WOMEN: IT'S ALL WOMEN'S FAULT
Well, not women per se -- just anti-feminist right-wing apparatchik Laura Schlessinger and phony-feminist Camille Paglia.
Here's Schlessinger, being interviewed about the Spitzer scandal:
"Are you saying the women should feel guilty, like they somehow drove the man to cheat?" a visibly aghast Meredith Vieira of "Today" asked Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a radio host.
Dr. Schlessinger replied, "Yes, I hold women accountable for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need."
And here's Paglia in Salon:
Why was Hillary flying around the world to those 80 countries anyhow -- building her resume while leaving her randy hubby unleashed?
What?! Expecting personal responsibility from men? But that's absurd!
Lately I've had serious disagreements with some of the godmothers of modern feminism, but even so, they're a damn sight better than alternatives like Schlessinger and Paglia.
*****
Oh, and this is the loopiest moment in Paglia's current column:
And that [Clinton] scare ad was produced with amazing ineptitude. If it's 3 a.m., why is the male-seeming mother fully dressed as she comes in to check on her sleeping children? Is she a bar crawler or insomniac? An obsessive-compulsive housecleaner, like Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest"?
"The male-seeming mother"? Here's the ad -- you really think so, Camille? Er, I don't see it. Maybe my tran-dar is a bit rusty.
As for the rest -- "a bar crawler or insomniac"? Hunh? Yeah, the ad doesn't really make sense. The phone isn't ringing in the woman's house. The kids don't look like siblings. But it doesn't have to make sense. It's just supposed to play on your reptile brain. And in Texas, apparently, it worked, though it gives me no joy to say that. So the ad isn't inept. Besides, Camille, it's not as if all your beloved French nouvelle vague films make perfect linear sense, either.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
CLINTON CAMPAIGN MAKES McCAIN'S VP SELECTION PROCESS EASIER
The Clinton campaign's ongoing effort to poison Democratic voters' minds against the party's likely nominee -- not just Geraldine Ferraro's recent remarks but remarks by Gloria Steinem and others -- have made John McCain's decision on a running mate much easier. The shocking part of Ferraro's message is her assertion that Barack Obama is privileged because he's black; the rest of the message we're hearing from her and other Clinton surrogates is that he's getting away with being inexperienced because he's youthfully attractive and male.
So McCain's VP choice is simple: He ought to pick an older white woman, a Kay Bailey Hutchison or an Elizabeth Dole (or, the snarky will say, Senator Clinton herself), and urge the running mate to reach out to demographic peers who've been persuaded that a vote for Obama would be a betrayal of group solidarity.
I'll point out here that an AP exit poll of Mississippi reveals that "More than half of Clinton voters said they had a favorable opinion of McCain," while "only about a quarter of Obama voters viewed McCain favorably." Yes, I know -- there were a lot of GOP crossover voters in Mississippi and most went for Clinton, possibly out of a Limbaughesque desire to make mischief, but that's not enough to explain why a majority of Clinton supporters approve of McCain. Her repeated declarations of his suitability to be president, perhaps? Could that be why?
So McCain may as well take advantage of Clinton's coalition-building work by running with someone very much like Hillary. Who knows -- maybe we'll see McCain ads in Ms. by fall.
The Clinton campaign's ongoing effort to poison Democratic voters' minds against the party's likely nominee -- not just Geraldine Ferraro's recent remarks but remarks by Gloria Steinem and others -- have made John McCain's decision on a running mate much easier. The shocking part of Ferraro's message is her assertion that Barack Obama is privileged because he's black; the rest of the message we're hearing from her and other Clinton surrogates is that he's getting away with being inexperienced because he's youthfully attractive and male.
So McCain's VP choice is simple: He ought to pick an older white woman, a Kay Bailey Hutchison or an Elizabeth Dole (or, the snarky will say, Senator Clinton herself), and urge the running mate to reach out to demographic peers who've been persuaded that a vote for Obama would be a betrayal of group solidarity.
I'll point out here that an AP exit poll of Mississippi reveals that "More than half of Clinton voters said they had a favorable opinion of McCain," while "only about a quarter of Obama voters viewed McCain favorably." Yes, I know -- there were a lot of GOP crossover voters in Mississippi and most went for Clinton, possibly out of a Limbaughesque desire to make mischief, but that's not enough to explain why a majority of Clinton supporters approve of McCain. Her repeated declarations of his suitability to be president, perhaps? Could that be why?
So McCain may as well take advantage of Clinton's coalition-building work by running with someone very much like Hillary. Who knows -- maybe we'll see McCain ads in Ms. by fall.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
DEAR GERALDINE FERRARO:
Was Bob Johnson, the African-American founder of Black Entertainment Television, also criticized for anti-Obama remarks because he was white?
Was Bob Johnson, the African-American founder of Black Entertainment Television, also criticized for anti-Obama remarks because he was white?
A FEARMONGERING AD? SURE. A RACIST AD? I'M NOT SO SURE.
It's not that I find the theory proposed in this Orlando Patterson op-ed unimaginable -- it's just that, if it were true, I think the evidence would be considerably clearer:
ON first watching Hillary Clinton's recent "It's 3 a.m." advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right -- something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America's racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude.
... when I saw the Clinton ad's central image -- innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger -- it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn't help but think of D. W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad -- as I see it -- is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.
The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father -- or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black -- both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino....
Well, that's just it -- this isn't the Jesse Helms "Hands" ad, in which the rejected job seeker is unambiguously white. Watch the ad -- there are five separate shots of children, and in two of them it's clear that we're looking at a dark-complected, dark-haired child, quite possibly Hispanic. Then we see the mother, and she could be Hispanic as well. All this on behalf of a candidate who (a) likes to target voting blocs and (b) runs well with Hispanics and women.
Even if you're looking to tap into Hispanic mistrust of blacks as well as white mistrust of blacks, can you do so with one set of images? Can you make whites think a black man is "the other" without reminding Hispanics that whites often see them as "the other"? (Or are Hispanics supposed to regard white bigots as "the other"?) And can you pull all this off in an ad that runs a mere thirty seconds and lacks any literal or symbolic tip-off of the specific nature of the object of fear?
And this argument seems flawed:
It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites.
But if this ad is a dog whistle to whites, why run it in a state where whites are only 48% percent of the primary electorate and not in a state where whites are (see page 3) more than two thirds of the primary electorate? Because Hillary was already ahead in Ohio? Doesn't she need huge blowout wins to stay in the race?
No, this ad was not American democracy's finest hour. But I'm skeptical of Patterson's theory.
(My theory? Well, has Hillary Clinton ever deliberately released an image in which she looks as old as she does in the last shot of the ad? I think that's the point -- to stress her age. This ad is about youth, not race.)
****
There's disagreement about this ad at The New Republic's Plank blog -- Jason Zengerle agrees with Patterson, Christopher Orr is on the fence, and Michelle Cottle just rolls her eyes.
It's not that I find the theory proposed in this Orlando Patterson op-ed unimaginable -- it's just that, if it were true, I think the evidence would be considerably clearer:
ON first watching Hillary Clinton's recent "It's 3 a.m." advertisement, I was left with an uneasy feeling that something was not quite right -- something that went beyond my disappointment that she had decided to go negative. Repeated watching of the ad on YouTube increased my unease. I realized that I had only too often in my study of America's racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude.
... when I saw the Clinton ad's central image -- innocent sleeping children and a mother in the middle of the night at risk of mortal danger -- it brought to my mind scenes from the past. I couldn't help but think of D. W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," the racist movie epic that helped revive the Ku Klux Klan, with its portrayal of black men lurking in the bushes around white society. The danger implicit in the phone ad -- as I see it -- is that the person answering the phone might be a black man, someone who could not be trusted to protect us from this threat.
The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father -- or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black -- both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino....
Well, that's just it -- this isn't the Jesse Helms "Hands" ad, in which the rejected job seeker is unambiguously white. Watch the ad -- there are five separate shots of children, and in two of them it's clear that we're looking at a dark-complected, dark-haired child, quite possibly Hispanic. Then we see the mother, and she could be Hispanic as well. All this on behalf of a candidate who (a) likes to target voting blocs and (b) runs well with Hispanics and women.
Even if you're looking to tap into Hispanic mistrust of blacks as well as white mistrust of blacks, can you do so with one set of images? Can you make whites think a black man is "the other" without reminding Hispanics that whites often see them as "the other"? (Or are Hispanics supposed to regard white bigots as "the other"?) And can you pull all this off in an ad that runs a mere thirty seconds and lacks any literal or symbolic tip-off of the specific nature of the object of fear?
And this argument seems flawed:
It is significant that the Clinton campaign used its telephone ad in Texas, where a Fox poll conducted Feb. 26 to 28 showed that whites favored Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton 47 percent to 44 percent, and not in Ohio, where she held a comfortable 16-point lead among whites.
But if this ad is a dog whistle to whites, why run it in a state where whites are only 48% percent of the primary electorate and not in a state where whites are (see page 3) more than two thirds of the primary electorate? Because Hillary was already ahead in Ohio? Doesn't she need huge blowout wins to stay in the race?
No, this ad was not American democracy's finest hour. But I'm skeptical of Patterson's theory.
(My theory? Well, has Hillary Clinton ever deliberately released an image in which she looks as old as she does in the last shot of the ad? I think that's the point -- to stress her age. This ad is about youth, not race.)
****
There's disagreement about this ad at The New Republic's Plank blog -- Jason Zengerle agrees with Patterson, Christopher Orr is on the fence, and Michelle Cottle just rolls her eyes.
THE LANGUAGE POLICE
Via Steve Benen, I see that Jonah "Liberal Fascism" Goldberg, in the L.A. Times, is quoting the public statements of Barack and Michelle Obama and arguing that they fail a verbal litmus test:
What is fascinating here is not the sentiment, but what's missing from it. The P-word.
...One cannot credibly talk of love of country while simultaneously dodging the word and concept of patriotism.
Yup, not patriotism itself, but "the word and concept of patriotism." As Steve says in response:
It’s rather bewildering. The column isn't about patriotism, or honoring the nation’s highest ideals, or acting in such a way as to protect the nation's values, traditions, and institutions; it's about rhetoric.
In this sense, a politico can give a rah-rah speech, and wrap himself in the flag, while opposing American civil liberties, stifling dissent, and supporting policies like torture and the elimination of habeas corpus. But so long as this person uses the "P-word" and wears the stars and stripes are on his lapel, there's a "patriotism gap."
It's good to know. Patriotic beliefs are nice, but talking about patriotic beliefs is vital.
But, there's been a lot of this sort of thing lately. This, of course, comes a few weeks after the preposterous controversy about whether we could regard Barack Obama's "renunciation" of Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitism as meaningful if it wasn't accompanied by the additional word "reject."
And that came a few months after a period of time in which Rudy Giuliani, who was then the GOP front-runner, was loudly insisting that Democrats were weak on terrorism because they didn't use the phrase "Islamic fascism."
Remind me again: It's Democrats and liberals who are obsessed with "politically correct" speech, right?
Via Steve Benen, I see that Jonah "Liberal Fascism" Goldberg, in the L.A. Times, is quoting the public statements of Barack and Michelle Obama and arguing that they fail a verbal litmus test:
What is fascinating here is not the sentiment, but what's missing from it. The P-word.
...One cannot credibly talk of love of country while simultaneously dodging the word and concept of patriotism.
Yup, not patriotism itself, but "the word and concept of patriotism." As Steve says in response:
It’s rather bewildering. The column isn't about patriotism, or honoring the nation’s highest ideals, or acting in such a way as to protect the nation's values, traditions, and institutions; it's about rhetoric.
In this sense, a politico can give a rah-rah speech, and wrap himself in the flag, while opposing American civil liberties, stifling dissent, and supporting policies like torture and the elimination of habeas corpus. But so long as this person uses the "P-word" and wears the stars and stripes are on his lapel, there's a "patriotism gap."
It's good to know. Patriotic beliefs are nice, but talking about patriotic beliefs is vital.
But, there's been a lot of this sort of thing lately. This, of course, comes a few weeks after the preposterous controversy about whether we could regard Barack Obama's "renunciation" of Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitism as meaningful if it wasn't accompanied by the additional word "reject."
And that came a few months after a period of time in which Rudy Giuliani, who was then the GOP front-runner, was loudly insisting that Democrats were weak on terrorism because they didn't use the phrase "Islamic fascism."
Remind me again: It's Democrats and liberals who are obsessed with "politically correct" speech, right?
POLITICIZED? QUITE POSSIBLY. BUT SPITZER SHOULD STILL GO.
I still think Eliot Spitzer ought to resign. I understand the argument that there's a double standard when Larry Craig and David Vitter are still in office. But Spitzer's been a lousy governor and will be no loss. More important, resignations don't have to be a sign of political weakness, which is why there were two big ones in the GOP in late 1998.
Remember 1998? The GOP's pursuit of impeachment was wildly unpopular and Democrats gained seats in Congress in the midterms, something that never happens in the sixth year of a president's term. And so Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned -- not revealing that had been engaging in adulterous conduct during the Monica period. And Gingrich's designated successor, Bob Livingston, also resigned, after his adultery was revealed.
And so it was generally accepted that the GOP could now resume the pursuit of impeachment unburdened by charges of hypocrisy. Bill Clinton was impeached, the GOP refused to allow a censure after failing to secure a conviction, the GOP whined that he'd gotten away with something awful, and Al Gore was unable to win the presidency in 2000.
Sometimes a resignation isn't the worst thing in the world. It depends on how you use it.
*****
I say that even though I've been reading what people such as Scott Horton of Harper's are writing about the case:
...Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice. This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions. During the Bush Administration, his Justice Department has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican. Beyond this, a number of the cases seem to have been tied closely to election cycles.
...The Justice Department has yet to give a full account of why they were looking into Spitzer's payments, and indeed the suggestion in the ABC account is that it didn’t have anything to do with a prostitution ring. The suggestion that this was driven by an IRS inquiry and involved a bank might heighten, rather than allay, concerns of a politically motivated prosecution....
(If you haven't read it yet, the ABC report he cites is here.)
I'm actually surprised that this bomb wasn't dropped next fall rather than now -- not only because of its likely impact on national elections, but because of what it might do to the makeup of New York's legislature, state legislatures having been a particular obsession in the Rove years. New York's lower house, the Assembly, has been Democratic for years, while the State Senate has been Republican, but a special election a few weeks ago got Democrats very close to a State Senate takeover:
In a major victory for Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his party, a Democratic assemblyman won a stunning upset in a State Senate election on Tuesday in a district that has been in Republican hands for a century.
The win reduces the Republicans' majority to one seat and will intensify pressure on the majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, as he tries to maintain his party's grip on the Senate, which it has controlled for more than 40 years.
The Democrat, Darrel J. Aubertine, a dairy farmer, leaned heavily on Mr. Spitzer's media consultant and the state Democrats' money as he waged a costly campaign against the Republican, William A. Barclay, a lawyer and an assemblyman whose father once held the Senate seat.
Mr. Aubertine won 52 percent of the vote to 48 percent for Mr. Barclay, according to unofficial results. Republicans outnumber Democrats 78,454 to 46,824 in the north country district, and Mr. Barclay had been favored to win....
