Irish Trojan in Tennessee

McCain predicts Bradley Effect?

By Brendan Loy

Hmm... this is interesting:

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.

"Period. Full stop."

By Brendan Loy

Just a thought: it would be nice to see John McCain clarify his non-answer about Barack Obama's patriotism in the same sort of straightforward, no-nonsense, not-open-to-interpretation way that Obama responded today to Wesley Clark's comments questioning the value of McCain's military service.

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.

I suggest that McCain read Mark Halperin's advice from last week, particularly:

14. Recognize that gimmicks ... are seen as just that — gimmicks. ...

17. Avoid personalizing your disdain for Obama. ...

22. Protect the McCain Brand at all costs – it is the only thing that gives you a chance to win!!

Somebody get this guy a latte

By Brendan Loy

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.)

Well, it turns out ol' Tom is still buffenbargering after all these months:

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.

McCain-Buffenbarger '08! ;)

Ugh, powder blue

By Brendan Loy

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. :)

Anyway, here are some more photos from the Obama-Clinton rally in Unity.

Clinton, Obama join together in Unity

By Brendan Loy

Literally.

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.

Here's a quick primer on Unity, from Wikipedia:

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.

Politics as usual?

By Brendan Loy

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.

(Hat tip: Halperin.)

Poll shows Obama way ahead nationally; Barr, Nader hurt McCain

By Brendan Loy

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. ;)

What about Zimbabwe?

By Brendan Loy

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 Sun editorial -- 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"?

Mismanaging the world

By Brendan Loy

"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.

Vice President Biden?

By Brendan Loy

Joe Biden: hell yeah, I'd be Obama's veep!

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.

A dead heat in Georgia?!

By Brendan Loy

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.

P.S. His mom's white! He's from America! Heh.

Hope for Iraq

By Brendan Loy

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.

More from The Economist here and here. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

A house divided

By Brendan Loy

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:

Heh.

Of course, while the Schwarzenegger-Shriver split gets front page treatment in the New York Times, the same thing happens every day in the Carville-Matalin household. :)

(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...)

Victory in sight?

By Brendan Loy

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.

Bush vs. Carter?

By Brendan Loy

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!

Heh.

More politics-as-sports

By Brendan Loy

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. :)

My letter to Senator Joe

By Brendan Loy

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.

Read the whole thing after the jump.

Quittin' time

By Brendan Loy

Hillary Clinton will formally withdraw/suspend and endorse Obama shortly at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. If you aren't near a TV, you can watch the event streamed live on CNN, MSNBC and C-SPAN.

Also, The Caucus, Daily Kos and TPM will be liveblogging.

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."

Heh.

Quote of the day #2

By Brendan Loy

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.

More after the jump.

Quote of the day

By Brendan Loy

"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.)

Don't let John McCain feed your baby

By Brendan Loy

If you do, your baby may get burned by bottled hot water:

Tee hee.

Obama's Gary Hart moment?

By Brendan Loy

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!

McCain: Let's go to Mars

By Brendan Loy

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.

Sounds good to me, but what I want to know is, will we do the other things?

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!

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?

Clinton to endorse Obama on Friday Saturday

By Brendan Loy

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."

Politico's Ben Smith writes:

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.

More from NYT's Adam Nagourney:

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.

Final popular-vote update

By Brendan Loy

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.

Blog countdown PSA

By Brendan Loy

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.)

Headline of the day

By Brendan Loy

"In Defeat, Clinton Graciously Pretends to Win."

What is Maureen Dowd talking about?

By Brendan Loy

Her NYT column today contains this bit of sheer nonsense:

[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."

The speeches

By Brendan Loy

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.

See also:

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:

Tell Hillary where to go

By Brendan Loy

In the climax of her remarkable, contemptible speech, Hillary Clinton asked her supporters for their advice on whether to drop out:

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[.]

As NRO's Jim Geraghty writes, it's fairly obvious where this path leads:

She wants people to visit her web site and help her decide what to do next.

Can you see what's next? "I wanted to concede, but my supporters didn't want me to."

Like I said, it's the Ross Perot strategy. "The volunteers have asked me to run!"

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:

Reactions to Hillary's speech

By Brendan Loy

Jonathan Chait:

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.

Dana Goldstein:

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.

Jonathan Cohn:

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?

Matthew Yglesias:

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.

Andrew Sullivan:

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 theater, a way of keeping herself in the spotlight and maneuvering her delegates to demand a second spot on the ticket. The way she is now doing this - by an implicit threat, backed by McCain, to claim that Obama is an illegitimate nominee if she does not get her way - is designed to humiliate the nominee sufficiently to wound him enough to lose the election.

Either way, she is clearly intent on getting Obama defeated this fall if she is not offered the vice-presidency. And if she gets the veep nod, the way she has gotten it will allow her to argue that a November loss was not her loss. It was his. And she will run again in 2012.

She will not go away. The Clintons will never go away. And they will do all they can to cripple any Democrat who tries to replace them. In the tent or out of it, it is always about them. And they are no longer rivals to Obama; they are threats.

A Sullivan reader:

What Democrats needed from Clinton tonight, aside from at last CONCEDING to Obama, was to go after McCain with everything she had: this would have been a first step to pulling her supporters into the larger Democratic fold. Instead, incredibly, she chose to continue her veiled critique of Obama. Instead, incredibly, she chose to emphasize and repeat all of her lies: that she won the popular vote, that she has "more votes than any other candidate who's ever run in the primaries", and, most damagingly, insinuating that somehow, this election was "stolen" from her. We see, more clearly than ever, that this is not about defeating Republicans in 2008: it is, for her, solely about her own career.

The Jed Report:

If I had any respect for Hillary Clinton going into tonight, after watching her speech, it is now gone.

She is now running for a nomination that she has lost. She cannot win it. The game is over.

She is, however, clearly willing to put John McCain in the White House if she doesn't get her way. Now, I don't think she has the power to do that, but she seems to think that she does, and she thinks that is a legitimate negotiating tactic.

The most pathetic part of the speech was her appeal for fundraising dollars. Because of her own mismanagement, her campaign is millions in debt. She's wealthy -- she can afford it. But yet she asks her constituency, which she says is struggling to get by, to help her pay off her own debts.

