Irish Trojan in Tennessee

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

A Democratic panel approves seating full Florida and Michigan delegations, giving each delegate half a vote.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Barack Obama has resigned as a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, his campaign says.

Florida & Michigan update

By Brendan Loy

Politico's Ben Smith looks at where things stand after all sides -- the Clinton camp, the Obama camp, the Florida folks and the Michigan folks -- made their arguments to the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee.

Numbnut?!?

By David K.

Who said spelling bees were boring!

T.S. Arthur forms

By Brendan Loy

As foreshadowed below, Tropical Storm Arthur has formed -- one day before the "official" start of the Atlantic season -- from the remnants of Pacific T.S. Alma. It was actually designated a T.S. while over the Yucatan Peninsula. I'm out and about right now; details when I get home.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Arthur didn't form over land; it formed "near the coast of Belize," according to the 1:00 PM special advisory that designated it. It was over land by the time the 2:00 PM advisory was issued, which is what I was reading when I wrote this post on my cell phone.

No word yet from Alan Sullivan considers the NHC's designation of Arthur "count-padding." Anyway...

...TROPICAL STORM ARTHUR OVER THE YUCATAN PENINSULA...EXPECTED TO WEAKEN OVER LAND LATER TODAY...

... MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS REMAIN NEAR 40 MPH...65 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER GUSTS. THESE WINDS ARE OCCURRING PRIMARILY OVER WATER WELL TO THE NORTHEAST AND EAST OF THE CENTER. ARTHUR IS EXPECTED TO WEAKEN TODAY AS IT MOVES FARTHER INLAND OVER YUCATAN.

After the expected weakening, Arthur could re-strengthen in the Bay of Campeche or the Gulf of Mexico, according to Eric Berger and Dr. Jeff Masters.

Alma could re-form as Arthur

By Brendan Loy

Will the first tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season be... the first tropical storm of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season?

SPECIAL TROPICAL DISTURBANCE STATEMENT
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
500 AM EDT SAT MAY 31 2008

AN AREA OF LOW PRESSURE...ASSOCIATED WITH THE REMNANTS OF FORMER EASTERN PACIFIC TROPICAL STORM ALMA...IS CENTERED OVER THE GULF OF HONDURAS NEAR THE COAST OF NORTHERN BELIZE. THE LOW IS MOVING SLOWLY WESTWARD...AND THE CENTER IS EXPECTED TO MOVE INLAND OVER THE YUCATAN PENINSULA DURING THE NEXT FEW HOURS. HOWEVER...SATELLITE IMAGERY AND SURFACE OBSERVATIONS INDICATE THIS SYSTEM IS BECOMING BETTER ORGANIZED...AND A TROPICAL DEPRESSION COULD FORM IF THE CENTER REMAINS OFFSHORE THIS MORNING. EVEN IF NO DEVELOPMENT OCCURS...LOCALIZED HEAVY RAINS AND FLOODS ARE POSSIBLE DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS OVER PORTIONS OF HONDURAS...EL SALVADOR...GUATEMALA...BELIZE...AND SOUTHEASTERN MEXICO. FUTURE TROPICAL DISTURBANCE STATEMENTS WILL BE ISSUED ON THIS SYSTEM AS NECESSARY.

In some instances, a storm can retain its name when crossing from one basin to another. I forget the exact criteria for that, but I believe it has to do with whether the old storm retains its circulation, as opposed to merely its moisture. Given the NHC's reference to the "remants of former" Alma, and the statement that "a tropical depression could form" (as opposed to re-form), I think they're contemplating designating it as a new storm -- in which case it would be named Arthur, if it reaches tropical storm status in the Atlantic basin. Weather Matrix agrees.

Meanwhile, weather Alan Sullivan, who correctly bucked the predictions of an active season last year, writes: "The Atlantic is way too active for so early in the season."

NBA time warp

By Brendan Loy

It's official: the NBA Finals will feature the league's top seeds in a 1980s-style clash of titans: Lakers vs. Celtics.

Shark sighting!

By Brendan Loy

As I mentioned earlier, my parents are in town this weekend, and tonight my dad and I went to a Tennessee Smokies game. I had totally forgotten that Notre Dame's Jeff Samardzija is a Smokie (er, a Smoky?), but he is, and there he was, standing in the dugout right in front of us:

I couldn't resist saying something, so I walked up to the edge of the dugout and yelled "Hey, Jeff!" a couple of times until he heard me and looked over. I then said, "Go Irish!" He responded with a sort of half-smile and quasi-acknowledgment that suggested he gets that all the time from Notre Dame fans who feel so passionately about the Irish that they figure it's perfectly reasonable to treat famous ND alums like long-lost buddies and thus randomly say "Go Irish" at them. Heh.

Alas, Samardzija wasn't pitching tonight, but it was cool to see him anyway. He's got a blog, by the way.

Anyway, the Smokies won the game, 8-3, and we had a good time. Here are a few more pictures:

Noonan defends McClellan (sort of)

By Brendan Loy

Peggy Noonan:

Leave [Scott McClellan] alone. He wrote a book. It is true or untrue, accurately reported or not. If not, this will no doubt be revealed. It is honestly meant and presented, or not. Look to the assertions, argue them, weigh and ponder. ...

The book can be seen as a grenade lobbed over the wall. Thus the explosive response. He is a traitor, turncoat, betrayer, sellout. If he'd had any guts he would have spoken up when he was in power. ... But those damning him today would have damned him even more if he'd resigned on principle three years ago. [The right]—and the administration—would have beaten him to a pulp, the former from rage, the latter as a lesson: This is what happens when you leave and talk. ...

When I finished the book I came out not admiring Mr. McClellan or liking him but, in terms of the larger arguments, believing him. One hopes more people who work or worked within the Bush White House will address the book's themes and interpretations. What he says may be inconvenient, and it may be painful, but that's not what matters. What matters is if it's true. Let the debate on the issues commence.

Bob Dole: Bob Dole is angry. Bob Dole.

By Brendan Loy

Bob Dole told Scott McClellan today that Bob Dole thinks Scott McClellan is a "miserable creature," a "total ingrate," a greedy bastard, and a poor excuse for a man. (Bob Dole, of course, knows a thing or two about manhood.)

"If all these awful things were happening," Bob Dole wrote in an e-mail to McClellan, "and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job." That, says Bob Dole, would have taken "integrity and courage."

Instead, Bob Dole wrote, McClellan chose the path of greed. Bob Dole added that Bob Dole thinks McClellan should donate his book proceeds "to a worthy cause, something like, 'Biting The Hand That Fed Me.'"

Bob Dole also pointed out that McClellan is hardly unique in this regard. "In [Bob Dole's] nearly 36 years of public service, [Bob Dole has] known of a few like you," Bob Dole said. McClellan, says Bob Dole, is just another "miserable creature" who doesn't "have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," but instead "soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

"You’re a hot ticket now," Bob Dole concluded, "but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"

According to Politico, Bob Dole "signed the email simply: 'BOB DOLE.'"

Uh-oh, now Obama's in trouble

By Brendan Loy

Ricky Martin endorses Hillary Clinton.

This weekend's schedule

By Brendan Loy

For anyone trying to figure out when exactly to tune in to Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer this weekend, here is the schedule:

Saturday: DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee meets to rule on Florida & Michigan challenges. Oral arguments begin at 9:30 AM EST. After a lunch break, RBC members will "consider and debate the challenges" in the afternoon. As many as 368 delegates -- 313 pledged, 55 super -- are at stake. More on the numbers here.

Sunday: Puerto Rico votes. The polls are open from 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM EST. 55 pledged delegates are at stake. As for the "popular vote," depending on how you do the math, Hillary Clinton needs to win by more than 113,000, more than 177,000, or more than 268,000 votes to have a shot at staking any sort of arguably plausible claim on a popular-vote "victory." (Of course, the "popular vote" is inherently illegitimate, and moreover, counting every vote isn't such a good idea for Clinton anyway. But the question right now is whether she'll even have an argument, not whether it's a winning argument.)

My blogging on these events will probably be rather light, as my parents are in town this weekend.

McCain's Arab-American problem

By Brendan Loy

Will John McCain lose the presidency because of the Arab-American vote?

Arab-Americans are both very likely to vote -- their turnout is 20 percent higher than that of the general population -- and they are concentrated. Two-thirds of them live in just 10 states, including the swing states of Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. In Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, Arab-Americans have made up 2 percent of the electorate in recent elections. That sounds like a small proportion, but in a close race it can make a difference. In 2000, Bush won the Arab-American vote over Gore by 7.5 percentage points. ... [This year, however,] Zogby polling has found that a strong majority of Arab-Americans now favor Obama.

(Hat tip: Sullivan.)

Everybody take off your pants!

By Brendan Loy

Why? Because Hitler wore pants, that's why! Hitler!

Hillary schedules events thru next Friday

By Brendan Loy

There are some indications that Hillary Clinton is planning on sticking around past next Tuesday. Specifically, the reporters embedded with her campaign "received an email Thursday afternoon informing [them] they could sign up for travel through June 6 on the campaign website." (Hat tip: Halperin.)

Notwithstanding this, I predict she drops out on Thursday (the 5th). Obama will reach the "magic number" -- however it's defined -- either Tuesday night or Wednesday (with additional superdelegate endorsements), thus well and truly clinching the nomination. At that point, the pressure on Hillary to withdraw will become intense and almost universal among party leaders outside her circle of sycophants and rabid supporters.

If she presses on, using Michigan and Florida as her phony rationale for doing so -- and, yes, it's phony even if she genuinely believes it, having convinced herself of her righteousness -- it'll be career suicide (and quite possibly party suicide). Which doesn't mean she won't do it, but I'd bet against it. All things considered, I suspect this "schedule" is mostly for show.

Michigan makes its case

By Brendan Loy

Michigan Democrats' argument to the Rules & Bylaws Committee is surprisingly reasonable -- certainly moreso than the nonsense Hillary's people have been spouting. In particular, I hadn't previously heard the argument that the DNC "selectively enforce[d] its calendar rule," penalizing Michigan and Florida but not New Hampshire (even though all three violated the calendar), and that this selective enforcement is what forced Michigan's hand.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of that interpretation of events -- indeed, I suspect Michigan was just looking for an excuse to cut in line -- but on its face, it sounds reasonable, and actually does provide an arguably legitimate, rather than merely demogogic, case for lifting the delegate-stripping penalty.

However, I take issue with this statement, at least as it applies to the proposed solution of cutting Michigan's delegation in half:

To penalize Michigan ... would jeopardize our chances of carrying Michigan and winning the Presidency.  ... [W]e must insist on Michigan’s full delegation being seated at the Democratic National Convention with full voting rights.

The problem is this: the Republicans cut Michigan's delegation in half, too! In fact, the GOP halved the delegations of Michigan, Florida, South Carolina, Wyoming and New Hampshire, all because they violated the party's calendar.

It is difficult to see, therefore, how the Democrats would "jeopardize our chances of carrying Michigan" by adopting the exact same solution the Republicans chose -- unless the spin wins out over the facts. Unfortunately, if the RBC halves the delegations and the Clinton campaign and/or the Michigan & Florida folks choose to demagogue the issue, that's exactly what is likely to happen.

Alma

By Brendan Loy

The first tropical storm of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season (which starts annually on May 15, roughly two weeks earlier than the Atlantic season) has formed. Its name is Tropical Storm Alma, and it could cause a major flooding disaster in Central America.

The Atlantic hurricane season officially starts on Sunday -- not that that means anything, of course. The first named Atlantic storm will be Arthur.

Why the polls don't matter

By Brendan Loy

Last week, Matthew Yglesias wrote:

It's really too bad that the folks behind Five Thirty Eight.com have gone and created such a compelling website based around state-by-state general election polling. It's all really well done and, as such, I can't really bring myself to look away. But this stuff is all really and truly meaningless.

He's right. It's May; the general election is in November. Making Electoral College projections based on current polls is a bit like projecting the BCS bowl matchups based on the AP poll in Week 2. It's candy for political junkies (hence my glee when these maps first started appearing), but it's not terribly informative, and it's certainly not anything to base important decisions on. Thus, it's rather silly for Clinton to be sending out pollsters' maps to the superdelegates, using them to argue that she's more electable than Obama.

Underlining this point today on his Politico blog, Ben Smith offers an Electoral College projection from May 28, 2004 -- four years ago yesterday -- that showed Kerry beating Bush, 327-211. See, that proves Kerry's electable!

An awful lot can, and will, change in the five-plus months between now and the election. Most people don't start seriously paying attention until after Labor Day, and the closest of the battleground states will be decided by swing voters who make up their minds in the final week of the campaign. You can learn a lot more from thinking about the likely dynamics of the race (e.g., young vs. old, change vs. experience, cash cow vs. cash-strapped, dovish vs. hawkish, liberal vs. conservative, and alas, black vs. white) than from looking at polls, whether national or state-by-state, at this early date.

UPDATE: Speaking of polls, this is interesting:

There are very few sure things in politics, but here's one: Barack Obama's going to dominate the black vote in November. John F. Kerry got 88 percent, and it's hard to see Obama getting less than 90 percent as the favorite son of a core Democratic constituency in a great Democratic year.

But many polls aren't currently showing this. Take the SurveyUSA poll of Michigan getting some attention today. The poll, which has McCain up 4 percentage points, has Obama winning among African-Americans 62 percent to 26 percent with the balance undecided ...
This seems just wildly unlikely as an outcome ...

Whatever the cause, it's something to watch for in general election polling, and a way in which Obama's support seems at times to be seriously understated.

Obama backtracks (?) on diplomacy

By Brendan Loy

Call it flip-flopping if you must, but I, for one, am glad to see Obama clarifying/revising his position on meeting with foreign leaders:

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, sought to emphasize, as he and his aides have done continually over the last few days, the difference between avoiding preconditions for talks with nations like Iran and Syria, and granting them automatic discussions at the presidential level.

While Mr. Obama has said he would depart from the Bush administration policy of refusing to meet with certain nations unless they meet preconditions, he has also said he would reserve the right to choose which leaders he would meet, should he choose to meet with them at all.

The issue presents one of Mr. Obama’s biggest political and policy tests yet as he appears headed toward a general-election contest against Senator John McCain of Arizona: How to continue to add nuance to a policy argument that he views as a winning one, without playing into a fierce round of accusations that he is either shifting positions or appeasing the enemy.

The "appeasement" charge is crap, as I've noted before. But, as I also said in that same post, "it's perfectly fair to debate whether Obama's stated willingness to meet with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions is a good idea. I'm not at all sure it is[.]" What I am sure of is that important foreign-policy decisions should be made based on contemporaneous good judgment, not slavish adherence to spur-of-the-moment campaign promises. Obama's apparent recognition of this fact is distinctly a good thing.

Alien fever grips Denver

By Brendan Loy

Not illegal aliens, mind you. Space aliens:

A video that purportedly shows a living, breathing space alien will be shown to the news media Friday in Denver.

But enough about Dennis Kucinich.

McClellan's book consumes the Beltway

By Brendan Loy

I never got around to posting yesterday about Scott McClellan's book. I'm sure you've heard all about it already, but here are some of the highlights:

President Bush “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment,” and has engaged in “self-deception” to justify his political ends, Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary, writes in a critical new memoir about his years in the West Wing.

In addition, Mr. McClellan writes, the decision to invade Iraq was a “serious strategic blunder,” and yet, in his view, it was not the biggest mistake the Bush White House made. That, he says, was “a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed.”

Mr. McClellan’s book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” is the first negative account by a member of the tight circle of Texans around Mr. Bush. Mr. McClellan, 40, went to work for Mr. Bush when he was governor of Texas and was the White House press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006.

More:

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence. ...

The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.

McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.

Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial" ...

“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.” ...

“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.” ...

McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush's liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.” ...

Among other notable passages: ...

• Bush was “clearly irritated, … steamed,” when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: “‘It’s unacceptable,’ Bush continued, his voice rising. ‘He shouldn’t be talking about that.’”

• “As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided.”

• “History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.”

Needless to say, reaction to the book has been fast, furious, and predictably partisan. For instance, Nancy Pelosi "totally agrees" with McClellan's charges, and Robert Wexler, a top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, wants McClellan to testify about his accusations. Karl Rove, on the other hand, says McClellan's book is "a little irresponsible" and that he "sounds like a left-wing blogger." Barack Obama says McClellan "confirmed what a lot of us have thought for some time." But the current White House press secretary, Dana Perino, accuses McClellan of distorting the truth to sell books and says, "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew." And Dan Bartlett, a former top Bush aide, is distinctly displeased:

Former White House counselor Dan Bartlett lashed out at Scott McClellan in a telephone interview Wednesday, saying the allegations that the media was soft on the White House are "total crap," adding that advisers of President Bush are "bewildered and puzzled" by the allegations in McClellan's new book.

"It's almost like we're witnessing an out-of-body experience," Bartlett said of McClellan. "We're hearing from a completely different person we didn't have any insight into."

Bartlett added that intimates of the President feel McClellan has violated his trust. "Part of the role of being a trusted adviser is to honor that trust," said Bartlett. "It's not your place now to go out" and criticize the President like this. ...

Bartlett said the bewilderment stems from "Scott's decision to publicly air these deep misgivings he's never shared privately or publicly" with fellow Bush insiders. "To do it now, through a book, is a mistake," he added.

Bartlett asserted that McClellan did not play a major role in key events, noting that the former aide was serving as deputy press secretary for domestic issues during the run-up to the war in Iraq, raising questions about how McClellan could claim the President used "propaganda" to sell the war.

"I don't think he was in a position to know this," Bartlett said flatly. He said it's "troubling" that McClellan is now "gives credibility to every left-wing attack" on anecdotes that are "either thinly-sourced or not witnessed by him" in the White House.

Blogospheric reactions are split with similar predictability. Perhaps one of the more sage points comes from Ed Morrissey:

Expect all sides to redefine McClellan in order to either boost or reduce his credibility. To the Right, McClellan will have been the worst press secretary of modern times, and to the Left a man of extraordinary ability chased out of his job by Bush’s minions. The truth will be somewhere in the middle.

So... what do y'all think?

What?

By Jay Johnson

No snarky commentary on the Bush chest bump at the Air Force Academy graduation yet?

I'm very disappointed.

UPDATE BY BRENDAN: Here's a photo of the bump in question:

(Via the Denver Post.) Heh.

Of Tucker and toad venom

By Brendan Loy

Glenn Reynolds weighs in on an illegal, deadly aphrodisiac: "Others may see things differently, but to me there's a big gap between 'toad venom' and 'feeling sexy.'" As Glenn himself would say: Indeed.

This comes on the heels on Tucker Carlson's disturbing relevations about his sex life, vis a vis the veepstakes:

“The VP story is a little bit like sex,” observes Tucker Carlson, the writer and NBC political analyst who falls into the skeptic column. “When it’s happening, you’re totally focused on it, it’s all you want. Then, the second it’s over, you can barely remember why it seemed so important.”

“It happens, there are fireworks for 30 seconds, ‘[AP's Ron] Fournier’s got it — it’s JACK KEMP!’”

According to Wikipedia, Tucker is married with four children, so I'm guessing he doesn't really yell out "JACK KEMP!" in the heat of passion. But who knows. I suppose some women would find it sexier than toad venom, at least. Though, if there's a bow-tie involved as well, toad venom might be preferable.