An all-Democratic legislature elected in '08 would probably still be in place for any redistricting resulting from the 2010 census -- after which the state's rapidly dwindling Republican congressional contingent might dwindle even further.
So, sure, there are political reasons for this. But the story is out now, and that means the damage is done. A weakened laughingstock Spitzer who remains in office isn't going to do the Democrats any good.
I still think Eliot Spitzer ought to resign. I understand the argument that there's a double standard when Larry Craig and David Vitter are still in office. But Spitzer's been a lousy governor and will be no loss. More important, resignations don't have to be a sign of political weakness, which is why there were two big ones in the GOP in late 1998.
Remember 1998? The GOP's pursuit of impeachment was wildly unpopular and Democrats gained seats in Congress in the midterms, something that never happens in the sixth year of a president's term. And so Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned -- not revealing that had been engaging in adulterous conduct during the Monica period. And Gingrich's designated successor, Bob Livingston, also resigned, after his adultery was revealed.
And so it was generally accepted that the GOP could now resume the pursuit of impeachment unburdened by charges of hypocrisy. Bill Clinton was impeached, the GOP refused to allow a censure after failing to secure a conviction, the GOP whined that he'd gotten away with something awful, and Al Gore was unable to win the presidency in 2000.
Sometimes a resignation isn't the worst thing in the world. It depends on how you use it.
*****
I say that even though I've been reading what people such as Scott Horton of Harper's are writing about the case:
...Note that this prosecution was managed with staffers from the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice. This section is now at the center of a major scandal concerning politically directed prosecutions. During the Bush Administration, his Justice Department has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican. Beyond this, a number of the cases seem to have been tied closely to election cycles.
...The Justice Department has yet to give a full account of why they were looking into Spitzer's payments, and indeed the suggestion in the ABC account is that it didn’t have anything to do with a prostitution ring. The suggestion that this was driven by an IRS inquiry and involved a bank might heighten, rather than allay, concerns of a politically motivated prosecution....
(If you haven't read it yet, the ABC report he cites is here.)
I'm actually surprised that this bomb wasn't dropped next fall rather than now -- not only because of its likely impact on national elections, but because of what it might do to the makeup of New York's legislature, state legislatures having been a particular obsession in the Rove years. New York's lower house, the Assembly, has been Democratic for years, while the State Senate has been Republican, but a special election a few weeks ago got Democrats very close to a State Senate takeover:
In a major victory for Gov. Eliot Spitzer and his party, a Democratic assemblyman won a stunning upset in a State Senate election on Tuesday in a district that has been in Republican hands for a century.
The win reduces the Republicans' majority to one seat and will intensify pressure on the majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, as he tries to maintain his party's grip on the Senate, which it has controlled for more than 40 years.
The Democrat, Darrel J. Aubertine, a dairy farmer, leaned heavily on Mr. Spitzer's media consultant and the state Democrats' money as he waged a costly campaign against the Republican, William A. Barclay, a lawyer and an assemblyman whose father once held the Senate seat.
Mr. Aubertine won 52 percent of the vote to 48 percent for Mr. Barclay, according to unofficial results. Republicans outnumber Democrats 78,454 to 46,824 in the north country district, and Mr. Barclay had been favored to win....
An all-Democratic legislature elected in '08 would probably still be in place for any redistricting resulting from the 2010 census -- after which the state's rapidly dwindling Republican congressional contingent might dwindle even further.
So, sure, there are political reasons for this. But the story is out now, and that means the damage is done. A weakened laughingstock Spitzer who remains in office isn't going to do the Democrats any good.
Monday, March 10, 2008
JUST GO, ELIOT -- AND GOOD RIDDANCE
The news that New York's Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, sought the services of high-priced prostitutes is just the icing on the cake -- Spitzer was already a disaster:
Before his first year in office, Eliot Spitzer was a populist avenger, a media darling, a rising Democratic star, a progressive's Rudy Giuliani, a panacea-in-waiting, a front-runner in the first-Jewish-President race. Somehow, he's become an unpopular governor careering from mess to mess. Allegations that his office used the state police to smear [Republican State Senate President] Joseph Bruno for misusing state aircraft (an affair known as Troopergate), and a doomed proposal to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, have compromised the brand.... [In the 2006 election,] he got sixty-nine per cent of the vote; a few weeks ago, a poll found that only twenty-five per cent would vote for him if an election were held today.
Sometimes I look at Democrats in office and think of what Casey Stengel said when he managed the hapless 1962 New York Mets: Can't anybody here play this game? Here's a guy who could have been, if not president (he's not the warmest guy on the planet), then certainly a U.S. senator, an attorney general, or quite possibly a Supreme Court justice. Instead, he spent most of his first year in office answering questions about a ridiculous abuse of authority, then about a driver's license proposal that showed he was politically tin-eared (and that served as the excuse for the big Hillary Clinton pile-on last fall) ... and now this.
I'll shed no tears if Spitzer resigns -- the Dems don't need a Larry Craig or David Vitter.
***
If you're keeping score at home, Spitzer backs Hillary Clinton. The man who'd replace him, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, who's African-American, also endorsed Clinton, but possibly with some discomfort:
As he greeted voters outside P.S. 175 in Harlem on Tuesday morning, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson was explaining how he thought Mr. Obama would win the district when an elderly woman approached him and asked who she should vote for.
Mr. Paterson, a prominent Clinton surrogate -- he was the guy directly behind her as she gave her concession speech in Iowa -- hesitated.
"Uh, Hillary," he offered sheepishly.
"Uh, O.K. All right," the woman said, somewhat dismissively, as Mr. Paterson chuckled at his predicament.
Asked afterward why he had hesitated, Mr. Paterson said he had been reluctant to try and sell Mrs. Clinton "because I knew that woman was going to laugh in my face as soon as I did it."
****
UPDATE: A couple of commenters have asked why Spitzer should resign, especially when Larry Craig and David Vitter haven't. Let me make myself clear: I wish Spitzer had resigned before this scandal broke. He came in on an absolutely massive wave of goodwill and he pissed every bit of it away last year. I am sick to death of Democrats squandering the opportunity to reverse the abysmal image Democrats have in this country. I want the word "Democrat" to stand for competence and excellence in the public's mind, and "Republican" to stand for ineptitude and incompetence. Spitzer was a screw-up all last year, and now this. The hell with him.
****
ANOTHER UPDATE: I expect to have more to say about this case, but for now I'll just say that the fact that Craig and Vitter are still in office also addresses the question of Democratic competence -- approximately two decades after the need for it became obvious, it's clear that Democrats still don't have a fully functioning, ref-working noise machine. I hate the fact that our political culture requires this, but it does, and we don't have one. What are we waiting for?
The news that New York's Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, sought the services of high-priced prostitutes is just the icing on the cake -- Spitzer was already a disaster:
Before his first year in office, Eliot Spitzer was a populist avenger, a media darling, a rising Democratic star, a progressive's Rudy Giuliani, a panacea-in-waiting, a front-runner in the first-Jewish-President race. Somehow, he's become an unpopular governor careering from mess to mess. Allegations that his office used the state police to smear [Republican State Senate President] Joseph Bruno for misusing state aircraft (an affair known as Troopergate), and a doomed proposal to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, have compromised the brand.... [In the 2006 election,] he got sixty-nine per cent of the vote; a few weeks ago, a poll found that only twenty-five per cent would vote for him if an election were held today.
Sometimes I look at Democrats in office and think of what Casey Stengel said when he managed the hapless 1962 New York Mets: Can't anybody here play this game? Here's a guy who could have been, if not president (he's not the warmest guy on the planet), then certainly a U.S. senator, an attorney general, or quite possibly a Supreme Court justice. Instead, he spent most of his first year in office answering questions about a ridiculous abuse of authority, then about a driver's license proposal that showed he was politically tin-eared (and that served as the excuse for the big Hillary Clinton pile-on last fall) ... and now this.
I'll shed no tears if Spitzer resigns -- the Dems don't need a Larry Craig or David Vitter.
***
If you're keeping score at home, Spitzer backs Hillary Clinton. The man who'd replace him, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, who's African-American, also endorsed Clinton, but possibly with some discomfort:
As he greeted voters outside P.S. 175 in Harlem on Tuesday morning, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson was explaining how he thought Mr. Obama would win the district when an elderly woman approached him and asked who she should vote for.
Mr. Paterson, a prominent Clinton surrogate -- he was the guy directly behind her as she gave her concession speech in Iowa -- hesitated.
"Uh, Hillary," he offered sheepishly.
"Uh, O.K. All right," the woman said, somewhat dismissively, as Mr. Paterson chuckled at his predicament.
Asked afterward why he had hesitated, Mr. Paterson said he had been reluctant to try and sell Mrs. Clinton "because I knew that woman was going to laugh in my face as soon as I did it."
****
UPDATE: A couple of commenters have asked why Spitzer should resign, especially when Larry Craig and David Vitter haven't. Let me make myself clear: I wish Spitzer had resigned before this scandal broke. He came in on an absolutely massive wave of goodwill and he pissed every bit of it away last year. I am sick to death of Democrats squandering the opportunity to reverse the abysmal image Democrats have in this country. I want the word "Democrat" to stand for competence and excellence in the public's mind, and "Republican" to stand for ineptitude and incompetence. Spitzer was a screw-up all last year, and now this. The hell with him.
****
ANOTHER UPDATE: I expect to have more to say about this case, but for now I'll just say that the fact that Craig and Vitter are still in office also addresses the question of Democratic competence -- approximately two decades after the need for it became obvious, it's clear that Democrats still don't have a fully functioning, ref-working noise machine. I hate the fact that our political culture requires this, but it does, and we don't have one. What are we waiting for?
MAYBE WE MISUNDERSTOOD THE RULES
Based on this, shouldn't we be able to dispense with the general election and just declare Barack Obama the next president?
...A new survey by the National Beer Wholesalers Association asked individuals to name the candidate they’d most like to have a beer with, and Barack Obama easily cruised to victory (41 percent, compared with 21 percent for John McCain and 10 percent for Hillary Clinton)....
That's a huge lead over McCain -- but the real polls are much closer (in some polls, McCain wins)> So what's up? I thought beer appeal was our principal criterion for a president.
But maybe that's not how our elections really work. i'm looking at the John McCain items Atrios and Steve Benen have flagged today. First, from THe New York Times:
...Mr. McCain said he planned to continue to hold forth with reporters on the back of his bus, the Straight Talk Express.
Aides believe that doing so makes Mr. McCain less likely to be the subject of what they call "gotcha" journalism, and not merely because he tries to develop a rapport with journalists, whom he has jokingly called "my base." They believe that giving journalists access to the candidate, and the chance to hear about his positions at length, will make them less likely to jump on statements taken out of context.
That seemed to be borne out last week, when Mr. McCain briefly tripped over the name of the new Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev. Reporters, who have been known to quiz candidates on the names of foreign leaders, did not pounce....
And then from a Howard Kurtz's interview with Ana Marie Cox of Time, on CNN, in which Cox argued that reporters who regularly travel with McCain don't bother to report on his outbursts of temper:
... KURTZ: But that suggests that the people who have been traveling with him regularly… become part of the bubble, part of the team?
COX: Become part of the bubble, and also, I mean, I think what happens is that you -- if you've been covering him for a long time, there's a sense that, well, he does that all the time, it's not worth reporting, because he does -- he's a cranky old man. I mean, to be quite frank....
So maybe the important thing isn't which candidate the public would enjoy having a beer with. Maybe the important thing is which candidate the press would enjoy having a beer with. This year, the public's choice is obvious. But the press is keeping the race close.
Based on this, shouldn't we be able to dispense with the general election and just declare Barack Obama the next president?
...A new survey by the National Beer Wholesalers Association asked individuals to name the candidate they’d most like to have a beer with, and Barack Obama easily cruised to victory (41 percent, compared with 21 percent for John McCain and 10 percent for Hillary Clinton)....
That's a huge lead over McCain -- but the real polls are much closer (in some polls, McCain wins)> So what's up? I thought beer appeal was our principal criterion for a president.
But maybe that's not how our elections really work. i'm looking at the John McCain items Atrios and Steve Benen have flagged today. First, from THe New York Times:
...Mr. McCain said he planned to continue to hold forth with reporters on the back of his bus, the Straight Talk Express.
Aides believe that doing so makes Mr. McCain less likely to be the subject of what they call "gotcha" journalism, and not merely because he tries to develop a rapport with journalists, whom he has jokingly called "my base." They believe that giving journalists access to the candidate, and the chance to hear about his positions at length, will make them less likely to jump on statements taken out of context.
That seemed to be borne out last week, when Mr. McCain briefly tripped over the name of the new Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev. Reporters, who have been known to quiz candidates on the names of foreign leaders, did not pounce....
And then from a Howard Kurtz's interview with Ana Marie Cox of Time, on CNN, in which Cox argued that reporters who regularly travel with McCain don't bother to report on his outbursts of temper:
... KURTZ: But that suggests that the people who have been traveling with him regularly… become part of the bubble, part of the team?
COX: Become part of the bubble, and also, I mean, I think what happens is that you -- if you've been covering him for a long time, there's a sense that, well, he does that all the time, it's not worth reporting, because he does -- he's a cranky old man. I mean, to be quite frank....
So maybe the important thing isn't which candidate the public would enjoy having a beer with. Maybe the important thing is which candidate the press would enjoy having a beer with. This year, the public's choice is obvious. But the press is keeping the race close.
BUT ... BUT ... BUT I THOUGHT ALL FAITH-BASED SEXISM WAS ISLAMIC!
Remember that religious high school in Kansas that refused to play a basketball game officiated by a female referee? You may have heard that the school simply didn't believe that females should have authority over males, but it turns out that was completely wrong.
Or maybe not completely wrong...
...Initial reports stated that the school, citing religious beliefs, did not allow women to have authority over men, and therefore could not permit a woman to referee boys. School officials aren't speaking publicly on the matter, but St. Mary’s headmaster Rev. Fr. Vincent A. Griego did release a statement.
"This alleged reason was neither stated nor is it held by any official of St. Mary’s Academy," Griego wrote. He went on to write that: "The Church has always promoted the ideal of forming and educating boys and girls separately during the adolescent years, especially in physical education.... In addition, our school aims to instill in our boys the proper respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we cannot place them in an aggressive athletic competition where they are forced to play inhibited by their concern about running into a female referee."
Oh. How thoughtful of the school to recognize that this woman, with her inferior woman-brain, can't possibly assess the risks to the womb-vessel that is her body, and thus requires a patriarchal church to do it for her.
More:
... St. Mary's Academy is affiliated with Society of St. Pius X, a Catholic traditionalist group formed in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
A Catholic University religious studies professor, William Dinges, tells us that "Archbishop Lefebvre was a French archbishop, very, very conservative." I'll say:
Archbishop Lefebvre often condemned the 1789 French Revolution, and what he called its "Masonic and anti-Catholic principles"....
Lefebvre spoke approvingly of the "Catholic order" of the wartime French Vichy regime (1940-1944), which collaborated with Nazi Germany.... In 1976, Lefebvre praised the regimes of Jorge Videla in Argentina and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and in 1985 he spoke approvingly of the governments of Francisco Franco of Spain and Antonio Salazar of Portugal, noting that their neutrality in World War II had spared their peoples, including their Jewish populations, the suffering of the War.
