Ted Cruz and the Race to the Bottom of the Barrel

As he runs for president, Senator Ted Cruz is still in the news, even though he will never be president. After the kerfuffle surrounding him and some prominent gay hoteliers, he's back on the stump reminding folks that Barack Obama is black and it is the president's words that are causing cops to kill other black people.

As Politico reports, Cruz, speaking at an event hosted by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, insists that it is not systemic poverty or militarized police forces or unfair drug laws that are inflaming racial divides, but rather the Obama Administration's rhetoric.

"...[Mr Obama has] made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions that have divided us rather than bringing us together.”

Similar to his campaign platform, Mr Cruz doesn't give many specifics. He mentions one quote made in 2012 by Vice President Joe Biden, who said that the GOP is trying to put people back in chains. Damning stuff.

He also, for some reason, links the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy to racial and societal divides. Gun are too unfairly treated in this country, I assume.

President Obama, in his inflaming way, recently called police violence a "crisis" and condemned the neglect of the poor. How incendiary! The poor are neglected and unfairly treated by police and the judicial system?! I never. For his part, Mr Obama seemed frustrated that people are more concerned with broken windows than broken necks. A reasonable, sober response, in this blogger's cheeto-stained opinion.

Is this the "incendiary" language Mr Cruz speaks of? Or is he just pandering. Nah, couldn't be: “I think Republicans are and should be the party of the 47 percent," Mr Cruz said with a straight face.

In true Cruz fashion, when pressed to discuss something about his own platform, namely Obamacare and immigration reform, he dodged and weaved like the true pandering asshole he is, saying only: “What you’re hearing me say is, my message is going to be consistent.”

That message being what, exactly?

A More Direct Challenge

You may recall, if you followed politics at all in the 1990s, there was a move afoot on the part of the Gingrich revolters to reform how government worked.

What happened up to that point was that the Federal government would distribute funds to states targetted for very specific goals. These were called "categorical grants". Gingrich and his orc minions proposed to change this to a "block grant" system, whereby a state would be given a chunk of money and directed to spend it as it saw fit. In a perfect world, there would have been substantially no difference between the two methods. Ideally, they would solve the same problems and be the same amount of money, with the state having a bit more discretion in how it could target money it received.

But, well...politicians, money...you can see where this headed.

There's an interesting dynamic afoot here, and I want to study it from the ground up with you for a moment.

Little noticed outside of New York City (and even then, amidst the Obamathon, only among wonks here) was the release of an emergency budget proposal by Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Much of the hoopla over this budget stemmed from the loss of an entire graduating class at the police academy, cutting back on night-time fire coverage, as well as the suspension of a property tax rebate, an increase in property tax rates, and a 5¢ surcharge on all plastic bags.

All to close a $4 billion budget gap to $1.3 billion. Presumably, smoke and mirrors would take care of the rest. Actually, I know what will take care of the rest, but that's a different post.

Little noticed in the budget proposal, which will have to go to the city council for approval, was an item that would eliminate a program that has been around for over 100 years: public child dentistry.

Remember when you had to present a note from your dentist, once a year, certifying that you had been seen and were under his care? Some kids couldn't afford private dentists, and since these notes were mandatory, the city stepped in and established dental clinics around town for indigent (and sometimes, just lazy) kids to be checked up.

Even in the depths of near-bankruptcy thirty years ago, this program was considered sacrosanct. We could close down firehouses, reduce police presence, cut back on garbage pickup (which used to be daily), find myriad ways of saving a buck or two, but childrens' teeth were deemed essential.

This is a good thing, by the way.

Now, not so much. I pondered this rather curious earmark in the budget proposal. One day it hit me: with a President Obama, children's health insurance would be mandatory, meaning that these dentists would essentially be working for the Federal government now. He was kicking the ball upstairs.

I filed this away: city councils are notoriously slow, partly around Christmas time and PARTICULARLY ahead of an election year, to start mucking around with unions.

Comes today, this item:

ALBANY - Faced with a worsening economy, Gov. Paterson wants to slash school aid, shrink health care funding and hike public college tuition, the Daily News has learned.

The governor, who will propose $2 billion in budget cuts Wednesday, also wants public employees to go without raises for at least a year, sources said.

About $1.4 billion of the cuts to this fiscal year's budget would come from education and health care.

"Aha," says I. That cut in children's health aid, roughly a half billion dollars, would mean severe cuts in the Federally mandated children's health care program, Child Health Plus.

CH+ is funded by Medicaid, as part of those block grants I told you about earlier. You might recall the ruckus in Congress last year over renewing S-CHIP. This is that program.

Essentially, Patterson is setting up to kick Bloomberg's ball one step further up the ladder, to the Federal Government, to the Obama administration.

See, neither of these draconian budget adjustments will take effect, should they even be passed, until next summer, 2009.

Plenty of time for Obama to write, introduce, and pass his version of national healthcare. Plenty of time for the Federal government to pick up the ball.

My suspicion is we'll be seeing this same scenario repeated across the nation, as mayors and governors collaborate to kick their mandated spending programs back up the ladder to the Federal government.

For policy wonks like me, these are salad days indeed!

A Dream Delayed, But Not Denied

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

Gooooooooooooooooooood MORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNING, AMERICA!

Bet you thought I was going to go with Martin Luther King's dream, didn't you? ;-) But his dream was the American dream. If a funny looking scrawny guy with big ass ears, a permanent tan and an unsual name can be elected President, well...we can put a man on the moon, right?

Many random thoughts are flashing through my mind right now, and when I get like this, I like to remind myself: just breathe.

Take a breath with me now. Be in this moment. This is history, and history of a good kind, not the kind you stare at in horror as it unfolds on the TV. This is the kind of history that you savor, because it's about you.

Yes, you. Personally. Whatever part you played, even if you opposed it, this history was built stone by stone, pebble by pebble, person by person.

Forget the tasks ahead. Forget what has come before, except as how those moments built to this moment.

Thank yous abound. Thank you, Frederick Douglass. Thank you, Rosa Parks. Thank you, Dr. King. Thank you, Ralph Bunche.

Thank you, Reverend Jackson. Thank you, Representatives Henry Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, John Lewis, Harold Ford, Senator Hiram Ravel and the embarassingly small number of other black legislators who have paved the way for this moment.

Hillary Clinton had 18 million cracks in her glass ceiling. President-elect Obama needed just 340 or so to break through.

Obama was not my first choice for President, but he was my best choice, and I was proud to vote for him. In 1992, and 1996, I felt like progressivism had stolen a couple of victories from the forces of regression, and in 2000, when Al Gore was humbled by a slack-jawed faux-cowboy, I suddenly felt adrift in my own nation. Shortly after that election, I filed for dual citizenship (hey, it was available for the first time, to be fair!).

I've never run from a fight, but I was embarassed to be an American, for the first time since Nixon.

In the bluest city in one of the bluest states in the nation, despite having 8 million people around me who were more less near the same page as I was, I felt alone.

But...Walked out this morning
Dont believe what I saw
A hundred billion bottles
Washed up on the shore
Seems I'm not alone in being alone
A hundred billion castaways
Looking for a home

Turnout in the election nationwide was 61.9%, the highest since the 1920s (when Prohibition was repealed, which means Obama is as attractive as a pina colada).