Just in case there was any doubt...

By Brendan Loy

Hillary Clinton just sent this e-mail out to supporters; boldface in original:

This Sunday, voters in Puerto Rico will go to the polls and make their voices heard -- the first time the island has played such a vital role in selecting our party's nominee. At this critical moment, I am depending on you to help me make sure they have a choice. We are depending on the voters of Puerto Rico in our fight to secure the nomination.

She goes on to say that "this race is up to the voters, and I'm going to keep fighting for every last vote," and that "over the next four days, we have the opportunity to make history in the Puerto Rico primary -- and win the national primary vote by redoubling our efforts."

That some very interesting language there: "national primary vote." Is she trying (again) to exclude all caucuses now, even the ones that report popular-vote tallies? I thought Hillary said we must have a nominee based on 50 states! Now she seems to be suggesting that she can claim victory based on the popular vote in 37 states, two territories and the District of Columbia. Hmm.

Needless to say, that's ridiculous, and nobody would take such a tally seriously. However, as I've pointed out before, Hillary does have a shot at an arguably plausible "victory" in the tally of all states and territories -- leaving aside that the "popular vote" is an inherently illegitimate metric -- but, in order to get it, she'd need a Puerto Rico margin of between 113,000 and 268,000 votes, depending on how you do the Michigan math. The best magic number for her to aim for is probably 177,000; that margin would give her a shot at catching Obama in the count that includes all the caucus states and Florida and Michigan, and gives Obama the "Uncommitted" vote in Michigan. (To win without Michigan, she'd need 268,000+.)

Of course, I realize that the notion of a popular-vote victory fundamentally premised on a Puerto Rico blowout is a contentious issue. But I'm not wading into the pros and cons right now -- been there, done that. I just wanted to point out, for whatever it's worth, that the Clinton campaign has now made it explicitly clear that they are "depending on" Puerto Rico.

Today's e-mail missive from the Obama campaign, by the way, states as follows:

Only three contests remain in the Democratic primary.

Voters head to the polls in Puerto Rico on Sunday, followed by South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday.

After more than four dozen contests, Barack has won the most votes, the most delegates, and more than half the states. But we still need 48 delegates to secure the nomination.

We're fighting in these critical states and making the preparations necessary to take on Senator McCain.

That language, "these critical states," is intriguing. Are they sloppily declaring Puerto Rico a "state," or are they implying that South Dakota and Montana and the only "critical" contests remaining? We report, you decide.

P.S. Hillary's memo to the superdelegates sheds some light on that "national primary vote" line:

[W]hen the primaries are finished, I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned through primaries. Ultimately, the point of our primary process is to pick our strongest nominee – the one who would be the best President and Commander in Chief, who has the greatest support from members of our party, and who is most likely to win in November. So I hope you will consider not just the strength of the coalition backing me, but also that more people will have cast their votes for me.

So, "more delegates earned through primaries" = "more people have cast their votes for me." So she is advancing a metric that explicitly ignores the will of the voters in 13 states. Fantastic!

The problem with this approach goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, since Hillary Clinton appears committed to leaving no childish lie behind, no asinine argument unmade, no deceptive bit of rhetorical nonsense unstated in her endless assault upon reason, logic and truth. So, here goes:

It's one thing to claim that caucuses are undemocratic, unrepresentative, unfair, and generally, well, bad. That's a perfectly defensible position. However, it's the sort of argument that you make in the course of trying to reform the system, for example by convincing caucus states to switch over to primaries. Hillary did not do this -- indeed, she played lip service to the glory of the caucus process in Iowa specifically, in order to pander to those voters -- and now, instead, she wants to simply ignore the results from those states, because of their "undemocratic" process. Well, guess what? I know something that's more undemocratic than having a caucus: not having an election at all! Yet that's exactly what caucus states are reduced to -- electoral non-entities that effectively did not vote -- if you count only the states that held primaries.

That's without even getting into the fact that, coincidentally, pretty much all of the demographically Hillary-friendly states held primaries (and indeed, several of them got "bonus" delegates for voting late in the process), whereas a bunch of demographically Obama-friendly states held caucuses. So the "delegates earned through primaries" are hardly a fair or representative sample of the country. If all states had held primaries, Obama's pledged-delegate lead would be narrower (because his percentage margins in the caucus states would have been smaller), but he'd still be ahead, not behind as in Hillary's phony metric (because he still would have won those states). Moreover, Obama's popular-vote lead would be wider (because his raw vote margins in the caucus states would have been larger, since vastly more people would have voted). This is all hypothetical and speculative, of course, but it has a firmer basis in reality than Hillary's utter, shameless nonsense.

And then, of course, there are the contradictions inherent in Hillary's position. For example, Michigan's primary was also incredibly undemocratic, unrepresentative and unfair, since only one major candidate was on the ballot, and since most voters didn't bother to show up (or voted in the other party's primary) because they knew the primary didn't count. Yet Hillary wants to count that undemocratic primary -- in fact, she wants to give herself a Soviet-style 328,309 to zero victory in it -- while simultaneously excluding all the caucuses, which (unlike Michigan) fully complied with the rules, on the basis that they are undemocratic. Obviously, that makes no sense.

But then, we're well beyond the point where we should expect Hillary Clinton to make sense, or be internally consistent, or remotely rational, or morally defensible, in her pursuit of power. So I guess I'm just wasting my breath.

P.P.S. In case anyone's wondering, here is the full list of states whose voters are disenfranchised by Hillary's "delegates earned through primaries" metric for ascertaining the popular will: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii (gee, do you think Obama would have won by a huge popular-vote landslide in a primary there?), Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Washington and Wyoming. Needless to say, with the possible exception of Nevada, every single one of those is an Obama-friendly state, and if they'd held primaries, he almost certainly -- given the "demography is destiny" nature of this campaign -- would have won 'em all.

Any method of counting the votes (or the delegates) that excludes any of these states is inherently and facially illegitimate, and the fact that she would even attempt to make such an offensive argument is itself a independently sufficient reason to deny her the nomination.

Breaking news of the bloody obvious

By Brendan Loy

CNN Breaking News: "A judge has ruled that the Democratic National Committee has the right to determine whether to seat Florida delegates."

Um, yes.

Meanwhile, DNC lawyers say the Rules & Bylaws Committee cannot seat more than half of the delegates. I'm skeptical of this, and so is DemConWatch, which muses, "I haven't seen the analysis, but I thought the RBC was free to come up with any solution they wanted. And I'm curious - if the RBC comes up with a solution that the DNC lawyers don't like - what is the DNC going to do? Sue its own RBC committee?"

That said, the lawyers' memo may provide crucial political cover for the RBC members to reject Hillary's proposal (which they almost certainly want to reject anyway, for reasons I explained before). Thanks to the memo, instead of actively choosing to "disenfranchise" Florida and Michigan, they can simply say, "Sorry, but the lawyers told us we have to!"

Trapped in an elevator

By Brendan Loy

The New Yorker last month ran a fascinating, lengthy article about elevators. I just stumbled upon it today. It's worth a read if you've got the time. I found this snippet particularly interesting:

In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.

The article is framed by the story of Nicholas White, an employee in a New York high-rise building who once got trapped in the elevator for 41 hours. Here's the time-lapse security footage of his ordeal, via the New York Times's Health blog. As the New Yorker article reveals, White ultimately quit his job and sued the company that owned its building, only to settle for a piddling amount after four years of legal strife. His life is pretty much in shambles now, all because of a sequence of events that started with his getting trapped in an elevator after stepping outside for a cigarette on a Friday night.

Anyway, the Times blog post asks for readers' stories about elevator ordeals. Hey, I've got one! I was trapped in an elevator once, in France. The "ordeal" only lasted maybe two or three minutes, but it happened in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language, and I was only seven years old at the time, and I solved the problem! That makes it at least somewhat interesting, right?

The story goes like this. I was with my Mom and Dad at the tail end of our summer vacation in France. Specifically, we were leaving our Paris hotel, the Hotel Novanox, bound for the airport to catch our flight back to New York. The date, unless I'm very much mistaken, was July 4, 1989. (Irrelevant side note: Mikhail Gorbachev was arriving in Paris that day -- or maybe the next day? -- for some kind of big-deal summit thingy.)

My Dad and I were on the elevator. My Mom, the only fluent French-speaker in our family, wasn't. She was actually booked on a different flight to NYC, the next day, and thus I believe she was either back in the hotel room or else waiting for us in the lobby, to see us off.

Anyway, when the elevator got to the lobby, the door wouldn't open. We tried going back up a floor or two; it still wouldn't open. Back down to the lobby again; no luck. If I remember correctly, there were perhaps a half-dozen people in the elevator -- including, I think, a hotel employee of some kind -- but nobody seemed quite sure what to do. But then I noticed something. Watching the light shine through the crack of the door as we traveled up and down, it seemed like the elevator car was landing a foot or two below where it was supposed to. So, I thought, why don't we try going to the basement? I figured the elevator couldn't go below the basement.

I'm not sure how I communicated this idea to the others in the elevator (aside from my Dad, of course). Maybe the hotel employee spoke English; or maybe my Dad, who can speak some conversational French, clumsily translated; or maybe I just pushed the button. I don't remember. Regardless, we went to the basement, and -- as the locals might say -- Voila! The seven-year-old American tourist had saved the day. :) The doors did indeed open when we reached the basement, and we climbed the stairs up to the lobby. My Dad and I caught our flight with no problem.

So... what about y'all? Have any of you ever been trapped in an elevator?

McKinney clinches Green Party presidential nomination

By Brendan Loy

Remember Cynthia McKinney, the racist, anti-Semitic, conspiracy-mongering moron who was so radical and ridiculous that she managed to be voted out of her safe congressional seat in Georgia after she refused to take responsibility for physically assaulting a Capitol police officer, an incident that she blamed (as she does everything) on racism?

Well, she's going to be the Green Party nominee for President of the United States.

Cornell professor Peter Swartz, opposing McKinney's appointment to that university's faculty in 2003, famously wrote: "Ms. McKinney is a racist and anti-Semite of the first rank. If she were white and male, she would be David Duke." Well, hey, David Duke ran for president in 1988 (first as a Democrat, then as a Populist) and in 1992 (as a Republican). She's just following in her mentor's footsteps!

Obama: I see dead people

By Brendan Loy

Heh.

Baby's first hike through the Smokies

By Brendan Loy

Becky, Loyette and I spent Memorial Day communing with nature, as we hiked the Porters Creek Trail, a roughly 7-mile walk through the woods in the Smoky Mountain National Park.

It was very fun, if somewhat exhausting. (The hike to the campsite at the end of the trail was relentlessly uphill; the walk back was, naturally, downhill, and therefore mercifully less tiring.) We carried Loyette in her Kangaroo Korner slings, Becky using the fleece one and me using the mesh one, as we always do. We passed her back and forth throughout the roughly six-hour hike, and whoever wasn't wearing the baby would wear the backpack. So that worked out pretty well.

Loyette was amazingly tolerant of the long day. She got cranky exactly three times -- twice just before taking a long nap in her sling (i.e., she was tired), and once just before lunch (i.e., she was hungry). She's a great baby that way. :) Throughout the vast majority of the hike, she was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and seemed very interested in all the new sights, sounds and smells. Of course, that meant not just the natural wonders of the forest, but also the more mundane "wonders" like the feel of cold condensation on the outside of our water bottle, and the way a plastic bag full of peanuts (a handy trail snack) changes shape when you grab the outside of the bag. To a baby, everything new is exciting and wondrous.

Anyway, the trail we hiked is renowned for its beautiful wildflowers in early spring. Since it's late May, there aren't as many wildflowers now, but there are some, and they're pretty. Here are a few that I photographed:

See also this one and this one.

Oh, and the trail also has a somewhat scary bridge, quite reminiscent of the Bridge of Khazad-Dûm (although with a railing, admittedly):

It's hard to tell from the photos, but there's really quite a steep drop-off; the water is maybe 15 feet below you in the middle. And given the narrowness of the bridge, it's legitimately somewhat nerve-wracking to walk across.

I really wanted to find a large stick, hold it up, and proclaim, "You cannot pass! I am the servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. Dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udûn! Go back to the shadow! You shall not pass!!!"

But alas, there was another pair of hikers sitting on a rock nearby, well within earshot, so I had to contain my weirdness. :)

I did, however, do what my dad and I call the Indiana Jones pose -- notwithstanding the fact that, to my knowledge, Indiana Jones never did any such pose.

Anyway, I'll upload some more pictures of the hike to Flickr shortly, and link to them here when they're online.

P.S. I think this photo is cool:

UPDATE: As promised, here's the Flickr gallery. It's two pages long. Enjoy!

Could Obama-Nunn win Georgia?

By Brendan Loy

When I learned yesterday that Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia, had won the Libertarian nomination for president, I promptly called my parents and, getting their answering machine, left a message for my dad in which I wondered aloud whether there are any plausible Democratic vice-presidential options from the state of Georgia. The rationale behind my question was the notion, which I also mentioned here yesterday, that the Peach State could be unusually competitive thanks to the combination of: a) Barr's candidacy taking away Republican votes and b) record African-American turnout causing lots of Democratic votes. Thus, the thinking goes, a veep candidate from Georgia could conceivably put Obama over the top. And it's hard to imagine McCain winning the presidency without the 15 electoral votes from Georgia.

Well, the answer to my question is: yes, there is indeed a plausible Democratic vice-presidential option from Georgia. His name is Sam Nunn. Here's what Politico has to say about him:

[A]fter leaving politics in the 1990s, [Nunn] has...appeal as an independent-minded foreign policy/military elder statesman. ... [He] chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee, served on the Intelligence Committee and authored bipartisan legislation creating programs against nuclear proliferation (with Republican Sen. Dick Lugar) and reorganizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff (with Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater). ... Nunn holds positions at various national security organizations and is a professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech.

Nunn has the advantage of helping the Democrats make a play for Georgia. Since Bill Clinton narrowly carried Georgia in 1992, the state has gone Republican, but by inconsistent margins. This election could be the perfect storm for Democrats to turn Georgia blue: Obama likely would inspire high turnout among African-Americans (who represent 30 percent of Georgia’s population); McCain might suffer low turnout among religious conservatives long skeptical of him; and the just-announced Libertarian candidacy of Bob Barr, a recent Republican member of Congress from northern Georgia, could siphon conservative votes from McCain. With this confluence of forces working for the Democrats, Nunn joining the ticket could take Obama over the top in the ninth-largest state.

Five Thirty-Eight gives Obama a 5% chance of winning Georgia, though that's based on old polls that don't factor Barr into the equation. Anyway, what would that percentage rise to if Nunn were on the ticket? 20%? 25%? Perhaps more to the point: is there any realistic chance of Obama-Nunn carrying Georgia in an election where Obama needs it (i.e., a non-landslide)?

The Phoenix has landed

By Brendan Loy

NASA's latest Mars probe touched down successfully today.

Barr wins Libertarian nomination

By Brendan Loy

The Libertarian Party's national convention is in Denver this weekend, and today Bob Barr was nominated for president on the sixth ballot:

Rep. Bob Barr has won the Libertarian Party's nomination on the sixth ballot at the LP convention, with 324 votes to 276 for Mary Ruwart.

The ex-Republican from Georgia won the nomination after a tough battle that one of his supporters called a "dog fight." Ruwart, a longtime LP activist, was the favorite of the party's more radical or "purist" faction. ... Barr and Vegas oddsmaker Wayne Allyn Root split the "pragmatic" vote in the early rounds of voting, but when Root was eliminated on the fifth ballot, he endorsed Barr and declared his [intention] to be the party's vice-presidential candidate, a nomination [that] will be decided in a separate vote later today. ...

Barr's assistant, Jennifer Chambrin, was skipping along the sidewalk of 16th Street outside the Sheraton: "We won! We won! We won!" Inside the convention hall, she hugged Barr publicist Audrey Mullen, who then said, "Oh my God, we've got so much work to do now."

More here and here. (Hat tip: InstaPundit, who says, "I predict he'll outperform Michael Badnarik.")

P.S. There were several write-in votes for Ron Paul on the first ballot. Meanwhile, Mike Gravel made it to the fourth ballot, but was eliminated at that point with just 76 out of 629 votes, thus vindicating Sean's argument that "we're not a repository for crazy people, we're a political party with a specific political platform!"

P.P.S. On the other hand... in that same comment, Sean -- the Irish Trojan Blog's resident Libertarian -- described Mary Ruwart as "that idiot woman who wants to decriminalize kiddie porn." He's right. Specifically, Ruwart has been quoted as saying, "Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it’s distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess." And yet Ruwart received 46 percent of the vote on the final ballot. Hmm. A repository for crazy people? Maybe!

But hey, she's not the nominee; Barr is. And that raises some questions:

1) Does he make Georgia a swing state? I don't know how popular Barr is in his home state, but if he's well-known and well-liked there, is it conceivable that he could draw enough votes from McCain to make the race between Obama and McCain competitive in the Peach State, given the unprecedented African-American turnout that Obama will presumably inspire? (Georgia is 29 percent black.)

2) Does he raise Obama's "ceiling"? A recent Politico article pointed out that "Obama has long been thought by analysts to have a higher electoral vote ceiling as well as a lower floor than Hillary Clinton. " The article's focus was on that "lower floor," but I wonder if Barr could help rehabilitate his "higher ceiling." The logic underlying the notion of that "higher ceiling" is that Obama can compete in solid red states in the West, and maybe the South. That concept has largely faded from the public and media consciousness as the bruising campaign against Hillary Clinton has robbed Obama of the "post-partisan" sheen he had after Iowa. But it seems to me that Barr's opposition to the war, defense of civil liberties, and hard-line stances on immigration and government spending could hurt McCain most severely in precisely those western and southern red states. Might it open the door just wide enough for a resurgent Obama to pull some upsets?

3) Does he increase the likelihood of a clear-cut popular/electoral vote inversion? This is something I first mentioned last month, and I'm hearing more and more talk about it: the possibility of Obama winning a clear victory in the popular vote but losing the electoral vote by a clear, undisputed margin, creating the first "pure" inversion since 1888. The main reason this could happen is because Obama will likely narrow the gap in those same southern and western states that we were just talking about, but won't win them, and meanwhile he could suffer narrow defeats in a bunch of Rust Belt swing states. Well, for the same reasons stated above, Barr's candidacy makes it more likely Obama will narrow the gap in the South and West, while doing little to help Obama in the Rust Belt. So I think the answer to this question is clearly yes: Barr makes the popular/electoral inversion more likely.

4) Will Lou Dobbs pay attention to him? Of course, before Barr can have any appreciable impact on the race -- whether it involves throwing whole states to Obama (scenarios #1 and #2) or just narrowing the gap in solid red states and thus affecting only the popular vote tally (scenario #3) -- he needs to have some sort of media footprint, so that people are aware that he's running. That's where the right-wing and/or anti-illegal-immigration TV and radio talking heads come in. Will Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, etc., give his campaign any serious attention, particularly because of his stance on immigration? This is a crucial question, methinks. McCain is certainly vulnerable to an attack from his right on that issue. Is Barr the man to do it? We shall see.

P.P.P.S. But cf., "nobody likes Bob Barr."