Also in 1985, the French periodical Present quoted Lefebvre as endorsing the controversial French politician Jean-Marie le Pen, leader of the Front National, on the grounds that he was the only leading French politician who was clearly opposed to abortion.
In 1990, Lefebvre was convicted in a French court and sentenced to pay a fine of 5,000 francs when he stated that, as a result of Muslim immigration into Europe, "it is your wives, your daughters, your children who will be kidnapped and dragged off to a certain kind of places as they exist in Casablanca".
By the way, in 1989, a World War II-era collaborationist who became the only Frenchman to be convicted of war crimes against humanity was captured after spending several months in a monastery run by followers of Lefebvre. A 1997 article currently posted on the Society's Web site, "The Mystery of the Jewish People in History," tells us that "Jews are known to kill Christians" and warns that "If Christians wish to remain free, let them avoid entanglements with the Jewish people." I guess sexism is the least of these folks' offenses.
****
Meanwhile, there's this in Israel:
In Jerusalem, more ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Harediim, are leaving their cloistered neighborhoods for cheaper housing in the suburbs. In one suburb, that has led to rising tensions and sporadic violence with their modern Orthodox and secular neighbors.
...Dr. Hahvah is a modern Orthodox woman who dresses modestly, keeps kosher and observes the Sabbath. One day driving home, she saw that someone had put up a sign in her neighborhood that read "Don't pass here unless you dress modestly."
"I find that offensive," she says. "I don't think that anybody should impose dress codes on the public."
When she tried to haul the sign down, some ultra-Orthodox pelted her and her car with rocks....
That rock attack was hardly an isolated incident. People driving on the Sabbath have been bombarded with rocks. Earlier this year in Beit Shemesh, a young Haredi woman was sitting next an Israeli soldier on a public bus when ultra-Orthodox men assaulted both of them and forced the woman off the bus. Men and women, they said, should be segregated. Later, an ultra-Orthodox man who stood up to the zealots within his own community was himself brutally beaten. He said it was like a pogrom....
The deputy mayor says some Harediim have felt estranged as rising costs and overcrowding have forced more and more of them out of their sheltered neighborhood, Mea Shariim, in the heart of Jerusalem, and into the suburbs.
"Culturally, it's a big change for them," he says. "This is the first time these group of peoples are moving out of Jerusalem, out of Mea Shariim. They're not used to seeing a woman in pants, they're not used to seeing a woman with uncovered hair, and they find it very hard to adjust."
Oh, boo hoo.
Sorry -- I'm from New York, and I like the way we do things here: You're free to follow your beliefs, but you have no reason to believe that the people around you are going to stop living their lives their way. Distracted? Deal with it.
Remember that religious high school in Kansas that refused to play a basketball game officiated by a female referee? You may have heard that the school simply didn't believe that females should have authority over males, but it turns out that was completely wrong.
Or maybe not completely wrong...
...Initial reports stated that the school, citing religious beliefs, did not allow women to have authority over men, and therefore could not permit a woman to referee boys. School officials aren't speaking publicly on the matter, but St. Mary’s headmaster Rev. Fr. Vincent A. Griego did release a statement.
"This alleged reason was neither stated nor is it held by any official of St. Mary’s Academy," Griego wrote. He went on to write that: "The Church has always promoted the ideal of forming and educating boys and girls separately during the adolescent years, especially in physical education.... In addition, our school aims to instill in our boys the proper respect for women and girls. Teaching our boys to treat ladies with deference, we cannot place them in an aggressive athletic competition where they are forced to play inhibited by their concern about running into a female referee."
Oh. How thoughtful of the school to recognize that this woman, with her inferior woman-brain, can't possibly assess the risks to the womb-vessel that is her body, and thus requires a patriarchal church to do it for her.
More:
... St. Mary's Academy is affiliated with Society of St. Pius X, a Catholic traditionalist group formed in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
A Catholic University religious studies professor, William Dinges, tells us that "Archbishop Lefebvre was a French archbishop, very, very conservative." I'll say:
Archbishop Lefebvre often condemned the 1789 French Revolution, and what he called its "Masonic and anti-Catholic principles"....
Lefebvre spoke approvingly of the "Catholic order" of the wartime French Vichy regime (1940-1944), which collaborated with Nazi Germany.... In 1976, Lefebvre praised the regimes of Jorge Videla in Argentina and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and in 1985 he spoke approvingly of the governments of Francisco Franco of Spain and Antonio Salazar of Portugal, noting that their neutrality in World War II had spared their peoples, including their Jewish populations, the suffering of the War.
Also in 1985, the French periodical Present quoted Lefebvre as endorsing the controversial French politician Jean-Marie le Pen, leader of the Front National, on the grounds that he was the only leading French politician who was clearly opposed to abortion.
In 1990, Lefebvre was convicted in a French court and sentenced to pay a fine of 5,000 francs when he stated that, as a result of Muslim immigration into Europe, "it is your wives, your daughters, your children who will be kidnapped and dragged off to a certain kind of places as they exist in Casablanca".
By the way, in 1989, a World War II-era collaborationist who became the only Frenchman to be convicted of war crimes against humanity was captured after spending several months in a monastery run by followers of Lefebvre. A 1997 article currently posted on the Society's Web site, "The Mystery of the Jewish People in History," tells us that "Jews are known to kill Christians" and warns that "If Christians wish to remain free, let them avoid entanglements with the Jewish people." I guess sexism is the least of these folks' offenses.
****
Meanwhile, there's this in Israel:
In Jerusalem, more ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Harediim, are leaving their cloistered neighborhoods for cheaper housing in the suburbs. In one suburb, that has led to rising tensions and sporadic violence with their modern Orthodox and secular neighbors.
...Dr. Hahvah is a modern Orthodox woman who dresses modestly, keeps kosher and observes the Sabbath. One day driving home, she saw that someone had put up a sign in her neighborhood that read "Don't pass here unless you dress modestly."
"I find that offensive," she says. "I don't think that anybody should impose dress codes on the public."
When she tried to haul the sign down, some ultra-Orthodox pelted her and her car with rocks....
That rock attack was hardly an isolated incident. People driving on the Sabbath have been bombarded with rocks. Earlier this year in Beit Shemesh, a young Haredi woman was sitting next an Israeli soldier on a public bus when ultra-Orthodox men assaulted both of them and forced the woman off the bus. Men and women, they said, should be segregated. Later, an ultra-Orthodox man who stood up to the zealots within his own community was himself brutally beaten. He said it was like a pogrom....
The deputy mayor says some Harediim have felt estranged as rising costs and overcrowding have forced more and more of them out of their sheltered neighborhood, Mea Shariim, in the heart of Jerusalem, and into the suburbs.
"Culturally, it's a big change for them," he says. "This is the first time these group of peoples are moving out of Jerusalem, out of Mea Shariim. They're not used to seeing a woman in pants, they're not used to seeing a woman with uncovered hair, and they find it very hard to adjust."
Oh, boo hoo.
Sorry -- I'm from New York, and I like the way we do things here: You're free to follow your beliefs, but you have no reason to believe that the people around you are going to stop living their lives their way. Distracted? Deal with it.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
YOUR CANDIDATE'S SUPPORTERS SUCK
Tina Brown in Newsweek:
What saddens boomer women who love Hillary is that their twentysomething daughters don't share their view of her heroic role. Instead they've been swept up by that new Barack magic. It's not their fault, and not Hillary's, either. The very scar tissue that older women see as proof of her determination just embarrasses their daughters, killing off for them all the insouciant elation that ought to come with girl power in the White House.
I really don't understand this line of reasoning. Brown is saying that the support of young women for Obama can't possibly be affirmative -- it can't possibly have anything to do with Obama himself. No, its foundation has to be a rejection of Hillary Clinton. And it has to be a rejection of Hillary as a woman, or, rather, as Woman. It can't be a response to her specific approach to politics or her past or present positions -- it can't be, to take the most obvious example, a response to her initial support of the war. It can't be a calculation about her electability. It has to be about feminism.
Yet Brown and others who talk this way don't believe the opposite -- they don't believe that the support of older women for Hillary Clinton is primarily a rejection of Barack Obama, as an individual or as an African-American.
Here's a radical thesis: Older female Clinton supporters and younger Obama supporters are actually voting for their preferred candidate. They're not voting against. In both cases, the enthusiasm is overwhelmingly affirmative, not negative. Is that so hard to imagine?
Tina Brown in Newsweek:
What saddens boomer women who love Hillary is that their twentysomething daughters don't share their view of her heroic role. Instead they've been swept up by that new Barack magic. It's not their fault, and not Hillary's, either. The very scar tissue that older women see as proof of her determination just embarrasses their daughters, killing off for them all the insouciant elation that ought to come with girl power in the White House.
I really don't understand this line of reasoning. Brown is saying that the support of young women for Obama can't possibly be affirmative -- it can't possibly have anything to do with Obama himself. No, its foundation has to be a rejection of Hillary Clinton. And it has to be a rejection of Hillary as a woman, or, rather, as Woman. It can't be a response to her specific approach to politics or her past or present positions -- it can't be, to take the most obvious example, a response to her initial support of the war. It can't be a calculation about her electability. It has to be about feminism.
Yet Brown and others who talk this way don't believe the opposite -- they don't believe that the support of older women for Hillary Clinton is primarily a rejection of Barack Obama, as an individual or as an African-American.
Here's a radical thesis: Older female Clinton supporters and younger Obama supporters are actually voting for their preferred candidate. They're not voting against. In both cases, the enthusiasm is overwhelmingly affirmative, not negative. Is that so hard to imagine?
SNL STILL MAKING IN-KIND CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN (AND THE McCAIN CAMPAIGN)
Via The Page, here's last night's opening sketch on Saturday Night Live, a mock Clinton ad in which she imagines a clueless President Obama needing wise counsel in a nuclear crisis, and turning to her.
Yes, the phone call in the ad is framed by Amy Poehler as Hillary acknowledging that it's an "unfair and deceptive message" made up of "specious talking points." And yes, the Hillary who takes the phone call is straight out of a 1960s sitcom, in face cream and hair curlers and an ugly nightgown.
But the heart of the ad (I'm guessing the frame was tacked on afterward, and might not have been written by the author of the recent newsmaking Hillary sketches, Ann Coulter pal Jim Downey) is a vision of a President Obama who's more clueless and lacking in basic facts than Bush, and is a whimpering emotional wreck -- and who (of course!) picked Al Sharpton as his secretary of state. Frank Zappa, who threw a lot of comedy into his music, used the expression "putting the eyebrows on it" to refer to the way you use emphasis to direct an audience's attention to a joke or other effect -- and what's clear in the phone call part of this sketch is that there are no "eyebrows" suggesting that this is Clinton's absurd fantasy. It's all right-wing bullet points -- not just Obama the unready (and hirer of Sharpton) but Obama the guy whose too willing to trust the Iranians, North Koreans, and Russians. The RNC should send a thank-you gift.
I'm sure some of you will disagree with this interpretation. If so, fire away. And no, I'm not angling for another Wonkette link in which I'm derided as a hypersensitive "Obamaniac."
Oh, and SNL? I know there was an entire two-sentence joke about him in the last night's "Weekend Update," but do you think someday you might get around to doing an entire sketch making fun of John McCain? You know, like sometime before November?
(Cross-posted at Too Sense.)
Via The Page, here's last night's opening sketch on Saturday Night Live, a mock Clinton ad in which she imagines a clueless President Obama needing wise counsel in a nuclear crisis, and turning to her.
Yes, the phone call in the ad is framed by Amy Poehler as Hillary acknowledging that it's an "unfair and deceptive message" made up of "specious talking points." And yes, the Hillary who takes the phone call is straight out of a 1960s sitcom, in face cream and hair curlers and an ugly nightgown.
But the heart of the ad (I'm guessing the frame was tacked on afterward, and might not have been written by the author of the recent newsmaking Hillary sketches, Ann Coulter pal Jim Downey) is a vision of a President Obama who's more clueless and lacking in basic facts than Bush, and is a whimpering emotional wreck -- and who (of course!) picked Al Sharpton as his secretary of state. Frank Zappa, who threw a lot of comedy into his music, used the expression "putting the eyebrows on it" to refer to the way you use emphasis to direct an audience's attention to a joke or other effect -- and what's clear in the phone call part of this sketch is that there are no "eyebrows" suggesting that this is Clinton's absurd fantasy. It's all right-wing bullet points -- not just Obama the unready (and hirer of Sharpton) but Obama the guy whose too willing to trust the Iranians, North Koreans, and Russians. The RNC should send a thank-you gift.
I'm sure some of you will disagree with this interpretation. If so, fire away. And no, I'm not angling for another Wonkette link in which I'm derided as a hypersensitive "Obamaniac."
Oh, and SNL? I know there was an entire two-sentence joke about him in the last night's "Weekend Update," but do you think someday you might get around to doing an entire sketch making fun of John McCain? You know, like sometime before November?
(Cross-posted at Too Sense.)
Saturday, March 08, 2008
WHAT? YOU DON'T SEE THE RESEMBLANCE?
John McCain's campaign has a new ad out.
Ann Althouse loves it and had this to say about one image:
We see some evocative children in the end ... we see a little black girl pausing over some purple wildflowers.... Is she there to suggest that Michelle Obama -- like her husband -- is a mere child?
Let's see: Michelle Obama is a lawyer in her forties, is the mother of two, and is five foot eleven.
The girl in the Obama ad is so young she can barely see over the tops of the wildflowers.
According to Althouse, an exact match!
****
By the way, the main point of the ad is to make you think that John McCain is the second coming of Teddy Roosevelt and (especially) Winston Churchill.
Remind me again: Which candidate in this race is regularly criticized for having an overinflated sense of his own historical importance?
*****
And, of course, Bush likes to link himself to Churchill and TR, too, just like John McSame.
*****
(Cross-posted at Too Sense.)
John McCain's campaign has a new ad out.
Ann Althouse loves it and had this to say about one image:
We see some evocative children in the end ... we see a little black girl pausing over some purple wildflowers.... Is she there to suggest that Michelle Obama -- like her husband -- is a mere child?
Let's see: Michelle Obama is a lawyer in her forties, is the mother of two, and is five foot eleven.
The girl in the Obama ad is so young she can barely see over the tops of the wildflowers.
According to Althouse, an exact match!
****
By the way, the main point of the ad is to make you think that John McCain is the second coming of Teddy Roosevelt and (especially) Winston Churchill.
Remind me again: Which candidate in this race is regularly criticized for having an overinflated sense of his own historical importance?
*****
And, of course, Bush likes to link himself to Churchill and TR, too, just like John McSame.
*****
(Cross-posted at Too Sense.)
Friday, March 07, 2008
THIS IS OUT OF CONTROL
Samantha Power resigns and the Clinton campaign is still on the attack? Is there no limit?
Retired NATO commander Wes Clark and former State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin attacked Samantha Power on a Clinton conference call just now, a fairly poignant moment because Power, in the past, has been their vocal ally.
Clark is a hero of Power's first book, A Problem from Hell, and she and Rubin both backed Clark for president in 2004.
