Numbers

While it’s always good to take these things with a grain of salt, this is an interesting article on recent polling information on all three candidates.

 It anything, it would seem to suggest that Obama is more resiliant than most seemed to think.

Democrats are stupid.

I think I got as perhaps as mad as I’ve ever gotten with regards to the Democratic primary today.  I was listening to talk radio (probably a bad move right there to begin with) and the host (sitting in for someone, I believe) asked for Clinton supporters to call in and tell him what they thought of Obama, and vice versa.

What followed was a litany of morons from both sides saying the stupidest things I’d ever heard.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there are self-proclaimed Democrats out there who have stated that if their candidate of choice doesn’t win the nomination they will either vote for McCain or not vote at all.

Note that I said “self-proclaimed Democrats.”  I know at least four people who have said they’ll vote for Obama if he gets the nomination or McCain if Clinton gets the nomination.  Those four people are conservatives.  If they dont’t get the nominee of their choice, they’re going to vote along party lines, which I understand; that makes sense to me (although still opens a whole can of worms).

But there are actually Democrats who will vote for McCain (or not vote at all, which is almost the same thing) if their cadidate doesn’t get the nomination??  WTF??

Allow me to throw out a few words, some with other words: abortion, Iraq, the economy, civil rights, stem cell research, free trade, foreign policy, education, the separation of church and state, and I could go on!

 What do those things have in common?  They’re all KEY issues that — gasp! — separate Democrats and Republicans!  Now I know that there are some pro-choice Republicans out there just as I know there are some hawkish Deomcrats, but for the most part there are a range of issues that John McCain stands on the polar opposite of when compared to BOTH Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

So let me get this straight, you stupid, stupid Democrats: if your candidate of choice doesn’t win the nomination, you will vote for a candidate who believes the exact opposite of what your candidate believes???

Oh, and guess what?  NOT voting is just as bad.  NOT voting hands the election to the other side.

Dear Democrats,

Grow the fuck up.

 xoxo

It’s true: It’s false.

There are lots of things I’d like to get to, like the Richardson endorsement, Tracy Morgan’s bit on SNL last week (which was, in my opinion, actually worse than Tina Fey’s from two weeks ealier), and various odds and ends.  But this story just won’t let me go.

Above is the video of Hillary Clinton’s arrival to Bosnia (and a news conference from this week).  You know, that’s the trip where the canceled the greeting ceremony because they were running from sniper fire (and she brought a 16 year old Chelsea with her!).  That’s according to Hillary herself, of course.

I’ll keep it simple and point you towards a great article by RJ Eskow over at the Huffington Post with this key passage at the end:

I continue to be astonished at the willingness of Clinton supporters to elide, obfuscate, tolerate, condone, and defend behavior from their candidate that would provoke their outrage if it came from anyone else.

I don’t think blantant lies are going to win over the super delegates.  The people of Pennsylvania, maybe, but let’s hold out hope there.

Embellishment

With an assist from the Washington Post, I present a quote from a speech that Hillary Clinton gave this past Monday:

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

That piciture above would, in fact, be the greeting ceremony she had to skip.  Aside from the photo verification, the Post points out that there wasn’t a single article written about the First Lady coming under sniper fire at the time.  That’s generally something the media covers, First Lady’s taking fire.

When does it cease to be embellishment and become flat out lying?

Dog Fight?

Yes, that’s right, I went three whole days without a new blog.  Had I known that Cedars Sinai allowed for laptops in their waiting rooms, I probably would have put up a half dozen new entries on Tuesday.

 Anyway, back to it.

I’m not going to touch on Obama’s speech because I think there’s been enough commentary elsewhere, and I think it’s generally all along the same lines.  I will say that I hope it makes people realize just what I like about him so much, although I feel like I’ve expressed my reasons well before now.

This is an article worth discussing.

In it, Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen point out the cold, hard reality of the Democratic primary: Clinton can’t win.  No, seriously, she can’t (to be fair, neither can Obama, since he can’t get the total number of pledged delegates need to guarantee the nomination, but he can’t fall behind).  She can’t catch Obama on delegates and her only hope lies in getting more of the popular vote and using that to make a case for the super delegates…the problem there being that her odds of catching and passing Obama in the popular vote are slim to none.

