even if Syria and Israel manage to reach agreement, Syria almost certainly needs direct assurances from the United States too before it would enter into any kind of comprehensive deal -- something which would, among other things, have the salutary effect of cutting off Iran from an ally and increasing Hamas's isolation. President Obama has made it clear that he'd be willing to be a part of that. President McCain, not so much. That's your foreign policy choice this November in a nutshell."
• TAPPED's Jordan Michael Smith: "If Israel is okay talking with countries that support terrorism against Israel, why isn't America okay talking with countries that support terrorism against Israel?"

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers are convinced that Obama is winning this debate with McCain:

• Moulitsas: "How delicious is it to see Obama upending the Beltway's foreign policy and media establishments by running on a platform of tough diplomacy, rather than a 'my dick is bigger than yours'?"
• Firedoglake's Scarecrow: "To his credit, Obama is defying the conventional wisdom that Democrats are safer talking about the economy and not challenging Republicans on national security. That conventional wisdom has always been nonsense and never more so than now: 80 percent of Americans believe we're on the wrong track, and most know they were deceived about the Iraq threat and ill-served by a belligerent Administration too quick to demonize and too unwilling to talk. [...] Bush and McCain have already been undercut by those in their own party, including Chuck Hagel, Secretary [Robert] Gates and former Secretary of State James Baker. And McCain has left himself vulnerable by seeming to argue against diplomacy when Americans are sick of war."

MCCAIN IV: Another Gem From Hagee

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the news that controversial pastor (and McCain endorser) John Hagee claimed in a late '90s sermon that Hitler was fulfilling God's will. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports:

"John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a 'hunter,' sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.

Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: '"And they the hunters should hunt them," that will be the Jews. "From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks." If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that.'"

• Benen: "This is the guy whose support McCain worked for a year to earn. It's also the guy McCain refuses to repudiate, and to this day, whose endorsement he's 'proud' and 'glad' to have. [...] I'm trying to imagine what the reaction would be if Obama sought out a pastor, accepted his endorsement, campaigned alongside him, defended him from criticism, and then we learned that this same pastor thought Hitler was fulfilling God's will. I have a hunch reporters might ask Obama if he'd be willing to repudiate such a person."
• Drum: "According to pastor John Hagee, whose endorsement John McCain says he's glad to have, the Holocaust was God's way of punishing European Jews for not emigrating to Israel quickly enough and Hitler was His divine instrument for getting this done. Charming. [...] Of course, this whole thing is just garden variety white crazy, and the audio clip is more than five seconds long, which means that neither Sean Hannity nor CNN will play it on a 24/7 loop. I guess that leaves it up to the mighty blogosphere to draw attention to it."
• Oliver Willis: "But John Hagee isn't a scaaaarrrrrry black guy and the media loves McCain, so it doesn't count."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Problem with Boca

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg reacts to Jodi Kantor's New York Times article, "Many Florida Jews Express Doubts on Obama":

"Jodi Kantor's alternately amusing and disturbing visit to Boca Raton and environs, in which she found many elderly Jews willing to say ill-informed things about Barack Obama, is a reminder that the rupture in black-Jewish relations is still very real (and that Crown Heights story didn't help, either). I would have been happier had some of these alte kockers expressed some substantive criticism of Obama. But it's important to remember that, despite all of these problems of perception, and of actual racism, Jews are still far more likely than other whites to vote for a black candidate for President. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama ends up with 70 or 75 percent of the Jewish vote. The Appalachian Jewish vote might be problematic -- those Kentucky Jews are hardheaded, all five of them -- but overall, I imagine that, at the very least, he'll do better than [Jimmy] Carter did in 1980."

LEST WE FORGET: Nike Signs Big Brown To $90 Million Horseshoe Contract

From The Onion:

"PORTLAND, OR -- In a move that added the world's pre-eminent equine athlete to its stable of endorsers Tuesday, Nike signed Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner Big Brown to a seven-year, $80 million endorsement contract that included a $10 million signing bonus as well as the creation of a signature horseshoe, the Air Brown. [...]

'Big B doesn't complain when he gets the far outside starting gate position,' [Nike president Mike] Parker added. 'He just gallops. And he gives hope to everyone out there that if they train hard, push themselves, and keep their snout clean, they can accomplish anything.'

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:46 PM

May 21, 2008

5/21: Math Wars

Bloggers reacted to Barack Obama's OR victory and Hillary Clinton's KY victory in their usual ways. Many liberal bloggers claim that Obama's convincing win in OR -- a predominantly white state whose per-capita income is lower than the national average -- demonstrates that his weakness among working-class whites is mostly confined to the Appalachian region. In contrast, pro-Clinton bloggers (as well as most conservative bloggers) see Obama's 35-point loss in KY as further evidence that Obama will be a weak nominee.

Most liberal bloggers are getting fed up with Clinton's claim that she leads Obama in the popular vote (which is true only if one awards Obama zero votes from MI, where his name wasn't on the ballot). Yet Jim Geraghty asks an interesting question: Could Clinton win Puerto Rico's primary by enough votes to ensure that she leads Obama in the popular vote even if the MI results are excluded from her total? If that happens, we can expect the fights between pro-Clinton and pro-Obama bloggers to intensify.

DEM FIELD: He's Closing In, Folks...

Many liberal bloggers are pushing the Obama camp's claim that Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates:

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "NBC News and CNN report that Obama has now clinched a majority of the pledged delegates, surpassing the 1,627 mark. What's more, assuming Obama is able to secure 30 delegates out of Oregon [...], Obama will have clinched a majority of pledged delegates including Michigan and Florida (assuming a halving of the states' delegations, which Chuck Todd is reporting is a likelihood). What does this mean? Obama has not clinched the Democratic nomination, though his seemingly inexorable move towards securing the nomination was not slowed tonight. Nevertheless, Obama now has a claim to the majority of the pledged delegates under almost any scenario, meaning that the cadre of superdelegates pledging their support to the winner of the pledged delegate battle could move to Obama, and soon."
• The Huffington Post's M.S. Bellows, Jr.: "The truth is that winning the majority of democratically elected delegates is victory. Obama has won the election, which in a democracy means winning the nomination. This isn't a case where three candidates have split the vote so that none has a majority (in which case the superdelegates would play an indispensable role in breaking the deadlock and giving the nominee an apparent majority to carry him into the general election). It's a two-candidate race, and Obama won. Are there still undeclared superdelegates? Doesn't matter, because the superdelegates will, in the end, simply ratify the candidate the voters chose. They'll do this for any of several dozen good reasons -- ranging from a sincere love of democracy, to the self-interested calculation that they'll be run out of office on a rail if they presume to override the voters' choice and their candidate loses to [John] McCain -- but they'll do it."
• Firedoglake's Eli: "[Clinton] is now officially unable to win the nomination without the help of the superdelegates -- and she's trailing on those too."

Other liberal bloggers are asserting that the Dem primary is essentially over:

• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Despite what [Clinton strategist Terry] McAuliffe and his crew say in their frenetic spinning tonight, this race is over."
• Ezra Klein: "Tonight, the general election began."

TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat doesn't think Obama should declare himself the pledged delegate winner until FL and MI are resolved: "CNN, along with NBC, at the behest of the Barack Obama campaign, will pretend Florida and Michigan do not exist. They will declare that Barack Obama has won a majority of the pledged delegates in the Dem race. They will declare that 2.3 million voters in Florida and Michigan do not exist. This is not only outrageous of these news organizations, it is monumentally stupid of the Obama campaign. [...] He has handed Hillary Clinton the most appealing battle cry a politician could possibly have -- count the votes."

Open Left's Chris Bowers agrees that Obama shouldn't "declare victory" until FL and MI are resolved: "Clinton won Kentucky 37-14 (or maybe less, as the update indicates) in terms of delegates, which means that Obama is still 0.5 short of a non-Michigan and non-Florida pledged delegate victory. Oregon will put him over that mark. The non-Florida and Michigan 50% + 1 pledged delegate victory will have to wait until one of the following: more Edwards delegates flip, the May 31st meeting of the Rules and Bylaws committee, or Puerto Rico, on June 1st. By that time, enough superdelegates may have chosen Obama in order to declare overall victory. Still, I think it is best for the Obama campaign not to declare victory until the night of June 3rd. That night, however, they should declare victory."

DEM FIELD II: It Just Doesn't Add Up

Liberal bloggers are annoyed by Clinton's claim that she leads Obama in the popular vote:

• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "The Clinton campaign keeps claiming that they lead in the popular vote. Just a reminder that the only reason they can do that, is to claim that Obama got zero votes in Michigan, and that voters in Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington don't count. I don't understand how they and Hillary herself can make that claim with a straight face."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "Even if you change the rules and fully seat Michaigan and Florida and count them for the popular vote totals and don't count any portion of the Michigan 'uncommitted' (which were understood...to be for Obama) vote for Obama, Hillary is still behind in the popular vote total. The only way she moves ahead in popular vote is if you do all that and don't count four of the caucus states. Some stuff is just too ridiculous to let pass."
• Sudbay: "Hillary told us tonight that she's been told that she's received more votes than any other Democrat who has run for the nomination. Not true, unless the votes are counted her exact way and some states aren't counted at all. Will this never end? Just because they keep repeating this new lie over and over and over, doesn't make it true."
• Firedoglake's Cliff Schecter: "Um, if you run in a contest, like let's say Michigan, and your opponent's name is not on the ballot, that is only a win in Waziristan."

On the right side of the blogosphere, NRO's Geraghty wonders if Clinton can overtake Obama's popular vote lead if one excludes MI: "If you count Florida (where all of them were on the ballot) but not Michigan (where only [Clinton] was), Obama leads by 146,786. Could she make that up in the remaining contests? There are two small, probably pro-Obama states (South Dakota and Montana) remaining and one pro-Hillary territory, Puerto Rico. The last one is an open primary (Operation Chaos!) with 2.4 million registered voters. By the way, the island had 81.7 percent turnout in the 2004 general election, and the one poll that has been done there put Hillary ahead by 13 percent."

OBAMA: Aren't There Hard-Working White People In Oregon?

Liberal bloggers are arguing that Obama's OR victory demonstrates that his problem with working-class whites is mostly confined to the Appalachian region:

• Firedoglake's David Neiwert: "Oregon certainly is home to nearly as many white working-class voters as Kentucky (it's 87% white in Oregon, and 90% in Kentucky). Moreover, the outcome of the primaries throughout much of the West run along similar lines: Obama has run away with the votes in places like Idaho and Wyoming, and is likely to repeat that in Montana -- none of which are exactly renowned as havens of African American voters. In Washington state, Obama won the caucuses in every single one of the state's counties. It doesn't seem to me that [Obama] has a problem with white American working-class voters generically. Looking at the results, it seems he mostly has a problem with white voters in Appalachia. Elsewhere, whites seem perfectly comfortable voting for him."
• Moulitsas: "Are there any hard-working white people in Oregon? Can't possibly be the case, considering [he won] the primary there today. Ranked by per-capita income, Oregon is ranked 23rd in the nation, two slots behind Ohio, and a single slot ahead of Pennsylvania. And since Ohio and Pennsylvania are apparently the gold standard of white working class-ness in this election, Oregon is little different than those two on the economic front. Oregon is also a white state. According to 2005 census projections, Oregon is 9.38 percent Hispanic, 2.38 percent black, 2.44 percent pacific islander, 0.5 percent Native American, and 4.25 percent Asian. That's about 81 percent Anglo."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "As Jeff at Blue Oregon notes, Oregon isn't exactly a paragon of diversity itself, nor is it, for the most part, a terribly wealthy state. [...] I think Jeff's right to conclude that 'Oregon's central role in this election won't be putting Obama over the 50%-mark in pledged delegates...Rather, it's in reminding everyone that his broad base of support includes whites and poorer voters.'"

As usual, Big Tent Democrat disagrees with his fellow liberal bloggers: "Obama STILL has a working class voter problem in Oregon, despite the claims of the Obama News Network (NBC), Clintons win voters earning 30k or less by 54-43. Clinton wins non-college voters by 54-44."

OBAMA II: The Elephant In The Room

Many bloggers are arguing that racism has played a significant role in Obama's losses in Appalachia:

• Marshall: "There's simply no getting around the role of race in the Kentucky and, for that matter, the West Virginia results. From the exit poll numbers tonight, 'Was Race of the Candidate Important to You?' 21% said Yes and 81% of those voted for Hillary Clinton. Given how the levels of under-reporting are that go into a question like that, I don't think you easily get around that number."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "The [KY] exit poll shows that one in five voters openly declared that race was a factor -- and 81 percent of them voted for the Clintons. So one fifth proudly said they voted against a black man. How many more did so but didn't admit it? The AP reports [that] 'Only three in 10 whites who said race was a factor said they would vote for Obama should he oppose McCain in November. Nearly four in 10 said they would back McCain, while the rest said they wouldn't vote.' We're discovering that a core of less educated white voters in the Appalachias will do anything to stop a black man being president of the United States. Good to know."
• The Huffington Post's Bob Cesca: "Norah O'Donnell just reported that 9 out of 10 voters who thought race was important selected Senator Clinton [in KY]. But, of course, that's Senator Obama's 'problem' -- all that racism. His problem. Racist white people are his problem. Yeah. What the hell is wrong with people?"
• Daily Kos' DHinMI: "Beginning with Super Tuesday and then the Potomac primary, the pattern became clear: many counties of Appalachia have voted by margins of over 2 to 1, and sometimes even 9 to 1 for Hillary Clinton. It's inescapable that race is playing a factor in some voting everywhere, but that it's a much greater factor in Appalachia than anywhere else in America. Only in Appalachia has Hillary Clinton won huge margins. As I've written before, Obama does not appear to have a problem with white voters. However, Appalachia has a problem with Obama."

Big Tent Democrat slams DHinMI's post: "Here is a prime example of why Democrats lose white working class voters, this headline -- 'Appalachia's Last Chance to Show It Doesn't Have an Obama Problem'. Yes, tell voters they have a problem when they do not vote for you. Heck of a general election plan. When candidates and/or their supporters are blaming the voters, you know you have a problem."

OBAMA III: Limping Toward The Finish Line?

Conservative bloggers see Obama's blowout loss in KY as further evidence that he is a weak nominee:

• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "[What] does it say about the likely Democratic nominee that he is getting blown out at this late stage by 35 points in the late primaries?"
• NRO's Mark Steyn: "There's no precedent in modern primary history for a candidate growing weaker* the more his nomination becomes inevitable. His boast of finally getting a majority of pledged delegates -- or whatever cockamie Democrat arithmetical milestone he reached last night -- felt like a steam train running out of coal. He's still moving uphill, just about, but ever slower...and slower...and slo..w...er... [UPDATE: *Poorly phrased: I should have said there's no precedent for a candidate getting 'so weak'. Obviously, presumptive nominees from [Walter] Mondale to [Bob] Dole managed to frost up the base as primary season wore on -- but not to this degree, and not to the point where 50% of Democrat primary voters in Kentucky tell pollsters they wouldn't vote for Obama in November.]"
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Oregon's electorate tends towards the activist Left, driven by energy from college communities -- exactly the kind of demographic that suits Obama. If true, the problems for Obama in a general election may be even greater than thought. Had the split in the Democratic Party merely been racial, one could have expected a rapprochement in the fall, as the party unified to face off against a center-right candidate in John McCain. Now, though, we can understand the high percentages of voters who say they will vote McCain rather than Obama if Hillary loses the nomination in terms of an ideological response. They see McCain as closer to their political positions. [...] McCain has an opportunity to attract votes from Democrats who fear that their party has shifted too far to the left and who fear that Obama is the second coming of Jimmy Carter."

OBAMA IV: Gaffe Machine?

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about Michelle Malkin's latest column, in which she lists a number of verbal slips that Obama has made and concludes that he is a "gaffe machine":

"Barack Obama -- promoted by the Left and the media as an all-knowing, articulate, transcendent Messiah -- is a walking, talking gaffe machine. How many more passes does he get? How many more can we afford?"

• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Of course MSM is covering for him, but new media keeps educating the public on the fact that Obama is far out of his depth. He's a lightweight propped up by friends with cameras and microphones, and keeping the big con going through November will prove difficult."
• Townhall's Mary Katharine Ham: "George Bush was misunderestimated. These two Democratic candidates seem to have been consistently misoverestimated. Doesn't mean we can count Obama out in a general, but we can probably count on him messing up with delightful regularity."
• Morrissey: "Some of the gaffes Michelle notes belong in the 'potatoe' file, silly mistakes that could be attributed to exhaustion or misspeaking. Obama mixed up Sioux Falls and Sioux City last week, which I might do if I ever bothered to go to either city. [...But others] don't really qualify as 'gaffes' in the sense of momentary lapses in memory or factual recall, which all of us make. They represent deliberate positions intended to gin up support on the basis of obviously erroneous allegations. [...] Obama's assertion that the US had a shortage of Arabic translators in Afghanistan was part of an argument that blamed the stalling operations in Afghanistan on the Iraq War. And minimizing the Iranian threat in Oregon played into the minds of those who think that the Bush administration is the biggest threat to world peace. None of these are in the same 'potatoe' league as [ex-VP Dan] Quayle's highly-publicized missteps. These are mistakes with a purpose. The Young Gaffer may or may not know any better, but he's banking on the American voter not knowing any better this fall."

MCCAIN: Trapped By His Own Rules

Liberal bloggers are pleased that the press is devoting substantial coverage to McCain's lobbyist problem:

• Sudbay: "John McCain is supposed to be the great reformer. That's just pure bull. He scammed the FEC's public financing system last year -- something for which he's not been held accountable -- yet. And, his campaign is rife with very powerful D.C. lobbyists who work for some very shady characters -- and that's really starting to damage the McCain brand. [...] This is all his fault. He gathered all these lobbyists to run his campaign. Obviously, McCain didn't think it would be an issue -- but it is."
• dday: "Ever since John McCain implemented new rules that should have forced him to fire his entire staff, and ended up in him actually firing his convention manager, one of his national finance co-chairs, a regional campaign manager, and a senior aide, there was no way for the press to ignore such a barrage without reporting on it. [...] The ubiquity of the lobbyists in his campaign finally breaking out into the open is deadly, because he's carefully cultivated the image of being an independent maverick, and it's being assaulted on all sides. [...] McCain isn't going to be able to run from these associations but we're now down to people like [senior adviser Charlie] Black and [campaign manager Rick] Davis who aren't expendable."
• The New Republic's Michael Crowley: "Maybe, with the issue of lobbyists in the campaign festering, McCain had to address it head-on and get the pain over with, rather than suffer a drip-drip of stories over the coming weeks about which aide worked for which dubious government or corporation. But it sure seems like his campaign write large was not well-prepared for its new vetting edict. And the immediate effect has been to make the press spotlight a long list of lobbyists affiliated with McCain to whom no one was paying any attention before."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "The McCain gang just walked into this one. They never vetted aides, they never thought to check client lists, and then when confronted, they started purging lobbyists-turned-aides without thinking about the implications. This isn't going away."

MCCAIN II: Campaigning On Ignorance?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about an exchange that McCain had with Time's Joe Klein at a press conference yesterday. Klein reports:

"I just asked John McCain about why he keeps talking about Obama's alleged willingness to talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has no power over Iranian foreign policy, rather than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who does. He said that Ahmadinejad is the guy who represents Iran in international forums like the United Nations, which is a fair point. When I followed with the observation that the Supreme Leader is, uh, the Supreme Leader, McCain responded that the 'average American' thinks Ahmadinejad is the boss. Didn't get a chance to follow up to that, but I would have asked, 'But isn't it your job to correct those sorts of mistaken impressions on the part of the American public?' Oh well."

• Benen: "Is that really McCain's preferred standard for international affairs? Whomever the 'average Americans' thinks is in charge should be considered the leader?"
• TPM's Greg Sargent: "McCain: I Can Demagogue About Iran Because Public Is Ignorant. Okay, that's not quite what he said, but pretty darn close."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "It's increasingly clear that John McCain intends to use his special relationship with the press to run a campaign based on relentlessly lying about his opponent. [...] McCain and McCain's allies in the world of neoconservative punditry have deliberately created the entirely false notion that Ahmadenijad runs Iranian foreign policy. One point I've been making in my book-related appearances is that it's not a coincidence that the preventive war crowd told a lot of whoppers about Iraq before the war and is telling a lot of whoppers about Iran now -- the right knows that contrary to the prevailing conventional wisdom, there's just no evidence that the American people are deep down yearning for senseless violence and imperial adventurism."
• Democracy Arsenal's Ilan Goldenberg: "As Klein points out, the President's job is to educate the public on questions of policy. So if the 'average American' thinks that Ahmadinejad is the ultimate leader of Iran, it's up to the President to dissuade them of this notion -- not reinforce it. Back in 2002 more then half of Americans thought Saddam was responsible for 9/11 and President [George W.] Bush did nothing to disprove this assumption (In fact, while never directly claiming that Saddam was responsible for 9/11 the Administration did everything it could to reinforce the notion). That doesn't mean our policy should be based on those false assumptions. [...] Considering the bellicose language and all the speculation about war with Iran, you'd think the Republican nominee for President who consistently touts his foreign policy expertise should either get better briefings on the structure of Iran's government or start exercising that 'straight talk' he is supposedly so famous for."

MCCAIN III: Ahmadinejad, Khamenei, What's The Difference?

Conservative bloggers are pushing back against Klein's criticism of McCain:

• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "The left wants to portray McCain as an ignoramus for constantly mentioning Ahmadinejad -- the most identifiable public face of Iran -- rather than Supreme Leader Khamenei. J. Klein proudly confronted McCain on this at a press conference today. But it isn't as if Ahmadinejad is a member of some opposition party, nor would he be allowed to make the statements he does were his views not shared by the ruling regime. It's pretty clear that his inflamatory statements were just in keeping with long-standing Iranian policy."
• The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb links to a video of Obama implying that the U.S. should not be afraid to meet with Ahmadinejad: "I can't say I'm surprised that Time magazine and the Obama campaign managed to miss this clip which completely undermines their shared narrative. But now we have a new narrative: Obama intends to meet with Ali Khamenei, the man with the real power in Tehran, because even though Obama pledged to meet with Ahmadinejad, and said it was a 'disgrace' that Bush had not, he never had any intention of meeting with Ahmadinejad, and McCain is a liar for saying different. The Dems and their boosters in the press are tying themselves in knots trying to explain Obama's position. So what the heck is his policy? We have a right to know. Does Obama still intend to meet with Ahmadinjead? Does he intend to meet with Khamenei? And if he doesn't intend to meet with A'Jad, why the sudden shift? There is a lot of lying and obfuscation going on here, but none of it is emanating from the McCain camp."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Case For Generic Democratic White Dudes

The New Republic's Josh Patashnik:

"What's become clear at the end of this primary season is that neither Democratic candidate's appeal is as wide as Democrats would prefer. [...] Obama appears to have a problem with working-class whites east of Illinois, and Clinton appears to have a problem with Westerners and more upscale independent-minded voters. This pattern has been remarkably consistent since the beginning of the primary season. My suspicion is that these weaknesses basically cancel each other out, which is why you see both candidates sporting approximately equal-sized small leads over John McCain in national polls.

One wonders, in retrospect, if there were some candidate who could have bridged this divide and appealed equally well to both groups. Somebody like [ex-VA Gov] Mark Warner, perhaps, whom the Obama coalition might have embraced as an entrepreneurial, somewhat postpartisan, reformist fresh face, and whom the Clinton coalition might have embraced as a culturally moderate, economically savvy governor of a border state. (Or, if you prefer a different formulation, a 'generic Democratic white dude.') The reality is that discontent with Republicans runs so deep that there are a ton of people who are open to voting for a Democrat this year -- so many that Democrats can easily win the White House without getting all their votes. Which is a good thing, because...it looks like the Democratic candidate probably won't get all their votes."

LEST WE FORGET: Obama, Clinton, McCain Join Forces To Form Nightmare Ticket

From The Onion:

"WASHINGTON -- Presidential hopefuls John McCain (R-AZ), Barack Obama (D-IL), and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) announced Monday their plans to form what many Beltway observers have already dubbed the '2008 Nightmare Ticket,' a calculated move that political analysts say offers voters the worst of both worlds. [...]

'This nightmare ticket presents the American people with an unprecedented lack of opportunity in 2008,' Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote Tuesday. 'For just one vote, citizens will get four years of McCain's brilliant temper, the incredible inexperience of Barack Obama, and the powerful two-headed monster of Hillary and Bill Clinton.'

'It will be very exciting to see what they're capable of destroying,' Cohen added. [...]

At the top of the platform is a military strategy calling for the phased withdrawal of .000006 brigades from Iraq and Afghanistan every seven months over the next 350 years. Universal health care would also be provided, taken away on McCain's birthday, and then provided again only to those wealthy enough to afford it. Abortions would be made available on every other even-numbered Friday from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST to all women who can prove residency in Alaska or Nevada."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:45 PM

May 20, 2008

5/20: General Election Jousting

Liberal bloggers continue to argue that John McCain is ethically compromised by the presence of lobbyists at the highest levels of his campaign. They're also stepping up their calls for the resignation of McCain's senior adviser Charlie Black due to his past lobbying work for controversial foreign leaders. Conservative bloggers are reacting to this brouhaha in different ways. Some are ridiculing the controversy, calling it "silly season on hunting lobbyists in Washington politics." Others are offering names of other lobbyists whom McCain should fire from his campaign. Still others are accusing McCain of "appeas[ing] the Left" by introducing new rules regarding lobbyists on his campaign.

