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From The American Interest

2011-08-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

August 28, 2011

New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas and the Amendment of Doom

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD

Lord of the Rings aficionados know that the evil lord Sauron paid little attention to the danger posed by two hobbits slowly struggling across the mountains and deserts of Mordor until he suddenly realized that the ring on which all his power depended was about to be hurled into the pits of Mount Doom. All at once the enemy plan became clear; what looked like stupidity was revealed as genius, and Sauron understood everything just when it was too late to act.

Jeffrey Toobin’s gripping, must-read profile of Clarence and Virginia Thomas in the New Yorker gives readers new insight into what Sauron must have felt: Toobin argues that the only Black man in public life that liberals could safely mock and despise may be on the point of bringing the Blue Empire down.

In fact, Toobin suggests, Clarence Thomas may be the Frodo Baggins of the right; his lonely and obscure struggle has led him to the point from which he may be able to overthrow the entire edifice of the modern progressive state.

Writes Toobin:

In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.

This is one of the most startling reappraisals to appear in The New Yorker for many years. It is hard to think of other revisions as radical as the declownification of Clarence Thomas: Herbert Hoover as the First Keynesian? Henry Kissinger as the Great Humanitarian? Richard Nixon, the most liberal president ever (that one might even be true)?

There are few articles of faith as firmly fixed in the liberal canon as the belief that Clarence Thomas is, to put it as bluntly as many liberals do, a dunce and a worm. Twenty years of married life have not erased the conventional liberal view of his character etched by Anita Hill’s testimony at his confirmation hearings. Not only does the liberal mind perceive him as a disgusting lump of ungoverned sexual impulse; he is seen as an intellectual cipher. Thomas’ silence during oral argument before the Supreme Court is taken as obvious evidence that he has nothing to say and is perhaps a bit intimidated by the verbal fireworks exchanged by the high profile lawyers and his more, ahem, ‘qualified’ colleagues.

At most liberals have long seen Thomas as the Sancho Panza to Justice Antonin Scalia’s Don Quixote, Tonto to his Lone Ranger. No, says Toobin: the intellectual influence runs the other way. Thomas is the consistently clear and purposeful theorist that history will remember as an intellectual pioneer; Scalia the less clear-minded colleague who is gradually following in Thomas’ tracks.

If Toobin’s revionist take is correct, (and I defer to his knowledge of the direction of modern constitutional thought) it means that liberal America has spent a generation mocking a Black man as an ignorant fool, even as constitutional scholars stand in growing amazement at the intellectual audacity, philosophical coherence and historical reflection embedded in his judicial work.

Toobin is less interested in exploring why liberal America has been so blind for so long to the force of Clarence Thomas’ intellect than in understanding just what Thomas has achieved in his lonely trek across the wastes of Mordor. And what he finds is that Thomas has been pioneering the techniques and the ideas that could not only lead to the court rejecting all or part of President Obama’s health legislation; the ideas and strategies Thomas has developed could conceivably topple the constitutionality of the post New Deal state.

Reshaping the Constitution

Back in Pundit High, they used to teach a fair amount about constitutional history in the US history course; phrases like “Marbury vs. Madison” and “Fletcher vs. Peck” had an ugly way of turning up on quizzes and tests. Our American history teacher, besides discreetly taking some of the boys aside from time to time to explain the dubious origins of their family hoards, was steeped in New Deal constitutional views and made a point of telling us that two of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights were vestigial organs, constitutional equivalents of the appendix. The Second Amendment on the right to bear arms simply meant that states could have militias; the Tenth Amendment reserving all additional powers to the states meant nothing at all and had simply been thrown in as a sop to ignorant know-nothings of the age.

Other parts of the Constitution, by contrast, gained in importance over the years: the commerce clause, for example, gave the federal government a practically unlimited power in this modern age to regulate everything under the sun.

In that as in so much else Pundit High prepared us to move into the liberal world of the day; we were being given exactly the ideas and opinions that would prepare us to lead the next generation of American liberalism in the New England way. Until very recently the constitutional vision I was taught in my teens remained, as they say, hegemonic. The enlarged role of the commerce clause was uncontested and the two amendments dangled with the other dead constitutional provisions — letters of marque and reprisal, no bills of attainder, the prohibition on quartering — in constitutional limbo.

The way we learned them, the Second and Tenth amendments were as dead as the three fifths clause: so dead that there was no point in asking why they died or what they were doing there. Like the “begats” in the Bible (long tables of genealogy listing endless generations of people who are otherwise entirely forgotten) they padded the document without doing any work. The federal government faced few realistic constraints on its power and the constitutional settlement of the New Deal was unshakably firm.

Those were the operating assumptions my generation took with us to college and beyond; they are still the conventional wisdom among most American intellectuals and journalists today.

What we didn’t know, and what the world at large didn’t know until very recently, was that the New Deal constitution was not as permanent or unalterable as it looked. Intellectually its foundations were shaky, and after two decades of a Clarence Thomas-led assault, the constitutional doctrines that permitted the rise of the powerful federal government could be close to collapse.

In the case of the Second Amendment, the collapse has already come. Back in my Pundit High days, anyone who dared to suggest that the Bill of Rights gave individuals the right to bear arms would have been laughed out of the class as an ignorant yahoo. These days, that is the accepted view of the US Supreme Court and most of the legal profession. The resurrection of the Second Amendment proves that the “dead letter” clauses of the Constitution can come back to life — and suggests that Clarence Thomas understands how this can be done.

The next topic for Constitutional revisionism is the expansive reading of the commerce clause that the New Deal judges used to justify the Roosevelt administration’s ambitious economic programs. The Obamacare health reform depends on that kind of reading of the commerce clause; the penumbras must stretch pretty far for the Constitution to give Congress the right to require all Americans to buy private health insurance. And if the commerce clause can be stretched this far, one must ask whether there is anything that the Constitution blocks Congress from doing.

If gun control and Obamacare were the only issues at stake in the constituional debate, liberals would find Thomas annoying but not dangerous. Losing on gun control and health care frustrate and annoy the center left, but those are only two items on a long list of liberal concerns.

The real problem will come if Thomas can figure out how to get the Tenth Amendment back into constitutional thought in a serious way. The Second Amendment was a constitutional landmine for the left; the Tenth is a nuclear bomb.

Toobin, who disagrees strongly with Thomas about most matters constitutional, political and cultural, does a good job of showing why Thomas is a formidable judicial thinker. The interpretative concept of “originalism” is sometimes confounded with a simplistic literal interpretation of the words of the Constitution. Thomas argues that to understand what the Constitution meant to the framers, one needs to do more than read the words on the page and look to see how Samuel Johnson and perhaps Noah Webster defined them in their dictionaries.

Thomas is not a fundamentalist reading the Constitution au pied de la lettre; the original intent of the founders can be established only after research and reflection. The Eighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” can only be understood if one understands the thought of the period, the types of punishment then widely used, and the political and cultural traditions that shaped the thinking of the founders on questions of justice and punishment. One then takes that understanding, however tentative, and applies it to the circumstances of a given case today.

It is not the only possible way to read the Constitution, but it is a very interesting one and it may be the only politically sustainable way for the Court to read it in a contentious and divided country. Without some rule of interpretation that the average person can understand and accept as legitimate, the Court gradually loses legitimacy in the public eye. The originalist interpretation, whatever objections can be made to it intellectually and historically, is politically compelling. It resonates with the American propensity for commonsense reasoning. To say that the Founders meant what they meant and that the first job of a judge is to be faithful to their intent is something that strikes many Americans as sensible, practical and fair.

As Toobin tells the story, the revival of the Second Amendment was the first great triumph of the new approach. Thomas and others assembled a mountain of evidence that convinced increasing numbers of legal scholars that the Second Amendment must be read as conferring an individual right to bear arms — not merely a generic endorsement of the right of each state to maintain a militia. More, this right was intended as political: to check the power of the state to overawe and crush the people. As a result, the once seemingly unstoppable movement toward gun control has gone into reverse gear.

The startling possibility now beginning to dawn on some observers is that these same methods applied to the Tenth Amendment would lead to a much more far reaching revision to constitutional doctrine. The text of the Amendment is simple and short:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The standard interpretation is that this merely restates an assumption that undergirds the Constitution as a whole and so has no special meaning or significance in law. If reading the rest of the Constitution leads you to uphold some act or law as constitutional, this amendment would not affect that judgment. Therefore it can be and usually is ignored. That is certainly what we were told to do with it in the hallowed halls of Pundit High.

But there is another view of this amendment. The Constitution of the United States confers specific, “enumerated” powers on the Congress, and many of the things that Congress does today are not listed among those enumerated powers. On his last day in office, President James Madison vetoed what today we would call an infrastructure bill. He thought the bill was a good idea, that the country needed the infrastructure and that the federal government was the right agency to provide it, but believed that the Constitution he had helped write provided no authority for Congress to act in this way. If Congress wanted to support infrastructure in the various states, the right way to proceed was to get an infrastructure amendment into the Constitution. Barring that, nothing could be done.

Taken seriously today, that approach to the Constitution would change the way Washington does business. Radically. The list of enumerated powers is short and does not include, for example, health care, education, agricultural subsidies, assistance to the hungry or old age pensions. Most of the New Deal and Great Society (with the interesting exception of civil rights laws which enforce the Civil War era amendments) would be struck down. Whole cabinet departments would close.

The federal government would not wither away completely; even on a narrow reading of the commerce clause (the clause that places the regulation of interstate commerce among Congress’ enumerated powers), Washington would exercise considerable authority over the national economy. But the balance between the states and the feds would change, and among other things, our federal tax burdens would fall, but the costs of state government would rise.

This is pretty much a Tea Party wish list, and it is why the Tea Party movement is so strongly identified with originalist interpretations of the Constitution. Unleashing the Tenth Amendment would move the constitutional status quo back towards the early 1930s when the “Nine Old Men” struck down one New Deal law after another. For Toobin and most New Yorker readers, it is hard to imagine an idea that more radically and totally runs against everything they believe.

That Justice Thomas’ wife Virginia is a prominent speaker and organizer in the Tea Party completes the picture: the Thomas’ are the anti-Clintons, the power couple out to dismantle the progressive American state. The specter Toobin’s piece conjures is of Clarence and Virginia, like Frodo and Sam, quietly toiling towards Mount Doom while liberal attention is fixed elsewhere.

How Real Is The Fear?

The prospect of a serious judicial rehabilitation of the Tenth Amendment is real, though perhaps not immediate. And change this sweeping is unlikely to come simply because a relative handful of judges and lawyers change their minds on an issue of constitutional interpretation. A broader change would need to take place in society so that the idea of transferring more activities from Washington to the states appeals to public opinion to the point where presidents appoint judges who share this philosophy, the Senate confirms them, and the new majority begins to set a new direction for the law.

Arguably, we are nearing a zone where something like that could happen. The apparent Republican front-runner Governor Rick Perry has strong views on the Constitution. His book Fed Up! Our Fight To Save America From Washington is essentially an essay calling for a return to the concept of a federal government limited to its enumerated powers. Let unemployment stay above 8 percent through November of 2012 and President Perry could be sending the names of judicial nominees to a Republican Senate. With a couple more allies on the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas could get pretty close to the lava pits of Mount Doom.

Big constitutional changes have happened before. The Supreme Court was a very different and much stronger institution by the time Chief Justice John Marshall was through with it. It took Court a few years to accept the New Deal, but when it did, the law changed very quickly. The reversal of Plessy vs. Ferguson transformed racial jurisprudence and stood old doctrines on their heads. The Warren Court’s decisions of the 1960s and, of course, Roe vs. Wade transformed the American legal landscape.

Nowhere in the Constitution or anywhere else is it written that all these changes must be one way: that liberal judges can overturn conservative precedents while conservatives must let liberal precedents stand. (From a Tea Party point of view one of the great virtues of Thomas’ originalism is that it provides a principled basis for conservative jurisprudence that ruthlessly reverses decades of liberal precedent.)

At the moment, Governor Perry’s advocacy of Tenth Amendment Federalism looks like an asset in the competition for the GOP nomination but a serious and perhaps fatal liability in a general campaign. Medicare and Social Security might not pass a strict Madisonian constitutional test, but there are not many voters who want to see them vanish. The public mind is more skeptical about Washington than at any time in living memory, but that is not the same thing as a public demand for less federal spending on middle class entitlements.

Nevertheless, the Jacksonian populism behind the Tea Party and associated movements connects with some deep seated American preferences. The public is suspicious of clever legal theories that run counter to ‘obvious’ ideas about what the Constitution means. Just as populists like mandatory sentencing rules that reduce the discretion of judges in criminal matters, they like ways of interpreting the Constitution that reduce the ability of judges to base their decisions on anything beyond the clear meaning of the text. Andrew Jackson’s populism drew energy from his opposition to the (elite backed, constitutionally questionable) Bank of the United States and his firm stance against John Marshall and his usurping Court. Governor Perry’s attacks on Fed Chairman Bernanke are not unlike Jackson’s attacks on Nicholas Biddle; the platform being hammered out in Texas has a distinctly Jacksonian feel.

It’s hard to argue with Toobin that Thomas has moved the ball down field in his quest for a new era of constitutional jurisprudence. Sauron’s tower is probably not going to fall right away, but for the first time, progressives are beginning to see credible scenarios which could change the rules of the game.

Jeffrey Toobin is announcing to the liberal world that Clarence Thomas has morphed from a comic figure of fun to a determined super-villain who might reverse seventy years of liberal dominance of the federal bench and turn the clock back to 1930 if not 1789.

The fantasy is still far fetched, and it is notoriously hard for political movements to get and hold power long enough to shift the balance on the Supreme Court, but that Thomas has accomplished as much as he has shows how far the country has drifted from the old days when liberals were confident that the Supreme Court would find new ways to fit its judicial philosophy to the demands of the blue social model.

They can no longer count on that; the consequences could be extreme.

From the New Yorker

2011-08-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

ANNALS OF LAW

PARTNERS

Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama’s health-care plan?

by Jeffrey ToobinAUGUST 29, 2011

As the Justice has assumed an influential role on the Roberts Court, his wife has helped lead the public war against the Administration.

RELATED LINKS: Ask the Author: Join a live chat with Jeffrey Toobin about Clarence and Virginia Thomas on Wednesday, August 24th, at 3 P.M. E.T.

KEYWORDS: Clarence Thomas;; Virginia Thomas;; Supreme Court Justices;; Conservatives;; Originalists;; Health-Care Reform;; Tea Party

It has been, in certain respects, a difficult year for Clarence Thomas. In January, he was compelled to amend several years of the financial-disclosure forms that Supreme Court Justices must file each year. The document requires the Justices to disclose the source of all income earned by their spouses, and Thomas had failed to note that his wife, Virginia, who is known as Ginni, worked as a representative for a Michigan college and at the Heritage Foundation. The following month, seventy-four members of Congress called on Thomas to recuse himself from any legal challenges to President Obama’s health-care reform, because his wife has been an outspoken opponent of the law. At around the same time, Court observers noted the fifth anniversary of the last time that Thomas had asked a question during an oral argument. The confluence of these events produced the kind of public criticism, and even mockery, that Thomas had largely managed to avoid since his tumultuous arrival on the Court, twenty years ago this fall.

These tempests obscure a larger truth about Thomas: that this year has also been, for him, a moment of triumph. In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.

The conventional view of Thomas takes his lack of participation at oral argument as a kind of metaphor. The silent Justice is said to be an intellectual nonentity, a cipher for his similarly conservative colleague, Antonin Scalia. But those who follow the Court closely find this stereotype wrong in every particular. Thomas has long been a favorite of conservatives, but they admire the Justice for how he gives voice to their cause, not just because he votes their way. “Of the nine Justices presently on the Court, he is the one whose opinions I enjoy reading the most,” Steve Calabresi, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law and a co-founder of the Federalist Society, said. “They are very scholarly, with lots of historical sources, and his views are the most principled, even among the conservatives. He has staked out some bold positions, and then the Court has set out and moved in his direction.”

Thomas’s intellect and his influence have also been recognized by those who generally disagree with his views. According to Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School, Thomas’s career resembles that of Hugo Black, the former Alabama senator who served from 1937 to 1971 and is today universally regarded as a major figure in the Court’s history. “Both were Southerners who came to the Court young and with very little judicial experience,” Amar said. (Thomas is from Georgia.) “Early in their careers, they were often in dissent, sometimes by themselves, but they were content to go their own way. But once Earl Warren became Chief Justice the Court started to come to Black. It’s the same with Thomas and the Roberts Court. Thomas’s views are now being followed by a majority of the Court in case after case.”

The implications of Thomas’s leadership for the Court, and for the country, are profound. Thomas is probably the most conservative Justice to serve on the Court since the nineteen-thirties. More than virtually any of his colleagues, he has a fully wrought judicial philosophy that, if realized, would transform much of American government and society. Thomas’s views both reflect and inspire the Tea Party movement, which his wife has helped lead almost since its inception. The Tea Party is a diffuse operation, and it can be difficult to pin down its stand on any given issue. Still, the Tea Party is unusual among American political movements in its commitment to a specific view of the Constitution—one that accords, with great precision, with Thomas’s own approach. For decades, various branches of the conservative movement have called for a reduction in the size of the federal government, but for the Tea Party, and for Thomas, small government is a constitutional command.

In his jurisprudence, Thomas may be best known for his belief in a “color-blind Constitution”; that is, one that forbids any form of racial preference or affirmative action. But color blind, for Thomas, is not blind to race. Thomas finds a racial angle on a broad array of issues, including those which appear to be scarcely related to traditional civil rights, like campaign finance or gun control. In Thomas’s view, the Constitution imposes an ideal of racial self-sufficiency, an extreme version of the philosophy associated with Booker T. Washington, whose portrait hangs in his chambers. (This personal gallery also includes Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher.)

In recent weeks, two federal courts of appeals have reached opposing conclusions about the constitutionality of the 2010 health-care law; the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, upheld it, while the Eleventh Circuit, in Atlanta, struck down its requirement that all Americans buy health insurance. This conflict means that the Supreme Court will almost certainly agree to review the case this fall, with a decision expected by June of next year. It is likely to be the most important case for the Justices since Bush v. Gore, and it will certainly be the clearest test yet of Thomas’s ascendancy at the Court. Thomas’s entire career as a judge has been building toward the moment when he would be able to declare that law unconstitutional. It would be not only a victory for his approach to the Constitution but also, it seems, a defeat for the enemies who have pursued him for so long: liberals, law professors, journalists—the group that Thomas refers to collectively as “the élites.” Thomas’s triumph over the health-care law and its supporters is by no means assured, but it is now tantalizingly within reach.

ILLUSTRATION: PHILIP BURKE

DNC, White House, and Coakley Camp in a Mexican Standoff

2010-01-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

From National Review Online:

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Washington is already blaming the Coakley camp for today's loss (?!) so, naturally, the Coakley camp is hitting back.

As Jim has already noted at Campaign Spot, Politico has a leaked memo the campaign is circulating, faulting unpopular Obama policies (health care? Christmas Day bomber? Cornhusker Kickback? ding-ding-ding!) and a belated response from the DNC for the race's sudden competitiveness. Here are the talking points:

National Dems Failed to Aid Coakley Until Too Late

— Coakley campaign provided national Democrats with all poll results since early December

— Coakley campaign noted concerns about "apathy" and failure of national Democrats to contribute early in December. Coakley campaign noted fundraising concerns throughout December and requested national Democratic help.

— DNC and other Dem organizations did not engage until the week before the election, much too late to aid Coakley operation

Brown Capitalized on Concerns About National Democrats

— From the beginning, Brown labeled President Obama's health care and cap and trade plans as tax increases. Polling throughout the race showed this to be the most effective attack on Coakley.

— Coakley's lead dropped significantly after the Senate passed health care reform shortly before Christmas and after the Christmas Eve "bombing" incident. Polling showed significant concerns with the actions of Senator Nelson to hold out for a better deal. Senator Nelson's actions specifically hurt Coakley who was forced to backtrack on her opposition to the abortion restriction amendment.

— Democrats concerns with Obama's Afghanastain plan forced Coakley to oppose the Afghan war in the primary, which hurt her in the general.

Claims about Coakley's Scant Campaigning and Miscues Were exaggerated

— Because of the failure of national Democrats to support Coakley, she was forced to devote significant time to fundraising in December. She also released a variety of plans in December and had a public event nearly every day.

— Coakley's failure to release television advertisments until 12 days before the election was the result of a fundraising problem that national Democrats failed to resolve. Meanwhile, right wing groups pumped significant amounts of money into Brown’s campaign allowing him to go up with ads first, including negative attack ads funded by the Swift Boat and Willie Horton groups.