Clark today called her words "disturbing" and suggested that Obama's stance boils down to "simply show[ing] up and say[ing], 'What's this all about?'" That approach would, he said, "leave us still at war."
Rubin blamed Obama for the mess, in particular for giving a senior foreign policy adviser -- he described her variously as a "guru" and a "svengali" with "unlimited access to the candidate -- free rein to tour the world talking about his policies in a field where words matter.
"He can't seem to run a foreign policy team the way it's supposed to run," he said, calling it "amateur hour on making foreign policy."
Spencer Ackerman says:
I'm guessing Clark is referring to some Power comments about potentially listening to the military about the pace of withdrawal. Wow, candor! Well, according to [Clinton advisor] Jack Keane, Hillary Clinton would not get the U.S. out of Iraq at all.
*****
At this point, I'm not sure Jonathan Chait is right when he says this:
Clinton's justification for this strategy is that she needs to toughen up Obama for the general election....
[But] her attacks on Obama are not a fair proxy for what he'd endure in the general election.... in recent weeks the nightly newscasts have consisted of Clinton attacking Obama, McCain attacking Obama, and then Obama trying to defend himself and still get out his own message. If Obama's the nominee, he won't have a high-profile Democrat validating McCain's message every day.
Except she seems so hell-bent on crushing him at this point that I'm not sure about that anymore. At times I half-think that if Obama hangs on and wins the nomination, she's going to campaign for McCain. At the very least, I really fear she's going to find subtle ways to signal to the public that she thinks McCain would be a better president.
Samantha Power resigns and the Clinton campaign is still on the attack? Is there no limit?
Retired NATO commander Wes Clark and former State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin attacked Samantha Power on a Clinton conference call just now, a fairly poignant moment because Power, in the past, has been their vocal ally.
Clark is a hero of Power's first book, A Problem from Hell, and she and Rubin both backed Clark for president in 2004.
Clark today called her words "disturbing" and suggested that Obama's stance boils down to "simply show[ing] up and say[ing], 'What's this all about?'" That approach would, he said, "leave us still at war."
Rubin blamed Obama for the mess, in particular for giving a senior foreign policy adviser -- he described her variously as a "guru" and a "svengali" with "unlimited access to the candidate -- free rein to tour the world talking about his policies in a field where words matter.
"He can't seem to run a foreign policy team the way it's supposed to run," he said, calling it "amateur hour on making foreign policy."
Spencer Ackerman says:
I'm guessing Clark is referring to some Power comments about potentially listening to the military about the pace of withdrawal. Wow, candor! Well, according to [Clinton advisor] Jack Keane, Hillary Clinton would not get the U.S. out of Iraq at all.
*****
At this point, I'm not sure Jonathan Chait is right when he says this:
Clinton's justification for this strategy is that she needs to toughen up Obama for the general election....
[But] her attacks on Obama are not a fair proxy for what he'd endure in the general election.... in recent weeks the nightly newscasts have consisted of Clinton attacking Obama, McCain attacking Obama, and then Obama trying to defend himself and still get out his own message. If Obama's the nominee, he won't have a high-profile Democrat validating McCain's message every day.
Except she seems so hell-bent on crushing him at this point that I'm not sure about that anymore. At times I half-think that if Obama hangs on and wins the nomination, she's going to campaign for McCain. At the very least, I really fear she's going to find subtle ways to signal to the public that she thinks McCain would be a better president.
A REQUEST FOR SENATOR CLINTON
Dear Senator Clinton,
I'm reading about Samantha Power, the Obama adviser who made the mistake of calling you "a monster" and has now been forced to resign under pressure from your camp. And I see that John McCain's legendary temper has just shown up on videotape -- he lit into a New York Times reporter who asked him a perfectly reasonable question about his discussions with John Kerry regarding a possible bipartisan ticket in 2004 (story here; video here).
So here's what I want to ask: Given the fact that we may be living out the political equivalent of 1978 baseball season, with the Obama campaign as the Red Sox and your campaign as the Yankees, will you at least promise to do some of this to John McCain? Will you promise to rattle a few people in the McCain campaign -- especially the candidate -- the way you're rattling the Obama people, to hector them as relentlessly as you're hectoring Senator Obama until they make dumb mistakes?
Or are you going to live up to your husband's prediction that if you two are the nominees, it will be "the most civilized election in American history" because the two you "like and respect each other" so much?
In other words, if we're going to pick you because you know how to fight, are you going to save a little fight for your real opponent?
Oh, and you could start now.
Dear Senator Clinton,
I'm reading about Samantha Power, the Obama adviser who made the mistake of calling you "a monster" and has now been forced to resign under pressure from your camp. And I see that John McCain's legendary temper has just shown up on videotape -- he lit into a New York Times reporter who asked him a perfectly reasonable question about his discussions with John Kerry regarding a possible bipartisan ticket in 2004 (story here; video here).
So here's what I want to ask: Given the fact that we may be living out the political equivalent of 1978 baseball season, with the Obama campaign as the Red Sox and your campaign as the Yankees, will you at least promise to do some of this to John McCain? Will you promise to rattle a few people in the McCain campaign -- especially the candidate -- the way you're rattling the Obama people, to hector them as relentlessly as you're hectoring Senator Obama until they make dumb mistakes?
Or are you going to live up to your husband's prediction that if you two are the nominees, it will be "the most civilized election in American history" because the two you "like and respect each other" so much?
In other words, if we're going to pick you because you know how to fight, are you going to save a little fight for your real opponent?
Oh, and you could start now.
ANARCHISTS DON'T LIKE DEMOCRATS
The authorities investigating yesterday's Times Square bombing think there are similarities to past bombings at the British and Mexican consulates. When I first read that, I found it puzzling -- sure, it's not surprising that antiwar or anti-military types would be angry at England, especially during the Blair years, but why Mexico? Then today I read this in The New York Times:
At some point before the explosion on Thursday, anarchist writings and photographs of various spots around New York City -- including the military recruiting station and police station in Times Square -- were discovered in one of several bags recovered by the authorities, an official said.
And this in an accompanying Times story (emphasis mine):
... Three bombings with similar devices at three high-profile locations in Manhattan, each occurring at nearly the same time of day, in the predawn hours; each inflicting little damage; none injuring people.
And in each case, someone -- most likely a man -- seen pedaling away on a bicycle with a hooded jacket or sweatshirt hiding his face....
The one outside the Mexican Consulate, at 27 East 39th Street near Madison Avenue, came on the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of Bradley Roland Will, 36, a journalist from New York who often traveled to Latin America to chronicle little-known disputes....
And, in fact, if you go to Anarchistnews.org, you can find this from the time of that 2007 bombing:
Mexican consulate attacked in NYC
Early this morning explosives rocked the Mexican Consulate shattering windows and waking neighbors, nearly one year to the day since gunmen sympathetic to the Mexican ruling party assassinated anarchist activist and American independent journalist Brad Will. The murder of Brad Will sparked weeks of protest in his home of New York City. Demonstrators occasionally got unruly and left the Mexican Consulate on East 39th Street damaged.
NYPD detectives have reviewed surveillance cameras from the area and believe that a lone man in his 20s hurled two small home made grenade-like explosive devices at the consulate building around 3:30 am this morning and left the scene on a bicycle. The attack has been compared to a 2005 attack at the British Consulate....
Anarchistnews.org commemorates Will's death here.
So, yeah, the pieces do seem to fit. And Michelle Malkin is already self-righteously braying about praise for the bombings from a couple of anarchist posters on Indymedia. Very soon, if the bomber really is an anarchist, the right is going to try to hang this around our necks.
But what do anarchists actually think of Democrats? Let's go to this Anarchistnews.org discussion of Barack Obama:
...he's a brain-dead tool who does nothing but mouth convenient slogans that mean nothing.
Time for a change? What change you worthless fuck-wit? Name one agenda that Obama has thought about enough to formulate an actual action plan around, and then riddle me this Batman- how is he going to fund it? Redistribution of the wealth from the "rich"? Wrong fuck-wit, the very legislators that you need to implement that ARE the rich, and they are not going to give it up to a bunch of mealy mouthed whiny fucks like you.
It's all hollow worthless shit filled promises that they cannot possibly follow through on...
Another poster sees him as dangerous to the cause (and isn't particularly nice to Hillary Clinton, either):
he is probably the most likely to dampen the efforts of the extra-congressional left because he is about as charismatic as they come. it's way easier to demonize the corporate state when a corporate robot like clinton is the face of it.
Some posters just assume he'll be assassinated. Some criticize his positions on immigration, workers' rights, possibile miltary action in Pakistan, and other issues. Some are mildly hopeful, but come down against him nevertheless:
i personally choose not to vote.if the process changed anything,it would have by now.
plus,there are alot of lies told by candidates to get in office,then abandoned once elected.(remember bush?)
but if he does get in office,it would be a slap in the face to the system up until now.
but,it also is pretty sad how the white man have managed to convert other races to their sick,authoritarian ways.
but if it must be this way,all the more power to him.
maybe he will make a bettter life for the opressed.
not to say i support him,ill still never like a president.
fuck.
These are people who have no desire to engage the system and who really believe the system can be brought crashing down. They are not Democrats. They are not liberals. I don't care how many times right-wingers whine that they are.
The authorities investigating yesterday's Times Square bombing think there are similarities to past bombings at the British and Mexican consulates. When I first read that, I found it puzzling -- sure, it's not surprising that antiwar or anti-military types would be angry at England, especially during the Blair years, but why Mexico? Then today I read this in The New York Times:
At some point before the explosion on Thursday, anarchist writings and photographs of various spots around New York City -- including the military recruiting station and police station in Times Square -- were discovered in one of several bags recovered by the authorities, an official said.
And this in an accompanying Times story (emphasis mine):
... Three bombings with similar devices at three high-profile locations in Manhattan, each occurring at nearly the same time of day, in the predawn hours; each inflicting little damage; none injuring people.
And in each case, someone -- most likely a man -- seen pedaling away on a bicycle with a hooded jacket or sweatshirt hiding his face....
The one outside the Mexican Consulate, at 27 East 39th Street near Madison Avenue, came on the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of Bradley Roland Will, 36, a journalist from New York who often traveled to Latin America to chronicle little-known disputes....
And, in fact, if you go to Anarchistnews.org, you can find this from the time of that 2007 bombing:
Mexican consulate attacked in NYC
Early this morning explosives rocked the Mexican Consulate shattering windows and waking neighbors, nearly one year to the day since gunmen sympathetic to the Mexican ruling party assassinated anarchist activist and American independent journalist Brad Will. The murder of Brad Will sparked weeks of protest in his home of New York City. Demonstrators occasionally got unruly and left the Mexican Consulate on East 39th Street damaged.
NYPD detectives have reviewed surveillance cameras from the area and believe that a lone man in his 20s hurled two small home made grenade-like explosive devices at the consulate building around 3:30 am this morning and left the scene on a bicycle. The attack has been compared to a 2005 attack at the British Consulate....
Anarchistnews.org commemorates Will's death here.
So, yeah, the pieces do seem to fit. And Michelle Malkin is already self-righteously braying about praise for the bombings from a couple of anarchist posters on Indymedia. Very soon, if the bomber really is an anarchist, the right is going to try to hang this around our necks.
But what do anarchists actually think of Democrats? Let's go to this Anarchistnews.org discussion of Barack Obama:
...he's a brain-dead tool who does nothing but mouth convenient slogans that mean nothing.
Time for a change? What change you worthless fuck-wit? Name one agenda that Obama has thought about enough to formulate an actual action plan around, and then riddle me this Batman- how is he going to fund it? Redistribution of the wealth from the "rich"? Wrong fuck-wit, the very legislators that you need to implement that ARE the rich, and they are not going to give it up to a bunch of mealy mouthed whiny fucks like you.
It's all hollow worthless shit filled promises that they cannot possibly follow through on...
Another poster sees him as dangerous to the cause (and isn't particularly nice to Hillary Clinton, either):
he is probably the most likely to dampen the efforts of the extra-congressional left because he is about as charismatic as they come. it's way easier to demonize the corporate state when a corporate robot like clinton is the face of it.
Some posters just assume he'll be assassinated. Some criticize his positions on immigration, workers' rights, possibile miltary action in Pakistan, and other issues. Some are mildly hopeful, but come down against him nevertheless:
i personally choose not to vote.if the process changed anything,it would have by now.
plus,there are alot of lies told by candidates to get in office,then abandoned once elected.(remember bush?)
but if he does get in office,it would be a slap in the face to the system up until now.
but,it also is pretty sad how the white man have managed to convert other races to their sick,authoritarian ways.
but if it must be this way,all the more power to him.
maybe he will make a bettter life for the opressed.
not to say i support him,ill still never like a president.
fuck.
These are people who have no desire to engage the system and who really believe the system can be brought crashing down. They are not Democrats. They are not liberals. I don't care how many times right-wingers whine that they are.
HEY, YOU CRAZY KIDS
I'm just a middle-aged guy using an obsolete operating system, but I really liked that parody of the "Yes, We Can" video featuring John McCain was hilarious (and that other John McCain "Yes, We Can" video, too). So I'm surprised that I haven't seen a video yet that puts acoustic guitars behind Hillary Clinton's GOP-friendly line about how she and John McCain have a lifetime of experience that they'd bring to the White House. Anybody working on one out there?
I'm just a middle-aged guy using an obsolete operating system, but I really liked that parody of the "Yes, We Can" video featuring John McCain was hilarious (and that other John McCain "Yes, We Can" video, too). So I'm surprised that I haven't seen a video yet that puts acoustic guitars behind Hillary Clinton's GOP-friendly line about how she and John McCain have a lifetime of experience that they'd bring to the White House. Anybody working on one out there?
Thursday, March 06, 2008
FAREWELL TO THE DEMOCRATIC ERA
This week's New York Times story about Jim Downey, the Saturday Night Live writer responsible for the recent run of Hillary Clinton sketches, included a line that seemed like a mistake:
"Our job is, whoever is in power, we're opposed," said Lorne Michaels, the show's longtime executive producer.
Hunh? Did Bush resign and we missed it? No, but my sense is that Michaels is revealing something about his world's groupthink -- I get the feeling that, in his world, in a way it's as if Democrats have been in power for a while now: Bush is a laughingstock, a Democratic victory in November '08 seems inevitable, and the Democratic candidates seem like glamorous rock stars, while the Republicans seem pathetic. At SNL, it probably seemed as if Obama was practically president already.
Some people are saying now that it's fine to have an extended Democratic nomination fight, because it keeps the Democrats front and center and keeps John McCain out of the limelight. I think McCain actually benefits from not being in the limelight -- he's not being scrutinized, he's not being criticized, he's just there, in the background. And he'll be there -- plain old reliable Daddy -- when all the clever people who can't stop talking about (and mocking) the Democrats exclusively (hello, Maureen Dowd) get tired of beating up Clinton and Obama.
This week's New York Times story about Jim Downey, the Saturday Night Live writer responsible for the recent run of Hillary Clinton sketches, included a line that seemed like a mistake:
"Our job is, whoever is in power, we're opposed," said Lorne Michaels, the show's longtime executive producer.
