I'm Brendan Loy, a 26-year-old graduate of USC and Notre Dame now living and working in Knoxville, Tennessee. My wife Becky and I are brand-new parents of a beautiful baby girl, born on New Year's Eve.
I'm a big-time sports fan, a politics, media & law junkie, an astronomy buff, a weather nerd, an Apple aficionado, a Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter fanatic, and an all-around dork. My blog is best-known for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina, but I blog about anything and everything that interests me.
You can contact me at irishtrojan [at] gmail.com, or donate to my "tip jar" by clicking the link below:
The presumptive GOP nominee tells voters in an afternoon Pickersville,
Pennsylvania town hall that the state will pick the winner in November
— and he will be behind until right before the polls close.
McCain's point seems to be simply that he's the underdog, which is undoubtedly true. But, if the election is close, it's quite possible that he'll be literally right; indeed, he might seem to be behind even after some polls close... until the combined impact of the Bradley-Wilder Effect and the Exit-Poll Liberal Selection Bias Effect (see: the Seven-Hour Presidency of John Kerry) is revealed, when actual vote totals -- as opposed to final opinion polls and leaked exit polls -- reveal a narrow McCain victory.
I'm not predicting it. I'm just saying it's a possibility.
The John McCain of 2000 and 2004 would have done it. Will the John McCain of 2008?
P.S. Incidentally, Obama also criticized MoveOn.org -- specifically its "General Betray Us" ad -- in the same speech.
UPDATE: It seems Obama's answer on the Clark front isn't good enough for the McCain campaign, which appears to be implicitly adopting the position that a candidate can be faulted for anything his supporters say, even after the candidate clearly and explicitly disavows it. I trust the McCain folks won't mind when this same standard is applied to them.
McCain's only hope in this election is to make the case that he is the true candidate of change, reform, "straight talk," etc. In short, he needs the "McCain brand" to both survive the collapse of the "Republican brand" and to trump the shininess of the "Obama brand." It's a tough task, but Obama has recently opened the door for McCain with his reversals on several issues, particularly campaign financing. (For that matter, the MoveOn.org thing is something of a flip-flop; Obama pointedly did not vote on the resolution to condemn the ad, back when it was primary season and a "Yes" vote might have hurt him with the base.) McCain is obviously trying to take advantage of the opportunity he's been handed. But, in this still-undecided voter's view, he's doing so in precisely the wrong way.
McCain needs to kill Obama with kindness, honesty and straightforwardness, not heavy-handedly twist and contort his words in a blatant political game that ultimately holds Obama's statements and actions to a standard that McCain himself cannot possibly meet. The latter course might be enough to fool some low-information voters, but those folks aren't paying attention yet anyway, and in the mean time, opinion leaders in the media and blogosphere -- who are crucial to the survival of the McCain brand -- are going to see right through McCain. You can't become perceived as the candidate of the "high road" by taking a short cut on the low road. It just won't work.
Remember Tom Buffenbarger, the machinists' union blowhard who unleashed a hilariously unhinged anti-Obama rant on Hillary Clinton's behalf during her post-Wisconsin-primary rally back in February? I'll refresh your memory:
[During his speech introducing Clinton,] Buffenbarger derisively dismissed Obama as a mere "wunderkind," a
"man in love with the microphone," and "a poet, not a fighter." He
repeatedly and pointedly called him "the junior senator from Illinois"
(as if Hillary isn't the junior senator from New York?). He compared
Obama to "Janus, the two-faced Roman god of ancient times." And then he
really got going:
"The Barack Show is playing to rave reviews, sold out on
college campus after college campus, standing-room-only crowds to hear
his silver-tongued oration. Hope! Change! Yes, we can! Give me a
break! I've got news for all the latte-drinking, Prius-driving,
Birkenstock-wearing, trust-fund babies crowding in to hear him speak! This guy won't last a round against the Republican attack machine!"
... Buffenbarger [also made the] blatantly anti-intellectual argument -- repeated twice
-- that Obama can't "fight" for the working class because he was "the
editor of the Harvard Law Review." I guess Hillary's stint as an editor
of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action establishes her credentials
as a real union stiff?
Buffenbarger blustered so buffoonishly that I proposed a new verb to describe his actions: "to buffenbarger," meaning "to engage in an inappropriately vitriolic attack on a member of one's own political party." (TPM Cafe contributor David Schlitt had a similar idea.)
Now is not the right
time for the [International Association of Machinists] to endorse Senator Barack Obama... Our members feel
the economy squeezing their family finances for every last dime, every
single week ... But those meat and potato issues have not found a place
in the message frame developed by Senator Obama's campaign. To us, hope
and change are not antidotes to the economic pressures blue-collar
families face... In the Machinists Union, a predominately blue-collar
union, the impression continues to grow that Senator Barack Obama could
care less about folks like us.
Clinton and Obama wore (nearly) matching outfits at their Unity event this afternoon: her pantsuit and his tie were both, according to Politico's color-spectrum analysis, powder blue.
Powder blue, of course, used to be a UCLA school color, back when I was at USC. But the Bruins switched in 2003 to a different shade of blue, so I guess I can forgive the Dems for their use of what I've always considered a rather distasteful shade of an otherwise fine color. Still... for future reference, I'd recommend either Notre Dame blue or Newington blue. :)
Around midday today, the former Democratic rivals will make their first joint public appearance since she dropped out of the race -- and the event will be held in Unity, a tiny town in western New Hampshire where Obama and Clinton each received exactly 107 votes* in the January 8 primary.
Unity
is a town in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, United States. The
population was 1,530 at the 2000 census and an estimated 1,715 six
years later. The town includes the villages of East Unity, Quaker City,
and West Unity. ... The racial makeup of the town
was 99.35% White, 0.07% African American, 0.13% Asian, and 0.46% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.72% of the population.