And it gets uglier. A senior Democratic party official, responding to the leaked memo, returns fire, blaming the Coakley campaign for perpetrating "political malpractice" and allowing "one of the worst debacle[s] in American political history to happen on their watch" (!). Emphasis in the Politico original:

This memo is a pack full of lies and fantasies - The DNC and the DSCC did everything they were asked and have been involved in the race for several weeks not just the last one.

The campaign failed to recognize this threat, failed to keep Coakley on the campaign trail, failed to create a negative narrative about Brown, failed to stay on the air in December while he was running a brilliant campaign. It's wishful thinking from a pollster, candidate and campaign team that were caught napping and are going to allow one of the worst debacle in American political history to happen on their watch that they are at the 11th hour are going to blame others.

Before the DNC and DSCC got involved there was barely a single piece of paper on what the narrative is on Brown. "The candidate in this race and the campaign have been involved in the worst case of political malpractice in memory and they aren't going to be able to spin themselves out of this with a memo full of lies."

Finger-pointing begins for Democratic insiders

2010-01-19T09:29:00.000-08:00

From politico.com:

By MANU RAJU & JONATHAN MARTIN & JOHN BRESNAHAN | 1/19/10 12:29 AM EST

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As voters head to the polls in Massachusetts, nervous Democrats have already begun to blame one another for putting at risk the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held for more than 40 years.

Many angry Democrats blame their candidate, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, for running a sluggish campaign that let Republican Scott Brown set the contours of the race.

Some Democratic strategists lay the fault at the feet of President Barack Obama, saying he should have done more to sell the party’s agenda.

And in private conversations, Hill sources say White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has blamed Coakley, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake for failing to see Brown’s surge in time to stop it.

“With the legislative and political stakes so high, it’s unbelievable that the Senate committee and White House let this race get so out of hand,” said one senior Washington Democrat. “There’s a lot of blame to go around. Martha Coakley is only one of the problems here.”

Coakley is at the center of the criticism. Democrats complain that her campaign was caught napping after last month’s primary — and that Brown was able to use the pause to shape the race.

“A malaise set in, and there was a failure to take advantage of the opportunity to define yourself the next day” after the primary, said longtime Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.). “You thank people for the primary and then begin to define the next six weeks.”

Added Neal: “Going dark was not a great idea.”

Although DSCC Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) was still predicting victory Monday, even he conceded that it would have been “better” if Coakley had laid out the differences between the candidates earlier. He said Democrats have learned a crucial lesson: that even in very blue states, Democrats should expect a “volatile” environment with a “tough” electorate — and “you can’t afford not to be aggressive.”

“You have to define your opponent before they define themselves,” Menendez said. “In Brown’s case, he’s working hard to try to disguise himself.”

Menendez learned that the race was tightening about a week and a half ago, when independent pollsters returned results showing the race much tighter than Democratic polls had been portraying. He acted quickly — unleashing more than $2.5 million into the race, including $1.4 million in television ads in the past week alone, according to sources familiar with the effort.

The DSCC also dispatched senior staff to take tighter control of the Coakley campaign, bolster her get-out-the-vote efforts, improve her fundraising and enhance coordination between the White House and the campaign. As a result, the tone of her ads and her stump speech were sharpened in an attempt to define Brown in the minds of the voters as a far-right Republican out of touch with the state’s mainstream voters.

“Look, we’re never in place of a campaign; a candidate has to run their own race,” Menendez told POLITICO. “When the alarm bells went off, we sprung into action.”

Emanuel has told his confidants that those bells rang too late — and that both Menendez and Lake, who declined to be interviewed, should have been moving sooner.

But the White House itself is facing a barrage of criticism among Democrats, with many saying that Obama has let the GOP frame the issues — particularly health care — in the minds of many independent voters, including those who elected Republican governors in Virginia and New Jersey in the fall.

“We lost independents in Virginia, we lost independents in New Jersey and we’re losing independents in Massachusetts,” said one Democratic campaign strategist. “The only thing those three states have in common is Obama.”

The Democratic National Committee, which spent at least $750,000 almost exclusively on get-out-the-vote efforts, has also faced criticism for not dispatching its resources early enough.

For the entire article, go to: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31637.html

Senate Vote Clears Way for Health Care Debate

2009-11-21T19:06:00.000-08:00

The Senate voted on Saturday to begin full debate of major
health care legislation, propelling President Obama's top
domestic initiative over a crucial, preliminary hurdle -- and
past the angry opposition of Republicans -- in a formidable
display of muscle-flexing by the Democratic majority. The 60
to 40 vote, along party lines, clears the way for weeks of
rowdy floor proceedings that will begin after Thanksgiving
and last through much of December.

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na

Requiem for the Right

2009-09-04T12:40:00.001-07:00

Requiem for the Right
The biographer of Whittaker Chambers and William Buckley on a dying movement.
By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Aug 29, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Sep 7, 2009

The editor of The New York Times Book Review and the paper's "Week in Review" section, Sam Tanenhaus is the biographer of Whittaker Chambers and is at work on the life of William F. Buckley Jr. In a new, short book, The Death of Conservatism, he argues that the right needs to find its footing for the good of the country. In an e-mail exchange with Jon Meacham, Tanenhaus reflected on the book's themes. Excerpts:

Meacham: So how bad is it, really? Your title doesn't quite declare conservatism dead.
Tanenhaus: Quite bad if you prize a mature, responsible conservatism that honors America's institutions, both governmental and societal. The first great 20th-century Republican president, Theo- dore Roosevelt, supported a strong central government that emphasized the shared values and ideals of the nation's millions of citizens. He denounced the harm done by "the trusts"—big corporations. He made it his mission to conserve vast tracts of wilderness and forest. The last successful one, Ronald Reagan, liked to remind people (especially the press) he was a lifelong New Dealer who voted four times for Franklin D. Roosevelt. The consensus forged by Buckley in the 1960s gained strength through two decisive acts: first, Buckley denounced right-wing extremists, such as the members of the John Birch Society, and made sure when he did it to secure the support of conservative Republicans like Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and Sen. John Tower. This pulled the movement toward the center. Second: Buckley saw that the civil disturbances of the late 1960s (in particular urban riots and increasingly militant anti-Vietnam protests) posed a challenge to social harmonies preferred by genuine conservatives and genuine liberals alike. When the Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan called on liberals to join with conservatives in upholding "the politics of stability," Buckley replied that he was ready to help. He placed the values of "civil society" (in Burke's term) above those of his own movement or the GOP.

Today we see very little evidence of this. In his classic The Future of American Politics (1952), the political journalist Samuel Lubell said that our two-party system in fact consists of periods of alternating one-party rule—there is a majority "sun" party and a minority "moon" party. "It is within the majority party that the issues of any particular period are fought out," Lubell wrote. Thus, in the 1980s, Republicans grasped (and Democrats did not) that new entrepreneurial energies had been unleashed, and also that the Cold War could be brought to a conclusion through strong foreign policy. This was the Republicans' "sun" period. The reverse is happening today. The Democrats now dominate our heliocentric system—first on the economic stimulus, which is already proving to be at least a limited success, and now on the issue of health-care reform. These are both entirely Democratic initiatives. The Republicans, so intent on thwarting Obama, have vacated the field, and left it up to the sun party to accept the full burden of legislating us into the future. If the Democrats succeed, Republicans will be tagged as the party that declined even to help repair a broken system and extend fundamental protections—logical extensions of Social Security and Medicare—to some 46 million people who now don't have them. This could marginalize the right for a generation, if not longer. Rush Limbaugh's stated hope that Obama will fail seems to have become GOP doctrine. This is the attitude not of conservatives, but of radicals, who deplore the very possibility of a virtuous government.

Meachem: Is there an analogous historical moment? Conservatives argue that this is 1965 and that a renaissance is at hand.

I disagree. Today, conservatives seem in a position closer to the one they occupied during the New Deal. The epithets so many on the right now hurl at Obama—"socialist," "fascist"—precisely echo the accusations Herbert Hoover and "Old Right" made against FDR in 1936. And the spectacle of citizens appearing at town-hall meetings with guns recalls nothing so much as the vigilante Minutemen whom Buckley evicted from the conservative movement in the 1960s. A serious conservative like David Frum knows this, and has spoken up. It is remarkable how few others have. The moon party is being yanked ever farther onto its marginal orbit.

Meachem: Would Chambers recognize the right as it stands today?

He might recognize it, but with dismay. Even in 1959, Chambers withdrew from National Review—where he had been writing occasional essays—because it seemed out of step, for instance, in its failure to see that the Soviet Union must be negotiated with, not simply threatened with nuclear extinction. Chambers opposed the arms race, favored civil liberties, distrusted the unregulated free market. His model was Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th-century English conservative who regarded unchecked capitalism, and the upheavals it wrought, as a potential threat to the social order. Above all, Chambers was a humanist intellectual, deeply learned in the literature of several languages. He urged Buckley (his young protégé) to read the radical novels of André Malraux. He admired Nabokov's Lolita.

Meachem: Is there an inherent contradiction in the idea that conservatives need to put forward an agenda for the future?

I don't think they need to put forward such an agenda. The best policies are formed through cooperation between the two parties. Most voters aren't ideological. They choose leaders for reasons of trust and affinity. It's worth remembering that even at this supercharged moment, with so much fervor in the air, this country elected a relatively inexperienced African-American product of Hawaii, Kenya, Columbia, and Harvard, with some years spent as a social organizer on the South Side of Chicago. And a majority voted for him for they same reason they have voted for other presidents, because they liked and trusted him, and because he seemed attuned to them and their problems. Hannah Arendt identified the ability to listen—to place oneself inside the mind of others—as the essential requirement of democratic statesmanship. The function of conservatives is not to meet every liberal program or scheme with a denunciation or a destructive counterscheme, but rather to weigh its advantages and defects, supporting the first and challenging the second. A declaration of ideological warfare against liberalism is by its nature profoundly unconservative. It meets perceived radicalism with a counterradicalism of its own.

Meachem: One criticism of your book will no doubt be that you are an egghead sellout from The New York Times and aren't a true conservative anyway.

Egghead? I wish. I'm a working journalist, plus biographer and self-taught historian. I claim no expertise as a political thinker, and even less in the realm of policy. As for my having sold out to the Times, anyone masochistic enough to review my writings over the years will see my point of view has changed very little. Nothing I say in my new book conflicts with anything I wrote in my biography of Chambers. I'm not registered with either party and never have been. I'm interested in politics as a theater of ideas and as a place where intellectuals now and again exert some visible influence. It is this confluence of ideas and action that I like to write about.

Meachem: Who do you see as the plausible leaders of the right in the next decade? for that matter, will there be one "right," or possibly a Palin party and a Pawlenty party, to put it very roughly?

This is the crisis now facing the right and principal reason I wrote this book. The movement has exhausted itself and depleted its resources. Before the GOP finds a new leader, it will need a new vocabulary. Political ideas don't change much over time and political debates don't either. (Remember, TR, FDR, and Truman all favored national health care. So did Nixon.) But the tonal difference between a Joe McCarthy in 1950 and a Reagan in 1980 is enormous. And it is the intellectuals who must reinvent the conservative vocabulary, by thinking hard again. I once asked Bill Buckley what brought him to Goldwater and then Reagan. He said, "They came to me." Bill Buckley had the ideas and the language. These ascendant leaders needed to master both.

“Conservatives” Are Single-Largest Ideological Group

2009-06-20T03:02:00.001-07:00

From Gallup.com

June 15, 2009

Percentage of “liberals” higher this decade than in early ’90s
by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ -- Thus far in 2009, 40% of Americans interviewed in national Gallup Poll surveys describe their political views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This represents a slight increase for conservatism in the U.S. since 2008, returning it to a level last seen in 2004. The 21% calling themselves liberal is in line with findings throughout this decade, but is up from the 1990s.

TRANSCRIPT - Newt's Speech to 2009 House/Senate GOP Fundraising Dinner

2009-06-10T18:18:00.001-07:00

Thank you all very very much.

And I want to thank Mitch McConnell and John Boehner for inviting me on behalf of the two committees and I want to thank John Cornyn and Pete Sessions for having been such gracious hosts. I also want to thank Governor Palin and Todd for coming tonight and for being part of this.

When Callista and I came in with Sarah and Todd, and we came to the bottom of the steps over here, John McCain was there very graciously welcoming us. And I have to tell all of you that despite every effort of the elite media to prop up Joe Biden and pretend he actually knows what he’s doing, I felt that looking at John McCain and Sarah Palin that this country would have been amazingly better off had they been in the White House.

I also want to say that I think on behalf of both campaign committees that Jon Voight has given you your battle cry for the next year and a half. And I say this having once with Haley Barbour and Bob Dole crisscross the country when we had been out of power for forty years and people thought we were absolutely out of our minds to suggest that we could actually win a majority.

I think the phrase “do not tell me it can’t be done,” is about a good a way to start thinking about 2010 and 2012 as you can imagine. And I think our goal should be to reach out to the American people in every possible way. To make sure that John Boehner becomes the Speaker of the House in January of 2011, that Mitch McConnell becomes the Senate majority leader, and this is a one term presidency in the Jimmy Carter tradition.

Let me be candid, watching that video, a lot has changed since 1994, then I was a father and my two daughters Kathy and Jackie are here tonight, and we’re thrilled that they’re here. But now I am a grandfather, Maggie is 9 and Robert is 7. Then I was an elected official who had been a college teacher, now Callista and I run four small businesses. Like the 26 million other small business owners, we a burdened with payroll taxes, red tape, and all of the challenges of trying to create jobs in a government hostile environment.

Back then I came to chair the Medicare reform task force, now I’m on Medicare. Back then I went to the movies, now Callista and I make movies. So I recognize that 2009 is not 1994. But I want to say to all of you as Republicans, we have been here before. 1964, 1977, 1993, in each we had lost, they had been hard years, the news media was gleefully hoping we would disappear. 1965 was followed by a 1966 in which we picked up 47 house seats, swept the major governorships including electing Ronald Reagan in California. Two years later in 1968 we began the first of forty years of presidency in which no overt liberal in forty years won the presidency. 1977, when Jimmy Carter’s inaugural day popularity was higher than Barack Obama’s was followed by 1980.in which Ronald Reagan won a decisive victory and fundamentally changed the course of America.1993, in which Bill Clinton was creating a new democratic party was followed by 1994 in which the Democratic Party suffered its worst defeat in forty years.

Now history teaches us that there is a clear road back to a majority, that this is a time for optimism, for solutions, and for a focus on hope and opportunity. We must focus on solving America’s problems and creating solutions for America. The American people will take care of the Republican Party if we will work with them and focus on helping them.

Consider California. Last November, then Senator Obama got 61 percent of the vote, clearly a blue state by the current method of coloring things. But in May, stopping taxing and spending in Sacramento got 64 percent of the vote and gave us an example of the great challenge facing the Republican Party. Think about this, 64 percent of the people of California said Sacramento is such a mess they rejected raising taxes and raising spending. They wanted fundamental change in Sacramento. 64 percent would be a massive majority in our largest state for a party that only a year ago – less than a year ago – got 39 percent. But notice the challenge to many Republicans. The referendum failed n every county. That is a majority of the voters of San Francisco voted no. Now one of the challenges to the Republican Party, are we prepared to be inclusive and not exclusive.

Let me be clear, and I say this having been active and thinking about this party and thinking about governing this country for 51 years. I am happy that Dick Cheney is a Republican, I am also happy that Colin Powell in a Republican. A majority Republican Party will have lots of debates within the party. That is the nature of majorities. Remember, Reagan carried 49 states in 1984, and a lot of them were not hard core conservatives. Reagan won in 198- by appealing to independents and unhappy Democrats. There’s not a single Reagan speech where he doesn’t say “my fellow Republicans, and those independents and Democrats who are looking for a better future.” There were not enough Republicans to win in 1980, in fact we were – I believe – 21 percent of the electorate by identity in 1979.

Now inclusion does not mean lack of principles. Like Reagan – and Callista and I just did a movie you saw last night called Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny with Dave Bossie and Citizens United. Like Reagan, I am for first principles. Tonight, I am going to apply first principles to three areas. One – strengthening our unique American civilization, Two – strengthening our national and homeland security, Three – Building a productive America with the best jobs and greatest prosperity in the world.

First, we must strengthen our unique American civilization. Let me be clear, I am not a citizen of the world. I think that the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous. There is no world sovereignty, there is no world system of law - there is in fact no circumstance under which I would like to be a citizen of North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Cuba, or Russia. I am a citizen – I am a citizen of the United States of America. And, the rest of this speech is about the United States of America.

America is a unique civilization. Callista and I, a couple of years ago, did a movie called Rediscovering God in America which is a walking tour of this city. We did it deliberately. It was our answer to the 9th circuit court, which is in fact irrationally out of touch with this country, and which actually ruled that ‘One Nation Under God’ was unconstitutional. Grounds, in my judgment, for abolishing the court and re-recruiting it. That is not a radical position. Thomas Jefferson eliminated 18 out of 35 federal judges, over one half of all federal judges. I am merely proposing one court of appeals. I am a moderate on this issue.

But the core of this is a very straightforward historic debate. It is not a theological debate, it is not a religious debate, despite every effort of the elite media and the academic left to distort it. It is a fundamental question of political history. If you go to the national archives, you will find the Declaration of Independence, a political document. It says, “We are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This is fundamental to the nature of America. We are the only country in history that says, “your personal rights come from God directly to you, and you loan the government sovereignty.” But the center of sovereignty in America is inevitably inexorably with the citizen because it is inalienable. That’s the core document of this country.

That is why quotas and Sotomayor are wrong, that is why rationing in healthcare is wrong. No government bureaucrat has the right to take from you the rights that God gave you, and rationing under healthcare is inevitably limiting your life at the whim of a bureaucrat and at the manipulation of a politician.

The greatest articulator of this belief was the first Republican President. A man who tragically presided over a civil war in which 620,000 Americans died to end slavery, unlike president Obama’s Cairo speech, it was not an act of happiness, it was a fundamental and stunningly painful expression of our willingness to live and die for the beliefs that make men free.

It’s worth looking at Lincoln because he is speaking only four yeas after the founding of the Republican Party. And, by the way, if you want absolute proof you cannot teach American history honestly and accurately without reference to God, go to the Lincoln Memorial, read the second inaugural – March 1865 – 703 word – 14 references to God – Two quotes from the Bible – and explain to me how you would teach Lincoln accurately and honestly without explaining his attitudes.

I’m going to quote from Lincoln for a minute. It is a little bit longer than good speech making tolerates, but I’m doing it quite deliberately. I want to reset in you the passion, the sincerity, the authenticity of the Declaration of Independence in making us a unique country. In his 1858 debates with Douglass, only four years after the founding of our Party, Lincoln said the following:

“Posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence, and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth, and justice and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.

Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back – return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me, take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever, but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.

You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed those sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity – the Declaration of American Independence.”

That is what this is all about. That is why I am a citizen of the United States of America and not a citizen of the world.

Compare that passion for individual liberty and individual opportunity with the quotas, group politics, and the bureaucratic healthcare rationing advocated by our opponents. This Republican commitment to the individual did not cease after Lincoln. Reagan in one of his radio talks in the 1970’s – part of which we have in our movie – said the following:

“Some of our social planners refer to them as "the masses" which only proves they don’t know them. I’ve been privileged to meet people all over this land in the special kind of way you meet them when you are campaigning. They are not "the masses," or as the elitists would have it–"the common man." They are very uncommon. Individuals each with his or her own hopes & dreams, plans & problems and the kind of quiet courage that makes this whole country run better than just about any other place on earth.”

And that’s why rationing is wrong, and that’s why quotas a wrong, because in fact they eliminate the very power of the individual.

This commitment to our history and to our first principles leads us to some profound commitments - having judges that understand that an America that has driven God from the public square will no longer be the America that has extended freedom and prosperity for 400 years, understanding that individual rights and responsibilities are at the heart of our system, that there are no quotas and no group identities in the American system, understanding that at Cape Henry where English speaking settlers first came they erected a cross as their first act in order to thank God for having gotten across the Atlantic, understanding that at Jamestown, our first permanent settlement, they established the principle if your will not work you will not eat – not for the poor but for the aristocrats who thought they could buy their way out of work. The work ethic was at the heart of our welfare reform in 1996. It is the most successful conservative reform in modern times. Sixty five percent of the people on welfare went to work or went to school.

It is why we have to teach American history accurately and honestly; and frankly, replace those professors and those teachers who are unwilling to be accurate and honest about American history.