As proud as I was to vote for Senator Obama, I think when I walk into the voting booth in 2012, and cast my vote for the re-election of President Obama, it will hit me, the magnitude of what has just happened. The job's not over, not by a long shot. Inequality in this country won't be history until we have two African-Americans running for the top job opposing each other.

One Democrat. One Republican.

Oh, I forgot a thank you:

Heavenly Father, thank you for this moment, and please give President Obama the strength, the wisdom, and the courage to guide the ship of state through the turbulent waters ahead.

Amen.

God, I wanna cry!

UPDATE: The first thing that popped into my head this morning when I woke up and saw how big a landslide Obama had was, "Bush claimed political capital for eking out a victory in 2004, yet I bet Obama will be humble in the face of the change he has wrought."

UPDATE, PART DEUX: The wonk in me would like to point out that, not only did more people vote for Barack Obama than have voted for any other President in history, but that a higher percentage of people voted for Obama than for any other first term President since FDR in 1932.

Like I said, "Amen!"

Barack To The Future

(with apologies to Skippy for cribbing his phrase)

 

I went to vote today.

 

I got to my polling place at 7:15 AM. I like voting early, I like getting home at night and knowing I've fulfilled my obligations for the day.

 

Normally, I vote somewhere around 7:45. Usually it's me, the poll workers and maybe one or two poll watchers, depending on how tight the local races are. My district is reliably Democratic, more so as it has become something of a haven for artists.

 

I get to talk to the poll workers, usually ladies of a certain age in my neighborhood who make a few bucks by jotting down numbers on a card and a sheet of paper and wishing you well. Sometimes, I'll bring coffee because I know they've been there since 5 or so, and have a long dead stretch of time until 9 or 10PM.

 

Usually, I'm voter number four in my ED. In NYC, we divide our precincts up into Assembly Districts and then Election Districts. That means my ED is basically the four square blocks around my house. My immediate neighborhood is a mix of deeply blue collar homeowners, one or two who are pretty Republican, and a large dollop of single men and women, with a sprinkling of young families. Usually, this means I'm one of the first people up in the morning, nevermind out and voting.

 

My polling place is the local elementary school. On a good day, say when Clinton ran for re-election in 1996, there might be twenty people voting at any one time that early.

 

Today, I had heard rumours that the turnout was already gearing up to be spectacular. That's why I decided to get there early. I wanted to witness it.

 

In one ED, just one, there were some seventy five people lined up when I got there. Think about it: usually, twenty people across something like 20 EDs. Today, 75 in just one. I was fortunate. It wasn't mine. I did have to stand in line.

 

I was voter number 25 in my ED. Remember, I'm usually a half hour later and number four or so. Six times as many voters in three-fourths the time in my ED alone.

 

I get the sense there's a welling up in this nation. A repudiation of the evil attempts to take this nation back to a time when things were better...for white men.

 

I'm not sure what finally woke America up. Katrina? Perhaps. Iraq? Possibly. September 11 and the watered down accusations of the 9/11 Commission's report? Likely.

 

Somewhere along the line, Americans looked at government-by-Republican and said "enough". In drips and drabs, to be sure. We'll put up with a lot, and will be very forgiving, very...Christian.

 

There is, however, an undeniable momentum to the future, towards progress. We are, to coin a phrase, heading Barack to the Bridge to the 21st Century.

 

I can write this on election morning, November 2, with the results unknown, much less unannounced, because frankly, it doesn't really matter. Obama can win, Obama can lose, but this boulder will not endure Sisyphian efforts to roll it up the hill of reactionary thinking any longer, it will flatten those who choose to get in its way. If Obama somehow manages to lose this election-- no matter, in 2012, Hillary will prevail. There is no stopping this motion. The inertia is too great.

 

If Obama loses, it just means the right wing has thrown John McCain in front of the rock to momentarily bounce it around a bit, but McCain with a fully Democratic congress, and a GOP torn asunder, will be less of an impediment than many on the right would wish.

 

In 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004, I had hoped that America would finally see the sham being foisted upon them by the Republican party, shackling us to our jobs and to an indentured servitude of lifelong indebtedness while the government does nothing for the "little guy", the "Joe The Plumbers" of America. It worried me that, as we rode deeper and deeper into the abyss, as Republican leaders became less and less coy about the rapine of America's bounty, that Americans might wait until it's too late.

 

And indeed, they may have. It might be impossible to pull our great and wondrous nation back from the brink. But we have a chance. We have hope.

 

We have change. And I have never been prouder to be an American than I was to be voter number 25 this morning.

En Indorcemunt

I, ThumbPer da Qat, herebye indorce Barack Obama foah Presnident.

I fink hem be da bessest presnidet foah qats ebber! Hem maik shoah da qats at Hemingway House hab a place to lib foaheber.

And hem tax kuts meen dat qats all ober da werld will git moah fud from dey ownahs, cuz dem kin affoahd moah fud. Dass whut manee ob mah frens says!

So you shud bote foah Barack Obama for mai saik! We need moah pitchers liek diss......so we kin taik ober da werld!

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

A large part of me is thinking that Barack Obama is going to walk away from the election tomorrow with the largest mandate a President has had since Ronald Reagan.

If not more.

And part of me, the part of me that roots for the Mets, the Rangers, and yes, the Democrats, is worried. This is no time for complacency and if we are to be accused of anything, better we should be accused of running up the score than in losing graciously.

Al Gore lost graciously, thanks in large part to the spiteful vendetta of Ralph Nader. Did anyone want a repeat of the past eight years?

Not that I believe, in his heart of hearts, that John McCain and George W Bush are soulmates, cloned from the same dreck and flotsam that would see this country drift rather than take the reins of its own destiny. I don't. I believe McCain sincerely wants to do right by doing good.

I just don't think he has either the energy or the capacity anymore after selling his soul, one slice at a time, for the past eight years.

This was why, despite a bruising and at time bitter primary campaign in which my candidate lost, I was able to instantly support Barack Obama. The John McCain of 2000, the one able to speak his mind and be funny from time to time, the one I was able to disagree with without being disagreeable, him I might have had a harder time turning down.

Not this guy:

Not ever. How could I even respect a man who was so thoroughly humiliated, even to the extent of having his adopted baby's parentage questioned, by the very man he now had to kowtow to in order to get the nomination?

It is an ignominious epitaph for "The Maverick" that his political career should end in such a shabby way.

I say "end" because I assume at his age that he might even resign the Senate given the amount of animosity he has had to raise on both sides of the aisle in this campaign. He doesn't have the luxury of two or more re-election bids to re-establish his respect.

His chance came eight years ago, and he blew it. I suspect one reason he was practically given the nomination is that he deserved his shot.

That and the fact that ultimately, he and his campaign were about the strongest contenders against an Obama or Clinton ticket. I don't claim to understand the Republican mindset, but my guess is the thinking went something along the lines of "Well, we're going to get creamed this year, the economy will be in the tank, we need to send out the person who has the best shot of keeping the moderates on the sidelines."

He ran, I think, perhaps the best campaign he could, given the circumstances. You know the old saw about being given lemons and making lemonade.

McCain was given rotting lemons and a moosehunter and managed to make something not quite as nasty as moose piss. If that is damning with faint praise, it is nonetheless praise.