So why is she still running?  Better yet, why is she still running and complimenting McCain in an effort to attack Obama?  I mean, not only is she forcing Obama to stay in a race against her which prevents him from focusing all of his attention on McCain, she’s actually HELPING McCain!

Seriously, people, that’s just…that’s just piss poor.

What I find particularly interesting is a point made by Chuck Todd on MSNBC today: anyone other than a Clinton would have been laughed out of the race by this point.  Okay, maybe not “laughed” out, but surely dismissed.  And yet, as the article I linked to points out, the media acts like it’s a dog fight.  But that’s just not true.

I’ve been on board with “the media likes Obama better” bit.  Because I think they do.  But the simple fact that Hillary is being portrayed as having a legitimate shot at winning refutes any claims that the media is hurting her.  On the contray, they’re the only thing holding up the facade that is a competitive race.

Race

Tomorrow morning (I’m not sure when or if it will be televised), Obama will be giving a speech in Philadelphia entitled “Race, Politics, and Unifying Our Country.”  If there were any doubts about Obama being one of the foremost politicians of this or any generation, the amount of pre-press his speech has gotten should put those to rest.  It’s equal parts desire to see him spin his way out of the maelstrom he’s found himself in recently and a desire to hear his thoughts on the issue at hand.

But what will he say?

Back when Obama first entered the race, there was some debate as to whether or not he was “black enough.”  This was because of his background, being the child of an African man and a white woman (I find it interesting that one is defined by his nationality and the other by her skin color, but that’s neither here nor there).  At the time, I made the claim that Obama’s background was a perfect storm.  Clearly, he’s suffered the same prejudices that all people of color have — people who see his skin color aren’t going to differentate because his mom was white or his dad African.  At the same time, Obama was removed from any environment that might have subconsciously convinced him that he was a second class citizen.  He has never viewed a ceiling in what he could accomplish, real or otherwise.  Because many minorities in this country are raised believing that they can only do so much in this country and that’s a hard mentality to break.

I think that’s what Obama should talk about and I think he should tie it directly into Jeremiah Wright’s comments.  He’s already made comments that Wright’s (and Ferarro’s) controversial speeches are the result of an older generation, one that is (justifiably) wary of the ground that someone like Obama is treading on.  More to the point, Wright is using an old lexicon; he’s stuck in the language of the past.

Obama needs to address this, not just to clear the air of Wright’s comments, but to set the tone for his campaign in the months to come.  He needs to make it clear that his is a campaign and a presidency whose time has come.  He needs to make it very clear that the social paradigm in this country has changed and that it must change even more.

He needs to make the majority realize that he doesn’t want to overthrow them and that he just wants Americans to be Americans.  He needs to make the minority realize that he understands their pains and that he’s going to make things better through positivity — and that the old negativity, on both sides, is no longer welcome.

It’s going to be a big speech, but it could turn the election on its ear.

Tomorrow’s a big day.

Michigan and Florida

So Florida isn’t going to vote again.

This more or less guarantees another few months of whining from the Clinton campaign.  It could be one of the more ridiculous stances they’ve taken.  The vote didn’t count, plain and simple.  That was a decision made before the primaries and it was agreed upon by the DNC.  The idea of complaining about it now — when it suits her — is just so sad.

Clearly, playing by the rules will actually benefit Obama in this instance.

Michigan is a bit more complicated.

The proposal for the Michigan re-vote would only allow registered Democrats to participate.  That would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that many Democrats registered as Republicans so that they could vote in a meaningful primary earlier in the year.  This means that a decent number of Democrats are going to be locked out of the primary process — and wasn’t the point of a re-vote to give those people a voice?

The Obama campaign has a problem with this, as well they should.  The Clinton campaign has no problems with it and is accusing the Obama campaign of getting in the way of democracy, or some such nonsense.

Seriously, they just get more and more ridiculous.

Perspective

Here’s yet another example of why I’m so pro-Obama.  It’s hard, sometimes, to explain how his perspective is different from that of other presidential contenders.  But it is.  You can see it in his books and you can see it on display in this exchange with the Chicago Tribune.

Basically, he’s addressing not just the Jeremiah Wright dust up, but the Geraldine Ferarro issue.  He does an amazing job of stepping back and looking at the big picture.  Instead of ripping either person, he instead talks about where their particular views comes from and what we can learn from what BOTH have said.