The percentages from the 2000 census indicate that Unity had literally one black person, two Asians, seven mixed-race individuals, and eleven Latinos. Oh, and 1,509 non-Hispanic whites. Heh.
Anyway, here's an AP article about how Unity is gearing up for today's big event. It opens with the obligatory quote from a local old lady: "I don't remember having any presidential candidates here in my time," says 84-year-old Roberta Callum. And then there's this, regarding the expected crowd of 2,500: "Locals say the last time there was a crowd that big was for a 1970s performance by folk singer Arlo Guthrie." Heh.
The Concord Monitor is unimpressed with the meta-pun that today's event represents:
[N]o one would have mistaken these two policy wonks for the jokesters of the New Hampshire presidential primary.
Nonetheless, nearly six months after the local vote, Obama and Clinton return today, going to extreme lengths for a corny gag.
They're coming to Unity, N.H. - get it? Unity? It's a place where they
split the local Democratic vote, 107-107. It's a place so far out in
the boondocks that voters and reporters will require shuttle buses from
Sunapee, for Pete's sake.
Ah yes, the bustling metropolis of Sunapee -- population 3,055! And it's only 31 minutes away! Heh.
Earlier today, I read this article by Bob Beckel making the strategic case for an Obama-Clinton ticket, and I found myself almost beginning to doubt the ferocity of my oft-stated belief that such a choice would be "wolf-face crazy." Then I read the little biographical blurb at the bottom:
Bob Beckel managed Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign.
LOL! And Obama should take this guy's advice on political strategy, why exactly? ;)
Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Dan Balz argues that, so far, McCain vs. Obama is politics as usual:
Whatever substance they may contain has been buried in negative counterattacks from the opposing camp, designed to turn ideas into stereotypes and candidates into caricatures. In the hands of Obama's advisers, McCain is nothing more than the third coming of President Bush. To McCain's staff, Obama is merely a liberal, naive, arrogant extension of what Democrats have been offering for years.
Gone in the early stages of this campaign is any sense of the uniqueness of the two nominees. McCain is certainly no garden-variety Republican and the historic possibilities of Obama's candidacy cannot be overstated. But those realities have been submerged beneath a tactical shouting match that feeds the cable culture of contemporary politics.
Don't blame the media for this. The campaigns have deliberately adopted postures of hyper-aggressiveness to set the early tone. The testosterone levels appear extremely high. No charge however small or incidental can go unanswered. No proposal, no matter how innocuous or provocative, can be discussed calmly or intelligently.
That led a McCain surrogate to respond to Obama's comments on the rights of terrorist detainees, a topic on which reasonable people can differ, as "delusional." It led to an Obama surrogate to describe as "stupid" the positions McCain has taken on the Iraq war, though it is clearly arguable that the surge strategy has helped to reduce violence and U.S. casualties. ...
Of all the candidates who sought the presidency this year, McCain and Obama seemed the least likely to fall so quickly into old habits. The question is whether the opening weeks are a true reflection of their characters and the kind of campaigns they intended to run or a temporary departure.
The L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll finds the following national breakdown in a four-way race: Obama 48%, McCain 33%, Nader 4%, Barr 3%, Undecided 10%. Even if we assume that most of those 10% will eventually vote for McCain, in accordance with the Bradley Effect, Obama's still clearly winning.
What's particularly intriguing is that, although Nader does slightly better than Barr, their combined effect hurts McCain far more than Obama. When only two candidates are mentioned, it's Obama 49%, McCain 37%. Another 4% volunteer their intention to vote for "someone else," while 10% remain undecided. The poll write-up explains:
Eighty-seven percent of McCain’s voters would stay with him [in a four-way race featuring Nader and Barr], but 11% would vote for another candidate, with 2% undecided. Almost all of Obama’s voters (95%) would still stay with him even when the race opened up to include more candidates.
More specifically, when the two-way race becomes a four-way race, 5% of McCain voters switch to Barr, and 6% switch to Nader, while 2% say they "don't know" how they'd vote. By contrast, just 2% of Obama supporters switch to Nader, 0% switch to Barr, 2% "don't know," and -- just to prove that you can always find a tiny segment of poll respondents who'll say things that don't make any sense whatsoever -- 1% switch to McCain! (Remember, he's an option in both scenarios; why anyone would vote for Obama in a two-way race, but McCain in a four-way race, is beyond me.)
Other interesting findings:
• "More than 80% of Obama voters said they were enthusiastic about their candidate, including 47% who are very enthusiastic. It’s another matter for McCain. Just under half (45%) of McCain voters said they were enthusiastic about voting for him, but 51% were not enthused about the prospect."
• "While almost a fifth of moderate Republicans would support Obama, just 7% of moderate Democrats would support the Republican candidate. Overall, almost four out of five liberals support Obama, just 58% of conservatives support McCain."
• "[M]en are somewhat divided -- 40% for Obama to 37% for McCain -- but women give the Democratic candidate a 25 point lead (54% to 29%)."
• Among whites, it's McCain 39%, Obama 39%, Nader 5%, Barr 4%, someone else 2%, undecided 11%. (If Bradley/Wilder holds, McCain will get the bulk of those undecideds in the end.) Among blacks, Obama gets "nine out of 10" or thereabouts, while McCain gets just 2%, and 2% are undecided. Obama wins 61-23 among "other ethnic groups."
State-by-state polls, it should be noted, have been trending in the same direction. Five Thirty Eight, which was projecting an extremely close race as recently as a few weeks ago, now has Obama winning 344 to 194 in the Electoral College, with a map that roughly resembles Clinton's win over Dole in 1996.