It troubles me, this other side of me, the one that obsesses about the possibilities of losing. I realize an awful lot of is was created by the media, who don't want to pronounce the race over until it is over, even if it is over, even if McCain himself believes it is over.

After all, what's going to draw voters to watch on Tuesday night? Not the spectacle of the first minority candidate to win the Presidency, no, of course not. It's all about "Does the old white guy stand a chance still?"

It's a sad state of affairs for our nation when even our Presidential elections have to be sold like a season ending cliffhanger.

Complacency, then, is our worst enemy. If everyone who said they would vote for Obama would simply get out and vote, then my fears would be allayed.

So that's job one for tomorrow: get out the vote. Take the day off and take five people to the polls to vote.

Job number two: remind people why you support Obama. You don't need talking points to do this. You don't need to know that his healthcare plan is better than McCain's or his tax cuts will provide three times the relief for you that McCain's will.

All you need to do is make it personal. So ask yourself, why ARE you supporting Obama? If you can't answer that question easily, then you need to think it through a bit more.

This is your vote, dammit, your birthright, and at the risk of losing a vote or two to McCain or worse, Nader, you ought not to waste it. Be sure you understand why you are voting the way you are voting, even if it's for some silly emotional reason. It doesn't matter. In our emotions are often the most compelling arguments made.

Number three: after you've voted, make sure to tell your friends you have (hell, Starbucks is giving away coffee for free to people who voted!), because while the five you take to the polls might vote, there are going to be huge numbers of people out there who will forget. Every reminder helps.

That means emails, Twitters, blogposts, phone calls, and casual run-intos in the street. Talk it up. It's important. This election will be historic, people might actually brag about their vote. Get a jump on the bandwagon!

Finally, once you have voted, and are in for the night, find a comfortable place to sit, and be sure to have plenty of relaxing music on hand. It's going to be nerve-wracking by design. The networks won't have the guts to call it for Obama the way Fox called it for Bush in 2000. It will last into the early morning and it will be tense.

I think the Pennsylvania results will be the place where the networks milk it for all its worth. Just my opinion, but if I was going to try to steal an election, that's where I'd put my resources, and the "tell" has been in for weeks now that McCain's focused on that area: Ohio and Pennsylvania.

I don't think ultimately it will matter, but I'm not willing to bet the next eight years on it.

Get out and vote.

McCain Wins One Constituency!

Unfortunately, it cannot vote....
Thank god for the Weekly World News, saved from the annals of history at the last minute, for providing one last laugh at no one's expense. I was starting to feel cheap about all the laughs I was having at McCain's expense...

The switch in endorsement is unusual, but there's some reason to suspect Alien succumbed to something other than reason: It would be wrong to speculate, but it would also be irresponsible not to!

---

Seriously, the McCain campaign is in dire straits, and appears to be destined to lay all their chips on one last "Hail Mary" pass: somehow wresting the state of Pennsylvania from a double digit Obama lead. The 21 electoral votes there would offset likely losses in other traditionally red states that McCain is struggling with (losing in most).

Even in a state noted for its Immaculate Receptions, it seems rather unlikely that McCain can make up a double digit deficit in five days, but we should prepare and call out our friends in western Pennsylvania in particular for a "get out the vote" effort.

Even tho some 40% of the Pennsylvania population lives within the Philadelphia television market and Obama is probably pulling most of his numbers from that section, estimates run as high as 60% in polls from there, he is still having trouble with blue collar voters in western PA.

This isn't about wanting to win and win big. This is about needing to win. We don't know what kind of tricks the GOP have up their sleeve, and frankly, I'd like to keep those up the sleeve if it's all the same to anyone. This point in history is too critical a moment to risk it all by resting on laurels.

We're better than they are. They voted for Bush twice. We did not, and we have to convince as many people as possible that Barack Obama has the solutions we need to get this country back on track.

I am aware that the taste of revenge is sweet, but it comes with a price and that price is a lack of belief by ourselves and others in the rightness of our victory.

Instead, let us frame Obama's win on Tuesday in terms of what is just and right, that life sometimes gives us an opportunity and we must seize it. This is our future, this is our goal, this is our country that we fight for.

Five days. Five short little days. Make the most of them, folks.

Redistributor Cap

Much has been said in the past week or so regarding Barack Obama's "spread the wealth" comments. Suddenly, he's been called a "redistributionist in chief".

Well, Senators, time to analyze just what "spread the wealth" is all about.

First, let's define some terms. Since the occasional right wing conservative scans this blog (I know, because I've read bits of my writing taken word for word in other places that I'd be ashamed to link to), I think its important they get some edumacation.

Capitalism, loosely defined, is the redistribution of wealth! Think about it: I have a little bit of wealth, and I have a need. You have a product or service that satisfies that need. I give you a little bit of my wealth in exchange for the satisfaction of my need.

What gets exchanged?" Wealth. Where does it go? From me, who had some you didn't have, to you, who now has accumulated more. It has been redistributed!

Nothing wrong with that. I don't know of many rational people who don't get that the free market in theory works pretty well.

In this example, wealth is nothing more than a pile of rocks accumulated from other people. Eventually, the rocks aggregate and make a pile so high, it's hard to toss more on top, and some end up trickling down.

What supply side economics does, in theory, is say, "Look, we'll pour more rocks on top of the highest piles, and some will tumble to the ground where the poor and middle class can scavenge for the pebbles and stone dust.

It's like the old joke about the priest who takes the money from the collection plate and tosses it in the air: whatever God can catch, he can keep.

What Obama proposes to do is simple: take the highest rocks off the highest piles, and give them to the people still with piles closer to the ground.

Not in the direct sense of actually giving money to the poor and middle class, but in allowing those classes (sadly, or maybe not so much, I'm not part of the classes who would benefit from Obama's tax cuts, but I'll get to that in a moment) to keep more of their stones.

So what happens then? Well, the core cost of living is the same no matter how much money you have: you need food, you need clothing (sadly), you need shelter. You need transportation. People with fewer rocks will spend a higher proportion of their rocks on these necessities. Whatever is left, one hopes, they will put in a bank but given our consumerist society, they will end up spending those rocks on comforts.

In other words, they'll get their rocks off.

But remember the first example I spoke about? I have a little bit of wealth and a need (or want) and I share my wealth with you in order to have you satisfy that hole in my life?

Look what happens now: those same rocks that the capitalists would have gotten directly from the government thru lower tax rates, rocks they likely would have off-shored in some Cayman Islands investment corporation, are now repurposed to have benefitted millions of Americans first, before getting back essentially to the same place they were going to end up in the first place! In the pockets of the rich!

In effect, the wealthy have lent out their wealth AND gotten a higher return from the American economy AND seen the American economy get stronger as a result, than they would have seen squirreling their rocks away on some island offshore.

Lest you think that this concept has been lost on Republicans, take a look at some of John McCain's proposals:

- Increased defense spending, including ramping up troop levels.

- a $5,000 tax credit for buying zero emission cars.

- $2 billion to "clean" coal technology.

- a $5,000 tax credit for health insurance to every American family.

None of these are anything except governmental solutions to free market problems. In other words, a redistribution of wealth.

To periphrase Animal Farm, "All rocks are equal, but some rocks are more equal than others".