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers continue to savage Barack Obama for saying that Iran "[doesn't] pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us." These bloggers are accusing Obama of being ignorant of the concept of "asymmetric warfare" and calling him "a 9/10 Democrat". Liberal bloggers are fighting back, arguing that Obama's assessment of the dangers posed by Iran is a lot closer to reality than conservatives' "paranoid saber-rattling".

MCCAIN: Bought And Sold?

Liberal bloggers continue to attack McCain over his lobbyist problem:

• Daily Kos' DHinMI: "The problem, according to the McCain campaign, is perception. But the problem isn't perception. Instead, it's the same old reality that McCain's candidacy, just like George Bush's, is bought and paid for by the GOP lobbying infrastructure. Last week the McCain campaign was forced to distance itself from staff who had lobbied on behalf of the military dictatorship of Burma/Myanmar. Another had to be let go because he lobbied for the governments of Serbia and Qatar. [...] Finally, there's Charlie Black, one of McCain's chief strategists. As MoveOn has documented, Black has a long history of lobbying for foreign thugs and repressive governments. [...] Does McCain currently have anyone on his campaign who's not a lobbyist?"
• Firedoglake's emptywheel: "The McCain campaign employed a number of people who were actively lobbying the Senate on subjects central to McCain's interests. That's not a perception problem, it's a real ethical problem, a stench the campaign can't cleanse simply by considering it a 'perception problem.' McCain's campaign and McCain's policies have been bought and sold by lobbyists, something that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "McCain's problem isn't necessarily that he should have seen this coming yet didn't. Rather, McCain's problem is much more insidious: Believing that he is beyond reproach. Already in this nascent general election campaign (or pre-general election campaign) we've seen McCain play fast and loose with campaign finance and ethics laws and regulations, seemingly under the theory that because his name is on the law he can get away with anything. We have also seen it with McCain's lame attacks on Barack Obama regarding Hamas even though McCain himself not three years ago advocated for rapprochement with the Palestinian group. And we've seen it again and again and again and again with McCain's all-too-close relationship with lobbyists. Do Americans really want a holier-than-thou President who doesn't come close to living up to his own ideals?"
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "I certainly understand why the McCain campaign is starting to feel antsy. McCain benefits from a public perception that he's a 'reformer' who disdains the influence and access given to high-priced DC lobbyists. Now, people are starting to get a peek behind the curtain, finding a candidate who's surrounded himself with these same high-priced DC lobbyists, many of whom worked for some of the world's most unsavory thugs. And now it's on the front page of a major daily. With the pressure picking up on Charles Black, this may still get worse for the McCain campaign."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "This isn't the first time McCain has raised eyebrows over his troubling ties to lobbyists. Bush criticized McCain during the 2000 presidential campaign for taking campaign money from people who had business before his own Senate committee. McCain likes to talk about ethics, but his career, from the Keating Five on, has been anything but."

MCCAIN II: Mixed Messages

On the right side of the blogosphere, Michelle Malkin offers the name of another lobbyist whom she wants McCain to fire: "Five McCain campaign staffers and volunteers have now been shown the door over their lobbying activities and/or status as foreign agents. [...] But not a word from either the MSM or the lefties about McCain Hispanic outreach advisor Juan Hernandez, the former Mexican cabinet official who lobbied aggressively for illegal alien rights and benefits in the US on behalf of a foreign government. He still serves as a fellow at the conflict-of-interest-clouded Reform Institute funded with money from George Soros while continuing to advance Mexico's open-borders agenda and drumming up campaign cash for McCain, most recently, as I reported earlier this month, for Cinco de Mayo. So: What about Juan?"

Meanwhile, Hot Air's Ed Morrissey criticizes the controversy: "I'm not saying that having lobbyists in campaigns is a good idea, but they would be at worst an indirect indicator of the nature of the candidate. Checking the client list only goes so far, too, since most lobbyists have diverse clientele, and lawyers -- especially criminal defense attorneys -- exist to represent all sides in any dispute. If people want to see fewer lobbyists and less opportunity for corruption, then the only solution is to reduce the power and reach of the federal government in order to eliminate the spoils for which lobbyists pay big money."

Townhall's Matt Lewis criticizes "McCain's campaign to appease the Left": "It's almost as if John McCain's campaign simply decided they will not allow anyone to cause McCain one minute's trouble...Say something about Obama's middle name -- sayonara. Twitter a YouTube clip about Rev. Wright -- you're gone. Be a lobbyist at a time when that's a liability -- adios! By quickly dispensing of any unwanted baggage, McCain's campaign hopes to frustrate Obama's ability to attack him. Of course, this strategy isn't all that different from Bill Clinton's triangulation. In both cases, the principal frustrates his opponents by making unorthodox moves. While triangulation seeks to co-opt opponents' ideas, McCainulation seeks to root-out -- like a cancer -- any potential internal weakness -- before they can be exploited by your opponent. [...] The problem with appeasement, of course, is that it doesn't appease -- it actually emboldens your opponents and rewards them for their aggression. In the instance of McCain's new rules regarding lobbyists on his campaign, McCain is finding out that he has not, in fact, pacified his opponents by introducing these new 'rules' about lobbyists. Instead, he has opened the door to a slew of new problems."

MCCAIN III: The House Of Black

Liberal bloggers are stepping up their calls for the resignation of McCain's senior adviser Charlie Black, who has lobbied for several controversial foreign leaders:

• Daily Kos' DarkSyde: "Charlie Black has the right to work for whomever he sees fit, but that just begs the question. Given Mr. Black's many divided loyalties to a multitude of wealthy patrons, clear conflicts of interest, and his self professed penchant for cutting lobbying deals on a cell phone from the back of the 'Straight Talk Express,' it's reasonable to ask just who the hell this guy is working for now. More importantly, can we trust the judgment of a Presidential candidate who casually places such grave responsibility for the welfare of our nation during a time of war, in the hands of a man who looks eager to open a lobby franchise in the Oval Office on behalf of everyone from revolting foreign operatives to extremist anti-American clerics at the expense, literally, of legitimate, taxpaying citizens?"
• emptywheel: "McCain has shown a real inconsistency about what kind of lobbying ties compromise his campaign. With [Tom] Loeffler and Eric Burgeson, there seem to have been two problems. First, both were active lobbyists, who lobbied the Senate for clients whose issues fell squarely in the purview of the Commerce, Armed Services, and Indian Affairs Committees on which McCain serves. In addition, both represented foreign 'countries,' Loeffler Saudi Arabia and Burgeson the Kurds. Of course, that's true of Charlie Black, as well. For example, Black lobbied the Senate on FISA, and has had an affinity for representing evil dictators throughout his career. So why is okay for Charlie Black to stick around while Loeffler and Burgeson take their blackberries and go home?"

Meanwhile, Think Progress' Matt Corley accuses Black of making misleading statements in his attempt to downplay the lobbying backgrounds of certain McCain staffers: "McCain is still refusing to fire certain top aides, like campaign manager Rick Davis, who is a former lobbyist. Charlie Black, another former lobbyist who is McCain's senior adviser, told reporters today that 'Rick Davis and nobody else at his firm either has been a registered lobbyist in five years.' CNN's Dana Bash reports today, however, that Davis's old firm 'can still use his name to recruit business since it's still on the letterhead.' [...] Additionally, Black's claim that neither Davis nor anyone at his firm have been registered as lobbyists in five years appears to be false. Here's an image of a lobbying report from 2005 that has Davis listed as an 'individual who acted as a lobbyist.'"

MCCAIN IV: McBush Comes To Phoenix

Liberal bloggers are mocking McCain after it was reported that President Bush will help McCain raise money by joining him at a Phoenix fundraiser:

• Singer: "How is it possible that the Republican's presumptive presidential nominee, a man who has represented Arizona in the Senate and the House for 25 years, needs George W. Bush to headline a fundraiser in Phoenix? [...] I could understand if George W. Bush were raising money for McCain in Texas or in a place like New York City, squeezing out money from donors to the Bush-Cheney campaigns in 2000 and 2004 who have yet to contribute to McCain's presidential efforts. [...] But McCain needing Bush to get money out of Arizona? That's something else entirely. [...] Apparently Arizona Republicans are so blase about McCain that they won't contribute to his campaign committee -- or even evidently to the RNC -- without George W. Bush himself being trotted out. It's tough to be a Republican..."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Confirming once again that Bush and McCain are inextricably linked, it's Bush who will be raising the bulk of money for McCain's campaign effort. McCain can't raise it for his own campaign, so he has Bush raising dough for the RNC. [...] Bush wants a third-term. McCain is so desperate, he's tied himself to Bush."
• Firedoglake's Attaturk: "John McCain will not be allowed to separate himself from Bush, even if the former had the inclination to do so. If McCain runs for President, he'll do it on the Decider's terms."

OBAMA: A 9/10 Democrat?

Conservative bloggers continue to criticize Obama for making the following statement:

"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela -- these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, 'We're going to wipe you off the planet.'"

• Malkin: "Does Barack Obama understand the concept of asymmetric warfare? Barack Obama complains that no one wants to talk about the 'issues.' Well, his abject ignorance of warfare in the 21st century is an issue that can't be emphasized enough. And the right side of the blogosphere has been all over it. [...] Barack Obama: The epitome of a 9/10 Democrat."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "Barack Obama, last night in Portland, on Iran: 'They don't pose a serious threat to us.' Barack Obama, today, in Billings, Montana, on Iran: 'I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.' Can someone explain why it is, exactly, that Barack Obama is not a laughingstock?"
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "The Soviet Union certainly could have wiped us out, but we could have wiped it out too. The players were rather rational and neither wanted to be destroyed. Iran could wipe us out through proxies with dirty bombs, but President Obama would never wipe Iran out. The players are not rational*. Both Iran and Obama supporters are wrapped up in messianic zeal for their respective sides. (*Of course, Iran probably knows President Obama would turn the other cheek, so perhaps only one of the players is irrational and it's not the one you'd think.)"
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "Iran is the leading sponsor of terrorism in the world. Right now, Iranian weapons are killing Americans in Iraq via insurgents and overrunning a U.S.-supported government in Lebanon via Hezbollah. They are financing Hamas, which threatens Israel, a nation that Obama has recently taken to calling an American ally. And all of this is without them having nuclear weapons. Sure, Iran is unlikely to create a world without America or Israel. It's not likely to be able to restore the Caliphate and turn the U.S. into an Islamist state. But it sure as heck has the potential to do a lot of damage in the process of pursuing its insane goals, even if its military is puny compared to the Soviet Union."

Unlike Matthew Yglesias, Commentary's Jennifer Rubin thinks McCain, not Obama, is winning the national security debate: "Monday was another day spent on foreign policy and another one with Obama on the defensive. So score one for the McCain messaging team. If every day between now and Election Day is about appeasement, Obama's foreign policy flip flops and Iran, McCain will be delighted."

Hot Air's Allahpundit criticizes a separate aspect of Obama's remarks: "This context suggests [Obama] didn't mean last night that Iran wasn't a serious threat, just less of a serious threat than the Soviet Union -- a debatable point if you believe Iran's regime has irrational/suicidal impulses but less debatable if you don't. Rather than beat him over the head on how seriously he takes Iran, the better question would be why, if he thinks we're so vastly stronger than they are, he's prepared to offer them economic benefits, membership in the WTO, and possibly formal recognition rather than deal with them militarily."

OBAMA: More Right Than The Right?

Liberal bloggers are defending Obama's remarks about Iran:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "This point is implicit in much of the current paranoid saber-rattling over the Middle East. But does John McCain really think that the threat posed by Iran is equal to that the United States faced from the Soviet Union -- the world's greatest land military power, with a massive strategic nuclear capacity that carried on a multi-decade ideological struggle with the US? In his speech this morning, McCain adds all the caveats that Iran is not a superpower. But at bottom he still seems to see that it is a sign of foreign policy naivite to say that the threat we face from Iran today pales in comparison to that we faced from the Soviets."
• Benen: "Does McCain really want to debate this? First, Obama didn't say the possible Iranian threat is 'tiny.' He said it's 'tiny' when compared to the Soviet Union. [...] McCain thinks it reflects poor 'judgment' to recognize the obvious difference between a nuclear superpower and Iran? [...] Finally, on the substance, Obama is so obviously right about Iran it's hard to believe this discussion is actually happening. As Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria explained a few months ago: 'Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century...Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?'"
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "Dismissing a potentially nuclear-armed Iran as 'puny' probably wasn't a smart move by Obama, but I nonetheless continue to be amazed at the rose-colored glasses that so many conservatives use these days when they talk about the old Soviet Union. [...] I guess they have to do this because it's the only way they can make Iran look like it's the worst threat ever in history. But as dangerous and destabilizing as a nuclear Iran would be, there's simply no reason to think that Shiite theology makes them undeterrable. They've never acted suicidal in the past, and it's unlikely they will in the future. Obama has that exactly right."
• Singer: "Yitzhak Rabin once famously said about negotiation with his onetime sworn enemies, the PLO and Yassir Arafat in particular, 'You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.' Likewise, John F. Kennedy wisely said during his inaugural address, 'Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.' McCain apparently does not understand these key tenets of foreign policy. [...] So I wholeheartedly applaud Obama for turning it around on McCain and asking the fundamental question regarding McCain's weird unwillingness to consider negotiations with Iran. Indeed, 'what are George Bush and John McCain afraid of?'"

CLINTON: Debating Causes And Effects

Jodi Kantor's New York Times article, "Gender Issue Lives On as Clinton's Hopes Dim," has prompted a discussion among liberal bloggers about the role that gender played in Hillary Clinton's (expected) defeat:

• Arianna Huffington, who's generally been a critic of Clinton, praises the NY senator: "I have regularly criticized Clinton over the course of her campaign (and long before it, starting with her vote to authorize the war), but there is no question that she has forever altered the way women running for president will be viewed from here on out. [...] She [has] forever demolished the question mark hovering over the issue many (wrongly, in my opinion) have felt would be a woman candidate's biggest weakness: the ability to be seen as a plausible commander-in-chief. It is to her great credit that very shortly into the '08 race, when you saw Clinton on television, you didn't think, 'Oh, there's the woman running for president.' That is no small feat for a woman trying to break into a male-dominated arena. So the next time a woman -- or two or three -- runs for president, it won't be seen as a novelty act. Because Hillary certainly wasn't."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller criticizes Kantor's assertion that there is a "long-standing pattern of [American voters] finding women less plausible military commanders than men": "I'm constantly amazed how Iraq is whitewashed out of the campaign narrative. After all, at the Presidential level, there's no 'pattern' of participants 'finding women less plausible military commanders than men', since the number of serious female Presidential candidates in American history can be counted on one finger. A more plausible explanation is Democrats following the long-standing pattern of antiwar voters voting against politicians that support unpopular gratuitously unnecessary wars. The evidence suggests this is what happened. While earlier states saw split demographic trends, as the campaign wore on it's pretty clear Obama locked up the most anti-Iraq war constituency groups -- African-Americans and liberals -- whereas Clinton locked up the most pro-Iraq war constituency groups -- older white people. [...] The fact that Clinton stayed in the race for so long and nearly won despite being strongly out of step with most Democrats on Iraq, the central political issue from 2002-2006, is a testament to how much credibility Democrats were willing to accord to Clinton as a possible commander-in-chief. It's a strike against the 'gender case', not evidence for it."
• The Huffington Post's RJ Eskow urges commentators not to downplay the prejudice that Obama has faced: "As Hillary Clinton's campaign winds down, commentators are talking about sexism. Good. It's infested this race, and many of us have deplored it. But reality is multifaceted. While Sen. Clinton has faced bigotry, so has her opponent. [...] Clinton's losing for a number of reasons, including sexism. But let's not forget, she was decisively leading in Democratic polls a few months ago -- and she was a woman then, too. Is her drop in approval a sign of sexism? Are Democrats that responsive to Chris Matthews or Fox News? Or isn't it more likely that voters have responded to her political choices? As for the media, coverage of Sen. Clinton's private life has often been sexist while the Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright coverage has verged on racist. Both Clinton and Obama have struggled against prejudice during this campaign, and both of them have led the way for others that will follow. Neither is a victim, and both are pioneers."

CLINTON II: Would A Million Dollars Change Your Mind, Young Dems?

The Huffington Post's Nico Pitney and Sam Stein report that "Haim Saban, the billionaire entertainment magnate and longtime Clinton supporter," offered $1M to the Young Dems of America "during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization's two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse [Clinton]":

"[Saban] denied the allegation. But four independent sources said that just before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Saban called YDA President David Hardt and offered what was perceived as a lucrative proposal: $1 million would be made available for the group if Hardt and the organization's other uncommitted superdelegate backed Clinton. [...]

Members of the Young Democrats agonized about the potential fallout of Saban's call; his financial offer represented one-third of the group's 2008 budget. Democratic officials and fundraisers were consulted about how to respond, and at times the discussions were 'emotional,' one participant said. 'It is scary for them, Haim is very powerful, he has great influence over donors who give to them.'"

Several liberal bloggers are discussing Pitney and Stein's report:

• Yglesias: "It seems that Haim Saban, a major Clinton donor and also the primary financial backer of Brookings' Middle East policy output, tried to bribe the Young Democrats of America into throwing their superdelegate support to Hillary Clinton. Sleazy, if true, and it certainly seems to be true."
• Ezra Klein: "To be honest, I'm rather surprised that we're not hearing more stories of superdelegates having their arms twisted or being bribed. Still, it's worth noting that Haim Saban, the founder of Brookings' Saban Center for the Invasion of Middle Eastern Nations, tried to bring the financial hammer down on the Young Democrats of America. They stood tall behind the pro-Obama consensus of their membership, but as Sam Stein and Nico Pitney report, they were scared shitless. Way to cultivate the youth, guys!"
• Oliver Willis: "This isn't the first time the swells have tried to hurl their money around. Just a few months ago they were purporting to tell Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi how to do her job because she stated facts unfavorable to Clinton."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Reinventing The GOP Brand

Open Left's Chris Bowers denounces "John McCain's Sham Progressive Campaign":

"Check out the last twelve posts on John McCain's campaign blog, which account for all content on McCain's blog over the past month:

1. McCain on Saturday Night Live
2. McCain launches eco-friendly store
3. McCain tackles climate change
4. McCain, his mother, and Katie Couric
5. John McCain on The Daily Show
6. McCain loves his mother
7. McCain celebrates Cinco de Mayo
8. McCain health care town hall
9. McCain offers health care solutions
10. McCain will lower health care costs, and make it available to everyone
11. John McCain visits the 9th Ward in New Orleans
12. John McCain in Selma, Alabama, honoring civil rights

These twelve articles cumulatively paint a shocking fraudulent image of John McCain as a hip progressive. He appears on cool, supposedly center-left media, like SNL and The Daily Show. He is in with Latinos and African-Americans, honoring their holidays and memorials. He loves this mother and Katie Couric. He cares about the environment and global climate change. He will lower the cost of health care and make it available to everyone. The blog messaging is 100% progressive. [...] A huge fraud is being perpetuated in this campaign, strongly reminiscent of Bush's 2000 'compassionate conservative' campaign. The inability of the nation...to recognize it as such is extremely disturbing, depressing, and frightening."

LEST WE FORGET: The New 90210

The Hater's Amelie Gillette:

"A few months ago the CW ran out of ideas and announced their plans to remake Beverly Hills: 90210, and ever since then two questions have reverberated in America's collective mind, namely: 'What?' and 'Why?' Well, today we got an answer to at least one of those questions in the form of a promo for the new 90210. According to the trailer, the CW's 90210 is going to be a choppy melange of people walking down hallways, dark rooms illuminated by solitary spotlights, shoelaces worn as headbands, pool lounging, and run-of-the-mill high school stock characters, all shot in early-90s seizure-vision.

I hope that this 90210 follows in the original 90210's footsteps and kills off at least one boring character in a trendy, hot-button issue, PSA-worthy way. Beverly Hills: 90210 had Scott accidentally shoot himself with his parents' loaded gun in order to teach teens about gun safety. Maybe 90210 can have Silver (and her headband) murdered by a guy who friended her on Facebook for a lesson about online safety, or Navid -- his iPhone in hand -- can perish after crashing his car into a wall as a warning about texting while driving, or maybe Ethan can be pummeled to death by reality television, as a lesson about watching The Real World. Only time will tell."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:04 PM

May 19, 2008

5/19: The Mac's Back In The Spotlight

We observed on Friday that it feels like the general election is already upon us. That trend continues today, as lefty bloggers (excepting certain Hillary Clinton supporters) direct most of their fire at John McCain and righty bloggers direct most of their fire at Barack Obama. Liberal bloggers are buzzing about McCain's recent lobbyist purge and are calling on McCain to fire his senior adviser Charlie Black due to his past lobbying work for controversial foreign leaders. Liberal bloggers are also repeating their call for Cindy McCain to release her tax returns.

Now that the Obama-Clinton race is receding into the background, McCain is receiving more scrutiny and conservative bloggers are playing more defense. For instance, several righty bloggers are currently trying to rebut ex-State Dept. official James Rubin's charge that McCain changed his position on Hamas. However, conservative bloggers continue to play aggressive offense when it comes to Obama's foreign policy views, which Hugh Hewitt describes as "full-throated appeasement."

MCCAIN: A Growing Lobbyist Problem?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about the news that ex-TX Rep. Tom Loeffler stepped down from his position as McCain's nat'l finance co-chair due to his lobbying ties. The Washington Post's Michael D. Shear reports that Loeffler "is the fifth person to sever ties with the campaign amid a growing concern over whether lobbyists have too great an influence over the Republican nominee."

• Firedoglake's Cliff Schecter: "Another McCain lobbyist bites the dust...This is going to be a huge vulnerability for the 'reformer,' as his campaign is swimming with lobbyists with all sorts of sordid ties."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "For a guy who prides himself on straight talk and not being swayed by the evils of money or lobbyists, John McCain sure seems to have a whole bunch of lobbyist friends and a lot of lobbyists working for him."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "The McCain campaign is trying to minimize the damage of these dismissals by instituting a new 'conflict-of-interest' policy. However, I think that this policy will probably hurt McCain more than it will help it. This is because the policy was clearly only instituted as a political move since, if McCain really cared about these lobbying connections, then it would be the sort of policy the campaign put in place when it started. Unlike [John] Edwards and Obama, who put far more restrictive policies in place at the start of their campaigns, the McCain camp only put their policy in place once they realized these repeated dismissals would make a laughingstock out of McCain's image as a maverick reformer. As such, not only will this policy be seen for what it is, a transparent political move, it will force McCain to keep firing many more aides as these lobbyist connections keep appearing."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen wonders why McCain didn't investigate his staff's lobbying ties earlier: "That the McCain campaign thought it would be wise to bring in high-priced Washington lobbyists to run the entire operation is bizarre. It's considerably worse, however, that neither McCain nor anyone around him thought about checking to see who these lobbyists worked for before they took over the campaign operation. For a candidate running as a less incompetent version of [George W.] Bush, these stories really aren't helping."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum thinks McCain knew that these staffers were lobbyists: "The press is reporting this as if it's just one embarrassment for McCain after another that he keeps finding out he's got lobbyists working for him, but that's not the story here. The real story is that McCain obviously knew these guys were lobbyists long before anyone pointed it out to him. You don't hire the CEO of the DCI group without knowing that the guy is a lobbyist. Only a child would believe that McCain didn't know who these guys were when he hired them."

MCCAIN II: Fade To Black

Liberal bloggers are pressuring McCain to fire his senior adviser Charlie Black due to Black's lobbying work for various controversial foreign leaders, including ex-dictator of Zaire Mobutu Sese Seko and ex-Iraqi oil minister Ahmed Chalabi:

• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "When is McCain going to fire Charlie Black? Or is Black's work for brutal regimes okay?"
• MyDD's J Ro: "Black made millions burnishing the images of these evil men, selling them as worthy allies for Washington politicians to befriend. John McCain has repeatedly said to judge him by the company he keeps. This is the company he keeps. McCain needs to fire the men who take money from dictators. Sign the petition and tell him so (and cause his campaign more than a little bit of trouble in the process). Six lobbyists down...dozens more to go?"
• Benen: "The irony [is] that ol' Charlie was on Fox News this week blasting Obama for his willingness to meet with unsavory characters who run rival nations. Black hasn't just met with a motley international crew; he's represented them as their lobbyists and cashed quite a few of their checks. [...] If McCain is serious about cleaning up his house, and getting his internal lobbying mess straightened out, Black is going to have to go."

Liberal bloggers aren't buying Black's defense of his lobbying work for these unsavory characters, which he justifies by asserting that he never took on any work "without first talking to the State Department and the White House and clearing with them that the work would be in the interest of U.S. foreign policy":

• The New Republic's Christopher Orr: "Claiming that you only worked for dictators the U.S. government liked is not much of a defense when a central part of your job was convincing the U.S. government to like them. It's a little like saying, yes, I made a ton of money defending a series of murderous mafiosi -- but remember, I always quit working for them once they were convicted."
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "The fact that Black ran his contracts by the federal government does not answer the moral questions they raise. It does show that he did not sell out US interests, as those interests were defined by whoever held power. It does not show that there was nothing wrong with trying to win US government support for a possible Iranian agent who was trying to lead us into war (Chalabi); two of the greatest kleptocrats in recent history, who robbed their countries blind and immiserated their people (Mobutu and [ex-Philippine President Ferdinand] Marcos); or a sociopath ([ex-Angolan rebel Jonas] Savimbi) who plunged his country into civil war, scattered millions of land mines across the country, targeted food supplies, health clinics, and schools, and was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. 'I ran it by the White House first' doesn't begin to cover that one."