Caveat: It's still very early, and polls at this point can be extremely misleading, arguably to the point of meaninglessness. It's clear that Obama is doing very well right now; it's not at all clear what, if anything, that means for November.
P.S. It should also be noted that, although some pre-election polls in 2000 showed him in the high single digits, Nader ultimately got just 2.73% that year, and in 2004 he managed a paltry 0.38%. It seems highly unlikely, then, that in a high-stakes election offering such a stark issue-based contrast as Obama vs. McCain, he'll ultimately get anywhere near 4% of the vote. In fact, given that Obama is practically a liberal's dream candidate (at least as plausible Democratic nominees go), I find it hard to believe that Nader will do better than the 0.38% he got in '04, when he was running against the far less dreamy John Kerry. (On the other hand, I suppose Nader's numbers could be boosted by the "racist liberal" vote -- folks who won't vote for McCain because he's a Republican, but won't vote for Obama because he's black.)
The only way I can see Nader breaking 1% is if he truly does pick up a whole bunch of erstwhile McCain voters -- and that itself seems highly unlikely, given how anathema his views are to anyone who is remotely conservative or libertarian-ish. My guess is that those 6% of McCain voters who currently gravitate to Nader in a four-way race are simply disaffected with their candidate, and are casting a "protest vote" for the third-party candidate whose name they recognize, namely Nader. But once they start paying more attention, I'd imagine that most of 'em will realize Nader is really not their kind of guy. Nader is a liberal candidate; it's hard to believe he can build a sizable support base that's based fundamentally on anything other than liberal voters.
In the end, most of the disaffected conservatives/Republicans will either stay home, vote for Barr, or hold their noses and vote for McCain. The "conservatives for Nader" movement is about as plausible as the "elderly Jews for Buchanan" movement in Palm Beach County eight years ago. ;)
TNR's James Kirchick asks an intriguing question: "Will the Candidates Recognize Morgan Tsvangirai as President of Zimbabwe?"
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the
Movement for Democratic Change, is the legitimately elected president
of Zimbabwe. Or at least he should be. He won that country's
presidential election (and his party won its parliamentary election) on
March 29th, a victory that has been denied to him and his colleagues
over the past three months as Robert Mugabe has murdered nearly 100
opposition supporters, tortured many more, and driven thousands from
their homes. A week after the election, the Zimbabwean junta announced
that Tsvangirai did not win an outright majority, thus forcing a
runoff scheduled for this Friday. On Sunday, however, Tsvangirai announced
that he was dropping out of the election, stating that "we cannot stand
there and watch people being killed for the sake of power."
So here's a question for
Senators Obama and McCain. Back in April, Assistant Secretary of State
for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer declared
Tsvangirai the winner of the March 29th election, and certified that he
won over 50% of the vote. Recognition of him as the duly elected
president of Zimbabwe -- with all of the diplomatic measures that would
imply, specifically spelled out today in a New York Suneditorial -- should have been forthcoming, yet the State Department has been reluctant to go that far. With Tsvangirai hiding in
the Dutch Embassy for fear of his life, will either of you call upon
the United States to recognize him as the elected president of
Zimbabwe?
Sounds good to me. But wouldn't that constitute "regime change"?
"John McCain and the Republicans will lose if this campaign is about issues. They only mismanaged the economy and mismanaged the hurricane and mismanaged the budget and mismanaged the war and mismanaged the hunt for Osama bin Laden and mismanaged the world." --John Brummett, Arkansas News Bureau. (Hat tip: Ben Smith.)
P.S. Meanwhile, on an unrelated note, the Obama campaign takes some MSM heat for its less than entirely progressive attitude toward the American Muslim community. Money quote from Congressman Keith Ellison (he's the guy who was actually photographed being sworn in with his hand on the Koran), regarding Obama's aggressive denials of those pesky "smears" alleging that he's a Muslim: "A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way." More here and here.
As I've said before, I think Biden is a great choice in theory -- an experienced hand, sensible on foreign affairs, forceful on the war on terror, etc. In practice, he's a bit trickier: he's as slippery and slimy a Washington insider as they come, which doesn't exactly jive with Obama's message of change, and he has a bad habit of putting his foot in his mouth. (See: "articulate and clean," Indians at 7-Eleven, etc.)
Still, since I ultimately rank national security and foreign policy as my #1 voting priority, I'd be reassured by Obama picking Biden. I kind of doubt it will happen, though, especially now that he seems almost to be campaigning for it.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have statistical evidence of the Bob Barr effect! A new poll in the blood-red state of Georgia, where the Libertarian nominee is from, shows a dead heat: McCain 44%, Obama 43%, Barr 6%. Wow!
Now, a major grain of salt is called for here. It's very early, and I seriously, seriously doubt these numbers will ultimately hold up. But this sort of polling data (see also: close races in Alaska, North Carolina) can't make the McCain people happy. Indeed, I bet they're getting some serious heartburn from the combination of: 1) the recent state polling numbers generally, which show a definite Obama bounce in red, blue and purple states alike, and 2) the noises Obama is making (backed with action) about competing in states like Texas and Indiana.
With regard to Georgia and point #2, the real issue is that, in light of Obama's decision to change his mind and reject public financing -- a tactical no-brainer, notwithstanding its dubiousness in principle -- he can afford to put his (abundant) money where his mouth is, and at least force McCain to waste precious resources in these states.
Optimism about Iraq: it's not just for neocons anymore! From this week's issue of The Economist:
After all the blood and blunders, people are right to be sceptical when good news is announced from Iraq. Yet it is now plain that over the past several months, while Americans have been distracted by their presidential primaries, many things in Iraq have at long last started to go right.