(show Memeorandum the love, gang)

Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Third Party

The fear-mongering of this article aside, there's an important consideration for all progressives: to make sure that Barack Obama not only wins the Presidency, but that his coattails are long and enveloping:

Although two seats on this court are vacant, Bush nominee Peter Keisler has been denied even a committee vote for two years. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, he will almost certainly fill those two vacant seats, the seats of two older Clinton appointees who will retire, and most likely the seats of four older Reagan and George H.W. Bush appointees who may retire as well.

The net result is that the legal left will once again have a majority on the nation's most important regulatory court of appeals.

The balance will shift as well on almost all of the 12 other federal appeals courts. Nine of the 13 will probably swing to the left if Mr. Obama is elected (not counting the Ninth Circuit, which the left solidly controls today). Circuit majorities are likely at stake in this presidential election for the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeal. That includes the federal appeals courts for New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and virtually every other major center of finance in the country.

On the Supreme Court, six of the current nine justices will be 70 years old or older on January 20, 2009. There is a widespread expectation that the next president could make four appointments in just his first term, with maybe two more in a second term. Here too we are poised for heavy change.

Now, there's a movement afoot amongst progressives who have become frustrated with Obama's drift to the center to register their disapproval by voting for a third party candidate (likely, Ralph Nader) in "safe" states. The operating theory is, "to hold him accountable on issues of social, economic and environmental justice issues from the Left," as a friend has put it to me.

Bollocks.

First, it is a dangerous game to play, trying to determine which is a swing state and which is a "safe" state. While Obama *should* be safe in many states, remember that if Al Gore had won his home Congressional district, Ralph Nader wouldn't be the hated man he is right now. Safe is in retrospect. We can't afford to gamble with the long term future of this nation.

Second, let's assume that the "safe" scenario is, well, safe. Who is Obama going to listen to more: the people who stood by him loyally, or the folks who turned tail at the first opportunity to showboat and grandstand?

Loyalty begets loyalty in politics. If you truly want to sway opinion, the best place to do that is from within the party. Look at how the Christian Coalition has tied up the Republican party for nearly thirty years now. They didn't do it by walking, even after Ronald Reagan abandoned their cherished anti-abortion plank. Or Bush the elder. Or Bush the younger. Or the twelve year Republican-led Congress.

Say what you will about how fools suffer for their foolishness, the simple fact is, any candidate who runs as a Republican has to take into consideration the concerns and programs of that wing of the party. Period.

It's no different for Democrats. Just ask MoveOn.org.

What progressives really need to do is to fire up the same money machine that the Religious Right has. In politics more than in nearly any other field, money talks, and bullshit walks, and to abandon your vote to make a point is bullshit.

You want a progressive court? You want an end to this invasion? You want national health care? You want an alternative energy program?

Five words: put up or shut up.

When I first had to choose between Obama and Clinton, I had a difficult choice to make: as an old-style Liberal, I knew both candidates had solid progressive...dare I say it? Liberal?...credentials. In my mind, I questioned Obama's commitment to his principles. I didn't have that question with Clinton.

I have no doubt that Obama is sincere when he says he will commit ten billion dollars to developing alternative energy, that he wants the troops home from Iraq within 16 months, that a redeployment in Afghanistan is the only way to find and bring Osama bin Laden to justice. I support him on all of these. I don't think his nuancing the middle is out of character with what he's committed to.

You see, over the past few months, I've listened to what he has said, and came away convinced that he'll make a great President. Not a good one. Not an adequate one. A great one.

And given the uproar from the right wing of this nation, I suspect they know it too.

We cannot do anything less than make sure of a victory for Barack Obama next Tuesday. We cannot afford to make a mockery of this nation like we did eight years ago in allowing George W Bush to slip into the White House.

We cannot afford to let friends vote third party.

Can I Get An "AMEN", Brothers and Sisters????

One could only hope for this:

SHOULD Barack Obama win the presidency and Democrats take full control of Congress, next year will see a real legislative attempt to bring back the Fairness Doctrine - and to diminish conservatives' influence on broadcast radio, the one medium they dominate.

Yes, the Obama campaign said some months back that the candidate doesn't seek to re-impose this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan's FCC phased it out in the 1980s, required TV and radio broadcasters to give balanced airtime to opposing viewpoints or face steep fines or even loss of license. But most Democrats - including party elders Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Al Gore - strongly support the idea of mandating "fairness."

It's funny. I never really noticed how much I missed the disclaimer that my local television stations had to broadcast.

See, when some moron, say, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, would wrangle a moment of air time from the local television outlet, a) he was forced to keep his comments factual and polite, and b) the station was forced to "provide free air time for responsible spokespeople of opposing views."

In 1980, sensing an opening, the broadcast media, owned and operated in many instances by stridently right wing corporatists with an agenda (think Richard Mellon Scaife) prevailed upon Ronald Reagan's FCC to do away with the Fairness Doctrine, thus eliminating reasoned discourse presented for the public enlightenment.

The Fairness Doctrine was introduced in 1949 by the FCC, but until 1969 was usually applied on a case-by-case basis.

In 1969, journalist Fred Cook was torn to shreds on the radio program of the Rev. Billy James Hargis. Attacked personally for writing a book about Barry Goldwater, Cook argued before the Supreme Court that the FCC doctrine implied the right to free and equal time to respond to the scandalous (and nearly slanderous) charges levelled.

At first blush, it may seem that this was not a matter for the Courts to decide, free enterprise, First Amendment and all, but the SCOTUS took note of the fact that the airwaves were a public trust overseen by the Congress and therefore were actually public domain. As a public trust, there was no reason the government couldn't require such a doctrine and upheld Cook's complaint.

(The other thing the Fairness Doctrine required was programming "in the public interest" which is why your rock or hip-hop station broadcasts those bizarre programs really early on Sunday morning, like herbal medicine shows or community affairs programming.)

When the Reagan administration effectively eviscerated the Fairness Doctrine, it created Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Monica Crowley, Michael Savage and any number of right wing knuckleheads whose only claim to fame is being potty-mouthed and willing to be paid for it.

It also created Stephanie Miller, Air America Radio, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann.

I apply the Fairness Doctrine to my columns, you see... ;-)

This deregulation of the broadcast market, along with the consolidation of power amongst five mammoth content distributors, created the hugely right wing media goliath that we have today.

It is no secret the agenda that General Electric, Disney, and the others have established: entertain at the expense of informing. Don't tell the truth, tell a masking of truth. Put lipstick on a pig and trot it out as a beauty queen. Tout "American Idol" rather than America's failures in Iraq.

In short, cry havoc and unleash the dogs of war on the people of the United States. Beat us into submission until we no longer care, and never EVER let a responsible spokesperson with an opposing point of view have any air time whatsoever, except in a context where he can be edited and mocked into submission.

Mr. Anderson's article, as panicked as it is (after all, he works for Rupert Murdoch, who made his life's fortune on being a strident partisan and suppressing rational discussion), points out the enormous success lying on the radio has had.

It's about time it stopped. He cites the First Amendment, but as anyone with a speck of understanding can see, the First Amendment is under more savage attacks without the Fairness Doctrine than with.

What Anderson is more concerned with (and his article amply demonstrates) is comfort. The comfort of not having one's views challenged substantively. The comfort of being truly elitist because one is truly ignorant. The comfort of being, in short, an idiot.

So "amen" to the Fairness Doctrine, and long may she oversee the dialogue of this great nation.