Hunh? Did Bush resign and we missed it? No, but my sense is that Michaels is revealing something about his world's groupthink -- I get the feeling that, in his world, in a way it's as if Democrats have been in power for a while now: Bush is a laughingstock, a Democratic victory in November '08 seems inevitable, and the Democratic candidates seem like glamorous rock stars, while the Republicans seem pathetic. At SNL, it probably seemed as if Obama was practically president already.
Some people are saying now that it's fine to have an extended Democratic nomination fight, because it keeps the Democrats front and center and keeps John McCain out of the limelight. I think McCain actually benefits from not being in the limelight -- he's not being scrutinized, he's not being criticized, he's just there, in the background. And he'll be there -- plain old reliable Daddy -- when all the clever people who can't stop talking about (and mocking) the Democrats exclusively (hello, Maureen Dowd) get tired of beating up Clinton and Obama.
THE RIGHT CRAVES A BLOODBATH. SORRY, GUYS, YOU AIN'T GONNA GET ONE.
This morning I told you that on ABC news last night Jake Tapper linked the possibility of a brokered Democratic convention to the possibility of riots in the streets -- all because 1968 had both violent unrest and a difficult nominating process, as if the two were linked. Now I see that the lunatic right has seized on this scenario -- and clearly hopes it comes to pass.
Here's Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb:
I wrote a little while ago about the plan of some protest groups to 'Recreate 68' at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this year. If there's a close delegate count and the convention is contested -- which is still unlikely, but possible -- that stands to raise the tension level for Democrats. If the anti-war base is dissatisfied with Congress' failure to bring the troops home -- a virtual certainty -- that could raise it as well. The pressure is on the DNC to ensure that despite the potential trouble, the nominating party goes smoothly.
Since writing previously, I've learned that the folks trying to screw up the liberalpalooza have their own website: Recreate 68.org. The site is set up to facilitate communications between protesters, and help them with planning....
Oh, my God! They have a Web site! The technologically advanced liberal-terrorist fiends!
Oh, give me a break. Goldfarb quotes a defense of property damage on the group's site (found in this PDF) and looks forward to mayhem, but come on -- some callow idiots always want to do that kind of thing, at every major-party election-year convention, and every large political gathering of any kind. That was true four years ago and eight years ago and twenty years ago, and it has nothing to do with the political party running the convention or the state of the nomination fight. It's utterly predictable and utterly boilerplate, and unless Denver completely falls down on the job, these people aren't going to get to do any real harm and things are going to go just fine.
Goldfarb adds:
The organizer of Recreate 68 ... is already sparring with the City of Denver over the permitting process for protests. It seems like there's real potential for this to get ugly.
Going to Goldfarb's link, we learn that the organizer in question is one Glenn Spagnuolo. So how "ugly" might this get? Well, a bit of Googling reveals that Spagnuolo was one of a group of protesters who held up Denver's Columbus Day parade last October. How ugly did that get? Well:
Police arrested 83 Columbus Day Parade protesters ... after fake blood and dismembered baby dolls were poured on the parade route Saturday....
The parade through downtown was delayed about an hour....
Plastic baby-doll IEDs and an hour's delay in the parade! Oh, the humanity! Except for the complete absence of violence or any significant impact on the social order, it's almost exactly like Chicago '68!
Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Goldfarb (and Ed Driscoll and Instapundit, who quote Goldfarb, approvingly and with hope in their hearts), but the bloodbath you so desperately crave isn't going to happen -- even if there's a brokered convention.
This morning I told you that on ABC news last night Jake Tapper linked the possibility of a brokered Democratic convention to the possibility of riots in the streets -- all because 1968 had both violent unrest and a difficult nominating process, as if the two were linked. Now I see that the lunatic right has seized on this scenario -- and clearly hopes it comes to pass.
Here's Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb:
I wrote a little while ago about the plan of some protest groups to 'Recreate 68' at the Democratic National Convention in Denver this year. If there's a close delegate count and the convention is contested -- which is still unlikely, but possible -- that stands to raise the tension level for Democrats. If the anti-war base is dissatisfied with Congress' failure to bring the troops home -- a virtual certainty -- that could raise it as well. The pressure is on the DNC to ensure that despite the potential trouble, the nominating party goes smoothly.
Since writing previously, I've learned that the folks trying to screw up the liberalpalooza have their own website: Recreate 68.org. The site is set up to facilitate communications between protesters, and help them with planning....
Oh, my God! They have a Web site! The technologically advanced liberal-terrorist fiends!
Oh, give me a break. Goldfarb quotes a defense of property damage on the group's site (found in this PDF) and looks forward to mayhem, but come on -- some callow idiots always want to do that kind of thing, at every major-party election-year convention, and every large political gathering of any kind. That was true four years ago and eight years ago and twenty years ago, and it has nothing to do with the political party running the convention or the state of the nomination fight. It's utterly predictable and utterly boilerplate, and unless Denver completely falls down on the job, these people aren't going to get to do any real harm and things are going to go just fine.
Goldfarb adds:
The organizer of Recreate 68 ... is already sparring with the City of Denver over the permitting process for protests. It seems like there's real potential for this to get ugly.
Going to Goldfarb's link, we learn that the organizer in question is one Glenn Spagnuolo. So how "ugly" might this get? Well, a bit of Googling reveals that Spagnuolo was one of a group of protesters who held up Denver's Columbus Day parade last October. How ugly did that get? Well:
Police arrested 83 Columbus Day Parade protesters ... after fake blood and dismembered baby dolls were poured on the parade route Saturday....
The parade through downtown was delayed about an hour....
Plastic baby-doll IEDs and an hour's delay in the parade! Oh, the humanity! Except for the complete absence of violence or any significant impact on the social order, it's almost exactly like Chicago '68!
Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Goldfarb (and Ed Driscoll and Instapundit, who quote Goldfarb, approvingly and with hope in their hearts), but the bloodbath you so desperately crave isn't going to happen -- even if there's a brokered convention.
HOW STUPID IS JOHN HINDERAKER?
The headline chosen by Power Line's Hindrocket in response to the bombing at the Times Square recruiting center overnight is just idiotic:
Islamic Extremists or Code Pinkers?
As is this:
Given the increasing virulence of attacks on the military and on military recruiting facilities by antiwar groups like Code Pink, most notably the repeated confrontations in Berkeley, one could speculate that a liberal group is the most likely culprit.
First of all, when the hell have you known Islamicist extremists to time a bombing in order to minimize casualties? Hello? 9/11? 3/11? 7/7? Every jihadist suicide bombing ever? This thing happened at 3:43 A.M., according to The New York Times. You're a jihadist and you're going to waste a Times Square bomb on the few hours of the day when Times Square isn't packed with people? Really?
And why is the most likely culprit a "liberal group" -- as opposed to a group with an agenda utterly unrelated to the American left-right divide, or your garden-variety American lone nutjob? (An update at the Times link above says, "The authorities are looking into a possible connection to two earlier bombings at foreign consulates in Manhattan, in 2005 and 2007"; AP adds that these were the Mexican consulate and the British consulate. Go ahead, give yourself a headache trying to figure out why a "liberal group" woud do those things.)
And if Hindrocket is seeing "increasing virulence of attacks on the military and on military recruiting facilities," he hasn't been to Gotham much -- we're seeing next to nothing of that kind around these parts.
And I'd be delighted to see a list of Code Pink's terrorist bombings -- yelling in a really loud voice doesn't count. Besides, on the off chance that Code Pink did turn terrorist, I think Hillary Clinton's headquarters would be an equally likely target.
****
By the way, I'm not going to go near the theory that Karl Rove is behind this, which has been raised by a Kos commenter and is already the subject of right-wing scorn. Not plausible -- Rove's style is much more along the lines of breathless announcements of massive plots that were thwarted just in the nick of time by the codpieced manliness of the Republican Party.
The headline chosen by Power Line's Hindrocket in response to the bombing at the Times Square recruiting center overnight is just idiotic:
Islamic Extremists or Code Pinkers?
As is this:
Given the increasing virulence of attacks on the military and on military recruiting facilities by antiwar groups like Code Pink, most notably the repeated confrontations in Berkeley, one could speculate that a liberal group is the most likely culprit.
First of all, when the hell have you known Islamicist extremists to time a bombing in order to minimize casualties? Hello? 9/11? 3/11? 7/7? Every jihadist suicide bombing ever? This thing happened at 3:43 A.M., according to The New York Times. You're a jihadist and you're going to waste a Times Square bomb on the few hours of the day when Times Square isn't packed with people? Really?
And why is the most likely culprit a "liberal group" -- as opposed to a group with an agenda utterly unrelated to the American left-right divide, or your garden-variety American lone nutjob? (An update at the Times link above says, "The authorities are looking into a possible connection to two earlier bombings at foreign consulates in Manhattan, in 2005 and 2007"; AP adds that these were the Mexican consulate and the British consulate. Go ahead, give yourself a headache trying to figure out why a "liberal group" woud do those things.)
And if Hindrocket is seeing "increasing virulence of attacks on the military and on military recruiting facilities," he hasn't been to Gotham much -- we're seeing next to nothing of that kind around these parts.
And I'd be delighted to see a list of Code Pink's terrorist bombings -- yelling in a really loud voice doesn't count. Besides, on the off chance that Code Pink did turn terrorist, I think Hillary Clinton's headquarters would be an equally likely target.
****
By the way, I'm not going to go near the theory that Karl Rove is behind this, which has been raised by a Kos commenter and is already the subject of right-wing scorn. Not plausible -- Rove's style is much more along the lines of breathless announcements of massive plots that were thwarted just in the nick of time by the codpieced manliness of the Republican Party.
THOSE RIOT-PRONE DEMOCRATS
Last night on ABC news, Jake Tapper linked the chance of a brokered Democratic convention this year to riots in the streets.
Watch Tapper's report here. Talking about the possibility that superdelegates will decide the nominee, he says this:
... But if party insiders choose the candidate with fewer elected delegates, that could cause an uproar, bringing back memories of the turbulent 1968 Chicago convention, which party chairman Howard Dean wants to avoid at all costs....
Here's a screen shot of the film clip that plays as Tapper says this:
Yeah, right, Jake -- that's what all the violence in the Chicago streets in 1968 was about: credentials-committee delegate-selection decisions.
Last night on ABC news, Jake Tapper linked the chance of a brokered Democratic convention this year to riots in the streets.
Watch Tapper's report here. Talking about the possibility that superdelegates will decide the nominee, he says this:
... But if party insiders choose the candidate with fewer elected delegates, that could cause an uproar, bringing back memories of the turbulent 1968 Chicago convention, which party chairman Howard Dean wants to avoid at all costs....
Here's a screen shot of the film clip that plays as Tapper says this:
Yeah, right, Jake -- that's what all the violence in the Chicago streets in 1968 was about: credentials-committee delegate-selection decisions.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER
I've seen the new New York Times bestseller list and Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism is no longer #1.
It's been replaced in the top spot by ... Valerie Bertinelli's weight loss memoir.
I'd say the intellectual sophistication at the top of the list has increased significantly.
I've seen the new New York Times bestseller list and Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism is no longer #1.
It's been replaced in the top spot by ... Valerie Bertinelli's weight loss memoir.
I'd say the intellectual sophistication at the top of the list has increased significantly.
BUSH: ME! ME! IT'S ALL ABOUT ME!
Salon's Alex Koppelman reminds us that Bush is still a narcissistic little brat:
Bush, reluctant to give up the spotlight, endorses McCain
In a press conference in the White House Rose Garden Wednesday, President George W. Bush was supposed to pass the baton, after a fashion, to presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain. But instead Bush looked very much like a man not quite ready to give up that baton and its attendant spotlight; on more than one occasion, he interrupted McCain, who could only stand and look awkward.
...Things broke down a bit when it came time for questions from the press, as an animated Bush barely let McCain get a word in edgewise.
That was especially true for the last question of the press conference, when one reporter asked Bush where his campaigning on McCain's behalf might be most helpful to the Republican nominee. Bush made a few brief remarks, and McCain tried to answer the question, but Bush interrupted and went off on a rant, gesticulating enthusiastically as McCain stood off to the side.... McCain broke in, saying, "Could I say, one state springs to mind? Texas," and then Bush jumped right back in. At the end of a couple of more responses, as McCain appeared to be pausing, Bush abruptly brought the press conference to an end....
You can see that on video here. Bill Clinton was once chided by an AP reporter for using the word "I" 94 times in a 10-minute speech on behalf of his wife, but in this video the utterly manic Bush uses the word "I" seven times in the first 18 seconds. Do the math -- that's more than double Bill Clinton's "I" pace.
Bush really, really doesn't like ceding the spotlight -- his lawyers stole it for him fair and square after the 2000 election and it's his now, dammit. Although the circumstances are different, I'm reminded of this moment in 2003, when Bush was asked about another high-profile member of his own party:
...[Bush] is also not accustomed to taking second billing, as was evident on Wednesday, when a reporter made the mistake of referring to the California [gubernatorial] race as ''the biggest political story in the country'' during an otherwise sleepy mini news conference focused on the economy.
''It is the biggest political story in the country?'' the president retorted, irritated. ''That's interesting. That says a lot. That speaks volumes.''
''You don't agree?'' the reporter said.
''I don't get to decide the biggest political story,'' Mr. Bush said, grumpily. ''You decide the biggest political story. But I find it interesting that that is the biggest political story in the country, as you just said.''
Another reporter jumped in, ''You don't think it should be?''
The president replied: ''Oh, I think there's maybe other political stories. Isn't there, like, a presidential race coming up?'' ...
This was in August 2003. The presidential election was nearly fifteen months away. But even the temporary celebrity of Arnold was too much for W.
(Salon link via the Carpetbagger Report.)
Salon's Alex Koppelman reminds us that Bush is still a narcissistic little brat:
Bush, reluctant to give up the spotlight, endorses McCain
In a press conference in the White House Rose Garden Wednesday, President George W. Bush was supposed to pass the baton, after a fashion, to presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain. But instead Bush looked very much like a man not quite ready to give up that baton and its attendant spotlight; on more than one occasion, he interrupted McCain, who could only stand and look awkward.
...Things broke down a bit when it came time for questions from the press, as an animated Bush barely let McCain get a word in edgewise.
That was especially true for the last question of the press conference, when one reporter asked Bush where his campaigning on McCain's behalf might be most helpful to the Republican nominee. Bush made a few brief remarks, and McCain tried to answer the question, but Bush interrupted and went off on a rant, gesticulating enthusiastically as McCain stood off to the side.... McCain broke in, saying, "Could I say, one state springs to mind? Texas," and then Bush jumped right back in. At the end of a couple of more responses, as McCain appeared to be pausing, Bush abruptly brought the press conference to an end....
You can see that on video here. Bill Clinton was once chided by an AP reporter for using the word "I" 94 times in a 10-minute speech on behalf of his wife, but in this video the utterly manic Bush uses the word "I" seven times in the first 18 seconds. Do the math -- that's more than double Bill Clinton's "I" pace.