Loyette's future?

By Brendan Loy

I guess this is the South's answer to Baby Einstein. :)

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!

By Brendan Loy

The Indy 500 is underway. Danica Patrick is in 13th place right now. For Danica's sake, here's hoping Hillary Clinton didn't place any bets on her. :)

UPDATE: Title changed (from "Gentlemen and lady, start your engines") after Lisa pointed out that there were three women in the race: Patrick, Milka Duno, and Sarah Fisher. All three crashed and did not finish, and Patrick was distinctly unhappy about it. Scott Dixon won the race.

Refuse to lose

By Brendan Loy

The Jed Report makes an entertaining analogy.

Meanwhile, Hillary herself pens an op-ed explaining her RFK remarks, and outlining her case for why she's still in the race. It's basically a repetition of the same bogus arguments that she's been using all along (popular vote, swing states, etc.), plus a newly explicit playing of the gender card ("as the first female candidate in this position, I believe I have a responsibility to finish this race") and a veritably Nixonian line about how "my parents did not raise me to be a quitter." Notably, the op-ed barely mentions Michigan and Florida, and doesn't specifically use them as an independent rationale for continuing her campaign. Is she backing away from the precipice?

In any event, I think it's telling that she feels the need to defend herself in this fashion. It's never a good sign, methinks, when you're reduced to penning newspaper columns explaining why you haven't dropped out of the race yet. It's even worse when you're saying things like: "I am not unaware of the challenges or the odds of my securing the nomination - but this race remains extraordinarily close." Yeah, it's close, but so is a basketball game where one team is up by 4 and has the ball with 1.2 seconds left. It's close, but it's over. And it sounds like Hillary might be starting to realize that.

The 3G iPhone is (almost) here

By Brendan Loy

The 3G iPhone will be released on June 9, according to Gizmodo. (This is, like, four-day-old news, but I just saw it on End User, via InstaPundit.)

Analysts believe it will be pretty similar to the current iPhones, with the exception of the faster speed. More dramatic changes to the phone -- multiple models, multiple price points, etc. -- may be coming early next year.

I'm still crossing my fingers for a phone-as-modem feature. (It's possible to hack the current iPhones to have this feature, though of course it's quite slow on the EDGE Network. I wonder if the new iPhones will support it natively, or if not, if the hack will still be possible.)

Hillary's gaffe

By Brendan Loy

I'm sure you've all heard about the Clinton/Obama/RFK kerfuffle by now, but I figured I should weigh in on it, at least briefly. Y'all know I am the furthest thing from a Hillary fan, but I think it's pretty obvious that she wasn't intending in any way to suggest that she's staying in the race just in case Obama gets assassinated. Her words were, needless to say, incredibly poorly chosen, and her "apology" only made things worse -- but nevertheless, this is, at its core, a phony controversy.

Time marches on

By Brendan Loy

I neglected to mention it at the time, but this past Tuesday was the one-year anniversary of my graduation from law school, and Wednesday marked one year to the day since we moved to Knoxville. Wow!

It's hard to believe it's been that long. Time flies, I guess, particularly when we're talking about a year that began with Loyette being the size of a kidney bean and ended with her approaching five months old, growing and learning and changing every day -- so much so that it sneaks up on you, and you're amazed when you ponder memories or look at pictures from even a couple of weeks ago, let alone a couple of months. At this point it's hard to remember what my life was like in February, never mind December... and as for May? Fugghetaboutit.

Anyway, I guess this milestone means I've now officially concluded my first year in the "real world." And wow, what a year it's been. I know I don't talk about my own life in this space as much as I used to; I guess the combination of having a baby and starting my career have caused me to show a wee bit more discretion in terms of what I blog about. But suffice it to say that, on all fronts, things are going very well, and I'm really, really happy. And the anniversary of my graduation seems like a good moment to stop, take stock, and give thanks for all my blessings -- most especially the one who is currently sleeping soundly in the other room. :)

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Tornado on the ground near Hennessy, Oklahoma.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

By Brendan Loy

The six most frequently quoted bulls**t statistics. (Hat tip: Sully.)

Seat Florida & Michigan?

By Brendan Loy

Daily Kos diarist PocketNines does the delegate math in excruciating detail and concludes that Obama should agree to seat Michigan and Florida in full, because, in the words of the Jed Report's "Cliff Notes version":

Obama is still a lock to win the nomination even if Michigan and Florida are seated in full, and by giving Clinton everything she wants, her rationale for taking the campaign to the convention disappears.

That makes a lot of political sense, but as I said before, the fly in this ointment is that, even if the Obama campaign agrees to seat Michigan and Florida in full -- thus putting Hillaryland and Barackworld in complete agreement -- I still don't see how the Democratic Party can afford to go along.

Maybe I'm putting too much stock in the Rules & Bylaws Committee members' ability to look beyond the current controversy and see the bigger picture. But the long-term reality is that, if they cave on Florida and Michigan, they will have completely ceded their power over the primary and caucus process. Seating Florida and Michigan would be abject surrender to state-by-state chaos.

The battle of the Senators Joe

By Brendan Loy

Joe Biden responds to Joe Lieberman.

A preview of a vice presidential debate, perhaps??

Is the unity ticket dead?

By Brendan Loy

If true, this is incredibly good news:

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.

That's from Al Giordano. I'm guessing he has some decent sources. I sure hope they're right. As I've said before, the "unity ticket" is a terrible, terrible idea. I'd rather Obama picked this guy.

This week in graffiti

By Brendan Loy

The world's largest LOLcat.

(Hat tip: I Can Has Cheezburger.)

P.S. O Hai.

P.P.S. Fly, u foolz!!

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

AP: Appeals court rules Texas had no right to seize hundreds of children from polygamous sect.

Farewell, Comcast

By Brendan Loy

Y'all probably remember my lengthy Comcast saga last month (posts here, here, here, here, here, here and here). The whole thing was extremely frustrating and took way too long to resolve -- and might never have been resolved at all, if not for corporate intervention which was due solely to the fact that I'm a blogger. Yet despite all the angst, Comcast managed to keep my business -- even after the revelation that they were stealing my cable -- by fixing the problem and giving me a refund.

And then they proceeded to lose my business over a lousy $5.

I explain after the jump.

Hillary's gambit

By Brendan Loy

Jonathan Chait on Hillary's newly escalated Florida-and-Michigan rhetoric:

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. I try not to make moralistic characterological judgments about politicians, because all politicians compromise their ideals in the pursuit of power. There are no angels in this business. Clinton's gambit, however, truly is breathtaking.

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.

Indeed.

With regard to why her "attempt to steal the nomination" is "obviously not going to work," it isn't just because the supers "don't want to commit suicide"; it's also because the math just isn't there for Hillary. Even if Florida and Michigan are seated according to her best-case scenario, Obama only needs 19 percent of the undeclared supers to secure the nomination. Given that many of those supers are already in the tank for one candidate or the other -- i.e., they're not undecided, just undeclared -- it's inconceivable that Obama won't get at least 19% of them. So he's got the nomination wrapped up, no matter what happens with Florida and Michigan.

What, then, is Hillary playing at? I have a theory. She appears to be racheting up her rhetoric to the point where, if the Rules & Bylaws Committee does anything other than seat the Florida and Michigan delegations with full voting rights and in complete accordance with the rogue primary results, she can declare that decision an anti-democratic outrage that must be remedied, irrespective of its significance to the nomination battle, and thus use it as an excuse to keep fighting all the way to the convention, even after Obama secures the nomination by any and all mathematical standards (whether the magic number is 2,025, 2,210, or something in between). In this scenario, Hillary would most likely "suspend" her campaign, but refrain from endorsing Obama or "releasing" her delegates, and then lie in wait for the next three months, hoping some political calamity befalls him in the mean time, at which point she can sweep in like a "white knight" and take the nomination away from him.

So, you might ask, why doesn't Obama just surrender on Florida & Michigan -- since he's going to have a majority either way -- in order to deny Hillary that phony rationale for continuing her campaign? The answer is that, even if he does surrender, the Rules & Bylaws Committee won't. As I mentioned yesterday, more than just the current nomination fight is at stake here. The party's very credibility, its ability to meaningfully enforce its calendar and its rules, is on trial. Again: "the Democrats cannot simply seat Michigan and Florida, with full voting rights, in exact accordance with the results of the states' primaries, in direct contradiction of the previously imposed sanctions. If the party does this, it would completely undermine, forevermore, its ability to control the primary & caucus calendar in any way. Such an action would be abject surrender to chaos. The 2012 New Hampshire primary would be sometime in fall of 2009. They can't do it. They won't."

Hillary knows this. But instead of laying the groundwork for a reasonable compromise, she's dropping the rhetorical equivalent of nuclear bombs in the party's path, insinuating that no middle ground is possible because anything less than a complete recognition of the rogue primaries would be an affront to democracy on par with the 2000 election, the denial of women's suffrage, segregation, slavery, etc. (!!)  These are the words of a person who doesn't want a problem to be solved.

This is her path forward, people: to keep her campaign going all the way to Denver, ostensibly not because she wants the nomination, but because she wants to make sure that Michigan's and Florida's "voices are heard." It's an incredibly cynical, dishonest, destructive tactic. It will deny Democrats the ability to unify behind their nominee all summer long. It will perpetuate, particularly among low-information voters who aren't familiar with the math, the notion that Obama is trying to win the nomination illegitimately. It will degrade people's faith in the electoral process for no good reason. It will create a (false) image of the Democratic Party leadership as disenfranchisers and vote-stealers. But it's her best shot at constructing a rationale for staying in the race -- so that she can take advantage of any "July surprise" that might befall Obama -- once he has the nomination mathematically secured beyond all doubt, which will happen shortly after June 3. And since Hillary cares only about herself, it seems reasonable to presume that this is precisely what she'll do.

P.S. A Huffington Post article suggests it's quite possible Hillary will lose at the Rules and Bylaws Committee by a vote of 15-13. Hmm. You don't suppose, do you, that she might compare such an outcome to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore, and use the closeness of the vote as an excuse to soldier on to the Credentials Committee, with rhetoric along the lines of "2.3 million voices were silenced by the votes of two unelected party officials"? Nah, she can't be that shameless... [/sarcasm]

A brief history lesson for Hillary

By Brendan Loy

Not that she cares about history, or rules, or fairness, or consistency, or democracy, or anything else other than her own power.

Ugh, ugh, ugh

By Brendan Loy

Hillary Clinton, speaking today in Florida:

Here in Florida, more than 1.7 million people cast their vote, the highest primary turnout in the history of Florida. And nearly 600,000 voters in Michigan did the same. And not a day goes by that I don’t meet someone who grabs my hand or holds up a sign, no matter where I am, in Kentucky or anywhere else, and says, “Please, make my vote count.”

Hey, guess what, Hillary? In Iowa, 236,000 people cast their votes. In Nevada, 117,559. In Maine, 44,670. In Washington, 200,000 or so. And yet your tally doesn't count any of their votes, even though it's perfectly possible to estimate the tallies, and even though those states' caucuses (unlike the Florida and Michigan primaries) were indisputably legitimate. I bet those people want their votes to count, too!

I receive dozens and dozens of letters and emails and phone calls, every couple of hours it seems like, all making the same urgent request: please count my vote. We used to be worried about voter apathy, didn’t we? We worried why Americans didn’t participate. Now, people are worried that their participation won’t matter.

You know what I'm worried about? I'm worried about you destroying your own party, undermining your opponent's legitimacy, and needlessly shaking voters' faith in democracy, all because you are shamelessly demagoguing this issue for your blatant own personal gain -- and ridiculously cloaking your self-serving arguments in idealistic terms, acting like some sort of G*d-damned martyr -- when, in reality, you and your campaign agreed to the rules that you now demand be disregarded, and didn't start objecting to them until it was too late!

I believe the Democratic Party must count these votes. They should count them exactly as they were cast. Democracy demands no less.

Ah yes, democracy! Count every vote! But wait, does "democracy demand" that you be granted a 328,309 to zero victory in Michigan, in direct contradiction of the clearly expressed will of that state's voters, who granted you only a 55% "victory" even though you were the only major candidate on the ballot? Does "democracy demand" that you be declared the "winner" because you won an uncontested election that sounds more like something out of Soviet Russia or Saddam Hussein's Iraq than the United States of America? What the hell does pretending that nobody in Michigan supports Barack Obama have to do with "democracy"?

I am here today because I believe that the decision our party faces is not just about the fate of these votes and the outcome of these primaries. It is about whether we will uphold our most fundamental values as Democrats and Americans. It is about whether we will move forward, united, to win this state and take back the White House this November.

"It is about whether I will get what I am owed: the presidency. It is about whether my ambitions can be stopped by such mere technicalities as 'rules.' It is about whether I can construct a ridiculous, indefensible metric whereby I can fool you dumb plebes into thinking I won. Wait, did I say all that out loud?"

I would go on, but it's just too depressing. I can't even bring myself to read the rest of her ridiculous speech. I really think she is seriously one of the most disgustingly shameless people on the planet.

P.S. I'm pretty sure this speech constitutes Hillary setting off a nuclear bomb in Obama's, and the Democratic Party's, path. She is now explicitly and full-throatedly questioning Obama's legitimacy as the nominee (invoking the specter of the 2000 election, and the civil rights movement, in the process!) unless the party agrees to her demands. Demands which are -- objectively -- absolutely beyond the pale. The Democrats cannot simply seat Michigan and Florida, with full voting rights, in exact accordance with the results of the states' primaries, in direct contradiction of the previously imposed sanctions. If the party does this, it would completely undermine, forevermore, its ability to control the primary & caucus calendar in any way. Such an action would be abject surrender to chaos. The 2012 New Hampshire primary would be sometime in fall of 2009. They can't do it. They won't. And yet Hillary is quite clearly saying that, if they don't, they are subverting democracy, and Obama is an illegitimate nominee.

Superdelegates, this is the moment to end it. Every undeclared superdelegate who cares about the future of the Democratic Party should come out for Obama, now. Hillary cannot be allowed to drag this out any further. It's gone on far too long already, but this is the last straw. May 31 must be made irrelevant to the outcome of the race. As must Hillary Clinton.

End it.

P.P.S. Andrew Sullivan:

How do you respond to a sociopath like this? She agreed that Michigan and Florida should be punished for moving up their primaries. Obama took his name off the ballot in deference to their agreement and the rules of the party. That he should now be punished for playing by the rules and she should be rewarded for skirting them is unconscionable.

I think she has now made it very important that Obama not ask her to be the veep. The way she is losing is so ugly, so feckless, so riddled with narcissism and pathology that this kind of person should never be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Yes.

P.P.P.S. I managed to skim the rest of the speech, and I just wanted to call attention to this line:

Senator Obama and I are running to be president of all Americans and all 50 states. And I want to be sure that all 50 states are counted and your delegates are seated at our convention.

That "all 50 states are counted" ... except for Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington!

There are truly no words adequate to condemn the utter vileness of Hillary Clinton.

Popular vote update

By Brendan Loy

I begin with the caveat that the popular vote is an illegitimate metric for determining the "winner" of the primary and caucus process, and that pledged delegates are in fact the proper measure of such. (Note that "such" refers to "the 'winner' of the primary and caucus process," not "the winner of the nomination.")

I also note that Obama has already secured the pledged-delegate "win," with or without Florida and Michigan -- if we give Obama the Edwards delegates who have personally declared for him, and if we give him all (or nearly all) of Michigan's "Uncommitted" delegates, both of which are accurate counting methods if we're trying to project what's actually going to happen at the convention in August.

Nevertheless, with all that said, here's an update on the "popular vote" math:

What The Hobbit must have

By Brendan Loy

With producer Peter Jackson and director Guillermo Del Toro set to host a live chat Saturday about their impending film adaptation of The Hobbit, movie site The Deadbolt has posted an excellent article about the "Seven Things We Want From The Hobbit." They're spot-on. There's a lot of detail to each one, but the site's seven basic demands are:

1. It has to be funny.
2. It needs to work as a stand-alone film.
3. The whole movie can't be about the Battle of the Five Armies.
4. Smaug needs to be a classic movie villain first, dragon second.
5. Don't cut out all of the songs.
6. Explain the ring.
7. Don't be afraid to make Gandalf a bit of a bastard.

In the item about Smaug, I particularly like this bit:

Renaissance festivals and lackluster CGI have defanged the dragon for modern film audiences, so how can Del Toro hope to make Smaug as cool as he needs to be? Our advice - concentrate on the drama and dialogue of the Smaug scenes first and worry about his design later. Smaug, first and foremost, needs to be a classic villain - we're talking Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, Hans Gruber, etc. - and we need to be much more afraid of his words and demeanor than his spiky claws or teeth. In fact, Del Toro should use the scene in No Country for Old Men between Anton Chigurh and the gas station owner as the model for the tone and level of raised stakes in the Bilbo/Smaug scenes. Chigurh was so scary it didn't even matter that he had the haircut that he did, so if Smaug's character is handled correctly, it shouldn't matter that movie audiences aren't afraid of dragons anymore.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! If you're interested in this topic, you should definitely read the Deadbolt article. It has way more detail than I've included here.

That's the ticket!

By Brendan Loy

At last, the perfect running mate for Obama:

Heh. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)

Would you loan money to Hillary Clinton?

By Brendan Loy

I sure wouldn't. She's spending herself into massive amounts of debt -- $31 million as of April 30, presumably even more by now -- all in the pursuit of an utterly lost cause. What's the point, Hillary?

Of course, $11 million of that debt is money she owes herself, and another $5 million is money she owes Mark Penn. Some of the rest is owed to other high-dollar consultants. I'm not exactly weeping for those folks. They knew what they were getting into.

But some of this debt is owed to miscellaneous small-time vendors in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other states she's campaigned in. How can she justify that? She's throwing money down the toilet in pursuit of a nomination she can't win, accruing more and more debt along the way, while a bunch of people who've helped her -- caterers, cleaners, landlords, event planners -- are paying the price, in the form of unpaid bills. She claims to be a "fighter" for the little people, and yet the little people are among those who she's stiffing. Are these folks ever going to get their money back? If they don't, Hillary Clinton will have some serious explaining to do.

P.S. Slate offers a useful primer on the topic, under the headline, "Can a Campaign Go Bankrupt?" (Short answer: yes.)

Meanwhile, about the possibility of Obama helping Hillary retire her debts: I was going to say that it would be an outrage for Obama to use the hard-earned, small-dollar donations of his individual contributors to pay off the debts of a rival campaign that was financially mismanaged to the point of near-criminal incompetence -- and that didn't know when to quit. However, according to Josh Marshall, that's not even a legal possibility, and all the MSM talk about it is legally ignorant babbling.

"Obama is not allowed to take millions of dollars from his own campaign and give them to Clinton's campaign," Marshall writes. "The most his campaign could legally give would be $2,000. Any deal to help Clinton with her debt would have to be in the form of Obama helping to raise additional money on Clinton's behalf." More here.

Don't worry, be happy

By Brendan Loy

Obama's sorta kinda victory speech

By Brendan Loy

Here is Obama's speech in Iowa last night:

Mark Halperin calls it "one of the best-written (and delivered) speeches of the campaign." I guess there's something in the water in Iowa: the guy always gives a great speech there. :)

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Sen. Barack Obama will win Oregon's Democratic primary, CNN projects.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Sen. Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic primary in Kentucky by a wide margin, CNN projects.