Absolutely no class -- and completely self-absorbed.

John Aravosis:

Obama won tonight and she still can't concede. Take a flying leap. You lost. You nasty woman. She can't decide what she wants to do, whether she concedes or not. So she wants people to email her and help her decide. ... She's just a nasty nasty woman. I'm so glad the Democratic leadership gave her space and her time to grieve. How's that working for you?

FinneganOregon, a Daily Kos diarist:

I am sitting here listening to her speech this evening and my jaw has slowly dropped to the floor.

This woman has no class.

She deserves absolutely nothing. Not a f***ing thing.

The only dissenting voice I can find in the liberal blogosphere is Al Giordano, who says, "I think that Senator Clinton’s speech was fine. She didn’t concede. (The Field didn’t expect her to.) But nor did she declare that she’s going to go on a Kamikaze mission. ... Everything is good. She’s getting out. She just has to negotiate her terms. But she stopped short of starting an internecine Civil War in the Democratic party. And nothing in her tone or words indicated otherwise."

Needless to say, I completely disagree. In fact, I'm baffled; Giordano must have been watching a different speech than I was. I think Dana Goldstein, quoted at the top of this post, is 100% right: "Hillary's entire speech was manufactured to rile up her supporters -- instead of priming them to shift their allegiance to Obama."

P.S. See also Noam Scheiber.

Hillary speaks

By Brendan Loy

"Thank you so much to South Dakota. You had the last word [sic; that would be Montana -ed.], and it was a good one."

"I want to start tonight by congratulating Senator Obama and his supporters on the extraordinary race that they have run." (She then proceeded to say some other nice things about him, battling through a few hecklers at one point. I couldn't quite make out what the hecklers were saying, but I think it was anti-Obama.)

"And it has been an honor to contest these primaries with him, just as it is an honor to call him my friend. And tonight, I would like all of us to take a moment to recognize him and his supporters for all they have accomplished."

"Now, 16 months ago, you and I began a journey to make history and to remake America..." blah blah blah

UPDATE: "You asked yourself a simple question: who will be the strongest candidate?" (Crowd yells "Hillary!") "Who will be ready to take back the White House and be commander-in-chief..." Hmm, where is she going with this?

UPDATE 2: "Our campaign carr[ied] the popular vote with more votes than any campaign in history."

UGH.

Hillary Clinton just implicitly called the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party illegitimate.

Now she's babbling about swing states. What a freaking creep.

UPDATE 3: Now she's talking about "count[ing] every single vote!" Unbelievable!!

I don't know why I'm continually surprised by Hillary's shamelessness. Someone tell me again, why the HELL would Obama want to make this utterly contemptible woman his V.P.?

She really doesn't know when to stop, or have any idea what she sounds like to people who aren't either idiots or sycophants. This speech isn't remotely conciliatory or valedictory. It's a blatant attempt to undermine her own party's nominee on the very night he clinches the nomination. Absolutely beyond belief.

UPDATE 4: I don't want hear her say another freakin' word about "party unity." It's like Loeb said: "Every time Mrs. Clinton claims she has a popular majority, she's...making it that much more likely that her supporters will stay home in November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop."

Clearly, she has made a conscious decision not to stop. Unreal.

Now she asks rhetorically: "What does Hillary want?" ... "I want the 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard, and no longer to be invisible." (!!!)

What does Hillary really want? She appears to want Obama to lose in November. That's the only rational explanation for this speech, at this time, given in this way.

UPDATE 5: The crowd chants, "DENVER! DENVER!"

See?!? What did I tell you about rhetorical momentum?? This is exactly what I meant!! Using rhetoric like this, even now, she is creating a situation where many of her supporters will view not fighting to the convention as a betrayal! Now watch her use that as an excuse.

"Now, the question is, where do we go from here? ... This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight." The crowd goes wild. You know what decision they want!

UPDATE 6: She's telling people to "go to her website" and tell her what to do!! This is the Ross Perot strategy -- "I do what the volunteers want!" So she's deliberately creating rhetorical momentum, so she can say that she's staying in the race because her supporters demanded it!!

FINAL WORD: Hillary Clinton had one last chance, tonight, to exit the stage with dignity.

She missed it.

CNN: Obama wins

By Brendan Loy

Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer says Barack Obama, Barack Obama is the presumptive nominee.

UPDATE: Here's the video:

Fuzzy math

By Brendan Loy

Fox News's delegate count in the scroll at the bottom of the screen has Obama at 2,128 delegates, 10 more than the "magic number" -- but he still doesn't have a little check-mark next to his name, like McCain does. Not sure what's up with that, or where they're getting their numbers from. (Maybe the Associated Press?)

CNN, meanwhile, has Obama at 2,114 delegates, four away from securing the nomination. I think that means Wolf Blitzer, Wolf Blitzer will be declaring Obama the nominee at 9:00 PM, if not sooner. (By the way, yes, I still have cable at the moment. Long story.)

The Huffington Post has a running tally, naming names, and they claim he's at 2,110 delegates, eight away.

Obama's campaign says he's at 2,108, ten away.

However you do the math, it's clear that Obama will be able to accurately say in his speech tonight: "Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States."

It's over

By Brendan Loy

Obama is now 12 delegates away from the nomination, without considering any "private commitments" or making any projections of tonight's results.

That means he'll definitely be able to declare victory as soon as Montana is "called" for him, even if South Dakota is still too close to call (or, for that matter, if it's "called" for Hillary). Even a one-vote win in Montana gives him 9 delegates, and there's no way he won't get at least 3 delegates in South Dakota.

UPDATE, 7:22 PM: Now he's 10 delegates away. CNN is quoting the same number. If he gets a few more endorsements, the mere fact of the polls closing in South Dakota may put him over the top.

UPDATE, 7:29 PM: CNN says he's now within 7 delegates.

You know what would be hilarious? If Obama gets within 1 delegate of clinching, and then Donna Brazille -- an undeclared superdelegate on CNN's "best political team on television" -- announces her endorsement live on CNN, thus putting him over the top. :)

UPDATE, 7:45 PM: Now 6 delegates to go, says CNN.