Bush really, really doesn't like ceding the spotlight -- his lawyers stole it for him fair and square after the 2000 election and it's his now, dammit. Although the circumstances are different, I'm reminded of this moment in 2003, when Bush was asked about another high-profile member of his own party:
...[Bush] is also not accustomed to taking second billing, as was evident on Wednesday, when a reporter made the mistake of referring to the California [gubernatorial] race as ''the biggest political story in the country'' during an otherwise sleepy mini news conference focused on the economy.
''It is the biggest political story in the country?'' the president retorted, irritated. ''That's interesting. That says a lot. That speaks volumes.''
''You don't agree?'' the reporter said.
''I don't get to decide the biggest political story,'' Mr. Bush said, grumpily. ''You decide the biggest political story. But I find it interesting that that is the biggest political story in the country, as you just said.''
Another reporter jumped in, ''You don't think it should be?''
The president replied: ''Oh, I think there's maybe other political stories. Isn't there, like, a presidential race coming up?'' ...
This was in August 2003. The presidential election was nearly fifteen months away. But even the temporary celebrity of Arnold was too much for W.
(Salon link via the Carpetbagger Report.)
BY OTHER MEANS
In his latest right-wing bloviation, World Net Daily's Joseph Farah refers to the junior senator from Illinois four times as "Barack H. Obama."
If you listen to Barack H. Obama, you might get the impression Arab-American families are getting knocks on door in the middle of the night after which they are spirited away to concentration camps never to be seen again.
..."If there is an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties," he said.
...Does Barack H. Obama believe Arab-American families are being rounded up? Does he believe any have been rounded up? Does he believe it will happen?
...Let me tell you, as an Arab-American, I believe my chances for being part of any mass roundup will be greatly increased through a Barack H. Obama presidency.
...I'm sure America's enemies are putting Barack H. Obama's campaign rhetoric to use in their propaganda at this very moment.
I'm ignoring Farah's actual argument, which is just the usual WND boob bait. (Farah says that he is more likely to be rounded up by the government in an Obama presidency, "because of my open allegiance to constitutional government" -- I guess in the same way that all those right-wingers were rounded up and put in camps in the Clinton and Carter presidencies.) The "H." is what I'm noticing. This is a two-note dog whistle -- it says "Hussein" to right-wingers and it says "The liberal fascists won't let us say 'Hussein.'"
I'm sure it will be widely imitated.
Which makes me think that declaring the name off limits just isn't going to work -- Obama's going to have to find a way to get the public used to it.
****
(Cross-posted at Too Sense.)
In his latest right-wing bloviation, World Net Daily's Joseph Farah refers to the junior senator from Illinois four times as "Barack H. Obama."
If you listen to Barack H. Obama, you might get the impression Arab-American families are getting knocks on door in the middle of the night after which they are spirited away to concentration camps never to be seen again.
..."If there is an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties," he said.
...Does Barack H. Obama believe Arab-American families are being rounded up? Does he believe any have been rounded up? Does he believe it will happen?
...Let me tell you, as an Arab-American, I believe my chances for being part of any mass roundup will be greatly increased through a Barack H. Obama presidency.
...I'm sure America's enemies are putting Barack H. Obama's campaign rhetoric to use in their propaganda at this very moment.
I'm ignoring Farah's actual argument, which is just the usual WND boob bait. (Farah says that he is more likely to be rounded up by the government in an Obama presidency, "because of my open allegiance to constitutional government" -- I guess in the same way that all those right-wingers were rounded up and put in camps in the Clinton and Carter presidencies.) The "H." is what I'm noticing. This is a two-note dog whistle -- it says "Hussein" to right-wingers and it says "The liberal fascists won't let us say 'Hussein.'"
I'm sure it will be widely imitated.
Which makes me think that declaring the name off limits just isn't going to work -- Obama's going to have to find a way to get the public used to it.
****
(Cross-posted at Too Sense.)
WHAT'S NEXT?
James Fallows:
... In a live CNN interview just now, Sen. Clinton repeated, twice, the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience, I have a lifetime of experience, Sen. Obama has one speech in 2002" line. By what logic, exactly, does a member of the Democratic party include the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience" part of that sentence?
... to pose it in a form that is poison for the party should Obama be the nominee??? To produce a clip that the McCain campaign could run unedited every single day of a campaign against Obama? That is something special....
I wonder when Barack Obama is really going to start linking Hillary Clinton to John McCain -- not just saying that they're two examples of "the old politics" or two people who voted for the Iraq War, but arguing that Clinton would be perfectly content with John McCain as president.
You might start seeing pictures like this in Obama's ads:
You might start hearing a lot more about Bill Clinton's statement in January:
"She and John McCain are very close," he said. "They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."
Coming soon, I suspect.
James Fallows:
... In a live CNN interview just now, Sen. Clinton repeated, twice, the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience, I have a lifetime of experience, Sen. Obama has one speech in 2002" line. By what logic, exactly, does a member of the Democratic party include the "Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience" part of that sentence?
... to pose it in a form that is poison for the party should Obama be the nominee??? To produce a clip that the McCain campaign could run unedited every single day of a campaign against Obama? That is something special....
I wonder when Barack Obama is really going to start linking Hillary Clinton to John McCain -- not just saying that they're two examples of "the old politics" or two people who voted for the Iraq War, but arguing that Clinton would be perfectly content with John McCain as president.
You might start seeing pictures like this in Obama's ads:
You might start hearing a lot more about Bill Clinton's statement in January:
"She and John McCain are very close," he said. "They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."
Coming soon, I suspect.
YES, McCAIN CAN WIN -- ESPECIALLY IF WE UNDERESTIMATE HIS CHANCES
Reuters:
McCain turns to November: Can he win?
Now that he is the U.S. Republican presidential nominee, John McCain faces a huge challenge: How to beat recent history and win a third straight White House term for his party....
He faces an uphill battle against either Obama or Clinton.
In the last 50 years, only once has the party in power for two terms in a row been able to win a third one, when George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, succeeded the immensely popular Ronald Reagan in the 1988 election.
And this year the call for change is plaintive: The U.S. economy is in trouble, Americans are tired of the Iraq war, and most are ready to move on from unpopular President George W. Bush....
If you argue that the out party has to win when we're in an unpopular war and the economy is tanking, you're making an argument that's the mirror image of the conventional wisdom in 2000. Remember? We had peace and prosperity, so Al Gore should have won decisively. (That argument is still used to deride Al Gore's campaign skills.)
And if the one guy in the past fifty years who extended his party's streak to three terms was Poppy Bush, that just proves a weak, stale candidate can get the job done.
The rules that trump all of these historical patterns in the modern political world are that Democrats always run under a cloud of suspicion and Republicans under a presumption of fitness and worthiness, and that voters in search of a president gravitate to Daddy. These aren't insurmountable, but they have to be surmounted. Past election history isn't going to neutralize them.
Reuters:
McCain turns to November: Can he win?
Now that he is the U.S. Republican presidential nominee, John McCain faces a huge challenge: How to beat recent history and win a third straight White House term for his party....
He faces an uphill battle against either Obama or Clinton.
In the last 50 years, only once has the party in power for two terms in a row been able to win a third one, when George H.W. Bush, the current president's father, succeeded the immensely popular Ronald Reagan in the 1988 election.
And this year the call for change is plaintive: The U.S. economy is in trouble, Americans are tired of the Iraq war, and most are ready to move on from unpopular President George W. Bush....
If you argue that the out party has to win when we're in an unpopular war and the economy is tanking, you're making an argument that's the mirror image of the conventional wisdom in 2000. Remember? We had peace and prosperity, so Al Gore should have won decisively. (That argument is still used to deride Al Gore's campaign skills.)
And if the one guy in the past fifty years who extended his party's streak to three terms was Poppy Bush, that just proves a weak, stale candidate can get the job done.
The rules that trump all of these historical patterns in the modern political world are that Democrats always run under a cloud of suspicion and Republicans under a presumption of fitness and worthiness, and that voters in search of a president gravitate to Daddy. These aren't insurmountable, but they have to be surmounted. Past election history isn't going to neutralize them.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
ENCOURAGING RELIGIOUS THUGGERY IN IRAQ: IT WAS ALL PART OF A BRILLIANT, BENEVOLENT PLAN
Commentary blogger Abe Greenwald picks up today's New York Times and reads a front-page story in a rather peculiar way:
Question: What is the most extraordinary thing about the following extraordinary sentence?
Answer: It is the lead of a story in today's New York Times. The paper of record ... is now acknowledging the realization of the most ambitious goal of the Iraq War: the de-radicalization of Muslim citizens....
It is impossible not to infer that the Bush Doctrine and the commitment of the men and women in uniform has facilitated this shift.....
If I were in the Bush administration or one of the troops, I'm not sure I'd want to be praised this way. Here's what the story actually says about how this religious disillusionment came to pass:
... Fingers caught in the act of smoking were broken. Long hair was cut and force-fed to its wearer. In that laboratory, disillusionment with Islamic leaders took hold.
... "When they behead someone, they say 'Allahu akbar,' they read Koranic verse," said a moderate Shiite sheik from Baghdad, using the phrase for "God is great."
...Zane Mohammed, a gangly 19-year-old with an earnest face, watched with curiosity as the first Islamists in his Baghdad neighborhood came to barbershops, tea parlors and carpentry stores before taking over the mosques.
... Then, one morning while waiting for a bus to school, he watched a man walk up to a neighbor, a college professor whose sect Mr. Mohammed did not know, shoot the neighbor at point blank range three times, and walk back to his car as calmly "as if he was leaving a grocery store." ...
This is what happened after the U.S. invaded, and now it's terrifying and infuriating Iraqis, and Greenwald thinks it's something the Bushies should be proud of. It's not a bug -- it's a feature! It was our brilliant freedom plan!
Greenwald says:
Far from "creating more terrorists" as the failed cliche goes, the war has helped to nurture an appreciation for liberty among Iraqi youth. A 24-year-old Iraqi college student is quoted as saying she loved Osama bin Laden at the time of 9/11. Now, after seeing the efforts of religious leaders to curtail her daily freedoms, she rejects extremism entirely.
Here's what she actually says (emphasis mine):
"I used to love Osama bin Laden," proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.
... "Now I hate Islam," she said, sitting in her family's unadorned living room in central Baghdad. "Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing."
Greenwald actually read that and said it disproved the notion that the war created more terrorists. I guess some of us just see what we want to see.
Commentary blogger Abe Greenwald picks up today's New York Times and reads a front-page story in a rather peculiar way:
Question: What is the most extraordinary thing about the following extraordinary sentence?
BAGHDAD -- After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.
Answer: It is the lead of a story in today's New York Times. The paper of record ... is now acknowledging the realization of the most ambitious goal of the Iraq War: the de-radicalization of Muslim citizens....
It is impossible not to infer that the Bush Doctrine and the commitment of the men and women in uniform has facilitated this shift.....
If I were in the Bush administration or one of the troops, I'm not sure I'd want to be praised this way. Here's what the story actually says about how this religious disillusionment came to pass:
... Fingers caught in the act of smoking were broken. Long hair was cut and force-fed to its wearer. In that laboratory, disillusionment with Islamic leaders took hold.
... "When they behead someone, they say 'Allahu akbar,' they read Koranic verse," said a moderate Shiite sheik from Baghdad, using the phrase for "God is great."
...Zane Mohammed, a gangly 19-year-old with an earnest face, watched with curiosity as the first Islamists in his Baghdad neighborhood came to barbershops, tea parlors and carpentry stores before taking over the mosques.
... Then, one morning while waiting for a bus to school, he watched a man walk up to a neighbor, a college professor whose sect Mr. Mohammed did not know, shoot the neighbor at point blank range three times, and walk back to his car as calmly "as if he was leaving a grocery store." ...
This is what happened after the U.S. invaded, and now it's terrifying and infuriating Iraqis, and Greenwald thinks it's something the Bushies should be proud of. It's not a bug -- it's a feature! It was our brilliant freedom plan!
Greenwald says:
Far from "creating more terrorists" as the failed cliche goes, the war has helped to nurture an appreciation for liberty among Iraqi youth. A 24-year-old Iraqi college student is quoted as saying she loved Osama bin Laden at the time of 9/11. Now, after seeing the efforts of religious leaders to curtail her daily freedoms, she rejects extremism entirely.
Here's what she actually says (emphasis mine):
"I used to love Osama bin Laden," proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.
... "Now I hate Islam," she said, sitting in her family's unadorned living room in central Baghdad. "Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing."
Greenwald actually read that and said it disproved the notion that the war created more terrorists. I guess some of us just see what we want to see.
ALLEGEDLY FALSE PROMISES: ER, WHAT ABOUT THIS ONE?
I keep reading that previously private discussions show that Barack Obama has been keeping his fingers crossed behind his back whenever he's criticized NAFTA. This is getting a tremendous amount of attention (the clown who calls himself Instapundit is now referring to this controversy as Naftaquiddick).
But the Clinton campaign has its own bit of tough campaign talk that, according to today's New York Sun, is just political posturing, according to someone recounting private discussions -- yet I'm not hearing much of anything about the story. So is this true?
If Senator Clinton can best Senator Obama in today's round of primaries and caucuses and go on to capture the White House, a co-author of the surge strategy in Iraq says he is convinced she would hold off on authorizing a large-scale immediate withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq.
In a weekend interview, a retired four-star general, Jack Keane, said that when he briefed Mrs. Clinton in late 2006 and January 2007 on the counteroffensive strategy known as the surge, she "generally supported the surge strategy in the sense she wanted it to succeed but she was skeptical about its chances."
...Mr. Keane is in a position to know Mrs. Clinton, having worked informally with her since 2001, when he was vice chief of staff for the Army. Early last year, the Clinton team even asked the retired general to become a formal adviser to the campaign on military issues, a request Mr. Keane declined, as he has done when asked by other candidates.
Mr. Keane nevertheless said he holds the former first lady in high esteem.
"Senator Clinton is very knowledgeable about national security and is probably going to be strong on defense," he said. "I have no doubts whatsoever that if she were president in January '09 she would not act irresponsibly and issue orders to conduct an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, regardless of the consequences, and squander the gains that have been made." ...
The Clinton campaign disputes what Keane says. Three other war fans (Frederick Kagan, Kenneth Pollack, and Michael O'Hanlon) are also quoted in the story, and they agree with Keane's assessment, but O'Hanlon and Pollack do so based on conversation they had with Clinton some time ago, and Kagan mentions no discussions with her at all.
Is this disinformation? Well, you tell me. I don't see many people on the right hoping to run against Obama rather than Clinton, nor, if it is disinformation, do I understand the timing (a week ago would have been a bit more helpful -- or, if it's an attempt to damp down her antiwar vote in the general election, a few months from now would be better timing).
Clinton campaign, Clintonites, please -- give me a good reason to discount this. Otherwise, if the contest really is headed to Pennsylvania, this needs to be talked about a lot.
I keep reading that previously private discussions show that Barack Obama has been keeping his fingers crossed behind his back whenever he's criticized NAFTA. This is getting a tremendous amount of attention (the clown who calls himself Instapundit is now referring to this controversy as Naftaquiddick).
But the Clinton campaign has its own bit of tough campaign talk that, according to today's New York Sun, is just political posturing, according to someone recounting private discussions -- yet I'm not hearing much of anything about the story. So is this true?