This improvement goes beyond the fall in killing that followed General David Petraeus's “surge”. Iraq's government has gained in stature and confidence. Thanks to soaring oil prices it is flush with money. It is standing up to Iraq's assorted militias and asserting its independence from both America and Iran. The overlapping wars—Sunni against American, Sunni against Shia and Shia against Shia—that harrowed Iraq after the invasion of 2003 have abated. The country no longer looks in imminent danger of flying apart or falling into everlasting anarchy. In September 2007 this newspaper supported the surge not because we had faith in Iraq but only in the desperate hope that the surge might stop what was already a bloodbath from becoming even worse (see article). The situation now is different: Iraq is still a mess, but something approaching a normal future for its people is beginning to look achievable.
The article proceeds to explain the improvements in greater detail, and then concludes:
In highlighting the improved conditions in Iraq we do not mean to justify The Economist's support of the invasion of 2003 (see article). Too many lives have been shattered for that. History will still record that the invasion and occupation have been a debacle. Iraqis even now live under daily threat of violent death: hundreds are killed each month. They remain woefully short of the necessities of life, such as jobs, clean water and electricity. Iraq's government is gaining confidence faster than competence. It is still fractious, and in many places corrupt.
Nor does it follow that a turn for the better necessarily validates John McCain's insistence on America staying indefinitely. A safer Iraq might make Barack Obama's plan to pull out most American troops within 16 months more feasible, though at the moment a precipitate withdrawal looks foolish. But to guard the fragile improvements, the key for America must be flexibility. Both candidates have to keep their options open. If America's next president gets Iraq wrong because he has boxed himself in during the campaign, all the recent gains may be squandered and Iraq will slide swiftly back into misery and despair. That would be to fail twice over.
You know those "House Divided" license plates -- they're really popular here in the South -- for families in which the spouses root for rival schools? Well, the governor and first lady of California have something similar going on, except it relates to politics rather than sports, and it's on their house instead of their car:
(As for those license plates, I need a customized USC/Notre Dame version that says "A Man Divided." Heh. Okay, not really, but it'd look cool, anyway...)
Kimberly Kagan, president of the Institute for the Study of War, and Frederick Kagan, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, claim in the WSJ:
America is very close to succeeding in Iraq. The "near-strategic
defeat" of al Qaeda in Iraq described by CIA Director Michael Hayden
last month in the Washington Post has been followed by the victory of
the Iraqi government's security forces over illegal Shiite militias,
including Iranian-backed Special Groups. The enemies of Iraq and
America now cling desperately to their last bastions, while the
political process builds momentum.
These tremendous gains remain fragile and could be lost to skillful
enemy action, or errors in Baghdad or Washington. But where the U.S.
was unequivocally losing in Iraq at the end of 2006, we are just as
unequivocally winning today.
(Hat tip: Youngblai.) I have no idea whether the Kagans are correct, but in general, the problem with claims like theirs is one of credibility: back in 2006, most folks on the Right did not contemporaneously admit that we were "unequivocally losing in Iraq," so it's hard to know how much credence to lend to their claims now. (Honest query: I'd be curious if somebody can find an example of the Kagans bucking this trend back in '06, and forthrightly admitting then that we were losing. Maybe they did; I have no idea. But many conservatives -- and administration officials -- didn't.)
Listening to a hawkish conservative who always claimed we were winning say, "we were losing then, but we're winning now," is sort of like listening to a far-left liberal who opposed the war in Afghanistan say, "we should have stayed out of Iraq and focused on Afghanistan." Maybe they're right, but they have no credibility saying it!
Actually, though, the former example is arguably worse than the latter one, because whereas a lefty who rallies 'round a war he opposed is making a self-contradicting statement of opinion, a hawk who rewrites the war's history is making a self-contradicting statement of fact. And, as the saying goes, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but nobody's entitled to their own facts.
That's what makes this Iraq debate so frustrating for someone like me -- someone who is by no means an expert on what's happening in Iraq, but who wants to support the right course of action based on sound reasoning and properly understood facts. Both sides are so committed to their ideological preconceptions that it's seemingly impossible for them to agree on what the facts are. The Left will claim we're losing, or are inevitably bound to lose, and must therefore get out, whether that's factually true or not; and the Right will claim that we're winning, and can succeed if only we keep at it for a little longer, and must therefore stay the course, whether that's factually true or not.
For many on both sides, I think, it's past the point of being dishonest: they're so committed to their argument that they convince themselves to honestly believe their version of reality. One of the reasons I'm undecided between Obama and McCain is because I feel like I'm choosing between these two camps, both of which have ideological blinders on, which is not exactly an appealing choice -- and meanwhile, I don't have the requisite information to decide whose preconceptions are closer to the truth, largely because I don't trust either side to present that information accurately! Nor do I trust the liberal media, or the conservative media, or the right-blogosphere, or the left-blogosphere. On this issue, it seems like everybody has an agenda.
What are the actual facts? Are we winning or losing? Is there a reasonable hope of genuine success in building a reasonably stable and at least somewhat democratic Iraq, or are we just wasting our time on a quixotic and unsustainable effort to do so, and suffering needless losses in the process? If we leave, will things get better or worse -- and if worse, how much worse? The "facts on the ground" that would help answer these questions are absolutely essential pieces of information for any rational decision-maker, yet they get lost in the fog of war -- and, perhaps more pertinently, of politics. Argh.
Back in the long-ago dark ages of late 2007, when it appeared that Hillary Clinton was the inevitable Democratic nominee, there was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over the notion that the 2008 election -- and a potential Clinton Administration -- was going to turn into a re-hash of the 1990s.