Obama will get at least 7 delegates in South Dakota unless his vote total is less than 41.66%. He'll get at least 6 delegates unless his vote total is less than 38.88%. He's essentially guaranteed at least 5 delegates, since he'd have to dip below 27.77% to get less than that, which pretty clearly isn't going to happen.

So, assuming the exit polls do not suggest a West Virginia-style blowout by Hillary (i.e., in a range where a 73-27 victory is conceivable), the mere fact of the polls closing in South Dakota should add at least 5 delegates to Obama's column.

That means that if just one more superdelegate endorsement happens before 9:00 PM EDT, South Dakota puts him over the top -- even if Hillary wins the state. No need to wait for Montana.

Paging Donna Brazille!

UPDATE, 8:04 PM: CNN says Obama is 5 delegates away.

This appears to be based on CNN's own independent reporting, talking to superdelegates. Obama's own delegate countdown is stuck at T-minus 10, presumably because he wants pledged delegates to put him over the top.

Clinton must not raise the "popular vote" tonight

By Brendan Loy

The last 24 hours have seen an incredibly vigorous guessing game of, "What will Hillary Clinton say tonight?" Here's the New York Times's Adam Nagoruney's take:

Mrs. Clinton’s aides said that, should Mr. Obama cross the line Tuesday night — and be declared at least the presumptive nominee — their candidate would acknowledge his accomplishment, without going so far as to drop out.

That seems quite likely to be true, but in my mind, the big question is, what will she say about her non-concession? Will she make a conciliatory, valedictory speech that's basically mum on her next step, leaving things vague until tomorrow (perhaps at AIPAC) or the next day? Or will she present an affirmative case for her decision to stay in the race, which would almost certainly involve arguing again that "I lead in the popular vote and Senator Obama leads in the delegate count"?

If she does the latter, two major problems crop up immediately. First of all, if her logic is, in essence, "we're tied, because he won more delegates and I won more votes," it's difficult to understand what would change that logic between now and August. The core premise of her argument -- incorrect and illegitimate though it may be -- will remain in place indefinitely; nothing after tonight is going to change the popular-vote math, obviously. So it's hard to see how "he has more delegates, but I have more votes" is an argument for staying in the race tonight but then dropping out later this week. If it's anything at all, it's an argument for going all the way to Denver. (Cue my argument about rhetorical momentum.)

Secondly, even if she does drop out later this week after reiterating her phony "popular vote" argument tonight, she'll have already seriously damaged Obama by implicitly questioning his legitimacy as the nominee on the very night when the party should be starting to formally unify around him. Again, I quote Baltimore Sun columnist Paul Rogat Loeb:

Given the bitterness of so many Hillary Clinton supporters that the woman they thought would be America's first female president will not be, the more they hear the suggestion that Sen. Barack Obama's win is illegitimate, the more likely they are to bolt. If Senator Clinton's voters embrace the story that "a man took it away from a woman," denying her a victory she deserved, they're at risk of staying home come November, or holding back from the volunteering and get-out-the-vote efforts necessary for the Democrats to prevail.

That's why it's so unfortunate that Mrs. Clinton continues to claim that "we are winning the popular vote." Because that statement is a lie - and it undermines every word she has recently spoken about the need for the party to come together. ...

Every time Mrs. Clinton claims she has a popular majority, she's...making it that much more likely that her supporters will stay home in November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop, and the superdelegates need to hold her accountable.

In my opinion, making this argument tonight, of all nights, would be absolutely unforgivable. And I bet she'll do it.

Obama-Clinton '08: wolf-face crazy

By Brendan Loy

In response to Hillary Clinton's suggestion this afternoon that she's open to being Obama's VP, I would just like to reiterate my previously stated belief that picking Clinton as veep would be "wolf-face crazy...the kind of decision you make when you are drunk, and on cocaine, and on deadline, and on fire." (Hat tip: ESPN Page 2.)

As I put it then: "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." (If you don't believe me, here's a preview. Imagine how much worse this would be if she was his runningmate!!)

And that's without even getting into all the other problems with such a ticket. It really would be terminal insanity. Again: "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."

Alas, as I wrote in that May 8 post, "the media will be absolutely obsessed with the notion of a 'dream ticket' ... and the Clintonistas, given their endless supply of self-centeredness, will be only too happy to add fuel to the fire." That prophecy is now predictably coming true. As a result,

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.

Mark Halperin echoes this point today, writing that "any delay [by Obama] in choosing a running mate will only bring rampant speculation about whether he is going to pick Clinton – and if not, why not – speculation so extreme it might warp and dominate the entire process (and potentially create reams of critical and distracting press for his eventual Veep selection)."

The earliest vice-presidential selection in the last 20 years was Kerry picking Edwards on July 6, followed closely by Clinton picking Gore on July 10 and Dukakis picking Bentsen on July 13. (Bush picked Cheney on July 24. Gore picked Lieberman on August 7. Dole picked Kemp on August 10. H.W. Bush picked Quayle on August 17.) Personally, I'd like to see Obama beat Kerry's speed record. How does, oh, June 23 sound? Like I said before: rip the band-aid off quickly.

AP: Obama clinches nomination!

By Brendan Loy

Breaking news:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House. ...

The AP tally was based on public commitments from delegates as well as more than a dozen private commitments. It also included a minimum number of delegates Obama was guaranteed even if he lost the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana later in the day.

(Hat tip: Becky.)

My initial, gut reaction is that this AP report, which Team Clinton will inevitably describe as "premature," actually increases the chances of Hillary fighting on to the convention. I fear they'll say a bunch of things this afternoon and evening that will make it harder to backtrack and drop out once "effectively clinched" turns into simply "clinched."

On the other hand, Mark Halperin says Hillary "underestimates...the number of her staff and top supporters who will not tolerate her campaign continuing beyond Wednesday – and just how gravely they feel about it." He's probably right, and I may well be wrong about the risk of the Clintons talking themselves into a continued fight. But beware of rhetorical momentum!