MCCAIN III: Cindy McRich

As the focus on McCain's lobbyist connections grows, liberal bloggers are increasingly discussing Cindy McCain's wealth and calling on her to release her tax returns:

• Daily Kos' smintheus: "Cindy McCain, who still refuses to release her tax returns, is operating at a whole different level than most of us. [...] As the NY Times revealed last month, Cindy McCain has donated the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars to her husband's campaign by giving him her corporate jet to use at cut-rate prices. [...] Funny thing about that, it's McCain's own legislation that permits his wife to donate to his campaign the corporate jet service worth about $1 million. [...] Clearly John McCain is unashamed to have had his hypocrisy on campaign-finance 'reform' exposed so starkly. The McCains are well beyond the ordinary ethics that the rest of us bring to civic life."
• Sudbay: "Yesterday, McCain made a big deal out of stopping at a gun shop in West Virginia to show that he's just a regular guy -- a man of the people. He even bought some fishing gear. [...But] real people who fish don't have private artificial lakes on their 10-acre estates. Real people don't have lakes built for them on their estates. [...] McCain and Cindy are very, very, very rich people. Very rich. When you own nine homes (or is it ten?), you're among the elite, no matter how you cut it. Really makes you wonder what is Cindy McCain hiding in her tax returns."
• Oliver Willis: "John and Cindy McCain have a ten acre estate with their own private lake. Those are the spoils of a quarter century in Washington and why McCain hides his wealth behind Cindy McCain's skirt."

MCCAIN IV: Righty Bloggers Fight Back

Conservative bloggers are criticizing ex-State Dept. official James Rubin's Washington Post op-ed, in which Rubin argues that "McCain Was for Talking [To Hamas] Before He Was Against It":

• RedState's absentee: "As Soren Dayton noted earlier the story is a lot of hogwash, which the editors of the Washington Post let squeak right onto the page, either with no oversight, or worse, with oversight. Obviously Senator McCain's position remains now as it was then, no unconditional meetings with Hamas. Well now the full video is available and Rubin's creative editing exposed. [...] The editors have failed in their job. They've allowed this deliberate, lying hack job onto the page and demeaned the paper. Write to them now, and demand a retraction. Public, and with lots of mea culpa goodness."
• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "It turns out that [Rubin's] quote wasn't exactly the whole story. In fact, it seems to have been, shall we say, selectively quoted. As I noted earlier, the McCain campaign said that pre-conditions must be met before McCain would meet with Hamas. The video the liberals put out only showed part of McCain's response. The video below shows that McCain has always contended he would negotiate with Hamas only after they ['renounce(d) this commitment to the extinction of the state of Israel']."

Meanwhile, Rubin defends himself on the Huffington Post: "The question and answer I released yesterday was a full question and a full answer. Nothing was left out of the question or the answer. Nothing is taken out of context. But in order to avoid further controversy and distraction, I have dug out what I believe to be all of the discussion on Hamas during our interview. [...] As you can see, there is no conditionality in any of his answers. Nowhere does he say what Senator Clinton and Senator Obama say: that is, Hamas has to renounce terrorism, recognize Israel and accept the previous agreements of the Palestinian authority before we could deal with them. Instead, Senator McCain is talking about engagement with Hamas and how it could come about. [...] So I say to the McCain campaign, just admit the truth, either he made a mistake or he changed his mind, then let us return to debating the issues as Americans."

MCCAIN V: Righty Bloggers Fight Back (Again)

Conservative bloggers are criticizing IA Sen. Tom Harkin for comments he recently made about McCain:

"...McCain's family background as the son and grandson of admirals has given him a worldview shaped by the military, 'and he has a hard time thinking beyond that,' Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Ia., said Friday.

'I think he's trapped in that,' Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. 'Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.'

Harkin said that 'it's one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just how you're steeped, how you've learned, how you've grown up.'"

• Glenn Reynolds: "It seems like every election cycle, fake war hero Tom Harkin reappears with this stuff."
• RedState's Jeff Emanuel: "As demonstrated by the choreographed spectacle of John Kerry's 'Reporting for Duty!' at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, military service is something that is valued by those currently opposing it when it appears to be advantage, as many on the Left saw John Kerry's four years in the Navy when running against Air National Guard veteran George W. Bush. When it all comes down to it, this is about the Democrats testing the waters on this particular line of attack against a man with over thirty years of service in the Navy who is running to be a wartime President. As with the reverse attempt four years ago, when prior wartime service was portrayed as one of the most valuable attributes a potential president could possess, this line will most likely be a loser as well."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "According to Tom Harkin, a man who served his country for decades in the military and follows a family tradition of service must be feared rather than respected. [...] This comes, of course, from the same party whose Senate Intelligence chair suggested that military pilots have little human feeling. It precedes an effort by the New York Times tomorrow, along with some of McCain's oh-so-courageous unnamed Senate colleagues, to suggest that McCain didn't really experience Vietnam because his five-plus years as a POW kept him from learning all of the lessons John Kerry experienced in his three months in a Swift Boat. [...] If the Democrats want to party like it's 1968, that's their choice. The rest of America grew up. People stopped drinking the New Left Kool-aid a long time ago and quit treating veterans like baby-killers and Dr. Strangelove."

MCCAIN VI: So Much For That Veep Spot, Huck!

Conservative bloggers have never liked Mike Huckabee, and many think that his joke about an NRA conference attendee pointing a gun at Obama will disqualify him from VP consideration:

• Michelle Malkin: "Confirmed: Huckabee is an idiot. Textbook case of shooting yourself in the foot. Bye-bye, VP slot."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Mike Huckabee had the brain fart to end all brain farts when he made a joke about someone pointing a gun at Obama at the NRA convention. [...] A momentary lapse of the tongue shouldn't be enough to keep someone off the ticket, but it probably will be enough. A McCain selection of Huckabee in a race against Obama would get this joke played and replayed about as often as 'macaca.'"
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "I don't think there was any malice on Huckabee's part when he made his Obama gaffe. But I do think it shows spectactularly poor judgment and the potential for some [Dan] Quayle-ian moments should he get the vice presidential nod."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Yes, it was a joke. Yes, it seemed unscripted. But one never, ever, ever jokes about the possibility of a rival (or anyone, for that matter) being assassinated. Especially when many genuinely fear for that candidate's safety because of his race. Such a remark isn't just wrong and graceless. It's downright dumb. Huckabee owes Barack, his supporters -- and, for that matter -- John McCain an apology. Geez. With friends like Huckabee, neither Republicans nor gun owners need adversaries."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "[Huckabee's joke was] stupid, and doubtless [will] receive plenty of attention since it's useful to so many groups. The left will use it as a Larger Truth about the NRA; the media will use it to find some racial subtext that isn't actually there; and righteous conservative bloggers will use it to gently suggest that perhaps Huck isn't VP material. Way to help gun owners shed those stereotypes of being reckless and/or deranged, though."

OBAMA: You're Not Scared Of Iran? Well, You Should Be!

Conservative bloggers are slamming Obama for making the following statement at an OR rally:

"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us...Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."

• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "[Obama] seems not much concerned about Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorist organizations, its commitment to eradicate Israel, its current actions in supplying weapons that have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, and its role in eroding Lebanon's sovereignty through its client Hezbollah. And then there is is unbridled faith in diplomacy, unaffected by the lessons of history. Was it presidential visits with the Soviet Union that brought down the Berlin Wall?"
• Townhall's Hewitt: "Has Obama read even one book on the mullahs and their record of terror and their ambitions for the region and their plans for Israel? Is he aware that Iran is killing American soldiers and Marines? Obama expects people to take his support for Israel's security seriously, and then declares that Iran isn't a serious threat? This is indeed full-throated appeasement, the refusal to face facts about malign forces in the world and the repeated attempt to negotiate with powers that do not want anything except additional domination and which cannot be satisfied with other than conflict."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "Barack Obama is stupid or willfully ignorant. Iran will never attack us directly. They cannot. But they will attack us with a thousand cuts through many shadowy surrogates hoping we bleed to death. And if Obama is our President, we probably will."
• Morrissey: "This speech reveals Obama to have no grasp of history, no grasp of strategic implications of a nuclear Iran, and no clue how to secure the nation and handle foreign policy."
• The Weekly Standard's Dean Barnett: "Can it be that the presumptive Democratic nominee missed all that talk about asymmetrical forces and the threats they pose earlier in the decade? If so, perhaps he still noticed 9/11. Al Qaeda spent a lot less than '1/100th of what we spend' on what could be called military operations, and yet most people concluded after the World Trade Center Towers crumbled that even with a relatively lean budget, Al Qaeda did in fact pose a 'serious threat' to us."

CLINTON: Why's She Losing? It's The War, Stupid!

Several liberal bloggers are arguing that Clinton's support of the Iraq War was a major (and underappreciated) reason that she now finds herself on the brink of defeat:

• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "Lots of interesting material in Michelle Cottle's notebook dump on what various Clintonistas think the campaign did wrong. [...] It's fascinating to me that nobody mentioned the war. Clinton supported the war. In retrospect, the war was a terrible idea. Her support for it was a mistake. What's more, it's inconceivable to me that Obama's campaign could have gotten off the ground had Clinton spent 2002 and 2003 as a lonely liberal voice speaking out against the war, then spent 2005 and 2006 being completely vindicated in her judgment. It's not just that Obama wouldn't have beaten her, he wouldn't have run at all -- it would have been preposterous. [...] But Clinton's error on the war opened up serious doubts about her substantive and political judgment about one of the highest-profile issues of the moment. In many ways it's a testament to how brilliant her campaign was all throughout 2007 and 2008 that they never allowed the war issue to bury her, considering that an overwhelming majority of Democratic primary voters think she made a mistake."
• Atrios: "As Yglesias says, the lack of any mention of Iraq in the Clinton campaign post-mortem is a bit odd. More than that, I think the general dismissive tone of the campaign regarding Obama simply 'giving speeches' against the war suggests a tremendous misreading of the Democratic primary population. One power politicians have is to persuade, and it would have been nice if more of them had been giving speeches opposing the Iraq war back in the day instead of voting to give the president the authority to go destroy a country. 2002-03 was a very bad time for this country. It was a nation gone mad, and politicians directed that madness towards Iraq. For the most part our elites completely failed us. Dismissing those who in some small ways opposed this war while you, in a position of power, enabled it to happen is a slap in the face to a group of people who have been slapped quite a bit lately."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Holding His Ground?

Yglesias thinks Obama is winning the national security debate:

"Mike Tomasky has a good column about how Barack Obama's changing the game in the U.S. foreign policy debate, holding his ground and fighting and it seems to be working. One thing I'll note about this is that while it may not be true that 99 percent of life is just showing up, Obama's been showing us that showing up is a lot of it. There's nothing really shockingly novel about what he's been saying, it's just that as someone who's genuinely untainted by the failures of the past seven years he stands up and labels attacks on him continuities with the failures of the past seven years.

It's not that clever, but it doesn't need to be any more clever than that. George Bush has already handed the other side a huge dump of ammunition. And now there's a candidate who's ready to pick it up off the floor and shoot back. Shoot back, I might add, on point without shifting targets to the economy or veterans' benefits or whatever else."

LEST WE FORGET: McCain's Advice To Dems

During his Saturday Night Live appearance, McCain joined Seth Myers and Amy Poehler on "Weekend Update" (h/t Nicole Belle, who also has video):

McCain: I'd like to begin tonight by thanking Republican voters. We're gearing up for one of the most pivotal elections in this nation's history. And I'm honored to be part of it. But I also want to speak to Democrats. I know we don't see eye to eye on every issue, but I also believe we respect one another. That's why I want to give to you this piece of advice: Democrats, I have to urge you -- do not, under any circumstances, pick a candidate too soon.
Myers: Oh, so you don't think Hillary should drop out.
McCain: Absolutely not.
Poehler: I told you.
Myers: Cool it.
Poehler: You cool it.
McCain: That's right, fight amongst yourselves.

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 01:02 PM

May 16, 2008

5/16: Foreign Policy In Focus

The Dem primary may still be going on, but it sure feels like the general election has begun. Liberal bloggers are hammering President George W. Bush for his speech to Israel's parliament, in which he accused Barack Obama of favoring "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way that some Western politicians wanted to appease Adolf Hitler. Liberal bloggers are also criticizing John McCain for agreeing with Bush's remarks, and they're delighted that prominent Dems (including Hillary Clinton) are defending the party's presumptive nominee. Conservative bloggers, of course, are arguing that Bush's criticisms were accurate and that Obama's foreign policy views are "foolish".

Liberal bloggers aren't just defending Obama, however; they're also launching their own attacks on McCain. The netroots are slamming McCain for predicting (among other things) that American combat involvement in Iraq will be over by the end of his first term, which they consider an "unadulterated fantasy". They're also accusing McCain of changing his position on meeting with Hamas. Foreign policy, it seems, has returned to the forefront of this year's presidential campaign. But will it remain there? And if so, which candidate will benefit?

DEM FIELD: Obama Veepstakes

Open Left's Paul Rosenberg thinks Obama should choose John Edwards as his running mate: "By choosing Edwards as his running mate -- and thus balancing his ticket with someone who can appeal to the core white working-class demographic that has been Clinton's base of support -- Obama can in fact reinforce what he is all about. [...] Edwards [could] be both a 'balancing' and a 'reinforcing' candidate, and the end result would be a much more robust model of just what it is that Obama stands for -- which is why it would be such a potent, powerful move on Obama's part."

Pro-Clinton bloggers think Obama should choose Clinton, not Edwards:

• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "Setting aside the rather, to put it mildly, rosy expectations regarding Edwards' appeal, isn't there something missing from Paul [Rosenberg]'s discussion? Yep, that's right -- Hillary Clinton and her supporters. [...] Hillary Clinton is viewed as having NO appeal with voters. It is rather funny when you compare it to the high regard that Paul has for Edwards' supposed appeal to voters. The more I read from Obama bloggers and the Creative Class, the more I become convinced that driving the Clinton wing of the Dem Party out is one of their primary goals. I hold to my view that the Obama Wing of the Democratic Party needs to decide what is more important to them, winning in November, or destroying the Clinton Wing of the Democratic Party. I doubt they can do both."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Today on Hardball, there was more fawning over how great John Edwards and Barack Obama looked on the stage together yesterday, the point, of course, being that they're a ticket made in heaven. I have to agree they did look great but so did John Kerry and John Edwards four years ago and we all know how well that worked out. The truth is, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton looked perfect together too once upon a time, but the quintessential Dream Ticket image of them standing on the stage together after the Los Angeles debate has been overshadowed by the tension of the race between them that's ensued since then, not to mention the most recent debate, which was anything but a showcase of unity. [...] My real point here is that in fact, as great a guy and a candidate John Edwards is and was, he has in no way demonstrated that he would somehow be the key to the white working class vote. [...] In fact, Hillary Clinton didn't exactly blow Obama away on this measure either that early in the game but as we've seen in the most recent contests, the game has changed."
• Taylor Marsh: "What would an Edwards vice presidency say to all of Hillary's millions and millions of women? I won't print the answer on this blog, but it begins with 'f' and ends with you. Oh, and for the record, Claire McCaskill, Kathleen Sebelius nor Janet Napolitano will do. Ask a Clinton supporter ready to cast a protest vote for McCain. She'll tell you. [...] Clinton supporters who are threatening a protest vote for John McCain are large in number, many of whom are regulars on this blog and in the comment section, with hundreds of emails from lurkers to me every day saying they will not vote for Obama if he's the nominee. The disrespect for Hillary Clinton has been too wide and too deep in the Democratic Party, and they're not going to support it anymore. [...] Memo to the Democratic leadership elite: Consider yourselves on notice. Hell hath no fury. Believe it."

Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas, an Obama supporter, mocks Clinton supporters who argue that Obama must pick Clinton as his running mate: "Hillary Clinton for VP. She's earned it! Sure, she brings nothing to the ticket geographically, and offers nothing demographically that can't be offered by anyone else, but it's her or nothing! If you do the math, adding them up together makes them an invincible 'dream team', even though we believe Obama is sexist and hasn't crossed the 'commander in chief threshold'. The superdelegates better force this on Obama! If she doesn't get the vice-presidential nomination, we walk!"

OBAMA: Bushwhacked

Liberal bloggers are slamming Bush for accusing Obama of wanting "appeasement" of terrorists in the same way that some Western politicians wanted to appease Hitler. Bloggers are particularly furious that Bush made these statements while speaking to Israel's parliament:

"'Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,' Bush said at Israel's 60th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem.

'We have heard this foolish delusion before,' Bush said in remarks to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. 'As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.'"

• The Huffington Post: "President Bush has said repeatedly that he would not insert himself into the presidential race, but that stance changed dramatically today during his trip to Israel. After likening Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Osama bin Laden, Bush compared Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "The president attacked Sen. Obama as a terrorist coddler on the order of the late 30s Nazi-appeasers in a speech before the Israeli Knesset. As the president who's probably done more to damage this country than any in 150 years, I can't say I'm exactly surprised that he'd do this. But it really was disgusting, even for him."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Wow. Losing a congressional race in Mississippi and being the most hated president in American history makes a guy say crazy things. Not to mention, John McCain must be in real trouble if Bush had to stoop this low to help him. This is so inappropriate in so many ways. [...] I'm hoping the [Anti-Defamation League], which always weighs in when Democrats say such things, will be blasting our president for invoking Hitler in our presidential race. Not to mention, doing it in Israel? How tacky can you get."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "If you're a conservative and your ideas make no sense, then your opponents must be Neville Chamberlain. [...] To hawks, it's always 1939, every foreigner we don't like is a new Hitler, and preventive war is always the only solution. Bush and McCain truly are the ideological descendants of the folks who urged [Dwight] Eisenhower to go for 'rollback' and who insisted that Ronald Reagan betrayed the true path when he sat down with [Mikhail] Gorbachev for arms control talks."
• Firedoglake's emptywheel notes that Bush's grandfother, ex-CT Sen. Prescott Bush, had financial ties to Hitler supporters: "Boy, George Bush must not have liked his Granddaddy Prescott very much. [...] Or maybe it's just negotiating with Nazis that's the problem -- making tons of dough by serving as their banker? The Bush family doesn't appear to have any problem with that. [...] If we had a press corps with any historical memory, I guess, such a statement might get Bush in trouble (not to mention make it difficult for his hosts who invited a lame duck grandson of a banker to the Nazis to speak to the Knesset). But instead they're likely to focus on the false claim that Obama wants to appease Hamas."

Meanwhile, Daily Kos' DemFromCT thinks Bush's attack helps Obama: "Bush just did his Great Uniter bit to help unite everyone in the Democratic party behind Obama."

OBAMA II: Is Hillary Back On The Team?

Clinton chastised Bush for his remarks:

"President Bush's comparison of any Democrat to Nazi appeasers is both offensive and outrageous on the face of it, especially in light of his failures in foreign policy. This is the kind of statement that has no place in any presidential address and certainly to use an important moment like the 60th anniversary celebration of Israel to make a political point seems terribly misplaced. Unfortunately, this is what we've come to expect from President Bush."

Daily Kos' Scout Finch was pleased by Clinton's response: "Isn't that nice? Democrats attacking Republicans instead of each other? Is that the light at the end of the tunnel? Let's hope that Senator Clinton will continue to coalesce around Senator Obama and exit the race in a graceful fashion. It's time to heal our primary wounds and get busy attacking the entire Republican machine that has taken this country so far off track. If her comments today were any indication, she's ready to do just that...and not a moment too soon."

Several Clinton supporters and pro-Clinton bloggers also defended Obama:

• Clinton adviser Paul Begala criticized Bush in a Huffington Post diary: "George W. Bush is unworthy of the presidency. He is a disgrace to himself, our Nation, and the high office he holds. In a speech to the Israeli Knesset on Thursday, Mr. Bush forfeited the last scraps of his moral authority, dishonoring himself by using one of the world's most important pulpits to launch a false and vicious political attack against Barack Obama. [...] It is especially appalling to supporters of Israel that Mr. Bush would stand on a hilltop in Jerusalem to invoke the Holocaust in order to make a cheap and deeply dishonest political point. [...] As an American I am ashamed that such a man represents me. I say this as someone who has not supported Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries; someone who has reservations about Sen. Obama's plan to engage Iran in talks without any preconditions. But there comes a time when intra-party rivalries must yield, and all of us must stand together against the degradation of the Office of the Presidency."
• Big Tent Democrat: "There is a famous truism that politics ends at the waters' edge. George W. Bush trampled that much trumpeted principle to engage in a vile McCarthyistic attack on Barack Obama before the Israeli Knesset. Not only is George W. Bush the worst President in history, he is the most tasteless and disgusting. What a shameful episode for our Nation that this travesty of a President was elected to the highest office in our land. He will always remain a stain in our history."

OBAMA III: Bush Was Right!

Conservative bloggers are defending Bush's remarks and criticizing Obama (as well as Dems more generally):

• The Weekly Standard's William Kristol: "Barack Obama is upset at this statement by President Bush. Why? What does he disagree with? Shouldn't he just have seconded the president's admonition against falling for such a foolish delusion? Or does he know that his promise to talk with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad puts him in the camp of the foolish delusionists?"
• Townhall's Michael Medved: "Hasn't Barack Obama specifically suggested face-to-face negotiations with iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? And isn't Ahmadine-wack job a 'terrorist and radical?' If Iran is the world's leading supporter of terrorism (and it proudly is) doesn't that make the president a terrorist? And even if you resist the idea of classifying the President of Iran as a 'terrorist,' surely he counts as a radical, doesn't he? In what sense, then is, [Bush's statement] a 'false attack'?
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "[Bush]'s relatively banal statement -- banal because it has been repeated in some form or another by Western leaders ever since it became indubitably clear that Neville Chamberlain did not quite have things right at Munich -- has caused people to lose their ever-loving minds. [...] I'm gobsmacked at the idea that an issue should have even been made of this speech. The only thing this furious nonsense has done is to make clear to the McCain people that Team Obama can be easily rattled and made to -- dare I write it? -- lose its bearings."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "If you're upset that America's president opposes negotiating with terrorists and radicals, looks like you've found your party. Vote Democrat -- they apparently agree with you. That's the difference in a nutshell: Democrats are willing to talk to the terrorists; Republicans want to defeat them."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "Obama's reference to former presidents by way of defending his plan to negotate with Iran is unpersuasive. Past presidents negotiated with the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, but this is not the same thing as negotiating with a state like Iran that sponsors terrorism against both Israel and the U.S. Neither [John F.] Kennedy nor [Richard] Nixon did any such thing. It's true that President Reagan made overtures to Iran (arms for hostages and all that), but for this he was widely and properly condemned. It was perhaps Reagan's worst moment. It's also unprecedented, I believe, for a president to negotiate with an enemy state without pre-conditions, as Obama has promised to do, in order to persuade the world, as Obama puts it, that we aren't 'arrogant.' Even Hillary Clinton draws the line here. Obama's claim that his diplomacy with terrorist-sponsoring states will be 'tough' rings hollow when a purpose of the negotiations is to persuade the world that we've changed and now are suitably humble."
• AmSpec Blog's Quin Hillyer: "Look, it is absolutely clear that President Bush never mentioned Obama's name. The fact that Obama and his 'Praise be to Obama' chorus ([Sen. Joe] Biden, [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, etc.) reacted so strongly shows that they KNOW that the description of 'appeaser' applies to him anyway, and that he is quite vulnerable on this count. Without their heated response, the general public would not have directly associated Obama with Bush's remarks -- but now most voters paying attention will have an indelible impression in their minds that Obama = Appeaser. As well they should. Obama's calls for direct talks with Ahmadinejad are spectacularly irresponsible."

MCCAIN: McCain And Bush, Birds Of A Feather

Liberal bloggers are also slamming McCain for agreeing with Bush's remarks on appeasement:

"Senator John McCain, who has been critical of President Bush on the environment and other policies this week, on Thursday morning wholeheartedly endorsed Mr. Bush's veiled rebuke in the Israeli Knesset of Senator Barack Obama that talking to 'terrorists and radicals' was no different than appeasing Hitler and the Nazis. [...]

Asked if he thought Mr. Obama was an appeaser -- the Democratic candidate has said he would be willing to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran -- Mr. McCain sidestepped and said, 'I think that Barack Obama needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terrorism, that is responsible for the killing of brave young Americans, that wants to wipe Israel off the map, who denies the Holocaust. That's what I think Senator Obama ought to explain to the American people.'"

• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "It's only May, McCain is slipping further and further into the gutter. It's nothing short of disgraceful. It's hard to overstate how pathetic Bush's and McCain's conduct is on this. It's treacherous political slander at its most obvious. If, eight years ago, Bill Clinton traveled to foreign soil to take cheap and ridiculous shots at the Republican nominee during the presidential campaign, the right would be apoplectic. If Al Gore had quickly endorsed Clinton's attacks, we would never hear the end of it. And yet, that's exactly the dynamic we see playing out this morning."

Several bloggers are criticizing McCain's opposition to meeting with unfriendly foreign heads of state:

• Yglesias: "Not only did George W. Bush decide to take the basically unprecedented step of lashing out at his domestic political opponents in a speech to a foreign parliament, but John McCain chimed in to say he agrees with Bush. He busted out the frequently heard idea that 'serious negotiations' that are 'done in a face to face fashion as Senator Obama wants to do' is a step that 'enhances the prestige of a nation that's a sponsor of terrorists' and sundry other evils. This is such a common talking point on the right that you'd think that somewhere out there you could find some kind of causal explanation of how this works. Obama takes office. The Iranians, having heard his campaign rhetoric, send a message through the Swiss or something about the possibility of arranging a summit. Our guys talk to their guys, the meeting happens, and this gives [Mohammad] Khatami enhanced prestige in the eyes of whom? And what does this enhanced prestige allow him to do? What, in other words, are we afraid of?"
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "I'd go even a step further and ask why John McCain is afraid to speak with Iran. What is it about Iran that scares McCain so much? Or is it that McCain believes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei are so crafty that they would trick an American President into inadvertently ceding the state of Maine or American Samoa to Iran? Or alternatively, is it that McCain simply does not know how to act in a manner different from his true political role model, George W. Bush? America shows its strength by being part of the world, not receding from it. If there is any lesson to learn from the period between the two world wars it is exactly that -- it is entirely counterproductive for America to turn inward and be afraid to engage with the world in a meaningful way. But when America is willing to speak with unfriendly nations from a position of strength -- whether President Kennedy speaking with Premier [Nikita] Kruschev, President Nixon speaking with Chairman Mao [Zedong] or President Reagan speaking with Premier Gorbachev, to take three examples -- both America and the world more broadly can reap serious benefits."
• Marshall: "Pres. Bush and Sen. McCain must be terribly illiterate of our history or extremely cowardly to compare the current president of Iran (who helps govern a country with a tanked economy and a third or fourth rate military) to Adolf Hilter who had regrouped and tossed the restraints from what was the greatest military, scientific and economic powerhouse in Europe."