Oregon/Kentucky/Idol open thread

By Brendan Loy

The polls close at 6:00 PM EST in most of Kentucky, 7:00 PM in western counties. Oregon is mail-in only; last ballots are due at 11:00 PM. Oh, and the American Idol finale is from 8:00 to 9:00.

Barack Obama's big Iowa rally is at 8:30 PM, which creates an odd dilemma for him: how is he going to declare that he's won a majority of pledged delegates before the polls have even closed in Oregon? Admittedly, it's a foregone conclusion that he will secure the majority tonight -- with or without Florida and Michigan -- and indeed, he will probably secure the non-Florida/Michigan pledged-del majority based on Kentucky alone. But isn't it a bit unseemly to either: a) declare quasi-victory based on a 20-point loss; or b) declare quasi-victory based on presumed results from a state whose polls aren't even closed yet? And yet if he waits until 1:00 AM or whenever, everyone will already be asleep.

Of course, as a commenter on Pablano's site points out, maybe it doesn't matter, since everyone will be watching Idol anyway. (I don't even know who the finalists are. Okay, check that, I just looked it up: the finalists are David Archuleta and David Cook. But I honestly haven't been paying any attention. And I'm apparently not alone.)

Anyway, leave your predictions, comments, observations, etc. (about any of the three contests) here. I'm not sure how much live-blogging I'll be doing. The last several nights, after putting Loyette to bed, Becky and I have been (finally) watching the first season of Lost on DVD -- I know, we're so hip and with it! Viva 2004! -- and I have a feeling she won't want to watch Wolf when she could be watching Jack.

Oh, and no Lost spoilers, please. And by "spoilers," I mean "anything that has happened in the last four years." Thanks. :)

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Doctors say Sen. Edward Kennedy has brain tumor; condition discovered after he had seizure.

Memo to the media

By Brendan Loy

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but I couldn't let this one go. I've just sent out this letter to various members of the MSM, hoping to get somebody to pay attention to what Hillary is doing.

Dear members of the press,

Today's New York Times highlights Hillary Clinton's claim of a lead in the "popular vote."  The article discusses the controversy surrounding Florida and Michigan, but it barely mentions the two most intellectually dishonest aspects of Senator Clinton's tally:

* Her count totally and deliberately excludes the states of Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, even though it is perfectly possible to include reasonable estimates of those states' popular-vote totals.  Senator Clinton has chosen to ignore these states, and yet she has the audacity to claim that she is the one who wants to count every vote, in all 50 states.  That claim is flatly untrue. Hers is not a 50-state count, but a 46-state count.  In direct contradiction to her rhetoric -- "we cannot claim that we have a nominee based on 48 states," she said yesterday -- Senator Clinton is ignoring four whole states that held indisputably valid elections, simply because their inclusion would give Senator Obama a combined 110,000-vote boost and thus eliminate Senator Clinton's 26,000-vote "lead."

* Her count not only includes the unsanctioned primaries in Florida and Michigan, it makes no allowance for the fact that Senator Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan.  Instead of counting Michigan as a 328,309 to 238,168 victory for Senator Clinton -- her margin over "Uncommitted" -- she is awarding herself a 328,309 to zero victory.  This margin is reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's electoral "victories," and it obviously bears no relation whatsoever to the actual expressed will of the people of Michigan.  Yet her national "lead" is completely dependent on this absurd perversion of the popular will.  If "Uncommitted" is counted for Obama in Michigan, and if Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington are included in the tally, Senator Obama leads the national tally by more than 319,000 votes.

Through both of these indefensible vote-counting choices, Senator Clinton demonstrates that she is not interested in counting every vote, but only those votes which benefit her argument.

The Obama campaign is not aggressively countering these lies, presumably because it does not want to legitimize any aspect of Senator Clinton's "popular vote" argument.  However, the press has a duty to report the truth, and even granting Senator Clinton all reasonable benefit of the doubt, her fraudulent tally bears no relation whatsoever to "truth."  To claim that Senator Clinton has "received the most votes" is not merely a controversial statement, it is an outright lie, and the press must report it as such.  To do otherwise is to actively participate in the disenfranchisement of all voters in Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, and all non-Clinton-supporters in Michigan.

I am an independent blogger, unaffiliated with any campaign and personally undecided between Senators Obama and McCain.  However, I am exasperated by Senator Clinton's use of a facially fraudulent vote tally, and by the press's willingness to play along with her risible spin.  In particular, the exclusion of Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington gets barely a mention in the mainstream media, when in fact this is the most obviously indefensible aspect of Senator Clinton's vote-counting tactics.  How can she claim to "count every vote," and lambaste Senator Obama for declaring victory "based on 48 states," when she herself is only counting, at most, 46 states?!  This lie must be countered by the truth!

I have written letters to all of Senator Clinton's superdelegate endorsers in the four uncounted caucus states, urging them to insist that she stop ignoring their states' voters.  As my letter notes, it is particularly ironic that Senator Clinton is refusing to count Iowa and Nevada, given that she signed a pledge to respect those states' early caucuses by refraining from any campaign activity in the unsanctioned Michigan and Florida primaries.  "We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process," Clinton's campaign manager said at the time. Yet she is now arguing that Iowa and Nevada should not count, while Michigan and Florida should. This is hypocritical and intellectually dishonest to a degree that beggars belief.

If Senator Clinton wants to argue that Florida should count, and that Michigan should count with the "Uncommitted" votes going to Senator Obama, those are reasonable arguments, and can be fairly considered.  But the inclusion of her Saddam Hussein-style, unanimous "victory" in Michigan, and the exclusion of Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, completely undermines the intellectual underpinnings of her argument, and it is your duty as members of the press to point this out.

I urge all members of the media to provide honest, objective, and thorough analysis of this issue, rather than granting the Clinton camp's unrebutted spin a veneer of legitimacy that it plainly does not deserve.

Sincerely,

Brendan Loy
"Irish Trojan in Tennessee"
http://blog.brendanloy.com/

Boston's Jon Lester throws no-no

By Brendan Loy

Another no-hitter at Fenway. w00t!

A letter to Hillary's superdelegates

By Brendan Loy

As promised last week, I'm sending letters to Hillary Clinton's endorsers in Iowa, Maine, Nevada and Washington, urging them to insist that their candidate stop effectively disenfranchising their states' voters by making a "popular vote" argument that depends on pretending Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington never voted.

After the jump, I've copy & pasted one of the letters -- to DNC member, state senator, and congressional candidate Dina Titus of Nevada.

P.S. Also after the jump, a list of the people I've contacted, along with the e-mail address or URL I've used to contact them. If you have better contact info for any of these folks, or if you know of other Clinton endorsers in IA, NV, ME or WA that I should send my letter to, please let me know!

Electoral College geek alert!

By Brendan Loy

The increasingly indispensible blog FiveThirtyEight looks at the 269-269 scenarios, and what would be the likely result in such an event. (Bottom line: Obama probably becomes president.)

Clinton and Obama, together in Florida?

By Brendan Loy

Huh? Mark Halperin says, "Obama and Clinton to share Florida stage on Wednesday." Does he mean they'll literally be on the same stage, or just that they'll both be in the Sunshine State? If it's the former, that sounds very significant!

UPDATE: Halperin clarifies: "Obama and Clinton both plan to campaign in Florida on Wednesday." Oh. Nevermind.

P.S. Speaking of people whom Obama might like to "share [a] Florida stage" with... has anyone seen Al Gore? Just asking!

P.P.S. Heh:

But they got Connecticut wrong! It should be black... as should Maryland and Delaware. (Actually, if you look closely, it appears that Delaware has just been left off completely. Joe Biden's gonna be pissed!) Meanwhile, Nevada should be white, unless we're going on delegates rather than votes (in which case Texas should be black).

In any event, as Ben Smith notes, "it's a reminder that race and politics are complicated subjects when North Dakota is 'black.'" Heh. Indeed.

Steve Ludlow, class act

By Brendan Loy

Anybody who's ever had C. Stephen Ludlow as either an English teacher or a tennis coach at Newington High School knows he's a great guy and a class act. Now the Hartford Courant's readers know, too, thanks to an act of kindness toward an arch-rival last week that got written up in today's paper:

Tom Chauvin called it one of the most moving experiences he's had in 34 years of coaching the girls tennis team at Bristol Eastern.

Following what Chauvin called an intense, closely contested 5-2 victory over rival Newington on Monday, he was talking with his players as they sat on the court. The victory gave Eastern at least a share of the CCC South championship. Then he noticed Newington coach Steve Ludlow walking toward his team with his players lined up and Chauvin quickly told his team to get up.

Ludlow handed Chauvin an envelope, which contained a donation to a [scholarship] fund that Bristol Eastern started in memory of former player Holly Getler, who died last summer at 22 after a lifelong battle with kidney disease. ... More than $100 was collected. [That's roughly 5 percent of the total amount that Eastern needs to reach its fundraising goal.]

"It blew us all away," Chauvin said. "I didn't know how he even knew about it. We've been chief rivals for years now. I call them the New York Yankees of our division.

"This is what sport is supposed to be about. What those 20 kids or so learned at that moment collectively, that is the learning value that will stay with them."

It makes me proud to be a Newington alum (and a Ludlow alum!).

P.S. It should be noted that Chauvin isn't exaggerating about the rivalry -- though I prefer to think of Bristol Eastern as the evil Yankees, and Newington as the lovable Red Sox. :) Actually, Michigan-Ohio State is probably a better analogy: like the Wolverines-Buckeyes football game, the Indians-Lancers tennis match is always the last game of the season, and it's a battle for the conference championship pretty much every year. But anyway, the point is, with CCC re-alignment diminishing the Newington-Southington rivalries in several sports, the NHS-BEHS rivalry in girls tennis is probably one of the biggest and fiercest old rivalries left. So this act of good sportsmanship and kindness by Mr. Ludlow and the Indians is all the more admirable against that backdrop.

Obamamania in Oregon

By Brendan Loy

The media obsession with Obama's huge rallies may have peaked in January and February, but the man still knows how to draw a crowd: 75,000 in Portland!

That's almost as many people as the total number who voted for him in West Virginia.

UPDATE: This was in fact a record Obama crowd.

McCain on SNL

By Brendan Loy

Heh.

Two down, one to go

By Brendan Loy

As expected, Big Brown easily won the Preakness, and will have a shot at the Triple Crown in the Belmont three weeks from now. Here's today's race:

Big Brown will be the first horse to arrive at the Belmont with a chance for the Triple Crown since Smarty Jones in 2004 -- and if he achieves it, he'll be the first to do so in 30 years, since Affirmed in 1978. Eleven horses since then have won the Derby and the Preakness but lost in the Belmont, six of those between 1997 and 2004. (Silver Charm did it in '97, Real Quiet in '98, Charismatic in '99, War Emblem in '02, Funny Cide in '03 and Smarty Jones in '04.)

Me & Barack

By Brendan Loy

Okay, so it's a cardboard cutout. :) It's in front of the Sevier County Democratic Party headquarters in Sevierville, which Becky, Loyette and I are visiting for the Bloomin' Barbecue and Bluegrass
Festival.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Sen. Ted Kennedy is rushed to a hospital in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a Democratic source tells CNN.

Preakness today; Big Brown is big favorite

By Brendan Loy

The 133rd Preakness is at 6:15 PM EST tonight. Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown is an overwhelming favorite against a decidedly weak field. ESPN's Bill Finley writes:

Against a group of competitors better suited to a race like the Ohio Derby than a Triple Crown event, [Big Brown] can regress by several lengths and still beat this field easily. He is the only Grade I winner in the field and only one of two horses (along with Gayego) to crack the 100 mark on the Beyer Speed Figures. The competition stinks.

The only way to handicap the race is to pick the winner of the other race, the 12-horse contest for second place. From a betting and handicapping standpoint, that's a pretty interesting, wide-open event. I've got it down to five horses: Macho Again, Tres Borrachos, Kentucky Bear, Riley Tucker and Giant Moon. I will use this quintet underneath Big Brown in every exotic wager imaginable.

Incidentally, Finley predicts Big Brown will lose the Belmont in three weeks. If so, he'd be the eleventh straight Derby-Preakness winner to lose the Belmont with a Triple Crown on the line.

Desperately Seeking Votes

By Lisa Velte

No, this isn't a Hillary Clinton post.  A local Seattle radio station is running a contest for the Dirtiest Grill, and the winner gets a new Weber grill.  My dad's nasty old grill is one of the finalists, so I'm asking everyone if they could take a second to go here and vote for Grill #3.  Thanks a bunch!

Update:  Thanks for your votes everyone, but my dad has lost the lead!  If you could go back and vote again, he'd really appreciate it.  You can vote multiple times by simply refreshing the page, so if you need a way to kill some time this weekend, just "power vote" (as he calls it).  Thanks!

UPDATE  5/19:  He won!  Thanks so much for your votes everyone!!

A floor fight over the veep spot?

By Brendan Loy

Bob Beckel argues that, if Hillary Clinton really wants to be Obama's running mate, she can force her way onto the ticket in a convention roll-call vote -- or get herself picked in advance by threatening to force a roll-call vote. We're talking about a roll-call vote for the vice-presidential nominee, mind you; yes, the delegates pick the veep, too. And Hillary will have almost half of the delegates in her corner anyway, and Beckel thinks she'd be able to bring along enough of Obama's superdelegates (many of whom have residual loyalty to the Clintons) to secure the #2 spot. I doubt it will shake out this way, but it's an interesting possibility.

Clinching

By Brendan Loy

If you include Michigan's "Uncommitted" delegates in Obama's column, as well as the Edwards delegates who have announced their intention to switch to Obama in the wake of Johnny Boy's endorsement, it now appears that Obama will clinch the pledged delegate majority -- including Michigan and Florida -- on Tuesday. So, that's one rhetorical weapon removed from Hillary's arsenal, in terms of rebutting his anticipated argument that, after Tuesday's results come in, he will have effectively "won" the primaries and caucuses and now it's up to the superdelegates whether to validate or overturn that result.

Diplomacy is not appeasement

By Brendan Loy

Since I keep referencing it, but I haven't actually stated my position on it, I figured I should probably weigh in on yesterday's controversial statement by President Bush at the Israeli Knesset:

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. We have heard this foolish delusion before. 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.

Now, let me begin by pointing out that I myself have made the "appeasement" argument before. Specifically, in response to posters that were plastered around USC's campus in the immediate wake of 9/11 by anti-war activists (against the Afghanistan war, mind you), which stated "WAR IS ALSO TERRORISM," I made some rebuttal signs that stated, "APPEASEMENT IS ALSO SURRENDER." When I chose those words, I was responding to the then-common far-left credo that our reaction to 9/11 should involve withdrawing from the Middle East, closing our bases in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, etc. -- in other words, making specific, substantive concessions to Al Qaeda's demands.

Similarly, in 2005, I wrote on the blog that we should not withdraw from Iraq simply because the terrorists want us to:

The Islamist radicals don’t just want us out of their backyards — they want to take over ours. Just like we were foolish to ignore Hitler’s long-term goals for “Greater Germany” and pretend that he would be satisfied with a few incremental concessions here and there, we are foolish to ignore the Islamists’ long-term goal of a worldwide Islamic state.

Withdrawing from Iraq for fear of further attacks would not stop them — it would not even slow them down. On the contrary, it would encourage them, because it would show them that they can convince us to change our policies by terrorizing us. It would give them reason to hope that, with a few more attacks and a few more surrenders, maybe they really will be able to see the Islamic flag flying over the whole world. We must not feed that fantasy.

That’s not to say the Iraq war is necessarily justified — that’s a separate debate, but the debate must be conducted on our terms, not theirs. Whatever else might be said about Iraq, the terrorists’ ire is NOT a valid reason to consider withdrawing. Appeasement is not the answer.

Again, in raising the specter of "appeasement" and World War II, I was addressing a specific substantive concession that I believed we should not make, at least not for the reason stated. Now, you can argue the merits of my point, but it is at least within the realm of rationality to claim that such an action would indeed be "appeasement."

President Bush's comment, by contrast, is not within the realm of rationality. He is claiming that the mere act of sitting down and negotiating with an enemy is tantamount to "appeasement." That is absolutely absurd. Bush needs to look up a dictionary definition of the damn word he's talking about. American Heritage defines "appeasement" as "the policy of granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace." Concessions. Not negotiations. In no version of reality is the mere act of negotiating "appeasement."

Now, it's perfectly fair to debate whether Obama's stated willingness to meet with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions is a good idea. I'm not at all sure it is, and my uncertainty on that point is one reason (among many) that I'm undecided between Obama and McCain. The mere act of engaging in negotiations does have certain potential negative consequences, particularly when you're the world's unipolar power -- it tends to bestow a certain veneer of legitimacy to the other side, it can be a propaganda coup, etc. These factors need to be considered, and weighed against the potential positive consequences. That is an important debate to have.

But regardless of where you come down in that debate, calling the simple act of negotiating "appeasement" is clearly incorrect. It's not "appeasement" unless you concede something. Period.

If you want to argue that merely negotiating with one's enemies is itself inherently a "concession," then what do you make of the many times throughout our history that U.S. presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, have met with our enemies, sometimes with great success? Remember "only Nixon can go to China"? How about Reagan's meetings with Gorbachev, which helped end the Cold War? (Hat tip: David K.) Were those revered Republican presidents "appeasing" China and Russia, merely by meeting with them? Or does the substance of the negotiations determine whether they engaged in "appeasement"?

The answer is head-smackingly obvious, to the point that anyone who responds incorrectly is either an idiot or a liar. It is substantive concessions that matter. Thus, for instance, it is fair to argue -- not necessarily correct, but plausibly arguable -- that President Clinton "appeased" North Korea by essentially paying them off to halt (or pretend to halt) their nuclear ambitions. It is not, however, fair to argue that a President Obama would inherently be "appeasing" them merely by re-opening direct talks. You can't make any kind of judgment on the issue of "appeasement" without getting into the substance of the potential talks.

The last time I checked, neither Barack Obama nor any other major Democratic figure is promising any specific substantive concessions to Iran, nor to any other "terrorists [or] radicals." Bush himself actually acknowledged this point, unintentionally no doubt, when he mockingly described the Dems' position as a belief that "some ingenious argument will persuade [the terrorists and radicals] they have been wrong all along." If that were really the Dems' goal, as Bush asserts, then it would be foolish and naive, but it would not be "appeasement." Even if we credit Bush's own straw-man version of the Democrats' position, he's still wrong. Trying to convince someone they're wrong is not the same thing as "appeasing" them!

Of course, in reality, the goals of diplomacy are varied and complex, and again, we can and should debate what those goals should be, whether direct negotiation is worth the costs, etc. But dismissing the whole project as, by its very nature, "appeasement," is simply a lie.

Nor is this just some minor semantic debate. The word "appeasement" has a very specific and loaded historical meaning in geopolitical discourse, as Bush knows perfectly well. He made this explicit with his reference to Hitler, but he didn't need to. Everybody knows, when you're talking about "appeasement," that you're referring to Neville Chamberlain and his decision to give Hitler the Sudetenland, in hopes of achieving "peace in our time." That foolish action was, of course, a textbook case of "granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace." That was appeasement.