If Senator Clinton can best Senator Obama in today's round of primaries and caucuses and go on to capture the White House, a co-author of the surge strategy in Iraq says he is convinced she would hold off on authorizing a large-scale immediate withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq.
In a weekend interview, a retired four-star general, Jack Keane, said that when he briefed Mrs. Clinton in late 2006 and January 2007 on the counteroffensive strategy known as the surge, she "generally supported the surge strategy in the sense she wanted it to succeed but she was skeptical about its chances."
...Mr. Keane is in a position to know Mrs. Clinton, having worked informally with her since 2001, when he was vice chief of staff for the Army. Early last year, the Clinton team even asked the retired general to become a formal adviser to the campaign on military issues, a request Mr. Keane declined, as he has done when asked by other candidates.
Mr. Keane nevertheless said he holds the former first lady in high esteem.
"Senator Clinton is very knowledgeable about national security and is probably going to be strong on defense," he said. "I have no doubts whatsoever that if she were president in January '09 she would not act irresponsibly and issue orders to conduct an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, regardless of the consequences, and squander the gains that have been made." ...
The Clinton campaign disputes what Keane says. Three other war fans (Frederick Kagan, Kenneth Pollack, and Michael O'Hanlon) are also quoted in the story, and they agree with Keane's assessment, but O'Hanlon and Pollack do so based on conversation they had with Clinton some time ago, and Kagan mentions no discussions with her at all.
Is this disinformation? Well, you tell me. I don't see many people on the right hoping to run against Obama rather than Clinton, nor, if it is disinformation, do I understand the timing (a week ago would have been a bit more helpful -- or, if it's an attempt to damp down her antiwar vote in the general election, a few months from now would be better timing).
Clinton campaign, Clintonites, please -- give me a good reason to discount this. Otherwise, if the contest really is headed to Pennsylvania, this needs to be talked about a lot.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: JUST A SHOELESS YOUNG BOY WHO GREW UP IN THE SHACK NEXT TO THE CLAMPETTS
Of course he'll get away with this. He gets away with everything else, doesn't he?
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh issued an on-air apology to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., today after a caller said her daughter thought the Democratic presidential frontrunner looked like the cartoon character Curious George, a monkey.
Limbaugh, who laughed at the caller's comments, later apologized explaining he didn't know anything about Curious George.
Click HERE for the audio.
... "I had never heard of Curious George. Only now have staffers sent me little pictures of Curious George," he [said].
"... I laughed about it. It was a 12 year old kid's reaction to Obama, it was told by his mother. I was laughing because I was being polite, but I had never heard of Curious George." ...
In related news, Limbaugh later insisted that he's never heard of the internal combustion engine, cellphones, Harry Potter, revolving doors, Michael Jackson's Thriller album, automated teller machines, cable television, or sliced bread.
And by the way, Racist Mom, if your daughter is twelve years old and she's still reading Curious George books, you two have bigger problems to worry about than who gets elected president this year.
*****
(Cross-posted at Too Sense)
*****
UPDATE: An idiot at Protein Wisdom links me while demonstrating that he doesn't know the difference between an ordinary ad hominem insult and a racial slur that goes back years on more than one continent. Hey, but thanks for the hits, schmuck.
Of course he'll get away with this. He gets away with everything else, doesn't he?
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh issued an on-air apology to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., today after a caller said her daughter thought the Democratic presidential frontrunner looked like the cartoon character Curious George, a monkey.
Limbaugh, who laughed at the caller's comments, later apologized explaining he didn't know anything about Curious George.
Click HERE for the audio.
... "I had never heard of Curious George. Only now have staffers sent me little pictures of Curious George," he [said].
"... I laughed about it. It was a 12 year old kid's reaction to Obama, it was told by his mother. I was laughing because I was being polite, but I had never heard of Curious George." ...
In related news, Limbaugh later insisted that he's never heard of the internal combustion engine, cellphones, Harry Potter, revolving doors, Michael Jackson's Thriller album, automated teller machines, cable television, or sliced bread.
And by the way, Racist Mom, if your daughter is twelve years old and she's still reading Curious George books, you two have bigger problems to worry about than who gets elected president this year.
*****
(Cross-posted at Too Sense)
*****
UPDATE: An idiot at Protein Wisdom links me while demonstrating that he doesn't know the difference between an ordinary ad hominem insult and a racial slur that goes back years on more than one continent. Hey, but thanks for the hits, schmuck.
Monday, March 03, 2008
PAUL KRUGMAN FORGETS WHAT COUNTRY HE'S LIVING IN
I understand Paul Krugman's basic argument against Barack Obama's cross-party outreach -- for a while I was skeptical, too, and time will tell whether Krugman is right (and whether I used to be right).
But I really don't understand how Krugman could write this today:
All in all, the Democrats are in a place few expected a year ago. The 2008 campaign, it seems, will be waged on the basis of personality, not political philosophy.
Paul, this is America. How often is a presidential campaign not waged on the basis of personality?
Krugman suggests that if ever there was a presidential election in which Democrats could run on the issues, it's this one. But why wasn't that the case in 2004? A huge segment of the public had become utterly fed up with the war. The violence was only getting worse, and the incompetence continued to escalate. We'd learned there were never any WMDs and we'd seen the Abu Ghraib pictures. Yet the election turned on whether John Kerry was a "flip-flopper," whether he looked silly in a windsurfing outfit or saluting while beginning his convention acceptance speech, whether he was as beer-worthy as George W. Bush. The previous election turned on the beer-worthiness of Al Gore. Before that, we picked Clinton's youth and vigor over those of Bob Dole and Poppy Bush, and before that we rejected Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale because we thought they were boring little wussies.
Yes, I wish this weren't the case. I wish we voted on issues. But this America. We don't. Personality is the necessary delivery system for any issues payload. Krugman suggests that we'd be running an issues campaign if Obama hadn't run and done well, but we wouldn't -- we'd be running a personality campaign with, in all likelihood, no one the voters want to have a beer with as much as they do with John McCain. And that's why we'd lose.
I understand Paul Krugman's basic argument against Barack Obama's cross-party outreach -- for a while I was skeptical, too, and time will tell whether Krugman is right (and whether I used to be right).
But I really don't understand how Krugman could write this today:
All in all, the Democrats are in a place few expected a year ago. The 2008 campaign, it seems, will be waged on the basis of personality, not political philosophy.
Paul, this is America. How often is a presidential campaign not waged on the basis of personality?
Krugman suggests that if ever there was a presidential election in which Democrats could run on the issues, it's this one. But why wasn't that the case in 2004? A huge segment of the public had become utterly fed up with the war. The violence was only getting worse, and the incompetence continued to escalate. We'd learned there were never any WMDs and we'd seen the Abu Ghraib pictures. Yet the election turned on whether John Kerry was a "flip-flopper," whether he looked silly in a windsurfing outfit or saluting while beginning his convention acceptance speech, whether he was as beer-worthy as George W. Bush. The previous election turned on the beer-worthiness of Al Gore. Before that, we picked Clinton's youth and vigor over those of Bob Dole and Poppy Bush, and before that we rejected Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale because we thought they were boring little wussies.
Yes, I wish this weren't the case. I wish we voted on issues. But this America. We don't. Personality is the necessary delivery system for any issues payload. Krugman suggests that we'd be running an issues campaign if Obama hadn't run and done well, but we wouldn't -- we'd be running a personality campaign with, in all likelihood, no one the voters want to have a beer with as much as they do with John McCain. And that's why we'd lose.
MICHELLE OBAMA IS HEP!
I haven't read the profile of Michelle Obama in the new New Yorker, but there's a short preview here, from which we learn just how fashion-forward and taboo-shattering Mrs. O is.
According to the article:
She "is also cool in the other sense of the word; her tastes, references and vocabulary -- 'freaky,' '24/7,' 'got my back,' 'American Idol,' Judge Mathis -- if not exactly edgy, are recognizable, which, for a political spouse, makes them radical."
Wow. American Idol -- that's that weird new cult show all the kids are watching on their bafflingly modernistic two-way wrist TV iPhones, isn't it?
And "24/7" -- that's such a trendy, urban, street expression that mulleted R&B wannabes glommed on to it twenty years ago:
(Come on, you remember the annoyingly catchy "I Like It," right?)
I know this isn't meant disapprovingly, but I'm not sure why it's noteworthy at all. And doesn't John McCain do this, too, even though he's a generation older than the Obamas? Didn't he say when Alan Greenspan retired that we should keep him as Fed chairman even after he died, "like Weekend at Bernies"? Does it seem "safer" somehow coming from him, because he's older? Because he's whiter? Because to some people (who apparently don't get out much), some of her references seem (what euphemism am I looking for here?) urban?
(Of Mitt Romney saying "Who let the dogs out?" on Martin Luther King Day, the less said the better.)
*****
Oh, and the New Yorker article also reminds us that, according to her husband's second book, the scary angry dangerous militant radical Michelle Obama likes to watch reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
*****
(Cross-posted at Too Sense.)
I haven't read the profile of Michelle Obama in the new New Yorker, but there's a short preview here, from which we learn just how fashion-forward and taboo-shattering Mrs. O is.
According to the article:
She "is also cool in the other sense of the word; her tastes, references and vocabulary -- 'freaky,' '24/7,' 'got my back,' 'American Idol,' Judge Mathis -- if not exactly edgy, are recognizable, which, for a political spouse, makes them radical."
Wow. American Idol -- that's that weird new cult show all the kids are watching on their bafflingly modernistic two-way wrist TV iPhones, isn't it?
And "24/7" -- that's such a trendy, urban, street expression that mulleted R&B wannabes glommed on to it twenty years ago:
(Come on, you remember the annoyingly catchy "I Like It," right?)
I know this isn't meant disapprovingly, but I'm not sure why it's noteworthy at all. And doesn't John McCain do this, too, even though he's a generation older than the Obamas? Didn't he say when Alan Greenspan retired that we should keep him as Fed chairman even after he died, "like Weekend at Bernies"? Does it seem "safer" somehow coming from him, because he's older? Because he's whiter? Because to some people (who apparently don't get out much), some of her references seem (what euphemism am I looking for here?) urban?
(Of Mitt Romney saying "Who let the dogs out?" on Martin Luther King Day, the less said the better.)
*****
Oh, and the New Yorker article also reminds us that, according to her husband's second book, the scary angry dangerous militant radical Michelle Obama likes to watch reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
*****
(Cross-posted at Too Sense.)
THIS COULD BE AMUSING
Mike Murphy, a GOP strategist, suggested on Meet the Press yesterday that John McCain should pick Tom Ridge as his running mate. Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb has "heard from two different sources that Tom Ridge is at or near the top of the list to be VP."
Hey, bring it on. For most people, Ridge will always be associated with those risible color-coded terror alerts and his department's duct tape and plastic sheeting recommendations (curiously, since leaving government, he's joined the board of Home Depot). Ridge denied that terror alerts were politicized on his watch even as, during an election year, he proclaimed when dicussing alerts that "the kind of information available to us today is the result of the President's leadership in the war against terror" -- and then, after his resignation, he acknowledged that alert levels changed based on pressure from elsewhere in the administration. Yeah, this is a guy I think ofg when I think of the word "leadership."
On the other side of the coin, it would be fun to watch the wingnut reaction to Ridge, who spent more than a decade in Congress before becoming governor of Pennsylvania, and failed a lot of right-wing litmus tests:
Voted for funding for International Planned Parenthood, June 12, 1991....
Voted to allow abortions on overseas military bases, Oct. 3; 1992.
Voted against requiring parental notification and a 48-hour waiting period before minors could get abortions from groups receiving federal funds, March 25, 1993.
Voted for Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), used to prosecute peaceful abortion protesters; May 5, 1994....
Said on June 14, 1996, of the Reagan pro-life Republican platform plank, "It would be my preference to take it out or modify the language to be more inclusive." ...
Voted for President Bush's budget resolution breaking his no-new-taxes pledge, Oct. 5; 1990....
Voted against an amendment forbidding the National Endowment for the Arts from funding obscene or blasphemous worlds; or those desecrating the American flag, Oct. 11, 1990.
Voted for the Equal Rights Amendment, Nov. 15, 1983....
Voted for the so-called assault weapons ban, May 5, 1994....
Voted for banning the testing of space-based weapons, May 23, 1984....
Voted for prohibiting aid to the anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua, Oct. 22, 1983....
Voted against reinstating the exclusion of homosexuals from the U.S. military that had been lifted by President Clinton, Sept. 28, 1993.
More recently, he's come out in favor of what the anti-immigrant right calls "amnesty."
Abhorrent to the GOP base and unimpressive to everyone else? Please, John, go right ahead.
Mike Murphy, a GOP strategist, suggested on Meet the Press yesterday that John McCain should pick Tom Ridge as his running mate. Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb has "heard from two different sources that Tom Ridge is at or near the top of the list to be VP."
Hey, bring it on. For most people, Ridge will always be associated with those risible color-coded terror alerts and his department's duct tape and plastic sheeting recommendations (curiously, since leaving government, he's joined the board of Home Depot). Ridge denied that terror alerts were politicized on his watch even as, during an election year, he proclaimed when dicussing alerts that "the kind of information available to us today is the result of the President's leadership in the war against terror" -- and then, after his resignation, he acknowledged that alert levels changed based on pressure from elsewhere in the administration. Yeah, this is a guy I think ofg when I think of the word "leadership."
On the other side of the coin, it would be fun to watch the wingnut reaction to Ridge, who spent more than a decade in Congress before becoming governor of Pennsylvania, and failed a lot of right-wing litmus tests:
Voted for funding for International Planned Parenthood, June 12, 1991....
Voted to allow abortions on overseas military bases, Oct. 3; 1992.
Voted against requiring parental notification and a 48-hour waiting period before minors could get abortions from groups receiving federal funds, March 25, 1993.
Voted for Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE), used to prosecute peaceful abortion protesters; May 5, 1994....
Said on June 14, 1996, of the Reagan pro-life Republican platform plank, "It would be my preference to take it out or modify the language to be more inclusive." ...
Voted for President Bush's budget resolution breaking his no-new-taxes pledge, Oct. 5; 1990....
Voted against an amendment forbidding the National Endowment for the Arts from funding obscene or blasphemous worlds; or those desecrating the American flag, Oct. 11, 1990.
Voted for the Equal Rights Amendment, Nov. 15, 1983....
Voted for the so-called assault weapons ban, May 5, 1994....
Voted for banning the testing of space-based weapons, May 23, 1984....
Voted for prohibiting aid to the anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua, Oct. 22, 1983....
Voted against reinstating the exclusion of homosexuals from the U.S. military that had been lifted by President Clinton, Sept. 28, 1993.
More recently, he's come out in favor of what the anti-immigrant right calls "amnesty."
Abhorrent to the GOP base and unimpressive to everyone else? Please, John, go right ahead.
THAT "WOMEN ARE STUPID" OP-ED: BROUGHT TO YOU IN PART BY WINGNUT WELFARE
The talk of Blogistan yesterday was a Washington Post op-ed by Charlotte Allen that declared women stupid:
...What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? ...
I swear no man watches "Grey's Anatomy" unless his girlfriend forces him to. No man bakes cookies for his dog. No man feels blue and takes off work to spend the day in bed with a copy of "The Friday Night Knitting Club." No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors, such as Morgellons (where you feel bugs crawling around under your skin). At least no man I know. Of course, not all women do these things, either -- although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn't some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat....