Obama's Best. Day. Ever.

Wow! To read up on both Memeorandum and the Google News homepage, this must be Barack Obama's best day on the campaign trail!

Obama Over Fifty Percent In Florida - So The Daily Show focus group was NOT an outlier!

Debate Moderator "In The Tank" For Obama - The world according to Mickey Mouse, MALKIN, I mean: Black journalists can only now write about white people.

Nervous GOP Urge McCain To Attack - Apparently, they want the negative campaigning to get even stiffer. What else can McCain do? Claim Obama's a "tar baby"?

No Sale- Fudgie The Whale finds that NBC executive Jeffrey Zucker is behind an Obama Youth video...OOPS!, wrong Jeff Zucker! He can't keep his Jews straight, even on Rosh Hashana!

Poll: Obama Has 15 Point Lead In Pennsylvania - Maybe he bought the entire state guns and Bibles?

Springsteen, Joel To Headline Concert For Obama - OK, this one I might go see, just for shits and giggles.

New Voters Like Obama, But May Not Show up at Polls - I've had dates like that. Still, outpolling McCain 2 to 1 in new voters is a good sign for Obama.

Jay-Z concert in Miami for Obama - Not to be outdone, hip hop is representin'!

Palin To Debate As Edge Wanes Among Wal-Mart Moms - You can lead a redneck to a candidate, but you can't make them vote!

Palin refuses to name papers, mags she reads - In defense of Sarah, this is a step up for the United States. She can read.

Palin Continues to Question Human Role in Global Warming - Or perhaps she can't, after all

We Don't Need Another Hero

"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you"- Paul Simon

I read a fascinating essay this morning written by Paul Simon . It had originally been published upon the death of Joe Dimaggio:

A few years after "Mrs. Robinson" rose to No. 1 on the pop charts, I found myself dining at an Italian restaurant where DiMaggio was seated with a party of friends. I'd heard a rumor that he was upset with the song and had considered a lawsuit, so it was with some trepidation that I walked over and introduced myself as its composer. I needn't have worried: he was perfectly cordial and invited me to sit down, whereupon we immediately fell into conversation about the only subject we had in common.

"What I don't understand," he said, "is why you ask where I've gone. I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial, I'm a spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank and I haven't gone anywhere."

I said that I didn't mean the lines literally, that I thought of him as an American hero and that genuine heroes were in short supply. He accepted the explanation and thanked me. We shook hands and said good night.

Heroes are myths.

I don't mean that if heroes didn't exist, we'd have to invent them. No, I mean that we've invented them, and in so doing, have mythologized them as human beings. We've created larger than life, fictional characters out of flesh and blood people, people with foibles and flaws just like you and me.

In Dimaggio's day, it didn't matter that he was a focus-driven, cantakerous old coot who disliked most people and tried to live a solitary life in his silence. Indeed, part of his mythos is that he avoided the spotlight, this paragon of ability and dedication. His 56 game hitting streak is likely the purest of records in sport, falling so far outside the statistical norm for the sport, as Stephen Jay Gould observed.

In Dimaggio's day, all that mattered was the public image he had, his accomplishments on the field, and what few public appearances he made, carefully controlled by his handlers. In co-operation with the sporting press, of course. They understood that America needed heroes, that heroes sold papers back then.

We were a younger country back then. We're much older now. We don't need heroes.

Or so you would think. Part of what I believe the divide is between red staters and blue staters (meaning conservatives and Democrats) centers on heroes. Red staters are determined to have heroes, no matter how flawed they may be. The trouble is, they don't seek out their own heroes. Their heroes are manufactured for them.

A hero is someone you seek out, not for their sake, but for the sake of what they've accomplished. My heroes growing up, and please forgive the heavy sports theme of this post, were Joe Namath, Tom Seaver, Muhammad Ali. They were JFK and RFK and MLK, Jr.

And yes, there was Jesus and Moses and Ghandhi, too.

Could the American hockey gold medal have meant half as much if we had won in 1976 at Innsbruck or 1984 at Sarajevo? We needed the mythology, the false construct of defeating our sworn enemy on our own soil. People conveniently forget that victory took place under the Carter administration, so mythified that victory has become. People believe Reagan was already in office!

Somewhere along the way, we lost the thread of heroes. Look around you now, all you see are sympathetic eyes, searching for someone, ANYONE, to point the way ahead, to lead by example.

It is not any wonder, in my view, that our heroes today are fictional characters. Having stripped away the veneer of polite society from our news coverage, allowing our politicians and public figures to become not just clay-footed but clay-legged, -armed, and -chested, we have a need to search out those who we can look to in admiration, without reservation.

Silly Americans.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the release of movies like Star Wars, or the Indiana Jones films, or Rocky or Rambo or The Terminator, or any countless action/adventure movies came at a time when the scales of our eyes were being stripped away by partisan politics determined not to speak for the good of the nation, but for the bad of the politician it faced.

We look for purity, and find it wanting. Even now, the right looks to Sarah Palin as a beacon of "old fashioned values," conveniently forgetting that old fashioned values would have had her sitting in her kitchen preparing dinner instead of running a city into a massive debt and a state for less than two years, or would have her daughter exiled from her home town while she dropped a litter.
And conveniently ignoring that she's about as corrupt a politician as they come.

Similarly, the Democrats looked to Barack Obama for the same reasons: fresh-faced, principled stands, filled with ideas and vinegar.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that his hometown of Chicago is responsible for an awful lot of the corrupt ways that have infested our polity, and that it's impossible for a politician to come out of that untainted.

Harry Truman might have pulled it off, coming out of Kansas City Pendergast machine, but I doubt it. I seriously doubt that this unassuming man, with little personal charisma and charm and certainly nowhere near either of those qualities as Barack Obama has, was suddenly knighted as untouchably pure.

It appears that Americans are so in need of heroes, real-life heroes, that we'll create them for ourselves.

John McCain? Hero. John Kerry? Hero, but later villified for his heroism.

Sarah Palin? Hero. Hillary Clinton? Hero, but later villified for her heroism.

We just haven't gotten around to villifying McCain/Palin, but we're working on it!

And as I posted below, Barack Obama, a man who genuinely worked his way up the ladder on his own merits, hero, but villified for his heroism. But McCain/Palin? Hero.

We just haven't gotten around to villifying McCain/Palin, but we're working on it!

And we will. Win, lose or draw, McCain's accomplishments will be viewed thru the eyes now of the people who hate him the most, as will Palin's, as will Obama's, as will, eventually, Biden, altho I don't hear many people championing Biden as a hero.

Despite the fact that, indeed, he's picked himself up from tragedy and accomplished much in his life. He might actually BE a hero.

Fear Not, For I Bring You Tidings Of Great Joy

OK, it's time to cowboy up for the Obama campaign. Fortunately, I think they can do this fairly easily:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain has gained huge support and now leads Democrat Barack Obama among white women voters since naming Sarah Palin as his running mate, according to a survey published on Tuesday.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll found that much of McCain's surge in the polls since the Republican National Convention is attributable to the shift in support among white women.

First, we have to take into consideration that Sarah Palin, the supposed factor here, is a blank slate. She makes Barack Obama look like a seasoned, vetted professional politician.

Once women peer a little more closely into her positions, and especially, hear her speak about issues like abortion, like health care, like raising kids, this number will whittle down quickly.