It is why we have to have judges that refer to the American Constitution and worry about American precedents and reject those would be judges or replace those judges who insist on quoting foreign precedent and foreign law, which has no application to the United States of America.

It is why we recognize that American entrepreneurial capitalism and a free market will work. And that European socialism will not work in terms of productivity and prosperity.

Because America is unique it is worthy of defending. So my second point is – we must ensure national security and homeland security.

We need a great national debate on five key questions.
- Is the world dangerous?
- Are there people and governments that would like to destroy us?
- What is it worth to keep America and Americans safe from those dangers?
- What strategies can defeat our opponents?
- What metrics can we use to tell if the strategies are working or failing?

Under the Obama administration, we have fallen back into the utopian fantasies and self deception of the 1977 Carter Administration and the 1993 Clinton Administration.

The Reagan movie is a remarkable portrait of the contrast between idealistic realism and idealistic utopianism. Let me remind you, Ronald Reagan and his idealistic belief in democracy announced firmly and clearly that our goal in the Cold War was “We win, They Lose.” He announced clearly that our opponents were an evil empire and eleven years after his election the Soviet Union disappeared. He was both idealistic and realistic.

Jimmy Carter who was sincere idealist was totally out of touch with reality. He lived in a world of fantasies and the result was a catastrophic failure.

The Clinton era failures are similar. Their passion for mistreating terrorism not as an act of war but as an act of criminal justice, their refusal to accept the threats to America meant that they couldn’t cope with the World Trade Center in 1993 which in part was plotted by a prisoner in Attica prison. It meant that they could not cope with the Cobar Tower bombing in Saudi Arabia where they blocked the FBI from going and finding out what happened. It meant that they couldn’t take real knowledge of the two American embassies bombed in East Africa, that they couldn’t cope with the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen where the ambassador blocked the FBI from looking for people and therefore during the entire period of the Clinton Administration the ability of Al Qaeda to plan 9/11 was never stopped, and the people who were doing it were never stopped, and as a result we were left in enormous danger.

Again and again the legalisms and self deceptions of treating enemies as criminals led to more and more disastrous results. Today, many of the same civil libertarians defend the accused terrorists – follow criminal proceedings in a war – ideologues are now in the Obama Justice Department. It’s amazing how many of them come from law firms which were eagerly giving pro bono representation to alleged terrorists in Guantanamo.

The challenge for the Obama Administration is simple. Americans know better. This isn’t the first issue in which the President is clearly and decisively on the wrong side and the American people have begun to get it. By 3 to 1, the American people believe that we are safer with prisoners in Guantanamo than in America. Now, 3 to 1 is a pretty big margin.

Guantanamo is a case study is common sense versus self deception and I thought the President’s decision to deliberately schedule as a speech opposite Dick Cheney was the first big tactical mistake of his Presidency. I’m sure what happened was that his political advisors said to him, “Well, Vice President Cheney has bad poll numbers, you have good poll numbers, it will be a terrific contrast.” They forgot a couple of key things. Vice President Cheney was the youngest Chief of Staff to an American President in history. He was on the intelligence committee in the House, he was Secretary of Defense for 4 years, he spent 8 years as Vice President focused on national security – he actually understands the issue.

The great difference between Reagan’s rhetorical skills and President Obama’s rhetorical skills are that Reagan used his rhetorical skills to shine light on truths and fundamental facts. Obama uses his rhetorical skills to hide from fundamental facts. If you want a single case, read the Cheney speech and the Obama speech on the same day. There is a fundamental mistake, which tells you a great deal about this administration. Cheney had a fairly simple message – the reason we have Guantanamo is that we have people at Guantanamo that are dangerous. They are called terrorists. We call them terrorists because they want to kill us. It is good not to have them anywhere near us because it makes it harder for them to kill us. Now the average American could hear that simple declaredly sentence and say to themselves, “Okay, there’s the terrorists are okay gang and there’s the terrorists stay in Guantanamo gang. Uhh, okay, I got it. I’m with the terrorists stay in Guantanamo gang.” Now the President who had an impossible position was once said of Lincoln and Douglass that Lincoln was the best lawyer in Illinois with the good case and Douglass was the best lawyer in Illinois with the bad case. And I’m beginning to think that President Obama is in the Douglass tradition. Because the President, who is a remarkably wonderful orator said, “We are here at a deeply meaningful moment in which we are going to in a deeply fundamental and meaningful way engage is discussing a problem that is so complex and difficult that only myself can present it to you in such a way that you will fully appreciate the meaningfulness of this moment we have here together.” And the average American said “Got it. He doesn’t understand what’s going on.” And they are currently losing this debate by about 3 to 1 and it will get worse if they stick to it, because it is nonsense.

But we need to build on the lesson of this debate because it’s not about Guantanamo – it’s about the nature of reality. The lesson of terrorism is that we have to control our borders. The lesson of terrorism is that we must have an effective system of legal immigration. We must have a system of legal temporary workers. We must have a vastly expanded system of H1 visas for highly qualified workers. We must outsource the guest worker identity system to Visa, MasterCard, or American Express because no federal agency could keep up with the fraud if you tried to internalize it the bureaucracy. And we must assure assimilation into being Americans by making English the official language of government and by teaching American history to both first generation immigrants and to our own children. Now some of you will be told later how can we appeal to the Latino vote if we are actually in favor of English? The fact is that if you go to americansolutions.com and click on the platform, 59 percent of the Hispanic American population favors English as the official language of government and as Bobby Jindal’s father, who is a first generation immigrant from India, said to me recently, “We are crazy if we do not make English the official language of government. We need it to assimilate everyone from every country into being American.”

And in that process we have to treat American history to first generation immigrants and to our own children. And I believe that we should have a national campaign to fundamentally redesign the curriculums of every school in this country so they actually learn American history as a part of their citizenship.

These steps will make us more secure, more prosperous, and more law abiding. But the challenge of foreign dangers will remain. Beyond Guantanamo there are enormous dangers threatening America and our allies. Our enemies seek weapons of horrifying danger – nuclear weapons, electromagnetic pulse weapons, biological weapons. Our national and homeland security systems must become dramatically more robust in order to cope with these threats and protect America and Americans.

After 9/11 people ask, “why didn’t we think of that attack?” In fact many of us had, just nobody wanted to pay attention, it was in the bureaucracies. There is no excuse for not thinking today about the potentially catastrophic attacks that are threatening us. Our current Defense and Homeland Security budgets are simply too small and the bureaucracies are too slow and too cumbersome. We have to meet short term threats and we have to meet long term threats. The current budget cannot possibly meet both challenges. Focusing on the short term small war threat while starving recapitalization of the Navy and Air Force, under funding science and technology to pay for Afghanistan and Iraq is a formula for a future collapse in our ability to cope with China and Russia.

I appreciate what Secretary Gates is trying to do, it is impossible to defend this country and maintain homeland security on the current budget. And we frankly need more retired military people talking out and telling the truth about the decay of our Navy, the decay of our Air Force, the decay of our long term capabilities, and the current budget constraints. And I will tell all of you, the future challenge of China forces a much broader definition of national security thinking. Meeting the long term challenge of China and India takes us inevitably the economy, to education, and to fundamental change.

The key national security question for the next generation is simply our third topic. What do we have to do to compete with China and India so our grandchildren live in the most productive and therefore the most prosperous country in the world? How do we make America the best place in the world to build the next factory and create the next high paying job? Unless we solve this, we will inevitably cease to be the leading power in the world. Nothing keeps me going everyday more than the thought that I do not want to turn over to Maggie and Robert the first generation in American history to have failed to have done its job of fixing the country so our children and grandchildren are better off not worse off.

Without a strong economy and without scientific and technological leadership, we cannot sustain our military leadership capabilities. The economy and education are national security issues. Competing with China and India will be a bigger challenge than competing with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. I commend to all of you Bob Compton’s film 2 Million Minutes – that’s four years of high school – which shows you vividly two Indian high school students, two Chinese high school students, and two American high school students. And at the end of the movie you realize that we a country aggressively preparing for the 1956 Olympics. We will win no gold medals at that level. And I recommend to all of you to go to 2mminutes.com to see just how bad the challenge is. To meet that challenge we have to reform litigation, regulation, taxation, education, health, energy, and infrastructure. That is the minimum for us to compete successfully in the next generation with China and India. Yes, it’s big – I think it is also historically true. And the question is rather we have the courage to do it. The scale of change requires all 513,000 elected officials – school board, county commission, state legislature – not just the Presidency. It requires and tri-partisan approach - Red, white, and blue majorities – Republicans, Democrats, and Independents – not Red versus blue majorities. California’s 64 percent is an encouraging sign that if we are creative and we are articulate and we are clear, then we might just build a red, white, and blue majority that is truly tri-partisan. We do not need stimulus, we need growth. We do not need temporary fixes; we need real investment and real productivity improvements. The key question is: How do we make America the best place in the world for the next factory and the next job. The answer is the opposite of the left’s formula. Because we don’t need stimulus, we don’t need temporary jobs. We need investments to create permanent productivity increases to sustain permanent jobs.

You know for years the left talked about trickle down capitalism; it was one of their favorite attacks. Well, let me offer you an observation. Trickle down bureaucracy works even less than trickle down capitalism. The idea that you can pour $787 billion in Washington and have it somehow create jobs in an effective way is a fantasy of the first order. Not that the people who voted for it care; their goal was not productivity and prosperity. Their goal was power and paying off their allies.

You can tell how badly the stimulus has failed – and let’s be clear, this is not something President Obama inherited from George W. Bush – he got his stimulus, on his schedule, for his amount, delivered by his robots in Congress who did exactly as they were told without even reading the bill. So he can’t turn around now and say, “Oh Gosh, George W. Bush made me have a stimulus plan.” This is his plan. And what happened? They promised we would peak at 8 percent unemployment and on Friday we were at 9.4 percent, which is not in their budget which means their budget is already wrecked because we are going to have higher unemployment, greater government expenses, and less revenue than they projected because their plan has already failed.

And let me be clear as a matter of first principle. Bureaucrats micromanaging companies - Does not work. Politicians dominating the economy - Does not work. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are not substitutes for a sound market economy. Geithner and Summers are not replacements for Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. We have been here before. Jimmy Carter and four years of mismanagement got us to 13 percent inflation, 22 percent interest rates sliding into the worst recession since the Great Depression, and every other day gasoline rationing in which you could only buy gasoline based on the last number of your license plate.

How many of you remember when you could only buy gasoline every other day based on the last number of your license plate? Raise your hand, this is not a theory alright, this happened. America, the wealthiest country in the world was reduced by bad policy, bad politicians, and bad government to rationing gasoline. My good friend Dave Bossie pointed out that he was only 13 at the time and every morning his father would give him a screwdriver to go out back to change the license plate so that the car that needed gas had the right license plate. And from that I have developed a simple test for liberal and conservative. If you learned that government rationing led 13 year olds to change license plates and you conclude that we should have dropped an idea that dumb, you’re a conservative. If on hearing Dave Bossie’s story you concluded that we needed license plate police at every gas station, you are a liberal. It’s that straightforward.

But we’ve been here before. Let me be clear as to how disastrous this administration will end up being. Replacing the rule of law with special interests in bankruptcy does not work. Having a 31 year old take time off from law school to redesign the auto industry will not work. In fact, he is a symbol of the arrogance and lack of realism of this administration.

Paying off ACORN and other left wing interest groups will not work. You can’t have capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down. You are going to choose between one or the other, I choose capitalism because for 400 years it has been the most productive, the most prosperous highest quality of life system on the planet.

You have to have the rule of law not the rule of empathy. You cannot pay off political allies in violation of contract law, if America begins to resemble Venezuela and Russia in changing the law to favor political allies and punish political enemies, our economy will be crippled for a generation.

People will not invest where politicians can rip them off. And I don’t think that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd are exactly good advertisements around the world for the next factory to come to the United States.

So, how do we get back to economic growth? Raising taxes does not work. What would work? As Reagan would have said, ‘Let’s go back to First principles.’ Taxes are a first principle. High taxes kill jobs and growth. Low taxes encourage jobs and growth. What would a free enterprise, entrepreneurial market oriented stimulus package be like? First, let’s get money to the people who work and the businesses that hire them. If we had a two year 50% reduction in the Social Security and Medicare tax for both the employee and the employer match, you would have an extraordinary explosion of small business. You would have a dramatic increase in employment. You’d have the money available for businesses to invest without bureaucracies and without politicians. You would have a dramatic rebound. It would be much better than the bureaucratic trickle down theories of the left.

As a small business owner, I know what the impact would be of a two year 50 percent reduction both for the employees and the employer match.

If you want to compete with China for jobs, match the Chinese on capital gains. Their rate is zero.

If you want to compete for profitable businesses creating good jobs, adopt the Irish tax rate of 12.5 percent for corporations.

If you want to build up capital for investments permanently, abolish the death tax. It is the biggest single hindrance to average people creating capital. And by the way, 79 percent of the American people believe that it is wrong - Morally wrong - to require someone to visit the under taker and the IRS in the same week.

Now let me make a key point here, and I want to say this because of Jon Voight’s wonderful quote, “Do not tell me it can’t be done.” I just outlined for you the first four tax cuts that ought to be the heart of the Republican Party. And many of you will say to me, “Well, that’s unrealistic.” Well, so was a majority in ’94 and so was welfare reform and so was balancing the budget and so was electing Ronald Reagan and so was eliminating the Soviet Empire.

This is precisely what Ronald Reagan meant in 1975 at CPAC when he said, “we cannot have pale pastels, we need bold colors.” The fact is that if you go to the country with a genuine free market opportunity and you’re prepared to win the argument in the Margaret Thatcher phrase, “That first you win the argument, and then you win the vote.” And you go to the average small business in this country – you want to reach out to African Americans, to Koreans, to Vietnamese, to Chinese, to Indians, to Latinos – you go to every small business in America and say, “Hi, if we cut your Social Security and Medicare tax by 50 percent and we cut your match as the employer, would you have more money? Would that be better than giving the money to General Motors? Would you like that more than having Rahm Emmanuel spend it? And you suddenly have a conversation that when they go to their accountant and find out how much money you’re talking about, they’re going to want to come to the second town hall meeting. But that requires us to have the courage to have a bold vision of what a dynamic entrepreneurial market oriented America would be like – that rewarded work, that rewarded savings, that rewarded investment, that rewarded risk taking, and was prepared to take on the corrupt politicians and their corrupt allies head on. That’s the gap we need.

Some will say, “But how do you cut taxes when we have such a big deficit?” Remember, big deficits – on the left – mean raise taxes. Big deficits – on the left – never mean control spending. Well as John Kasich, our budget committee chairman who I believe is the next governor of Ohio, could report to you - stopping spending is a lot better way to balance the budget. Reforming government is a lot better way to balance the budget. Modernizing and replacing bureaucracies and failed programs is a better to balance the budget. Again, let me say this very directly, I am the only Speaker of the House since the 1920’s to have authored four consecutive balanced budgets. We paid off $405 billion in federal debt and I am quite comfortable telling you that yes we can balance the budget again if we have a majority and we are in charge.

Tax increases cannot balance the budget because they crush the economy which reduces revenues and they encourage the liberals to spend more. Look at Sacramento and New York. If raising taxes work, New York and California would have balanced budgets. But they don’t because the interest groups spend the money as fast as they find it.

Our record for four years was to control all federal spending including entitlements at 2.9 percent per year for four years. The lowest rate increase since Calvin Coolidge, and we did it with a liberal Democrat in the White House. So don’t tell me it can’t be done.

Now that means you have to look at how we’d do it? – by the way we also doubled the size of the National Institutes of Health’s budget and we passed the first tax cut in sixteen years to accelerate economic growth and increase revenue through prosperity.

We reformed welfare; this was not a negative – 92 percent of the American people favored welfare reform including 88 percent of the people on welfare. By the time we’d won the argument we were in a position where 2 out of every 3 people on welfare went to work or went to school. They got off of Medicaid, they quit taking welfare money, they started paying taxes, their incomes went up, their lives got better. That was real change. We reformed Medicare when it was scheduled to go broke. We controlled domestic discretionary spending – only twice since World War II has domestic discretionary spending gone down – 1981 and 1995. And let me tell you, these guys are spending so grotesquely I think it would be easy for domestic discretionary spending to go down dramatically. And I think the country would be grateful to have less pork flooding out from politicians and to have more to take home pay from their own hard work.

Today, there are huge opportunities for controlling spending; the level of fraud and corruption which has infected our government is staggering. Let me be blunt, when you read a New York Times story that 97 percent of the people who retire from the Long Island Railroad are getting disabilities, you are reading about a society so corrupt that theft has become the norm. It cost the U.S. taxpayer in the last decade $250 million for theft by Long Island Railroad retirees.

Our estimate – Jim Frogue at the Center for Health Transformation is going to have a book come out this summer on Medicare and Medicaid. Our estimate is the minimum level of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid is between $75-120 billion per year. The fact is that in South Florida a couple years ago they closed 17 HIV/AIDS transfusion facilities in the same day – 5 of the 17 were pizza parlors.

Nobody understands in America today how bad these governments are, how incompetent they are, how fundamentally flawed they are, and how many crooks there are that are living off your tax money and running up your debt while not providing you a penny in service. And there’s a lot of places to find the money to have tax cuts, economic growth, and work back to a balanced budget at the same time. But real growth is more than just taxes, real growth comes through real encouragement for the private sector combined with real reform of the government bureaucracies. We should repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley Bill which has not accomplished anything in telling us what went on, but cost every company millions of dollars.

And beyond tax policy, we need an American energy policy. We need a policy that emphasizes energy in America and recognizes that the problem is government. It’s not that we don’t have energy sources. The Bakken Field in North Dakota for example, in the last three years the estimate has gone up by 25 fold – 2500 percent – the amount of oil available. Natural gas discoveries in the last six years because of new technology have produced over 100 years supply of natural gas. In oil shale we have three times the reserves of Saudi Arabia. Brazil proved recently that you can go offshore and they have gone from 10 billion barrels of reserve to 90 billion barrels of reserve in the Atlantic. We have the largest supply of coal on the planet and the article in the Wall Street Journal today is fundamentally foolish because the fact is, at the right price we have more coal than Saudi Arabia has oil and it is an enormous potential asset. We have bio-fuels and ethanol in growing abundance. We have new breakthroughs in hydrogen, electric engines, wind and solar. America today – in energy- is artificially weakened by bad government policies which favor imports over American energy. And let me assert clearly and simply, bowing to the Saudi king is not an energy policy.

For national security, for the national economy, we should keep the money here. The next great building boom off of energy ought to be in Denver not Dubai. And the American people agree that we need an American energy policy. Last year at American Solutions we launched a petition drive of ‘Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less’ and in six weeks we had a million five hundred thousand signatures. 79 percent of the American people agree that both for economic reasons and for national security reasons we should develop American energy and that it is a key to our economic future.

The American people reject an energy tax and that’s all cap and trade is. I never refer to cap and trade – that’s just a fancy liberal phrase to hide the reality – this is an energy tax and every American at every level will pay it and it will export jobs to China.

The American people reject and imperial Environmental Protection Agency which is grotesquely exaggerating its power and one of the bills we should introduce is to replace the current bureaucratic litigation system at EPA with an entrepreneurial innovative system that is fundamentally new and different.

Americans reject the fundamental liberal principle of paying more to get less. I have confess I began reading the Waxman- Markey bill and I gave up when I got to the page where they were explaining how they would regulate Jacuzzis. People who believe that 31 year olds can redesign the energy industry – I mean can redesign the automobile industry and that bureaucrats in Washington need to meddle down to a level of making sure you only get the right Jacuzzi – are people that have lost any sense of what made America unique, any sense of individual liberty, any sense of personal freedom, and the correct answer is to simply defeat them, let them go home, get a tenured faculty job and write books the rest of their life.

Terry Maple and I wrote a book called Contract with the Earth, which is an outline of a green conservatism. I used to teach environmental studies; I believe we can have a sound environmental policy. But I believe that Americans want a creative, entrepreneurial, and effective policy for ample energy at reasonable prices with the money staying in America.

Finally, I think if we want to compete with China and India we have to confront the challenge of education. In 1983, I participated when the Reagan Administration released A Nation at Risk which said that our schools are so bad that if a foreign power was doing to our children what we are doing to them, we would consider it an act of war. Nothing much has changed. The poorest kids in America are trapped in schools that are grotesquely bad. They are more likely to go to jail than to go to college. Their lives are very limited by the very failure to learn.