But the mere fact that Chamberlain talked to Hitler wasn't "appeasement"! What made it "appeasement" is what he did at those talks: he made a concession that he shouldn't have made. Bush has offered no evidence, nor even an argument, that the Democrats would follow the same course as Chamberlain in that regard. He therefore has no business invoking Chamberlain and Hitler to make his point.

What's really sad about this whole kerfuffle is that, as I said, there is actually a very serious and important issue that underlies all this bulls**t and malarkey. But now that's all become obscured by Bush's despicable rhetoric and the Democrats' justifiably angry rebuttals. Basically, what's now happening to our political discourse on the important issue of how we should approach diplomacy with our enemies is precisely what happens on the Internet whenever somebody breaks Godwin's Law and inappropriately invokes Hitler. Our president yesterday became a glorified message-board troll.

One other point: I don't personally get too riled up about the whole "politics stops at the water's edge" thing. I'm not saying it isn't a good principle, necessarily, but it's just not something that personally makes my blood boil. However, it is something that Republicans and conservatives tend to get very worked up over. God forbid a liberal public figure should ever say anything critical of our foreign policy overseas! Any time they do so, even arguably, the right wing predictably erupts in a paroxysm of rage. For heaven's sake, Natalie Manies of the Dixie Chicks was pilloried for the fact that she dared speak ill of President Bush in England, and she's a freakin' singer. And I know there are examples of even more righteous outrage when it's an actual Democratic politician who does this, though I can't remember details off hand. The point is, this is very much a sore spot on the Right.

So, against that backdrop, it is totally hypocritical for anyone who has ever invoked the "politics stops at the water's edge" principle to in any way condone Bush's remarks yesterday. He went before the legislature of a foreign nation and, acting in his capacity as head of state, made a clearly political argument designed to attack the other party and its presumptive nominee. (And don't even start with the "he wasn't referring to Obama" nonsense, or the "Obama doth protest too much" absurdity. Just don't. That's beyond Hillaryesque in its disregard for the truth. Of course he was talking about Obama, you nitwits. And acknowledging that obvious fact in no way acknowledges the truth of the criticism. Go back to third grade art class and rejoin the discussion when you have something meaningful to contribute.) As such, he has specifically validated the practice of taking our internal political debates overseas, in the most ostentatious way imaginable. If you're okay with that, fine. But don't you dare ever criticize any Democrat or liberal ever again for doing the same thing in reverse.

Invade Burma?

By Brendan Loy

Last weekend, there was an interesting discussion in comments here on the blog about the merits of forcably bringing humanitarian aid to the people of Burma/Myanmar, the junta be damned. Now the New Yorker's George Packer ponders the same question, asking, "Should Burma Be Saved from Itself?" He writes:

Forcing the regime to let the rest of the world save its people would have a devastating effect on morale. Burma’s leaders are so isolated and irrational that they actually believe their own propaganda about being the only group that can hold the country together. It’s possible that the junta would collapse out of sheer humiliation. It’s also possible, though it seems unlikely to me, that Burmese military units would be ordered to engage the foreigners. Shots might be fired, people might be killed. No one knows what will happen if British sailors and American airmen arrive on soggy Burmese soil. Hanging over the question is, of course, Iraq. No one expects an intervention to go smoothly anymore; now we expect it to go terribly wrong. I doubt the American, British, French, Australian, and other governments, with or without U.N. consent, will decide to invade Burma with boxes of oral rehydration kits and high-energy biscuits. But if the fear of Baghdad and Falluja is what keeps foreign powers from saving huge numbers of Burmese from their own government’s callousness, that will be one more tragic consequence of the Iraq war.

On the other hand, if it’s going to be done, it should be done quickly. I know all the arguments why we shouldn’t. But there are at least a million counterarguments why we should.

Andrew Sullivan links to Packer's piece, and explicitly jumps on the bandwagon with the title, "Invade Burma, Please." He writes: "A brief, decisive international effort to reach the starving and sick seems important to me. If it helps demystify this vile regime, great. But in its demonstration of humanity, it is also a great way for the US to enhance its soft power in the developing world."

Discuss.

P.S. Meanwhile, Dr. Jeff Masters notes that the seasonal monsoon rains are rapidly approaching the Irrawaddy Delta.

A superdelegate map, and Michigan math

By Brendan Loy

The indispensable DemConWatch has a cool map of where each candidate is getting superdelegate support from. With a few notable exceptions, it's fairly similar to the primary map.

Meanwhile, The Jed Report argues that Edwards's endorsement of Obama "shatters Clinton's Michigan and Florida dreams," because "now that Edwards has endorsed Obama, there's really no fair argument to deny Obama" the 55 "Uncommitted" delegates from Michigan. Jed then does the math, and concludes that, even if Michigan and Florida are seated with full voting rights (but with Obama getting all 55 Uncommitteds), Obama only needs 22% of the remaining undeclared supers to clinch the nomination (this is using the Clintons' preferred "magic number" of 2,210).

An orgy of post-partisanship?

By Brendan Loy

McCain-Lieberman vs. Obama-Snowe?

Talk about "historic": we'd have candidates competing to be first black, first female, first Jewish, and oldest first-term president or vice-president, with the winning ticket guaranteed to be the first "bipartisan" administration since Adams-Jefferson.

(Lieberman, I should note in passing, is increasingly pissing me off lately. I don't have any problem with him supporting McCain -- I myself, as I keep saying, am thoroughly undecided between Obama and McCain at this point, and I don't think Lieberman owes some mythical duty of "loyalty" to support the Democratic nominee -- nor do I mind him drawing honest, substantive contrasts between McCain and Obama, even if he does so vigorously. But some of these deceptive partisan smears are beneath him... or I thought they were. Unlike Joe Klein, I'm not prepared at this point to say that I was wrong in 2006. But I'm disappointed in ol' Joementum. I'll probably have more to say about that at some point fairly soon.)

Another possibility: what if McCain picks Lieberman and Obama picks Gore, leading to a Gore vs. Lieberman grudge match for the veep spot? They'd be running against each other, eight years after they ran with each other! LOL! Can you imagine the vice-presidential debate? 

Okay, so it won't happen, for like a million reasons, but it's still something for political junkies to salivate over. :)

Here's something that might happen, though: you know how Obama unveiled the Edwards endorsement -- in Michigan -- on the day after his big loss in West Virginia? Well, Obama will be in Tampa next Wednesday, the day after his big loss in Kentucky (and his big win in Oregon, after which he will sorta-kinda-not-really declare victory). Can you think of anyone who Obama might try to convince to join him there -- in Florida, of all places -- for another big splashy post-election endorsement? Just saying!

The Ragin' Cajun in Knoxville

By Brendan Loy

As I mentioned previously, Becky and I went to the Knox County Democrats' Truman Day Dinner last night at the Knoxville Convention Center, where we were treated to a keynote address by none other than than the Ragin' Cajun himself, James Carville, described in the event's program as "the most famous political consultant in America" (something I think Karl Rove might take issue with).

Carville was as advertised: bombastic, outrageous, and hilarious. He was also, despite his well-known LSU fandom, dressed in a Tennessee football jersey throughout his remarks:

It was a Peyton Manning jersey, presented to him by the Knox County Democratic Party chairman, and he wore it proudly because, as Carville pointed out, Manning was born and raised in Louisiana. "He was our gift to your state," the native Louisianan said. "Don't expect any more."

A press release in advance of Carville's speech said he "will be giving his analysis of the primary campaign of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama," but in fact, he mostly steered clear of that topic, except to mock the hand-wringers who believe the battle is killing the party. "Don't worry," he said. "We'll be united." He added, "I'd much rather be in the party that's got two good candidates than in the party with one bad one."

The Republicans, Carville said, are the ones who are imploding (a theme echoed today by Peggy Noonan, who I'm guessing doesn't agree with Carville all that often). He then summoned his political strategy expertise and offered some free advice to the Republicans: "PANIC!!!"

But his most memorable jabs were reserved for a former Republican candidate for president, Tennessee's own Fred Thompson. Carville quipped that Thompson was "the only presidential candidate in history to test positive for ambien." (The audience roared.) Carville also said, to uproarious laughter, that Thompson is a big supporter of President Bush's education policy: "He wanted to make sure no child was left behind, so he married her." Heh.

I think my favorite line, though, was his reference to the topic that made this blog famous. Carville mentioned that he'll be giving the commencement address at Tulane this weekend. "I left Louisiana in 1986, and it took me 22 years to get back," he said. "That means I'm getting to Louisiana faster than FEMA got there."

You can read local news coverage of Carville's visit from the Knoxville News-Sentinel and Volunteer TV, and a bloggy interview at KnoxViews. Also, via Knoxville Talks, here is the local NBC affiliate's interview with Carville before the dinner:

As always with these sorts of events, you have to sit through all kinds of warm-up acts before the main event, and those included speeches by U.S. Senate candidates Bob Tuke and Mike Padgett, both of whom are vying to take on Lamar Alexander in November. (The primary is August 7; there are six Democrats on the ballot, but Tuke and Padgett are considered the front-runners.)

Both men spoke a little too long, I'd say, mostly repeating similar talking points: the Republicans are to blame for everything that's wrong with the country, Lamar Alexander has been in Washington for too long and is out of touch with ordinary Tennesseans, etc. Becky thought Tuke was the better speaker by far; personally, I thought Padgett was just about as good, but suffered from the fact that he spoke second, and by that point the audience was getting bored, having already heard all the good anti-GOP lines, and was ready for Carville to speak. Even so, it's odd that Tuke seemed to connect better with the audience, given that he's from Nashville whereas Padgett is a local boy.

Regardless, in all likelihood, Tuke and Padgett are fighting for the right to be a sacrificial lamb in November. According to a Rasmussen poll last month, Alexander leads 59% to 30% over Tuke and 58% to 31% over Padgett. But don't tell that to anyone at last night's event. It was basically a big pep rally for the Democratic Party, and although one speaker acknowledged that it can be "tough to be a Democrat in East Tennessee," folks at this shindig were incredibly upbeat about their chances in November. Of course, political self-delusion is a well-practiced art (just ask Carville's favored presidential candidate!), but I can see why there'd be some optimism: between the general national mood (Tuesday's special election in Mississippi was mentioned numerous times) and the recent scandals in the Republican-dominated Knox County government, it seems like, if there's ever a year when Democrats have a chance in East Tennessee, this would be the year.

The latest California couple

By David K.

Gays aren't the only new couples in California. USC and the Coliseum have patched up their differences and worked out a deal to keep the Trojans playing at the Coliseum for another 25 years, about the same time Coach Carroll will be ready to retire.

Gay marriage legalized in California

By Brendan Loy

The California Supreme Court has overturned the state's gay marriage ban...

...and it's not even the top story on Drudge. (Nor is Mark Halperin paying enough attention to realize that Florida, not California, is the "Sunshine State," last time I checked.) I'm not sure if this reflects a decrease in the level of national polarization caused by this issue, or if everybody is just too wrapped up in talking about President Bush's "bulls**t...malarkey" at the Knesset to pay attention.

But anyway: there it is. Gay marriage, legalized in California, by order of the court. Andrew Sullivan has more, of course, as does Boi From Troy.

Here's the opinion (PDF), which I haven't read, and probably won't for the moment. (After work, I'm going to see James Carville tonight.)

This being California, there will undoubtedly be a state constitutional amendment initiative to overturn the ruling -- but, on that front, Sullivan notes:

One key fact: the ruling takes effect in 30 days - which means thousands of couples will be able to marry long before any initiative attempts to reverse it. So the initiative question becomes: do you want to divorce thousands of already-married couples? Or do you want to keep things as they now are? That's a big advantage for the pro-equality forces.

Indeed.

UPDATE: More from Sullivan -- including a point that seems to contradict the above-quoted passage, though I may be misunderstanding him -- in a post titled "Judicial 'Activism'?":

As usual, the lazy critics are uninformed. The California court has not over-ruled the legislature: in fact, the legislature has voted for full marriage equality twice already. And the court has not "created" a right to marriage for gay couples. It has argued that if the state has conceded that domestic partners should have, under state law, all the benefits and responsibilities of married couples, the designation of a separate and distinct category must be suspect, under strict scrutiny, to the inference that the designation is based on a desire to deny gay couples equal dignity and recognition. This is the same point I've made in the past; isn't constructing a separate and distinct category an example of pure animus? You have conceded the substance, but cannot concede the name. Since no heterosexual couple's rights would be affected in any way, what exactly is the rationale for maintaining the distinction? Except bias?

One other political note: the Republican governor of the state, Arnold, has already come out against the ballot initiative designed to reverse this ruling. And the initiative will not be able to affect the thousands of marriage licenses that will be granted before then. So the legislature, the governor and the court have all now supported equality. So back to the people ... for one last chance to keep the stigma in place.

Speaking of the Governator, he has reiterated that he respects the Court's ruling and opposes its reversal.

The Pac-10 knows how to schedule

By Brendan Loy

The ACC and Pac-10 have the least despicable non-conference schedules in college football. And when you consider that the Pac-10 plays a nine-game, true round-robin in conference, their schedules are the most respectable by a mile.

Which conference has the cupcake-iest schedules? The Big Ten, of course. Though the SEC and Big 12 are nipping at its heels.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Former Sen. John Edwards will endorse Sen. Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, Obama's campaign says.

Obama-Clinton: "terminal insanity"

By Brendan Loy

Dick Morris disses the "dream" ticket:

It would be an act of terminal insanity for Barack Obama to name Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential candidate. It would not help him get elected, it would drag all the Clinton controversies into the general election, and having her down the hall in the West Wing would be a recipe for disaster, dissension and civil war. Other than that, it's a hell of an idea!

Heh. Indeed.

Read the whole thing. (And read my previous anti-dream-ticket posts here and here.)

Relatedly, from Politico:

Greg Sargent spends some time making the very good point that Obama doesn't do notably worse against McCain with working-class white people in much polling than Hillary does -- a lesson in the danger of reading primary results into the general election.

Don't confuse us with facts!

Hillary to IA, NV, WA, ME: Drop dead

By Brendan Loy

My earlier question about whether Hillary Clinton would proclaim her fraudulent popular vote "lead" today -- a "lead" which, for the first time, unequivocally depends upon completely ignoring the will of the voters of Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine -- is, alas, answered in the affirmative:

Clinton's high command is hosting a conference call right now. Terry McAullife, the chairman of the campaign, has a new talking point. It's "Hillary Clinton has now moved ahead in the popular vote." (He requires Florida and Michigan to make this claim)

Yes, he does -- but Florida and Michigan aren't the half of it, as I've pointed out repeatedly.

Including the vote tallies from two meaningless beauty-contest primaries that didn't count -- including a Saddam Hussein-style 328,309 to zero "victory" in a state where Obama wasn't on the ballot -- is bad enough. But largely escaping the media's notice, still, is Hillary's reliance on the disenfranchisement of four whole states that held indisputably valid, binding contests!!

I know I'm a broken record on this point, but I find it absolutely infuriating, and it seems like nobody is paying attention.

It bears repeating that two of the excluded states, Iowa and Nevada, were included among the four "early states" that Clinton herself pledged to honor -- by not campaigning in Florida and Michigan!! I quote from the September 2, 2007 New York Times article about hat pledge:

“We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process,” Patti Solis Doyle, the Clinton campaign manager, said in a statement.

"Unique and special," indeed! Their votes are uniquely irrelevant, according to Hillary's current argument for being awarded the nomination!

People, this math isn't just fuzzy, it's is completely indefensible, and it's an absolute joke that nobody is calling her on it. Everyone talks about Florida and Michigan, but nobody talks about Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine. Yet their exclusion from the popular-vote tally isn't even arguably plausible, and it goes completely against everything Clinton is pretending to stand for in the Michigan and Florida debate. "Count every vote!" Honor the "will of the people!" Unless those people happen to live in Iowa, Nevada, Washington or Maine!

Enough! This is ridiculous. I'll be writing letters to some Clinton superdelegates from those states. I'll post 'em when I'm done.

Big CA gay marriage ruling tomorrow

By Brendan Loy

The California gay marriage decision will be released tomorrow at 1:00 PM EST.

Needless to say, if the California Supreme Court were to legalize gay marriage (or otherwise reach a decision that sets up an immediate statewide political battle over the issue, as envisioned in the final paragraph here), it would throw the national political scene for a massive loop. It'll be very interesting to see what happens.

 Andrew Sullivan has more.

All of God's creatures

By Brendan Loy

The Vatican says it's OK to believe in aliens.

But not gay aliens, presumably. ;)

Hillary romps, everybody yawns

By Brendan Loy

So... is it still over? Survey says... yes.

Still, Hillary won West Virginia by 41% -- about what I expected -- but, thanks to high turnout, she got an unexpectedly large raw popular vote margin: 147,410 votes, according to the current count. This increases her chances of ultimately winning an arguably plausible "popular vote" count, as it's about 40,000 more than my estimate gave her from the Mountaineer State. If she can similarly beat my estimate in Kentucky, she'll net an extra 68,000 votes or so there.

That said, her overall hopes remain slim, as they depend on surprise results in Oregon, South Dakota and Montana, and a huge victory (and turnout) in unpredictable Puerto Rico -- where, incidentally, Michelle Obama is going. And of course, the whole notion of using the "popular vote" to determine the nominee is illegitimate, and there's no way the superdelegates are going to give her the nomination over the clear pledged-delegate winner on the basis of such fuzzy math. But we're talking about the margins of plausibility here. "So you're saying there's a chance."

Anyway, Hillary already "leads" the fraudulent "count" that includes Florida and Michigan, but excludes all Obama supporters in Michigan, and excludes entirely the states of Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington. She's ahead by 29,471 votes in that "tally." That is, of course, not an "arguably plausible" count, as I've explained before. And it's the only count she currently leads. If you add in the estimated IA/NV/ME/WA totals, she trails by 80,751. (If you use Washington's beauty-contest primary instead of its binding caucus, she trails by 30,751.) And of course, if you give Obama the "Uncommitted" votes from Michigan, rather than giving Hillary credit for a Saddam Hussein-style 328,309 to zero "victory" in Michigan, he's way ahead. He's even further ahead if you only count the contests that, y'know, actually counted (i.e., not Florida and Michigan). But let's not get crazy, and start enforcing "rules" and whatnot. ;)

It'll be interesting to see if Hillary proclaims her popular vote "lead" today. If she does, I may write letters to her prominent superdelegate endorsers in Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, arguing that they should insist on her not disenfranchising the voters of their states.

P.S. Speaking of superdelegates, the immediate result of Clinton's big win in West Virginia is... two more superdelegate endorsements for Obama. Heh.

P.P.S. TNR's Josh Patashnik makes an interesting point:

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. That's about as reasonable an outcome as he could have hoped for, given that the quirks of the primary calendar put two of his worst states in the union at this juncture in the race. (Random question: Oregon uses mail-in ballots, so there are no exit polls. Will the networks be able to project him the winner early enough in the night for him to make a speech at a reasonable hour?)

If, in fact, it was the antics of Rush Limbaugh that put Hillary over the top in Indiana, it may well be that El Rushbo was the only thing standing between Obama and a deeply embarrassing loss to a non-candidate. The joys of unintended consequences.

Heh.