Now, with Barack Obama the nominee, it appears we're going to re-hash the 1970s instead:
“Senator Obama says that I’m running for Bush’s third term," McCain
said. “Seems to me
he’s running for Jimmy Carter’s second.”
Zing, indeed. Well, I guess it's better than re-hashing the election of 1896.
TPM's Greg Sargent says we can "expect more evocations of Carter. Lots more." Politico's Jonathan Martin seems to agree, writing that Carter is one of the few "convenient and resonant Democratic bogeymen" available.
P.S. On an unrelated note, John McCain wants to veto beer!
Last week, I confessed that, although the rational side of my brain is undecided between Barack Obama and John McCain, the "portion of my brain that views politics as a sport can't help 'rooting' for Obama" because he is "the scrappy mid-major going up against the staid, boring, established program; he's Boise State against Oklahoma ('They said this day would never come: a WAC team in a BCS bowl! Yes, we can!'), he's Appalachian State against Michigan... or, as McCain might prefer to say, he's Hawaii against Georgia."
Now, Ben Smith uses a college-football metaphor, saying that Obama's 50-state, expand-the-map strategy is the political equivalent of the "spread offense."
If so, Obama's definitely going to win Michigan. :)
Having shocked y'all Friday morning by announcing that I'm retiring the blog on July 20, I figure Monday morning is a good time for yet another shocker. Would a three-page manifesto to Irish Trojan favorite son Joe Lieberman, lambasting him for dishonest and unworthy campaign rhetoric, do the trick?
I sent the letter Friday afternoon to Joe's D.C. office, and now I'm reprinting it on the blog. I don't mean to grandstand about this, but having been so vocal in defense of Lieberman, I figure I owe y'all an update on where I stand now. (In point of fact, my sentiments shouldn't be too shocking; I alluded to my growing disillusionment with Lieberman last month.)
It's important to emphasize that I have no problem whatsoever with Lieberman endorsing McCain and arguing against Obama's candidacy; it's the way he's been opposing Obama that bothers me, not the mere fact that he's doing so at all. I object to such things as his role in spreading the Obama's-a-Marxist and Hamas-loves-Obama memes, his implication that Democrats are not "pro-American," and several other specific statements he's made recently. Anyway, here's the money quote:
What happened to your 2006 message, promising a less hyper-partisan brand of politics? Based on your recent statements, it appears you have completely abandoned the premise that Democrats and Republicans have honest disagreements on the issues. Instead of substantively engaging important topics of legitimate debate and disagreement, you have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to vilify and caricature the Democratic Party ...
I am deeply disappointed that you have sunk to these lows, and having been such a vocal advocate on your behalf, I must admit that I am somewhat embarrassed. It is becoming more and more difficult to defend you against your critics in the blogosphere, who increasingly feel that they were “right all along” about you.
On reflection, "completely abandoned the premise" is probably a bit much. But it gets the message across, anyway. Joe needs to tone down his rhetoric, or folks like me who once greatly admired him will increasingly come to view him as just another typical politician.
UPDATE: A fine speech so far by Hillary; I have no complaints about it. But I have to quote the funny comment by Barb, who we're watching it with (she's visiting for the weekend from Buffalo). Barb finished one of Hillary's sentences for her:
Hillary: "The Democratic Party is a family..."
Barb: "...and I'm the kooky aunt who nobody likes, but you have to invite over for Christmas anyway."
Peggy Noonan, on why the "unity ticket" is a bad idea: "[Clinton]
undercuts the cleanness of Obama's message. She doesn't turn the page,
she is the page." Heh.
"Is [Obama] 'elitist,' too condescending and glib and remote and full of himself?
I don't find him so—but then again, I myself am an elitist who can seem
condescending and glib and remote and full of himself, so who am I to
judge?" --Kurt Andersen, in a piece for New York Magazine brilliantly titled "I'm Not Totally Sure We Can."
(I also like Andersen's take on what each candidate must to do pass the, er, commander-in-chief test, if you will: "I'm far more convinced that President Obama would summon up the
requisite steel and shrewdness than I am that President McCain would
become sufficiently nuanced and diplomatic." Heh.)
Be careful what you wish for: "If somebody has evidence that myself or Michelle or anybody has said something inappropriate, let them do it."
Presumably by "do it," he means "produce it," as in, produce the evidence. Hmm. This would seem to run somewhat counter to his previous statement that his wife is off-limits.
Now, I agree with Obama on the substance of the point he's making -- about how frustrating it is when totally unsubstantiated rumors get lifted out of the undernews into mainstream discussion, and thus in some sense legitimized, simply by somebody in the MSM asking the question -- but still, does he really want to essentially dare the media, and his political opponents, to dig up dirt on him and his wife? We all know what happened the last time a presidential candidate did that!
In an obvious and blatant attempt to shore up the crucial Space-Obsessed Law Professors With Highly Trafficked Blogs voting bloc, John McCain said yesterday he would like to put a man on Mars.
P.S. In other John McCain-related news, he's apparently trying to fight off the "age issue" by making references that the youngsters of today will understand -- like, for instance, comparing Obama to William Jennings Bryan.
The year was eighteen ninety-six, and John McCain was just sixteen...
:)
P.P.S. And yet more McCain-related news: he's released his first general-election ad, in which he states: "Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war. ... I hate war.
And I know how terrible its costs are."
TPM's Greg Sargent says "McCain is using his bio to achieve separation from George W. Bush," suggesting that "even if he's
continuing Bush's war policies, he's different from Dubya in that he understands the costs in a way that Bush never did." The subtext, Sargent writes, is: "Even if that reckless chicken-hawk took us to war,
someone who actually understands and has experienced the costs of war
-- someone you can actually believe -- is here to tell you that we must
continue it."