UPDATE: TPM's Greg Sargent writes:

The AP is including over a dozen super-dels who privately indicated to the news org that they will ultimately back Obama, should the contest continue, but haven't said so publicly. Not everyone counts private commitments; the Obama campaign, for instance, only includes publicly declared supporters in its super-delegate tally.

So this isn't an official clinching of the nomination, obviously. And indeed, it's really a no-brainer that Obama has reached the magic number when you factor in private commitments. It's highly likely that far more than a dozen have privately signaled support for Obama.

And Politico's Ben Smith weighs in:

Not to be a stickler here, but that's not how this has been working, either in our count or in in the Obama campaign's. The commitments that matter are the ones that are public. So the story is trivial: I think you could probably get virtually all of the superdelegates at this point to privately acknowledge that they'll vote for Obama at the convention.

So as far as the (academic) matter of deciding when exactly Obama gets the majority, I'm going to stick with named supporters. Our count, and the Obama campaign's, leave him about 30 shy.

Meanwhile, Halperin puts up this graphic:

P.S. Here's a lengthier version of the AP article, which is essentially a wrap-up of the entire race.

Clinton's non-concession concession?

By Brendan Loy

The debate rages over whether Hillary will concede tonight.

It appears that the confusion may turn on what the meaning of "is" "concession" is, as Politico's Ben Smith explains:

This morning's report that Clinton would "concede" that she's lost the delegate race -- and the campaign's subsequent denial that she's conceding the nomination -- triggered wide confusion.  

But Clinton herself explained her position yesterday in Yankton, SD yesterday:

"Tomorrow is the last day of the primaries and the beginning of a new phase in the campaign. After South Dakota and Montana vote I will lead in the popular vote and Senator Obama will lead in the delegate count," she said. "The voters will have voted and so the decision will fall to the delegates empowered to vote at the Democratic Convention. I will be spending the coming days making my case to those delegates. Their responsibility not only to the Democratic Party but to our country is to vote for the candidate who is best able to lead us to victory in November and best prepared to lead our country into the future."  

The theoretical case here is that -- even if Obama currently holds the absolute majority of convention delegates -- the delegates can't cast their votes until August, and could change their minds.

So in theory, Clinton can concede that Obama -- presently -- has the majority, but maintain that he doesn't have the nomination.  

In practice, she's pretty much out of options: He's on the verge of locking up the majority, and a bandwagon effect -- which has already begun to pull on her supporters -- will only intensify.

But as Clinton choreographs her defeat, she's outlined a two-step: First conceding that Obama's won the delegate race, then that he's won the nomination.

That makes sense in theory, but as Smith says, it falls apart in practice, unless her intention is to take the fight to Denver.

If she doesn't concede -- and I mean fully concede -- very quickly after it becomes clear that Obama has wrapped up a clear delegate majority, there is no logical point until the convention at which it will make sense for her to fully and finally concede.

Moreover, as I said earlier, the feisty rhetoric she'll inevitably use to justify her non-concession could create, perhaps unintentionally or half-intentionally, a sort of unstoppable rhetorical momentum that would make it nearly impossible for her to concede anytime before August 28 (the date of the roll call in Denver) without angering and alienating her supporters.

This is why I think the campaign either: a) ends this week (probably in the next 48 hours) or b) continues until August. And it's also why Harry Reid's plan -- telling superdelegates to wait a little longer -- is such a bad idea. This is no time for Obama's people to be delicate and deferential. They need to Clinton off the stage, now. This is their last, best chance to avoid a floor fight. It's now or never.

P.S. In comments, kcatnd quotes the Beatles:

If you don't take her out tonight
She's gonna change her mind
And I will take her out tonight
And I will treat her kind.

Heh. Indeed.

Kcatnd also speculates that Hillary will "bow out gracefully tonight once it's clear Obama has clinched it. Until then, it's still a 100%-absolutely-not-conceding tack." That's a distinct possibility. This all may be nothing but tough talk, both to influence Montana & South Dakota voters and to try and prevent the superdelegate flood that would allow Obama to hit the "magic number" tonight. If so, I hope it has the opposite effect. It will, if these Democratic party "leaders" have any sense at all. To quote from another song:

No other road
No other way
No day but today

Hillary way ahead in South Dakota??

By Brendan Loy

Whoa:

HILLARY CAMPAIGN EXPECTS 25-POINT WIN IN S DAKOTA, TOP SOURCES TELL DRUDGE... DEVELOPING...

And:

[An] American Research Group survey of South Dakotans [released today] shows Clinton leading 60 percent to 34 percent among Democrats in the state. There have been few surveys of South Dakotans this year; the last poll was conducted two months ago and showed Obama with a 12-point lead, according to Real Clear Politics.

A new ARG poll of Montana voters shows Obama with a four point lead in Montana, beating Clinton 48-to-44 percent.

The new numbers are subject to some skepticism because they are so at odds with prevailing notions about South Dakota in particular. Electoral projection blog FiveThirtyEight.com predicts Obama will win the state by five points and calls ARG's scenario "completely bats**t crazy."

FiveThirtyEight isn't alone:

[C]ampaign officials for both Clinton and her opponent, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, questioned the accuracy of the [South Dakota] survey results...and urged news outlets not to run them prior to the primary. ...

While accurately reflecting some primaries in the Democratic race, New Hampshire-based American Research Group has also missed others, in some cases by substantial margins. ARG indicated Clinton was ahead in Iowa, where she lost, and that she was behind in New Hampshire, where she won. An ARG survey showed at 3-point edge for Obama in South Carolina, where he actually won 55 percent to 27 percent.

On the other hand, ARG has been spot-on in some other primaries. I guess we'll find out tonight whether they're right this time, too, or whether this last-minute poll is indeed "bats**t crazy."

Obama lines up the supers

By Brendan Loy

On Sunday morning, I wrote:

Assuming conservative projections of 22 pledged delegates in Puerto Rico today, and 8 each in South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday, he needs 27 more delegates -- out of 218.5 undeclared superdelegates and Edwards pledgees.

The only question, really, is whether he'll get those 27 delegates by the time he takes to the stage in Minnesota Tuesday night, so he can declare victory then and there. I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of supers declare for Obama within, say, an hour after the polls close in Montana and Souta Dakota.