Right now, she's a woman and that's got women all across the nation paying attention. It's also partly why Palin has been secluded and incommunicado.

Palin will likely keep a percentage of women voters, to be sure. She's not the soccer mom McCain was hoping for, but there's an element of citizenry that thinks she'd make a good vice president because of her stance on the issues, who had never heard of her. They will stick.

And of course, there's no accounting for the lunatic fringe of PUMAs who will support anybody but Barack.

Too, Palin hasn't helped McCain where it counts: electoral votes. She may even have hampered him.

The Palin bounce (or as Skippy likes to call it, the Dead Caribou Bounce), as I indicated yesterday, was less than stellar and actually falls well within the average bounce a candidate can expect to receive after a convention, McCain receiving an 8 point boost. Even Fox had to be depressed!

I anticipate that, once September 11 is past and electioneering begins in earnest, Obama will slowly begin to build momentum, and pick back up some of these women. For now, he's kept Hillary Clinton on the sidelines, again, I suspect because of the 9/11 commemoration. He's giving a "window of purity" as Don Imus used to call the minutes leading up to having a religious leader appear on his program.

And then watch her preach!

(Mo' Memeo!)

The MacGuffin

In order to flesh out a thriller he was making, Alfred Hitchcock employed what he called a "macguffin". A pointless, useless piece that advanced the narrative but in the end had little to nothing to do with the actual movie.

The classic example? The maltese falcon from the eponymous movie, where the real mystery is a) who killed Sam Spade's partner and b) will Spade and Brigid fall in love and what will Spade do to keep her out of jail? The bird is a distraction.

Come the MacGuffin for the 2008 election: Sarah Palin.

Undoubtedly, it was Palin's selection, along with her speech at the RNC, that catapulted McCain from also-ran into a temporary front runner status.

Said status will likely be crowed about by right wingers until, well, McCain crashed back to earth, which will likely happen a bit after this week's commemoration of Bush's greatest failure.

It will be interesting to see how Barack Obama ties Bush into 9/11. Clearly, he can't do it ON 9/11, but he can remind people about the August 6th PDB and the failure of "imagination" taht Condi Rice spoke of.

Now, back to the MacGuffin: Palin's boomlet is nothing more than that. A skyrocket that has burst and dazzled, but ultimately will fizzle out into burnt embers and the stale smell of gunpowder. Like Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland, California, there is no "there" there.

The pitfalls of trotting out your one trick pony is, indeed, the one trick becomes wearing and fast. You can't accuse Palin of fresh ideas, since she trots out the same tired bromides that Republicans have foisted for thirty years and failed with for the past eight.

So if it seems that it's no longer "McCain/Palin '08," it's because the Republicans are in a position where they have to milk her for all she's worth right now, in the hopes they can extend a lead going into October, when the surprises start to come down. After all, she's wholly responsible for this bounce, particularly amongst men.

It won't work. Palin doesn't have the gravitas to carry the election on her own, she can't bear her boobs on TV, and McCain's own appeal has drawn a blank among the electorate. All it will truly take to bury Palin in this election cycle is the revelation that she is nothing but "politics as usual" despite her reformer act.

Obama needs to focus on Bush, to draw the extension that McCain will just be a third term, and hammer away at that theme. This same poll indicated that fully 66% of voters are concerned that the Republican ticket will merely extend the Bush agenda another four years. That's an easy swing of 10% back to Obama as the fall unfolds, as we can assume that all 46% of his support in the polls feel this way.

Yea, he's four points behind, but that was to be expected after the RNC and in fact, I'm surprised the bounce was not higher.

In 2000, for example, heading into the DNC, Bush held an overwhelming 55-39 lead over Gore. After the DNC, Gore pulled even, 47-47. McCain swapped just five and a half points.

So while it's not great news for Obama at this early stage, it's not bad news. Fret not, liberals. We will win this thing yet.

UPDATE: The stoopid! It burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrns!

(I'm feeling the love from Memeorandum. Go show them some more.)

How McCain Could Win

The news of Sarah Palin's, um, colorful family life has certainly made liberals scratch their heads, wondering how John McCain could possibly hope to win the election in November.

Granted, it seems like, one right after the other, story upon story is released that puts a major damper on the enthusiasm you might expect the Republicans to have regarding a breakthrough nominee.

While this is like a candy store full of goodies for Democrats, The Republicans do not appear to be too nonplussed by it all. Brave front? Perhaps.

I thought I'd sit down and do some political calculations in my head and see if, indeed, John McCain could still win the election. Now, I make no allowance here for extraordinary events, like an October surprise in either the Rezko trial or in the Alaskan investigation regarding whether Palin was illegally overzealous in pursuing the firing of her former brother-in-law, State Trooper Michael Wooten. This analysis is based on the status quo and is strictly an exercise in numbers, not strategy.

The electorate can be divided pretty neatly into three groups: 40% Republicans and conservatives, 40% liberals and Democrats, and 20% unsure/undecided/truly independent.

The middle sixty percent is where elections are battled, with each side almost conceding at least a third to the other (i.e. each side can count on 40% of the vote, plus).

Even in the worst defeat in electoral history, 1984's re-election of Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale pulled in the bare minimum 40% of the popular vote. I don't think McCain is in any danger of underwhelming that many people.

So they each start with at least 40% in the bank, meaning the middle twenty is the battleground. Indeed, Obama actually started a bit behind after the primary season, given the split in the party, since healed, between Clinton voters and Obombers.

Current polling suggests that Barack Obama should end the week somewhere north of 50% of likely voters. He did get a bit of a bounce coming out of Denver, but the real bounce occured shortly after Palin's revelations (pun intended) became news.

It is not often that a candidate gets a bounce during the other guy's convention! This despite the fact that Obama has stayed rather conspicuously in the background, as candidates traditionally do, coming forward only to deny that his campaign was behind the leak of the Palin unauthorized biographical information and to urge supporters to stay out of the Palins' private lives.

Unlike McCain, who tried hard to make the news daily during the Denver convention. But I digress.

It seems unlikely that McCain can win the election, to be sure, but here's how it could break for him.

All he really needs to do is keep it close until October, I think. He'll get a bounce (I'm guessing about three points) by Friday, much of which is coming from the seven or eight percent still undecided, and a few people shifting from Obama.

Scaring people, which is tonight's theme, can create irrational decision making.

So let's say Obama leads on Friday, 49-46. McCain cannot afford to lose much more ground. Period.

In addition to this, he will have to consider the electoral vote calculation. Pennsylvania is in play, thanks to Obama's hurtful comments regarding guns and religion. Biden helps him a little there, but possibly not enough. Ohio, too, is in play but that was a given anyway.

Rasmussen Reports, hardly an unbiased source, although they at least make a stab at reality, indicates that the electoral college tally right now stands at McCain 183, Obama 193, with 162 up for grabs or at least leaning.

These further break down this way:

Safe Republican 62

Likely Republican 121

Leans Republican 64

Toss-Up 27

Leans Democrat 71

Likely Democrat 50

Safe Democrat 143

Or 264 Obama, 247 McCain, with Obama needing just 5 more votes.