Meanwhile, The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum thinks McCain's remarks were politically stupid: "Democrats are going to do everything they can to promote the 'McBush' meme this year, and diving in feet first to say 'Me too!' when Bush hauls out artillery like this is just going to make their job easier. If McCain wants to sign on with Mr. 28%, who are we to complain?"

MCCAIN II: So Hamas Isn't Always Off-Limits...

Liberal bloggers are accusing McCain of hypocrisy after it was revealed that McCain had "expressed a willingness to negotiate with the terrorist group Hamas" during a 2005 interview with ex-State Dept. official James Rubin. Rubin describes the exchange in an op-ed in today's Washington Post (The Huffington Post also has video of the exchange):

"I asked: 'Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?'

McCain answered: 'They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so...but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.'"

• Singer: "On the issue of Hamas, in particular, because this exchange between Rubin and McCain was caught on tape and it isn't ancient history (just three years ago), this line of attack is now off the table for McCain and the hard right. They simply have no credibility on the issue. What's more, by harping on Hamas from here on out, those on the right would only serve to remind Americans (a) that McCain will flip-flop his positions for political convenience, and (b) that McCain was recently in favor of reaching out to Hamas. To this end, it's hard for me to think of anything else that could have emerged on this topic that could have been more detrimental to McCain."
• Aravosis: "[This] would make McCain a McHypocrite for blasting Obama for proposing the EXACT same thing McCain proposed only two years ago. But in all fairness to McCain, nearing the age of 72, maybe he simply can't remember his positions anymore."
• Firedoglake's Attaturk: "A video like this should be pretty damaging to McCain per the Tim Russert rule (there's videotape) -- but can the press actually harm their sainted grill-master by using the truth against him?"
• Drum: "I imagine that McCain will wriggle out of this somehow. Maybe by claiming that 'sooner or later' means, um, later. Or that 'deal with them' doesn't include actually talking to them. Or something. But it sure sounds as if he was in favor of talking to Hamas before he was opposed to it."

As Drum predicted, conservative bloggers are denying that McCain expressed a willingness to negotiate with Hamas:

• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "'Deal with them, one way or another' doesn't mean cutting deals with them; it means acknowledging their presence in the situation. [...] The context here is crystal clear. McCain envisioned a possible change in Hamas from a terrorist group to a legitimate political party, one that recognized Israel and renounced violence. Under those conditions, McCain said that we could engage them in talks designed to establish peace, and only under those conditions."
• RedState's Soren Dayton: "'Deal with' is not the same as 'unconditional' talks at the level of heads of state. The President of Iran says that Israel should be destroyed and their weapons are being used to kill American soldiers. Indeed, yesterday on the blogger call McCain pointed out that [Amb.] Ryan Crocker regularly interacts with Iranians in Baghdad."

MCCAIN III: Hope Is Not A Plan

Liberal bloggers are mocking McCain for predicting that "American combat involvement [in Iraq] will be over and most U.S. troops back home" by the end of his first term as President:

• Benen: "McCain has been Mr. Vague Generalities since the outset of his presidential campaign; today he predicted the end of the war in Iraq within the next four year based on nothing but his own wishful thinking; and he nevertheless feels comfortable lecturing us on the need for candidates to lead 'not with vague language but with clarity.' This is terribly foolish, and frankly, kind of embarrassing for a serious presidential candidate. McCain's vision for the future of Iraq seems almost child-like: 'I'm going to keep doing what Bush has done and hope things get better.' That's his policy."
• TAPPED's Jordan Michael Smith: "A cursory reading of [McCain's] speech shows it has absolutely no substance. A single paragraph is devoted to Iraq and it's just a fantasy of what the country will look like in five years. In McCain's world, five years from now most US troops will be home; Iraq will be stable and democratic; civil war will have been been averted; and violence will be down sharply. There is no explanation of how McCain is going to magically transform the country. [...] It's not a speech, it's a wish list, but even Santa would have trouble delivering on it."
• Arianna Huffington: "[McCain's speech is] pure, unadulterated fantasy. The political equivalent of the trippy tour the Beatles gave us in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds -- only instead of rocking horse people eating marshmallow pies, we have 'professional and competent' Iraq Security Forces and an Iraqi government 'capable of imposing its authority in every province' and 'defending the integrity of its borders.'"
• Yglesias: "I'm really confused as to what's going on in the Iraq section of John McCain's big speech. His rebuttal to the idea that he favors endlessly prolonging a ruinous war is that he hopes things will go much better in the future. [...] No word on whether or not there will be a pony in every garage. I mean, look, presumably when Bush first invaded Iraq he was hoping it would turn out well. When he warned in 2004 that violence would get worse if we left, he was hoping things would get better in 2005. But instead things got worse. Then when he warned in 2005 that if we left there would be civil war, he was presumably hoping that staying would avoid civil war. But it didn't."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Today John McCain gave his own little 'I Have A Dream' speech, predicting that a McCain presidency would mean most of the troops would be home from Iraq by January, 2013. What's this? A terrorist-appeasing timetable from the man who wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years? Not at all, says McCain: 'It's not a timetable; it's victory. It's victory, which I have always predicted. I'm not putting a date on it. It could be next month, it could be next year, it could be three years from now.' Sound familiar? Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq on Febuary 2, 2003: 'It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.'"

Conservative blogger Peter Wehner also thought McCain's speech was unrealistic: "For all I know, the conceit of the speech might work. The approach is certainly intriguing, and even original. And it'll probably get attention, which may be among its chief selling point. But my initial reaction is it doesn't work, at least for me -- perhaps because the speech seemed to cut against one of McCain's more impressive qualities, which is that he is a grounded, clear-eyed, realistic man, not given to wishful thinking."

Meanwhile, Drum accuses McCain of flip-flopping on the issue of troop withdrawal: "Back at the end of January, John McCain's coup de grâce against Mitt Romney was a completely bogus charge that Romney wanted to 'wave a white flag' in Iraq. 'My friends, I was there,' McCain said. 'He said he wanted a timetable for withdrawal.' This was an early indication that McCain was pretty much willing to say and do anything to win the nomination. But that was then and this is now: polls show that Americans overwhelmingly favor a withdrawal from Iraq and McCain wants to win the presidency. Result: in a speech today in Ohio outlining his vision for what he wants the world to look like at the end of his first term, McCain says he'll bring the troops home. [...] His intent is obvious: he wants to let the voting public know that he really, really wants to get out of Iraq soon, just like Barack Obama. It's looking more and more as if everyone's going to be campaigning against the war this year. Welcome aboard, Senator."

MCCAIN IV: Reaching Out To Bloggers Of All Stripes

McCain held another conference call with conservative bloggers yesterday, although this time, the campaign invited several non-conservative bloggers to participate.

TPM's Greg Sargent, a liberal blogger who participated in the conference call, reports that McCain "launched what may be his most direct attack yet on Barack Obama's national security credentials": "In a reference to Obama's declared willingness to meet with the leader of Iran, McCain said: 'I think [it] is an unacceptable position, and shows that Senator Obama does not have the knowledge, the experience, the background to make the kind of judgments that are necessary to preserve this nation's security.' That seems like an unequivocal declaration that Obama is incapable of protecting this country. In the past, McCain has raised doubts about Obama's national security cred, but to our knowledge has never taken the step of declaring outright that he's unfit to defend the country."

Conservative bloggers were impressed with McCain's responses to their questions:

• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "I gotta tell you: McCain sounded good in this teleconference. He trafficked in ideas, he had an appealing vision for the future, and he drew pointed comparisons between what he wanted to do and what Obama wants to do at every opportunity. For all of his flaws, McCain comes across as a tough, experienced leader -- and an unaccomplished empty suit like Barack Obama is really going to come across like a lightweight compared to McCain once people start getting down to brass tacks and making the decision between the two of them."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "John McCain seemed feisty today, even in the face of some somewhat skeptical questions from bloggers."

Michelle Malkin is angry that the McCain camp invited liberal bloggers to participate in the conference call while neglecting to invite her: "The McCain campaign holds weekly blogger conference calls with its candidate. There are many questions I know you'd like asked, but I've never been able to ask them because I haven't been one of the privileged few conservative bloggers allowed into the McCain sanctum to ask those questions for you. Yesterday, I learned that several far left-wing blogs were invited to participate in The Maverick's blogger conference call session. [...] If he's willing to take questions from hostile liberal bloggers, why not take some from conservative bloggers who represent substantial readerships with dissenting views on how best to make this country 'safe, prosperous, and proud?' [...] This is indeed an instructive example of how a McCain White House would run: He'll talk to the far left. He'll talk to 'acceptable' conservatives. But the grass-roots Right? Immigration enforcement proponents? You'll be as out of luck as you would be with Barack Obama in office."

Townhall's Amanda Carpenter disagrees with Malkin: "I'm glad [McCain]'s openly fielding hard-hitting questions from the left and the right and I suspect the outrage from the right is because some are just upset they won't get their 'special time' with McCain all to themselves now. Now, when will Obama be hosting his own calls and how soon can I expect my invitation?"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Obama's Silicon Valley Money Machine

The Atlantic's Joshua Green:

"The Internet was still in its infancy when Bill Clinton last ran for president, in 1996, and most of the immense fortunes had not yet come into being; the emerging tech class had not yet taken shape. So, unlike the magnates in California real estate (Walter Shorenstein), apparel (Esprit founder Susie Tompkins Buell), and entertainment (name your Hollywood celeb), who all had long-established loyalty to the Clintons, the tech community was up for grabs in 2007. In a colossal error of judgment, the Clinton campaign never made a serious approach, assuming that Obama would fade and that lack of money and cutting-edge technology couldn't possibly factor into what was expected to be an easy race. Some of her staff tried to arrange 'prospect meetings' in Silicon Valley, but they were overruled. 'There was massive frustration about not being able to go out there and recruit people,' a Clinton consultant told me last year. As a result, the wealthiest region of the wealthiest state in the nation was left to Barack Obama."

LEST WE FORGET: Bob Gates Speaks His Mind, Loves The Terrorists

Wonkette's Jim Newell:

"What the hell's wrong with Bob Gates, the Defense Secretary no one ever talks about? Recently he's been running his yap with all sorts of liberal Democrat treasonspeak -- just like Barack Obama, a known member of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Weather Underground. Apparently [Gates] *doesn't* want to bomb Iran or Syria, or even France! Not only that, he says it's counterproductive to even consider bombing these countries that need to be bombed.

First, at the Academy of American Diplomacy yesterday, Bobert said that we have missed opportunities to negotiate with Iran. Actual talky-talk! Then he said we need 'leverage' with Iran, rather than just demanding they do shit. Jesus, why don't you just put on yr freaking Turban o'Terror, Bob Gates-Qaeda? [...] Oh but that is nothing compared to what he told the good Americans at the Heritage Foundation a couple of days ago. Guy said that wanting to start new wars is a 'disease.' Well if 'bombing Iran' is what you consider AIDS, Mr. 'Gates,' then consider us HIV-positive! [...]

Would you like a Muslim Latte with your Arugula Salad, Mr. 'I'm Gay And Talk To People'? Perhaps an Ahmadinejad Biscuit, covered in Al-Zawahiri Gravy? A Farrakhan Pot Roast with Obama Carrots?"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:48 PM

May 15, 2008

5/15: Inching Toward A Resolution?

One of the reasons liberal bloggers are excited about John Edwards' surprise endorsement of Barack Obama is that they think it will help bring the Dem primary to "a quick and decisive conclusion". These bloggers believe that if Edwards pushes his delegates toward Obama, then Obama will preserve his delegate lead over Hillary Clinton even if the full FL and MI delegations are seated, thereby giving his victory more legitimacy in the eyes of Clinton supporters. However, it's not clear whether Obama's victory will be viewed as legitimate when both the Clinton camp and pro-Clinton bloggers are asserting that Clinton will finish the race with the popular vote lead.

DEM FIELD: The Netroots Smell Blood

Travis Childers' victory in the MS-01 special election has made liberal bloggers increasingly confident about the Dems' fall prospects:

• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "This business of Travis Childers winning an extremely Republican district on the heels of two other Democratic special election wins drives home how infuriating the idea of even having an extended 'electability' argument about 'who can win' is at this point. The reality is that given current conditions, either Clinton or Obama is very likely to win. [...] The GOP brand is so terrible that it's dragging candidates down in solid red districts, and [John] McCain is currently doing not-so-hot in polling matchups even though Americans are now inundated in unflattering information about Clinton and Obama while most people have never heard sustained from-the-left criticism of McCain."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "I've been arguing for some time that the Democrats were going to win easily in 2008. [Tuesday's] electoral results add more evidence to the trend. Reread my six signs Democrats are going to romp: Voters are paying attention, they like Democrats, they dislike Republicans, they like Obama, they want change, they associate change with Obama, and they don't like McCain the more they meet him."
• Daily Kos' DemFromCT: "The GOP that has always despised and derided John McCain now turns to him as 'savior'. [...] The real interesting trick will be to see how McCain is going to pretend not to be a Republican while Republicans wrap their arms around McCain in a death hug, not merely pretending to like him but pretending to be him. The more they succeed, the more he fails. The more he succeeds, the more they fail. Of course, the odds are that they'll all fail. The bullshit is just too pungent to pretend it's not there, and it isn't the most effective way to sell authenticity and change to a voting public that has rejected the party standard bearer (George W. Bush) as a miserable failure."
• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "Republicans aren't losing to Democrats because Democrats are cleverly disguising themselves as Republicans. Republicans are losing to Democrats because people hate Bush, hate the war, hate the economy, can't afford health care, can't afford gas, and hate Bush. In other words, they are thoroughly rejecting all of the Republican positions on key issues. So even though it's obvious to anyone with half a brain, the GOP will not be able to win in November by screaming 'librul librul librul terra terra Wright [cough! black! cough!] Wright.' But they still don't know it."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "This election cycle could be devastating for Republicans up and down the ticket. And, it will be, once we can get to the real work (meaning after the Clinton ego trip ends.)"

In contrast, MyDD's Jerome Armstrong -- a fierce Clinton supporter -- is pessimistic about Obama's chances: "[This] reminds me of the '76 Republican nomination, when [Ronald] Reagan began winning nearly all of the closing states, even though [Gerald] Ford remained with delegate lead at the convention (its ironic how NC also played a large role in that contest). I also don't think that Clinton is interested in the VP position with Obama. 'Yes, yes, yes' seems like a 'yea, yea, yea, whatever, you know which way I have to answer that question'. As [Tuesday] night showed, the national terrain looks vory good for Democrats. The GE is very different, in terms of turnout, but we will most certainly make gains in Congress. In the presidential, I don't know, its still early, but I'm currently pessimistic on our chances."

DEM FIELD II: Thank You, John!

Many liberal bloggers think Edwards' surprise endorsement of Obama could potentially lead to a resolution of the FL/MI situation:

• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Assuming Edwards pushes his delegates [toward Obama], then Obama will secure not only the current 19 Edwards delegates, but also the 13 prospective Edwards delegates from Florida and all 55 of the uncommitted prospective delegates from Michigan. In other words, Clinton would be shut out of all conceivable delegate options no matter how Michigan and Florida are seated, and Obama will reach the magic number according to all counts on June 3rd at the latest. As much as anything else could at this point, this endorsement really helps bring the nomination campaign to a quick and decisive conclusion."
• The Field's Al Giordano: "Edwards' support of Obama leaves no impediment for the [DNC Rules] Committee to fuse the two candidate's delegate totals [in FL] (67 for Obama, and 13 for Edwards) adding up to 80 for Obama to 105 for Clinton. If the Committee decides to seat the full delegations -- each with one vote -- that's a modest +25 delegate advance for Clinton. [...] As for Michigan: If the January 15 straw poll becomes the source for the math, Clinton would get 73 delegates to 55 for 'uncommitted.' Edwards' backing (along with [Bill] Richardson and [Chris] Dodd) of Obama opens the door to a solution in which all 'uncommitted' delegates can and should be guaranteed to the Obama campaign: a difference of just 18 delegates. [...] The most interesting solution...would be to seat the pledged delegations at 100 percent, but penalize the states by giving their superdelegates .5 votes apiece: they'd still get to go to the convention, but since the party leadership in each state is partly (in Florida) and wholly (in Michigan) responsible for the mess created by their January games of leap-frog, the punishment would go to them, and not to the voters. [...This solution] would take the wind out of the phony 'disenfranchisement' argument, give Clinton a boost of +43 pledged delegates, and even if all the undeclared supers in those states went for Clinton (not likely), with a half-vote that would add up to 23.5 more including those already declared for her from the two states. [...This] would have the effect of ending the confusion, taking the wind out of her sails, and she'd get the bonus prize of a maximum (and probably less than) +66.5, still far short of any equation that could deny Obama, the pledged delegate leader still, the nomination."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "One good thing to come from John Edwards' endorsement of Barack Obama is that there is absolutely no reason at all now to now seat the full Florida and Michigan delegations. Edwards will now throw his delegates to Obama. In Florida that would mean a 105-80 split in favor of Hillary Clinton. In Michigan that would mean a 73-60 split in favor of Clinton. The total gain for Clinton would 33 delegates, down from 48 delegates. Barack Obama needs to take the bull by the horns here, tell Donna Brazile that winning in November matters more than her silly turf wars in the DNC, and regain the high ground in Florida and Michigan."

Meanwhile, Obsidian Wings' publius, who supports Obama, doubts that Edwards' endorsement will sway working-class voters: "I think Edwards' working class support is overrated. The big story of course will be that Edwards shores up Obama's working class street cred at a critical time. Edwards, however, hasn't shown all that much strength among these voters. [...] While the endorsement may not help Obama with actual working class voters, it will help in the realm of media perceptions, which is the only game that matters at this point (sadly). The chattering classes perceive Edwards as having significant working class appeal. Thus, we'll hear over and over this week about how Edwards -- West Virginia aside -- strengthens Obama's working class street cred. This chatter, in turn, will help strengthen the resolve of superdelegates and other party establishment figures who are beginning to coalesce around Obama."

TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt, who supports Clinton, is upset by Edwards' endorsement: "I don't think Edwards' endorsement has anything to do with who would make a better candidate. It's about ending the growing perception that Obama can't win against John McCain because he can't get rural, blue collar, less wealthy and less educated voters. That perception was magnified [Tuesday] with Hillary's win in West Virginia. There's concern it will grow when Hillary wins Kentucky. Since Edwards (and other Democrats) believe Obama will ultimately win the nomination, Edwards is trying to nip that line of thinking in the bud. But, isn't this short-sighted? Shouldn't the focus of Democrats be on which Democratic candidate is better able to beat John McCain in November...? [...] Party unity is one thing and it could have waited three weeks. Winning is important too."

DEM FIELD III: No Respect For Edwards

Conservative bloggers are mocking Edwards for endorsing Obama:

• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "What's the answer to being trounced by coal miners? Having a fabulously wealthy son of a mill worker vouch for your blue-collar bona fides, of course. Can't hurt, and it would have been a nice get for Hillary as (weak) evidence of a momentum shift, but is there any other politician whose national profile is as grossly out of proportion to his actual base of support? In ten years, he's won two elections: The 1998 senate race and the 2004 South Carolina primary. He couldn't even deliver North Carolina to [John] Kerry when he was on the ticket. The left adores him for his fight-fight-fightin' nutrootsy rhetoric, but for all his alleged boldness he waited around here until Obama locked up the nomination before daring to announce for him. All this accomplishes, really, is pushing Hillary's West Virginia win off the front pages a few hours earlier and confirming what we already knew, i.e. that party bigwigs are tilting to Obama to try to end the race. And true to Silky's ineffectual form, she's still going to crush the Messiah among those southern, Edwardsian, blue-collar voters in Kentucky next week."
• Michelle Malkin: "One effete, big government liberal embraces another. Yawn."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "The only interesting issue pertaining to this endorsement is why it came so late. I'm hardly in a position to answer with confidence, but I think the answer has to do with gutlessness. In this account, Edwards feared that if he endorsed Obama only to see him routed among low income and rural white voters (the voters the former North Carolina Senator sees as his natural constituency), Edwards would look bad. After last night's version of that rout in West Virginia, Edwards probably figures Obama has hit bottom among this cohort. Thus, the endorsement is embarrassment proof."

Meanwhile, NRO's Victor Davis Hanson argues that Obama would be foolish to pick Edwards as his running mate: "McCain should pray that Obama picks (he won't) John Edwards as VP -- he brings no executive record of experience, and offers less ideological balance; he has a poor record of winning primaries over two failed runs for the Presidency, has never appealed to working-class whites, hurt the Kerry ticket as a mediocre VP candidate, did poorly in past and present debates, and went even harder to the left (in scripted fashion) in the primaries. Moreover, he adds to, rather than ameliorates, the sense of elitism and out-of-touchness that plagues Obama. For all the talk of growing up the son of a mill worker, voters remember 'the haircut' and that gargantuan house with the 'John's room' inner sanctum. I'm afraid all that outweighs the photogenic youthful appearance and occasional glibness."

DEM FIELD IV: Counting The Votes

Bowers is annoyed by the Clinton camp's claim that Clinton is ahead in the popular vote (which is true if one "only counts primary states -- including both Florida and Michigan -- and excludes any votes cast in the party's caucuses"): "For a moral argument about the popular vote -- a.k.a. the will of the nomination campaign electorate -- to carry weight, it needs to be as inclusive as possible in its vote totals. Instead, this vote total pretends that the over 550,000 caucus goers in Washington, Nevada, Maine and Iowa, not to mention the quarter of a million uncommitted voters in Michigan, didn't actually have candidate preferences in the nomination campaign just because those candidate preferences weren't recorded. Excluding those 800,000 participants in the nomination campaign from a popular vote total, especially when exit polls and turnout numbers make close estimates on those preferences quite simple, renders that popular total pointless. [...] When all of the people who attempted to participate in their state's only delegate selection event (or their state's only potential delegate selection event, as is the case in Florida and Michigan) are included, Barack Obama still leads by just under 260,000 votes even after Clinton's 137,500 vote victory in West Virginia. Barring some pretty shocking results in the remaining five contests, Obama will still hold that lead after all the voting is complete on June 3rd."

Armstrong, on the other hand, shares the Clinton camp's view that Obama should receive zero votes from MI: "Clinton wound up winning [WV] by about 147K votes, while winning every single West Virginia county. This makes interesting news on the overall popular vote totals. For all votes cast, this means that Obama leads currently by about 80,000 votes. Its tough to guess what Kentucky will bring, or the other states, but there's little doubt that, even not including the totals from Puerto Rico, that Clinton will lead from all the votes taken in the 50 contests."

Meanwhile, several liberal bloggers are criticizing Clinton's determination to stay in the race:

• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "[Tuesday] night I listened to Hillary Clinton's speech, and I found it both unnerving and impossible to turn away from, in the way that it's hard to stop looking at a mudslide rumbling down a mountain towards an unsuspecting town. There she was, talking about how she was in it to win it, how she was more determined than ever, how she was ready to go head-to-head with John McCain, and I thought: can she possibly believe this? If not, why in God's name is she saying these things? For some reason, what got me the most was hearing her ask for more money. She is, after all, an extremely wealthy woman. And she was asking those people she claims to be fighting for -- the nurse on her second shift, the worker on the line, the waitress on her feet, [etc.] -- to send her some fraction of the little money they have, for nothing. When she knows she can't win. That sort of took my breath away."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis writes an angry letter to Clinton: "Your own campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, told MSNBC [Tuesday] night that you will lose to Obama in overall pledged delegates. So the only way for you to win the nomination is by the superdelegates overruling the will of the people. That will cause a civil war in the Democratic party (I'll be helping to lead it). It will likely cause blacks to leave the party, possibly forever. It will disenfranchise the youth vote. The Netroots will likely declare war on you. [...] Because you're insisting on staying in a race that you've already lost, Obama is forced to spend money and time dealing with you, rather than dealing with John McCain. You are literally helping John McCain in this race. Why does that not make you a traitor to your party?"

OBAMA: Losing His Bearings?

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about an ABC News piece that accuses Obama of falsely asserting that (a.) Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan, and (b.) agricultural specialists deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan:

• Power Line's Scott Johnson: "There is occasionally an improvised quality to Barack Obama's critique of the conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He sometimes seems to be making up his critique as he goes along. This improvised quality comes through clearly in the ABC News Political Radar blog report on Barack Obama's appearance earlier this week in Cape Girardeau."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "If the likely Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States has not yet learned that Afghans don't speak Arabic, then that should be the cause of widespread concern, nyet? Equally of concern is the Pavlovian tendency to attribute any problem in Afghanistan to the fact that we have a presence in Iraq. Don't have enough agricultural specialists? That's because they are in Iraq! Is the Afghan terrain too mountainous? It's because we are in Iraq! Does Kabul not have an attractive enough nightlife? Blame the quagmire in Iraq! If we are not already at that point, we will be soon."
• RedState's Jeff Emanuel: "For a man whose campaign platform includes securing America, and re-establishing her supposedly-degraded standing in the world (in part by promising to unconditionally meet with hostile foreign leaders), Mr. Obama insists on maintaining a troublingly naive, inconsistent, and uninformed view of the world's cultures and of international events."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Obama's rhetoric calls into question whether he has any real knowledge of the issues in either Iraq or Afghanistan in any depth beyond that of the latest MoveOn talking points."