Now it looks like that's exactly what's going to happen:

Sensing an opportunity to shut down the nominating contest, Obama campaign advisers said that they were orchestrating an endorsement of Mr. Obama by at least eight Senate and House members who had pledged to remain uncommitted until the primaries ended, and that the endorsements would come the moment the South Dakota polls closed on Tuesday night.

Only one problem: the final polls close in South Dakota at 9:00 PM EDT (though polls in most of the state close at 8:00), but Montana's polls stay open until 10:00. So if these supers are really going to "remain uncommitted until the primaries end," don't they need to wait until "the moment the Montana polls close"?

Then there's the Harry Reid theory, which is that the remaining supers should stay mum "until the final votes have been counted." That would mean Wednesday morning at the earliest. But I think Obama has the right idea here. As I wrote last night, I think there's a danger of Hillary & co. talking themselves into continuing their campaign -- or at least taking the "middle option" of suspending-but-not-endorsing -- if the momentum of the moment doesn't very quickly usher them offstage tonight.

Dragging this thing out further is not a good strategy for anyone who wants the campaign to end this week (which is the same thing as saying "end before the convention," because IMHO, it either ends this week or it ends in August). Tonight is the best possible moment to declare a definitive winner and be done with it. If you give Hillary a chance to dither and delay, she'll dither and delay, and when the dust settles, she may well have fallen under the sway of her own (and Bill's) "keep fighting" rhetoric. Far better to rip the band-aid off quickly. Forget about "disrespecting" the Clintons; first of all, they deserve it, and second of all, the pain of that "insult" will fade. The pain of a three-month battle en route to Denver, won't. So, with all due respect to Harry Reid, he's wrong. Once Obama is assured of 2,018 delegates, there's no reason to delay, and doing so could prove grossly counterproductive. He should declare victory tonight, if he can. 

Luckily, it seems I'm preaching to the choir on this; Obama apparently agrees with me. Here's another take on his efforts to end it tonight:

With an expected late wave of support from congressional Democrats, Sen. Barack Obama appeared poised to secure enough delegates to earn his party's presidential nomination, perhaps even before the votes from the final two primaries in South Dakota and Montana are counted Tuesday night. ...

A Democratic source said at least five to 10 House members would endorse Obama on Tuesday morning, at least 10 senators will endorse him by the end of the day and an additional 10 superdelegates will also endorse him during the day. That would assure enough delegates by the end of the day to clinch the nomination.

Keep in mind, if the networks are able to immediately "call" South Dakota and Montana (based on exit polls) when the polls close, that'll be 17 delegates right off the bat. Currently, by his own count, Obama is 39 delegates away from clinching an outright majority, so he'll be able to declare himself the presumptive nominee at 10:00 PM -- assuming early "calls" in South Dakota and Montana -- if he gets 22 superdelegate endorsements between now and then. (That's not including his first three supers today -- Clyburn, Lalonde and Chappelle-Nadal -- who are already included in the count.)

P.S. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza reports:

The three highest ranking Democrats in Montana plan to wade into the Democratic presidential race as soon as the state's primary is decided tonight, according to a source familiar with the decision.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer as well as Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have agreed to all endorse the winner of Montana's primary -- almost certain to be Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) -- immediately upon the contest being called. The trio will be joined in the endorsement by state party chairman Dennis McDonald and vice chairman Margaret Campbell.

Politico's Ben Smith writes that the Montana 5 are "likely to be part of a substantial wave that comes to Obama when polls close."

P.P.S. Pablano projects that Obama will win by 18 points in Montana, but only by 5 points in South Dakota. If that's correct, Montana will probably be "called" right at 10:00, but there might not be a clear winner in South Dakota until late into the night, in which case Obama might want to pick up another couple of supers today (perhaps 24 or 25, instead of 22), so he can still declare victory at 10:00 or very shortly minutes thereafter. (He'll want to do so before 11:00, certainly, lest Tim Russert go to bed before Obama's victory speech!)

UPDATE: A potentially significant bulletin from the AP:

Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said Tuesday that once Obama gets the majority of convention delegates, "I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee."

UPDATE 2: CNN clarifies:

Sen. Hillary Clinton's is "absolutely not" prepared to concede the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to Sen. Barack Obama, her campaign chairman said.

Terry McAuliffe rejected as "100 percent incorrect" an Associated Press report that Clinton is preparing to acknowledge that Obama has the delegates to win the nomination Tuesday night as the five-month Democratic primary process comes to a close.

Obama "doesn't have the numbers today, and until someone has the numbers the race goes on," McAuliffe told CNN.

But that's not much of a denial, or "rejection." He said "until someone has the numbers" -- which could well be tonight! His bluster notwithstanding, the clarification is totally consistent with the earlier report.   

The longest election

By Brendan Loy

The remarkable Democratic primary and caucus process of 2008 -- the "campaign that wouldn't end" -- finally ends today, whether Hillary Clinton likes it or not, with primaries in Montana and South Dakota. After tonight, there's nothing of any significance left on the calendar until the convention begins on August 25.

There's been a lot of talk about what a long, drawn-out campaign it has been. (Remember when it seemed exotic to look past February 5?) I have a unique perspective on that, as the Iowa caucuses occurred the day after Becky and I came home from the hospital with our firstborn child. So we barely remember what our lives were like before this election began.

For Loyette, the situation is even more extreme. This campaign has literally been going on for her entire life. :) She was three days old when the first votes were cast; now she's five months and three days. She's more than doubled her weight, gotten five or six inches taller, and has changed from a tiny, dazed and confused newborn into a vibrant, happy, bouncing baby girl with a distinct personality and an ever-increasing set of skills. And all the while, the Democrats have been fighting over who'll be their nominee. Remarkable.

Anyway... what are your predictions for today's election? And when will Hillary drop out? Tonight? Tomorrow? Thursday? August 28? January 21? ;)

P.S. Remember how Mitt Romney dropped out, and endorsed McCain, at a speech in front of CPAC? Well, is it possible Hillary will drop out, and endorse Obama, at the AIPAC convention tomorrow? She and Obama are both scheduled to speak there tomorrow morning.