The states considered toss ups are Virginia (13 votes), Colorado (9), and Nevada (5), all carried by Bush in 2004. Hillary Clinton took Nevada surprisingly easily. Obama did extremely well against Clinton in Colorado and Virginia, both of which have skewed more Democratic over the past two election cycles.

That bodes well for Obama, but here's the mix: in the "Leans Democrat" are the following states: Iowa (7), Michigan (17), New Hampshire (4), New Mexico (5), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Wisconsin (10).

Of those seven states in 2004, Bush carried in Iowa (surprisingly, given that this state put Obama on the map) and New Mexico. Of the states that currently lean Republican-- Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Montana, Maryland Montana, and North Dakota-- Kerry carried none.

In other words, allowing for Iowa and New Mexico, the current calculus is more like Obama 252, McCain 259. This is, um, not good news. McCain has gained on Obama since the Democratic convention in Iowa, although the New Mexico lead for Obama remains solid. So let's back out New Mexico's five votes. Obama 257, McCain 254.

That's just too damned close to call this for Obama!

If McCain can hold onto the states currently at least leaning his way, and recapture Iowa, then the election will basically come down to Virginia. I suspect Nevada is less in play than pollsters think (again, that "guns" thing comes into play). Obama does well in the urban and college towns, but if you look at the primary map, the counties that Clinton took west of the Shenandoah are largely Republican.

This is not good news for Obama. Again, guns and religion. Working class folks. Obama will have to make the case over the next months that he's not the scary liberal black man that the Republicans will paint him as, that he's an average American, at least as average as Sarah Palin, with an interesting life story and a rugged upbringing. He has to show he learned something, some common sense.

If he can do that, he will win the election, but it will not be the landslide many are predicting.

UPDATE: I feel icky, violated: Hugh Hugetits linked to this post.

Any Questions?

There. I hope the Obombers choke on their bile and swallow an huge helping of crow...

In a fiery call to arms last night, Hillary Clinton tried to clear up the one thing that hadn't been clear before: Her level of enthusiasm for making Barack Obama president.

In past speeches, she has offered sincere endorsements of Obama, but then gone on to extol the accomplishments of her own campaign. This time, perhaps sensing a greater urgency, she offered repeated appeals on Obama's behalf.

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?" she asked, in what seemed like a question directed at the roughly 30 percent of her supporters who are resisting Obama, according to polls. "Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?"

She linked the historic moment of her campaign, the first by a women to make a serious run at the nomination of a major political party, to the other historic moment that won out, the mealymouthed whining of a bunch of progressives who hate her and, taking great pride in their misogyny, backed a man whose character has shown that he will struggle in the general election, making what should have been a Democratic, any Democrat, coronation into a horse race.

 

She even tore a rhetorical page out of Obama's playbook and took great pains to praise John McCain, just before launching into the most vicious attack on McCain during the convention. Now we know part of the deal struck between the two candidates.

 

Pundits will spin this speech a million different ways, and find nuances in phrasing and applause lines. The simple truth is, Senator Clinton looked her constituency right in the eye and in plain terms told them they need to vote for Obama for President.

 

And that cannot be spun in any other fashion by any rabid nutcase lefty who still believes the Clintons are only out for themselves.

 

Now...let's go kick the wheelchair out from under that old guy from Arizona!

What's Old Is News Again

Who would have thunk that, twenty years later, Eddie Murphy would be as relevant as he was in 1984?:

Plot to Kill Obama: Shoot From High Vantage Point

Denver's U.S. attorney is expected to speak on Tuesday afternoon about the arrests of four people suspected in a possible plot to shoot Barack Obama at his Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver. All are being held on either drug or weapons charges.

One of those suspects spoke exclusively to CBS4 investigative reporter Brian Maass from inside the Denver City Jail late Monday night and said his friends had discussed killing Obama.

"So your friends were saying threatening things about Obama?" Maass asked.

"Yeah," Nathan Johnson replied.

"It sounded like they didn't want him to be president?"

"Yeah," Johnson said.

Maass reported earlier Monday that one of the suspects told authorities they were "going to shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a ... rifle ... sighted at 750 yards."

Presumably, this could really only happen at Invesco Field during the acceptance speech. Traditionally, the presumptive nominee doesn't even appear near the convention until the night of his actual nomination and then only briefly.

Now, I'm not sure what kind of sniper rifle one might need while, say, hunting squirrels or defending your acre of property from intruders, but it seems to me this is likely overkill as a legitimate weapon under the spirit of the Second Amendment, even if the SCOTUS recently made the ridiculous ruling that the Second Amendment applies to individual gun ownership rights as opposed to membership in a militia.

And yet, this rifle with a range of nearly half a mile and more was available legally to a nutcase. There's something wrong with this nation. Particularly when we can't win all the frikkin' shooting medals at the Olympics!

It's not like the rifle is the only assault Obama has to beware at the convention, either. The PUMAs are out in force, it seems:

As frustrated Democrats converged on Denver yesterday, some began chanting "caucus fraud," while others shouted the word "sweetie," a reference to the time Obama called a female reporter by the same name. One Clinton supporter who spoke to ABC News said Obama couldn't be trusted. Another said, "He's shifty and untrustworthy." It was assuredly not the kind of message Obama and his diligently image-conscious team were counting on at the Democratic National Convention.

Clinton will have to give a very strong warning in her speech tonight about uniting behind Obama, but even then, there are hurt feelings on all sides, and while this is not a rift that cannot heal, it will take time.

Ironically, the longer the primary season ran and passions grew deeper, the shorter the healing process would be. My guess is sometime in the Spring of 2009, Obama will have to make a very public genuflection towards Hillary's supporters, perhaps by championing a signal piece of legislation.

Assuming he wins, of course. If he doesn't, then the Democratic party will destroy itself from within, backbiting and fingerpointing.

See, when Kerry lost the 2004 election, you could very easily finger the culprit: the candidate himself. That's not going to be quite so easy this time. Obama is not running against a failed incumbent, but a fairly well-liked and respected Senator. Obombers will blame Clinton, foolishly, for his loss, for dragging the campaign out, for exposing Obama's flaws.

And Clintonistas will merely point out that, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and let the woman finish cooking. Should Obama lose, he and the people who supported him so vociferously calling for Hillary's ouster from the campaign, will be made to pay heavy prices.

Harry Reid might find himself out of the job as Senate Majority Leader (indeed, it won't surprise me to find out part of Hillary's deal with Obama involves Reid's ouster), replaced by Hillary Clinton.

Of course, this entire scenario goes by the board if Obama wins, and the best way for Obama to win is for Hillary to forcefully make the case that her delegates should not only vote for Obama (maybe on the second ballot), but then shift their support fully to him.

Right now, Hillary supporters have gone to Obama by about 70-30. By making the case for an Obama presidency, Clinton will have tilted that further, and make the issue non-existent except in the darker deeper recesses of the paranoid fringe.

She should do it, too, and I expect she will. If her eight years as senator have taught her anything, there are some forces even a Clinton cannot hold back.

(much love to Memeorandum for the hat tip)

The Convention

You would think a breath of fresh air might accompany the opening gavel of the most historic convention in American history, the Democratic National Convention To Select The Scary Black Man and His Sidekick, Blabbermouth.