West Virginia open thread

By Brendan Loy

CNN's Gloria Borger says exit polls show half of West Virginia voters believe "Obama shares Reverend Wright's values." LOL. Well, at least they're well-informed! [/sarcasm]

Also, Obama is getting 28% of the white vote, according to Bill Schneider. So... uh... I guess maybe he might crack 30% overall?

Then there's this.

Anyway, I just turned off the TV, but if anyone else is still watching and wants to comment on the results, fire away.

UPDATE: With 47 percent of the precincts reporting, it's Clinton 65%, Obama 28%, Edwards 7%.

Meanwhile, in the much more exciting MS-1 congressional special election, it's Childers (D) 51%, Davis (R) 49% with 80 percent of the precincts in. This is a district that Bush won by 25% in 2004, and would be an absolutely huge victory for the Democrats, portending doom in November for the Republicans.

UPDATE 2: According to Daily Kos, the AP has called the race for the Democrat, Childers. Amazing. Cue GOP panic!

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Sen. Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic primary in West Virginia, CNN projects.

West Virginia predictions?

By Brendan Loy

Tonight, we learn the answer to the question I posed last week: Will it still be "over" after West Virginia?

The polls close at 7:30 PM, and, for the first time since February, I expect Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer will be able to immediately "call" the race, based on exit polls alone. (They even waited a half-hour or so before calling Mississippi.) So it'll be a suspense-free night, with only the margin in doubt. That'll give the "best political team on television" (and the various other networks' political pundit squads) several hours to pontificate about "what it all means": Obama can't win the white working class, Clinton can't catch up in the delegate count, maybe they'll have a "dream ticket," blah blah freakin' blah.

I expect I'll turn off the TV around 7:35 PM.

Anyway... what will Hillary's margin be? The average of the four last polls on RCP is 61-24, but that leaves 15% unaccounted for -- and although John Edwards is prominently on the ballot (see at left), I don't think he'll be getting quite that much support. Al Giordano predicts 69% to 31%, and 20-8 in delegates. Poblano says 67.4% to 28.6% (with 4% for Edwards), and 19-9 in delegates, with the potential for a 20-8 or 21-7 delegate split, depending on the 1st and 3rd districts. I'll be pessimistic, and say 70-25-5, and 21-7. What are your predictions?

Oh, and Pablano predicts a 105,000-vote gain for Hillary in the "popular vote," which is roughly the same as the 107,105-vote estimate I used in this post, and which would put her within a few thousand votes of Obama in the facially ridiculous "don't count Iowa, Nevada, Maine or Washington, but count Florida and Michigan, but don't count Uncommitted for Obama" cumulative tally. (She currently trails that transparently fraudulent "count" by 113,498 votes.)

Meanwhile, Marc Ambinder says the "most important election taking place today is not in West Virginia. It's in Mississippi, for the first congressional district, a seat held since the Republican revolution of 1994 by Republican Roger Wicker. Wicker's retiring, and there's a good possibility that Democrat Travis Childers will win today's run-off election." He adds:

A Dem pick-up here will be a portent of doom for Republicans in the fall. George W. Bush won this district by 25 points (66,000 votes) in 2004. Because Davis and Childers tangled via advertisements over whether Childers had been endorsed by Obama amid Rev. Wright's revenge tour, the press will be tempted to spin a Childers victory as a sign that Obama is not a drag on the ticket. Local factors and the national environment are going to be dispositive here, not Barack Obama. So don't believe the hype.

You can read more about the MS-1 race -- and the GOP "panic" it's causing -- in this RCP article.

Declaring victory, acknowledging defeat

By Brendan Loy

For reasons I've stated previously, I'm glad to hear this from Team Obama: "We’re definitely not going to declare victory [on May 20] ... We think it’s an important moment in the campaign ... [but] obviously we have to get to 2025."

Meanwhile, James Carville -- whom Becky and I will be seeing in person Thursday night, at the Knox County Truman Day Dinner (I got tickets through someone at work) -- says Obama will probably win:

Carville told about 500 people at Furman University that U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton should fight until the last dog dies.

“I still hear some dogs barking,” said Carville, the flamboyant Louisianan known as the left’s ragin’ Cajun. “I’m for Senator Clinton, but I think the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee.

“As soon as I determine when that is, I’ll send him a check.”

The New York Times Caucus Blog declares Carville "our fat lady" -- i.e., the official arbiter of when the race ends -- and says, "we’ll be keeping an eye on those Federal Election Commission filings to let you know when the general election has officially begun." Heh.

Charity Bowl '08: represent, USC & ND!

By Brendan Loy

Every Day Should Be Saturday is running a contest that gives all you college sports fans an opportunity to help the victims of the recent spate of disasters -- the Burma cyclone, the China earthquake, the Midwest tornadoes -- while simultaneously showing your team pride. Here's how it works:

1) Make a donation online to the American Red Cross, CARE, or the International Rescue Committee.

2) Email the donation confirmation to kevin@fanblogs.com and state your team affiliation by 8pm EDT on Wednesday, May 14th.

3) Results will be displayed at Every Day Should Be Saturday and Fanblogs throughout the week, with the final results shown by Thursday, May 15th.

4) The winning school will have its colors displayed at EDSBS and logo/mascot shown on every page at Fanblogs.

Things are looking dismal in the current standings for both USC and Notre Dame. Neither school shows up in the Top 10, and in fact, if EDSBS is counting ND as part of the "Big East" for purposes of their conference standings, it appears that zero dollars have been donated by fans of either school. (The Pac-10 and Big East are tied for last place with $0.)

So, pony up, Irish and Trojan fans! We can't let freakin' Michigan -- in first place with $1,000 -- win this thing.

The GOP's Nader?

By Brendan Loy

If Bob Barr wins the Libertarian nomination, will he "draw non-trivial numbers away from McCain," particularly in the small-l libertarian West? Hmm. (What if he were to pick Ron Paul as his running mate? Just asking!)

In other news, I discovered this blog today: Things Younger Than John McCain. Heh.

On a more serious note, George F. Will has some questions for McCain.

Joe Donnelly endorses Obama

By Brendan Loy

South Bend's congressman, Notre Dame Law School alum Joe Donnelly, is the latest superdelegate to endorse Obama.

I'm not sure how the 2nd District as a whole voted, but Donnelly's home county, St. Joseph, favored Obama 53% to 47% last Tuesday.

Also, Clinton has lost a pledged delegate to Obama, according to the Washington Post. "I cannot in good conscience go to the convention and not support Barack," said Jack B. Johnson, who was selected to fill one of Clinton's elected delegate slots "in consultation with the Clinton campaign by the Maryland Democratic State Central Committee." (Oops.) "She ran a great campaign, but she fell short of the line," Johnson says of Clinton. I wonder if the Obama campaign will include this "switch" in their count, in light of the previous fury over Clinton's threats to try and "flip" pledged delegates? (More here, and here.)

Oh, and in other news, there's a primary today. Shh, don't tell anyone. ;)

UPDATE: And now Ray Nagin endorses Obama. Ugh.

A thought on West Virginia

By Brendan Loy

There have been a lot of articles published in recent days with man-on-the-street quotes from West Virginia along the lines of, "I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife's an atheist."

Now, I'm not denying that this sort of sentiment is a problem for Obama, nor am I necessarily denying that it's a particularly severe problem in West Virginia. But can we please take this reporting with a little grain of salt, at least? I'm not sure whether these sorts of quotes tell us all that much about the electoral dynamic in West Virginia, as opposed to the psyche of the reporters writing the stories.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, if you're a reporter, and you conduct enough man-on-the-street interviews, you can find some idiot to say "Obama's a Muslim" -- or even "Obama's a n***er" -- anywhere. You can find racists and xenophobes and conspiratorial crazies in California, New York, Texas, Illinois; you can find 'em all over the damn country.

Can you find them more easily in West Virginia? Perhaps. But you're also much more likely to publish their quotes in a story about West Virginia, because it fits the storyline perfectly. Indeed, such a quote is precisely what these reporters are looking for when they start conducting the interviews in West Virginia. Whereas in California or New York, they'd probably ignore the random racist quote, in West Virginia they go out, they turn on the yokel-detecting radar, they hold up a microphone to the redneckiest-lookin' redneck they can find, and -- voila! -- journalistic magic happens.

Again: I'm not denying the real, genuine significance of racism as a factor in Obama's problems, nor am I suggesting that Appalachia is devoid of racists. But please, let's not jump to the conclusion that, when Hillary wins tomorrow's primary by a margin of 70% to 30%, it means that 70 percent of West Virginia Democrats are racists, just because we read a handful of cherrypicked quotes that seem to validate that preconceived notion.

Hillary Clinton's supporters prefer her to Obama for a whole bunch of reasons, some of them cultural, some of them political, some of them overtly racial, some of them subconsciously racial, and some of them falling into various other categories. While I disagree with their choice (and I strongly disagree with Hillary's conscious or reckless exploitation of the prejudices that do exist), it's an insult to those voters to paint them all with a broad brush and assume the only reason they've voting for Hillary is because they hate black people, or people with the middle name "Hussein," or whatever.

It's possible to condemn prejudice without engaging in it, and that's what's called for here. Some people in West Virginia (and elsewhere) are voting on the basis of racism, and that sucks. Most others aren't, and we shouldn't assume that they are. And that's all I have to say about that.

UPDATE: Poblano writes:

I do want to write a little bit more about the notion that West Virginians are racist. ... [T]he short version is: yes, there are racist voters in West Virginia, but there are racist voters in every state. The primary determinant of the extent to which racism tends to be more manifest is education levels, and so the effects may be more noticeable in West Virgnia, a state with poor academic achievement. But there is no reason to believe that West Virgnians are particularly racist, relative to their education levels.

That seems right to me.

Question

By Brendan Loy

Can someone tell me what this symbol is? I see it constantly on cars here in Knoxville, but I have no idea what it means, and you can't Google a symbol. :)

UPDATE: Commenters have informed me that it's the South Carolina state flag. Well, you wouldn't expect an effete Yankee elitist Obama supporter to know that, now would you? ;)

[NOTE: This post was originally published at 8:28 AM on May 13, but I've bumped it backward in time now that I know the answer, to keep Cletus near the top of the homepage for a while longer. -ed.]

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

The number of people killed by a 7.9-magnitude earthquake in China has risen to nearly 10,000, state-run media report.

Wrong track

By Brendan Loy

The notion that eighty-two percent of Americans think the nation is on the "wrong track" is, to me, pretty stunning. Not to say I disagree. I just find the near-unanimity amazing.

If McCain is somehow elected (I almost wrote "re-elected" -- haha, there's a Freudian slip the Democrats would love) in this sort of environment, it'll be nothing short of a miracle. Of course, it would be his second political miracle of this election cycle...

Mr. Nuance

By Brendan Loy

Barack Obama's stated position on Israel is, I think, impressively, refreshingly nuanced, and entirely unobjectionable. Which doesn't mean there won't be objections from those who regard "nuance" as a dirty word, of course. But I'm pretty hawkish about Israel (and terrorism generally), and yet I honestly can't find anything wrong with what he's saying (at least what I've read of it).

Honest, non-demogogic conservatives/hawks/Likudniks: show me where I'm wrong. Like Ross Perot, I'm all ears.

Hillary's conservative populism

By Brendan Loy

Jonathan Chait:

The dying days of the Hillary Clinton campaign have brought the breathtaking spectacle of a candidate lashing out at every element of public life that has nourished her career. The über-wonk has disparaged economists and expertise. The staunch ally of black America has attacked her opponent for lacking support of "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans." People who thought they knew Hillary Clinton have gazed in astonishment: What has she become? The answer is, a conservative populist.

Conservative populism and liberal populism are entirely different things. Liberal populism posits that the rich wield disproportionate influence over the government and push for policies often at odds with most people's interest. Conservative populism, by contrast, dismisses any inference that the rich and the non-rich might have opposing interests as "class warfare." Conservative populism prefers to divide society along social lines, with the elites being intellectuals and other snobs who fancy themselves better than average Americans.

Consider this analysis recently offered by Bill Clinton in Clarksburg, West Virginia: "The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules." This is precisely the dynamic that allows multimillionaires like George W. Bush and Bill O'Reilly to present themselves as being on the side of the little guy. A more classic expression of conservative populism cannot be found.

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.

Read the whole thing.

Devastating earthquake rocks China

By Brendan Loy

As if Cyclone Nargis -- which some fear could kill a million people if disease sets in -- and Saturday's devastating tornadoes in the U.S. heartland (the latest in what is becoming a historically bad year for tornadoes) weren't enough, now a 7.8 magnitude earthquake has struck central China, causing an official, initial death toll of 107, which is expected to ultimately go much, much higher. There are reports of 5,000 dead in a single county, and 900 students buried at a collapsed school.

UPDATE: Make that almost 9,000 dead:

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake devastated a hilly region of small cities and towns. The official Xinhua News Agency said 8,533 people died in Sichuan province and more than 200 others were killed in three other provinces and the mega-city of Chongqing.

When an earthquake kills almost 9,000 people (probably more, in the end), and it's only the second-worst calamity of the month (by far), you know it's been a bad month.

The Phyllo Creation

By Rebecca Loy

Thanks to everyone who recommended different dishes that incorporate phyllo dough and curry. I ended up creating a samosa-like dish with onion, ground turkey and a grated potato flavored with curry and ginger inside phyllo triangles. I paired it with some watermelon, sauteed zucchini and onion and a salad (basic greens with garbanzo beans, artichoke hearts, tomato, celery and green peppers). Oh, and milk. :)

My next recipe challenge is finding a tasty vegetarian meal that won't break the bank or leave me hungry in two hours. Any suggestions? Find mine after the jump.

Another SCandal

By Brendan Loy

As if Reggiegate wasn't bad enough, now one-and-done Trojan basketball star O.J. Mayo is accused of taking cash and gifts while at USC.

Ugh.

P.S. Pat Forde asks: "So you take the Bush allegations, add a side of Mayo and ask the question: Has there ever been a more textbook definition of 'lack of institutional control'?" He goes on:

If all the allegations stand up, USC athletic director Mike Garrett and the Inspector Clouseaus who comprise his compliance staff must lose their jobs over these serial embarrassments, or the school has no credibility whatsoever. When USC's two highest-profile sports both have star players allegedly on the brazen take from agents, somebody needs to answer for it. A lot of somebodies.

I would tend to agree with that. Fire Mike Brey Garrett?

Will Cyclone Nargis lead to the downfall of the Myanmar regime?

By Brendan Loy

As the government of Burma/Myanmar continues to show more interest in chasing down CNN reporters than in trying to prevent a holocaust in the Irrawaddy Delta, meteorologist and weatherblogger Dr. Jeff Masters puts the junta's despicable actions in historical context:

[T]he criminal indifference of the nation's leaders towards the plight of the cyclone's survivors will doom hundreds or thousands more to death or terrible suffering. One can only hope that the people of Myanmar will rise up and put an end to Myanmar's dictatorship as a result of this awful tragedy.

There is historical precedent for this sort of occurrence. The deadliest tropical cyclone of all time, the Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970, killed upwards of 550,000 people is what was then called East Pakistan (and now called Bangladesh). A statement released by eleven political leaders in East Pakistan ten days after the cyclone hit charged the government with "gross neglect, callous indifference and utter indifference". They also accused the president of playing down the news coverage. The dissatisfaction with the government response to the disaster boiled over into full-fledged civil war the next year, which ultimately led to the overthrow of the government and the establishment of the new nation of Bangladesh. As bad as the West Pakistani response to the Great Bhola Cyclone of 1970 was, the response of the Myanmar government to Nargis is far worse. The slowness of response to this tropical cyclone disaster is unprecedented in modern times.

It makes the U.S. and Louisiana governments' response to Hurricane Katrina seems like a model of efficiency by comparison. Here's an overview of what's happening:

More aid is on the way to cyclone-ravaged Myanmar - but so is the heavy rain... [and] relief workers, including Americans, [are] still being barred entry. ...

Officials have said only one out of 10 people who are homeless, injured or threatened by disease and hunger have received some kind of aid in the week since the cyclone hit.

The government, which wants full control of relief operations, has less than 40 helicopters, most of them small or old. It also has only about 15 transport planes, primarily small jets unable to carry hundreds of tons of supplies.

"Not only don't they have the capacity to deliver assistance, they don't have experience," said Mark Farmaner, director of the pro-democracy Burma Campaign UK. "It's already too late for many people. Every day of delays is costing thousands of lives."

On Friday, Myanmar's military rulers seized two planeloads containing enough high-energy biscuits to feed 95,000 people sent by the U.N. World Food Program, which briefly suspended help after the action. The U.N. later agreed to send two more planes to help survivors.

The government acknowledged taking control of the shipments and said it plans to distribute the aid itself to affected areas. ...

The U.N. has grown increasingly critical of Myanmar's refusal to let in foreign aid workers who could assess the extent of the disaster with the junta apparently overwhelmed. None of the 10 visa applications submitted by the WFP has been approved. ...

Myanmar says it will accept aid from all countries, but prohibits the entry of foreign workers who would deliver and manage the operations. The junta is not ready to change that position, [Shari Villarosa, the U.S. charge d'affairs in Yangon] said she was told. ...

The junta said it was grateful to the international community for its assistance but the best way to help was to send in material rather than personnel.

Relief workers have reached 220,000 cyclone victims, only a fraction of the number of people affected, the Red Cross said.

"Believe me, the government will not allow outsiders to go into the devastated area," said Yangon food shop owner Joseph Kyaw. "The government only cares about its own stability. They don't care about the plight of the people."

Indeed. F***ing inhuman bastards. May they rot in hell. (And, more immediately, may their "stability" be undermined by their own obsession with it.)

More on the (bad) dream ticket

By Brendan Loy

TNR's David Bell lists ten reasons the "unity ticket" is a bad idea. He's right.

Hillary's great Appalachian hope

By Brendan Loy

Jay Cost says Hillary still has a chance. Why? West Virginia and Kentucky, of course. "I think it is too hasty to declare her finished just days before two of her three best states."

In support of this notion, he posts the latest version of Sean Oxendine's Appalachia map (original here):

The blue counties are Clinton's, the green are Obama's. As you can probably guess, the darker the color, the larger the margin. South Carolina isn't included because it was still a three-way race then. The black line represents the boundary of Appalachia, according to -- um -- the Census Bureau, or somebody. I forget.

Anyway... I think Cost is right. And while he couches his analysis in terms of uncertainties and unknowns, I don't think there's any doubt that Hillary will win huge, huge victories in WV and KY. The only question is the turnout. Will it be high enough to give her the "popular vote" margins she needs? (This is what Bill Clinton was talking about, of course.) And then, if she does get the numbers, will anyone buy her illegitimate line of argument? Will it at least sow enough doubt and uncertainty to buy her time until May 31 (Michigan and Florida) and June 1 (Puerto Rico)? On Wednesday, I asked the question; today, I'll go out on a limb and say I suspect the answer is yes.

