Irish Trojan in Tennessee

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

The leader of al Qaeda in Iraq has been arrested, an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman tells The Associated Press.

UPDATE: Or not.

Vice President Clinton?

By Brendan Loy

No.

But the question is going to be asked, oh, about 100 million times between now and whenever Obama announces his actual running mate. And it's going to be incredibly annoying. The media will be absolutely obsessed with the notion of a "dream ticket" -- in fact, this may be the MSM's compromise solution to the West Virginia/Kentucky dilemma, sticking with the "it's over" meme but presenting Clinton's landslide wins as evidence that she's "indispensible" -- and the Clintonistas, given their endless supply of self-centeredness, will be only too happy to add fuel to the fire (regardless of whether Hillary would actually accept the offer).

For once, I am in complete agreement with Kos, who wrote yesterday that the notion of Obama offering Clinton the #2 spot "should be a non-starter from the start.  This isn't a call based on bitterness or hate, but practical politics." (Hat tip: yea.) I agree with Kos's reasons, and I would also add the ones I articulated last month:

[T]here's no way the dream ticket happens now. Before bittergate, I thought it was possible*, but now, no way. How can Hillary be on a ticket with someone she has called an out-of-touch elitist who is unready to lead from day one? Not that she'd have any shame about it, mind you, but the constant repetition of those charges out of her mouth would provide such a constant drumbeat of "gotcha" moments that it would totally eviscerate any electoral benefits such a ticket would otherwise reap. Imagine the negative ads! "Even Barack Obama's runningmate says..." NO WAY. Will not happen. Crazy.

The reality is, for all the myopic gnashing of teeth right now (can teeth be myopic? nevermind), the bulk of Hillary's supporters will ultimately vote for Obama. We're talking about what happens on the margins here. It's not as if he's only going to get 51% of the Democratic base to vote for him. The issue here is whether he'll get 85% or 90% ... or something like that. Having Hillary on the ticket would be one way to make up that 5% (or whatever) -- while simultaneously shedding 10% (or whatever) among independents, liberal idealists, etc., and helping McCain shore up his base -- but it's not the only way, and it's by far the most destructive way. There are other running mates Obama can choose who will also help him make inroads into margins of Hillary's base that you're worrying about, without the devastating collateral consequences elsewhere in the electorate. Kathleen Sebelius would help with women. Ted Strickland [or Evan Bayh -ed.] would help with Rust Belt folks. (If only Jennifer Granholm weren't Canadian, she could do both!) Bill Richardson would help with Hispanics. Jim Webb would help with the working-class "tough guy" vote.    

There are lots of good options. Hillary is a bad option. Bad, bad, bad. There are ways he can make this work. Picking Hillary is suicide. It a) gains him a sliver of her base that he'd have otherwise lost, and b) loses him the election.

I actually think Obama would be well served to announce his running mate earlier than usual, just to prevent the inevitable Clinton-for-veep speculation from consuming the entire summer, and from further dividing the party when he finally gets around to rejecting what many pundits (and Hillary supporters) will myopically see as the "obvious" choice.

Before the "healing" can truly begin, the last shot must be fired, and that shot will be Obama's choice of a vice presidential running mate who isn't named Hillary Rodham Clinton.

*P.S. My statement that "before bittergate, I thought it was possible" is seemingly contradicted by my January 22 comment that "If it's an Obama-Clinton ticket, I will eat my arm." :) However, there actually was a period in March or early April when I briefly flirted with the idea of a Obama-Clinton ticket being workable. Sort of like how I briefly flirted with the idea of voting for Nader in 2000. In both cases, I eventually realized that the idea was "wolf-face crazy...the kind of decision you make when you are drunk, and on cocaine, and on deadline, and on fire."

Heh.

By Brendan Loy

George F. Will:

Hillary Clinton, 60, Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer, became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home. She may think, or at least would argue, that when she was 12 her Yankees really won the 1960 World Series, by standards of "fairness," because they trounced the Pirates in runs scored, 55-27, over seven games, so there.

Unfortunately, baseball's rules -- pesky nuisances, rules -- say it matters how runs are distributed during a World Series. The Pirates won four games, which is the point of the exercise, by a total margin of seven runs, while the Yankees were winning three by a total of 35 runs. You can look it up.

After Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton, the Yankee Clipperette, can, and hence eventually will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat's Last Theorem, or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party's rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party's rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama's delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium's ZIP code.
    
Or perhaps she wins if Obama's popular vote total is, well, adjusted, by counting each African-American vote as only three-fifths of a vote. There is precedent, of sorts, for that arithmetic (see the Constitution, Article I, Section 2, before the 14th Amendment).

(Hat tip: Joe Mama.)

Believe it or not, I hadn't seen Will's "three-fifths" joke when I made essentially the same joke on an earlier post. Heh. Great minds think alike, or something.