 

You'd think, and you'd be wrong:

As Democrats arrived here Sunday for a convention intended to promote party unity, mistrust and resentments continued to boil among top associates of presumptive nominee Barack Obama and his defeated rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

One flashpoint is the assigned speech topic for former president Bill Clinton, who is scheduled to speak Wednesday night, when the convention theme is "Securing America's Future." The night's speakers will argue that Obama would be a more effective commander in chief than his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

The former president is disappointed, associates said, because he is eager to speak about the economy and more broadly about Democratic ideas — emphasizing the contrast between the Bush years and his own record in the 1990s.

This is an especially sore point for Bill Clinton, people close to him say, because among many grievances he has about the campaign Obama waged against his wife is a belief that the candidate poor-mouthed the political and policy successes of his two terms.

Now, it occurs to the diplomat and politician in me, as well as should occur to Clinton, that securing America's future means a return to sound fiscal policies, the ones of the Clinton administration, the ones that secured the single greatest economic boom in the history of mankind (not to make too big a deal of it).

 

Indeed, I would imagine that this story is an Obomber or a PUMA plant, or possibly a Rove plant, designed to create a tempest where none exists. True, Obama dissed, mightily, Clinton's legacy, and he will pay for that at some point down the road, but make no mistake about it: when that payback comes, it will not be in the gaudy lights of Denver, but in the smoke-filled backrooms of the Senate.

 

There's too much at stake here, and not enough wiggle room to manuever.

 

Ironically, had Obama chosen Hillary as his Vice Presidential candidate, an awful lot of this rumour would have been emasculated from the get-go. Choosing Biden was not precisely stimulating news (his hair plugs get more coverage), and it's hard to rally around a man who's claim to fame is being trounced twice running for the top job.

 

Hillary would have given a large bounce immediately to the polls, but the open-ended questions regarding her candidacy would have likely given some of that advantage back, too. However, a true change agent, someone interested in showing a new political face to the world, would have chosen her, if for no other reason than to show that bygones truly were bygones and he was prepared to heal the electorate.

 

Of course, the McCain campaign has jumped ugly already on the choice of Biden. It is interesting that they picked up on this theme. No doubt the choice of Hillary as either nominee or vice presidential pick would have generated a completely different ad, the clear inference here being that Hillary voters should cross parties, remembering their Reagan Democratic roots while forgetting that the Republican party abandoned them in favor of the monied class.

 

But I digress...

 

More interesting to me this go-round will be Hillary's keynote address to the Convention, scheduled for Tuesday night.

 

She's stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, she has to give full-throated, unrelenting support to Obama's candidacy (and she's been very very good doing that these past weeks), on the other, she has some wiggle room now that it has been revealed that she was never even in consideration for the Veep nod.

 

Obama strikes me as the kind of kid who you really hated to see win, because he'd get all "smack talk" in your face, and you really just wanted to beat his scrawny little ass the next go-round, which is why I think we may see a Hillary campaign in 2012 if Obama falters in the least (and he will). It will be interesting to see if Hillary leaves the door open even a crack tomorrow night. In my mind, she shouldn't, but the urge to keep the uncertainty flowing for four years will be immense, the old "lead me not into temptation, I'd rather find it myself" saw comes into play here.

 

You know, just when I was looking forward to finally falling asleep at a decent hour after the Olympics, they go and throw this at me...

(h/t Memeorandum for showing da love)

The Dude A-Biden

Hm. An interesting, if obvious, choice of Vice Presidential running mate for Barack Obama is Joe Biden, Senator from Delaware. He brings experience, intelligence, and foreign affairs knowledge out the wazoo.

Along with a lot of baggage.

I think it's somewhat ironic that Biden was Obama's choice, because the one big flaw he has, running his mouth off, is what got Obama noticed nationally in the first place. Remember this juicy little tidbit?

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," Biden said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Funny how no one really played the race card there, but the second the Big Dog mentioned "fairy tales" in the same breath as "Obama campaign, eevn though he was talking about Obama claiming to be anitwar, "RACIST! RACIST CRACKER!" came rolling down the hills like flaming barrels of pitch!

Now, Biden has some strategic significance. Like Hillary Clinton, Biden has ties to the working class areas of Pennsylvania, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, and is the senior senator from neighboring Delaware. Too, at age 65, presumably after 8 years of Obama, Biden would be too old to run for President, thus limiting his danger to the Obama agenda.

And clearing a path to the Presidency for Hillary, should she decide to run at that time. Biden would also lubricate what will likely be a contentious first term in the Democratic Senate.

See, just because Obama is President doesn't mean he'll automatically get his way. First, you have the Clinton faction who would love nothing but to pick off opportunities to injure Obama's legacy, but also, there are likely a significant number of senior Senators who view Obama's rapid rise in politics as something to take down a peg (Biden was probably one of them, so this removes one large obstacle in the same motion).

All in all, this is more of a win for Obama than a loss. There are several issues confronting Biden (after all, if he were perfect, it would be "Biden/Obama '08") most notably his ego and his uncontrollable mouth.

Those could hurt Obama, big time. But, Biden might be a good soldier. He carried a lot of water for Bill Clinton during those years.

I look forward to this ticket.

Getting All "Dr. Phil" On Barry

This article raises some interesting issues, stuff that's bothered me about Barack Obama since he started stirring the pot during the primaries:

It's not panic time - yet - but some Democrats watching Barack Obama say his campaign should have gotten a wake-up call this week, not only from his appearance with John McCain at the Saddleback Church but from a major poll suggesting he no longer leads his GOP opponent.

At the Saddleback forum with Pastor Rick Warren on Saturday in Orange County, the Republican presidential candidate delivered on-the-money messages and answers so effective they were "scary to me," said George Lakoff, a renowned author and UC Berkeley linguistics professor who has studied how the human brain absorbs and processes messages.

[...]By contrast, Obama was "overconfident ... and certainly not prepared" before the evangelical audience with definitive answers to clearly explain to voters his world view, values and vision, Lakoff said.

Now, admittedly, you could view the Saddleback forum as an exhibition game ahead of Opening Day. It was not that formal a debate setting, the questions were designed to be fairly easy, which means they involved more philosophy than intellect.

The problem Obama will face in the general election is he speaks like a college professor, which works well with his base, but he does not speak like a church minister, which works better with the audience he's looking to attract now.

Lakoff's right and he's wrong: Obama's message is not that much more different than Bill Clinton's, both have spoken about personal and shared responsibilities, but Clinton could deliver it in warm tones and words ordinary people use, and sentences that don't sound like they were lifted from the pages of a self-help book ("You are the change you seek"). That's a fine philosophical passage (Gandhi said it) but it's a tin-eared man who would dare say that in his stump speech and not think he was coming off messianic.

The difficult task ahead for Obama is now redefining himself in the eyes of Americans. While this debate seemed unimportant, particularly to those of us still licking our wounds from the primary campaign and were paying close attention, this debate, as moderated by one of the most popular televangelists in America, was the first time Barack Obama was seen by large numbers of people who were, to say the least, confused about who he was, based on the media.

He is either a shining haloed messiah to the left or a Muslim-born and raised black man who associates with known terrorists, with a funny sounding name to the right. People square in the middle, the lion's share of undecided voters, 13% in the recent Zogby poll the SFGate article cites,half of whom voted for Hillary, could be swayed either way, and this is where Obama's "gun & religion clinging white folks" comments have come back to haunt him.

He has to reintroduce himself. Opening day is next week.