In 2001, I participated in the report from the Hart-Rudman Commission which President Clinton and I created. We looked out to 2025 in national security; we said that the greatest threat to the United State – this was in March before 9/11 – was a weapon of mass destruction going off in an American city probably from a terrorist group. We said that the second greatest threat to the United States is the failure in math and science education and it is a greater threat than any conceivable conventional war. And not much has been done, despite all the bureaucracy and all the spending we have an immense distance to go if we take seriously producing student who are as well educated as the Chinese and Indian students.

Rev. Al Sharpton actually has it correct, and it may surprise you to hear me quote him, but I think he’s onto a very big idea - that ‘education has to become the first civil right of the 21st century.’

Now is a time to be bold. If we believe that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, if we are going to be the party that wraps itself around the Declaration of Independence and stands firm for being Americans then every child deserves to learn. Every adult that has been lost by bad education deserves to learn. Every first time prisoner deserves to learn.

Education is a moral as well as an economic and a national security issue. I would go much further than the President; I favor vouchers although I like Senator Lamar Alexander’s formula that there are simply Pell Grants for K-12. And I would love to have debase over why Pell Grant are good after 12, but not good for K-12.

But there is a zone where we can find common ground with President Obama; he has said consistently in debates including with Senator Clinton in the primaries that he favors unlimited charter schools. And if we were to actively and aggressively to ally with him, and to go into every state in the country and campaign to pass laws at the state level and to campaign to pass federal laws that rewarded those states that adopted unlimited charter schools and allowed every parent to have a choice of any school without having the schools trapped by the unions, or trapped by the education establishment, or trapped by the bureaucracy, we would in fact in the matter of a year or two have fundamentally begun to change the system.

The education establishment today is trying to kill charter schools all across America. It is an immoral and a destructive program. It places the defense of the incompetent ahead of the lives of the children. We need a ‘Save the Children’ campaign. We also need a ‘Save the Uneducated Adults’ campaign. And we must take up Chuck Colson’s great breakthrough with a faith based prison system which has saved the lives of thousands of people, because we owe it to the almost 2 million Americans in prison to recognize that they too are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and we have a deep moral obligation to them. I believe we have a deep moral obligation to save the unborn, but I also believe we have a deep moral obligation to care for children after they have been born and to help every American in every community have a better future.

We should go boldly into every community. We should reach out to every American, I think it is vital that we do that. And let me just say one last brief thing about healthcare because it is so central to where we are going.

This administration would destroy the American healthcare system. The New York Times I think let the cat out of the bag with its cheerful call for a massive tax increase and for rationing. I think the director of the budget in his statements of rationing should have frightened all of us. I am fundamentally, unalterably opposed to comparative effectiveness becoming the first step towards rationing because if we have been endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, how can a government bureaucrat tell you that you don’t deserve the best possible medicine, the best possible procedure, the best possible hospital?. And I think the core fight of the next few months will be what we have worked for years at the Center for Health Transformation on. Can we in fact develop a health system that is health base, health reform working on best standards and best procedures, modernizing the system, saving enormous amount of money which would allow us to fundamentally change the system. And can we do it without going to a British style national health system, without gong to a system that blocks Americans from getting best practices, and which turns power over to a Washington based bureaucrat to decide whether or not we live.

I think it is a central question to the future of our country.

So let me just close with the following thought. Republican Party has a great a moral challenge as it had in 1858 when Lincoln as an unknown lawyer was campaigning in Illinois. It has as great a challenge as it had in 1976 when Ronald Reagan, having lost the nomination, was invited by President Ford to come down and said, “We may be fewer than we have been, but we have the moral obligation to reach out to every American, to recruit every person, to make our case for America’s future.”

We stand for a strong national and homeland security system. We stand for a solid base in classic American principles. We can offer far better solutions than the left.

I am very proud to be a Republican activist. I am committed to American principles. I am committed to freedom for the individual. I am committed to defending America.

What is at stake is the future of this extraordinary experiment in individual human freedom.

I hope that each of you will leave here tonight, dedicated for your children, for your grandchildren, and for your country, to reaching out to every person that you can touch, to making the decision that we will win in 2010, and in 2012 in the great tradition of Jimmy Carter – we will make this one more one term left-wing presidency.

And before you say it can’t be done, let me remind you of Jon Voight’s great quote, “Do not tell me it can’t be done.”

If it was true for FDR, it’s true for us.

Thank you and God Bless you.

What both sides should know about Newt Gingrich's Republican road map

2009-06-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

From the L.A. Times blog:

As The Ticket reported last night, Sarah and Todd Palin did eventually attend the summer's major Republican fundraiser.

And former Speaker, current small business owner Newt Gingrich did speak. As usual, provocatively.

They raised nearly $15 million. And Gingrich acknowledged the Palins, to applause.

But what was really important, politically, from the evening event were his heartening remarks to the Republican faithful, offering encouragement and historical precedents, including how quickly the GOP rebuilt after major defeats in 1964, 1976 and 1992.

He also noted, to some audience murmuring, that while Barack Obama won 61% of California's presidential vote in November, six months later in the recent referenda, fully 64% rejected raising taxes and spending.

Partisans of either side may be pleased or angered by his words. They'll boo or cheer while watching this C-SPAN video. Which is fine. But they'll miss Gingrich quoting Democrat Al Sharpton positively. And outlining ways Republicans should ally with the new president.

And for those historical political observers who value a strong two-party system duking it out while Americans watch and make their choice, Gingrich's remarks offer the first actual proposed, detailed road map since November for a 21st century Republican reconstruction.

Whether Gingrich's familiar fountain of ideas triumphs, his thoughts are certain to become a part of the ongoing political debate leading up to the 2010 midterm elections -- and beyond.

And, if speaking about such things in 2009 helps position Gingrich for 2012, well, maybe he won't mind.

As we often do here, we'll let the political actors speak for themselves.

obot jokes

2009-04-29T16:19:00.000-07:00

I'm slow to the party on this one. An obot is an Obama Robot.

OBOT LOGIC
Two Obots living in California were sitting on a bench talking, and one Obot says to the other, ‘Which do you think is farther away… Florida or the moon?’ The other Obot turns and says ‘Helloooooooooo, can you see Florida ?????

CAR TROUBLE
An Obot pushes his BMW into a gas station. He tells the mechanic it died. After the mechanic works on it for a few minutes, it’s idling smoothly. The Obot says, ‘What’s the story?’ The mechanic replies, ‘Just crap in the carburetor.’ The Obot asks, ‘How often do I have to do that?’

SPEEDING TICKET
A police officer stops an Obot for speeding and asks him very nicely to see his license. The Obot replied in a huff, ‘I wish you guys would get your act together. Just yesterday you take away my license and then today you expect me to show it to you!’

RIVER WALK
There’s this Obot out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another Obot on the opposite bank. ‘Yoo-hoo!’ she shouts, ‘How can I get to the other side?’ The second Obot looks up the river then down the river and shouts back, ‘You ARE on the other side.’

KNITTING
A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the Obot behind the wheel was knitting! Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled, ‘PULL OVER!’
‘NO!’ the Obot yelled back, ‘IT’S A SCARF!’

OBOT ON THE SUN
A Russian, an American, and an Obot were talking one day. The Russian said, ‘We were the first in space!’ The American said, ‘We were the first on the moon!’ The Obot said, ‘So what? We’re going to be the first on the sun!’ The Russian and the American looked at each other and shook their heads. ‘You can’t land on the sun, you idiot! You’ll burn up!’ said the Russian. To which the Obot replied, ‘We’re not stupid, you know. We’re going at night!’

IN A VACCUUM
An Obot was playing Trivial Pursuit one night. It was her turn. She rolled the dice and she landed on Science & Nature. Her question was, ‘If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it?’ She thought for a time and then asked, ‘Is it on or off?’

FINALLY, THE OBOT JOKE TO END ALL OBOT JOKES!
A girl was visiting her Obot friend, who had acquired two new dogs, and asked her what their names were. The Obot responded by saying that one was named Rolex and one was named Timex. Her friend said, ‘Whoever heard of someone naming dogs like that?’ ‘HELLLOOOOOOO……,’ answered the Obot. ‘They’re watch dogs!

Danforth vs. ACORN

2008-10-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

From ky3.blogspot.com:

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

In a conference call, Former Senator John Danforth says fraudulent voter registrations by ACORN could send Election 2008 into overtime.
***
"If you want to think of a nightmare in America, think about an election either where Sen. Obama wins a close election or loses a close election, and the losing side believes it's been cheated."
***

ON OBAMA: "There is a clear connection between ACORN and Senator Obama. He's been endorsed by the ACORN PAC. He's taught classes for ACORN . . . It's a strong connection."

Sen. John Danforth expressed concern about possible fraudulent activity by ACORN in Missouri to register voters multiple times. Danforth only cited one specific instance in Independence where one individual registered "ten different times under different addresses and different social security numbers."

But the Republican added that "where it occurs in a large quantity . . . it could have an impact on the election."
ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. It claims it is the the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families.

Danforth made his statements in a late Wednesday afternoon conference call. None of the alleged activity by ACORN is occurring in Southwest Missouri, but Republicans point out that in a close election, Ozarks voters could see their ballots canceled out if fraud occurs in Missouri's two cities.
"It could be year 2000 revisited, but worse," Danforth warned. "If you want to think about a nightmare in America, think about an election where Sen. Obama wins a close election, or loses a close election, and the losing side believes it's been cheated," he added. He said no matter who wins, the goal should be to get the election behind us after November.

According to the Kansas City Star, Sen. Claire McCaskill said phony voter registration forms are not the same thing as voter fraud: "There has been no fraudulent voting...The people who claim this is a huge problem can never produce any instances where anyone voted fraudulently.
Danforth rebutted that claim. "It is not ok to have fraudulent registration . . . The system has been swamped, and this is not a trivial matter. It is not ok," Danforth said. "The last cycle there were more than questions raised, there were 12 convictions," he added.

Danforth said the goal of the conference call was to call attention to this problem, and try to "do whatever we can to stop it." He said a fair, clean election is in the interest of both parties. But he also raised ACORN's connection with Barack Obama.
"There is a clear connection between ACORN and Senator Obama," Sen. Danforth said. "He's been endorsed by the ACORN PAC . . . He's taught classes for ACORN. It's a strong connection."

Why Replacing Biden With Hillary Makes Perfect Sense for Obama

2008-09-16T15:26:00.001-07:00

Andy Ostroy at Huffington Post:

Sen. Joe Biden's a perfectly appropriate vice presidential running-mate for Sen. Barack Obama. He's got 36 years of Senate experience, is a true intellect, a foreign policy expert, and a genuinely nice guy. But ever since Sen. John McCain added plucky Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to his ticket, the old adage nice guys finish last is beginning to take on new meaning in this year's presidential contest. It's time to dump Biden and replace him with Sen. Hillary Clinton. I don't care how it's done. Campaign chief David Axelrod can figure that out. And the sooner the better. Because I'm starting to think that if Team-Obama doesn't do something dramatic fast, it's gonna lose this election. There's a worrisome shift in momentum and in the polls. The Palin phenomenon, while truly unfathomable to Democrats, has energized McCain's campaign and allowed him like Houdini to snatch Obama's "change" theme right out from under him. It's time to snatch it back.

Conventional wisdom says replacing Biden with Clinton can't be done. That it's too late. That it'll make Obama appear indecisive, impulsive and lacking good judgement. Many Democrats believe this would cause irreparable harm to the campaign, ringing Obama's death knell. But this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, it'd be a freakin' coup for Obama, and would instantly melt Palin's undeserving outsize political ice cap.

To be sure, a Biden-Clinton switch would cause quite a stir in the media. They'd accuse him of all sorts of things, from being politically expedient and flip-flopping to being irrational and ill-equipped to be president. The talking heads on CNN, Fox and MSNBC would be locked in a non-stop frenzied orgy of derisive rhetoric. But we also know that it would make about 18-million Hillary voters ecstatic at the same time. So, honestly, who really cares what Joe Scarborough, Keith Olbermann, Wolf Blitzer or Brit Hume thinks? These pundits don't constitute an appreciable voting block. What they think and feel would be utterly dwarfed by the euphoria from Clinton's faithful supporters. It's a pretty safe bet that an Obama/Clinton ticket would capture virtually all of these loyal Clintonistas. It's also a safe bet that many of those highly coveted 18-49-year-old women who polls show migrated to McPalin this past week would drop the spunky little hockey mom in a heartbeat for Hillary. Lastly, it's an even safer bet that Obama's current voters would stick with him as well. So, where's the downside? Show me a Democrat, today, who'd dump Obama for McCain if Biden was replaced with Clinton? They don't exist.

Obama should do what the Republicans would do in this situation. In fact, he should do exactly what his opponent did. Shake things up. Be unconventional. Roll the dice. Out-McCain McCain. Who cares how it looks. Who cares what the media thinks. One thing's certain: there's an 18-million deep pot of gold out there waiting to be mined. An Obama/Clinton ticket would slam the door shut on this election.

Joe Guarino: Obama to dump Biden?

2008-09-16T15:23:00.001-07:00

September 12, 2008

Rush Limbaugh openly speculated during the opening moments of his radio program today as to whether Barack Obama might be preparing to remove Joe Biden from his ticket in favor of Hillary Clinton. He cited the two-hour lunch meeting Obama had with Bill Clinton yesterday in Harlem.

But there are other circumstances, of course, that could theoretically lead to a perceived need to change the vice-presidential nominee. First, of course, is the nomination of Sarah Palin and the manner in which it has turned the presidential race upside down. Obama is now behind in the polls nationally and in some of the key states he was previously leading.

Second, there is newly released polling information that suggests the change of fortune could spill down to congressional races, and perhaps even cause the national Democrats to lose control of the House of Representatives.

Third, the Obama campaign at least momentarily appears to be out of energy, to be striking the wrong notes with the electorate, and to have lost its appeal.

And fourth, even Joe Biden has conceded that Hillary would have been a better running mate.

It is not clear to me how a national party, at this point, goes about changing its nominee. I do not know how party rules could make that happen.

But if, in fact, there are secret negotiations taking place with respect to Hillary replacing Biden on the ticket, the Clinton's are in a very strong negotiating position. And I suspect that Obama, to entice her to join him, would have to cede to the Clinton's a significant chunk of his presidency.

That is why I suspect it will not happen. But if it does, we may not learn until much later what agreements have been made.

Canadian bishops to ponder implications of 'next steps' after Lambeth

2008-09-11T04:34:00.000-07:00

From The Anglican Journal (Canada):

Marites N. Sison
staff writer

Sep 10, 2008

The Canadian house of bishops will discuss next month how best to respond to renewed proposals for a moratoria on the blessing of same-sex unions, the ordination of openly gay persons to the episcopate, and cross-border interventions.

In a related development, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, said he has requested Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to facilitate a meeting between him, the primate of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, Gregory Venables, U.S. presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, and the primate of Brazil, Mauricio de Andrade, to discuss cross-border interventions.

The three primates – Archbishop Hiltz, Archbishop de Andrade, and Bishop Jefferts Schori – have repeatedly asked Archbishop Venables to stop meddling in the internal affairs of their provinces. Archbishop Venables has, on his own accord, been providing episcopal oversight to churches that are in serious theological dispute with their respective provinces over the issue of sexuality. Archbishop Williams has said he will do his best to facilitate the request.

In an interview, Archbishop Hiltz said the Canadian bishops will have “a very focused conversation” around how they understand the call for moratoria. He said there are conflicting interpretations on what the moratorium means, with some thinking it means not having any new blessings, and some interpreting it as retroactive, which would require a synod like New Westminster to rescind its 2002 motion that allowed same-sex blessings in their diocese. He added that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent letter to bishops about the moratoria was also “significant.” Archbishop Williams had acknowledged that, while the call for moratoria received support from “a strong majority” at the conference, he was nonetheless aware of the “conscientious difficulties this posed for some.”

Archbishop Hiltz said that the diocesan bishop of New Westminster, Michael Ingham, “rightly pointed out that it’s not for him to rescind the motion; the synod has to debate the issue.” The primate said that he’d be “very surprised if they rescind that motion.”

Archbishop Hiltz said that the call for moratoria would also be “a huge pastoral challenge” for bishops of four dioceses that have pending requests from their synods for the approval of same-sex blessings “given the kind of strong majority votes those synods” had.

He also said that the question of reciprocity remains. Bishops who are being asked to hold off on same-sex blessings are bound to ask, “Am I going to see a similar act of graciousness on the part of a primate or a bishop who intervenes from another province?” said Archbishop Hiltz. He said that there is clear evidence that the interventions are not going to cease. Already, conservative primates who boycotted the conference and formed a council for the Global Anglicans Future Conference (GAFCON) have announced plans for church plantings and the possibility of creating a new province in North America.

“It’s very complex because (they) feel their intervention is a pastoral response,” he said.

Archbishop Hiltz said that he was “not surprised” by GAFCON’s rejection of the proposals to address the conflict over sexuality. “It almost feels to me that whatever accusations or charges they lay against us, they appear to me to function very much a separatist group,” he said.

Asked about GAFCON’s plan to set up a North American province, he said “the province has to be in communion with the See of Canterbury and it’s the Anglican Consultative Council that determines (whether a province can be set up), not a group of primates and bishops, not even the Archbishop of Canterbury.” He said that the Archbishop of Canterbury had already expressed earlier that he only recognizes one Anglican ecclesial body in Canada, and that is the Anglican Church of Canada.

Archbishop Hiltz said that while he can’t predict what the bishops will do, he is aware of that they are wrestling with the “tensions between the local and global.” The dioceses of Ottawa and Montreal – whose synods a year ago approved a motion requesting their bishops to allow same-sex blessings— are having synods on Oct. 24 and 25, a few days before the house of bishops meeting scheduled Oct. 27 to 31. The two other dioceses – Niagara and Huron – will have their synods in November and May, respectively.

“Their local constituency has spoken, an overwhelming majority in some cases,” said Archbishop Hiltz. “While some would say it was even inappropriate for them to even debate the issue after the outcome at General Synod…the synod was an opportunity to hear the mind and heart of the church local, and the pastoral needs are significant there than they are in other places as evidenced by the vote.”

At the same time, Archbishop Hiltz said, “behind them and around them is the wider picture.” The question posed by the St. Michael Report (issued by the Primate’s Theological Commission in 2005) still remains, he said. “Do we hold unity as the ultimate value and so we cling to that at the risk of making a pastoral response that is called for unnecessary in the local context, or is it the other way – the gospel imperative is so important in this pastoral context that we proceed at the risk of unity?”

Archbishop Hiltz said that while the recent Lambeth Conference didn’t resolve anything, “I think a lot of us came away a lot more aware of the context in which people are wrestling with the issue.” He said that Anglicans around the world operate in very diverse contexts. While countries like Canada allow gays and lesbians to be civilly married, there are other parts of the Anglican Communion where “if it’s found out that you’re homosexual, your life is on the line – you could be imprisoned or killed,” he said.

“What we do in Canada has the potential to impact other places,” he said. He added that bishops from other provinces also became acutely aware of what the situation in the Canadian church is.

The diocesan bishop of Montreal, Barry Clarke, has told the diocesan paper, Montreal Anglican, that he is “still in a process of prayerful thought” and “still in a space of listening to the diocese” on the issue of whether to allow priests to bless same-sex marriages under certain circumstances.

He said that his deeply moving experiences at Lambeth have also left him “deeply conscious of other voices in the wider Anglican Communion” on this and other issues.

The diocesan bishop of Ottawa, John Chapman, told the diocesan newspaper, Crosstalk, “I came home from Lambeth no further along than I was before I left.”

Bishop Chapman, who spoke on the issue of moratoria at the Lambeth Conference, said he would only consider a moratorium on the blessing of same-sex unions if its duration is reasonable. He noted that there had been no conversation on how long the moratorium would last. “I posed the question at Lambeth – moratorium? Until when? The next Lambeth?” He said he is waiting to hear what the Anglican Consultative Council and other bodies have to say about the matter.

Bishop Chapman also said that there was no consensus about the moratoria. “It was sort of a virtual majority (those in favour of a moratorium) that carried the day on that, but it certainly wasn’t consensus as there was consensus on the communion continuing towards healthy inter-faith relationships, to continue to ecumenical dialogue with a goal toward church unity,” he said.

On the question of what he hoped to achieve by meeting with Archbishop Venables, Archbishop Hiltz said, “What I would hope is that we could hear one another.”

He added; “What would I say in that meeting? Let me try and hear why it is you feel you need to continue to work to intervene in the life of the Anglican Church of Canada?” He said that he would try and explain that the Anglican Church of Canada has in place a shared episcopal ministry for those who disagree with more liberal actions of their dioceses around sexuality, and for those on the liberal side who feel marginalized by the lack of inclusiveness, a provision for pastoral generosity, “whereby those who are civilly married can come and ask for prayers, join prayers of people in eucharist.”