So, to review: John McCain hates war, yet he wants to send a man to Mars, a planet which is named after... war. :)
UPDATE: Glenn links here, and says of my above joke, "somehow the Obama backers manage to make everything about Iraq... Heh." Hey, now! What's this about "Obama backers"? I know it might be hard to believe, given my blog's recent focus, but I repeat:
I am undecided. In fact, if you put a gun to my head right now
and made me choose, I think -- *think* -- I'd vote for McCain. But it's
really entirely up in the air how I'll vote in November. I like and
admire Obama, but that doesn't mean I think he'd make the best
president. The best Democratic nominee, yes, but that's only because
his opponent is such a lying, conniving, deceitful [bad word]. Against
McCain, he doesn't have such an obvious "character" advantage (both
candidates are, as best as I can tell, generally good, decent and
honest, though of course not pure or perfect), and I'm not at all sure
who I think is, on balance, better on policy.
If that confuses you, consider this: "The portion of my brain that views politics as a sport can't help
'rooting' for Obama (he's exciting! he's inspiring! he's shiny!), [but] the
rational part of my brain, which governs my actual vote, is totally undecided
between Obama and McCain." Obama is the scrappy mid-major going up against the staid, boring, established program; he's Boise State against Oklahoma ("They said this day would never come: a WAC team in a BCS bowl! Yes, we can!"), he's Appalachian State against Michigan, he's Davidson against Kansas. Or, as McCain might prefer to say, he's Hawaii against Georgia. :) The point is, he's fun to root for, and that fact bleeds over into my blog coverage. (Also, my blog coverage has just been generally Dem-dominated because that contest has been much more exciting since late January.) Moreover, it's fun to poke fun at John McCain because, you know, he's old. (In fairness, I've also poked fun at Obama for being messianic and cultish. Whee, humor is fun!) But none of that necessarily means that I support Obama, because in the end, politics isn't a sport, and voting isn't about "rooting" or making jokes, it's about deciding the future of the country. So yes, I'm undecided. Really.
P.P.P.S. Speaking of the Red Planet, Andrew Sullivan this morning posted a picture from 2005 of Sunset on Mars. He should have included it in his "The View From Your Window" series!
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.”
"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.
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?
ABC says Hillary Clinton will drop out on Friday and "ced[e] the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama."
I'll believe it when I see it.
UPDATE: For some reason it didn't auto-post, but CNN sent out a breaking-news alert at 7:10 PM stating: "Sen. Hillary Clinton will officially end her campaign for the presidency by the end of the week, multiple sources tell CNN."
UPDATE 2: This isn't just based on anonymous sourcing now. Here's the official statement from the campaign: "Senator Clinton will be hosting an event in Washington, DC on Friday to thank her supporters and express her support for Senator Obama and party unity."
Clinton delivered something approaching a victory speech Tuesday night, just minutes after the media reported that Senator Barack Obama had clinched the nomination with a majority of the pledged delegates. But reality began to sink in Wednesday, as party leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, declared Obama "the nominee" and close supporters like Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel lost patience with her delays. ...
Clinton had convened a conference call with congressional supporters Wednesday to plead for time. Instead, a Clinton backer said, her supporters laid down the law: Time had run out, and she needed to leave the race this week.
Her decision came after a day of telephone conversations with supporters on Capitol Hill about what she should do now that Mr. Obama had claimed enough delegates to be able to clinch the nomination. Mrs. Clinton had initially said she wanted to wait before making any decision, but her aides said that in conversations, some of her closest supporters said it was urgent that she step aside. The news was first reported by ABCNEWS.com.
“We pledged to support her to the end,” said Representative Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who has been a patron of Mrs. Clinton since she first ran for the Senate. “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.”
UPDATE 3: The event has been pushed back to Saturday. It'll be competing for news coverage against the possible Big Brown Triple Crown.
Here are the final "popular vote" numbers, courtesy of Real Clear Politics. Leaving aside the fact that the "popular vote" is a fundamentally flawed and illegitimate metric for determining the "winner" of the Democrats' byzantine primary and caucus process, the results are as follows:
Obama wins if you don't count Michigan, whose primary results were rejected as illegitimate by the DNC.
Clinton wins if you count Michigan fully, and give Obama zero votes (thus granting her the benefit of an utterly undemocratic, Soviet-style 328,309 to zero "victory" there).
If you count Michigan, but give Obama the votes of "Uncommitted" -- which is more generous to Hillary than the DNC was, and represents less support for Obama than he would have gotten if Michigan had held a real primary -- Obama wins, provided that you include the estimated tallies from Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington. Clinton wins only if you exclude these four caucus states, in direct contradiction of her insistence on "counting every vote" from "all 50 states." Even if you use Washington's non-binding primary instead of its binding caucus, and include caucus estimates for Iowa, Nevada and Maine only, Obama still wins, albeit by a measly 11,000 votes.
Thus, the answer to the question I posed back on May 7 -- can Hillary Clinton "win" an "arguably plausible" popular vote tally? -- turns out to be "no." She only wins if she does one (or both) of the two indefensible things that I've been decrying all along: awarding herself a unanimous victory in Michigan that would make Saddam Hussein proud, and/or disenfranchising four whole states that did nothing wrong.
Stepping back from those controversies, though, a bigger-picture view of the "popular vote" reveals just how freakin' close this election was. The most Obama-friendly scenario has him winning by 151,844 votes, which is just 0.4% of the total cast. The most Clinton-friendly scenario (giving her the unanimous Michigan victory and excluding the caucus states) has her ahead by 286,687 votes, or just 0.8%. Basically, the popular vote was a tie.
