ANTI-OBAMA RACISM: THE FACT THAT YOU DON'T SEE IT DOESN'T MEAN IT ISN'T THERE

An odd experience I'm having lately is that even as I'm expressing exasperation at the Clinton campaign -- and feeling that I'm one of the awful "Blogger Boyz" who are being condemned as sexists for it -- I'm getting hits for a post I did last fall denouncing the Hillary nutcracker. I still think the nutcracker is disgusting, and yes, it's appalling how much overt, unabashed, unapologetic sexism is directed at Hillary Clinton.

But I think there's a perception out there that there simply isn't anything comparably racist -- no merchandise, no Photoshop "humor" -- directed against Barack Obama. When my nutcracker post is linked (for example, here), it's often by people who quote a recent denunciation of anti-Clinton sexism that reads in part:

Imagine this scenario:

...Across the country, racists openly ridicule Obama and his candidacy. In mainstream stores there are gag gifts playing on racist themes: maybe a (water)Melon Baller with Obama’s head on the handle, maybe a Barack Obama Shoeshine Set — you get the picture.... T-shirts say “Quit Running for President and Shine My Shoes!” Anybody who protests is branded a fool and a spoilsport....

Do people really think nothing like that is out there? Anywhere? That no one's making jokes like that? Anywhere?

If so, please explain all this:



(Click any image to enlarge. Yes, the shoeshine story references tap-dancing and Cadillacs.)

Obama is being asked to denounce sexism he and his campaign nothing to do with -- some jerk from a radio show holding up an "Iron My Shirt" sign, for instance. What's the limit for that? How obscure does something have to be before Obama no longer has a moral obligation to notice it and denounce it? And what's the Clinton campaign's corresponding responsibility? If something's only at Cafe Press or politicalhumor.about.com, is it part of the cultural landscape or isn't it? Is it worthy of denunciation or not?

(Sources: white women; PhatCow; Curious George; lawn jockey; driving; welfare; gangster; Afro; sculpture; shoeshine; watermelon.)

SOMETIMES IT'S ACCURATE TO CALL A CUBAN-AMERICAN A "SPIC"

Right? Isn't it? As a person who was born in Havana, wouldn't you agree, Alex?

During yesterday's Democratic primary coverage, CNN senior analyst Jeff Toobin criticized a New York Times column that published a joke about Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) being a "white bitch." ... But CNN contributor Alex Castellanos, who is also an adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign, disagreed, saying that some women deserve to be called a "bitch":

If I can disagree, I think you're dead wrong. She's dead wrong. And I think she thinks her problem is she's a woman. Her problem is she's Hillary Clinton. And some women, by the way, are named that and it's accurate.

In case it's not obvious, I'm being sarcastic here. What a jerk Castellanos is. Whatever disagreements I have with Hillary Clinton right now, I say this is beyond the pale.

****

AND: No, I don't actually believe it's OK to call Castellanos a spic. A jerk, a moron, an idiot, a boor -- yes.

ONE QUAYLE GAFFE? MORE LIKE ONE A WEEK

I guess fact-checkers at National Review were told not to look at the first two sentences of Republican hack Michelle Malkin's article "Barack Obama, Gaffe Machine":

All it takes is one gaffe to taint a Republican for life. The political establishment never let Dan Quayle live down his fateful misspelling of "potatoe."

Really? He was a victim of one isolated slip-up?

For the truth, let's go to the wayback machine:

At the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, George H. W. Bush called on Quayle to be his running mate in the general election....

Questions were raised about Quayle's use of family connections to get into the Indiana National Guard and thus avoid possible combat service in the Vietnam War....

Contributing greatly to the perception of Quayle's incompetence was his tendency to make public statements which were either self-contradictory ("We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward"), logically redundant ("The future will be better tomorrow"), obvious ("For NASA, space is still a high priority"), geographically wrong ("I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix."), fallacious ("It's time for the human race to enter the solar system"), or painfully confused and inappropriate, as when he addressed the United Negro College Fund, whose slogan is "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," Quayle said "You take the United Negro College Fund model that what a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."

... Quayle was asked his thoughts on sending humans to Mars. His response was stunning for the number of errors he made in just a few short sentences. "Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as earth]....Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."

...On May 19, 1992, Quayle gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California on the subject of the Los Angeles riots.... In an aside, he cited the fictional title character in the television program Murphy Brown as an example of how popular culture contributes to this "poverty of values", saying: "[i]t doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown -- a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman -- mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice.'" Quayle drew a firestorm of criticism....