S.C. Dem chair: Palin primary qualification is she hasn't had an abortion

2008-09-10T15:59:00.000-07:00

From Politico.com:

September 10, 2008

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate "whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Palin is an opponent of abortion rights and gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, earlier this year after finding out during her pregnancy that the baby had Down syndrome.

Fowler told my colleague Alex Burns in an interview that the selection of an opponent of abortion rights would not boost McCain among many women.

“Among Democratic women and even among independent women, I don’t think it helped him,” she said.

Told of McCain's boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: "Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway."

A note from David Brickner

2008-09-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

by David Brickner, Executive Director of Jews for Jesus (and not the founder, by the way, ed.):

September 9, 2008

Last month I had the privilege of speaking at a large church in the small town of Wasilla, Alaska. At the time, few people outside of Alaska had heard of Wasilla; now almost everyone in America knows that it is the hometown of Sarah Palin, John McCain's Vice Presidential running mate. She not only grew up in Wasilla; she served as its mayor before being elected governor of Alaska. The Palins now attend the church where I spoke; in fact, during the second service the entire family stood before the congregation as their newborn son was dedicated to the Lord.

My message that morning from Matthew 23: 37-39, titled, "The Jerusalem Dilemma," made reference to sin and judgment, and the need for all people, both Jews or Gentiles, to repent and seek forgiveness through Y'shua. I pointed to the many conflicts and tragedies that we hear about daily on the news, as evidence that the whole world is suffering the effects of sin and stands under God's judgment; that we all need the grace and forgiveness of God found only in Christ. These are no more or less than basic tenets of the Christian faith. Then I spoke of God's great love for Israel and for the world, and shared the encouraging news of how many Israelis are now open to hearing about Jesus.

Once Mrs. Palin's candidacy as vice-president was announced, my message became a matter of sudden public interest. A blogger on Politico.com quickly tore a small portion of the message out of context and twisted my words into something ugly and hurtful:

"Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's 'judgment of unbelief' of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity."

That is not what I said and it is certainly not my belief.

However, this misinterpretation of my beliefs became fodder for the media's reporting. Scores of news reports online, in print and on TV have repeated Politico's fabrication as fact without further scrutiny, sometimes even furthering the distortion. Typical of this was political pundit Rachel Maddow, as she criticized Sarah Palin in an exchange with Chris Matthews. The following was taken from NBC's national coverage of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

Maddow: Jews for Jesus founder [was] speaking at her church while she was there two weeks ago making incredibly, incredibly out of line comments about Israel and Jewish people. Saying that's why Israel was subject to terrorist attacks. It was God's judgment for not believing in Christ.
Matthews: What's the source?
Maddow: Politico.com

Some reports have even mistaken me for Sarah Palin's pastor, further comparing me to Jeremiah Wright who was Barak Obama's pastor. Last Saturday yet another story has come out in "The New York Times." As a result, I was interviewed by MSNBC News the following day.

I recognize that I am not the real target of this scrutiny; Sarah Palin is. By the time you read this, the whole story may have blown over for me and for Jews for Jesus, with the media moving on in search of other issues that might color people's view of all four presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Nevertheless, here are a couple of my reflections on the events of the past few days.

First, it is amazing how ready people are to believe a false report. Numerous friends and colleagues wrote to ask me if these reports were true. I'm sure it never would have occurred to them to think I would think or say such things if they had not seen them in print. How much quicker will strangers be to assume the views attributed to me were truthful? This experience has confirmed the old adage: you can't always believe what you read in the press.

I am certainly grateful for the institution of free speech and a free press. Jews for Jesus has relied on those freedoms as we proclaim the gospel. But freedom of speech can also be abused with deathly cruelty. For example, Raymond Donovan, President Ronald Reagan's first Secretary of Labor, was the victim of a long campaign of rumors and innuendo, which led to criminal prosecution. After incurring legal bills in excess of a million dollars, Donovan was acquitted of all charges. When he emerged from the courtroom, reporters swarmed around him vying for his comment. In response, Donovan posed the poignant question, "Where do I go to get my reputation back?"

Proverbs 18:21 tells us, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit." How true! Words that roll off this two-ounce slab of muscle and mucous membrane have an inordinate capacity to affect lives. Consider for example, the speeches of Nazi miscreant Adolf Hitler, contrasted with those of statesman Winston Churchill, during the Second World War. Both were eloquent orators. Hitler, on one side of the Channel, used his words to lead a nation into devilish crimes against humanity. Winston Churchill, on the other side of the Channel, used his rhetorical skill to lead a nation to the highest and most noble sacrifice, to England's credit in her finest hour.

We need to be discerning about what we listen to and what we are quick to believe. The Talmud asks, "Why do human fingers resemble pegs?" and then answers, "So that if one hears something unseemly, one can plug one's fingers in one's ears" (Ketuvot 5b).

We need to be especially discerning when it comes to negative or critical remarks, because those are the ones that people love to repeat. Bertrand Russell once dryly observed that no one ever gossips about another's secret virtues.

Second, I am grateful that God can use almost anything to further His work and to get out the gospel. Case in point: the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) is a wire service for the Jewish print world, much like the Associated Press is for secular publications. The JTA released an article titled, "McCain team: Palin rejects views of church's Jews for Jesus speaker" in which they repeated the distortions of my views. However, they also provided a link to my entire sermon, both the transcript and the audio version. Anyone who chooses to check the source by reading or listening to this message is going to hear the Good News.

I will never avoid the subject of sin and its consequences, but my message says more about God's love in Christ than it does about judgment. Here is one brief excerpt:

"And so all of the controversy that we see swirling in Jerusalem is really a mirror that the world looks into to see the controversy within. The Jerusalem Dilemma is the Wasilla Dilemma; it's the dilemma of the human heart. And so it's important for us to notice Jesus' response to this unbelief, this rejection.

"'How often I've longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.' And Jesus says 'Come under My wings, O Jerusalem. There's a place of grace that I want to establish for you in spite of your unbelief.'

"And so committed was Jesus to that place of grace that not many days after He said this, He stretched out His arms on a cruel cross and shed His blood to pay the penalty for your sin and for mine. But because of who He is—because He is the Messiah, the Anointed One of God—death could not hold Him, and the grave could not keep Him, and He rose again from the grave. And now that same resurrection power of God is available to be applied to the lives of all those who trust Him, in Jerusalem and around the world. That is the answer to the Jerusalem Dilemma, the dilemma of unbelief—the mercy and grace of God, this place of grace that whosoever will may come under and find God's forgiveness."

You can read or listen to the entire message at our website if you like. Please pray that many people, especially unbelievers, will do so. May this be God's way of getting His gospel message out far beyond Wasilla!

Written By
David Brickner

David Brickner
Executive Director of Jews for Jesus

3 Anchors to Follow Obama's Trek Abroad

2008-07-21T15:31:00.000-07:00

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 17, 2008; C02

The three network anchors will travel to Europe and the Middle East next week for Barack Obama's trip, adding their high-wattage spotlight to what is already shaping up as a major media extravaganza.

Lured by an offer of interviews with the Democratic presidential candidate, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric will make the overseas trek, meaning that the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts will originate from stops along the route and undoubtedly give it big play.

John McCain has taken three foreign trips in the past four months, all unaccompanied by a single network anchor.

Obama has "proven adept at generating excitement," says David Folkenflik, media correspondent for National Public Radio. He said the anchors hope "a little bit of that excitement will rub off on their newscasts if they can convey an American phenomenon abroad, if that's what it turns out to be. Senator McCain is not as magnetic a figure in that way."

Jim Geraghty, a columnist for National Review Online, said Obama's paucity of foreign travel as a presidential candidate makes the trip a natural draw for news organizations, while "McCain has been around forever, and he's probably been to all these places before." But, he says, "the networks will be acting as a PR wing for the Obama campaign if they treat any of these photo ops as truly newsworthy breakthroughs."

The plan is for Williams, Gibson and Couric interviews to be parceled out on successive nights in different countries, giving each anchor a one-day exclusive. (Correspondents could have done the interviews instead, but a certain competitiveness sets in once one or two anchors agree to go.) The Washington Post is withholding the scheduled locations for security reasons.

Some 200 journalists have asked to accompany Obama on the costly trip, which will include stops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the campaign will be able to accommodate only one-fifth that number. No itinerary has been announced.

The senator from Illinois has been drawing far more media attention than his Republican rival from Arizona. With this week's Newsweek cover story on Obama's religious beliefs, he has been featured on Time and Newsweek covers 12 times in the past three years, compared with five for McCain. This week's New Yorker includes a 14,600-word piece on Obama's political rise in Chicago. Obama and his wife, Michelle, were recently on the cover of Us Weekly and were interviewed -- with their young daughters, which Obama later said he regretted -- by "Access Hollywood."

When McCain visited Britain, France and Israel in March and met with their leaders, no network anchors tagged along. NBC and ABC sent correspondents; CBS did not. None of the evening newscasts covered his trip to Canada last month. And McCain's swing through Colombia and Mexico two weeks ago was barely covered, although NBC and ABC sent correspondents.

The upcoming Obama trip, by contrast, has already generated stories about how large his crowds will be and whether German authorities will allow him to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. "Europe Awaits Obama With Open Arms," the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday.

NYT REJECTS MCCAIN'S EDITORIAL; SHOULD 'MIRROR' OBAMA

2008-07-21T14:48:00.001-07:00

From The Drudge Report:

Mon Jul 21 2008 12:00:25 ET

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES -- less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The paper's decision to refuse McCain's direct rebuttal to Obama's 'My Plan for Iraq' has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.

'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece,' NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain's staff. 'I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.'

MORE

In McCain's submission to the TIMES, he writes of Obama: 'I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it... if we don't win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.'

NYT's Shipley advised McCain to try again: 'I'd be pleased, though, to look at another draft.'

[Shipley served in the Clinton Administration from 1995 until 1997 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Presidential Speechwriter.]

MORE

A top McCain source claims the paper simply does not agree with the senator's Iraq policy, and wants him to change it, not "re-work the draft."

McCain writes in the rejected essay: 'Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. 'I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,' he said on January 10, 2007. 'In fact, I think it will do the reverse.'

MORE

Shipley, who is on vacation this week, explained his decision not to run the editorial.

'The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information (it appeared before his speech); while Senator Obama discussed Senator McCain, he also went into detail about his own plans.'

Shipley continues: 'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.'

Developing...

The DRUDGE REPORT presents the McCain editorial in its submitted form:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military's readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Blowout bolsters Clinton resolve

2008-05-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

W.Va. shows hurdles for Obama in the fall

By Susan Page
USA TODAY

Hillary Rodham Clinton crushed Barack Obama by more than 2-1 in the West Virginia primary Tuesday — a victory that was surely personally satisfying but came as the Democratic presidential nomination is nearly in the grasp of her rival.

"There are some who have wanted to cut this race short," Clinton told raucous, cheering supporters in Charleston, but she left no doubt she plans to stay in the race through the final contests.

"I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign until everyone has had a chance to make their voices heard," she said, calling herself a stronger candidate in a general election and a better-prepared president.

Obama, who had made just three campaign stops in West Virginia, was campaigning instead in Cape Girardeau, Mo. — a battleground state in the fall — and focusing on presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

"There is a lot of talk these days about how the Democratic party is divided," he said, "but I'm not worried because I know that we'll be able to come together quickly behind a common purpose."

Still, surveys of voters as they left polling places spotlighted Obama's difficulty in winning over white, working-class voters who have been a mainstay of Clinton's support and who dominate the Mountain State's electorate.

She won white women by 3-1 and white men by 2-1. Whites without a college degree voted for her by 3-1.

Seven of 10 voters said Clinton shared their core values; fewer than half said that of Obama. Race was also a factor: One in five said it was important in their vote. Of those, 85% backed Clinton.

A third of Clinton supporters said they would vote for Obama in November if he is nominated. Nearly as many said they would defect to McCain. A quarter said they'd stay home.

Obama's campaign distributed a strategy memo that downplayed the importance of West Virginia's 28 delegates, likely to split 20 for her, eight for him. Over the past week, the memo noted, Obama had been endorsed by 27 of the party leaders known as superdelegates.

Before West Virginia's delegates were allocated, Obama was 150 delegates short of the 2,025 needed for nomination, an almost insurmountable lead.

Kentucky and Oregon hold primaries next Tuesday, followed by Puerto Rico on June 1 and the concluding contests in Montana and South Dakota on June 3. Former Democratic national chairman Roy Romer endorsed Obama on Tuesday with a plea for Clinton to drop out.

"Hillary Clinton has been a very strong and formidable candidate … but the math is controlling," the former Colorado governor said. He said it was "time for the party to unify, to get beyond the primary season and begin the general election."

Page 1A

New Yorker: No Endgame

2008-05-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

by Elizabeth Kolbert

May 12, 2008

Presidential-primary races tend to proceed along self-reflexive lines. The candidate who is ahead—or who is perceived to be—receives more press coverage. He collects more contributions and endorsements, and these generate still more media attention, which brings in more money, more votes, and so on. Meanwhile, his opponents find that they cannot pay their staffs, or afford to hire a bus, or attract more than a clutch of peevish reporters to their news conferences. Hoping to make it onto the short list for Vice-President, the laggards throw their support to the front-runner, and the contest comes to an abrupt, if not necessarily satisfying, close.

Hillary Clinton is perhaps the first candidate in primary history to run this process in reverse. The longer the race has gone on, the lower the odds have become that she will finish the season leading either in the popular vote or in elected delegates. (After her victory in Pennsylvania last month, Slate calculated that she would still need eighty per cent “of every remaining vote” to catch up with Barack Obama in pledged delegates, and this week’s contests in Indiana and North Carolina seem unlikely to alter that math substantially.) Clinton’s once commanding lead among superdelegates has shrunk by three-quarters. At various points, her campaign has been on the verge of going broke. Nevertheless, rather than growing weaker, she seems to have become more formidable. How is this possible? And, perhaps more to the point, how can it possibly end?

Last week, the political news was dominated by yet another Obama-related embarrassment. The Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.,’s performance at the National Press Club, with its praise for Louis Farrakhan—“one of the most important voices in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries”—and its insistence that the United States government is capable of spreading AIDS as a form of genocide, was either foolhardy or treacherous. “Jeremiah Wright has managed to do the impossible this political season,” the Web site RealClearPolitics observed, “unite pundits from the left and the right in agreement about how badly he’s hurting Barack Obama’s quest for the White House.” The incident raised, or, if you prefer, re-raised, questions about Obama’s judgment. It refocussed the campaign on race. And it fed concerns that the Senator lacks the instincts to win a 24/7, spare-no-attack election.

“Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them” is how the Times’ Bob Herbert put it. The Senator’s response to Wright’s statements—they “offend me,” he told reporters the following day. “They rightly offend all Americans, and they should be denounced. And that’s what I am doing very clearly and unequivocally”—was so overdetermined that it was hard to say whether it represented actually taking charge or was another example of being buffeted.

In the course of the campaign, Clinton has tried out at least a dozen lines of attack against Obama, from ridiculing his message of hope—“The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing”—to questioning his preparedness. “One of us is ready to be Commander-in-Chief,” she told a crowd in New York. “Let’s get real.” The attacks in themselves have not been especially effective and, as is so often the case, they have had a damaging effect on their instigator; according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, the proportion of Americans who view Clinton negatively has risen to a record high of fifty-four per cent. Still, Clinton has gradually succeeded in altering the terms of the contest. Her message, no less compelling for being self-fulfilling, is that politics is a rough and nasty business. At several points, she has come close to taunting Obama for not being man enough to match her viciousness. “We need a President who can take whatever comes your way,” she told a Philadelphia TV station a couple of weeks ago. “I’m with Harry Truman on this,” she declared at a rally later that day. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Just speaking for myself, I am very comfortable in the kitchen.” True to form, Clinton seized on the opportunity offered by Wright, appearing on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor” to announce that she found the pastor’s remarks “offensive and outrageous.”

There are, of course, measures of political grit besides the ability to dole out and withstand abuse. Last week, even as the Wright episode was being ceaselessly rehashed, Clinton followed John McCain in proposing a suspension of the federal gasoline tax for the summer. The proposal was aptly described by Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter as “the most irresponsible policy idea of the year.” As Clinton and McCain surely know, a gas-tax holiday would do nothing to address America’s genuine energy problems. It also would not alleviate the country’s economic problems. What it would do is encourage oil consumption—just about the last thing we need. Obama rejected the idea. Clinton immediately began running ads denouncing him for doing so.

Whatever the outcome of this week’s primaries, the pressure to resolve the Democratic contest can only increase. How Clinton will respond is unclear: her campaign seems to have entered a new, almost mystical phase, in which the number of votes received or delegates pledged no longer matters. “We don’t think this is just going to be about some numerical metric,” Geoff Garin, one of her chief strategists, recently told the Washington Post. After her back-from-the-dead victory in Ohio, Clinton committed herself to soldiering on not despite but because of the fact that the situation seemed hopeless. For everyone “across America who’s ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, and for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up,” she said, “this one is for you.” That message understandably resonates with voters who, when they are not bitterly clinging to their guns and their religion, are having trouble meeting their mortgage payments. As long as Clinton is willing to fight on simply for the sake of fighting, there really is no reason that this endless campaign has to end. ♦

Clinton Net 10 in PA

2008-04-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

Senator Hillary Clinton nets 10 more delegates in the Pennsylvania primary than her rival, Senator Barrack Obama, according to CBS News. Clinton grabbed 83 delegates to Obama's 73, with 2 delegates still to be designated. The Associated Press reports that Obama's delegate count is 1,723.5 including superdelegates with Clinton's tally being 1,592.5.

AP About Clinton Win in PA

2008-04-23T02:20:00.000-07:00

Analysis: With Pa. win, Clinton survives for yet another day

Apr 22, 9:27 PM (ET)

By NEDRA PICKLER

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton survived yet another day.

There will be little time for celebration, though. Time and money are running out.

Her win Tuesday in the large and important swing state of Pennsylvania was hard-fought. Barack Obama's well-funded effort to shut her down did not reach its ultimate goal of a surprise upset.

But Clinton now faces a dwindling number of contests, and she's at a steep financial disadvantage.

Obama already is spending twice as much on ads airing in North Carolina and Indiana, the two states that come up next with primaries on May 6. He's even advertising in Oregon, a state that he should win, where voting by mail begins in the first week of May.

He can afford to shower every contest with campaign dollars from the $42 million he had at the beginning of April, while Clinton is in debt. She'll have to either persuade donors to give her more money to sustain her long-shot bid or float herself another multimillion- dollar loan.

In Pennsylvania, Clinton won with the support of whites, women and older voters, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks.

Underscoring the race's excitement, more than one in 10 voters Tuesday had registered with the state's Democratic party since the beginning of the year. And about six in 10 of them were voting for Obama.

Some voters had a hard time making up their minds. About a quarter of the day's voters reported having made their minds up within the past week, and about six in 10 of them backed Clinton.

Of the states left, the biggest prize is North Carolina, a state that both sides are predicting Obama will win. Clinton dispatched one of her top state organizers, California and Texas veteran Ace Smith, to North Carolina in an effort to get every vote she can. Smith told reporters last week that getting the percentage spread within single digits would be a victory for Clinton. Obama's also expected to win Oregon and South Dakota.

So where can she look for victory? West Virginia and Kentucky are likely Clinton wins, but they offer less than 100 delegates combined. She also has a chance in Guam, Puerto Rico, Montana and Indiana. But none of them are likely to give her a big enough margin to put her over Obama.

To win, she needs to convince voters that Obama is not electable in November even though he's ahead in the delegate race.

She needs a big influx of cash.

She needs a shocking change of fortune.

---

Nedra Pickler covers the Democratic presidential campaign for The Associated Press.

29-15

2008-04-22T04:26:00.000-07:00

That's the number of states that Sen. Barrack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton have won, respectively. Here's another number: it has been projected that Clinton needs to win 63% of the votes in the Pennsylvania primary today to remain viable in the race. Obama's delegate lead is over 100 with a greater lead among delegates won in primaries and caucuses and Clinton narrowing the lead through a greater number of super delegates.

Ten to Go

2008-03-31T15:31:00.000-07:00

With ten primaries remaining, Senator Barack Obama has a lead in both delegates and the popular vote, but Senator Hillary Clinton has vowed to remain in the presidential nomination race. The Clinton campaign is nearly 9 million dollars in debt with the Obama campaign holding nearly 32 million in the bank. There are currently 800 superdelegates who are not yet pledged to either candidate including 75 at-large superdelegates.