Incidentally, Will isn't buying into the conservative CW that recent scandals have revealed Obama's alleged "liberal Reagan" status as a fraud. He writes:

Tuesday night must have been almost as much fun for John McCain as for Obama. The Republican brand has been badly smudged by recent foreign and domestic policies, which are the only kinds there are, so McCain's hopes rest on the still-unattached cohort called "Reagan Democrats," who still seem somewhat resistant to Obama.

McCain's problem might turn out to be the fact that Obama is the Democrats' Reagan. Obama's rhetorical cotton candy lacks Reagan's ideological nourishment, but he is Reaganesque in two important senses: People like listening to him, and his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness -- the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.

I think Will is right. The "liberal Reagan" lives, even if he's been limping recently. For all his weaknesses, which have become quite glaring in the last month or two, Obama still has several hugely important trump cards against McCain: his youthful and energetic appearance, his optimistic message, his rhetorical skill, and his ability to raise money. In a very superficial, meta sense, the general election is going to be a cash-strapped, often uncomfortable-looking, grumpy old guy, arguing for essentially the status quo on most issues, against a young, well-funded, energetic, rhetorically gifted "fresh face" who draws massive crowds and argues passionately for change. When you think of it in those terms -- and many swing voters are very superficial in their thinking about politics -- it's hard to imagine McCain winning, isn't it?

Those factors are in addition to the fact that the country is seemingly rather fed up with Republicans and Republican policies at the moment. And, oh yes, and let's not forget the media's adoration of Obama, which will only increase as he gets closer to the "first black president" finish line. (The media has traditionally adored McCain, too, but in this "historic" race against Obama, that'll change.)

If Obama manages to lose in spite of all those advantages, it will be a minor miracle, and the best example yet of Democrats throwing away an election where everything was in their favor. I'm not saying McCain can't win -- he certainly can -- but his supporters ignore Obama's built-in advantages at their peril.

Cyclone death toll could reach 100,000

By Brendan Loy

The worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami keeps getting worse:

Stephen Hadley, the White House national security adviser, said 100,000 people had probably been killed, with a large number of others unaccounted for, in a “humanitarian disaster of enormous proportions”. He said that Burma’s junta would “compound the disaster” by denying access to relief groups.

“This is not about politics, this is about helping people in need. And the junta should please open its doors and let the international community provide humanitarian assistance to the people in Burma because they need it desperately.”

Dr. Jeff Masters has more, noting that Cyclone Nargis "took the worst possible track, passing directly over the densely populated and low lying Irrawaddy River delta," and also "came at the worst time possible, during the winter bora rice crop harvest." So the storm's toll will be compounded by further food shortages at a time when the price of rice is already sky-high.

Masters also writes:

In one city alone--Bogalay, about 50 miles southwest of the capital of Yangon--10,000 people are thought to have died. Bogalay is a decrepit city of 100,000 that lies at the head of a estuary that leads to the sea. No doubt this narrow waterway served to funnel a storm surge over ten feet high into the city.

Yikes.

A question for Senator Clinton

By Brendan Loy

In an interview yesterday, Hillary Clinton told USA Today that she's more electable than Barack Obama because she does better among white people:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that 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," she said.

Now, look, I'm not going to get all frothing-at-the-mouth outraged over the mere fact that Senator Clinton is reciting basic demographic and statistical facts. However, I do have a question.

Hillary points out that she has been consistently beating Obama among whites, which is certainly true. However, it is equally true that Obama has been consistently beating her -- by much wider margins -- among blacks. How this adds up to Clinton having a "broader base," I'm not sure, unless she's counting blacks as three-fifths of a person or something. (Sorry... that was a low blow.) The reality is, Obama is getting more votes than her, so on its face, his "base" would seem to be "broader."

In any event, because Clinton seems to think that general-election preferences can be extrapolated from primary results, her poor performance among blacks is -- by her own logic -- a major problem for her. At present, her "winning coalition" includes only 10 to 20 percent of the black vote. She is fond of saying that no Democrat can win the presidency without winning the various "battleground states" whose primaries she's won; well, no Democrat can win the presidency with only 10 percent of the black vote, either.

The clear implication of Clinton's argument is that, because whites are voting for Clinton rather than for Obama in the primaries, it therefore follows that many of them will not vote for Obama in November. Okay, so can we likewise presume that, because blacks are voting for Obama rather than Clinton in the primaries, it similarly follows that many of them will not for Clinton in November? And if not, why not? Is Hillary simply taking the black vote for granted? I think she is, and I think she needs to be asked: why is it acceptable to take the black vote for granted, while the white vote must be earned? Do tell, Senator Clinton.

In reality, of course, the vast majority of Clinton primary voters -- of whatever race, ethnicity, gender, etc. -- will back Obama in November, and the converse would be true if she were the nominee. But if Hillary's going to use this bogus line of reasoning that conflates primary results with general-election trends, then she needs to be asked flat-out why she thinks she can win the presidency with only 10% of the black vote... and when she stumbles and fumbles her way to an answer, she needs to be asked the follow-up question, "Ah, so you're taking the black vote for granted, then?"