Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Lieberman leads McCain's outreach to disaffected Hillary supporters

By Brendan Loy

Oy vey:

Sen. Joe Lieberman – who has taken on increasingly high-profile campaign roles on behalf of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain – announced Thursday that was launching and heading a new grassroots organization, "Citizens for McCain," with a direct appeal to Hillary Clinton’s disappointed supporters.

“The phones at the campaign headquarters have been ringing with disaffected Democrats calling to say they believe Senator McCain has the experience, judgment, and bipartisanship necessary to lead our country in these difficult times,” Lieberman wrote in a message sent to the Arizona senator’s supporters. “Many of these supporters are former supporters of Senator Clinton.”

(Hat tip: Youngblai.)

Wrong state

By Brendan Loy

WDVX just played a song called "Satan Lives In Arkansas." But that isn't right. She moved to New York! :)

Forgive and forget?

By Brendan Loy

Ross Douthat on Hillary's decision to concede:

"If only she'd done this weeks ago," Matt writes. I take his point: It would probably been better for the party if Hillary had conceded defeat somewhat earlier (though there would have been the potential embarrassment of having the presumptive-nominee lose primaries to a rival who'd dropped out), or at the very least campaigned less fiercely against Obama once his victory became a near-certainty, and certainly her non-concession speech on Tuesday night was bizarre and faintly pathological. But I think that once a few months have gone by, at least some of outrage that Hillary Clinton has generated among liberal pundits by campaigning to the bitter end in a race that she ended up losing by just over a hundred pledged delegates and roughly half a percent of the popular vote will seem, in hindsight, faintly hysterical.

Ban Johnson, a commenter on Douthat's post, responds:

I'd grant your point if I believed your characterization of most of the outrage as about Clinton merely "campaigning to the bitter end" were accurate.

Most of the outrage wasn't about her campaigning in itself. It was about the malignity of her campaign -- suggesting McCain was better equipped to be commander of chief, dishonestly ginning up Michigan and Florida resentments, characterizing her supporters as "hard working white people": basically trying to sabotage Obama, the overwhelmingly likely nominee of her party, whenever she could get away with it.

(Hat tip: Sully.) I think they're both right, in a way.

Announcing the announcement

By Brendan Loy

Hillary Clinton sent out an e-mail to her supporters early this morning (not quite at "3:00 AM," but close!) declaring her intention to announce Saturday that she'll endorse Obama. This is the old "announcing the announcement" trick, and it raises the question: If you tell everyone you're going to endorse somebody, doesn't that mean you've already endorsed him?