Allen slams Barack Obama because a whopping five of the nine million-plus Obama voters this year have fainted at campaign rallies. She goes after Hillary Clinton because her "nearly all-female staff" (Mark Penn? hello?) "has run one of the worst -- and, yes, stupidest -- presidential races in recent history" (which is true only if "recent history" doesn't include, oh, say, January 2008 and the latter part of 2007, when the highly promising and decidedly more male campaigns of Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson, unlike Clinton's, utterly cratered).
Allen reminds me of Ward Connerly -- the African American who's made destroying affirmative action his life's work, seemingly because, as one reporter learned a few years back after talking to Connerly and a number of his acquaintances, Connerly he really doesn't like black people or being thought of as black. I don't know why Allen feels about her femaleness the way Connerly feels about his blackness, but it's clear that she does.
Over the years, Connerly has received quite a bit of support from right-wing foundations. Allen, for her part, was an editor at the blog of the anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum, which is also lavishly funded by right-wing foundations (UPDATE: A more detailed breakdown is here.) Go here and you can page through her blog work for IWF (a few choice cuts: "Stay-at-Home Moms Are Happy--and So Are Their Sons"; "Be a Feminist--and Worry About Becoming a Bag Lady"; "When Radical Feminists Grow Old--Not a Pretty Sight"; and this piece in which she reads that girls are doing better than boys in Wilmette, Illinois, and throws up her hands in despair). She also wrote quite a bit for IWF's magazine Women's Quarterly (in this piece, for instance, she describes herself as "a surrendered wife"). This hasn't been her sole source of income by any means, but I'm sure it really helped pay the bills. It certainly gave her ample opportunity to hone her self-hating chops.
The talk of Blogistan yesterday was a Washington Post op-ed by Charlotte Allen that declared women stupid:
...What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? ...
I swear no man watches "Grey's Anatomy" unless his girlfriend forces him to. No man bakes cookies for his dog. No man feels blue and takes off work to spend the day in bed with a copy of "The Friday Night Knitting Club." No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors, such as Morgellons (where you feel bugs crawling around under your skin). At least no man I know. Of course, not all women do these things, either -- although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn't some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat....
Allen slams Barack Obama because a whopping five of the nine million-plus Obama voters this year have fainted at campaign rallies. She goes after Hillary Clinton because her "nearly all-female staff" (Mark Penn? hello?) "has run one of the worst -- and, yes, stupidest -- presidential races in recent history" (which is true only if "recent history" doesn't include, oh, say, January 2008 and the latter part of 2007, when the highly promising and decidedly more male campaigns of Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson, unlike Clinton's, utterly cratered).
Allen reminds me of Ward Connerly -- the African American who's made destroying affirmative action his life's work, seemingly because, as one reporter learned a few years back after talking to Connerly and a number of his acquaintances, Connerly he really doesn't like black people or being thought of as black. I don't know why Allen feels about her femaleness the way Connerly feels about his blackness, but it's clear that she does.
Over the years, Connerly has received quite a bit of support from right-wing foundations. Allen, for her part, was an editor at the blog of the anti-feminist Independent Women's Forum, which is also lavishly funded by right-wing foundations (UPDATE: A more detailed breakdown is here.) Go here and you can page through her blog work for IWF (a few choice cuts: "Stay-at-Home Moms Are Happy--and So Are Their Sons"; "Be a Feminist--and Worry About Becoming a Bag Lady"; "When Radical Feminists Grow Old--Not a Pretty Sight"; and this piece in which she reads that girls are doing better than boys in Wilmette, Illinois, and throws up her hands in despair). She also wrote quite a bit for IWF's magazine Women's Quarterly (in this piece, for instance, she describes herself as "a surrendered wife"). This hasn't been her sole source of income by any means, but I'm sure it really helped pay the bills. It certainly gave her ample opportunity to hone her self-hating chops.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
PREMATURE DRAPE-MEASURING FROM FRANK RICH
So I didn't watch Saturday Night Live last night, but when I read that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani were surprise guests, I thought, "Oh -- Tina Fey's dream ticket."
Then I was reading Frank Rich, who's effectively declared the presidential race over -- McCain is too much like Hillary, old and cranky and tied to the war, and it's inevitable that any attacks on Obama will fall flat, thus Obama will win. Wow! That was easy!
...The good news for the Democrats so far is that whatever Mr. McCain's sporadic overlap with liberals, he is emulating almost identically the suicidal Clinton campaign against Mr. Obama. He has mimicked Mrs. Clinton's message and rhetorical style, her tone-deaf contempt for Mr. Obama's cultural appeal, and her complete misreading of just how politically radioactive the war in Iraq remains despite its migration from the front page....
What repeatedly goes unrecognized by all of Mr. Obama's opponents is that his political Kryptonite is the patriotism he offers in lieu of theirs. His upbeat notion of a yes-we-can national mobilization for the common good, however saccharine, speaks to the pride and idealism of Americans who are bone-weary of a patriotism defined exclusively by flag lapel pins, the fear of terrorism and the prospect of perpetual war....
Is that why McCain trails Obama by single digits in every poll -- except the ones (e.g., the L.A. Times poll) in which he's beating Obama?
I still fear the anti-Obama backlash hinted at by what's been going on on SNL the past two weeks:
...Last week's skit featured CNN moderators fawning over Mr. Obama; Saturday night's had the NBC panelists, Brian Williams and Tim Russert, doing the same, with Mr. Russert laying it on thick as he described Mr. Obama's eloquence.
"I get it Tim, he's eloquent," the faux Hillary said.
...Messrs. Williams and Russert continued to gang up on the SNL Hillary -- and when she complained, they mimed playing the violins.
The actor playing Mr. Russert ... went on to press Mrs. Clinton to pronounce the name of not only Russia's likely next president (as happened in last week's debate) but also Nigeria's foreign affairs minister and Sri Lanka's deputy ambassador to the United Nations.
Mr. Russert would then name the officials and ask Mr. Obama to name them....
Just love for Obama in the skit. No Farrakhan questions, I gather.
(Oh, and for good measure, I see that there was "TV Funhouse" cartoon on last night's show thathad featured Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and showed Jackson getting zapped in by an electrified fence dog collar. Interesting timing.)
Of course, let's not forget that when Hillary was the front-runner, a year ago, there was a preposterous SNL sketch that depicted Chris Matthews fawning over her ("You're great!" he said repeatedly). That's liberal humor -- we hate it when the other guys are in office, but we love mocking anyone on our side who can beat them. We want to think we're too cool to fall for our own politicians.
There's going to be that, and there's going to be lingering resentment of Obama from fervent Clinton supporters, and I don't know what else (the usual longing for Daddy)? There may not be much of this, but I still think it could well be enough, added to the Republicans coming home to McCain, and the moderates who never left, to put him over the top.
So I didn't watch Saturday Night Live last night, but when I read that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani were surprise guests, I thought, "Oh -- Tina Fey's dream ticket."
Then I was reading Frank Rich, who's effectively declared the presidential race over -- McCain is too much like Hillary, old and cranky and tied to the war, and it's inevitable that any attacks on Obama will fall flat, thus Obama will win. Wow! That was easy!
...The good news for the Democrats so far is that whatever Mr. McCain's sporadic overlap with liberals, he is emulating almost identically the suicidal Clinton campaign against Mr. Obama. He has mimicked Mrs. Clinton's message and rhetorical style, her tone-deaf contempt for Mr. Obama's cultural appeal, and her complete misreading of just how politically radioactive the war in Iraq remains despite its migration from the front page....
What repeatedly goes unrecognized by all of Mr. Obama's opponents is that his political Kryptonite is the patriotism he offers in lieu of theirs. His upbeat notion of a yes-we-can national mobilization for the common good, however saccharine, speaks to the pride and idealism of Americans who are bone-weary of a patriotism defined exclusively by flag lapel pins, the fear of terrorism and the prospect of perpetual war....
Is that why McCain trails Obama by single digits in every poll -- except the ones (e.g., the L.A. Times poll) in which he's beating Obama?
I still fear the anti-Obama backlash hinted at by what's been going on on SNL the past two weeks:
...Last week's skit featured CNN moderators fawning over Mr. Obama; Saturday night's had the NBC panelists, Brian Williams and Tim Russert, doing the same, with Mr. Russert laying it on thick as he described Mr. Obama's eloquence.
"I get it Tim, he's eloquent," the faux Hillary said.
...Messrs. Williams and Russert continued to gang up on the SNL Hillary -- and when she complained, they mimed playing the violins.
The actor playing Mr. Russert ... went on to press Mrs. Clinton to pronounce the name of not only Russia's likely next president (as happened in last week's debate) but also Nigeria's foreign affairs minister and Sri Lanka's deputy ambassador to the United Nations.
Mr. Russert would then name the officials and ask Mr. Obama to name them....
Just love for Obama in the skit. No Farrakhan questions, I gather.
(Oh, and for good measure, I see that there was "TV Funhouse" cartoon on last night's show that
Of course, let's not forget that when Hillary was the front-runner, a year ago, there was a preposterous SNL sketch that depicted Chris Matthews fawning over her ("You're great!" he said repeatedly). That's liberal humor -- we hate it when the other guys are in office, but we love mocking anyone on our side who can beat them. We want to think we're too cool to fall for our own politicians.
There's going to be that, and there's going to be lingering resentment of Obama from fervent Clinton supporters, and I don't know what else (the usual longing for Daddy)? There may not be much of this, but I still think it could well be enough, added to the Republicans coming home to McCain, and the moderates who never left, to put him over the top.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
BARACK OBAMA: A WOMAN AND AN ANTI-SEMITE
Again? Yup -- another pundit has decided that Barack Obama is a woman.
Maureen Dowd, of course, loves to describe Obama this way (e.g., as "Obambi," as a "debutante," and as comparable to "Hollywood starlets"), and we had Lucy Berrington and Jeff Onore in the New York Post in January asking whether Obama could be "our first woman president" -- and now, this week, there was Martin Linsky, a Kennedy School of Government faculty member, also using the "first woman president" formula in Newsweek. (Berrington and Onore live in Massachusetts, too. Is it something in the water?)
Linsky writes:
... this campaign will always be remembered for the emergence of the first serious woman candidate for president: Barack Obama.
Obama is a female candidate for president in the same way that Bill Clinton was the first black president....
Some of the reasoning here is just absurd. We're told that "Clinton proposes policy solutions to every problem" -- and Obama doesn't. (Never mind the fact that his policy proposals are fully as detailed as Clinton's.) We're told:
Obama is willing to acknowledge his indiscretions and not apologize for them. His drug use was part of his journey. He returned the campaign contributions of a former friend with an unsavory past.
(All sorts of politicians have admitted to using drugs -- most of them male. And just about every pol has to return a contribution or two these days, including Clinton.)
And, bizarrely, we're told that John McCain's "manner of exercising leadership" is "androgynous" (because McCain "is the only one who has regularly gone in front of hostile crowds and been willing to stand and defend positions -- on immigration, the Iraqi war, ethanol, restoring jobs in Michigan, and campaign finance -- that were certain to offend people whose votes he was trying to secure") ... but, somehow, McCain is not engaged in "gender-bending," as is Obama (and as is Hillary, whom Linsky, naturally, sees as male). I'm not sure why Obama is a potential "female" president while McCain is merely "androgynous"; these nuances are a bit subtle for me.
*****
Linsky's actually trying to compliment Obama; meanwhile, however, the people who unabashedly want to destroy Obama are getting nastier, as David Corn notes:
...An unsourced email being disseminated claims that "someone taped former Muslim Barack HUSSEIN Obama at a black church when he was in South Carolina" and that Obama said:
The email goes on to note that Obama sounds "a GREAT DEAL like Malcolm X." It asks, "Instead of the 'Manchurian Candidate,' is Obama the secret 'Farrakan Candidate'"? ...
Here's the premise: Barack Obama, the focus of intense media scrutiny as the possible Democratic nominee, would go into a church (a black church, of course) in the thick of the campaign and insult Israel -- and expect not to be found out. That's what these e-mailers want people to believe. And some people obviously will.
Again? Yup -- another pundit has decided that Barack Obama is a woman.
Maureen Dowd, of course, loves to describe Obama this way (e.g., as "Obambi," as a "debutante," and as comparable to "Hollywood starlets"), and we had Lucy Berrington and Jeff Onore in the New York Post in January asking whether Obama could be "our first woman president" -- and now, this week, there was Martin Linsky, a Kennedy School of Government faculty member, also using the "first woman president" formula in Newsweek. (Berrington and Onore live in Massachusetts, too. Is it something in the water?)
Linsky writes:
... this campaign will always be remembered for the emergence of the first serious woman candidate for president: Barack Obama.
Obama is a female candidate for president in the same way that Bill Clinton was the first black president....
Some of the reasoning here is just absurd. We're told that "Clinton proposes policy solutions to every problem" -- and Obama doesn't. (Never mind the fact that his policy proposals are fully as detailed as Clinton's.) We're told:
Obama is willing to acknowledge his indiscretions and not apologize for them. His drug use was part of his journey. He returned the campaign contributions of a former friend with an unsavory past.
(All sorts of politicians have admitted to using drugs -- most of them male. And just about every pol has to return a contribution or two these days, including Clinton.)
And, bizarrely, we're told that John McCain's "manner of exercising leadership" is "androgynous" (because McCain "is the only one who has regularly gone in front of hostile crowds and been willing to stand and defend positions -- on immigration, the Iraqi war, ethanol, restoring jobs in Michigan, and campaign finance -- that were certain to offend people whose votes he was trying to secure") ... but, somehow, McCain is not engaged in "gender-bending," as is Obama (and as is Hillary, whom Linsky, naturally, sees as male). I'm not sure why Obama is a potential "female" president while McCain is merely "androgynous"; these nuances are a bit subtle for me.
*****
Linsky's actually trying to compliment Obama; meanwhile, however, the people who unabashedly want to destroy Obama are getting nastier, as David Corn notes:
...An unsourced email being disseminated claims that "someone taped former Muslim Barack HUSSEIN Obama at a black church when he was in South Carolina" and that Obama said:
It's clear that we give too much money to Israel. [cheers] Why... do you know that every American gives approx .20 cents A DAY to Israel? [jeers] We keep hearing how tough the Israelis are... how great an 'ally' they are... --but what if we gave the SAME AMOUNT of money we gave THEM to the poor Palestinians--I bet THAT would bring them finally to the table. We could have a two-state solution... a two-state solution--just like former President Carter outlined in his latest book. We can't have peace in the Middle East until we solve that problem down in Palestine. George Bush should have thought about that before he went into Iraq...[etc.]
The email goes on to note that Obama sounds "a GREAT DEAL like Malcolm X." It asks, "Instead of the 'Manchurian Candidate,' is Obama the secret 'Farrakan Candidate'"? ...
Here's the premise: Barack Obama, the focus of intense media scrutiny as the possible Democratic nominee, would go into a church (a black church, of course) in the thick of the campaign and insult Israel -- and expect not to be found out. That's what these e-mailers want people to believe. And some people obviously will.
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