According to cnn.com, Obama's delegate count is 1,625 with Clinton's total being 1,486. With the candidates gaining candidates in proportion to the percentage of primary votes they garner, neither candidate can accumulate the 2,024 delegates to lock up the nomination. Clinton could top Obama in the popular vote with a big win in Pennsylvania and other remaining state primaries.

Party concerns about how the continuing campaigns are tearing apart the Democrat party and ruining Democrat prospects for winning the White House do not seem to have fazed either candidate.

Marc Cooper: It's 3 a.m. and Hillary's Dreaming

2008-03-05T14:25:00.000-08:00

From the Huffington Post:

Posted March 5, 2008 | 01:38 AM (EST)

To be a winner you have to win. And Tuesday night Hillary Clinton unreservedly won three out of four states. Barack Obama, however, has won twice as many primary and caucus states overall, leads substantially in the popular vote and continues to hold a mathematically insurmountable lead in elected delegates.

For two or three days, the Clinton campaign will spin itself -and the media--silly, breathlessly celebrating her overwhelming victories in Rhode Island and Ohio and her squeaker in Texas.

After the confetti is swept and the champagne bottles are tossed a more sober reality will take hold. Not just that her net gain of delegates this week will be, at most, in the single digits. But worse. There is no plausible scenario in which Clinton can win the nomination. At least not democratically.

Seven more weeks of campaign slog through Wyoming, Mississippi and into Pennsylvania. And then maybe tack on six more weeks, if you can believe it, into Indiana , West Virginia, and a handful of other states and into Puerto Rico on the 7th of June, quite literally into D-Day. Whatever the outcome, even if Clinton wins all 16 remaining contests -and some of them by veritable landslides, she will still be dozens of elected delegates behind Barack Obama.

She will not be the winner because she will have not won the majority of elected Democratic delegates. Clinton will be exactly where she was the night before Ohio and Texas: in second place and with no way to become the nominee unless enough unelected Superdelegates defy the popular will of the electorate and throw her the nomination (or unless you somehow believe that she can every coming primary with a 20 point margin).

Indeed, as Jonathan Alter has pointed out, Clinton can't win an elected majority even if she triumphs in what are now likely to be re-scheduled primaries in the cranky states of Michigan and Florida. Again, we'd be back to the Superdelegates and, therefore, back to a dicey game of chicken by the Democratic Party elite. How many Superdelegates are willing to politically die, or willing to spark an intra-party party civil war, just to save Clinton's bacon?

"The 1968 Chicago convention would look like a picnic compared to what Denver would become," a long-time political biographer said on election eve, predicting a youth uprising at the site of this summer's Democratic Convention if the election is thrown to Clinton. "This isn't 40 years ago," he said. "Now, everyone's got a car. And everyone who believed in the change that Clinton scoffs at would wind up surrounding that convention."

Maybe. Maybe not. Who am I to predict that the Democrats are too smart to self-destruct in what should be, by all other measures, a watershed year? The more steely-eyed amongst us, then, would do well to psychologically prepare for the nomination going, somehow or another, to Hillary Clinton. Which means, in turn, that Democrats ought to simultaneously prepare to be beaten by John McCain.

Clinton regained her footing this past week primarily by running a classic, Republican-style campaign of negative, fear-based ads. She blanketed the airwaves with a detestable spot that, stripped to its core message, warned that if Obama were selected, your children could be murdered in their beds in the middle of the night. Somewhere up above (or more likely from down below), departed GOP mudmeister Lee Atwater is cracking a grin.

The spot worked so well - with exit polls showing that voters who made a last-minute decision went in droves for Clinton-- that she couldn't resist reprising the line during her Tuesday night victory speech delivered to a cheering throng in Columbus. "When that phone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House," she said. "There's no time for speeches or on on-the-job training."

Perfect. Clinton's done McCain the favor of cutting his best general election campaign spot for him. All he has to do is cut her answering the phone out of the last 5 seconds of the ad and splice his own mug in there instead. If Clinton succeeds in making what's politely called the "national security issue" the center of the campaign by arguing she's a safer choice than Obama, then why wouldn't McCain argue that he's even better than she? McCain's already begun that effort. If Hillary's nominated, he'll most likely succeed.

The New Math

2008-03-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

With only 12 primaries left for the Democrat Party, the new math goes like this: Clinton needs 97% of the remaining delegates to clinch the presidential nomination and Obama needs 77%. According to cnn.com, Obama has 1,520 pledged delegates to Clinton's 1,424. 2,025 are needed to win the nomimation, so what does this mean?

It means that it is highly unlikely that either candidate can win by the primary route alone. Superdelegates will determine the presidential candidate when the dems meet in Denver, and the question is whether the supers will follow the popular will reflected in both delegate count and vote totals. By both measures Obama leads, but will the Clinton machine try to broker Hillary into the top slot? Of course. The Clintons are already trying to pry loose delegates that Obama won through primaries and caucuses, so of course they will try to broker some deal to overturn the popular vote so that Hillary can become president. Subverting the will of the people to gain the presidency? Is there any doubt that the Clintons would do this? Jesse Jackson and others have raised the possibility of another messy convention like Chicago in 1968.

On the morning television circuit, Obama said that his lead is "close to insurmountable." Clinton was asked whether she would be a part of the ticket with Obama. Her answer was that it hasn't been determined who would be in the top spot in that ticket. She also said that Ohio had voted overwhelmingly that she should be at the top of the ticket. She didn't mention that more states have spoken than Ohio, and that Obama is the choice of most of those states. Of course she didn't mention that.

Clinton still leads in the Superdelegate count by 39, but last week one superdelegate, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, defected from Hillary's camp and more will likely follow if Obama continues to win a majority of contests and delegates.

What Clinton Needs to Win

2008-03-04T19:07:00.000-08:00

According to Republican strategist Karl Rove, Hillary Clinton needs to secure at least 53% of all the primaries and caucuses left in order to win the necessary number of delegates for the Democrat nomination. In early returns in Texas, Obama leads Clinton, 50% to 48%, with 14% of the voting reported. One third of the votes in Texas come out of party caucuses, so it will take a while for all to be settled in the Lone Star State. Former Texas congressman Martin Frost reports that Obama led Clinton in the early voting by 75,000. Clinton is expected to close the gap tonight and the question is whether or not she can overcome the deficit from early voting. Even if she wins the popular vote it is possible for Obama to gain more delegates because of the caucuses.

McCain Wraps Up Nomination

2008-03-04T19:04:00.000-08:00

With wins in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont, McCain has secured the delegate count needed to win the nomination of the Republican Party. The next decision for McCain is his choice for Vice President. With six months to go before the Republican Party Convention, he's got plenty of time to think about who will be the best person to join him on the ticket.

Inside Delegate Math: The Numbers

2008-03-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

by ;Marc Ambinder at theatlantic.com

29 Feb 2008 04:15 pm

Using delegate projection software created by Matt Vogel, I ran a scenario yesterday showing how tough it will be for Hillary Clinton to catch up to Barack Obama's earned delegate lead.

Some of you have asked for my specific state-by-state projections.

So let's go state-by-state, again assuming that the full sanctions levied by the DNC are kept in place.

Ohio: Clinton wins by 4% and earns a net of 5 delegates
Rhode Island: Clinton wins by 10% and earns a net of 3 delegates
Texas: Obama wins by a net of 8% and earns a net of 15 delegates including those taken from the caucus portion of the contests
Vermont: Obama wins handily and nets 3 delegates.

We can fiddle with the numbers a bit, but winning by an extra percent in Texas is worth more than winning by an extra percent in Ohio. If Clinton wins by 8 percentage points in Ohio, she picks up a net of about 11 delegates compared to Obama's 15 in Texas. Let's be nice to Clinton and assume that she manages to eek out a win in Texas, giving her 3 extra delegates. For the day, she'd net only 8 delegates under this scenario -- with Texas and Vermont having cancelled each other out.

Moving on to Wyoming, let's assume, generously, that Obama only wins by 55%. He picks up 2 delegates. Then comes Mississippi. Let's assume the split is 60/40, Obama -- he picks up 7 delegates, and so -- since March 4 -- he's back up 1.

Flash forward to Pennsylvania, and let's assume that Hillary Clinton manages to win 60% of the vote in the state. She'll earn 32 extra delegates -- her biggest net gain so far.

I'll give the next two states and a territory to Obama -- by six points only each -- Guam (+0 net), Indiana (+4 net) and North Carolina (+7 net). Hillary Clinton has a shot to win West Virginia, which votes on March 13, so let's assume she wins by 10 points, earning a net of two extra delegates. Momentum carries over into Kentucky, which she wins by 10 points and earns five extra delegates. She's not going to win Oregon, probably -- Obama picks up six delegates there.

The June 3 primaries of Montana and South Dakota are probably Obama's: let's assume he wins them by 10 points, earning a total of 3 net delegates.

The last contest is the Puerto Rico caucuses, which takes place on June 7. Let's give Hillary Clinton an 80 to 20 victory there, giving her a net of 33 earned delegates.

So -- under these most rosy of scenarios -- since March 4, she'll have earned 520 delegates to Barack Obama's 461, having reduced his earned delegate total by about 80 -- or -- by about 60 percent -- but he'll still have a lead of approximately 100 delegates in total... and be that much closer to 2025.

The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire

2008-02-28T19:07:00.000-08:00

February 28, 2008, 7:40 am
Political Perceptions: ‘Junk Food Polling’ You Can Just Ignore

Here’s a summary of the smartest new political analysis on the Web:
By Gerald F. Seib and Sara Murray

In their final sprint toward the March 4 primaries, the campaigns of both Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are using a lot of “junk food polling” to impress voters and superdelegates—and you should just ignore it, writes MSNBC’s Tom Curry. This is the kind of polling that declares, based on some hypothetical matchup, that one candidate or the other would beat the Republican nominee in some state, and hence is the most “electable” in the fall.

Curry notes, for example, that the Obama forces want you to know “that if the Illinois senator were the Democratic nominee in November, he’d defeat Sen. John McCain in Iowa, winning 53 percent to 36 percent. This, at least according to a Des Moines Register survey of 674 Iowans last week.” Such polling is touted mostly to impress Democratic superdelegates, who can go whichever way they want in the Clinton-Obama matchup. But Curry recalls that similar polling once showed former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (who’s not even in the race any more) poised to beat Obama in Pennsylvania, and had retired Gen. Wesley Clark beating President George Bush nationally in 2004. Don’t take it all too seriously: If voters really know now who will win some state in the fall, perhaps they can also answer this: “What will be the price of gasoline at the pump on Nov. 4?”

With Obama potentially reneging on his promise to publicly finance a general election campaign, and McCain in the beginning throes of a brouhaha with the FEC about fundraising for the primaries, the high and mighty candidates’ images are already tarnishing, writes Salon’s Mike Madden. Both of them are playing into the “political drama” and trying to best each other morally, but it’s likely they’ll both just come out looking bad. “The vision of a McCain-Obama race that raises national politics to lofty new heights is starting to fray,” Madden notes. “If the campaign begins with two self-styled reformers squabbling in the media over which one is actually the biggest hypocrite, it’s hard not to wonder what might come next.”

Time.com’s Karen Tumulty looks at Bill Clinton’s trip on the campaign trail, which has been a lesson in irony as the former hope candidate tries to convince voters that it takes more than talk of hope and change to run the country. Bill Clinton’s contributions have been a double-edged sword as the man who could once woo crowds better than any candidate is outshone by Obamamania, leaving more of his detrimental qualities in the wake. “Bill’s presence has become a reminder of the past and of the style of politics that Barack Obama has promised to bring to an end,” Tumulty writes. “Even worse, say many Democrats, Bill has put his wife’s political career in jeopardy by displaying the same character traits that almost ran his own presidency off the rails—a lack of self-control and an excess of self-absorption.”

Campaign 2008 has shown that the evangelical vote is alive and, well, maturing, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Walter Russell Mead writes in Atlantic Monthly. That’s hardly clear in all the analysis you’ve heard so far, he notes: “This political season has only heightened the confusion over the future of religion in the nation’s culture and politics. Journalistic coverage of evangelical Christianity has oscillated between confident declarations that the Christian right is dead and horrified discoveries of its continuing influence.” But the reality is that the religious vote is spreading, moderating and becoming part of the mainstream of American politics: “In every way, the evangelical movement in the United States looks as if it is maturing. That means more social and political influence, not less, as the movement broadens, reaches into the elite, and develops messages with wider appeal. Yet it also means a more pluralistic and less strident movement, more apt to compromise and less likely to be held hostage by a single issue or a single party.” It is, all told, making a “shift from insurgent to insider, with all of the moderating effects that transition implies,” Mead concludes.

It’s not too soon to recap how this year’s crazed primary calendar has worked out. Stateline.org surveyed the nation’s governors and found that many of them think the incredibly front-loaded schedule actually worked for their states this year—but that, overall, it was “a mess to be avoided for 2012.” States that went early got new influence, and states that “hung back from the Feb. 5 frenzy are even happier” because they have been able to play kingmaker in the extended race. Still, “the current process is nuts, absolutely nuts,” Pennsylvania’ Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell tells Stateline. He, like many others, “advocates dumping the current caucus and super-delegate systems in favor of a rotating regional primary plan,” Stateline reports.

Super Tuesday, Take 2

2008-02-28T19:02:00.000-08:00

From Kathy Gill (Kathy's U.S. Politics blog):

Democrats and Republicans go to the polls in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont a week from today -- all primary states. The battleground states, based on number of delegates at stake, are Ohio and Texas.

* Ohio: 141 of 161 delegates allocated proportionally in the Democratic contest; 85 of 88 of delegates in the Republican contest (delegates are not legally bound to any candidate).
* Rhode Island: 21 of 32 delegates allocated proportionally in the Democratic contest; 17 of the 20 delegates allocated proportionally in the Republican contest;
* Texas: 126 of 228 delegates delegates allocated proportionally in the Democratic contest (in addition, caucuses will commence at 7.15 pm); 137 of 140 delegates in the Republican contest;
* Vermont: 15 of 23 delegates allocated proportionally in the Democratic contest;all 17 delegates in the Republican contest.

Obama Surges and Rumors Abound

2008-02-28T18:56:00.000-08:00

Obama has moved ahead of Clinton in Texas, but within the margin of error according to two polls. He trails Hillary in Ohio, just outside the margin of error in both the Zogby (44%-42%) and Rasmussen (47%-45%) polls. A rumor is circulating that Hillary will leave the race before Super Tuesday 2 on March 4. It would be surprising to see her do so, but in politics anything is possible.

TNR on McCain Scandal

2008-02-21T15:54:00.000-08:00

The New Republic: The Long Run-Up by Gabriel Sherman

Behind the Bombshell in 'The New York Times.'Post Date Thursday, February 21, 2008

Last night, around dinnertime, The New York Times posted on its website a 3,000-word investigation detailing Senator John McCain's connections to a telecommunications lobbyist named Vicki Iseman. The controversial piece, written by Washington bureau reporters Jim Rutenberg, Marilyn Thompson, Stephen Labaton, and David Kirkpatrick, and published in this morning's paper, explores the possibility that the Republican presidential candidate may have had an affair with the 40-year-old blond-haired lobbyist for the telecommunications industry while he chaired the Senate Commerce Committee in the late-1990s.

Beyond its revelations, however, what's most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in
the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain's former staffers to justify the piece--both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves--the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain's aides that the Senator shouldn't be seen in public with Iseman--and departs from the Times' usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: "In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, 'Why is she always around?'" In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.

What happened? The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.

The McCain investigation began in November, after Rutenberg, who covers the political media and advertising beat, got a tip. Within a few days, Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet assigned Thompson and Labaton to join the project and, later, conservative beat reporter David Kirkpatrick to chip in as well. Labaton brought his expertise with regulatory issues to the team, and Thompson had done investigative work: At The Washington Post in the 1990s she had edited Michael Isikoff's reporting on the Paula Jones scandal, and in 2003 she broke the story that Strom Thurmond had secretly fathered a child with his family's black maid. Having four reporters thrown on the story showed just what a potential blockbuster the paper believed it might have.

From the outset, the Times reporters encountered stiff resistance from the McCain camp. After working on the story for several weeks, Thompson learned that McCain had personally retained Bill Clinton's former attorney Bob Bennett to defend himself against the Times' questioning. At the same time, two McCain campaign advisers, Mark Salter and Charlie Black, vigorously pressed the Times reporters to drop the matter. And in early December, McCain himself called Keller to deny the allegations on the record.

In early December, according to sources with knowledge of the events, Thompson requested a meeting with Bennett to arrange access to the senator and to discuss why the Republican presidential candidate had sought out a criminal lawyer in the first place. Bennett agreed to meet, and on the afternoon of December 18, Labaton, Rutenberg, and Thompson arrived at his Washington office. During a one-hour meeting, according to sources, Bennett admonished the Times reporters to be fair to McCain, especially in light of the whisper campaign that had sundered his 2000 presidential bid in South Carolina. He told them that he would field any questions they had, and promised to provide answers to their queries. Of the reporters in the room, Bennett knew Labaton the best. In the 1990s, Labaton had covered the Whitewater investigation, and Bennett viewed him as a straight-shooting, accurate reporter who could be reasoned with. Rutenberg he knew less well, and Bennett was miffed that Rutenberg had been calling all over Washington asking probing questions about McCain and his dealings with Iseman. The rumors were bound to get out.

Two days after that meeting, on December 20, news of the Times' unpublished investigation burst into public view when Matt Drudge posted an anonymously sourced item on the Drudge Report. "MEDIA FIREWORKS: MCCAIN PLEADS WITH NY TIMES TO SPIKE STORY," the headline proclaimed; the story hinted around the core of the allegations and focused on Keller's decision to hold the piece. "Rutenberg had hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday," the item said, quoting unnamed sources, "but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election."
Immediately, the media pounced on the budding scandal. "If John McCain has hired Bob Bennett as his lawyer," one commentator said on Fox News, "that's a big--you don't hire Bob Bennett to knock down a press story. You hire Bob Bennett because you have serious legal issues somehow." On MSNBC, Pat Buchanan speculated that the Times newsroom was the source of the leak. "They've been rebuffed and rebuffed on this story, and they say we've had it, and they go around then and Drudge pops it just like he popped the Monica Lewinsky story first."

Initially, the McCain campaign refused to acknowledge the Drudge post. But by the afternoon of December 20, McCain denied the allegations at a press conference in Detroit, and his campaign released a statement deriding the Drudge item as "gutter politics."

Rumors of the unpublished Times piece swirled through the Romney campaign, then still locked in a tight dogfight for the Republican nomination. After the Drudge item flashed, Romney's traveling press secretary Eric Fehrnstrom went to the back of the campaign plane to ask New York Times reporter Michael Luo, who was covering Romney, if he had heard when the piece was running.

Inside the Times newsroom, the Drudge item sent the McCain piece into hiding, making it both tightly guarded and "a topic of conversation," as one staffer put it. "The fact that it ended up on Drudge pushed it into secrecy," added another staffer. "The paper gets constipated on these things," a veteran former Times staffer said, describing the editors' deliberations over whether to run the piece.

In late December, according to Times sources, Keller told the reporters and the story's editor, Rebecca Corbett, that he was holding the piece in part because they could not secure documentary proof of the alleged affair beyond anecdotal evidence. Keller felt that given the on-the-record-denials by McCain and Iseman, the reporters needed more than the circumstantial evidence they had assembled to prove the case. The reporters felt they had the goods.

The Drudge item didn't derail the investigation, however. By late December, the reporters had submitted several pages of written questions to Bennett for comment, and completed a draft of the piece before the New Year. But to their growing frustration, Keller ordered rounds of changes and additional reporting. According to Times sources, Baquet remained an advocate for his reporters and pushed the piece to be published, but sources say Keller wanted a more nuanced story looking less at personal matters and more at questions of Iseman's lobbying and McCain's legislative record. (The Washington-New York divide is an eternal rift at the Paper of Record: Baquet had successfully brought stability and investigative acumen to the Washington bureau; with the McCain piece, he was being sucked into his first major struggle with New York.)
In mid-January, Keller told the reporters to significantly recast the piece after several drafts had circulated among editors in Washington and New York. After three different versions, the piece ended up not as a stand-alone investigation but as an entry in the paper's "The Long Run" series looking at presidential candidates' career histories.