Fight on for HRC?

By Brendan Loy

Are Hillary Clinton and her supporters talking themselves into continuing their fight all the way to the convention? Or is the tough talk just posturing?

As Hillary huddles tonight in Chappaqua with her inner circle, I fear there's a real risk of an echo-chamber effect taking hold, and the Hillaryland brigades convincing themselves of the logic of continuing the campaign even after Obama surpasses the magic delegate threshold. She's being deliberately vague about staying in the race "until there's a nominee" -- what exactly does that mean, especially given that delegates can change their minds, and that the "magic number" itself is still in doubt? -- but we'll find out soon enough. If Obama clinches a delegate majority and Clinton doesn't drop out, then we'll know. If that happens, there'll be no preventing a party-crippling floor fight. Once the train leaves the station, it won't be stopped. It's either this week or the last week of August, methinks.

The question is, does anyone in Clinton's inner circle truly understand the depth of the backlash that would occur if she were to attempt such a thing? Do they realize it would be career suicide? Do they understand that these next couple of days represent her last chance to exit the race with some semblance of dignity, such that she and Bill might someday have a chance of rebuilding their image in the party? Or are they so myopic at this point that they'll fall under the spell of their own talking points?

Even if Hillary & co. don't truly believe their own rhetoric, they'd better be careful: their words may become increasingly difficult to back away from. When you've got supporters chanting "Denver! Denver!" (not to mention "McCain! McCain!") and fundraisers saying "August, and no earlier," how do you bow out gracefully -- even if you want to -- without leaving those folks feeling betrayed? Particularly when you've been casting your argument in terms of "upholding bedrock principles" and saving the country from certain doom? If she doesn't at least begin the process of standing down and backing off tomorrow night, the sheer force of momentum produced by her "fighting" rhetoric may carry her all the way to Denver, whether she means it to or not.

P.S. On a somewhat related note, it's incredibly frustrating to keep reading bogus reports -- from legitimate journalists in mainstream newspapers! -- about how the Obama campaign may "reach deeply into its well-stocked coffers" in order to repay Clinton's campaign debt. There's only one small problem: it'd be illegal for Obama to do anything of the sort, as noted here:

Obama is not allowed to take millions of dollars from his own campaign and give them to Clinton's campaign. 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.

This is a very basic piece of essential information, yet it keeps getting utterly ignored by "reporters" when they "report" on this issue. Such inexcusably sloppy reporting is journalistic malpractice, plain and simple.

Countdown to Obama's victory

By Brendan Loy

Barack Obama needs 25 superdelegate endorsements today and tomorrow -- maybe a few less than that, depending on his Montana and South Dakota margins -- to clinch an outright delegate majority in time for his St. Paul victory speech tomorrow night.

Can he do it? As of this writing, he's gotten two today, so he needs 23 more. Check this link or Halperin for updates throughout the day, as I'm sure there will be more endorsements. Also keep in mind, it isn't the "net" that matters, but the absolute number for Obama.

One key question is when the "Pelosi club" superdelegates, who've said they'll endorse the pledged-delegate winner, will specifically announce for Obama, who has already secured the pledged-delegate majority.

As for those in the alternate Hillaryland reality who want to trump the pesky delegate count by relying on a fundamentally flawed, inherently illegitimate, hotly disputed, and at best extremely narrow "popular vote" victory, here's a handy popular vote scenario tester, where you answer various questions about how the vote should be counted, and the tally updates automatically. There are a grand total of 972 possible scenarios. :)

P.S. Baltimore Sun columnist Paul Rogat Loeb makes an excellent point about Hillary's phony "popular vote" claims:

Given the bitterness of so many Hillary Clinton supporters that the woman they thought would be America's first female president will not be, the more they hear the suggestion that Sen. Barack Obama's win is illegitimate, the more likely they are to bolt. If Senator Clinton's voters embrace the story that "a man took it away from a woman," denying her a victory she deserved, they're at risk of staying home come November, or holding back from the volunteering and get-out-the-vote efforts necessary for the Democrats to prevail.

That's why it's so unfortunate that Mrs. Clinton continues to claim that "we are winning the popular vote." Because that statement is a lie - and it undermines every word she has recently spoken about the need for the party to come together. ...

Every time Mrs. Clinton claims she has a popular majority, she's shattering whatever cease-fire exists and making it that much more likely that her supporters will stay home in November. If she really wants a united party, she needs to stop, and the superdelegates need to hold her accountable.

P.P.S. On a barely related note, Politico quotes a Clinton aide as stating, "It’s clear to us that Barack Obama has won the Drudge Primary, and it's one of the most important primaries in this process." Hmm, does that make Matt Drudge a super-duper delegate?

UPDATE: Obama is definitely hoping to clinch tomorrow:

Looking to bring finality to the Democratic presidential campaign, Barack Obama worked furiously Monday to win over enough superdelegates to clinch the nomination with the final primaries Tuesday.

Obama wants to formally kick off his general election campaign against Republican John McCain in a victory speech Tuesday night as the final primary campaign polls close in South Dakota and Montana.

"Senator Obama is trying to line up people that are going to come out for him tomorrow during the day so that he'll have enough that puts him over the top that he can declare victory tomorrow," said Pennsylvania Rep. Jason Altmire, one of about 200 superdelegates under pressure to take a side in the contest.

For what it's worth, the polls close at 8:00 PM EDT in eastern South Dakota, 9:00 PM in western South Dakota, and 10:00 PM in Montana. Obama's rally in St. Paul is scheduled to begin at 9:00 PM EDT, but I assume he won't be speaking until sometime after 10:00. (Montana is expected to be a landslide, so it'll probably be possible to declare it for Obama -- and award him 9 delegates right off the bat -- immediately after the polls close. [UPDATE: Or maybe not?])

Oh, and about those superdelegates: 15 of them, all U.S. Senators, are meeting this afternoon to decide what to do. I imagine a mass Tuesday-morning endorsement by the remaining undeclared senators could go along way toward bringing a few more supers along and putting Obama over the top by 10:00 PM tomorrow.