MCCAIN: Making Too Many Promises?

McCain's speech from this morning -- in which he described how his first term as President will go -- is receiving mixed reviews from conservative bloggers:

• Townhall's Matt Lewis loved the speech: "You want change? I'll give you change! This was one of McCain's best speeches. This exactly the message he needs to win in November. This McCain will win in '08."
• Morrissey likes at least one of McCain's ideas: "The speech [is] interesting, especially in charter schools and his plan to appear regularly in front of lawmakers. [...] It's an interesting offer, and one that would play to McCain's strengths. He does best in town-hall formats, speaking extemporaneously, and the constant engagement on the floor of Congress in joint session could do wonders in breaking policy logjams. It certainly has the virtue of novelty, and it could help defuse the bitter partisanship that has afflicted the political class since Watergate."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein has concerns: "This morning, John McCain gives a speech and launches an ad touting what the world would look like after his first term in office. Some commentators have made the argument that given his age, McCain should pledge to only run for a single term, and set very specific goals for his time in office. To me, this seems like an effort to do so implicitly, while avoiding looking like a lame duck by doing so explicitly. I think what he runs the risk of, though, is making so many ambitious promises that he undercuts his image as a straight talker, and makes it harder to portray Barack Obama as a naive dreamer who resides in Fantasyland."

Michelle Malkin hated McCain's speech: "You'll have to forgive me for not getting all worked up about John McCain's BVT (Big Vision Thing) speech this morning in Columbus, Ohio. The fatal flaw lies in McCain's persistent belief, shared by the MSM and Beltway pundits, that partisanship in and of itself is at the root of all our ills. McCain's problem is that he has allied himself, for the unprincipled, empty cause of mindless 'bipartisanship,' with people and causes that move our country in the wrong direction. I don't want a Republican presidential nominee who makes common cause with La Raza/The Race. I don't want a Republican presidential nominee who sneers about profits like Ralph Nader. I don't want a Republican presidential nominee who talks and walks like Al Gore. And as I've said before in response to the annoying McCain platitudes about 'reaching across the aisle' and 'getting things done': When did it become the Republican Party's top priority to 'get things done?' 'Get things done' is mindless liberal code for passing legislation and expanding government. And as McCain's ample legislative record demonstrates, 'reaching across the political aisle' never entails pulling opponents to the right. It always entails selling out the right."

MCCAIN II: No Country For Old Men

Yglesias thinks seniors are predisposed to find McCain's age problematic: "This is an interesting development -- it seems that [MS Sen.] Thad Cochran, 70; [NM Sen.] Pete Domenici, 76; [IA Sen.] Chuck Grassley, 74 all told The Hill that they're too old to be Vice President. They're also, of course, all roughly the same age as the Republican Party's presidential nominee. I think this'll be an interesting issue to keep an eye on. Young people will definitely mock McCain for being old and his age will probably render people below a certain age immune to the cult of personality around him that's impacted a lot of self-loathing boomers in the press. But if anyone develops serious worries about McCain's age per se, it'll probably be his fellow senior citizens. Most folks I'm familiar with in their seventies are, like these GOP Senators, pretty aware of and realistic about their own situation and that of their friends and other peers in ways that might give them doubts about McCain."

The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen is intrigued by Yglesias' argument: "I've heard from some seniors I know that McCain is too old for them, but it never occurred to me that this might actually be a concern among other septuagenarians (and octogenarians, and nonagenarians...). Most of the polling numbers I've seen seem to point to considerably stronger support for McCain among seniors, while Obama is favored heavily by younger voters. But might there be some lingering doubts among those similar in age to McCain? Especially if he keeps having 'senior moments'?"

Bowers, on the other hand, urges Dems not to play "the age card" against McCain: "Age-based attacks on John McCain have much the same potential for backlash as gender-based attacks on Hillary Clinton, and racially based attacks on Barack Obama. Now that McCain's age has become a national punchline, many seniors might back McCain simply because they take offense at that narrative. This is particularly dangerous in a general election campaign when seniors will be the main swing group. Even though the electoral effectiveness of the conservative backlash narratives against liberal elites and the civil rights movement have been seriously diminished by changing demographics, these narratives are still somewhat salient among seniors. Combining these conservative backlash narratives with an additional, age-based backlash could prove problematic for Obama. [...] The only reason McCain is still within striking distance of Obama, instead of being blown out of the water, is because Obama has not locked down older, self-identified Democrats."

MCCAIN III: Shady Investments

Liberal bloggers are accusing McCain of hypocrisy after it was reported that his wife Cindy McCain "sold off at least $2 million she held in funds with investments in Sudan businesses":

• Think Progress' Matt Corley: "In an April 24, 2007 speech on energy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) criticized China for opposing sanctions in Darfur, saying that the reason it refused to do so was because 'China needs Sudan's oil.' Now, in a moment of irony, the AP reports that McCain's wife, Cindy, just 'sold off more than $2 million in mutual funds' whose holdings include companies that do business in Sudan's oil industry."
• Firedoglake's Attaturk: "I guess it's a good thing then that McCain and his wife can take care of all [these] hypocritical things now, so they'll be old news in June and July. [...] Shame on you China, only investing in Sudan for oil. How dare you exploit others suffering for your prurient national interests. You tell 'em Maverick. What kind of monstrous person would continue to invest in such a vile regime? D'OH!"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Tragedy And Scale

The Atlantic's James Fallows comments on the China earthquake:

"The human scale of almost anything in China is predictably shocking. I go to a city I'd never heard of -- say, Zibo -- and learn that it has about as many people as Chicago. I go to a city I have heard of and learn that estimates of its population are accurate only within a couple million. And of course we now have the staggering figures coming out from Sichuan province and its surroundings -- about 900 children trapped in one school, tens of thousands missing in another town, whole villages being swallowed up by landslides. America has never known mass tragedy on this scale -- or even on a pro-rated version of this scale. China has of course known it many times."

LEST WE FORGET: Aren't Libertarians Supposed To Be Consistent?

Radar's Nick Curran (h/t Shawn Macomber):

"Tuesday night, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) was the only member of the House of Representatives to vote against a resolution conveying 'condolences and sympathy' to the people in Myanmar affected by deadly Cyclone Nargis. It's not all that surprising of a move for a guy who earned the nickname 'Dr. No' by so frequently refusing to march along with the parade of feel-good legislative acts that often dominates the days of our Congress. (The resolution, it should be noted, doesn't actually do anything for the people suffering in Myanmar.) You see, if you want to earn hollow well wishes from Ron Paul on the House floor, you have to do something a little more special than just get totally wiped out by a massive cyclone and then be left for dead by your own government. Like win a big football game! Here's a quick look at some members of the elite group that has somehow managed to pry an 'aye' from Dr. No in House votes on other do-nothing resolutions considered this year...

• The University of Kansas football team for 'winning the 2008 FedEx Orange Bowl and having the most successful year in program history'
• The New York Giants for 'winning Super Bowl XLII and completing one of the most remarkable post-season runs in professional sports history'
• The Louisiana State University football team for winning the 2007 Bowl Championship Series national championship game"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:59 PM

May 14, 2008

5/14: Same As It Ever Was

Bloggers are reacting to Hillary Clinton's landslide victory in WV as one would expect. Liberal bloggers who support Barack Obama (by which we mean most liberal bloggers) are downplaying the significance of Clinton's win, arguing that Obama has always had a tough time in the Appalachian region and that the delegate math still favors him. Pro-Clinton bloggers are arguing that Obama has significant electoral weaknesses and that the uncommitted superdelegates should give Clinton the nomination. Conservative bloggers are delighting in Obama's poor showing, which they view as additional evidence that Obama will be a weak general election candidate. But will Obama's weaknesses be enough to deny Dems the White House in a year when GOP House candidates can't seem to win a special election?

DEM FIELD: The Landslide Will Not Bring Him Down

Most liberal bloggers are downplaying the significance of Clinton's WV win:

• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "No one expects Obama to be competitive in the state that includes the most hostile anti-Obama combination of demographics in the entire United States. [...] West Virginia (and Kentucky next week) will be ugly for Obama. Expect lots of talk about Obama's 'white' problem, before he goes on to win white Oregon convincingly next week."
• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Chuck Todd was just on MSNBC saying that there are 189 pledged delegates left after tonight. For Clinton to overtake Obama, she'd have to win 172 of those delegates or 91%. So congratulations on Hillary's victory tonight, but it doesn't matter. Barack Obama is the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "The Clinton plan now appears to be to ride to victory on the backs of WV, Kentucky, and Puerto Rico. Quit laughing."

Other bloggers are mocking the Clinton camp's claims that Obama's poor showing in WV suggests that he can't win the general election:

• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias: "As the Clinton campaign sagely points out 'no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916' and therefore Obama's primary loss shows that despite his large lead in the polls over John McCain, he can't possible win the election. What's even more interesting is that no Democrat has won the White House without carrying Minnesota since 1912 (it went for Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party) so given that Obama won Minnesota and Clinton won West Virginia, McCain is guaranteed to win the general election unless the eventual nominee can somehow completely replicate the social and political conditions prevailing in pre-WWI America. The outlook, in short, is very grim."
• Open Left's David Sirota: "You may have noticed that everyone on television is repeating Hillary Clinton's line that 'no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without winning West Virginia.' I wonder -- why, when Barack Obama won a tough-fought race in the swing state of Missouri, did no one bother to mention that no Democrat has EVER won the White House without winning Missouri? The point here is that stats like this are truly meaningless."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "Clinton declared West Virginia a swing state and said it was she, not Obama, who has performed best in swing states nationwide. [...] The argument is not without flaw. For one thing, Democratic candidates have lost West Virginia's primary, gone on to win the nomination, and then won West Virginia in the general election anyway. [...Furthermore,] I'm not sure if the swing-state argument is the most compelling one for the Clinton team. Even if we designate West Virginia as a swing state (it's a dubious proposition in light of Bush's 13-point victory there four years ago), Obama seems to have just as strong a swing-state case to make, if not more so -- he's won Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia, and Wisconsin."

DEM FIELD II: What's The Matter With Appalachia?

Several bloggers are discussing Obama's problems in the Appalachian region:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "There's been a lot of talk in this campaign about Barack Obama's problem with working class white voters or rural voters. But these claims are both inaccurate because they are incomplete. You can look at states like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states and see the different numbers and they are all explained by one basic fact. Obama's problem isn't with white working class voters or rural voters. It's Appalachia. That explains why Obama had a difficult time in Ohio and Pennsylvania and why he's getting crushed in West Virginia and Kentucky. If it were just a matter of rural voters or the white working class, the pattern would show up in other regions. But by and large it does not. [...] So what is it about this region? [...] First, some basic demographics. It's widely accepted that Hillary Clinton does better with older voters, less educated voters and white voters. These demographics perfectly match West Virginia -- and, more loosely, the entire Appalachian region."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "The [WV] exit polls reveal what the demographics have long foretold, and what the polls last February predicted, with just a few wrinkles. The race factor seems to have tipped very heavily toward Clinton in West Virginia. In Indiana, 16 percent said race was an important factor for them; in Pennsylvania, 19 percent; in West Virginia, 22 percent. The racial skew to Clinton does soar in West Virginia: 81 percent of race-based voters went for Clinton; in Pennsylvania, it was 55; in Indiana, it was 53 percent. [...] My own sense is that WV voters are conservative and risk-averse and Obama suffered a great deal from unfamiliarity. Race compounded it; and if you listen to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, you're likely to believe that Obama is a Muslim, racist, terrorist communist. I note that John Edwards -- a familiar white man who's not running any more -- got a healthy showing. Okay, West Virginia, we get the message."
• Benen: "How serious were identity-politics considerations [in WV]? John Edwards -- who dropped out of the race in January -- got 7% of the vote. That's quite a few West Virginians who seemed to be saying, 'We don't like the black guy or the woman from New York.'"

DEM FIELD III: Save Us, Superdelegates!

Pro-Clinton bloggers are arguing that Clinton's landslide win shows that Obama has major electoral weaknesses:

• MyDD's Jerome Armstrong: "Obama [did] not even break 30 percent, despite being practically anointed with the nomination?!?! Look, this is a partisan blog. Nearly everyone will come around to supporting the nominee here, but if Obama doesn't recognize the serious problem this presents in the world offline, and his supporters as well, I am speechless (which may not be a bad thing considering)."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "The 'presumptive nominee' lost by 40 points in a primary. Has this EVER happened? How could it have happened? What does it mean?"

Pro-Clinton bloggers are also urging the uncommitted superdelegates to support Clinton:

• Taylor Marsh: "It's time for superdelegates to think long and hard about who can win in November. Clinton keeps winning states Democrats need against John McCain. Obama's way to victory in November depends on reinventing the electoral map. It's risky at best."
• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "Superdelegates were given the responsibility of voting for the nominee who has the best chance of winning the presidency. It's not just a matter of pledged delegates in the individual races. The candidate who can win back the presidency in November is Hillary Clinton. The Superdelegates need to slow down, and the voters of the remaining 5 states need to come out in force."

DEM FIELD IV: Limping Toward The Finish Line?

Conservative bloggers are also delighting in Clinton's WV win, which they believe provides further evidence that Obama is a weak general election candidate:

• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "As I've said before, the fact that voters in a given Democratic primary favor Clinton over Obama doesn't mean that many of them will favor McCain over Obama; nor should we assume that Clinton voters who say they'll vote for McCain will actually follow through. Nonetheless, the margin in the West Virginia primary suggests real resistance to Obama among Democrats in that state. Now, Obama doesn't need to win West Virginia in November any more than he needs to win Kentucky, where he's scheduled to be trounced next week. But there are many Democratic voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania who fit the West Virginia and/or Kentucky profile. Obama may need to do reasonably well with such voters to carry these two crucial states. Democratic superdelegates probably believe the risk that Obama won't do well enough with white rural and working class voters to win in Pennsylvania and Ohio is smaller than the risk that a great many black voters will stay at home if the Democrats nominate Clinton. These superdelegates may be right. But that doesn't mean the risk associated with nominating Obama isn't quite real."
• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "The sheer magnitude of the Obama loss in West Virginia may be the strongest evidence yet that the working class resistence to Obama is real, and will in fact carry over to the general election. A 10 point loss, a 15 point loss, even a 20 point loss, okay, maybe you can explain that away. But Democrats turning out to deliver a 41 point embarassment to the likely nominee of their own party? That's really hard to for the Obama camp to write off."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "It's worrisome that Hillary Clinton is beating Barack so soundly in West Virginia and Kentucky. Usually, when it becomes clear that one person is pretty certain to be the eventual winner, that person picks up support and electoral momentum because of a 'bandwagon effect' -- most people want to go with a winner. [...] Given all this, it's hard not to wonder: Where's Barack's bandwagon, and what does it mean that he doesn't seem to have one?"
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "West Virginia may not prove that Clinton can come back -- only a séance is likely to do that. But it does demonstrate that the Democratic near-nominee is not the electoral powerhouse he was once thought to be."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Superdelegates ought to be sweating. White working-class voters, and various overlapping demographics -- the elderly, Catholics, Jews -- just aren't warming up to Obama, and they've been the backbone for the party for generations."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "As Hillary sweeps across West Virginia tonight with a massive victory, I have to wonder how many members of the MSM will change the 'Obama wins' narrative, at least only slightly, to recognize that Obama is, in fact, the weaker candidate in a general election match up with John McCain. [...] When the sun sets on this election we might have to realize that the media's efforts to set up Obama as the Democrat nominee has been the greatest gift they've ever given to the GOP."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Put West Virginia in the McCain column. Along with Ohio and Pennsylvania. Barack Obama is far outside the mainstream, and Democrats know it. Yes, GOP candidates are facing tough weather, as the special elections show. But not against hard left candidates, and Senator Obama is hard left."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "No one expected Obama to do well in West Virginia, but I don't recall any nominee having lost every single county in a primary when his nomination was mostly assured. [...] This won't keep Obama from the nomination at this point, but without a doubt he will have to limp to the finish line. He can keep pretending that Hillary doesn't matter and stay focused on McCain, but if Hillary runs the table in the meantime, he's going to look out of touch. That will hardly build confidence in his abilities to fend off a candidate who has come back from the politically dead and from financial bankruptcy to beat a tough Republican field."

DEM FIELD V: Is Hillary Looking Ahead To 2012?

The Huffington Post's Thomas B. Edsall speculates about Clinton's motives: "I suspect, but have no way of knowing, that she is: (1.) Praying for a devastating anti-Obama story -- Jeremiah Wright-Tony Rezko squared -- to surface and turn the Illinois Senator into an unacceptable candidate in the eyes of the media and convention delegates. This is clearly a long-shot, and presumably her aides have no such story in reserve or it would have already seen the light of day. (2.) Convinced, correctly, that after running a lousy campaign she has finally hit her stride as reflected in her solid victories in Texas, Ohio and, on Tuesday, in West Virginia. These victories, in her eyes and in the eyes of many of her aides, demonstrate that Obama is an empty suit weighed down with general election liabilities that are only coming to light at the close of the nomination process. (3.) Psychically unable to accept defeat -- after first believing she was the anointed candidate, and then, after losing her superstar status, clawing her way back into contention in an extraordinary display of grit."

Edsall concludes: "For Hillary, there may be very little downside in staying in the race until the bitter end, or at least until the final delegates are selected on June 4. Under once scenario -- Obama gets the nomination but loses to John McCain -- Clinton could begin her 2012 campaign on November 5, 2008, as a vindicated politician, using the narrative that she was the better candidate. Under the alternative scenario -- Hillary promptly concedes and Obama wins the presidency -- she may well have lost her one shot at the highest office in the land, and the White House and the power, prestige and status that goes with it, will be forever out of her reach -- a intensely painful prospect."

Mother Jones' David Corn agrees with Edsall: "Clinton is setting up the biggest I-told-you-so in recent American political history. Assume Obama is the nominee and imagine that he loses to McCain in the fall. Where would that leave Clinton? She would be able to wag her finger at her party, and she wouldn't even have to say those haughty words. She and her die-hard confederates would be able to note simply and smugly, We did try to warn you. In the following four years, they would remind reporters, party leaders, Democratic voters, and everyone else, over and over, that they had said that Obama was unelectable, that they had said he could not win blue-collar (that is, white) voters. This Clinton chorus would not cease singing this song for a nanosecond. Can't you just see Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe lecturing cable news hosts on this point? Hiding their schadenfreude -- just barely -- they would note that they had won the fundamental argument of 2008: who understands American voters the best? And in this scenario, Hillary Clinton would be well-positioned for 2012."

AMERICAblog's John Aravosis, a fierce Obama supporter, has no more patience for Clinton: "Good God. What is wrong with her? The Clintons and their campaign staff don't give a damn that they are now hurting our electoral chances in the fall against McCain and against the Republicans in Congress. Their campaign isn't happening in some vacuum, and they know it. Our candidates can't fundraise because of her. Obama can't focus on McCain because of her. Obama is wasting money on HER, rather than spending it on McCain, because of her. EMILY's List, and AFSCME, and the American Federation of Teachers and others are wasting their members' money on her now-failed race -- money that they could be spending, should be spending, on other real races, races that haven't already lost. She can't win, the math says she lost the nomination, but she doesn't give a damn. She's going to stay in the race like some spoiled hateful egotistical brat."

DEM FIELD VI: U.N.I.T.Y.

Pro-Clinton bloggers are arguing that Obama should pick Clinton as his running mate, noting that the new USA TODAY/Gallup poll finds that "55% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents also would like Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to choose Clinton as his running mate, although there's notable resistance among his backers":

• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "The first unifying gesture for a man who's run on his ability to unify would be to choose the person who came in a close second for the ticket. It puzzles me to hear people automatically dismiss the idea of Clinton as VP. For one thing, as this poll proves, the pick it would assuage Clinton's extremely passionate army of supporters, who Obama is going to need in the general -- and I'm not just talking for votes. But in addition, a Clinton pick has the added benefit of shoring up Obama's demographic weaknesses (working class whites, latinos, women), his perceived deficiency in the resume department, which, quite frankly, I suspect would cause more people to defect to McCain than Obama's race would, and it would balance out his lofty post-partisan inspirer-in-chief persona with an in the trenches fighter, one who for once would beat the pants off the Republican VP nominee in a debate."
• Big Tent Democrat: "We can see now that Hillary Clinton is clearly the almost required VP choice for Barack Obama should he be the nominee. Will the Obama campaign be stubborn and silly because the Media hates Clinton and apparently some in the Obama circle are childish? I trust David Axelrod, and more importantly, Barack Obama, have more sense than that."

Benen cautions against reading too much into these polling numbers: "I don't doubt that Clinton enjoys an enormous base of support within the party. That should be pretty obvious -- she's won more 15 million Democratic votes at this point. For her most enthusiastic supporters, having Clinton on the ticket, even in the #2 slot, is better than nothing. But I thought I'd take a minute to note that polls about running mates don't mean a whole lot. [...] These VP polls tend to measure name recognition -- and most VP candidates aren't well known to a national audience. Before 2000, I suspect most Republicans were not at all familiar with Dick Cheney, but then they got to know him pretty quickly. The same was true of Joe Lieberman. [...] The point isn't whether Clinton would be a good choice for Obama or not; that's a separate matter. The point is these VP polls don't tell us a whole lot. Obama may very well pick a running mate who isn't nationally known, but I suspect we'd all get to know him or her pretty quickly."

OBAMA: Exercises In Deliberate Misreading

During Obama's interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, the two men had the following exchange:

Goldberg: "Do you think that Israel is a drag on America's reputation overseas?"
Obama: "No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable."

GOP Reps. John Boehner and Eric Cantor released a statement accusing Obama of calling Israel "a constant sore":

"It is truly disappointing that Senator Obama called Israel a 'constant wound,' 'constant sore,' and that it 'infect[s] all of our foreign policy.' These sorts of words and characterizations are the words of a politician with a deep misunderstanding of the Middle East and an innate distrust of Israel."

Ex-Rep. Tom DeLay joined his former GOP colleagues by writing a blog post on Townhall criticizing Obama's remarks: "In an interview with The Atlantic, the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee called Israel a 'constant wound...a constant sore [that] does infect all of our foreign policy.' On one level, this is traffic-stoppingly stupid. What's wrong with this guy? We're told ad nauseum he's the greatest political communicator of his generation, and his idea of a balanced and nuanced position is to compare a threatened ally in a crucial region to a festering, open sore? It's no longer an open question as to whether Senator Obama is ready prime time: he's not. [...] Make sure Senator Obama knows that just because Israel is small and Israelis can't vote for him, that they do have a voice among their allies here in the U.S. Call his office and let him know how offensive these comments were, and ask him to retract his statement."

Goldberg chastised Boehner for misrepresenting Obama's remarks:

"Mr. Boehner, I'm sure, is a terribly busy man, with many burdensome responsibilities, so I have to assume that he simply didn't have time to read the entire Obama interview, or even the entire paragraph, or even a single clause. If he had, of course, he would have seen that Obama was clearly calling the Middle East conflict, and not Israel, a sore. Why, there's no one who would disagree that the Middle East conflict is a 'sore,' is there? I have no doubt that Mr. Boehner will issue a correction to his press release in which he states the obvious, which is that Obama expressed -- in twelve different ways -- his support for Israel to me."

Liberal bloggers are also coming to Obama's defense:

• dday: "It's important to recognize that a core part of Republican strategy in 2008, in addition to disenfranchising Democratic voters, is simply lying about their opponent. [...] There's no real slickness to the strategy, or forethought put into it. Birds are gonna fly, fish are gonna swim, and Republicans are gonna lie about the Democrat. Goldberg, a conservative, managed to display some intellectual honesty and point out that Boehner is, in fact, lying. The question is whether or not the rest of the media will follow his lead when some lie like this becomes front and center in the election."
• Yglesias: "Eliding here is the difference between calling Israel, the country, a sore and calling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a sore. But I guess Reps. Boehner and Cantor think the conflict is a good thing, that's helpful to Israelis, and makes America's relationships with other Arab political actors easier? [...] At the end of the day, I think Israel and Israelis will be better off with an American president who thinks the conflict is a serious problem that he'll put a relatively high priority on than with a president who intends to pay Israel the false compliment of pretending that the situation is somehow no big deal."
• MA Sen. John Kerry defends Obama in a blog entry on the Huffington Post: "Look, I've been around politics long enough to know that it's a contact sport. Words will be abused. Phrases will be taken out of context. But the latest distortion from the GOP, frankly, shouldn't give us all pause -- it should spring us into action. [...] These statements by Representatives Boehner and Cantor are so bad they rise to the level of a danger to our foreign policy. America's allegiance to Israel has always been bi-partisan and unshakeable. It still is, with either Sen. McCain, Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton as President. But how can we actually have a debate on foreign policy, if the other side simply makes up statements on which to base phony, contrived outrage?"

OBAMA II: Hamas's Man In Washington?