It was at about that time, amidst flurries of rumors swirling about the looming Times investigation, that the Times' McCain beat reporter, Marc Santora, abruptly left the campaign trail after covering the senator for four and a half months, frustrated by the McCain rumors. A rising star at the paper, Santora had been working grueling hours, joining the 2008 election coverage straight from a reporting assignment in Baghdad. As the campaign headed to South Carolina, the site of McCain's defeat in 2000, Santora emailed the Times' deputy Washington editor, Richard Stevenson, to vent about how the rumors were dogging him on the campaign trail, and left the McCain beat on January 10. "The last thing I wanted was to be a pawn in this thing," Santora told me. "I was exhausted, there were a lot of rumors flying around. I thought the best thing for me to do was take a break."

Santora wasn't the last casualty of the process. Two weeks ago, in early February, Marilyn Thompson, one of the four reporters working on the McCain investigation quit the Times. Thompson had been a staffer at The Washington Post for 14 years, until 2004. She had spent just six months at the Times and recorded only four bylines before accepting an offer to return to her former employer as an editor overseeing the Post's accountability coverage of money and politics. According to sources, Thompson became increasingly dispirited with the delays, and worked around the clock through the Christmas vacation on the piece, only to see the investigation sputter. Declining to comment on the investigation itself, Thompson told me her decision to return to the Post "was an opportunity to go back to the place that has been a home to me." (Thompson celebrated her byline during her last week at the Times. Her final day at the paper is tomorrow.)

Some observers say that the piece, published today, was not ready to roll. On Wednesday evening, much of the cable news commentary focused on the Times' heavy use of innuendo and circumstantial evidence. This morning, Time magazine managing editor Rick Stengel told MSNBC that he wouldn't have published such a piece. Since the story broke, the McCain campaign has been doing its best to pin the story on the Times and make the media angle the focus.

Indeed, when TNR started reporting on the whereabouts of the story on February 4th, all parties seemed intent on denying its viability. "There's absolutely no story there. And it'd be a mistake for you to write about a non-story that didn't run," McCain adviser Charlie Black told me last week. "Drudge shouldn't have put that up. He didn't know what the hell he was doing."
McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker told me last week the campaign had no further comment beyond the December 20 statement assailing the allegations. According to McCain advisers, the Times reporters hadn't contacted the campaign about the investigation for several weeks before the piece ran, and only a few reporters from competing news organizations have put in calls on the matter. Two members of the McCain team had contacted TNR's editor to pressure him not to investigate the story.

Of course, each of these sources had reason to keep the story from breaking. But what actually pushed it into publication? The reporters working on the investigation declined to comment. In an email to me on February 19, Keller wrote: "This sounds like a pointless exercise to me--speculating about reporting that may or may not result in an article. But if that's what Special Correspondents of The New Republic do, speculate away. When we have something to say, we'll say it in the paper."

Late in the day on February 19, Baquet sent a final draft of the Times piece to Keller and Times managing editor Jill Abramson in New York. After a series of discussions, the three editors decided to publish the investigation. "We published the story when it was ready which is what we always do," Baquet told TNR this morning. He added: "Nothing forced our hand. Nothing pushed us to move faster other than our own natural desire that we wanted to get a story in the paper that met all of our standards."

When the Times did finally publish the long-gestating investigation last night, the McCain camp immediately tried to train the glare back on the Gray Lady. In fact, McCain advisers stated that TNR's inquiries pressured the Times to publish its story before it was ready so this magazine wouldn't scoop the Times' piece. "They did this because The New Republic was going to run a story that looked back at the infighting there, the Judy Miller-type power struggles -- they decided that they would rather smear McCain than suffer a story that made The New York Times newsroom look bad," Salter told reporters last night in Toledo, Ohio.

This morning, after the piece ran, and as TNR's article was about to be posted, Keller finally responded to repeated requests for interviews. In an e-mail, he defended the substance, and the timing, of the story. "Our policy is, we publish stories when they are ready. 'Ready' means the facts have been nailed down to our satisfaction, the subjects have all been given a full and fair chance to respond, and the reporting has been written up with all the proper context and caveats." Important as the story may indeed turn out to be, it may have provided the Times' critics with a few caveats too many.

Gabriel Sherman is a Special Correspondent to The New Republic.

Where does Rush kneel, anyway?

2008-02-21T07:48:00.000-08:00

From Terry Mattingly at GetReligion.com:

Where does Rush kneel, anyway?

By: tmatt

Last week’s Newsweek seemed to sink deeper and deeper into my shoulder bag last week during my journey to greater Los Angeles. Thus, I am only now getting around to reading that cover story about the revolt in talk radio against GOP nominee-in-waiting (pending further New York Times review) Sen. John McCain.

It’s an interesting read, but the only passage that really jumped out at me was this one, which comes after the obligatory opening about Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, etc. GetReligion readers whose eyes glaze over at the mention of Southern Baptists and Dr. Richard Land (flash back) should stop reading at this point (although you’ll miss an interesting quote):

The revolt went beyond talk radio’s political shock jocks. James Dobson, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical Christian leaders, declared he could not “in good conscience” vote for McCain and endorsed Mike Huckabee — the first time Dobson had ever taken sides in a GOP primary. . . .

The uncivil war also pulled in some stalwarts of the GOP “base,” such as Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “Rush is even ranting against me,” Land tells NEWSWEEK. “I had the temerity to challenge the Great One in his all-knowing wisdom. Rush is underestimating the ability of Hillary or [Barack] Obama to unite conservatives around McCain. Rush says on air, ‘Dr. Land, I’ll tell you, I talk to 20 million people a day.’ No he doesn’t. He talks at 20 million people a day.” (Limbaugh declined NEWSWEEK’s interview request.)

OK, Rush vs. the Southern Baptists is interesting. Round II of his wars with Huckabee?

Now this is where things get interesting and very, very vague.

The numbers suggest an apparent gap between the movement’s leaders and rank-and-file conservatives. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, McCain holds a marginal lead among conservatives (49 to 43 percent) in a showdown with Huckabee. Seventy-six percent of all GOP voters and 69 percent of self-described conservatives say they would be satisfied with McCain as the GOP nominee. However, on Saturday, the first test since McCain became the presumptive nominee, Huckabee trounced McCain in the Kansas caucus, winning around 60 percent of the vote.

As the country learned anew in 2000 and 2004, every vote counts — especially every vote in states (like Ohio) where the margin of victory in a general election is likely to be narrow. If even a handful of conservatives were to follow the Limbaugh-Coulter line and stay home, it could make a real difference. McCain knows that, which is why he is moving to address the trouble to his right. Sens. Tom Coburn and Sam Brownback, widely respected among right-to-lifers, have been contacting prominent social conservatives, including many members of Congress, urging them to take a second look at McCain’s record.

Confused? Here’s the question: Who are the GOP leaders and who are the rank-and-file?

This may strike regular GetReligion readers as a bit strange, but I really think that the Newsweek team needed to add some additional, more accurate, labels to this piece. Is Limbaugh the same kind of conservative as Land? What are the differences between the two and why are they clashing? Why is Bill Bennett on one side and Michael Savage on the other? While I am asking questions, why was Limbaugh so opposed to Huckabee’s brand of populist conservatism in the first place?

I am reminded of that earlier quote from Land about the priorities of “evangelical” voters:

“If you were going to prioritize among evangelicals, their social views are first; their foreign policy views are second; and their economic views are third. They vote against their pocketbook all the time and have demonstrated that they do so.”

Now, is that true only for “evangelical” voters? What about the old Reagan Democrats and the centrist Catholics who are the all-powerful swing voters in election after election? What about Orthodox Jews? African-American churchgoers? How about Hispanics in Pentecostal pews? Hispanics who are in Mass once or more a week?

Newsweek missed a major point here and it was sitting right there in the open.

The bottom line: What are the moral and religious views of someone like Rush Limbaugh? In reality?

What are the moral and religious views of someone like Dr. Richard Land?

Where do their values and priorities clash?

Answer those questions and you may be able to figure out what will happen with voters who trust someone like Dobson more than they trust the likes of Coulter. This may also explain why pro-life leaders — cultural conservates, again, as opposed to pure GOP types — have been quicker to endorse McCain than the leaders of the GOP establishment and those who carry their water on radio.

I was reminded, yet again, of scribe Michael Gerson’s 2004 presentation at a Pew Forum meeting in Key West, Fla. Remember that? During a wide ranging speech and Q&A — text of the speech here — Gerson said that the great divide in the W Bush White House was a familiar one, with the small-c “catholics” pitted against those whose conservatism was more libertarian in nature. In other words, conservatives whose first priorities were social and moral vs. those whose first priorities were economic.

Now, ponder that as you tip-toe through the confusion of that religion-haunted Newsweek cover story. I think you will find more than a few ghosts.

Obama: The Democrat Option Play

2008-02-20T15:55:00.000-08:00

Two commentators said it today and others must be thinking it: Obama has given anti-Clinton democrats a non-Clinton option and in increasing numbers Democrats are taking that option. According to conservatives Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, Obama's frontrunning status and momentum give Democrats a viable candidate and a substantial enough reason for voting against Hillary. Plausible? I think so.

politico.com: Clinton targets pledged delegates

2008-02-19T14:20:00.000-08:00

By: Roger Simon
February 19, 2008 05:48 AM EST

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.

This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides.

What? Isn’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right?

Wrong.

Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first ballot. This has been an open secret in the party for years, but it has never really mattered because there has almost always been a clear victor by the time the convention convened.

But not this time. This time, one candidate may enter the convention leading by just a few pledged delegates, and those delegates may find themselves being promised the sun, moon and stars to switch sides.

“I swear it is not happening now, but as we get closer to the convention, if it is a stalemate, everybody will be going after everybody’s delegates,” a senior Clinton official told me Monday afternoon. “All the rules will be going out the window.”

Rules of good behavior, maybe. But, in fact, the actual rules of the party allow for such switching. The notion that pledged delegates must vote for a certain candidate is, according to the Democratic National Committee, a “myth.”

“Delegates are NOT bound to vote for the candidate they are pledged to at the convention or on the first ballot,” a recent DNC memo states. “A delegate goes to the convention with a signed pledge of support for a particular presidential candidate. At the convention, while it is assumed that the delegate will cast their vote for the candidate they are publicly pledged to, it is not required.”

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer told me Monday he assumes the Obama campaign is going after delegates pledged to Clinton, though a senior Obama aide told me he knew of no such strategy.

But one neutral Democratic operative said to me: “If you are Hillary Clinton, you know you can’t get the nomination just with superdelegates without splitting the party. You have to go after the pledged delegates.”

Winning with superdelegates is potentially party-splitting because it could mean throwing out the choice of the elected delegates and substituting the choice of 795 party big shots.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has warned against it. “I think there is a concern when the public speaks and there is a counter-decision made to that,” she said. “It would be a problem for the party if the verdict would be something different than the public has decided.”

Donna Brazile, who was Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000 and is a member of the DNC, said recently: “If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit [the DNC]. I feel very strongly about this.”

On Sunday, Doug Wilder, the mayor of Richmond and a former governor of Virginia, went even further, predicting riots in the streets if the Clinton campaign were to overturn an Obama lead through the use of superdelegates.

“There will be chaos at the convention,” Wilder told Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation.”

“If you think 1968 was bad, you watch: In 2008, it will be worse.”

But would getting pledged delegates to switch sides be any less controversial? Perhaps not. They were chosen by voters, but they were chosen to back a particular candidate.

And it is unlikely that many people, including the pledged delegates themselves, know that pledged delegates actually can switch.

Nor would it be easy to get them to switch.

If, however, after the April 22 Pennsylvania primary the pledged delegate count looks very close, the Clinton official said, “[both] sides will start working all delegates.”

In other words, Clinton and Obama will have to go after every delegate who is alive and breathing.

A Cheeseburger for Obama?

2008-02-19T14:02:00.000-08:00

Senator Omama's win last night among cheeseheads in Wisconsin could propel him into a win in beef-rich Texas. That's the suggestion of CNN political observer William Schneider. Obama has won the cheese, but we'll have to wait until March 4th to see about the beef.

With wins in Wisconsin and Hawaii last night, Obama has won the last 10 straight contests.

It's All Uphill From Here

2008-02-18T19:26:00.000-08:00

Coverage Adds to Clinton's Steep Climb

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 18, 2008; C01

It was 15 degrees outside on a wind-whipped Pennsylvania Avenue as Hillary Clinton, smile firmly fixed in place, made an early-morning stop for a primary she didn't have a prayer of winning.

Inside the high-ceilinged office of the National Council of Negro Women, as 20 journalists looked on, Sen. Clinton sounded almost wistful last Monday as she noted the racial and gender aspect of her contest against Barack Obama. "One of us will go on to make history," she said, before adding that she believed she would be the one to make it.

Left unspoken -- but very much on the minds of the modest press contingent -- was that she had just lost four states to Obama, had been forced to lend her operation $5 million and had dumped her campaign manager. And no upbeat talk by the candidate was going to change that story line.

The media floodgates opened after Obama swept last week's primaries in the District, Maryland and Virginia. Never mind that the two Democratic candidates remain close in the delegate count, or that Clinton has been described as doomed once before, in New Hampshire. She is drowning in a sea of negative coverage.

The New York Daily News said "the once-mighty Clinton campaign is beginning to feel like the last days of Pompeii." The New York Times quoted an unnamed superdelegate backing Clinton as saying that if she doesn't win Ohio and Texas next month, "she's out." The Washington Post said "even many of her supporters worry" that the nomination "could soon begin slipping out of her reach." Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Dick Polman likened her campaign to the Titanic. A Slate headline put it starkly: "So, Is She Doomed?"

Clinton spokesman Doug Hattaway, citing the back-and-forth nature of the contest, says the campaign isn't worried about the spate of Hillary-in-trouble pieces. "That may emerge as a national story line, but we don't think it influences voters on the ground," he says. "The 'momentum' story is just not all that real. People aren't led around by the nose by the national media narrative." Of course, voters in primary states also watch the networks and read national news online.

Fueling the sense that the former first lady is sinking is increasingly sharp criticism from liberal columnists who are embracing Obama, while few pundits are firmly in Clinton's corner. The Nation, the country's largest liberal magazine, has endorsed Obama. Markos "Kos" Moulitsas, the most prominent liberal blogger, voted for Obama in the California primary and has been ridiculing Clinton's campaign.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich wrote that the Clinton machine is "ruthless" and the candidate "crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities."

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen said Clinton has "an inability to admit fault or lousy judgment" and made an "ugly lurch to the political right" in backing a 2005 bill that would have made flag burning illegal (which, as he later noted, Obama also endorsed).

Arianna Huffington, one of the Net's leading Clinton-bashers, has written of "Hillary's hypocrisy running neck and neck with her cynicism." New Republic Editor-in-Chief Marty Peretz posted an essay last week titled "The End of BillaryLand Is on Its Way. Rejoice!"

For much of the campaign, Clinton, who seemed wary of the press during her eight years in the White House, limited her contact with reporters. She would go days without taking media questions. But since losing Iowa she has become far more accessible, in the tradition of trailing candidates who suddenly realize they need the exposure.

Her campaign can still be inconsiderate toward reporters, sometimes not sending out the next day's schedule until 2 a.m., making it impossible even to plan what time to get up. But tensions have eased as Clinton has held more frequent news conferences.

"She's very comfortable dealing with the media and is perfectly willing to take questions," Hattaway says. "It's got its pluses and minuses. There are those who say it's pushing you off your message of the day. But, by and large, it's good to be accessible, and she's good at it."

On her campaign plane, Clinton started coming back to the press section for off-the-record chats, usually harmless but sometimes including comments that contradicted what she was saying publicly, according to participants. Two weeks ago part of the media contingent revolted, saying the conversations did them no good if they couldn't use the information. Since then, although she walked the aisle with a tray of chocolates to hand out on Valentine's Day, the airborne sessions have dwindled.

When the campaign offered to send Chelsea Clinton -- who never grants interviews -- to the back of the plane, some journalists objected to the off-the-record restriction, and the candidate's daughter bagged the idea.

Accessibility, though, doesn't necessarily translate into candor. And examining the way Clinton answers media questions helps explain why she is portrayed as a conventional politician pitted against a cultural phenomenon.

Last Monday, when ABC's Jake Tapper asked about the obvious problems in her campaign, Clinton said she'd had a "great night" on Feb. 5, Super Tuesday, an "enormous response" from donors after lending her campaign money, and that the replacement of campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle was "Patti's decision" -- granting not a glimmer of recognition that anything was less than perfect.

On Tuesday night, when she was swamped in the Potomac primaries, Clinton gave a speech in Texas that made no mention of the results. Reporters were incredulous the next day when she stuck to her everything's-fine stance at a media availability: "Some weeks one of us is up, and the other's down, and then we reverse it." What about Obama pulling ahead in delegates? "That's what I always thought would happen."

A similar dynamic was on display in a "60 Minutes" interview, when Katie Couric couldn't get her to acknowledge that she ever contemplates losing the nomination. "You have to believe you're going to win," Clinton insisted.

At an MSNBC debate last month, when Tim Russert asked the candidates to name their greatest weakness, Obama made the minor admission that he has trouble keeping track of paperwork. And Clinton's confession? She gets "impatient" and "really frustrated when people don't seem to understand that we can do so much more to help each other."

By late last week, some pundits were conjuring up scenarios for a Clinton comeback, if only to find something new to say. But she was still depicted as a mathematical long shot.

A national figure since 1992, Clinton is a disciplined and detail-oriented candidate, with a style that produces few sparks, while Obama is filling basketball arenas with thunderous oratory. That is why her choking up in a New Hampshire coffee shop became such a huge story -- because we rarely get a peek behind the steely exterior.

By contrast, there is little question that some journalists have gotten swept up in the Obama excitement. After Obama's victory speech Tuesday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews said he "felt this thrill going up my leg." Some reporters have brought their kids to Obama events, while others have danced to the music played at the rallies.

Obama has defied the laws of journalistic gravity, somehow avoiding the usual scrutiny applied to front-runners. A few attempts to examine his life and record -- such as a Times piece on Obama's pattern of voting "present" in the Illinois legislature, and another on Obama watering down a bill affecting a nuclear power company that contributed to his campaign -- barely caused a ripple. Now Obama's wife, Michelle, who did interviews with Larry King and Couric last week, is getting the treatment, drawing mostly soft-focus questions. A Newsweek cover story out today calls her "direct and plain-spoken, with an edgy sense of humor . . . she can be tough, and even a little steely." She is "outspoken, strong-willed, funny, gutsy, and sometimes sarcastic," cutting "an athletic and authoritative figure," a front-page Times profile declared.

A handful of columnists, such as Time's Joe Klein, have questioned whether the Obama campaign has cultish qualities, but they are in the minority. It took a British magazine, the Economist, to carry the cover headline last week: "But could he deliver?"

While few in the media world will say so out loud, a Hillary collapse ("The Fall of the House of Clinton," as a Weekly Standard cover put it last month) is a more dramatic outcome than a win by the woman originally depicted as inevitable. But there is considerable danger in writing that story prematurely.

Hillary: Omniscient and Rude

2008-02-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

With Barrack Obama winning eight straight states, Hillary is showing new sides of her inner life. In McAllen, Texas Hillary claimed that everything is happening as she expected and congratulated Obama for his latest victories. The rudeness comes from her ignoring Obama's victories when speaking with supporters on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. This is standard operating procedure for Clinton who rarely mentions Obama's wins or her losses as she speaks to supporters in rallies and fundraisers. The way this generally plays is that Hillary only acknowledges her defeats when directly questioned by the press as happened in McAllen today.
Is this any way to run a political campaign? Apparently this is how a Clinton losing campaign is done (in more ways than one).

"Who's Inevitable Now?"

2008-02-13T13:16:00.000-08:00

From politico.com:
Obama takes on new aura of momentum
By: Ben Smith and Avi Zenilman and Kenneth P. Vogel Feb 12, 2008 11:56 PM EST
Landslide victories lead Barack Obama supporters to crown him with sense of inevitability.

Who’s inevitable now?

With three landslide victories in Tuesday’s “Chesapeake Primary” in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., and a widening lead by any measure of delegates, Senator Barack Obama’s supporters have begun to suggest a case that, just a few months ago, was coming from Hillary Rodham Clinton: He’s a lock.

In a conference call with reporters before polls closed Tuesday, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe cited “the cold, hard reality of the math.”

"I don't think it's so much about momentum as the reality of the math," he said, citing the campaign’s success in building a small but unmistakable lead among pledged delegates. “If we continue to do that, mathematical reality sets in and it becomes harder and harder to overcome."

Plouffe’s aim was to begin the process of massing uncommitted Democratic leaders behind a front-running Obama, the same end to which Clinton and her aides wielded her high poll numbers last year.

The stress on Obama’s delegate lead was also the opening of an effort to muscle Clinton – now trailing by almost any count of delegates – from the race.