For what it’s worth, neither campaign attacked these people.  While the Obama campaign was upset by Clinton’s lack of action, they never called Ferarro a racist or a bigot.  Specifically, Obama himself has only ever said that her comments were ridiculous and absurd.  He’s never attacked her or Hillary.

And the Clinton campaign, much to their credit, hasn’t gone after Jeremiah Wright or Obama.

Here’s the passage from the interview with Obama:

Tribune: The issue of [former U.S. Rep.] Geraldine Ferraro’s comments on the role your race has played in this campaign. Then comes the video that has comments that your pastor Jeremiah Wright has made. How are we to look at these, what’s the best way to look at this and in what context do you put them to the American people?

Obama: Well, you know, I think they’re separate issues, but there is a relationship. I think you’re touching on something that’s worth talking about. I think, with respect to Geraldine Ferraro, I don’t think what she said was racist, and I was asked about this and I said I didn’t think that was what it was. I do think that what she said was wrong.

The implication was that I was an affirmative action beneficiary. I think you can make an argument that my race might have played a role in my selection for the 2004 convention, but it doesn’t account for the fact that it was a pretty good speech. I think that my persona obviously includes the fact that I’m an African-American, and so to the extent that how I talk about issues of race and how I present myself is attractive to some voters, I think is undeniable.

To suggest that I could have gotten through the gauntlet of the last 13 months against very experienced, very savvy, skilled politicians and find myself in the lead for the Democratic nomination, including against the dominant political machine in the Democratic Party over the last 20 years, seems pretty dismissive.

And not just dismissive of me, but dismissive of voters. This idea that, “Oh, you know, let’s get a black guy in there,” I think just doesn’t make sense. So I think that it was looking at an issue through a racial lens that doesn’t make perfect sense. I mean, she could have made a subtle point about the role of race in my candidacy that could have been interesting. This wasn’t it. All right, so that’s Geraldine Ferraro.

Rev. Wright. He preached his last sermon, he’s now in retirement. I’ve put out a statement today. Ill be honest with you, this is somebody who I’ve known for 20 years. I basically came to the church and became a member of the church through Trinity [United Church of Christ] and through him. He’s the person who gave me the line “the audacity of hope.” He is somebody who is a former Marine, a biblical scholar, has taught and lectured at major theological seminaries across the country and has been very widely regarded and admired.

And, you know, he hasn’t been my political adviser, he’s been my pastor. And I have to say that the clips that have been shown over the past couple of days are deeply disturbing to me. I wasn’t in church during those sermons.

The things he said and the way he said them I think are offensive. And I reject them, and they don’t reflect who I am or what I believe in. In fairness to him, this was sort of a greatest hits. They basically culled five or six sermons out of 30 years of preaching. That doesn’t excuse them, and I’ve said so very clearly, but that’s not the relationship I had with him. That’s not the relationship I had with the church, and if I had heard those kinds of statements being said, if I had been in church on those days, I would have objected fiercely to them, and I would have told him personally.

When some of these statements first came to light was right around when I was starting to run for president. He was a year away from retirement, and the church itself is a pillar of the community and a well-regarded, well-known church. I suspect there are members of the Tribune family that are also members of Trinity.

It is not what’s been painted as this separatist church or what have you, it is a very traditional African-American church on the South Side of Chicago. And most of the reverend’s sermons are the sermons of a traditional African-American pastor. And so my view was that it would not be appropriate for me to distance myself from the church. I put out a statement saying I profoundly disagree with these statements, and the fact that he is now retiring makes me not want to simply discard him. He’s like a member of the family, he’s like your uncle who says things you profoundly disagree with, but he’s still your uncle.

Tribune: Geraldine Ferraro, she’s asked to leave, she leaves the campaign, she should have left. And some people see that, legitimately so. Then how should we see . . .

Obama: I think people should raise legitimate concerns about it. And the fact that he’s retiring, and we’ve got a young pastor, Otis Moss, coming in, means that people should understand the context of this relationship. That this is an aging pastor who’s about to retire and that I have made and will make some very clear statements about how profoundly I disagree with these statements. I don’t think they are reflective of the church.