Meanwhile, conservative bloggers continue to criticize Obama's positions on Israel and the Middle East:

• Townhall's Mary Katharine Ham: "Obama's advisers have since stated that the 'wound' of which he speaks is clearly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and not Israel itself. That interpretation is only marginally better for Obama, in my mind, but the tactic is undoubtedly helpful for him. [...] Gaza phonebankers will assume his outreach is posturing and read the very real signals of his associations, staff, and comments as proof that Gaza GOTV should kick into overdrive. A deliberately blank canvas makes a dangerous presidential candidate, and the problem with Obama's pro-Israel stance persists -- it's anything but clear."
• Philip Klein: "Obama has vowed to meet without preconditions, within the first year of his administration, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust, threatened to wipe Israel off the map, and his regime has financed Hamas. So I just don't see why it's such a stretch for me to fear that circumstances would arise under which Obama would find it necessary to meet with Hamas to make progress in peace negotiations. Given his eagerness to meet with the leading state sponsor of terrorism, I just don't see why he'd draw a moral distinction at a democratically elected terrorist group that controls an area of diplomatic importance."
• Mirengoff: "Barack Obama and his legion of supporters in the MSM may not like the fact that Hamas supports his candidacy, or that John McCain and his supporters mention this fact. But it's not difficult to understand why Hamas favors Obama. Consider this statement by Obama regarding Lebanon. [...] The naivety of this statement is staggering. [...] Does he really believe that Hezbollah and its sponsors can be pacified or neutralized by electoral reform, an end to corrupt patronage, and 'fair' distribution of services? [...] No wonder he's Hamas's man."
• RedState's haystack: "Barack Obama promises he will talk to everyone -- friend and foe alike. [...] So, when Obama negotiates in good faith, and strikes a deal with terrorists who wish him into office, and they subsequently go back on their word(s) [which they ALWAYS do], and they keep upping the anty...what will Mr. Hope and Change and Change and Hope DO, exactly? Why, he'll give a speech about Hope and Change of course."

On the left side of the blogosphere, Yglesias denies that Obama has a "Jewish problem": "[Obama] doesn't actually seem to have one when pitted against John McCain. Rather, Jewish Americans like Clinton best, Obama second-best, and McCain least. Keep this in mind next time you read an argument that seems to assume that white working class Clinton supporters would prefer McCain to Obama -- it's perfectly possible for Obama to be someone's second-choice, just as Clinton is the second choice of millions of Obama voters."

MS-01: Tremble, NRCC!

The netroots are thrilled that Democrat Travis Childers defeated Republican Greg Davis in last night's special election in MS-01, a solidly GOP district. They see this win as further evidence that the GOP brand is in trouble:

• Marshall: "To put this into some broader perspective, the Republicans have lost three straight Republican districts to the Democrats in by-elections this year. [Ex-Rep Dennis] Hastert's district in Illinois, Louisiana 6th, and now Mississippi 1st. Each successively more Republican than the last. In Mississippi 1st, President Bush got 62% of the vote there in 2004."
• Ezra Klein: "It's always hard to draw a line from special elections out to general election, but Democrats are taking seats they have no right to even be contesting. And given how many retirements the GOP has seen this year, and how much voter registration Obama and Clinton have kicked off, well, things don't look so good for the Republicans."
• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "The magnitude of this loss cannot be overstated. The Republican party is in serious trouble in 2008."
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "We are going to win everywhere in November. Landslide city."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "[Childers won] an 8-point victory in a solidly Republican district. The GOP even brought in Dick Cheney to campaign and tried to tar Childers as an Obama lover. But nothing worked. Even in Mississippi, they just don't want anything to do with Republicans anymore. It's going to be a ver-r-r-r-y long summer and fall for the GOP leadership."

Liberal bloggers are particularly pleased that the GOP failed in its efforts to damage Childers by linking him to Obama:

• Moulitsas: "Republicans claim they are gleeful over Obama in the fall, that they'll wrap Jeremiah Wright around every Democrat. And they did so, heavily, leading up to today's special election. [...] And it's a district in the Deep South, where scary black people are supposed to be particularly damaging to Democrats. And yet, Democrat Travis Childers won the district by eight points. Imagine that. No matter how much opportunistic Clinton supporters claim that Obama is a problem this November, fact is, the problem has been and remains George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Distractions like Wright and 'bitter' have been, and remain, irrelevant."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "The Republicans tried to make this election about two people: Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And despite running this type of campaign, they lost. While it is true that Childers distanced himself from his party (and implicitly from Obama), the fact is that the Obama/Wright smears simply DID NOT WORK. The Republicans are going to have to get a new game plan, and the establishment media are going to have to get a new meme. Sorry folks."
• Digby: "Ads featuring Reverend Wright aren't working in the deep south. Something's happening."

MS-01 II: I've Got A Bad Feeling About This...

Several conservative bloggers are concerned about Childers' victory in MS-01:

• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "There is no denying it anymore -- if it could even be denied in the run-up to tonight; Republicans have serious problems with the brand identity. Yes, I know that there are six months left until the election but what else needs to occur for the GOP to realize that it has a very serious problem on its hands? There have been any number of indications concerning a Republican image problem and nothing has been done to ameliorate matters. Either Republican leaders get on the ball very quickly, or the GOP is headed for yet another round of epic Congressional losses."
• Mirengoff: "The Republican brand is in such bad shape that the Dems can win virtually anywhere if they nominate a candidate whose position on key issues is, or can be made to seem, close to that of the Republican. Fortunately, the Democrats will not nominate such a candidate for president. And the Republican nominee, whether we feel comfortable about it or not, isn't necessarily seen as intimately associated with the Republican brand. Even so, I think that Republican nominee is running uphill."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "Not only is the GOP losing special elections, it's managing to lose elections in districts where its candidates should be winning by 10 points without even campaigning. [...] What you're seeing is the result of the Republican Party's 'leadership,' such as it is, becoming arrogant, complacent, and coming to believe that they're so smart that they don't need to listen to the people who put them in office to begin with."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A Silver Lining?

The New Republic's sees an upside to Obama's blowout loss in WV:

"In retrospect, Barack Obama may be lucky he didn't win Indiana last week. Why? Suppose he had -- there would have been immense pressure on Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race, which she might have done. Given that around seven percent of West Virginia Democratic primary voters pulled the lever for John Edwards, who dropped out of the race more than three months ago, there's a pretty decent chance Obama would have lost West Virginia, or at the very least would have come up short of 50 percent. And as bad as tonight's results look for him (even though it's yet one more instance of the essentially unchanging demography-is-destiny story in the Democratic race), surely it would have been far worse to lose to Hillary if she had already conceded the race. As it stands now, he'll be able to take his licks in West Virginia and Kentucky without being totally humiliated, then make a victory declaration of sorts after a win in Oregon."

LEST WE FORGET: Intolerable Acts

McSweeney's Mark Amundsen provides a list:

1774:
Boston Port Act
Massachusetts Government Act
Quartering Act
Administration of Justice Act
Quebec Act

2008:

Took the Last Heineken Act
Rushed Out Onto the Sidewalk in Front of Me but Then Walked Real Slow Act
Fired Test Missiles Over Sea of Japan Act
Drove 65 in a 65 Zone Act
Clipped Your Fingernails at Your Desk Act

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:59 PM

May 13, 2008

5/13: Ready For The Main Event

Now that Barack Obama appears to have a near-stranglehold on the Dem nod, liberal bloggers are gearing up for the general election. After spending the past few months focusing on Hillary Clinton, the netroots have recently been directing most of their fire at John McCain, criticizing his climate plan and repeatedly linking him to George W. Bush. Conservative bloggers, of course, have been in full-blown anti-Obama mode for weeks now, and they continue to slam Obama for his relationships with shady figures and his foreign policy views (especially with respect to Israel). Will Clinton force the blogosphere to pay more attention to her with a blowout win in WV today, or will bloggers continue to focus on the brewing Obama-McCain battle?

DEM FIELD: Obama's Appalachian Problem

In anticipation of Obama's expected drubbing in WV today, Daily Kos' DHinMI argues that Obama's problems with white voters are confined to Appalachian residents and their descendents: "It would be great if pundits and politicos would recognize and acknowledge that race doesn't appear to have been much of a hindrance for Obama in the Democratic primaries, except, it appears, in Appalachia and in some regions where descendants of Appalachian migrants settled, such as the Ozarks, Oklahoma, and some isolated rural communities on the Plains. Obama doesn't appear to have much of a problem with white voters. But it seems quite likely Appalachia has a bit of an Obama problem."

TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat disagrees: "In Arizona, Clinton won the white vote by 53-38 (she won Latinos 55-41.) In Florida, Clinton won whites by 53-23 (she won Latinos by 59-30). In Indiana, Clinton won whites 60-40. Are these three states in Appalachia too? [...] In Massachusetts, Clinton won whites 58-40 (she won Latinos 56-36). In Rhode Island, Clinton won whites 63-37. In New Jersey, Clinton won whites 66-31. Unless the entire country East of the Mississippi is now referred to as Appalachia, I think this proposed theory explains very little and indeed is part of the entire Ostrich approach we now see from Obama blogs. It is just plain silly now. I believe Obama can do better. I believe his problem goes beyond race issues. Obama is indeed the wine track candidate, the candidate of the Creative Class (and of course African Americans.) But he must do better -- with white women, with the white working class, with seniors and with Latinos. [...] Pretending that saying 'Appalachia' will solve it is no answer."

Daily Kos diarist dawnt urges the netroots not to write off Appalachia: "Over the last week or so, I've heard a lot of kossacks writing off West Virginia, making fun of West Virginia, and even saying West Virginia doesn't matter. Some have painted all of Appalachia as racist homophobes who will never change. [...] Some have suggested that we revert to Clinton-style 'states that matter' campaigning, leaving West Virginia and Kentucky behind altogether. Well, progress hasn't left us behind, and I hope that progressives won't either. [...] I know that we cannot win West Virginia on Tuesday. We cannot win Kentucky next week. We cannot win Appalachia in November. But that does not mean we should give up on them or work less hard for them. It does not make the 50 state strategy less important -- it makes the 50 state strategy more important. It means we should work even harder. Call it bridging the ignorance gap, if you will."

Obsidian Wings' publius examines Obama's "race problem": "Today's Post article on the ugly racism that Obama campaign workers have faced is disappointing, though (sadly) unsurprising. It's also been humiliating -- as a native Kentuckian -- to read some of the openly racist sentiments being expressed to reporters on the ground there. But let's face it -- race is playing a big role not just there, but throughout the Midwestern white working classes. That's not saying all white working-class Americans feel this way, or even that most do. But a lot do -- and everyone knows it. And that's a big reason why Clinton is up by such obscene margins in West Virginia and Kentucky. We should stop pretending otherwise. But that said, I think Obama supporters should see this ugly reality as an opportunity -- and as a motivation to double down in support and effort. [...] An Obama victory...would be a true watershed in that it would signal to future campaigns that a new national political majority has emerged that not only rejects race-baiting, but that (more crucially) doesn't depend upon the votes of those swayed by race-baiting."

Meanwhile, AMERICAblog's John Aravosis tries to rebut the Clinton camp's electability arguments: "As we approach the West Virginia and Kentucky primaries, Hillary is once again telling us that how a candidate does in a primary dictates how they will do in the general election. Meaning, if Obama loses to Hillary in the primary in a certain state, then he will lose to McCain in the fall in that state. It's total bull, but nonetheless, that's what Hillary keeps saying. So, I guess that means that no blacks will be voting for Hillary in the fall since they're not voting for her now. Specifically, Hillary will only get 8% of the black vote in the fall, dooming her candidacy, were she to be handed the nomination by the Superdelegates."

DEM FIELD II: Obama Veepstakes

Several liberal bloggers are discussing potential running mate choices for Obama:

Open Left's Chris Bowers lays out his VP criteria: "It is essential that Obama choose a running mate who opposed the war from the start. This criteria quickly eliminates a wide swath of potential VP candidates, including Bill Richardson, [ex-Gen.] Wesley Clark, Hillary Clinton, [AZ Gov.] Janet Napolitano, [VA Gov.] Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, [MO Sen.] Claire McCaskill, and [ex-SD Sen.] Tom Daschle. [...VA Sen. Jim] Webb and [KS Gov. Kathleen] Sebelius...each have a lot of support online. Further, both also do a good job of reinforcing Obama's other campaign arguments: unity and change. Both have strong bi-partisan ('unity') records, Webb in working for [Ronald] Reagan, and Sebelius in convincing several high-ranking Kansas Republicans to become Democrats. Both also hit he 'change' note pretty well, since Webb has only been a Senator for a couple of years and since Sebelius has been outside of D.C. since 1994."

Bowers continues: "Now, comparing Webb and Sebelius themselves, as both a progressive and as an electoral strategist I don't think it is much of a contest. Sebelius appears to have a consistently strong progressive record, and a lengthy series of electoral victories that swan against the national and local tide. Webb, by contrast, is something of an electoral neophyte with a narrow primary victory and narrow general election victory under his belt. His Senate record is not particularly progressive (FISA being an egregious example), and I have also heard that he isn't exactly the most energetic or disciplined campaigner. [...] So, until some potentially better options begin endorsing Obama for President, right now, by process of elimination, I think Obama's best choice is definitely Kathleen Sebelius. Should either [OH Sen.] Sherrod Brown or [WA Sen.] Patty Murray endorse Obama, I could be persuaded to change my mind on this, since both of them would, I think, be extremely strong Veep choices for Obama. However, Brown remains neutral and Murray is currently backing Clinton."

Big Tent Democrat, on the other hand, thinks the only logical pick is Clinton: "One other reason Hillary Clinton has to be at the top of Obama's VP list is her finely honed campaigning skills. Just for a moment imagine the VP debate, for instance. Does anyone imagine Hillary Clinton will not clean the clock of the Republican VP candidate? Does anyone imagine Clinton will not be a huge benefit to Obama on the campaign trail? There really is no argument against Hillary Clinton as the VP candidate for Obama, other than petty nonsense. I hope and expect Barack Obama will rise above the nonsense we see from some of his supporters and choose a unity ticket that will guarantee a big Democratic win in November."

TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt, who strongly supports Clinton, disagrees with Big Tent Democrat: "While Big Tent Democrat has been sold on a unity ticket for months, I am not, regardless of who is on top of the ticket. I don't think they have a better chance of retaking the White House in November together. I think together they will drive Republicans and conservatives out in force. It's not a balanced ticket. I also don't want to see a joint ticket because I think Hillary Clinton would make a great President, and I don't think she ever will get the chance if she starts off as Vice President under Obama for 8 years. As for the speculation that Obama would convince Hillary's supporters to vote for him if he picks another female VP candidate like Napolitano or McCaskill, I highly doubt it. There is only one Hillary Clinton. Women are not interchangeable. In fact, it would be rubbing salt in the wounds of her already disappointed supporters. Like showing off the new girlfriend to the jilted one. I think millions would stay home. If Obama wins the nomination, let him go forth against McCain in November without leaning on Hillary or choosing another female VP candidate just because he wants the female vote. Let him pick his best candidate for a VP and go the distance."

DEM FIELD III: Go Forth And Endorse, Young Supers!

Some of Obama's supporters are urging the undeclared superdelegates representing Young Dems and College Dems to endorse Obama:

• AMERICAblog's Joe Sudbay: "Per 'The Page,' Crystal Strait from Young Democrats endorsed Obama this past weekend. Good for her. [...] The remaining 3 student Superdelegates, Lauren Wolfe, David Hardt and Awais Khalil, need to decide. And, their votes should reflect the work of the young voters in the Democratic party who aren't superdelegates, but are putting their hearts and souls into electing the next President. This is a no-brainer for Wolfe, Hardt and Khalil. So what are they waiting for? It's soon going to be too late, Obama will pass the 2,025 mark, and Wolfe, Hardt and Khalil will lose their chance of helping elect America's next president. Yes, our next president could owe them one. That's a hell of a missed opportunity."
• Actor Kal Penn writes an open letter on The Huffington Post to Wolfe and Khaleel: "As representatives of a college group, I respect your decision to have waited until your constituents made their voices heard in a clear fashion. But that time has come and gone. You are no doubt aware that this election season started with an increase in youth voter turnout of 135% above 2004 levels in Iowa. Senator Obama won the 'youth vote' by a 4-1 margin in that state, followed by 3-1 in New Hampshire, and 2-1 in Nevada. [...] Your failure to pledge now risks returning those passionate, first-time voters to a political landscape of the same old games that caused them to maintain such distance from the Democratic Party before."

OBAMA: Weak Sauce

Conservative bloggers are slamming Obama for comments he made about Israel and Hamas during an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg:

• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Barack Obama is the least-prepared-to-be-president major presidential candidate in modern times. The combination of naivete and arrogance in the interview he gave to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg ought to stop every supporter of Israel in his or her tracks. Obama's 'we don't do nuance well in politics and especially don't do it well on Middle East policy' is a huge red flare. There isn't much nuance needed when terrorist organizations on Israel's northern and southern borders are proponents of the destruction of Israel. 'Nuance' when it comes to dealing with terrorists equals appeasement at best, surrender at worst."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "[Obama] seems to be suggesting that one of the main obstacles to peace is 'hawkish elements', when I would suggest constant rocket attacks, suicide bombers, refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist, and national leaders threatening to wipe Israel off the map might be bigger factors."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "Does Obama seriously believe that Hamas endorses his candidacy because he is 'worldly,' has a Muslim middle name and won't be a 'cowboy?' If so, he is even more out of touch with reality than we thought. If not, he completely ducked the interviewer's question (not that the interviewer, another Obama fan, noticed) and has yet to explain why he thinks Islamic terrorists want him to win."

OBAMA II: Where's The Outrage, Senator?

Several conservative bloggers complained that Obama didn't express enough indignation at receiving praise from a Hamas spokesperson:

• NRO's David Frum: "Obama's words are unexceptionable so far as they go. What's striking here is what is not said: There is no revulsion, no affront that Hamas would name him as its preferred candidate. [...] I do not believe that Obama is in any sense hostile to Israel. I am certain that he would be honestly disgusted by anti-semitism in any form. But do I believe that he would be cavalier with Israel's security? That his belief that anything can be negotiated and that dialogue is always the answer exposes America's allies to risks? That his understanding of the origins and causes of the Arab-Israeli dispute is dangerously wrong? That he will 'engage' Hamas and Hezbollah for exactly the same reasons that he will seek to 'engage' Iran and Syria? Yes I do. He may consider himself Israel's friend. But he will be a dangerous friend -- made all the more dangerous by the reluctance of many in the pro-Israel community to ask searching questions of this supremely evasive politician."
• The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb: "This has always been the problem with the Hamas endorsement -- the Obama camp never once got their backs up at the notion that Hamas would welcome an Obama presidency. It would have been just as easy for [strategist David] Axelrod or Obama to turn this to their advantage -- to say that Hamas clearly doesn't know anything about Obama or John Kennedy if they think an Obama administration will be a friend to Hamas. But instead they said they were 'flattered' by the comparison to JFK, and have since taken to repeating that Obama's policy with regard to Hamas is no different than Clinton's or McCain's -- which is a tough sell given that his whole foreign policy approach centers on talking to tyrants and terrorists."
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "What is most disturbing is [Obama's] acceptance of the perspective that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the source of all of the region and 'all of our foreign policy' problems and his blasé attitude toward Hamas. He does not seem the least bit concerned that a terrorist organization would endorse him. At the very least this should demonstrate how absurd is his claim that there is no difference between his position and John McCain's on this topic."

MCCAIN: A Third Bush Term?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about McCain surrogate/MO Rep. Roy Blunt's admission that McCain "would be" a third Bush term on the economy:

Wolf Blitzer: "So it would be in effect a third Bush term when it came to pro-growth tax policies?"
Blunt: "It would be. I think it would be. And I think that's a good thing."

• Think Progress' Faiz Shakir: "It's nice to see Blunt conceding the point. McCain is promising more of Bush's economic agenda -- unaffordable massive tax cuts for the rich that offer no help for the average family. [...] All this coming from a man who once said he 'cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us.'"
• Crooks and Liars' Nicole Belle: "Bless his little heart, let's have House Minority Whip Roy Blunt on every week to talk up John McCain's candidacy! Talk about living within a bubble, Blunt thinks nothing of touting the McSame presidency as a Bush third term, despite the record disapproval rating for the man and the vast majority of the country believing that the country is going in the wrong direction under his leadership."
• Firedoglake's Christy Hardin Smith: "The GOP has put this country in a world of shit. And it seems that most Americans understand that all too well. [...] So, with that in mind, what in the hell were the Republicans thinking trotting out Roy Blunt for some seriously mixed up messaging yesterday?"
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "What's the top message priority for Democrats hoping to win this year's presidential election? When it comes to defining John McCain, it's pretty obvious: he'd offer more of the same. [...] McCain is aware of the dangers here -- no one wants to be closely associated with the most unpopular president since the dawn of modern polling, and no one wants to run on a 'stay the course' platform when four out of five Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. With that in mind, it's always encouraging when some leading Republicans seem anxious to make it easier for Democrats to hammer their message home."

MCCAIN II: Better Than Bush, But Not Good Enough

While acknowledging that McCain's environmental stance represents a step forward from Bush, liberal bloggers believe that McCain's proposals are vastly inferior to Obama's and Clinton's:

• Grist's David Roberts: "My initial reaction is that [McCain's climate plan is] better than expected, somewhat short of Lieberman-Warner, and far short of what Obama has proposed. It should comfort us that a McCain presidency will mean real action on climate change, not the shell game Bush is engaged in. But it's hard to see how McCain can claim the allegiance of voters who rank climate change as a top concern. He's still behind the curve."
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "It's great that McCain acknowledges the reality of climate change and great that he acknowledges that we need to do something about it. But his cap-and-trade proposal is pretty weak tea."
• Firedoglake's Eric de Place: "To the extent that McCain's new proposal, flawed as it is, constitutes the lower bound of new national climate policy, we've just made a gigantic step forward. And it's about freaking time. Honestly. So what's wrong with McCain's plan? Let me count the ways. (1.) The targets are too modest. It calls for 60 percent reductions (below 1990 levels) by 2050, rather than the more aggressive 80 percent targets favored by the Democratic candidates. [...] (2.) It allows for unlimited 'offsets' from both foreign and domestic sources. There are two big problems with the anything-goes approach to offsets. For one thing, there's simply no guarantee that the offsets are real [...]. And two, a huge offset program drastically reduces the incentive for businesses to innovate and adapt. Why invest in efficiency measures when you can just keep polluting and pay for a phantom tree-planting project in Indonesia? (3.) It gives away carbon permits for free at the outset of the program, moving toward auctioning only later. [...] A better approach is auctioning the permits and then using the revenue for the public benefit, perhaps simply rebating the funds on a per capita basis."

Daily Kos' Devilstower doesn't trust McCain when it comes to the environment: "Back in 2000, candidate Bush also said the climate change was an issue and pledged to regulate CO2. It wasn't until after his election that that cuddly, caring, compassionate conservative Bush's positions gave way to the standard GOP line. So what's the difference between Bush and McCain? One is a Republican who is already in office, the other is a Republican running for office. Far from making him different from Bush, McCain's empty promises make him exactly the same as the man whose administration he's running to extend. What evidence is there that McCain would break Bush's flip-flop record if he gets the chance to sit in the Oval Office? How about this: McCain is being advised on these issues by Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute, who just this morning put out an op-ed explaining how we can't let the environment get in the way of cheap energy. And of course the proposals McCain put forward today don't align very well with his other big push for a gas tax holiday. [...] As has already been demonstrated time and again, 'maverick' McCain's difference from the hard right extends as far as his words, and stops well short of his deeds. Coming from McCain, any promise on climate change is nothing but hot air."

The American Prospect's Kate Sheppard agrees: "Despite his lip service, all signs indicate that McCain lacks a grasp of the gravity of environmental concerns, and will push policy only as far as it does not inconvenience special interests and the conservative establishment. While his own values may be greener than those of the current Republican administration, chances are slim that he would make the strides necessary to reform the nation's environmental agenda."

MCCAIN III: The Maverick At His Worst

Conservative bloggers are also critical of McCain's climate plan, albeit for totally different reasons. They are accusing McCain of proposing "a massive regulatory intervention" in an effort to address "a supposed crisis that rests on skewed science":

• AmSpec Blog's Peter Suderman: "There's an old saying that everything becomes funnier if you add 'on ice!' to the end of it. Walt Disney...on ice! Nuclear winter...on ice! John Kerry...on ice! [...] Anyway, John McCain seems to be taking a similar approach to climate change legislation. Come up with whatever expensive regulatory scheme you want, and then just add the words 'market-based.' Suddenly, it's all good! So here he is telling the New York Times today that he'll 'propose a domestic cap-and-trade system that will mobilize market forces to develop and commercialize alternatives to carbon-based fuels.' It's as if he believes a massive regulatory intervention will somehow become more palatable if you repeat the word 'market' as many times as possible."
• Michelle Malkin: "A rational, free-market-based approach to environmentalism requires a commitment to scientific truth, accuracy, and honest cost-benefit analyses. For the last several years, McCain has been committed to none of those. [...] Like Barack Obama, McCain touts a 'cap-and-trade' system as the free-market answer to reducing carbon emissions. Analysts who haven't been bitten by the global warming alarmist bug beg to differ –- and evidence from cap-and-trade systems already in operation back them up. [...] A true 'free-market' approach to environmentalism means protecting the free market, not destroying it in the name of supposedly 'cost-free solutions' to a supposed crisis that rests on skewed science."

Hugh Hewitt, in contrast, defends McCain's cap-and-trade proposal by arguing that Obama's proposal is worse: "Skeptics about any aspect of the global warming debate -- the significance of the temperature rise, its origins, or the ability of humans to affect the temperature change -- thus have a choice: A candidate with a plan that includes a push for nuclear energy and accountability for China and other rapidly industrializing countries, or a candidate who will push an America-first, only, and without nuclear power plan. McCain has occupied the center on this debate, and the GOP and conservatives should get over it and begin working to keep enough Republican senators in place to assure that President McCain's emphasis on a new generation of nuclear power plants becomes a reality, thus keeping cap-and-trade from becoming a suffocating blanket."