But on the numbers, Plouffe has a point. An analysis of the delegate count by Politico indicates that Obama’s wide margins in contests over the last week mean that Clinton will be forced to answer with not just victories, but landslides of her own, in the big states on which she is staking her hopes – Ohio and Texas, which vote March 4.

“We’re going to sweep across Texas in the next three weeks, bringing our message about what we need in America: The kind of president that will be required on day one to be commander in chief, to turn the economy around,” Clinton told a crowd of thousands in El Paso Thursday night. “I’m tested. I’m ready. Let’s make this happen."

This exhortation came hours after her campaign announced the departure of her deputy campaign manager, Mike Henry, in the latest reflection of staff turmoil.

Clinton’s challenge is to keep the count of pledged delegates close, while protecting her lead among the party officials known as “superdelegates,” who can vote independently at the Democratic National convention – but who may be reluctant to defy the popular vote.

The Obama campaign now argues that the superdelegates should follow the majority of the pledged delegates.

Clinton, meanwhile, has sought to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the process by which pledged delegates are chosen, arguing that caucuses aren’t true reflections of the will of the people, and that the exclusion of Florida and Michigan voters because of a dispute over the primary calendar taints the official tallies.

But Obama’s lead in pledged delegates widened Tuesday night to more than 100, even by conservative estimates, and there’s no indication that it will narrow before March.

There are 573 delegates up for grabs between March 4 and April 22. For Clinton to even things up, she needs to get 345 of those 573 delegates, or 60 percent – the sort of margin she won in her home state of New York.

Obama’s dramatic victories Tuesday also put him ahead in the count of pledged delegates even if Florida, whose delegates have not been recognized by the Democratic National Committee, was permitted to seat a delegation.

And his victories put him ahead even in counts that include superdelegates.

“This is the new American majority. This is what change looks like,” Obama said in a speech to an audience of thousands in Madison, Wisconsin Tuesday night.

Obama’s wins were his sixth, seventh, and eighth in a row, and even as Clinton looks forward to March 4, his campaign is looking with relish on Wisconsin and his home state of Hawaii, which vote a week from today.

His widening coalition is becoming part of his message: He won a majority of Latino votes – which had been Clinton’s bulwark elsewhere – in Virginia and Maryland.

He won a majority of white men in both states, and won the support of groups across the economic spectrum, while drawing stunning majorities of support from African-American voters – as high as 90% of their support in Virginia, according to exit polls.

The wide margins – he won with 64% of the vote in Virginia, and appeared headed for victory on a similar scale in Maryland– seemed to answer the Clinton campaign’s arguments that he has not won primaries in large states.

And Obama moved clearly into one traditional frontrunner’s role Tuesday night, trading blows with the likely Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, in their respective victory speeches.

“John McCain is an American hero. We honor his service to our nation. But his priorities don’t address the real problems of the American people, because they are bound to the failed policies of the past,” Obama said in Wisconsin.

“Senator McCain said the other day that we might be mired for a hundred years in Iraq, which is reason enough to not give him four years in the White House.”

McCain, for his part, jabbed at Obama’s lofty rhetoric of hope in his own remarks in Virginia.

“Hope, my friends, is a powerful thing. I can attest to that better than many, for I have seen men's hopes tested in hard and cruel ways that few will ever experience,” he said, continuing, however, that “to encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas that trust in the strength and courage of free people is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.”

And McCain concluded by stealing Obama’s signature line.

“My friends, I promise you, I am fired up and ready to go,” he said.

AP: Clinton Ex-Campaign Manager Backs Obama

2008-02-13T13:01:00.000-08:00

Feb 13 11:00 AM US/Eastern
By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer

Obama Claims ‘New American Majority’ After Wins

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - An aide to Barack Obama says the man who led former President Clinton's 1992 bid plans to endorse the Illinois senator.

Obama's campaign plans a 1 p.m. conference call Wednesday to announce the endorsement by David Wilhelm, who later became chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement would be made public later in the day.

Wilhelm plans to tell reporters that Obama can build a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans needed to win the general election. He also says Obama can bring the change he promises—improving the economy and ending the war in Iraq.

Wilhelm is a superdelegate from Illinois who was previously uncommitted in the race.

Hillary's Second Firewall

2008-02-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

New Hampshire was to be Senator Hillary Clinton's firewall after losing to Senator Barack Obama in the Iowa caucuses. Clinton did win in New Hampshire and she continued to win in the Michigan primary and the Nevada caucuses. But then came losses in South Carolina, Alabama and Alaska. In between these contests was a win by Hillary in Florida, and then Hillary went on a roll with wins in Arizona, Arkansas and California.

Since California Obama has won every primary and caucus except for important victories for Hillary in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. The large delegate numbers for those large states enabled Hillary to continue to maintain a slim lead in delegate count, but that lead evaporated last night with the Obama victories in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. So Hillary has set up the Texas primary as a second firewall.

If this Hillary strategy sounds familiar, you may be recall Mayor Rudy Guliani's strategy of making Florida his firewall. Rather than compete in Iowa, New Hampshire and other early states, Guliani focused nearly exclusively on Florida. He lost there and shortly thereafter bowed out of the race. If Hillary loses in Texas, Obama will be well on his way to securing the Democrat Party nomination. Stay tuned.

A Big Night for Obama, McCain Continues to Roll

2008-02-12T17:46:00.000-08:00

Senator Barack Obama swept what has been termed the Potomac Primary with big wins in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Maryland extended voting hours to 9:30 pm due to weather-related treacherous roads. For the first time Obama moved ahead of Senator Hillary Clinton in delegate count, 1,186 to 1,181. 2,025 are needed to win the Democrat Party nomination for president.

Senator John McCain swept the Potamac Primary races and increased his delegate count to 827 of the 1,191 needed to secure the Republican Party nomination for president.

Kristol: Obama's path to victory

2008-02-12T10:01:00.000-08:00

By William Kristol
Published: February 11, 2008

Last summer, George W. Bush told The Washington Examiner's Bill Sammon that Hillary Clinton would probably be the 2008 Democratic nominee. "She's got a national presence and this is becoming a national primary," he said. "And therefore the person with the national presence who has got the ability to raise enough money to sustain an effort in a multiplicity of sites has got a good chance to be nominated."
This seemed a reasonable judgment at the time. It may still turn out to be right. But today Barack Obama is neck-and-neck with Clinton in the national polls - and he's shown a greater ability to raise money. After his strong showing over the weekend, it is Obama who now has the clearer path to his party's nomination.
I'll avoid a false precision in the numbers that follow. There are minor differences among news organizations in projecting delegate allocations in states that have already voted, and in counting preferences among the 796 elected officials and party leaders - the "superdelegates" - who vote according to their choice, not voters' instruction.
Obama leads Clinton by roughly 70 delegates among about 2,000 chosen so far in primaries and caucuses. (There are still about 1,200 delegates outstanding.) Among the superdelegates, Clinton is ahead by about 100 superdelegates among the 300 who have declared a preference (though any of them can change their mind, so a count of them now is in large measure premature). All in all, Clinton seems to be slightly ahead.
She won't be for long. On Tuesday Obama is expected to prevail in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia. So around 9 p.m. Tuesday night, television networks probably will be announcing, for the first time, that Barack Obama holds an unambiguous delegate lead.
Today in Opinion

His lead in votes - already in the neighborhood of 200,000 - will probably have widened. And Obama should be able to increase those delegate and popular vote totals on Feb. 19, when Wisconsin and Hawaii go to the polls.
Next comes March 4, when Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island vote. Clinton's campaign believes Ohio and Texas will constitute her firewall. Will it hold?
I suspect not. Obama will have momentum. He will likely have more money than Clinton for advertising. His ballot performance among Hispanics and working-class whites has generally been improving as the primary season has gone on. He intends to push a more robust economic message that could help him further narrow the gap among lower-income voters. And an interesting regression analysis at the Daily Kos Web site (poblano.dailykos.com) of the determinants of the Democratic vote so far, applied to the demographics of the Ohio electorate, suggests that Obama has a better chance than is generally realized in Ohio.
As for Texas, look for a couple of possible endorsements to help Obama there. If John Edwards campaigns for Obama in East Texas, and Bill Richardson defies the pleas of Bill Clinton and travels across the border from New Mexico to help out, Obama could prevail.
If Obama wins Ohio and Texas - or even wins one - he'll be in good shape. He should take Wyoming on March 8 and Mississippi on March 11.
Then there's over a month until the next contest, in Pennsylvania on April 22. That stretch of time could be key. It could be the moment for many of the uncommitted superdelegates to begin ratifying the choice of Democratic primary voters, and to start moving en masse to Obama.
Many of these superdelegates are elected officials. They tend to care about winning in November. The polls suggest Obama matches up better with John McCain. And the polls are merely echoing the judgment of almost every Democratic elected official from a competitive district or a swing state with whom I've spoken. They would virtually all prefer Obama at the top of the ticket.
All of this will move the superdelegates to Obama - perhaps as early as just after March 4, or perhaps not until April 22, or perhaps not even until the last match-up on June 7. But the superdelegates will want to avoid a situation in which they could be in the position of seeming to override the popular vote, or of resolving a bitter battle over whether and how to count votes from Florida and Michigan, at the convention.
And there are, as a final resort, two super-superdelegates (so to speak) who would have the clout to help Democrats achieve closure: Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi. If they stepped forward at the right time, they would earn the gratitude of their party. And they might also enjoy contemplating a derivative effect of their good deed - the fall of the house of Clinton.

Source: The International Herald Tribune

New York Times: For Clinton, Bid Hinges on Texas and Ohio

2008-02-12T09:57:00.000-08:00

February 12, 2008

By PATRICK HEALY

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers increasingly believe that, after a series of losses, she has been boxed into a must-win position in the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4, and she has begun reassuring anxious donors and superdelegates that the nomination is not slipping away from her, aides said on Monday.
Mrs. Clinton held a buck-up-the-troops conference call on Monday with donors, superdelegates and other supporters; several said afterward that she had sounded tired and a little down, but determined about Ohio and Texas.
They also said that they had not been especially soothed, and that they believed she might be on a losing streak that could jeopardize her competitiveness in those states.
“She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out,” said one superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. “The campaign is starting to come to terms with that.” Campaign advisers, also speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view.
Several Clinton superdelegates, whose votes could help decide the nomination, said Monday that they were wavering in the face of Mr. Obama’s momentum after victories in Washington State, Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine last weekend.
Some said that they, like the hundreds of uncommitted superdelegates still at stake, might ultimately “go with the flow,” in the words of one, and support the candidate who appears to show the most strength in the primaries to come.
The Clinton team moved on Monday to shift the spotlight off the candidate’s short-term challenges and focus instead on “the long run,” in the words of her senior strategist, Mark Penn.
“She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner,” Mr. Penn said. “Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger.”
Clinton advisers have said that superdelegates should support the candidate who they believe would be the best nominee and the best president, while Obama advisers have argued that superdelegates should reflect the will of the voters and also take into account who they believe would be the best nominee. Superdelegates are Democratic party leaders and elected officials, and their votes could decide the nomination if neither candidate wins enough delegates to clinch a victory after the nominating contests end.
With primaries on Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, Clinton advisers were pessimistic about her chances, though some held out hope for a surprise performance in Virginia.
And as polls show Mr. Obama gaining strength in Wisconsin and his native state, Hawaii, which vote next Tuesday, advisers, donors and superdelegates said they were resigned to a possible Obama sweep of the rest of February’s contests.
Some donors also expressed concern about a widening money imbalance between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton: Obama fund-raisers say he is taking in roughly $1 million a day, while Clinton fund-raisers say she is taking in about half of that, mostly online. Mrs. Clinton’s aides say that the campaign was virtually broke as of the Feb. 5 primaries, but that finances have stabilized.
Mr. Obama’s financial edge allowed him to begin running television advertisements in Ohio and Texas on Monday, while the Clinton campaign plans to begin advertising on Tuesday. Clinton advisers say that she will have advertisements running statewide in both Ohio and Texas, and that she will have advertisements in English and Spanish in Texas.
“I think that clearly things have not been going as great as they were with her victories on Super Tuesday, and we can’t wait to get to March 4,” said Alan Patricof, one of Mrs. Clinton’s national finance chairmen.
Mrs. Clinton will have “a major ad buy” through the next week in Wisconsin, a senior adviser said Monday, and spend a few days campaigning there. But this adviser and others said the bulk of her time would be devoted to campaigning in Ohio, Texas and a bit in Rhode Island. In a sign of Texas’s importance, she plans to fly there Tuesday, even though Wisconsin votes next week.
While Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and allies emphasize that she has the time and the financial resources to regroup, they say she will have to take more significant steps to shore up her candidacy beyond the staff shakeup she engineered on Sunday, when she replaced her campaign manager and longtime aide, Patti Solis Doyle, with another veteran adviser, Maggie Williams.
Campaign advisers said they expected Ms. Williams to bring new energy to both the campaign team and Mrs. Clinton, after a long year of campaigning, and to encourage her to show more spunk and determination on the campaign trail. They say they do not expect the candidate’s political message to change appreciably; she will increasingly focus on the concerns of working-class voters, a key demographic in Ohio, as well as of Hispanics, a significant population in Texas.
As she seeks to erect a fire wall for her candidacy in Ohio and Texas, Mrs. Clinton will deploy her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to campaign in both states, particularly in Ohio, where her advisers believe his popularity will help her with working-class voters, labor union members and black voters.
In a conference call with reporters on Monday, Mr. Penn, who is also Mrs. Clinton’s pollster, played down some polls that showed strength for Mr. Obama and highlighted Mrs. Clinton’s abilities to beat the leading Republican candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
“We believe that Hillary Clinton in the long run is better positioned to take on John McCain,” Mr. Penn said.
Yet some Clinton donors and superdelegates worry that the focus on Mr. McCain is premature, and that other strategic decisions by the campaign — like counting on Michigan and Florida delegates to be seated at the convention even though their status is in limbo — show faulty thinking that suggests the Clinton campaign does not have a short-term game plan against Mr. Obama.
“They are looking way too much at Florida, Michigan and McCain, because all three won’t matter if she doesn’t blow Obama away in Texas and Ohio,” said a Democrat who is both a Clinton superdelegate and major donor, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment of campaign strategy. “Obama has momentum that has to be stopped by March 4.”
Clinton advisers took issue with the notion that Mr. Obama’s momentum was significant, noting that his victory in the Iowa caucuses did not translate into winning the New Hampshire primary five days later, and his South Carolina victory did not prevent Mrs. Clinton from winning the biggest states on Feb. 5.
“There is no evidence that voters are voting based on momentum — in fact the evidence is to the contrary,” said Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director.
Hassan Nemazee, another national finance chairman for Mrs. Clinton, said he was also telling his network of allies not to get caught up in the headlines about Obama
“I’m telling donors and supporters: Don’t be overly concerned about what goes on in the remainder of the month of February because these are not states teed up well for us,” Mr. Nemazee said.
Asked if that message was sinking in, he pointed to the campaign’s announcement that Mrs. Clinton had raised $10 million online so far this month, and was on pace to raise more than $25 million in February.
“I predict for you we will have our best single fund-raising month in February, and that’s significant,” he said.

NBC News: Obama Favorite Tommorrow

2008-02-11T15:31:00.000-08:00

Andrea Mitchell reports that Obama is favored to win tommorrow and gain the lead in the delegate race. Meanwhile, Clinton is trying to twist arms to pick up superdelegates in order to give her an edge in delegate count. The chief arm twister? President Bill Clinton.

The Undemocratic Democrat Party

2008-02-11T09:53:00.000-08:00

2205 is the magic number for Hillary or Barack. It is the number needed to clinch the presidential nomination of their political party. After this weekend's primaries and caucuses Clinton leads Obama in delegate count, 1,125 to 1,087. It is likely that the delegates won by each candidate through the election process will remain close and this sets up a highly undemocratic possibility for the Democrat Party. Unlike the Republican Party where all delegates are elected in statewide primaries and caucuses, the Democrat Party has 796 superdelegates. Superdelegates are powerful party insiders who may decide who the Democrat candidate for president will be.

According to an Associated Press (AP) report, "Both campaigns are aggressively pursuing superdelegates" ("Clinton leads among insiders, 2/11/08). Who are these superdelegates? 720 of them are appointed by the party and the remaining 76 superdelegates are elected at state party conventions. Their number includes senators, non-elected party leaders and labor bosses.

In the same AP report cited above, 399 superdelegates have already endorsed a candidate irrespective of the will of the people as expressed in primaries and caucuses. Superdelegates could decide for the party who will run for president in November, against the will of the majority of democrat voters and against the candidate who accumulates the most delegates through the primary and caucus process. This would make the Democrat Party highly undemocratic.

Obama and Huckabee Pick Up Wins

2008-02-10T04:18:00.000-08:00

As expected, in yesterday's primaries and caucuses Senator Barack Obama scored wins in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington state and the Virgin Islands. Governor Mike Huckabee won in Kansas, Washington state and in Louisiana, but he did not win the necessary 83.3% of the vote he needs to overtake Senator John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination.

Huckabee garnered nearly 60% of the votes in Kansas, but as the Associated Press reports he is "hopelessly behind" McCain in the delegate count. According to AP, McCain's now has 719 of the 1,191 that he needs to secure the Republican nomination. Huckabee's total is 234.

According to CNN. com, Senator Hillary Clinton holds a slim lead in delegate count, 1100 to Obama's 1039. 2025 delegates are needed to win the Democrat Party presidential nomination.

Today, Maine voters will gather for their state caucuses. On Tuesday, democrat party primaries will be held in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Votes will also be tallied for Americans overseas.

Looking Ahead to Tuesday

2008-02-09T10:56:00.000-08:00

2008-2-12	District of Columbia	Presidential Primary
2008-2-12	Maryland	Presidential/State Primary
2008-2-12	Virginia	Presidential Primary
2008-2-19	Hawaii	Democratic Caucuses
2008-2-19	Washington	Presidential Primary
2008-2-19	Wisconsin	Presidential Primary

Today's Primaries and Caucuses

2008-02-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

2008-2-9	Virgin Islands	Virgin Islands Democratic Caucuses
2008-2-9	Kansas	Republican Caucuses
2008-2-9	Louisiana	Presidential Primary
2008-2-9	Nebraska	Democratic Caucuses
2008-2-9	Washington	Caucuses
2008-2-9	Maine	Democratic Caucuses

The Huckabee Non-Factor

2008-02-09T08:45:00.000-08:00

As Karl Rove demonstrated Wednesday night on Fox's Hannity and Colmes, Republican candidate Mike Huckabee has a close to zero chance to overtake Senator John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination. After Tuesday, McCain has 719 delegates and Huckabee has 234. 1,191 delegates are needed to win the nomination.

Huckabee needs to win 83.3% of the remaining delegates in order to beat McCain. It isn't going to happen, so why is Huckabee still hanging on? The conventional wisdom is probably correct that Huckabee is angling to become the Vice President on the ticket with McCain. This could have some advantages for McCain since the frontrunner has not done all that well in most of the southern primaries and Huckabee could sure up support for McCain among some conservative voters. However, questions have been raised about Huckabee's record as governor of Arkansas, whether he has a conservative track record.

The Worthlessness of National Political Polling

2008-02-09T06:32:00.000-08:00

We hear news reporters and political pundits tell us regularly about national polls on the various candidates for president. Since the nomination process is a state by state process, what good are national polls? No good at all except to give news reporters and political pundits something to talk about. They may show trends that can influence voters in the upcoming primaries, but how is this actually helpful? It would better serve the electoral process to hear stories on the positions of the candidates. However, it's easier to report a national poll and explain momentum changes than to explain positions on issues. So, we can expect more reporting on national polls and the current dearth of examination of the candidates' positions on issues. This is just one more example of how the American public is poorly served by the news media.

Rove and Morris on Likely Primary and Caucus Results

2008-02-09T06:23:00.000-08:00

Wednesday night on Hannity and Colmes, Karl Rove gave a masterful analysis of the Democrat and Republican races to the presidential nomination. His white board presentation suggests that Senator John McCain has the Republican nomination all but locked up and that Senator Hillary Clinton has the clearest path to the Democrat nomination (she leads in the delegate count over Senator Barack Obama with 1055 to 998). Rove pointed out that Huckabee would need to win 83.3% of the remaining delegates to overtake McCain. On the Democrat side, Obama will likely win today's primaries and caucuses, but that Tuesday's contests favor Hillary, as do future primaries.

Dick Morris on Thurday night's H & C suggested that Obama could gain momentum from today's events that would propel him into victories on Tuesday and in later primaries.

In my view Rove's analysis makes the most sense of the current political landscape.

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