They’re certainly not reflective of my views. I do think there is an overlap in the sense that there is a generational shift that is taking place and has constantly taken pace in our society. And Rev. Wright is somebody who came of age in the 60s. And so like a lot of African-American men of fierce intelligence coming up in the ’60s he has a lot of the language and the memories and the baggage of those times. And I represent a different generation with just a different set of life experiences, and so see race relations in just a different set of terms than he does, as does Otis Moss, who is slightly younger than me. And so the question then for me becomes what’s my relationship to that past?

You know, I can completely just disown it and say I don’t understand it, but I do understand it. I understand the context with which he developed his views but also can still reject unequivocally. . .

Tribune: You reject his views, you won’t reject the man. Is that it?

Obama: Yeah, exactly. And this is where the connection comes in. I mean, I do think that Geraldine Ferraro, the lens through which she looks at race, is different. . . . She’s grown up in different times. The Queens that she grew up in is, I’m sure, a different place than it was then. Just as Chicago is a different place than it was then.

So part of my job is to see if I can help push the country into a different place with a different set of understandings. But as I said, it doesn’t excuse what the reverend said, and I’m very troubled by it. And if, as I said, if I had heard those sermons, if I had been there when those sermons were taking place, I would have raised that with him, and if I had thought that that was the message being promoted on a consistent basis within that church, I don’t think I could be a consistent part of it.

MST3K

The Obama campaign decided to go all MST3K on a Clinton memo.  It’s good stuff (gakked from Ben Smith):

From: Bill Burton
Sent: Wed 3/12/2008 6:36 PM
To: Bill Burton
Subject: FW: The Clinton Memo… as annotated by the Obama communicationsdepartment

To: Interested Parties

From: Clinton Campaign

Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Re: Keystone Test: Obama Losing Ground [Get ready for a good one.]

The path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue goes through Pennsylvania so if Barack Obama can’t win there, how will he win the general election?

[Answer: I suppose by holding obviously Democratic states like California and New York, and beating McCain in swing states like Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin where Clinton lost to Obama by mostly crushing margins. But good question.]

After setbacks in Ohio and Texas, Barack Obama needs to demonstrate that he can win the state of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the last state with more than 15 electoral votes on the primary calendar and Barack Obama has lost six of the seven other largest states so far – every state except his home state of Illinois.

[If you define "setback" as netting enough delegates out of our 20-plus-point wins in Mississippi and Wyoming to completely erase any delegate advantage the Clinton campaign earned out of March 4th, then yeah, we feel pretty setback.]

Pennsylvania is of particular importance, along with Ohio, Florida and Michigan, because it is dominated by the swing voters who are critical to a Democratic victory in November. No Democrat has won the presidency without winning Pennsylvania since 1948. And no candidate has won the Democratic nomination without winning Pennsylvania since 1972.

[What the Clinton campaign secretly means: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT WE'VE LOST 14 OF THE LAST 17 CONTESTS AND SAID THAT MICHIGAN AND FLORIDA WOULDN'T COUNT FOR ANYTHING. Also, we're still trying to wrap our minds around the amazing coincidence that the only "important" states in the nominating process are the ones that Clinton won.]

But the Obama campaign has just announced that it is turning its attention away from Pennsylvania.

[Huh?]

This is not a strategy that can beat John McCain in November.

[I don't think Clinton's strategy of losing in state after state after promising more of the same politics is working all that well either.]

In the last two weeks, Barack Obama has lost ground among men, women, Democrats, independents and Republicans – all of which point to a candidacy past its prime.

["A candidacy past its prime." These guys kill me.]

For example, just a few weeks ago, Barack Obama won 68% of men in Virginia, 67% in Wisconsin and 62% in Maryland. He won 60% of Virginia women and 55% of Maryland women. He won 62% of independents in Maryland, 64% in Wisconsin and 69% in Virginia. Obama won 59% of Democrats in Maryland, 53% in Wisconsin and 62% in Virginia. And among Republicans, Obama won 72% in both Virginia and Wisconsin.

But now Obama’s support has dropped among all these groups.

[That's true, if you don't count all the winning we've been up to. As it turns out, it's difficult to maintain 40-point demographic advantages, even over Clinton]

In Mississippi, he won only 25% of Republicans and barely half of independents. In Ohio, he won only 48% of men, 41% of women and 42% of Democrats. In Texas, he won only 49% of independents and 46% of Democrats. And in Rhode Island, Obama won just 33% of women and 37% of Democrats.