Hillary's mixed signals

By Brendan Loy

What happens after Obama clinches the delegate majority this week? Well, on the one hand...

Clinton campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe tells my colleague Ken Vogel in San Juan that Hillary Clinton will “probably” continue a retail-level campaign operation after Tuesday’s primaries regardless of what happens in them.

Team Clinton also won’t necessarily consider the campaign over if rival Barack Obama soon reaches the 2,118-delegate threshold necessary to clinch the nomination. ...

[McAluiffe said,] “We’ll see. We’re going to get through Tuesday’s votes. We’re going to see where we are, and we’re going to look at all of our options. Every option is on the table.” ...

And he hinted that the campaign might be targeting some superdelegates committed to Obama. ... “Just remember: No superdelegate is bound until they vote at the convention.”

On the other hand...

Members of Hillary Clinton's advance staff received calls and emails this evening from headquarters summoning them to New York City Tuesday night, and telling them their roles on the campaign are ending, two Clinton staffers tell my colleague Amie Parnes.

The advance staffers -- most of them now in Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Montana -- are being given the options of going to New York for a final day Tuesday, or going home, the aides said. The move is a sign that the campaign is beginning to shed -- at least -- some of its staff. The advance staff is responsible for arranging the candidate's events around the country.

With the future of her campaign in doubt, Clinton hasn't announced her plans for the final election night of the primary cycle or beyond, but the aides said she would stage her election night event in New York City.

Her home state sounds like a great place to make a concession speech, no? [UPDATE: According to Ben Smith, Hillary's election-night speech will be "at Baruch College in Manhattan. A Clinton source says it'll be 'valedictory' but she seems unlikely to actually drop out and endorse Obama tomorrow." Meanwhile, one of Hillary's top supporters, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, says she should concede after tomorrow's elections.]

Anyway, I don't think anyone knows what Hillary will do yet -- I doubt she herself has even finally decided -- but it's quite possible that McAuliffe's tough talk is largely posturing for negotiating position. Consider this report from over the weekend:

Hillary Clinton will be offered a dignified exit from the presidential race and the prospect of a place in Barack Obama's cabinet under plans for a "negotiated surrender" of her White House ambitions being drawn up by Senator Obama's aides.

Hmm... peace with honor in Vietnam Hillaryland? Well, hey, it could be a good test run for ending the war in Iraq. :) More after the jump.

The sun sets... on Hillary's campaign?

By Brendan Loy

Above, a pretty sunset in Knoxville. Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, Hillary ended up winning by about 142,000. By my armchair calculations, Obama still leads by 35,000 in the count that includes the caucus states, Florida & Michigan, and counts Uncommitted for Obama.

UPDATE: My armchair calculations were a bit off; Real Clear Politics puts Obama's lead in that count at 44,605.

Basically, barring huge upsets in South Dakota and Montana (both in turnout and in result), Clinton will only be the "popular vote winner" in the counts that either: a) give her the benefit of a Soviet-style, 328,309 to zero "victory" in Michigan, and/or b) exclude and thus effectively disenfranchise the caucus states of Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington, in direct contradiction of her recent statement that "I want to be sure that all 50 states are counted," not to mention her 2007 pledge to snub the Michigan and Florida primaries because of the "unique and special role" played by, among others, Iowa and Nevada, which she now excludes from her count.

Turnout low in Puerto Rico

By Brendan Loy

With 14% percent of the precincts reporting, Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama by 67% to 33% in Puerto Rico -- and, more importantly for Hillary's hopes of a "popular vote" win, by a raw vote margin of 22,253 votes to 10,924 votes. So far, then, the results corroborate anecdotal reports of surprisingly low turnout.

If we assume that 14% of the precincts means roughly 14% of the votes, and if we further assume that the margin will remain roughly constant across the remainder of the island, Hillary's current 11,329-vote edge translates into roughly an 80,000-vote victory, which is not nearly enough to earn her an arguably plausible "win" in the national popular vote count (barring major upsets in South Dakota and Montana).

Even if Hillary's margin ends up being 100,000 or 110,000, it won't be enough. Hillary needed her Puerto Rico margin to get well into the 100,000's to have any shot at winning the national "popular vote" without the benefit of a) a Saddam Hussein-style, 328,309 to zero "victory" in Michigan and/or b) the indefensible exclusion of four caucus states that held valid elections.

Bottom line: unless overall turnout and/or Hillary's support is much higher in the precincts that haven't reported yet, Hillary now has virtually no chance of earning a claim on the popular vote that isn't facially ridiculous, undemocratic and absurd.

UPDATE: With 56 percent of the precincts reporting, Hillary now has roughly a 70,000-vote lead, which extrapolates to approximately 125,000. Still not enough unless you only give Obama his "exit poll share" of the Uncommitted vote in Michigan, and maybe not even then, depending on what happens in South Dakota and Montana. Also, given that the DNC gave Obama more than his share of the Uncommitted vote, and given that Obama unquestionably would have gotten more votes in a "real" primary than Uncommitted got, I'd say a count that gives him only a 73% share of Uncommitted stretches the definition of "arguably plausible" somewhat. But that's the only arguably plausible count -- or perhaps arguably arguably plausible? -- that Hillary now has a shot at.

The new math

By Brendan Loy

After yesterday's Rules & Bylaws Committee decision, Obama has 2,052 delegates (including Edwards pledged dels who have declared for Obama), and the new "magic number" is 2,117. That puts him 65 away from clinching the nomination.

Assuming conservative projections of 22 pledged delegates in Puerto Rico today, and 8 each in South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday, he needs 27 more delegates -- out of 218.5 undeclared superdelegates and Edwards pledgees.

The only question, really, is whether he'll get those 27 delegates by the time he takes to the stage in Minnesota Tuesday night, so he can declare victory then and there. I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of supers declare for Obama within, say, an hour after the polls close in Montana and Souta Dakota.

One thing he won't necessary wait for, before declaring victory, is a Clinton concession. Reportedly, however, Clinton is coming to terms with the fact that she's going to lose, so a concession may actually happen.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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?

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!"

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.

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)?

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."

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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. :)

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. :)

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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."

Heh.