Now, that said, if the 13 caucus states had held primaries, Obama probably would have had a more substantial edge. For instance, although he won by a whopping 79.5% to 17.2% in Idaho, he netted only 13,225 votes there, because only 21,224 people voted. If Idaho had held a (real) primary, Obama's percentage margin would likely have been more akin to his 56% to 38% win in the state's non-binding primary, but turnout probably would have been more on the order of 175,000 or thereabouts (judging from Kerry's total in 2004). That translates to a margin of roughly 31,500 instead of 13,225. Repeat that effect in the other 12 caucus states -- Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Washington and Wyoming -- and you're probably talking about an additional several hundred thousand votes for Obama if all 50 states had held primaries.
Nevertheless, it's clear that the battle for the nomination was achingly close, and the central reason Hillary lost is because of the strategic gaffes committed by her incompetently managed campaign. She and Obama essentially split the Democratic Party right down the middle, but Obama came away with a clear delegate majority for the simple reason that he ran a better campaign than she did. This obviously burns her up inside, and helps explain her current irrational behavior. She's sitting there thinking, over and over again, "I should have won this thing, I should have won this thing." And that thought process makes it incredibly difficult for her to acknowledge defeat.
And you know what? In a sense, she's right. She should have won. If her campaign had merely matched the strategic competence of Obama's campaign, such that she'd essentially tied him in delegates as well as votes, she'd very likely have ended up being the nominee, precisely because of the electability arguments she's been making. If this race were truly a tie, the superdelegates would be very open to those arguments, and she'd probably win the floor fight in Denver. But because her campaign arrogantly failed to compete in various states, and thus allowed Obama to rack up an unassailable delegate lead in February, she clearly lost the pledged-delegate count, which is the closest thing we have to an accurate reflection of the "winner" and "loser" of this byzantine process. As a result, it's game, set, match, Obama.
So, Hillary, you're right: you should have won the nomination. But nobody stole it from you. It's your own damn fault you lost, and putting your party through hell in a futile attempt to make up for your own campaign's blatant strategic errors is hardly the mark of a leader.
I was going to delete the blog sidebar thingy that was counting down to "MT, SD primaries," which stated (under "Upcoming events" at left) that those elections are "-1 days" away. But then it occurred to me to do something different. Instead of deleting the countdown, I've changed its text to read "Obama clinches," and I'm going to leave it there until Hillary Clinton drops out of the race and endorses Obama. So, this way, we can keep a running tally of how long Hillary continues her campaign even after she's lost.
This is sort of like how, back in 2006, I left the "Shannon's due date" countdown in place until Shannon actually had her baby -- at which point it said "-7 days." I wonder if Hillary will beat that record? (For what it's worth, the Democratic National Convention begins in 82 days.)
[Hillary Clinton] has told some Democrats recently that she wanted Obama to agree to
allow a roll call vote, like days of yore, so that the delegates of
states she won would cast the first ballot for her at the convention.
She said she wanted that for her daughter.
Memo to Maureen: there is always a roll-call vote, at every single convention, not just in "days of yore." Obama does not have the ability to "allow" or "disallow" such a vote, because it is the roll-call vote that will make him the nominee, as opposed to the "presumptive nominee."
Watch Obama's speech (in particular the opening portion, about Hillary), and then watch Hillary's speech, and tell me, which one of these candidates really wants the Democratic Party to be united?
Hillary's claim that she wants the party to be united is, at this point, an utter and obvious lie. Her speech last night was sheer demagoguery, deliberately using rhetoric -- about the "popular vote," about Michigan and Florida, about electability, and so forth -- that will keep her supporters in a frenzy of anger and/or denial about the outcome of the election.
I said beforehand that it would be unforgivable if she made these sorts of arguments last night, and she made them, and it is indeed unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable. On the very night when the party should have begun coalescing once and for all around its presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton continued to stoke the fires of intraparty civil war, instead of beginning of the process of standing down and backing off.
I'm not saying she needed to concede last night, but she needed to be gracious and conciliatory and valedictory, not combative and defiant and demagogic. She needed to explicitly attack McCain's candidacy, not implicitly attack Obama's legitimacy. She needed to speak the language of unity, not merely pay lip-service to it. She failed -- she deliberately chose to fail -- on all counts.
This notion out there that we should "respect" Hillary by not acknowledging the repugnance of last night's speech, and of her recent campaign tactics generally, is completely back-asswards. It's disrespectful to be anything other than repulsed, because such a reaction requires a belief that Hillary doesn't know perfectly well what she is doing. To give Hillary a pass is to assume she's a witless child, which she most certainly is not. She knows precisely what she's doing -- and it is the exact opposite of "uniting the party." She is willfully undermining her party's nominee.
If you don't believe me, just watch the beginning of John McCain's (widely panned) speech, in which he made a blatant -- and somewhat ham-handed, in my view, but that doesn't necessarily mean it won't work -- play for disaffected Hillary voters.
McCain's efforts in this regard, aided and abetted by Clinton's rhetoric, are already bearing fruit:
[T]he RNC's convention office in St. Paul has received numerous telephone
calls in the last few hours from people who identify themselves as
Clinton supporters asking how they can help Sen. McCain.
HillaryGrassrootsCampaign.com, an organization with upwards of
half-a-million supporters, announced today it is committed to breaking
ranks with the Democratic Party and supporting Senator Hillary Clinton
in the general election - regardless of her status as the party's
nominee.
There
will be more developments like these, and no matter what she says
publicly about "unity," Hillary can't wash her hands of them. She created
this monster. If you tell people, over and over again (even unto the
very night that your opponent clinches victory!), that their votes aren't
being counted, that they aren't being "respected," that they're
"invisible," and that their chosen candidate, despite having lost, is
the legitimate winner -- no matter how untrue all of those things are
-- many of them are going to start believing what you're telling them.