I have a growing sense that, if there was going to be a moment before June 3 for the party to truly and fully coalesce around Obama, this week was it, and it hasn't happened. Oh, they've half-coalesced, they've whispered their allegiances, and there have been superendorsements. But there's been no mass superdelegate movement, no intervention by party graybeards, no coordinated push to get Hillary out of the race -- nothing like that. In fact, there's been a coordinated decision by the Obama campaign to not push Hillary out, probably for fear of triggering further divisions within the party (and perhaps a wave of mutnemom). I'm not saying this was a bad decision, or that a more muscular approach wouldn't have backfired. I'm just saying that, if the get-Hillary-out moment was going to happen this month, I think it needed to happen this week, and it didn't.

"But what about May 20?" you might ask. Well, I'm not at all sure Obama's "declare victory on May 20" gambit will work. In fact, I think it may be a bad idea to even try it. Hillary will win a much bigger victory, percentage-wise, in Kentucky that day than Obama will in Oregon, and the concept of declaring victory on the basis of a majority of pledged delegates is almost Hillaryesque in its spinnish hamhandedness. A "majority of pledged delegates" is only slightly more meaningful than a "plurality of the popular vote": it may have some psychic or moral significance, but it's not the metric that determines victory. A majority of all delegates is what determines victory, and Obama should not want to get into a contest with Clinton over who can more blatantly move the goalposts. While she vascillates between metrics and rationales -- big states, swing states, popular votes, 2,209 as the new "magic number," etc. -- he ought to stand firm in stating that he'll be the presumptive nominee when he hits 2,025 delegates, including supers. No sooner, no later. Using his pledged-delegate majority as an argument to the voters, the supers and the media is fine; using it to declare victory, to assert that the race is over, is problematic and Hillary-ish, IMHO.

Matthews on the mound, Puerto Rico at the plate: let's play beanball

By Joe Loy

Note: Just so nobody will assume I'm Spinning this issue ~ I support Barack Obama, for whom I voted in my state's primary. (Admittedly, I was For Hillary before I was Against her. :) My sinister motivation here :> is that I'm Also in favor of (a) due Process and (b) Puerto Rico :}.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The host of MSNBC's Spitball Dirtball Screwball Hardball with Chris Matthews yesterday mounted another bold attack in his ongoing 2nd Battle of San Juan. Extremely extensive transcript excerpts (tendentious emphases added; my commentary follows):

...MATTHEWS:  And then you can see it going through Puerto Rico.

When it comes time to fight for who‘s got the most elected delegates -

pledged delegates, and if you lose that, if you come short, which is likely you will come short, can you add Puerto Rican votes to your claim of a popularity—of a popular vote victory?

[Clinton Communications Director Howard] WOLFSON:  Of course.

MATTHEWS:  Even though they can‘t vote in the presidential election?

WOLFSON:  Well, they‘re participating in our...

MATTHEWS:  Right, right, right.

WOLFSON:  ... in our primary process.

MATTHEWS:  But are you willing to say that you have a right to the nomination based on Puerto Rican votes?

WOLFSON:  Yes.  Which votes are you going to exclude from the process?

MATTHEWS:  No, just—just...

WOLFSON:  I said yes.

MATTHEWS:  Just people that are not American—are not voting in the American presidential election.  That‘s all.

[Much more after the Jump. / ~ the guestblogger]

Super Friday for Obama; Clintons still in fantasyland

By Brendan Loy

Bill Clinton -- who is reportedly among the people pushing his wife hardest to keep fighting, all the way to the convention if necessary -- told West Virginia voters today that an overwhelming turnout coupled with an overwhelming Hillary margin in the Mountaineer State (and neighboring Kentucky) can make the "earth move." Why? Because of that wonderfully illegitimate metric, the "popular vote," of course:

"She can win the popular vote, she is clearly the most electable according to all the national polls, and between now and August, the superdelegates are gonna have to think long and hard about how badly they want to win."

Meanwhile, back here on planet Earth, Obama made a net gain of 7 superdelegates today -- including a nod from the superdelegate superblogger, Mr. Super -- and he has now overtaken Clinton in some media superdelegate counts, for the first time in the campaign. (The count I trust the most, DemConWatch, has Hillary still up, but by a measly 1.5 super votes. So it's only a matter of time. Like, maybe a few more hours, the way today has been going.)

In other news, Rasmussen Reports will be stopping its daily tracking poll of the Democratic race:

[W]hile Senator Clinton has remained close and competitive in every meaningful measure, she is a close second and the race is over. It has become clear that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. ... With this in mind, Rasmussen Reports will soon end our daily tracking of the Democratic race and focus exclusively on the general election competition between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama. Barring something totally unforeseen, that is the choice American voters will have before them in November. While we have not firmly decided upon a final day for tracking the Democratic race, it is coming soon.

And, on an unrelated note, Joe Lieberman would like you to know that he, uh, checked John McCain's bearings, and, uh, they're just fine.

Teehee.

So, you think YOU had a lousy day?

By Jay Johnson

I'd say that this guy has had it just a bit worse than you likely have.

Estimate: cyclone could kill 500,000

By Brendan Loy

Will Cyclone Nargis, the catastrophic storm that ravaged Burma/Myanmar, ultimately be worse than the 2004 tsunami? Christ almighty.

That fearful prediction comes from the Sun, so you may want to take it with a grain of salt. But it's based on an estimate of what could happen "through disease and hunger if the nation's hardline army rulers continue to block aid for the devastated lowlands of the Irrawaddy Delta."

And blocking aid is exactly what these evil rulers are doing. They've seized all food supplies and are preventing it from being distributed to the victims, forcing the U.N. to suspend its relief efforts. Meanwhile, according to Nyo Ohn Myint, leader of an exiled opposition party:

"The bodies need to be collected and burnt as soon as possible or disease will claim many more lives. But the government has organised nothing and its 400,000 soldiers are doing nothing while undistributed aid piles up.

"They are hoping bodies will be washed out to sea so the final count is smaller – but it could kill half a million people within a matter of weeks. The world must know what is going on."

There is a special circle of Hell for these junta bastards.

Incidentally, a death toll of 500,000 would place Nargis on the Top 5 list of deadliest natural disasters in history (excluding famines and diseases). Although, the term "natural disaster" may not be entirely appropriate, as Myint pointed out: "Much of this will be a man-made disaster, caused by the military regime."

P.S. The deadliest tropical cyclone in world history was the 1970 Bhola cyclone in India and Bangladesh, which killed between 300,000 and 500,000 people.

Barack Obama, mountain mama?

By Brendan Loy

Hillary Clinton says "West Virginia is a test" of electability. Heh, yeah, a "test" she can't possibly fail. That's a little like Michael Jordan challenging Wayne Gretzky to determine who is the greatest athlete of their generation -- by playing a basketball game.

Here's a look at just how challenging impossible West Virginia's political landscape is for Obama. A new poll released yesterday shows him down 63% to 23% (with 14% undecided, I guess). Daniel Larison has more grim poll numbers. [UPDATE: ARG says it's 66% to 23%.]

Mark Halperin wonders, "Why is the likely Democratic nominee not visiting the next state up? Is it the expectations game?" Um... yes? Duh? Look, Clinton's people have consistently made the (bogus) argument that, if Obama spends lots of time and money in a state, that means he "should" win it, even when he's clearly the demographic underdog and is obviously just trying to hold down her margin (see, e.g., Pennsylvania). He knows he can't come remotely close in West Virginia -- the best he could hope for would be to maybe reduce her margin to 20% or 25%, and will anyone really give him credit for that? -- so why give Hillary the ability to make that argument? It's like Larison says:

[W]hat he needs to do is to change the subject and act as if these primaries [in West Virginia and Kentucky] are not happening (or, to borrow a page from the Clintons, to claim that they “don’t really count”), because there is simply no way that he is going to change the powerful opposition to him in these states.  Imagine the resistance that he faced in the Monongahela Valley, and then expand it to include entire states, and you have an idea of what he’s up against.

I don't support the "claim they don't count" strategy -- when she wins, he should graciously congratulate her, reiterate that he is the choice of voters all across the country, and proceed with his general-election arguments against John McCain -- but there's nothing wrong with lowering expectations, nor with pointing out that these states shouldn't count extra just because they happen, coincidentally, to take place near the end of the calendar. Hillary's inevitable blowout wins in West Virginia and Kentucky should "count" no more, and no less, than Obama's blowouts in, for instance, Georgia and Kansas on Super Tuesday.

That said, I'm of two minds about this, because if Hillary racks up a huge popular vote margin, and wins the WV delegate count by something like 32 to 7, it'll probably rejuvenate her spirits and at least dampen the media's "it's over" meme for a while. But at the same time, if Obama campaigns heavily in West Virginia, the media will declare that he is trying to "close the deal" -- and when he "fails" to do so, losing by, say, a "whopping" 22 points (which would actually be pretty good), that'll be disastrous for him in the campaign's meta-storyline.

So, all things considered, I think Larison is right. Obama is better off basically ignoring West Virginia, and spending the next week campaigning in general-election states. Even if she wins almost all of the Mountaineer State's 39 delegates... it won't change a damn thing. His mathematical advantage is still insurmountable.

Now, if we want to talk about real "tests," this would be an interesting idea:

[T]here is one last chance for the Clinton campaign: make Oregon definitive. Everyone knows she's going to win Kentucky and West Virginia. Everyone expects her to lose in Oregon. If she throws down the gauntlet and says: "Oregon is it. Obama has home field advantage. If he wins, I'm out. If I win, we go all the way to the convention. Game on."

Who, really, could resist? Certainly not the cable networks!  And the state is home to millions of white people.

Heh.

Obama, for his part, plans to declare victory in Oregon on May 20, on the basis that he will have clinched a majority of the pledged delegates -- not 2,025, but 1,627, the number that ObamaIsWinning.com has been touting for months as "the real magic number."

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?"

Will it still be "over" after West Virginia?

By Brendan Loy

Hillary says she'll fight on, though the congealing consensus is that she's likely to behave like Mike Huckabee after Super Tuesday, running a purely positive campaign from here on out. (I'll believe that when I see it.)

In any event, the media CW that "it's over" remains firmly entrenched, as illustrated by the following clip from tonight's CBS Evening News, currently linked at the top of Drudge:

Here's how the New York Times put it: "Very early this morning, after many voters had already gone to sleep, the conventional wisdom of the elite political pundit class that resides on television shifted hard, and possibly irretrievably, against Senator Hillary Clinton's continued viability as a presidential candidate."

But is the shift truly "irretrievable"? The big question in my mind is whether the "it's over" meme will survive Clinton's 30-point win (or more!) in West Virginia next Tuesday, followed by perhaps a 40-point win in Kentucky the following week.

Will the MSM have enough discipline to recognize that, in this primary season where demography is destiny, these inevitable Clinton landslides will tell us nothing new about either candidate, and will not demonstrate that Obama "can't close the deal" or that Hillary is "fighting back"? (In truth, the results will demonstrate only that two of the three most naturally Hillary-friendly states in the nation -- the other being Arkansas -- coincidentally happen to hold their primaries right near the end of the process.)

Or will the MSM once again fall prey to the allure of shiny moving objects, allowing Hillary to successfully use this coincidence of the calendar to generate fake "momentum" down the stretch? Will her utterly predictable blowout wins turn the media storyline back in her favor, freezing the superdelegates and focusing everyone's attention on May 31 and June 1 (i.e., Michigan, Florida and Puerto Rico)?

I honestly don't know the answer to that question, but it will determine whether anyone takes Hillary Clinton seriously during the final month of this long campaign.

Can Hillary win the popular vote?

By Brendan Loy

The short answer is: probably not.

The long answer is: if she wins by massive margins in Kentucky and West Virginia, pulls a stunning upset in Oregon, and romps in a Puerto Rico primary with unprecedented turnout, she could still potentially win an arguably plausible version of the popular vote tally.

By "arguably plausible," I mean a tally that does not depend on either a) a 328,309 to zero "win" in Michigan, or b) the total disenfranchisement of voters in Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington (caucus states that, as I've discussed before, don't report popular vote totals, but that do provide turnout numbers which allow for a rough estimation of vote totals). Any argument that purports to present Clinton as the "choice of the people," while ignoring those four caucus states (in which Obama had a 110,222-vote advantage) and/or giving Hillary credit for her Saddam Hussein-style "victory" in the Wolverine State, is laughable on its face, and such a tally will never be taken seriously by anyone outside Clinton's innermost circle of devoted sycophants.

However, I'd say it's arguably plausible to include Hillary's 294,772-vote Florida margin, even though it came in a beauty-contest primary that both candidates pledged not to campaign in. Similarly, it's arguably plausible to give Hillary the benefit of her 90,141-vote "win" over "Uncommitted" in Michigan's similarly meaningless primary, with Uncommitted's votes going to Obama. (Admittedly, not every Uncommitted voter favored Obama. But it's intuitively obvious that there were a lot more Obama supporters who didn't vote -- because he wasn't on the freakin' ballot, and the primary didn't count -- than there are Uncommitted voters who weren't for Obama. Awarding Uncommitted's votes to Obama doesn't overstate his popular support in Michigan, it understates it. And in any event, a 328,309 to 238,168 margin is much closer to being an accurate reflection of the will of Michigan's people than a 238,168 to 0 margin is.)

Of course, claiming "victory" based on such a tally is highly dubious, not only because it counts the Florida results and a modified version of the Michigan results, but because the "popular vote" is an inherently flawed metric and is not a legitimate way to determine the "winner" of the primaries.

But I said "arguably plausible," not "legitimate according to Brendan Loy." So, with that understanding, I ran the numbers, as promised yesterday. Details after the jump.

NDLS 2L wins Long Island Marathon

By Brendan Loy

Remember Dan McGrath, the Notre Dame law student who finished 33rd in the New York City marathon during his 1L year? Well, now he's a 2L, and on Sunday he won the Long Island Marathon, then flew back to South Bend in time for a Monday-morning Jurisprudence final. As a result of his exploits, he's featured on the sports mega-blog Deadspin, under the headline "Annoying Superhuman Lawyer-To-Be Makes Life More Difficult For The Rest Of Us." Heh. Congrats, Dan!

McCain supporters fueled Hillary's Indiana win

By Brendan Loy

The exit polls show that Hillary Clinton only won Indiana because of pro-McCain voters. In other words, she probably owes her victory to Rush Limbaugh and his army of chaos-loving Dittoheads.

P.S. In fairness, Ben Smith points out that "presumably many of these were voters sincerely picking a second choice." That's true, and it's a good point. It's impossible to know, of course, what percentage were doing that, and what percentage were "playing tactical games," a la Limbaugh. Nevertheless, whatever their motivations, it seems (if we believe the exit polls) that Hillary owes her margin of victory in Indiana to the support of people who have no intention of voting for her in November. Given the Clinton camp's penchant for using primary results to draw conclusions about electability, this seems a fair and pertinent point.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Sen. Hillary Clinton will narrowly win the Indiana Democratic primary, CNN projects.

Drudge, Russert say it's over

By Brendan Loy

I just got home after my drive from Nashville, and upon getting out my computer, I'm greeted by news of a shrinking Clinton lead in Indiana (1.4 percent, or 16,609 votes), a prediction by Gary's mayor of a "possible Indiana shocker," and a report by Matt Drudge that "Hillary plans to huddle with undecided super delegates tomorrow; gauging if she can go on." And then there's Drudge's bold headline:

The link goes to this video clip of Tim Russert -- the emperor of MSM conventional wisdom -- declaring the race over:

Will Hillary really drop out (or "suspend" her campaign, or whatever) immediately before two states -- West Virginia and Kentucky -- that she could potentially win by 30 or 40 percentage points? I'm still skeptical. But if Obama can pull out Indiana, the chorus calling for her exit could become overwhelming. And unless she gets a fundraising surge like she did after Super Tuesday and again after Pennsylvania, the money problem may decide the issue for her.

Key fact: Obama's whopping popular-vote margin in North Carolina -- more than 233,000 with 99% reporting -- makes it, I think, impossible for Hillary to "win" the national "popular vote" using any remotely, arguably legitimate metric. I'll run the numbers tomorrow, but I think she can probably still "win" if you count her votes in Michigan and don't give Uncommitted's votes to Obama, thus giving Hillary the benefit of a Saddam Hussein-style 328,000 to zero victory. But that's obviously, facially absurd; it has nothing whatsoever to do with the "will of the people," and absolutely no one outside of Hillary's most devoted circle of shameless sycophants will buy into it. And, even if you give her every other benefit of the mathematical doubt (counting Florida, excluding the four caucus states, counting her 90,000-vote victory over Uncommitted in Michigan, etc.), I think it's now impossible for Hillary to "win" the "popular vote." Thus, we can now say with confidence that, when all is said and done on June 4, Obama will have more delegates and more votes. Clinton will therefore be left trying to spin a loss into a win, and to convince a supermajority of superdelegates to overturn the clearly expressed will of the people. She'll fail. Drudge and Russert are right: it's over.

UPDATE: As noted above, CNN called Indiana for Clinton a couple of minutes after I published this post. The other networks have called it, too. It will be a very slim margin, however -- so slim that it seems entirely possible, if not likely, that Hillary owes her victory to Rush Limbaugh. In a race this close, "Operation Chaos" may well have made the difference.

P.S. Hillary's assertion that Indiana "broke the tie" in the PA-NC-IN trifecta is quite possibly the most pathetically unconvincing piece of election-night spin since Joe Lieberman's "three-way split decision for third place" in New Hampshire four years ago.

P.P.S. An astute post on Obsidian Wings, declaring the race over and explaining why.

Big night for Obama!

By Brendan Loy

Just landed in Nashville. It looks like the exit polls were right, for once: a close contest in IN, an Obama landslide in NC. Nice! ... Incidentally, my contrary predictive post below appeared about
an hour after I sent it. Odd.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Sen. Barack Obama will win the North Carolina Democratic primary, CNN projects.

Misleading exit poll alert!

By Brendan Loy

Huffington Post says it's Hillary by 5 in IN, Obama by 12 in NC. I predict the actual numbers will be roughly opposite that. She'll win by double digits, he won't, and she'll benefit from another
fake "comeback."

Audio Moblog

By Brendan Loy

powered by Hipcast.com

Indiana/North Carolina open thread

By Brendan Loy

The polls are closed in most of Indiana. North Carolina will soon follow suit. As mentioned below, I'll be in flight from 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM EST, and driving from Nashville to Knoxville after that, so my ability to post blog updates will be extremely limited. But this is your thread to chat about the results as they trickle out. Comment away!

It's Hoosier/Tar Heel Tuesday!

By Brendan Loy

The polls are open in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. They'll close tonight at 6:00 PM EST in most of the Hoosier State, 7:00 PM in a few western Indiana counties, 7:30 PM in the vast majority of North Carolina, and 8:30 PM in a few N.C. counties.

The RCP poll averages show Clinton up by 5 in Indiana, and Obama up by 8 in North Carolina, so a "split" seems the most likely outcome. But who knows, maybe we'll see an upset tonight. What are your predictions? And what will the outcomes mean? Does an Obama sweep force Hillary out of the race before West Virginia? Does a "split" keep us going to the convention, or just to early June? What if Hillary pulls off a sweep? (Here are my thoughts.)