MCCAIN IV: You Stay Classy, Joe!

Liberal bloggers are slamming McCain surrogate/CT Sen. Joe Lieberman for claiming that a Hamas spokesperson's positive statement about Obama "suggests the difference" between Obama and McCain:

"The fact that the spokesperson for Hamas would say they would welcome the election of Senator Obama really does raise the question, 'Why?' And it suggests the difference between these two candidates."

• TPM's Greg Sargent: "Lieberman is clearly emerging as a chief attack-dog for McCain on foreign policy, and here he is echoing McCain's talking points with unerring precision: While we all know that Obama doesn't in any way support Hamas or its goals, it's okay to use the group to tar the Illinois Senator anyway, merely because McCain and the Republicans want to. One wonders whether Harry Reid will keep this sort of stuff in mind when considering committee chairmanships in 2009."
• Daily Kos' Kagro X: "John McCain and Joe Lieberman = A Third Term of Stupid. Joe, this is why you're not allowed to be a Democrat any more. Too f*@#ing dumb, and too f*@#ing transparent. Note to the rest of you: this is the kind of intellectual honesty 'everything but the war' gets you."
• Benen: "Shortly after promising not to engage in these kinds of attacks, John McCain went after Barack Obama a few weeks ago over an ostensible 'endorsement' from a Hamas spokesperson. It was a cheap and ridiculous move -- especially given the fact that McCain and Obama have the same position on Hamas -- which Time's Joe Klein accurately described as 'gutter crap.' It was therefore not surprising at all to see Joe Lieberman repeat and legitimize the bogus line yesterday on CNN."
• Crooks and Liars' SilentPatriot: "This ridiculous guilt-by-association crap needs to stop already. Ed Schultz made a great point the other day: What if someone in, say, the KKK came out and said they would welcome the election of McCain over Obama? Does that have bearing on McCain, his candidacy or his beliefs? Of course not. But we wouldn't then go around, adding the caveat, 'Why does the KKK support him?' Only desperate neocons stoop that low."

MCCAIN V: McCain's Nader?

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about ex-GA Rep. Bob Barr's entry into the Presidential race, which they perceive as a blow to McCain:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "Barr is enough of a media darling that if he runs he'll get a lot of free media. And there's enough weirdness going on in the Republican party right now that I could imagine a few scenarios where he'd draw non-trivial numbers away from McCain. [...] A lot of Barr's drawing power will be a test of just how much opposition to the Iraq War there is in the Republican party. How many Republicans are there out there who just won't accept McCain's Iraq forever position but can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat? And how many of them could Barr sop up?"
• Firedoglake's Blue Texan: "The GOP brass begged Barr not to run. And Sean Hannity's complete freak out on this clip shows you just how spooked the wingnuts are over this. Make no mistake: this is a huge blow to the Republicans, who are already fighting with one arm tied behind their backs thanks to Dubya, Iraq, the economy and Dubya. And, as an added bonus, the Paulites, who were already plotting against McCain, now have a place to go in November. Go Bob!"
• Meanwhile, Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher has a question: "Now that Bob Barr is running for president, inquiring minds want to know...will Tim Russert give a highly publicized, 'exclusive' campaign kick-off interview on MTP as he did for Ralph Nader? If not, why not?"

MCCAIN VI: Go Home, Bob

Most conservative bloggers are unenthusiastic about Barr's candidacy:

• Malkin: "Many readers have e-mailed asking what I think of former Ga. Rep. Bob Barr's presidential candidacy. [...] Two words: Not much. On immigration, he's virtually indistinguishable from all the other remaining presidential candidates. On homeland security, he's joined with what Heather MacDonald calls the 'privocrats' in whipping up unfounded hysteria about intelligence-gathering efforts in a post-9/11 world. On Iraq, he's what Allahpundit calls the 'poor man's Ron Paul'. And doesn't the ACLU, for which Barr consults, already have enough candidates in the race?"
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "Barr has more problems than a little whipped-cream licking to overcome. Based on his own platform, Barr will have to conduct a John Edwards campaign, running against pretty much his entire voting record during his Congressional career. On every issue Barr names, he voted in the manner in which he now criticizes. [...] What will he use for a campaign slogan -- 'In hindsight, I was a lousy Congressman'? That didn't work for John Edwards this year in a major-party primary, and it won't convince people to vote Libertarian, either."
• Meanwhile, AmSpec Blog's Robert Stacy McCain likes Barr's immigration stance: "'If a person is illegally in this country, the taxpayers of this country and the government of this country owe them nothing,' Barr said. This notion that government owes something to people, simply because they're here, does not resonate with me as somebody who believes in responsible government. If one were running a charity called the United States of America, that would be one thing. This is not a charity, this is the people's business."

MCCAIN VII: Huck, No!

Several conservative bloggers are upset about James Pethokoukis' report that Mike Huckabee "is currently at the top of John McCain's short list for a running mate":

• Malkin: "Huckabee for VP? That's the buzz. It's the GOP immigration drag queen ticket! La Raza/The Race gives it two thumbs up. [...] All they need is sanctuary-friendly Rudy Giuliani as DHS Secretary, and the open-borders nightmare team will be complete. Can someone please fast-forward to 2012? Please."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit understands the rationale for putting Huckabee on the ticket: "Having not one but two media darlings on the GOP ticket might convince the press to go merely hip-deep into the tank for Obama instead of face-first, like they're planning. Finally, now that Barry O's the nominee, McCain has both a worry and an opportunity that he wouldn't have had opposite Hillary: Turnout among black voters in the south is sure to be huge this year, which, coupled with a weak turnout among southern evangelicals, could be lethal by putting red states in play. Adding a prominent Christian to the ticket solves that problem and frees McCain up to focus on the battlegrounds instead of fighting a rearguard action to preserve his base. Adding Huckabee specifically to the ticket, with his blue-collar populist rhetoric, holds an extra advantage in giving him a shot at Hillary's base of working-class Democrats in Pennsylvania and Ohio. All of which is to say, while Hot Air readers might not like this idea, I can understand why Team Maverick might."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Lessons From The Corleones

The New Republic's Isaac Chotiner:

"John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell have a fun and smart article in The National Interest comparing the Corleone family's response to the attempted assassination of Vito to America's response to 9/11. Tom Hagen counsels prudence and negotiation, and therefore represents the 'liberal institutionalism' of the Democratic Party. Sonny Corleone wants vengeance and conflict, and thus represents today's neocons. And then there is Michael, the realist, who saves the Corleone family, and also presents a good model for the United States to follow in the post-9/11 world. [...]

Still, I was left wondering: Do these guys know that The Godfather movies are a tragedy? That the entire point of the story is that Michael sells his soul? Considering the fact that certain 'realists' have been happy to sell their souls for a long time now (Henry Kissinger somehow comes to mind), this might have been an interesting direction for the piece."

LEST WE FORGET: The Comedic Possibilities Of Eclipses

A Deep Thought by Jack Handey:

"I bet a fun thing would be to go way back in time to where there was going to be an eclipse and tell the cave men, 'If I have come to destroy you, may the sun be blotted out from the sky.' Just then the eclipse would start, and they'd probably try to kill you or something, but then you could explain about the rotation of the moon and all, and everyone would get a good laugh."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:48 PM

May 12, 2008

5/12: No End To Hostilities

Most liberal bloggers -- including many who support Hillary Clinton -- expect that Barack Obama will be the Dem nominee. However, Clinton's netroots supporters don't appear ready to unite behind Obama. Pro-Clinton bloggers are pointing to Clinton's likely blowout win in WV as further evidence of Obama's weaknesses among working-class whites, noting that every successful Dem candidate since Woodrow Wilson has won WV. In a sign of the simmering tensions in the liberal blogosphere, MyDD's Todd Beeton even felt the need to urge his Clinton-supporting readers not to defect to John McCain if Obama wins the Dem nod. It's clearly going to take a long time for the hostility between Clinton's and Obama's online supporters to subside -- a fact that is not lost on conservative bloggers.

DEM FIELD: Unity Is Overrated

Most liberal bloggers are opposed to an Obama/Clinton ticket:

• Ezra Klein: "You don't want a toxic working relationship between the president and the vice-president. Imagine President Obama, with VP Hillary Clinton and shadow-VP Bill Clinton, wants to pursue a legislative strategy that the Clintons think is a bad idea. How will they feel when Obama ignores their 8 years of White House experience and goes his own way? Will they be able to keep their sprawling universe of well-connected confidantes from leaking tales of their displeasure to the press? Will they want to? What happens when the first Time magazine cover comes out with Obama staring down the Clintons, and the tagline is, 'Who's Really Running the Country?' It's such an obvious story that it can be predicted, with almost perfect certainty, right now. Will he sideline them? Will it sow seeds of mistrust?"
• The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum: "[I'm] pretty unenthusiastic about an Obama/Clinton 'dream ticket.' [...] A strong vice president is one thing, but if you choose Hillary as a running mate you get the whole Clinton family in the bargain, and having Bill Clinton as a de facto part of the White House staff just smells like big trouble. That aside, the bigger issue is that picking Hillary would be a sign of weakness from Obama, and a completely unnecessary one. Obama certainly ought to reach out to Hillary once the primaries are over, but he can win in November on his own, and there are plenty of good, solid VP choices out there that would nonetheless make it crystal clear that an Obama White House would be an Obama White House."
• TAPPED's Te-Ping Chen: "A dual ticket not only detracts from Obama's positives, it adds on Clinton's negatives to boot. Early opposition to the war, turning over a new leaf in foreign policy? Not when your vice-president voted for the former, and has since casually threatened 'obliterate' a major Middle Eastern country with aplomb. Hitch on a squarely Washington insider, and suddenly the Obama campaign's key tagline -- 'change' -- starts to sound weirdly akimbo. (Somehow, Changexperience just doesn't have that ring.) [...] In 1992, the last time a Clinton ran for the White House, Bill bucked conventional wisdom to reject a candidate who would 'balance' him, and instead picked a fresher candidate that helped define the generational metaphor of his campaign. This time around, Obama would be wise to do the same."
• Scott Lemieux: "First, by far the biggest impact of vice presidents on the ticket is the potential to bring a swing home state into the fold, which Clinton doesn't offer. Second, if the idea is to shore up Obama's 'foreign policy cred' you want someone with military experience but who opposed the war (such as [VA Sen. Jim] Webb or [Gen. Wes] Clark); Clinton of course is the opposite. Third, the media. It's hard to know what to do about the media's grossly unfair treatment of Clinton; if I was convinced that she would make the best president I wouldn't let it dissuade me. But when picking a running mate, surely this has to be considered a great deal more important. Fourth, partly because of the unfair treatment she receives from the media, she has much higher negatives than you would prefer in a VP candidate. Finally...I should note that the fact that Clinton appeals more to lower-class whites and older voters 1)compared to Obama and (this is the important step for those of you who don't understand why it's illogical to make inferences about the general from primary results) 2)among people who vote in Democratic primaries hardly means that she is the optimal choice to appeal to these voters compared to other possibilities."

MyDD's Jerome Armstrong -- who's a strong Clinton supporter -- supports an Obama/Clinton ticket: "The best VP tickets are those that unite the party, or otherwise bring on new constituencies. Its rare that a VP adds any regional strength, as people vote for the President, top of the ticket, no matter where they reside. [Gerald] Ford would have been strongest choosing [Ronald] Reagan in '76. [Jimmy] Carter had have been strongest choosing [Ted] Kennedy in '80. Reagan was the strongest having chosen [George H.W.] Bush in '80. One party united, and the other stayed divided. [...] There's also the opening for McCain, if Obama shuns Clinton, that McCain chooses a woman for a running mate. Sen. Elizabeth Dole is too old and AK Gov [Sarah] Palin is too young; but I could imagine Kay Hutchinson running with McCain, very effectively. [...] The hatred of Clinton runs deep among the Obama supporters, but by August, I think it will have settled some, and unless Obama gets much stronger as a candidate on his own, he'll need Clinton more than ever. In the recent LA Times poll, Clinton crushes both Obama and McCain over whom is best on economic issue. In regards to the economy, there's no better brand than the name Clinton in US politics. Its three months away, and things can change, but thats the only ticket that makes sense right now."

On the right side of the blogosphere, Hot Air's Allahpundit argues that Obama would be foolish to pick Clinton as his running mate: "If Obama's even moderately sane he'd rather take his chances with losing in November with someone else on the ticket than winning and having to endure Lady Macbeth plotting against him from inside the White House for the next four years."

DEM FIELD II: All Over But The Shouting

Atrios thinks the primary race is all but over: "Obama's won. There's no nomination path for [Clinton] which doesn't involve rewriting the rules in a way which would never be seen as legitimate, or a massive shift in superdelegates which would likewise be problematic, and even those paths range from unlikely to impossible. I don't think Clinton has to drop out. She can continue to campaign through to the last contest if she wants (she doesn't need my permission to do so), though hopefully this article is correct and the, uh, emphasis of the campaign shifts away from Obama's supposed lack of appeal to real Americans."

AMERICAblog's John Aravosis questions Clinton's motives for staying in the race: "She's not stupid, she knows she lost the nomination. So then what is she doing? Trying to suck up to MI and FL for the next election in 2012? Trying to hurt Obama out of revenge? Trying to become Obama's VP? Trying to assuage her ego by finishing up all the primaries, to hell with how much damage she does the party? I suspect it's all of the above, plus staying on deck in case Obama gets hit by a meteor."

In a separate post, Aravosis unloads on Clinton: "Hillary and her husband are now out to destroy our nominee. Your could argue that it kind of made sense when Hillary still had a chance (her kitchen-sink tactics were nasty, to be sure, they appeared to have crossed a line, but at least there was a logic to it when Hillary had a chance). Now that the race is over and Hillary has lost, her ongoing attempts to hurt Obama, to smear him, to make rural voters hate him, to convince America that a black man can't and shouldn't be president, make her little better than the Republicans she hated during the 1990s."

Meanwhile, Beeton, a Clinton supporter, urges his readers to support Obama over McCain: "I understand that many supporters of Hillary Clinton have grave reservations about Barack Obama as president and honestly, it would be nice if people on both sides of the candidate divide would respect and acknowledge this fact rather than dismissing it with knee-jerk accusations of racism or 'troll!' It's a reality. Now, if you are one of those currently considering voting for John McCain yet have been fighting fiercely for Hillary Clinton in the primary, listen up. You are welcome here...But...don't expect to have a forum to argue in favor a John McCain presidency. This blog has always been open about its rasion d'etre: electing Democrats, and John McCain is no Democrat as his positions on choice (he's against), war (he's for) and healthcare (he believes the market should handle it, cuz that's worked out so well so far!) make clear. So, you are welcome here; pro-McCain diaries are not. [...] To Hillary supporters considering defecting to McCain, I say, vote for John McCain if you will, but know that doing so is voting against the very agenda you've been fighting so hard to advance and against the very candidate you've been fighting for to win the Democratic nomination."

DEM FIELD III: On To West Virginnie!

Pro-Clinton bloggers are buzzing about Clinton's likely blowout win in WV:

• TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt: "CNN just flashed a poll showing Hillary ahead with 66% of the vote. It said a big W. VA win will show that 'a lot of Democrats aren't ready to get on Obama's bandwagon.' CNN says W.Va. used to be solidly Democratic until 2000 when George Bush took it. Social issues are big there. Guns are even bigger. The LA Times also says W. Va could spell trouble for Obama in November."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "In terms of the GE, Obama appears to have no chance in West Virginia while Clinton could likely win it. [...] It seems clear that all the talk of Obama's 50 state strategy was just that, empty talk. His electoral map will look to the West."
• In a separate post, Big Tent Democrat writes: "Did you know that Democratic Presidential candidates carried West Virginia in every recent election except the last 2?"
• Meanwhile, Armstrong chastises those who suggest that racism will play a role in tomorrow's vote: "I'd humbly suggest, to all the Obama supporters that join us here on this blog, that if you can't stand the heat of the West Virginia primary, you stay out of the kitchen. While I'm at it, I also suggest that you refrain from accusations against West Virginians as being racist, or you'll join the other 6 previous users here, whose offensive comments were deleted on Friday, and that were themselves banned from the site. [...] In WV, Clinton is blowing Obama away in numbers that she has not been seen since Super Tuesday. And while Obama supporters have claimed that the her voters will move over to support Obama in the GE, this poll doesn't quite show that happening in WV. [...] If your knee-jerk answer is that they are racist -- are you really saying something that you think Obama and his campaign can't say, or are you saying it because of anger and frustration? Racism is ignorance, but unfounded accusations of racism are just as low on the scum-radar."

Atrios is annoyed by the Clinton supporters' arguments: "One thing I'm looking forwarded to is not being bombarded by transparently stupid arguments about how performance in a state primary has some meaningful mapping to performance in the general election. The latest is the Clinton campaign suggesting that West Virginia is an important 'test' because Democrats since Wilson have only become president if they've manged to win there. I assume that's true, but that's about winning that state's electoral college votes in the general election and not about getting primary voters to vote for you. And as Mark Penn helpfully reminds me, Jimmy Carter did not win the West Virginia primary. I imagine over the past month or so people in the Clinton campaign have been marveling at their ability to manipulate the freak show, to introduce stupid narratives and bogus arguments into our discourse. And they have been amazingly good at it. I'd even admire it if they actually managed to, you know, win the elections instead of just making our discourse stupider."

The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen responds to Armstrong's post: "Armstrong's point is well taken. Unfounded accusations of racism are obviously wrong, and it's especially awkward in the context of two Democratic primaries. There's considerable anecdotal evidence that racial animus is driving voters in Kentucky and West Virginia away from Obama, but anecdotes are not data. My only follow up would be this: what else can explain Obama's 40-point deficits in West Virginia and Kentucky? The states are lacking in some of Obama's most reliable constituencies, but so are states like Nebraska, North Dakota, Idaho, Wyoming, and Alaska, but Obama won each of those contests easily. What's more, looking at county data, some of Obama's worst performing counties just happen to be throughout Appalachia. Unfounded accusations of racism have no place in the political debate. But if regional attitudes on race aren't keeping Obama's numbers down in Kentucky and West Virginia, what is? Given Obama's otherwise-strong position, what else explains why he's about to get trounced?"

On the right side of the blogosphere, RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh mocks Armstrong's post: "Despite all of the talk that Obama's nomination is now inevitable and that with said inevitability will come newfound party unity, seething anger and resentment continues to define the mood of Clinton supporters. This is, perhaps, somewhat understandable; at the beginning of the nomination contest, I don't imagine that people like Armstrong really ever thought that Obama would be able to wrest the nomination away from Clinton when they consulted the stars. Nevertheless, one would have thought that the various pro-Clinton factions in the netroots would have begun to reconcile themselves to an Obama nomination and then line up to support him against John McCain and the Republicans. Well, perhaps eventually, they will. But for now, there remains seething anger and resentment and since it is almost the middle of May already, one could easily see the resentment continuing through the summer -- especially if Hillary Clinton decides to push through the rest of the primary schedule and goes to the Democratic National Convention without having fallen on her sword."

DEM FIELD IV: Who's More Popular?

Armstrong asserts that Clinton will lead in the popular vote lead once FL and MI are resolved: "As we roll on in the next remaining contests, we expect a split. Clinton winning WV, KY, and PR; Obama winning OR, MT & SD. MI & FL will be settled, and Clinton will lead in the popular vote."

Other liberal bloggers disagree:

• MyDD's Transplanted Texan: "There are three things wrong with this argument. First of all, it assumes that not a single person in all of Michigan supports Obama. Real Clear Politics has Obama up by about 846,801 without those two states and up 113,498 with them, but that latter figure does not give Obama any of Michigan's 'uncommitted' vote. If you're determined to count every vote, you certainly can't ignore a full 200,000 voters. Second, the results of those two states are in no way reflective of this campaign. If my memory is correct, Indiana is the only state where both candidates have aggressively campaigned and Clinton's lead has not narrowed (or disappeared altogether). This pattern would no doubt have held in MI and FL, where no campaigning took place and Obama's name recognition had not yet taken off. A true reflection of those state's sentiments would certainly lean towards Clinton, but probably by a narrower margin. And third, even if you assume [John] Edwards did as well as Obama and award him only half MI's uncommitted vote, he still picks up 119,084 votes and leads Clinton by well over 250,000. Do we really think that WV and KY will net her that many votes?"
• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Any popular vote count that does not allocate the Michigan uncommitted is invalid, because it is based on the rather absurd notion that the over 238,000 Michiganders who selected the 'uncommitted' choice weren't actually supporting any candidate. In truth, several campaigns existed that pushed Obama and Edwards supporters to choose uncommitted, as even the Clinton campaign has argued on numerous occasions. [...] It is now virtually guaranteed that Obama will win a narrow plurality of the popular vote / participation in the Democratic nomination campaign. Neither candidate will have won a majority, but the 'will of the electorate' will still have been served by the outcome. That is a very good thing, since I know that I would not have been the only person extremely uncomfortable with nominating a candidate who did not receive the most popular support in the process."

OBAMA: Denouncing And Rejecting Hamas

Conservative bloggers are buzzing about the Obama camp's decision to sever ties with adviser Robert Malley after it was revealed that Malley had been in regular talks with Hamas:

• Townhall's Mary Katharine Ham: "An adviser gets canned for hangin' with Hamas. [...] I'm sure this has nothing to do with Obama's actual policies or feelings about Hamas, of course."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "As Ed Lasky notes, in the past the Obama campaign has attempted to downplay Malley's role, stating that he is 'one of hundreds of people who have sent in advice to the campaign.' However, media sources like the Washington Post and Newsweek have refused to buy this claim, placing Malley on relatively short lists of Obama foreign policy advisers. It's now clear that the Obama campaign was being disingenuous. After all, you can't sack someone who is merely sending you emails."
• RedState's Erick Erickson: "First Hamas praised Barack Obama. Then Barack Obama's campaign said how flattered it was. Then Obama had to toss an advisor once it became public that the guy was working with Hamas. In light of all the undesirables Obama is associated with and the undesirables who support Obama, I've added this one to the RedState Store."
• Commentary's Jennifer Rubin: "It's fine and well for Obama to say in a general election setting that Hamas is a terrorist organization, but John McCain's central point is correct: Hamas endorsed Obama. It is worth considering why. Is it because he favors direct, presidential talks with Hamas' sponsor Iran? Or because Hamas sees him as lacking resoluteness or as excessively sympathetic to the Palestinian cause? And it's not as if Hamas is an isolated case of fringe groups and individuals favoring Obama."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty has more questions for the Obama camp: "(1.) Did Malley ever met with top Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef, the guy who praised Obama on American airwaves? (2.) Did Yousef and Hamas praise Obama as a result of that meeting with Malley? If so, what was the topic of that meeting, and were any policy changes promised, suggested, or hinted?"
• RedState's Soren Dayton: "I am not arguing that Obama will work with the Iranians or their agents, Hamas and Hezbollah. But when President Obama enters office on a promise to withdraw from Iraq, Iran advancing directly and through its proxies in the region, and a new President who is understood as uniquely open to a Palestinian perspective, how will that be viewed in the region? Who will have won?"
• NRO's Mark Hemingway: "Hate Israel? Yes, We Can."

MCCAIN: More Lobbyist Baggage

Liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain for appointing Doug Goodyear, a lobbyist whose firm once represented the military junta that runs Myanmar, to manage the '08 GOP convention (NOTE: Goodyear resigned on Saturday "so as not to become a distraction" for McCain).

• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Comedy. The man who will run the convention to name John McCain as the Republican nominee to carry out George Bush's third term, is a lobbyist who once defended an oppressive military regime by calling George Bush a liar. It's at times like this that you realize how difficult it is to be a straight talking maverick."
• Firedoglake's David Neiwert: "It turns out that Condoleeza Rice isn't the only prominent Republican with hands stained from their dealings with the murderous and wretched military junta that rules Myanmar. So, it turns out, is the man chosen by John McCain to run the Republican National Convention."
• TPM's Josh Marshall: "McCain's pretty tight with a lot of lobbyists, isn't he?"
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "Once the [Michael] Isikoff article was published, it was only a matter of hours before Goodyear had left the campaign. After all, at a time when the Burmese junta is preventing much-needed aid from reaching those devastated by the recent cyclone in the country, having a man who lobbied on behalf of that rightfully maligned dictatorship run a party convention just doesn't look good. But apparently, it's alright in the eyes of McCain to keep one of the junta's lobbyists on board of his campaign committee, as Marc Ambinder points out this evening. [...] Now having read the reporting of both Isikoff and Ambinder, I'm close to speechless. The sheer hubris of John McCain in believing a) that it's alright to have his campaign almost entirely run by lobbyists; b) that it's alright to continue to employ a lobbyist for the Burmese junta as a regional campaign manager; and c) that he shouldn't be questioned about things like this, just blows me away. I don't know what more I can say now than just wow."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Let Them Eat Arugula

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait analyzes Clinton's newfound "conservative populism":

"Historically, the conservative populist's social divide ran along racial and ethnic lines. In recent years, overt racism has all but disappeared from mainstream political life, and even racial hot button appeals like the 1988 Willie Horton ad have grown rare. What remains is a residue of nostalgia about small towns -- whose residents are said to have stronger values and work harder than other Americans, and who also happen to be overwhelmingly white. In 2004, after John Kerry declared that some entertainers supporting him represented 'the heart and soul of America,' George W. Bush embarked upon a national tour of small- and mid-sized cities, where he would say, 'I believe the heart and soul of America is found in places like Duluth, Minnesota,' or other such places.