That was before the "potatoe" gaffe.

A few more Snopes-verified quotes:

* "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."

* "Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts."

* "The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."

* "I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change."

* "One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared.'"

* "Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things."

* "I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future."

* "We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world."

* "I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."

* "We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."

* "We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur."

* "Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children."

Oh, and don't forget my favorite:

"Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is part of the United States that is an island that is right here."

Don't have a pity party for Dan Quayle, Michelle. He acquired his reputation as a dolt the old-fashioned way -- he earned it. And to argue that this Olympic-level doltishness is equivalent to, say, referring to Sioux Falls as Sioux City and immediately correcting oneself (one of the felonies in Malkin's Obama gaffe brief) is utterly preposterous.

BUT AREN'T THE WINGS, Y'KNOW, OFFSTAGE?

Patrick Healy of The New York Times runs down the list (as if we don't already know it by heart) of reasons Hillary Clinton is still running. This is one I've never understood:

While Mrs. Clinton believes that winning the nomination is a long shot at this point, she is also staying in the race because, in her experience, electoral politics can be a chaotic and unpredictable enterprise, scandals can emerge from nowhere, and Mr. Obama's candidacy could still suffer a self-inflicted or unexpected wound. Picking up more primary votes and superdelegates could only strengthen her position if the party wants or needs to find an alternative to Mr. Obama.

But why does she have to keep running to make that point?

Hasn't she been the obvious alternative to Obama from the moment this became a two-person race -- and isn't she making herself a less palatable alternative the longer she divisively casts him as unqualified and as the enemy of democracy and of the white working class?

I already hear the cries that it's typical of sexist pigs like me to say a woman should just exit the arena and be quiet. But being shrewd about biding one's time and picking one's shots is a political skill, which means that if Hillary Clinton practiced it expertly, she'd be showing she's a first-rate political strategist, equal (if not superior) to any male pol. She could play the double game much more subtly, floating the notion to inside players that she's still an alternative but not poisoning the minds of a large voting bloc against Obama. (Or, if she's going to keep running, she could remember more than once every few days to say something that hurts John McCain.)

She's not trying to increase her viability as an alternative in the event of an Obama calamity. She's trying to create an Obama calamity.

A TALE OF TWO SPEECHES

Hillary Clinton tonight on John McCain:

Who is ready to defeat Senator McCain in the swing states and among swing voters?

(APPLAUSE)

That's it. That's the only time his name came up in her speech.

Barack Obama tonight on John McCain:

We face an opponent, John McCain, who arrived in Washington nearly three decades ago as a Vietnam War hero and earned an admirable reputation for straight talk and occasional independence from his party.

But this year's Republican primary was a contest to see which candidate could out-Bush the other, and that's a contest that John McCain won.

The Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans that once bothered John McCain's conscience are now his only economic policy.

The Bush health care plan that only helps those who are already healthy and wealthy is now John McCain's answer to the 47 million Americans without insurance and the millions more who can't pay their medical bills.

The Bush Iraq policy that asks everything from our troops and nothing of Iraqi politicians is John McCain's policy, too. And so is the fear of tough and aggressive diplomacy that has left this country more isolated and less secure than at any time in recent history.

(APPLAUSE)

The lobbyists who ruled George Bush's Washington are now running John McCain's campaign. And they actually had the nerve the other day to say that the American people won't care about this.

Talk about out of touch. I think the American people care plenty about that.
(APPLAUSE)

Now, I will leave it up to Senator McCain to explain to the American people whether his policies and positions represent long-held convictions or Washington calculations, but the one thing they don't represent is change.

One of the two Democratic candidates is fighting the fight that needs to be fought right now.

And one of the Democratic candidates is fighting the other Democratic candidate.

TED KENNEDY

Beat the odds, Ted.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES AS VICTIMS: A BRIEF HISTORY

Richard Cohen in his Washington Post column today:

...[Hillary Clinton] ran as only a woman could. She acknowledged that she had been a victim, which, of course, she was. She referred to it occasionally, sometimes with great charm, sometimes with humor, and for some voters -- particularly older women who often know a bit about life that men don't -- it was something of a selling point.

A man could never have done anything similar. A man cannot play the victim....

Nonsense. Being a victim (admittedly not a sexual one) has been a subtext of, by my estimation, every Republican presidential campaign since 1964. Republicans always tell us (or strongly imply) that they're victims -- of coastal elitists, college professors, secular humanists, nonwhites, feminists, gays ... you name it. Hillary Clinton has just put her own spin on this time-tested approach to campaigning for president.