Whatever your predictions, and whatever your rooting interests, remember: the early, leaked exit polls mean nothing. If Drudge comes out with another late-afternoon "EXIT POLL DRAMA" bulletin, showing Obama leading Indiana by a small margin and North Carolina by a huge one, don't buy it. Obama always does worse in the actual results than in the unweighted exit polls. So don't get excited, and don't buy into this crap again:

[Pennsylvania's] early exit polls had suggested a nail-biter that suggested Hillary might be finished. Yet, much like Super Tuesday, Hillary made a "comeback" over the course of the night, as her vote margin gradually widened. Why, it was almost as though Obama had Hillary on the ropes and she fought him off with pure grit and determination. Impressive! She's back!

That's happened four separate times now: New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, Texas & Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Not again! Enough! The line must be drawn here! Let there be no unearned, fraudulent "spin" boost for Hillary this time, due to poor media memory of recent exit-poll history. PAY ATTENTION, MSM!!!

Anyway... my flight leaves Denver at 7:00 PM EST and lands at 9:25, so it's quite likely that neither state will have been "called" when I take off, and both will have been "called" by the time I land. And, upon landing, I have a 2 1/2-hour drive from Nashville back to Knoxville. So, needless to say, I won't be doing my usual election-night liveblogging. But I might post an update from the airport if there's anything to report (e.g., meaningless exit-poll leaks), and regardless, I've set up an "open thread" to automatically post at 6:00 PM. Also, CNN Breaking News alerts should auto-post a few minutes after Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer calls each state.

Goooo Obama, Beeeeat Expectations!

Baseball and beer

By Brendan Loy

Kristy and I are at the Rockies-Cardinals game at Coors Field. We -- and our beers -- have a great view from the first row of Section L306 in right field. Go Rockies! (They lead 2-1, and I'm wearing my Rocky Top shirt.)

UPDATE: We had a great time, but alas, the Rockies lost, 6-5.

Pick your poll

By Brendan Loy

USA Today: "Poll: Flap over pastor hurts Obama"

New York Times: "In Poll, Obama Survives Furor, but Fall Is the Test"

Who's right? For better or worse, the voters of Indiana and North Carolina will decide that, at least for purposes of the immediate media storyline.

P.S. Mark Ambinder explains the difference between the two polls' wildly divergent national Clinton vs. Obama numbers.

Obama conspiracy-theory porn

By Brendan Loy

Ben Smith brings us up to date on the latest Obama conspiracy theory, courtesy of a former Lyndon LaRouche acolyte and a 9/11 Truth pamphleteer in South Bend.

Naturally, since this is a LaRouchie thing, they accuse Obama of being a closet conservative, "a pawn of -- wait for it -- the CIA, the Ford Foundation, the Trilateral Commission, and Zbigniew Brzezinksi." LOL!

(I actually tried once to read a lengthy LaRouche pamphlet in its entirety, after a LaRouchie on USC's campus gave it to me. I literally couldn't get through it. It was utterly incomprehensible due to its sheer lunacy and logical incoherence. Those people are nuts.)

Smith also notes that the Reverend Wright controversy isn't quelling the Obama-as-secret-Muslim rumors: "I just got a viral email trying to resolve a major source of cognitive conspiracy dissonance by claiming that Trinity United Church is an Islamic front." Heh. God bless America.

"Disaster of horrific proportions" in Myanmar

By Brendan Loy

Cyclone Nargis has produced a major humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar (a.k.a. Burma), with perhaps 13,000 dead and the nation's capital -- which suffered a direct hit from the storm -- plunged into a "primitive existence."

Dr. Jeff Masters has a detailed post on the cyclone and its impact.

Hillary's pathetic pandering

By Brendan Loy

Hillary Clinton's phony populism and egregious anti-intellectualism are really getting ridiculous. In the words of Robert Reich:

I'm not suggesting economists have all the answers. But when economists tell a president or a presidential candidate that his or her idea is dumb – and when all respectable economists around America agree that it’s a dumb idea – it’s probably wise for the president or presidential candidate to listen. When the president or candidate doesn’t, and proudly defends the policy by saying she's "not going to put my lot in with economists,” we’ve got a problem, folks.

Indiana and North Carolina voters, please, for heaven's sake, see through this crap.

Seen on a TSA sign...

By Brendan Loy

"Video cameras that use video cassettes." Hmm. That's the first time I've seen that particular formulation (at an airport, stadium, etc.) as an attempt to clarify the increasingly blurry distinction between still and video cameras. Only problem: "video cameras that use video cassettes" are well on their way to becoming obsolete!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Chihuahuas!

By Lisa Velte

Yesterday was the Kentucky Derby, which is often called "the most exciting two minutes in sports." But last Saturday, I was getting some good laughs at a very different kind of race: the 4th Annual Petco Chihuahua Races. I could tell you all about it, but I think this video I took speaks for itself:

The dogs were put in "packs" of 10, with the top two dogs from each race going on to the second round. It sounds simple enough, but this "race" went on for about five minutes before a second chihuahua would make its way toward the finish line:

More videos and a few pictures after the jump.

Hundreds of ballots! Thrown out!

By Brendan Loy

There will be a recount in Guam. Apparently more than 500 "spoiled" ballots went uncounted, which dwarfs Barack Obama's 7-vote margin of victory.

Meanwhile, in other political news yesterday: "Democrat Don Cazayoux, one of a handful of Southern candidates whom Republicans have tried to associate with Obama, won a special congressional election in a Republican district... [The race] was closely watched to see whether Obama can play the same role in GOP demonology as Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy."

Halperin plays the Eight Belles card

By Brendan Loy

I expected commenters on my blog to pick up on the Hillary Clinton-Eight Belles analogy in the wake of the horse's second-place Kentucky Derby finish (behind, ahem, "Big Brown") and tragic post-race death. And it figures that Wonkette would also pick up the story, and give it a headline like "Hillary's Horse Dies Embarrassingly." But I'm a little surprised to see Time's Mark Halperin discussing it -- with an unmistakable air of amusement -- on his widely read election-news clearinghouse, The Page:

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS UP
Hillary Clinton enthusiastically picked a filly named Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby and compared herself to the horse. Eight Belles finished second. The winner was the favorite, Big Brown. Eight Belles collapsed immediately after crossing the finish line, and was euthanized shortly thereafter.

Er, well, yes. However, I think we can all agree, Obama and Clinton supporters alike, that whoever finishes second in the Democratic presidential race, we all sincerely hope they aren't, um, euthanized immediately after the deciding delegate vote is cast.

(On the other hand, I suppose if Hillary were to merely break an ankle during, say, a balloon fiasco following Obama's victory, that would complete the analogy without anyone dying -- since humans aren't generally "put down" after breaking limbs. If they were, a certain South Bend tennis net would have been my undoing!)

Anyway, The Huffington Post has more.

Um, and R.I.P., Eight Belles. Election-related snickering aside, it really is quite sad.

Obama wins Guam by 7 votes

By Brendan Loy

The final tally in the Guam caucuses: Obama 2,264, Clinton 2,257. Heh!

That's 50.08% to 49.92%, if you were wondering. Not quite Florida-close -- indeed, an order of magnitude less close, as that race was decided by 0.009%, rather than 0.155% -- but still: seven votes. Wow.

According to Politico, Clinton and Obama will each get four pledged delegates, each of whom has a "half-vote" at the convention, so the tally is 2-2. But Obama's seven-vote victory in the popular vote apparently nets him a superdelegate:

The ticket of Pilar Lujan and Jaime Paulino won the race for Party Chairman and Vice Chairman -- both superdelegate positions. Paulino is an Obama supporter, and Lujan has indicated she'll back the caucus winner.

Presumably that means she'll vote for Obama, despite his extremely narrow margin of victory. And I believe the Guam supers get full votes, rather than half-votes... so, counting superdelegates, Obama earns a net gain of 2 delegates (4 to 2). Three other Guam supers are, I think, still undeclared.

UPDATE: According to the Jed Report, one of the other three Guam supers is for Clinton, one is undeclared, and one hasn't been selected yet.

CNN Breaking News

By CNN

Big Brown wins the 134th Kentucky Derby.

Derby time!

By Brendan Loy

The Kentucky Derby is about to begin. I'm rooting for Denis of Cork because of his Irish-sounding name and Notre Dame connection. My second choice is Smooth Air, because of ESPN's sappy human-interest story about 70-year-old trainer Bennie Stutts. Go Denny & Bennie!

Once again, I'll miss Dave Johnson's call. "And down the stretch they come!"

UPDATE: Big Brown (the favorite, and Obama's third-place pick) won the Derby. But the big story is the tragedy that befell second-place finisher Eight Belles (the filly, and Hillary's pick). Eight Belles suffered a devastating injury, and had to be euthanized immediately after the race. Denis of Cork (my pick) finished third.

And then we're going to Guam! YAAARH!

By Brendan Loy

Barack Obama is leading the Guam caucuses.

UPDATE, 5:29 PM: With all but one precinct reporting, Obama leads 1,951 to 1,748. So Hillary will need a 204-vote margin in Dededo, Guam's most populous village, to overtake Barack and win the caucuses.

Noonan on Wright

By Brendan Loy

Peggy Noonan compares Jeremiah Wright to the Wolfe Tones. A must-read.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.)

No candidates at Kentucky Derby

By Brendan Loy

The Kentucky Derby is today, Saturday. Post time is 6:04 PM Eastern.

Alas, my vision of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton making dueling appearances at the racetrack -- in anticipation of the Kentucky primary, two weeks and three days hence -- will not be fulfilled. But Chelsea Clinton will be there! And Hillary did briefly don a Derby hat during a visit to Louisville on Thursday.

Well, it looks better on her than it would on Barack, I suppose. :)

Meanwhile, both candidates have announced their Derby picks, taking the concept of the political "horse race" beyond the metaphorical. Obama is picking Colonel John to finish first, Pyro to finish second, and Big Brown to finish third. Clinton has only announced her first-place choice: Eight Belles, the lone filly in the race. Heh. Girl power!

Does anyone really believe...

By Brendan Loy

...that Obama can "close the door on the nomination with...a narrow loss in Indiana" and a win in North Carolina? Why on earth would Hillary, after a "split" on Tuesday, drop out of the race -- immediately before literally her best two states, outside of Arkansas, in the entire country (West Virginia and Kentucky)? That's crazy.

The only way Hillary drops out, maybe, is if she loses both of Tuesday's primaries outright, and her fundraising dries up as a result -- and even then, I'm not sure. Her path to the nomination no longer depends primarily on the voters; her strategy is centered on the superdelegates, not the pledged delegates (of which probably less than a dozen really hang in the balance in Indiana anyway). We already know she's going to finish way behind in the pledged delegate count; a win in Indiana won't change that, and by the same token, a loss in Indiana won't make the situation meaningfully worse than it already is.

What Indiana will do, of course, is play a big role in shaping the media narrative, which the superdelegates are susceptible to being swayed by. But Hillary knows perfectly well that West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico will swing the narrative back in her favor, if she stays in. Besides, we all know what will happen, narrative-wise, on Tuesday. Even if the media sets "a solid win in Indiana" as Hillary's goalpost now, it will inevitably get moved at the last minute, because on election night, the OMG! EXIT POLLS!! will show Obama winning Indiana by 6 points and North Carolina by 18, or something like that, and every idiotic, short-memoried pundit will declare Clinton's campaign over... whereupon she'll "rally" to win Indiana by 1 (which will look like 3 when Tim Russert goes to bed) and lose North Carolina by "just" 8 (which will look like 5 at Russert's bedtime). Another Clinton comeback!! She's a "fighter," don't ya know!!

*sigh*

Anyway, all things considered, I think this idea that Obama is (again) on the verge of "clinching" the nomination is wishful thinking. Unless the USOs (Uncommitted Superdelegates for Obama) decide to come out of the closet en masse in the wake of Hoosier/Tar Heel Tuesday -- which I suppose is possible, but I think it's unlikely -- or, again, unless Clinton just plain runs out of money, I don't see any "doors" being "closed" yet, and certainly not if Obama loses Indiana by any margin.

In fact, oddly enough, I think Obama's back may be, in a certain sense, more "against the wall" than Clinton's. If he loses Indiana and, let's say, scores a weaker-than-expected victory in North Carolina (let's not even contemplate the horrific prospect of a loss there), the media narrative will turn irrevocably against him for the rest of the primary season, and things could get very ugly. The rest of the calendar is almost all Hillary territory, with no significant Obama "firewall" opportunities. Tuesday is his last chance to even try and force her from the race. If she survives to spin another day, Obama's "run out the clock" strategy is going to become increasingly difficult to maintain through several more weeks of news cycles. The MSM will increasingly portray the race as having no clear winner, with Obama winning the early races but losing all the late races because of Wrightgate and so forth (never mind that geography and demography are way, way more important than "momentum" or scandals or other shifting events in the campaign; the media likes its storylines chronological, dammit). Hillary's "popular vote" arguments will gain ever-increasing traction, and Obama's process-based rebuttals will look increasingly desperate (no matter how correct they are). Michigan and Florida will be front-and-center. And the race will most definitely go on into June, at least.

The only way Obama can even hope to prevent all that, in my judgment, is to win Indiana on Tuesday. A "narrow loss" will not cut it.

P.S. Incidentally, here's a good analysis of what's probably causing Obama's exaggerated exit-poll numbers. (Hint: it's not the Bradley Effect.) The article also contains a good explanation of why some leaks Pennsylvania had Obama up 5, while others had him down 4.

ASU cheerleading team axed over raunchy photo

By Brendan Loy

[Warning: All of the links below are at least marginally SFW, in that they contain no actual nudity. However, some contain scantily clad women, suggestive material, etc., so depending on your situation and location, you may want to steer clear.]

The Arizona State cheerleading squad survived the uniformed ex-cheerleader in a porn movie scandal, but apparently the specter of six current cheerleaders in their underwear, baring their not-quite-naked bodies on the Internets for all to see, was too much for the university to handle:

[T]he cheerleading squad that performed at Arizona State football and basketball games has been eliminated. Arizona State will instead have "spirit squads" that will be led by the band director.

Why the change? It's not entirely clear, but the Fox TV affiliate in Phoenix suggests that it's because TheDirty.com posted photos of Arizona State cheerleaders in their underwear.

More on this story -- including the photo -- after the jump.

The Democratic primary in 7 minutes

By Brendan Loy

Well, 7 minutes and 26 seconds to be exact. Very funny -- and complete with two Lord of the Rings references and a Star Trek reference!

(Hat tip: the excellent DemConWatch.)

No way!

By Brendan Loy

I don't know if this is actually brand new, or if I just missed it until now, but Google Maps now has a public transit feature. SWEET!

I freaking love Google Maps.

More "gotcha" crap

By Brendan Loy

A widely circulating YouTube clip, referenced in comments earlier, that supposedly shows a top Clinton adviser insulting Indiana voters and using the n-word, was apparently doctored. (More here and here.)

Doctored or no, this is one of those "gotcha" things I've been complaining about. Who cares? Are we really arguing about what some campaign surrogate did or didn't say in 1992? Jeez.

Because 32 bowls just aren't enough

By Brendan Loy

I mentioned yesterday that college football's powers-that-be have once again decided, in their infinite wisdom, that the BCS is just fine & dandy, and playoffs r teh suxx0rs. But I missed this detail: the NCAA has certified two new bowl games, bringing the total to 34.  Because, as AOL Fanhouse says, "that's what the nation really wanted."

This means a total of 68 teams will be goin' bowling. Last year, 71 teams finished with records of 6-6 or better. We're seriously getting into the territory where, in a given season, there might not be enough bowl-eligible teams to fill out all the slots. I expect we'll soon see a rule change allowing in teams with 5-7 records if there aren't enough .500-or-better teams available. (Remember, 6-6 teams have only been allowed in for the last two years, and that change coincided with the expansion from 28 to 32 bowls.)

In any event, 34 bowls means that more than 57 percent of all Division I-A teams will be playing in the postseason. Remember when a bowl bid was actually a meaningful reward for a good year?

Anyway, the new kids on the block are the Congressional Bowl in Washington, D.C., and the St. Petersburg Bowl in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mercifully, a 35th bowl -- the Rocky Mountain Bowl in Salt Lake City, which would have pitted the fifth-place Mountain West team against the fourth-place WAC team -- was rejected.

The St. Petersburg Bowl is still in need of a corporate sponsorship, which gives me an idea. If every college football fan who supports a playoff, and hates the endless proliferation of meaningless bowls between 6-6 teams, were to donate, say, $5, couldn't we make these folks a sponsorship offer they couldn't refuse -- and force them to name their bowl something like the "Utterly Meaningless St. Petersburg Bowl" or the "St. Petersburg Bowl Brought To You By Shameless Greed" or the "Let's Have A Freakin' Playoff Already St. Petersburg Bowl" or the "F***-the-BCS St. Petersburg Bowl"? Cuz that'd be sweet.

Meanwhile, another AOL Fanhouse blogger wonders how on earth USC lost two games (and played poorly in a bunch of other games) each of the last two seasons, given that seven former Trojans were drafted during the first two rounds of the NFL Draft last weekend -- which continues a trend of Trojan dominance on Draft Day. It's a fair question.

Things to think about when criticizing college athletes

By Jay Johnson

I know that I have personally been guilty of being overly critical of some college athletes about their performance on the field of play.  Someone's not giving full effort, a step too slow, or otherwise just not putting it all out there on the floor for their team and their fans.

Here's a story that should make everyone check that attitude for a minute.

Tennessee's preseason All-America guard, Chris Lofton, started off the 2007-08 season in an absolute funk.  He wasn't scoring, his play seemed a bit lackluster, and couldn't hit a three to save his life.

Well, the facts were really that he was battling to actually save his life. 

Diagnosed with testicular cancer following a random NCAA drug screen after the 2006-07 season, he fought a private battle with the cancer, with only the closest of the close among his family and friends knowing what he was going through.

Meanwhile, local sports fans and commentators were critical to varying degrees about Lofton's performance.  There were calls for him to be benched along with wild speculation about what his problems on the floor were.

I just think that this is a good opportunity to remind everyone that college athletes are young kids, from divergent backgrounds, with any number of personal problems that can impact their play.  So, before you take time to bash someone on a message board, call in to a talk show, or otherwise express an opinion without all the facts, slow down and take Chris Lofton's situation to heart.

Recipe request

By Rebecca Loy

Brendan and I enjoyed a spinach and chicken pie the other night and I have a bunch of leftover phyllo dough. Anyone have a good recipe that uses phyllo? Extra credit if it includes curry!

Unmitigated gall 101

By Brendan Loy

Heh: "There is one theme, however, that runs through not-for-attribution conversations with both sides [in the Clinton-Obama race]: Each candidate thinks the other has unmitigated gall."

NCAA demonstrates common sense; Hell freezes over

By Brendan Loy

Remember Barack Obama's pick-up game with the North Carolina Tar Heels? Well, technically speaking, it violated NCAA rules. But for once, the NCAA is taking a sensible line: "This was a unique situation and not an NCAA issue," said a spokesman. "It certainly was a great opportunity for the student-athletes to interact with a presidential candidate."

Happy May Day!

By Brendan Loy

In honor of May Day, Sen. Joe Lieberman would like to remind you that it's a "good question" whether Barack Obama is spending today contemplating the plight of the proletariat and listening to songs like this:

;)

In other news, Pajamas Media asked me to elaborate on my Obama/Wright post in an article for their site, so I did. It's not my best work, and both liberals and conservatives will find plenty to dislike in it. But I hope it's at least food for thought.