By Brendan Loy

Hmm... now, does this "humanize" Hillary, or make her an effete, out-of-touch elitist? We embed, you decide!

(In fairness, I have trouble with those things sometimes too.)

P.S. She's also never heard of Red Bull, and she hasn't pumped her own gas in years. Elitist!! ;)

On a more serious note, after the jump are the clips of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Hillary this morning in South Bend. Notre Dame fans should at least watch the first minute of the first clip -- there's a Fighting Irish reference!

Also, Buffalo-area readers may want to skip ahead to around 5:45 in the second clip, where he (briefly) takes her to task for not improving the Western New York economy. w00t!

Obama rejects, denounces & disowns Wright

By Brendan Loy

I think the term "Sister Souljah Moment" may need to be renamed as "Jeremiah Wright Moment":

Obama basically said exactly what Andrew Sullivan said yesterday that he needed to say, so it's no surprise that Sullivan called Obama's remarks "a very impressive, clear and constructive re-framing of the core message of his candidacy. ... [T]oday, we found that he can fight back, and take a stand, without calculation and in what is clearly a great amount of personal difficulty and political pain. It's what anyone should want in a president." More reactions here, including this from Jonathan Chait:

His denunciation of Rev. Wright today seems to be pretty much a bullseye. Why did he let the story hang out there so long without a response? I don't know, but I do see a pattern here: Throughout the campaign, Obama has made very good tactical moves, but he's made them slowly. Hillary Clinton, by contrast, has made a lot of mistakes, but she does grasp the 24-hour news cycle and she acts very quickly.

That's my impression, too.

Glenn Reynolds, however, is unimpressed. I expect that most on the Right will react similarly. But I'm not sure what else they want Obama to say. They can say, as Glenn does, that he should have said it sooner. Fine. But that's a weak criticism. "Better late than never" is a common expression for a reason. And, look, can we take a big-picture view of this, please? Even if you have a completely cynical opinion on Obama's transformation vis a vis Wright -- even if you don't believe him for a second when he claims he didn't realize until now that Wright was so radical and disgusting -- let's take a look at where we are now, as opposed to where we were a month ago or three months ago or 20 years ago.

Right now, at this very moment, we have an African-American candidate for president who commands overwhelming support within the black community, who has just explicitly and firmly denounced the radical and hateful nonsense that is all too often accepted and repeated without question within that selfsame black community. That's a very good thing. Wright will undoubtedly dismiss Obama's comments as, in Al Sharpton's words, "grandstanding in front of white people," but the truth is that Obama is speaking to black people, too -- he's speaking to everyone -- and he is sending a very clear message: enough with the bulls**t. Haven't conservatives been waiting for a black leader to do that for, like, forever?

This is the promise of the Obama candidacy, encapsulated and made real. Obama is urging blacks to leave behind, once and for all, the politics of conspiratorial victimhood -- the politics of Jeremiah Wright and, although Obama can't afford politically to say so explicitly, of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton -- and embrace the politics of unity and hope and, ultimately, self-empowerment.

You can parse his words and question his timing, and you'll find plenty to criticize. But ultimately -- again, big picture, people -- he's doing the right thing, and it's a very important "right thing." Either his heart's in the right place, or, if you want to be all cynical about it, he's pretending that it is, and his overall message demands that he continue to do so, which is almost as good. Either way, the Barack Obama who spoke today is the natural ally of anyone who has ever despaired over the blame-whitey victimhood culture within the black community. No, he's not quite channeling Bill Cosby. He wouldn't be in this position if he were. No, he didn't throw Jeremiah Wright under the bus last fall. It's a delicate and difficult tightrope he's walking. He's not perfect. But no one is, and Obama is trying harder than anyone else has, on this stage, ever before. Be reasonable! 

I'm not saying how we got here is entirely unimportant, but I think recognizing where we are now is vastly more important. And I think it would be a shame if Obama is now effectively crucified by both sides: the political right (and its newfound ally, Hillary Clinton), for not saying this sooner; and radical elements of the liberal-black community, for saying it at all. Rightly or wrongly, the takeaway lesson, if such a two-front assault destroys him, would be that a black politician cannot succeed on the national stage, at least until the baby boomers die off. Conservatives ought not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. (That's liberals' job!) Obama is doing the right thing here, and if he's a little late to the party, slap him on the wrist and then defend him against the coming Wright/Sharpton/etc. onslaught. And then beat him in November on security issues or whatever. But he's on the right side of this issue, and if he loses because of it, it will be a shame for everyone -- principled conservatives included.

P.S. My dad writes: "It's now expected that Wright ... will come back and further Diss the apostate. / This will be Good. Instead of Hillary & McCain running for President against Jeremiah Wright, Wright will be perceived as running against Obama. Excellent."

My dad, incidentally, says Wright is "evidently jealous" of Obama, but I think Cornhuskers may have hit closer to the mark when he said that Wright's ramblings confirmed a longstanding fear that the old-guard "civil rights leaders would fear that they are going to lose that 'white man behind the curtain keeping black people down' trump card" and would consequently go after Obama, knowing that "it's hard to preach this when the person sitting in the big chair at 1600 Penn is a black man." Further support for this theory: now Al Sharpton is coming after Obama, too.

This is good, as my dad said. If Obama is running against Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright, he'll win in a landslide.

Indiana is everything

By Brendan Loy

Thesis: between Jeremiah Wright's latest ramblings, Hillary Clinton's continued domination of the media spin game, the high-profile AP/Ipsos poll showing Hillary doing significantly better than Obama in November, the numerical fudge factor provided by the Michigan and Florida wild cards, and the incredibly unfavorable geography of the upcoming calendar for Obama (West Virginia and Kentucky will, in consecutive weeks, provide Hillary with her biggest non-Arkansas margins of victory in the entire campaign, and Puerto Rico may not be much better), events are now conspiring against Barack Obama such that Hillary may actually have a chance -- and Obama's only real opportunity to reliably stop her from seizing that chance is to win in Indiana on Tuesday. If he loses, then heaven help us, she might just be the nominee.

Discuss.

I'm not sure whether I believe this "thesis," but I am worried about the possibility that it might be right. And I'm apparently not alone, judging by