Hillary's dead-woman-walking "campaign" has become one giant Big Lie.
At this point, the only way Hillary can even begin to redeem herself is by aggressively countering this stuff -- not merely by dropping out and endorsing Obama, which she will inevitably do at some point, but by explicitly walking back her combative, divisive rhetoric. She needs to passionately make the case to her supporters, particularly women, that Obama's their man, and McCain isn't. She needs to find a plausible way to openly contradict her past statements about "elitism," electability, the "commander-in-chief test," and so forth. She needs to be the one who convinces her supporters that Obama is really and truly the legitimate nominee, that the "popular vote" doesn't matter, that nobody was "disenfranchised," that no one is "disrespecting" her "18 million" supporters. Above all, she needs to make perfectly clear that she was not robbed, that she lost fair and square.
She needs to do all this, irrespective of the fact that it will leave some of her most fervent supporters feeling "betrayed." She can't use their fragile emotions as an excuse, because she created those emotions with her shameless demagoguery. (That's what demagoguery does. That's its whole purpose.) Like I said: she created the monster. Some of the damage she's done is irreparable, which is why she can never fully be forgiven for her actions. But she can take a small step toward reconciliation by undoing as much of the damage as possible.
Somehow, though, I don't think she'll be walking back her rhetoric on any of these key points. Oh, she'll make the case for Obama on policy, and argue that he's better than McCain, for the sake of appearances. But, having planted the "she was robbed" seed in her supporters' brains, she'll let them stew about it, and she'll tell herself that if they want to stay home -- or vote for McCain -- because of that, well, there's nothing she can do. Like so much of what she says, that's a lie. But maybe it'll let her sleep at night.
Personally, I am not a Democrat -- I'm an independent -- and although
the portion of my brain that views politics as a sport can't help
"rooting" for Obama (he's exciting! he's inspiring! he's shiny!), the
rational part of brain, which governs my actual vote, is totally undecided
between Obama and McCain. Thus, my anger at Hillary is more based on my
internal sensibilities -- about right and wrong, about proper and improper
behavior, and, above all, about truth and untruth -- than on fear
of what she'll do to Obama's chances in November. And yet I'm pretty damn angry. So I
can't imagine how intense the anger must be among committed Democrats who are 100% behind Obama. They have to be livid. At this point, she's got be reaching Bush/Cheney/Lieberman levels of earned hatred, yes?
Oh, and as long as we're talking about Hillary hurting Obama's chances, check out this video clip that the Republican National Committee sent out last night:
This is Exhibit A, B, and C for why the unity ticket is wolf-face crazy. Can you imagine how much worse it would be if she were his runningmate?
UPDATE: Here's another clip the RNC is circulating:
Now, the question is: Where do we go from here? And given how far we've come and where we need to go as a party, it's a question I don't take lightly. This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight.
[At this point, her supporters cheered wildly, and some chanted, "Denver! Denver!"]
But this has always been your campaign. So, to the 18 million people who voted for me, and to our many other supporters out there of all ages, I want to hear from you. I hope you'll go to my Web site at HillaryClinton.com and share your thoughts with me[.]
Luckily, Hillary's "18 million" aren't the only people who know how to use the Interwebs. So, I invite you all to follow this link, and give Hillary the advice she so desperately needs. For example:
Incredible. She justifies her continuing the campaign by saying that she finished the campaign. She doesn't concede that Obama has a majority of delegates, let alone that he's won. She repeats her bogus popular vote argument. She congratulates Obama's campaign on its "achievements," but barely musters a single good word about him.
I don't know what the fallout will be, but at minimum, I'd say that anybody on her staff who cares about their party has a moral obligation to publicly quit and endorse Obama.
The more I think about it, the more it seems that Hillary's entire speech was manufactured to rile up her supporters -- instead of priming them to shift their allegiance to Obama. Yes, there's a situation with Michigan and Florida. But is it really fair for Clinton to claim that her 18 million supporters nationwide have been made "invisible?" Who's supposed to be the bad guy here, scary Howard Dean? Clinton is offering more fighting rhetoric. But the fight should be over.
Isaac Chotiner, who calls the speech "A Total Disgrace":
[H]er speech tonight has been combative and petty (mentioning the states she won, saying the primaries ended in South Dakota, not Montana, claiming a popular vote win), with scant praise for the Democratic nominee. If Clinton wants people to believe that she cares more about the Democratic Party than her own career, she is failing badly.
I have no problem with her reminding people of her campaign highlights--or postponing an actual concession. But implying that Obama can't win in November? Whether or not she believes that, she has no business saying it now. And suggesting that she'll fight on until her supporters are no longer "invisible" and get "some respect"? What on earth is she implying there?
I probably shouldn't write any more about this woman and her staff. Suffice it to say that I've found her behavior over the past couple of months to be utterly unconscionable and this speech is no different. I think if I were to try to express how I really feel about the people who've been enabling her behavior, I'd say something deeply unwise. Suffice it to say, that for quite a while now all of John McCain's most effective allies have been on Hillary Clinton's payroll.
The speech tonight was a remarkable one for a candidate who has lost the nomination, though not remarkable for a Clinton. It was an assertion that she had won the nomination and a refusal to concede anything to her opponent. Classless, graceless, shameless, relentless. Pure Clinton.
Her narcissism requires that she deprive her opponent of a night, or a second, of gratification or attention. And she has now won, in her Bush-like version of reality, 18 million votes. Her invitation for her supporters to email their suggestions to her website is pure t