Likewise, Bill Clinton recently declared, 'The people in small towns in rural America, who do the work for America, and represent the backbone and the values of this country, they are the people that are carrying her through in this nomination.' The corollary -- that strong values and hard work is in shorter supply among ethnically heterogeneous urban residents -- is left unstated. Hillary Clinton's statement about 'hard-working Americans, white Americans' simply made explicit a theme that conservative populists usually keep implicit."

LEST WE FORGET: Defiant Clinton Voters Will Stick It To The Media

Wonkette's Sara K. Smith mocks the Clinton camp's planned "protest vote" in WV:

"Despite the fact that he now leads the Democratic nomination race by every conceivable metric, Barack Obama will not be the candidate running against John McCain. Legions of Clinton die-hards will turn out in West Virginia tomorrow to stick it to MSNBC, Robert Reich, non-hard-working white people, and other members of the sexist cabal who want Hillary to throw in the towel before she has humiliated herself in all 50 states (plus Guam, Samoa, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Tatooine).

At a campaign stop in West Virginia, Bill Clinton told supporters that 'if 600,000 people show up [to vote for Hillary on Tuesday], and you say, "We want a president," then you will see the earth move.' That's right, America! Your next president will be determined by 600,000 West Virginians, who will all vote for Ron Paul."

Posted by Ian Faerstein at 12:42 PM

May 09, 2008

Race-Based Initiative

CLINTON: Trying To Get An Entry On StuffWhitePeopleLike.com?

Coming on the heels of Geoff Garin boasting that Hillary Clinton had made "progress" with the white vote, the liberal blogosphere is in an uproar over remarks made by Clinton herself in USA Today: "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on. [An AP report] found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. ... There's a pattern emerging here."

• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "There sure is a pattern emerging here. The Clintons are using racism to try to win the nomination against a black man. And our party leaders are okay with it. ... Is it any wonder blacks aren't voting for Hillary? They shouldn't vote for Hillary, ever again."
• Pam's House Blend's pam: "The frame is specific -- that's why Clinton referred to hard working white Americans. What happened to 'blue collar Americans?' Oh wait, there are a lot of hard working black and brown blue collar/working class Americans, and many of them they voted for Obama, so she had to slice that demo down to the bottom line. ... I want to believe that it wasn't a purposeful slip of the tongue because it's too painful to contemplate that the black vote is now perceived as a 'problem' because it skews to Obama, and because there are more white voters who have a problem with him based on his race, we have to nail that demo. Remember, the black vote has been the most reliable Democratic vote, not the Reagan Democrats."
• Andrew Sullivan: "If a Republican said this about a black opponent, his career would be in jeopardy for racism."
• Talking Points Memo's David Kurtz: "Race has been the subtext of much of Hillary's argument for her own electability. But now she's thrown it right out there in the open: Obama can't win because he's black. Vote for me instead. You don't have to believe that Hillary's a racist (I don't) to conclude that a combination of the rigors of the campaign trail and her own powerful ambitions have clouded her judgment and curdled her spirit. It has certainly soured what had been a historic relationship between the Clintons and the black community."
• The Jed Report: "Clinton is making these comments to get attention. Her campaign is broke and she needs free media. She knows that the press loves to cover conflict, especially this kind of conflict. She's serving up raw meat on a platter, consequences be damned. ... Should we just ignore Clinton? After all, she hasn't a shot of winning the nomination. ... So I think what we do is calmly -- but forcefully -- reject Clinton's divisive rhetoric, using fact and reason instead of invective and fury."

More-moderate bloggers were critical of Clinton's remarks, but were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt:

• Matt Yglesias: "As quoted, that's a dumb thing to say which seems to imply that non-white voters or perhaps all Obama supporters are lazy. But add a pinch of charitable interpretation into the dynamic, and I think Clinton's meaning is perfectly clear -- she really does do better than Obama among white working class voters in Democratic primary elections. I don't buy the argument ... that this edge among white working class Democratic primary voters indicates a substantial Clinton electability edge in the general election ... but it's a common argument and not an offensive one."
• The Stump's Michael Crowley: "It's definitely uncomfortable to hear her say it, but if Hillary thinks white Americans won't elect a black president, is it so transgressive for her to say it out loud? Everyone in politics and media has been having this conversation for more than a year now. If anything it seems better than reliance on cutesy euphemisms like 'working class' or 'electability.' I'm willing to be convinced I'm wrong but I think it's worth considering this before the latest 'race-baiter' pile-on gets underway in earnest."
• Ben Smith: "I'm of two minds about it. On one hand, as Crowley points out, it was perhaps a matter of speaking plainly about what the media and partisans of both sides have been chattering about for months. ... [On the other hand,] her language -- 'hard-working Americans, white Americans' -- is rankling with people who think she's making an equation there. (Or that her campaign is deliberately pushing the race angle.) And the candidate's blunt discussion of race runs the risk of turning her more abstract 'electability' argument into a case for the nomination based on the assertion that white people won't vote for the black candidate. That's going to be very hard for many Democrats, particularly African-American superdelegates, to stomach, whether or not they think it's true."

Not many bloggers defended Clinton outright (Taylor Marsh was noticeably silent). But MyDD's Jerome Armstrong spoke out forcefully against the uproar: "Reading through the comments, it's pretty amazing to consider what the Obama supporters are saying about Clinton. ... Now, when Barack Obama made his claim about the 'typical white person', it didn't mean anything, he was just talking generalities; and the same thing with Clinton here, but even less so [but a 'gaffe' in the same manner]. Clinton clarifies that she's talking about working Americans that Obama is not doing well with, which are typically white, and she's 'ugly and divisive'? This is a lame stretch." However, he did add this caveat: "Political correctness on speaking about demographics has arrived, so are accusations of racism for speaking about voters in terms of their voting habits by skin color that far behind? [I hope] we can talk about a division without promoting it to happen."

Some bloggers were befuddled as to why Clinton, from a strategic point of view, would adopt such racial rhetoric. Contentions' Jennifer Rubin: "Has she ever come right out like this and said 'Whites aren't voting for him' before? She's talked about 'working-class' voters and women seniors, of course. But not once, in my recollection, has she spoken openly of any racial divide. Why on earth would she do this if she's not still committed to trying to scare superdelegates and whip up the vote in West Virginia? There doesn't seem much point, if she actually has the Democrats' best interests at heart. (And it won't help her get the VP slot, either.) Frankly, it makes about as much sense as her '3 a.m.' ad or her remarks touting John McCain's preparedness as commander-in-chief. All those suspicions about her preference for a potential one-term McCain presidency rather than a two-term Obama one are only going to increase with comments like this."

Others pushed back against suggestions of Machiavellian intent. Hilary Rosen: "I don't know what Hillary Clinton will do in the next few weeks. But I do know that she is not going to take an unwinnable fight to the convention and spoil the party. ... And she will resolve her campaign the way she has lived her entire career -- with class, commitment and intelligence. And if that were to happen, mark my words, she will be the MOST valuable surrogate Barack Obama has in the fall campaign."

Many liberal bloggers went beyond the ethical arguments to attack Clinton's electability argument and the statistics she based it upon:

• Markos Moulitsas "How is that not race-baiting? Are African Americans not hard working? Are Americans with college degrees not hard working? And this obsession with race! And she's wrong, too." [TABLE OF DEMOGRAPHIC DATA] "So how can Clinton be so wrong? Because she's citing an AP-Yahoo News poll from back on May 3rd. Rather than cite actual voter data, she is basing her claims on an old poll taken before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. Yup. That's what Hillary Clinton has been reduced to. Ignoring actual votes and cherry picking polls. Which really, shouldn't surprise anyone. She's already ignored and belittled every state and voter demographic that doesn't support her [in order to confirm] her manufactured reality."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "So much for the notion that Barack Obama is uniquely weak among White voters. New Gallup polling puts that theory to rest as well. ... So at a point when Obama was getting hit as hard in the media (both paid and nonpartisan) as he ever has, attacked for his relationship with a neighbor (Bill Ayers) and his former pastor (Jeremiah Wright), Obama still runs about as well as did John Kerry, who only narrowly lost the last presidential election.... For reference, Al Gore received 42 percent of the White vote in 2000, so Obama does not run too far behind him either."
• Singer also takes the opportunity to undercut Obama's supposed weakness with Jewish voters: "So when you actually delve into the numbers, it becomes clear that these numbers actually bode fairly well for Obama's chances among Jewish voters in November. What's more, these numbers seriously undercut the notion that Obama has a serious problem among American Jews resulting from false smear emails or whatever else."
• Alex Koppelman: "There are two problems with what Clinton said. First, there's the assumption that voting patterns in the primaries accurately predict voting patterns in the general election. ... But even if we concede the above point, there's still the matter of the unspoken demographic problem Clinton herself faces. African-American voters are absolutely critical to the Democratic Party. And while it's true that Obama trails behind Clinton in winning support from white working-class voters, it's not as if he's getting no support from that group whatsoever. Clinton, on the other hand, has almost no support left from African-American voters."
• The Jed Report: Barack Obama has won more pledged delegates, more states, and more votes than Hillary Clinton, no matter how you count it. Under any imaginable standard, he will enter the fall campaign with a broader, larger political base than would Hillary Clinton. [Also,] a disproportionate share of Clinton's support from white voters comes from women who are basing their vote on gender more than race. ... Clinton might be able to find a trend line over the course of a few weeks that looks good for her, but any real perspective shows just how much support Barack Obama has been able to build -- and just how much she has squandered. ... At one point, Clinton did have a bigger and broader political base. No longer."

A typical response to Clinton's remarks in the conservative blogosphere was nicely illustrated by Michelle Malkin: "Meanwhile, Hillary's playing the white card ... and the Obama-supporting nutroots are not happy. ... Really going to miss these food fights."

DEM FIELD: The Flor-igan Fight

Another debate raging in the liberal blogosphere is the dispute over how to settle the delegate controversy in FL and MI, states that Clinton supporters insist are crucial to her electability argument. Clinton added fuel to the fire yesterday when she sent an open letter to Obama demanding that the FL and MI delegations be seated without compromise.

• TalkLeft's Jeralyn: "As to all the Michigan plans proposed so far, none are fair to Hillary. I think all the delegates, not half of them, should be counted. Hillary should get her's now. Those who voted uncommitted should be seated at the convention as uncommitted votes and they choose between Hillary and Obama then, if the race is still going on. ... Barack Obama removed himself from the Michigan ballot and may get the delegates from those who voted for Dodd, Kucinich and Gravel, those who voted uncommitted, which includes those who voted for Edwards or truly were uncommitted and and 5 of HIllary's delegates. This is fair? This is new politics? This is vote-stealing."
• TalkLeft's Big Tent Democrat: "So let me get this straight -- the first act of the self declared Democratic nominee Barack Obama will be to state that Michigan and Florida will not count? This is insane. Two key states in November will be dissed in the first act of the newly crowned Democratic nominee. At the least, Obama should wait until he has 2209 delegates counting the existing Florida and Michigan delegations."
• Matthew Yglesias "Nothing would do more to help resolve the Florida and Michigan issue than for Clinton to drop out and endorse Obama. If she did that, the only remaining issue would be to strike a balance between representing FL and MI at the convention and slapping FL and MI on the wrist hard enough that states don't pull this kind of stunt again. ... It's the fact that the campaign is continuing that makes the question difficult to resolve because it has both campaigns focused on maximizing their delegate counts rather than dealing with the aforementioned issue. Which, I suppose, is part of what makes it such an appealing pretext for staying in the race -- as a rationale it has a nice circular logic where the campaign can't end 'till MI and FL are resolved, but the issue can't be resolved until the campaign ends, so on and on we go.
• Big Tent Democrat: "Barack Obama is almost certainly going to be the nominee. ... That's why I think attitudes like that exhibited by Matt Yglesias are totally misguided. If Obama loses the nomination, it won't be because Florida and Michigan are seated. It will take a huge meltdown for that to happen."

THE FIELD: Decked By Cards?

The big uproar in the conservative blogosphere centered on Obama's remark that John McCain was "losing his bearings" for touting to the media that Obama was endorsed by Hamas. The McCain camp shot back with a memo accusing Obama of use the "age card" against McCain.

• Michael Goldfarb: "In the same breath as [Obama] says McCain is name calling, he effectively calls McCain a senile old coot. Mark Salter put out a statement blasting Obama over the rank hypocrisy of his attack. Of course what's really absurd is Obama's insistence that his policy towards Hamas is no different than McCain's. This might be true if Obama wasn't in such a rush to play pattycake with Iran, which provides the funding and training that sustain Hamas, and which, like Hamas, denies Israel's right to exist."
• Hot Air: "McCain's point here goes right to the heart of Obama's foreign policy. Yes, it's true that Obama's stance towards Hamas, incoherent though it is, isn't much different from the GOP's, leading one to wonder then why Ahmed Yousef should have any strong preference for him instead of McCain. The answer: Because he knows that the Messiah's willingness to engage in 'aggressive' diplomacy with one set of terrorist slackjaws means he's more likely to adopt that policy towards other sets. That's why no matter how much pro-Israeli rhetoric Obama offers, Palestinians continue to bitterly cling to the hope that he's going to be a new Jimmy Carter once he’s in office and free enough from electoral pressures to let the mask slip a bit."
• Contentions' Jennifer Rubin: "Barack Obama accused John McCain of 'smearing him' by claiming that Hamas wants Obama to be President. But this isn't a smear, it is fact. A spokesman for Hamas, you will recall, did endorse Obama."
• The Corner's Andy McCarthy: "King of Righteous Indignation, is righteously (actually, risibly) indignant over a "smear" by John McCain -- namely, McCain's factually true (and totally understandable) observation that Hamas wants Obama to be president. ... I hope Sen. McCain does not decide that this, like the patently relevant Wright matter, is somehow beneath his dignity to discuss."
• Sullivan: "My response is simply that honorable campaigns do not allow foreign agents, especially terrorist organizations, to insert themselves into American presidential politics. No respectable foreign governments do such a thing; and the gambits of al Qaeda, Hamas, or any other grouping to play one candidate against another should in general be ignored, not exploited. ... It's a lame and cheap shot. And beneath McCain."

THE FIELD: The Activist Vs. The Decider

Many bloggers are also criticizing Obama for his judicial philosophy, which they claim is too legislative (or "activist") in nature.

• The Swamp's James Oliphant: "It's an interesting, if not shocking, exercise to match Obama's remarks up against those made by John McCain on judges earlier this week. ... Where McCain seemed to suggest that courts should involve themselves in controversies only when necessary, Obama clearly views their duty more expansively, especially in terms of leveling the playing field between rich and poor."
• Hot Air: "In our earlier threads, some of our commenters insisted that there would be no difference between McCain and Obama on judicial appointments. Obama himself made the difference clear; he wants judges who would impose social policy rather than interpret and enforce existing law. This makes sense from a legislator who has done nothing to propose social policy in his three years in the Senate. He would rather take the shortcut on which liberal activists have grown to rely when they realize that their radical plans have little chance of success in the legislative process."
• RedState's Tom Feeney: "Over the last half of this century, the United States Supreme Court has frequently elected to decide what the law should be rather than what the law actually is. ... As we approach the coming election, we must have leaders that are dedicated to upholding the rule of law and finding judicial nominees that are able to exercise the kind of restraint that Senator McCain promotes. Senator McCain recognizes that the real and desired activism in our country is democratic rather than judicial."

Others, however, claim that McCain too heavily favors executive power, and has allowed it to encroach too heavily upon the Constiution. Glenn Greenwald: "Virtually every abuse of the last eight years has its roots in the Bush/Cheney view of the President as Monarch, and John McCain clearly endorses its fundamentals. Indeed, when responding to a questionnaire on executive power circulated to all the candidates, [McCain] refused to say that there was even a single aspect of Bush's use of executive power that he found unconstitutional or otherwise objectionable. ... By contrast, Obama answered the same question at length, [and] then went on specifically to identify numerous issues -- torture, detention of Americans as 'enemy combatants' without due process, warrantless surveillance, violations of international treaties, the lawless creation of military commissions -- which he said were unconstitutional or otherwise objectionable expressions of excessive Presidential power. By contrast, McCain refused to identify even a single Bush assertion of power he rejects."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

P.J. O'Rourke: "All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I'd be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I've got three kids and three dogs in my family. We'd be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat."

LEST WE FORGET:

From "Deep Thoughts," by Jack Handey: "One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. 'Oh, no,' I said. 'Disneyland burned down.' He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late."

Posted by Chris Bodenner at 01:04 PM

May 08, 2008

She's Still In It To Win ... What Exactly?

DEM FIELD I: She Keeps Going, And Going, And Going...

Liberal bloggers react to Hillary Clinton's vow to stay in the race "until there's a nominee":

• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "While, as I wrote last night, I don't think she'll ultimately be the nominee, I support her decision to continue. The rest of the states deserve to participate in this historic election."
• The Stump's Michael Crowley: "I'm actually a little surprised she's pressing on. Surely even the Clintons can see some point of diminishing returns where the harm to their reputation outweighs whatever tiny chance she has of succeeding."
• Taylor Marsh: "On To West Virginia. ... This is a time for champions. We fight on."

In reaction to Clinton saying that "if [Dems] had the rules that the Republicans have, I'd already be the nominee," AMERICAblog's John Aravosis writes: "It's petulant, arrogant, whiny, and just overall makes her look like a spoiled brat. She is looking and acting and sounding like one of her pushy surrogates, not like a presidential candidate. Whining about how you should have won it already is something your staff says -- if at all -- not you. ... Oh, and one more thing. It's been clear from the beginning that someone forget to tell Hillary, 'we're not Republicans.'"

The Stump's Mike Crowley: "A few days ago I joked that Hillary had come to resemble Mike Huckabee: "Deriding elites, playing the populist, campaigning hard in rural areas. ... A few TV commentators have declared that her campaign is effectively dead either way, but that she may carry on for a while--maybe until June 3--with a purely positive campaign whose last hope is a totally unforced error (a.k.a. "macaca moment") that brings Obama down. And that, of course, is how Mike Huckabee closed out his own campaign--harmlessly traveling around with barely an ill word for John McCain. Hillary's bizarre transformation will have been complete. (That they both lived in the Arkansas governor's mansion makes it that much stranger....)"

DEM FIELD II: Some Of My Best Friends Are White People!

The greatest response to Clinton vowing to stay in the race centered on her camp's insistence that she's seen great gains in securing the coveted "white working-class vote":

Talking Points Memo's Greg Sargent: "On the Hillary conference call, Hillary chief strategist Geoff Garin made the case for her electability in some of the most explicitly race-based terms I've heard yet. Garin argued that the North Carolina contest, which Obama won by 14 points, represented 'progress' for Hillary because she did better among white voters there than she did in Virginia. ... Garin's overall implication here is that her success among white voters in North Carolina yesterday is 'progress' in the sense that it strengthens her case for electability. In other words, it's an explicit, and unabashed, linking of her claim of electability to her success among whites."

• Open Left's Chris Bowers: "Awesome. Let's spin crippling losses as huge victories, and talk about the importance of voters in explicitly racial terms."
• Huffington Post's Mike Barnacle: "Now, faced with a mathematical mountain climb that even Stephen Hawking could not ascend, the Clintons -- and it is indeed both of them -- are just about to paste a bumper sticker on the rear of the collapsing vehicle that carries her campaign. It reads: VOTE WHITE."
• Aravosis: "Hillary is saying that her base is better than Obama's base. And we all know who Obama's base is: Blacks (and elitist latte sipping pansies from San Francisco who don't have testicular fortitude, but Hillary doesn't mean gays, she means other effeminate pansies from San Francisco). ... We learned months ago that when the Clintons start invoking race, it's intentional."

Though most liberal bloggers were critical of Garin's "progress" argument, Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat was more circumspect: "In the Left blogs today, it is considered a mortal sin to point out that Barack Obama has trouble connecting with white working class voters. ... African American voters have been a staple of the Democratic coalition. While no constituency should ever be taken for granted, there seems to me no doubt, all things being equal, that holding white Democrats is more of a problem than holding African American Democrats."

Josh Marshall seemed to have the most balanced take: "There's nothing wrong with studying these percentages in terms of demography. Nor is there anything wrong with Democratic strategists recognizing that their candidates need to win this or that percentage of white voters to win. But creeping in the shadows of these conversations about how Democrats can no longer manage to win the white vote and are only saved from political oblivion by running up big margins among African-Americans is a little disguised assumption that African-American votes are somehow second-rate. I don't think there's any getting around that."

And Ben Smith sees the timing of Garin's rhetoric as somewhat suspicious: "Now, the press has talked about the race in these terms constantly, so I won't feign shock. But it's a bit strange to hear it so bluntly from the candidate's mouth, and probably not a great way to endear herself to African-American voter. And it's also noteworthy that the blunt talk on appealing to whites surfaces the day after the last round of primaries in which there's a substantial number of black voters."

Finally, Jim Geraghty sees a double standard in all the talk over Dem demographics: "African-Americans are voting overwhelmingly for a candidate who shares their skin color, but it's being repeatedly suggested that white working-class voters are motivated by racism. Is this the 'national conversation on race' that Obama had in mind in his Philly speech?"

DEM FIELD III: Consolation Prizes

Many in the liberal blogosphere suspect that Clinton's refusal to concede is an attempt to secure a veep slot:

• Beeton: "What the Clinton campaign is doing ... is to demonstrate how crucial Hillary Clinton's presence on the ticket is to Obama's victory in November. The longer she is able to continue in the race and the better she continues to do among white working class voters in states such as West Virginia and Kentucky, the more compelling the rationale for offering her the VP spot becomes."
• Daily Kos's NMDan: "The only logic to the Clinton's action has to be a power grab for the VP position.... I know, I know many of you don't want to hear this but I think it is almost inevitable. The record numbers that the Democrats are turning out will not be ignored within political circles and amongst the Superdelegates. The Clintons and their advisors are smart enough to do the math and realize its over for 2008. The Clintons also realize they are a brand name, they have a huge organization, and they will wait 8 years to take the whitehouse. They are professional politicians."
• Marc Ambinder: "At the highest levels of the Obama campaign, there is no appetite for any talk of a unity ticket so far. Still, big victories in West Virginia and Kentucky will help Clinton make the argument that she is indispensable."

Markos Moulitsas thinks the possibility of an Obama-Clinton ticket is a terrible idea: "This isn't a call based on bitterness or hate, but practical politics. The VP candidate needs to be a subservient figure, someone who won't outshine or overshadow the presidential candidate. Let's face it, Hillary is too strong a personality to play that role (not anymore), and the drama the Clinton family carries with them would be a distraction from Obama's core message. Seeing how Bill Clinton has comported himself this primary season, no one wants to see him around the rest of the year. He's been a disgrace. Furthermore, at a time that the GOP is fractured, demoralized and broke, few figures can bring in the dough than the Clintons. There's no reason to give Republicans a boost by putting Clinton on the ticket. ... She doesn't deliver geography ... she doesn't add 'experience' to the ticket, since she always overplayed her credentials on that front, she probably brings some credibility on health care, but little else. There's the 'unify the party' thing, but that's overplayed as well."

Huffington Post's Ian Welsh suggests that even if Clinton was offered the veep slot, it wouldn't be in her best interest to accept it: "[T]o be crass and point out the unpalatable truth, there isn't a lot in it for Hillary to back Obama in a more than pro-forma 'going through the motions' fashion. If he loses, she's the presumptive nominee in 4 years, after all. If he wins, she probably has to wait 8 years, and she's not getting any younger."

Welsh suggests other motives for Clinton staying in the race: "For Bill, probably a seat on the Supremes if the opportunity comes up (and it will, if Obama is elected.) For Hillary? Probably Senate Majority leader--it's not like Harry Reid really likes the job anyway."

Over on the conservative side of the blogosphere, The Corner's Lisa Schiffren also thinks a veep slot would not be in Clinton's best interests: "Hillary is older, more experienced in life if not leadership, and the putative nominee is pretty flimsy. Taking orders from him and living to serve -- or being frozen out of -- his agenda is not a place that Hillary should want to be. For one thing, it will undermine the vision of political strength she has offered the nation's girls and young women -- which is her genuine gift and legacy. ... Being the Veep candidate on a losing ticket is a one-way train to political oblivion. If he wins -- and maybe even if he loses -- he will run again in 2012. Challenging a sitting president of your own party is a fool's errand. Waiting till 2016 is another for a 60-year-old woman."

"Hillary has two real political choices: 1) return to the Senate and become a power center, and maybe even a voice for the working classes she has gotten to know. ... Or 2) If she is going to demand a serious job, she should demand a top-tier cabinet position where she has a major undertaking to call her own. (Not that I want her in charge of health care, the military or foreign policy.)"

Despite the damage done to Clinton in the primary, and the near impossibility of her getting the nod, The Stump's Noam Scheiber suggests that she's actually still "in it to win it": "My earlier understanding was that Hillary refused to quit because she believed Obama would lose to McCain. I didn't see things the same way, but there was a certain nobility to her stubbornness (even if the logic was self-serving). If DeFrank is right and I'm understanding him correctly, Hillary now thinks both she and Obama would win and just wants to claim the prize for herself. It's, uh, not exactly the most principled argument for denying the nomination to the guy who's basically won it."

Another consolation prize being bandied about the blogosphere is the possibility of Obama paying off Clinton's mounting campaign debt (which appears even greater now that her camp announced yesterday that the Clintons loaned themselves another $6.4M):

• Andrew Sullivan: "The representative of working class white America is now using her own multi-million dollar fortune to ensure that the little people's voices are heard. It's a nice contrast with the elitist, commie egghead who has revolutionized campaign finance with 1.5 million small donors."