[I'm sympathetic to their attempt to parse crushing defeats. And I'm sure Rush Limbaugh's full-throated endorsement of Clinton didn't make any difference. Right]

Why are so many voters turning away from Barack Obama in state after state?

[You mean besides the fact that we're ahead in votes, states won and delegates?]

In the last few weeks, questions have arisen about Obama’s readiness to be president. In Virginia, 56% of Democratic primary voters said Obama was most qualified to be commander-in-chief. That number fell to 37% in Ohio, 35% in Rhode Island and 39% in Texas.

[Only the Clinton campaign could cherry pick states like this. But in contrast to their logic, in the most recent contest of Mississippi, voters said that Obama was more qualified to be commander in chief than Clinton by a margin of 55-42.]

So the late deciders – those making up their minds in the last days before the election – have been shifting to Hillary Clinton. Among those who made their decision in the last three days, Obama won 55% in Virginia and 53% in Wisconsin, but only 43% in Mississippi, 40% in Ohio, 39% in Texas and 37% in Rhode Island.

[If only there were enough late deciders for the Clinton campaign to actually be ahead, they would really be on to something.]

If Barack Obama cannot reverse his downward spiral with a big win in Pennsylvania, he cannot possibly be competitive against John McCain in November.

[If they are defining downward spiral as a series of events in which the Clinton campaign has lost more votes, lost more contests and lost more delegates to us - I guess we will have to suffer this horribly painful slide all the way to the nomination and then on to the White House.]

[Thanks for the laughs guys. This was great.]

More damn dirty media

As should be clear by now, I’m a filthy liberal.  I’ll admit that I can lean towards the middle on certain issues, but by and large I land with the left on most things.  As such, I enjoy left wing TV and radio.

And I don’t mean mainstream TV and radio, I mean left wing TV and radio, those that make no bones about their stances.  I’m talking about Air America and Countdown with Keith Olbermann.  No one associated with these shows pretends to be anything other than what they are, and to be fair some right wing media does the same (keep in mind that Fox News and Bill O’Reilly specifically claim to be independents — no, really).

While the mainstream media clearly prefers Obama (which is different than being anti-Hillary, by the way), the left wing media, at least at the start of all of this, has managed to balance on the fence.  Simply as a matter of party unity, most radio and TV hosts have kept their personal preferences to themselves.

It has been interesting to see how that’s changed over the last few weeks, the culmination of week to be seen in an upcoming “Special Comment” from Keith Olbermann.

One by one, left wing commentators seem to be tipping over to Obama, their reasons for which coming as a chorus: Hillary is acting like a Republican.

Hell, I heard one radio host call her a Neo-Con, for god’s sake.

Now, obviously this is gross hyperbole.  It’s wrong on a number of levels.  First, Hillary Clinton is no where near being a Republican in any way, shape, or form.  Second, the claim the she is one seems to be dependent upon the behavoir of her campaign, as if dirty tricks is a strictly Republican manuever.  Neither side is clean and the suggestion that using the “kitchen sink” strategy makes Hillary a Republican is silly.

Or, it would be during any other election year.  This year is about being above all that.  This year is about a different kind of politics.  Anything that subscribes to the old school is seen as locked in step with the administration we’re all waiting to be rid of.

Her behavior seems to be influencing undecided super delegates, too, like Nancy Pelosi:

“I think that ticket either way is impossible,” Pelosi told NECN’s Alison King shortly after an environmental event in Waltham, Massachusetts today.

Pelosi cited comments made by Clinton officials that John McCain would be a better commander-in-chief as an example of why the ‘dream ticket’ wouldn’t become a reality.

What’s amazing to me is that Hillary’s additiude seems to be spreading to her supporters as well.  The pro-Hillary articles and blogs online seem overwhelmingly defensive when it comes to any criticism of her behavior and the the song that Geraldine Ferarro started singing seems to be growing louder: that any criticism of Hillary must be driven by misogyny.

It’s starting to piss me off, to be perfectly honest.  Maggie Williams even had the gall to imply that Obama was playing the race card by responding to Ferarro’s comments.

I just wish someone would start calling the Clinton campaign out on their bullshit tactics and do so in an extremely public way.  Because they need to answer for their behavior.