And maybe her approach hasn't really been all that original -- maybe all she's done is add an (admittedly quite valid) charge of sexism, as well as her personal narrative, to an off-the-shelf GOP campaign template. Eric Alterman:

...it can hardly be a coincidence that the punditocracy swung behind the Clintons and against Obama just as her campaign began to rely on the same set of right-wing talking points that Republican presidential campaigns have employed against Democrats since 1968. Obama was too liberal. Obama was too effeminate. Obama was too elitist. Obama could not win the votes of "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans."

... once the nomination began to go Obama's way, the Clintons pivoted right. Hillary harped on Bill Ayers's terrorist past and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's lunatic statements and told an interviewer that there was no basis for rumors that Obama was a Muslim "as far as I know." Bill Clinton said he looked forward to her victory over Obama so we could have an election between "two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country." The candidate embraced McCain's intellectually indefensible gas tax holiday and, when questioned about it, repudiated a lifetime of high-minded wonkery by insisting that economists enjoyed no special expertise when it came to economics. Bill Clinton made the ethos of his wife's campaign explicit in Clarksburg, West Virginia, when he announced, "The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules." His target was not the corporate elite but a liberal black man raised, like himself, by a lower-middle-class single mother....

*****

All of which gets me back to something Aimai said in the comments to this post:

I don't get why you are so angry that some people still feel that HRC's candidacy was important to them, or won't get on board with Obama, or that they still have some grieving to do, or that they don't dismiss her candidacy as quite as unimportant as you do.

Yeah, maybe I'm overdoing it. But first of all, I don't put this in the past -- I don't think Clinton supporters are grieving yet because I think most of them still believe she can win the race. Hillary Clinton and her team are encouraging them to believe this, and to believe that anyone who says otherwise is a sexist/elitist pig; the campaign wants supporters to continue feeling aggrieved and victimized by a hydra-headed chauvinist/yuppie beast that includes everyone from journalists who can do simple delegate math to the "Iron My Shirt" idiots to the female McCain supporter who said "How can we beat the bitch?," but has Barack Obama's head front and center. The campaign has supporters riled up in a way Nixon and Agnew would have admired, and at some of the same targets:

"I'm real tired of the pundits telling me the race is over -- telling America what it should think," said Dorinda Perkins, 63, a lab technician. "I do not want her to quit."

And there's no evidence whatsoever that the fight is going to end after the last primary:

She made it clear at every stop that she has every intention of keeping her campaign going, raising questions about whether she will throw in the towel on June 3, the day of the last primaries, as some Democrats had hoped.

(I've had the naive thought that an Obama win in Oregon that's bigger than Clinton's win in Kentucky might end this, but that's naive -- maybe an Obama victory in Kentucky would end this, but nothing less, and probably not even that.)

This matters because the longer the Clinton campaign encourages this sense of grievance, the more likely it is that many Clinton supporters will just stay home, or decide the proper way to strike a blow for sexism is to vote for the guy whose Supreme Court justices would, unquestionably, overturn Roe v. Wade. Not voting for Clinton could very well be this year's version of voting for Nader.

So, OK, I'm being a boor, and I should let Clinton supporters go through the stages of grieving. I just wish the Clinton campaign would stop trying to keep them in the denial stage.

WOW, THAT'S SOME LOOPHOLE

From a New York Times story about a snazzy new seven-point proposal from House Republicans that's going to get the GOP back in America's good graces -- really, swear to God:

A draft of the conservative agenda calls for the endorsement of a constitutional amendment to prohibit federal spending from growing faster than the economy except in times of war or national emergency.

Er, aren't we -- according to all Republicans -- already in a time of war, as well as a time of national emergency, right now and, like, forever? Or at least until the last Islamomuslonazi is rooted out of Evildoeristan, a process that absolutely requires us to be in Iraq for a gazillion years even though most of Evildoeristan is in other countries?

So, um, when would this proposed constitutional amendment actually be in effect?

I also like the fact that at a time when the public is furious about the war, gas prices, the housing bubble collapse, and health care costs, the GOP plan includes

a proposal to require recipients of food stamps or housing aid to meet work requirements.

I guess that means the emphasis of the new GOP slogan ("The Change You Deserve") is on the third word ("The Change You Deserve, not those welfare scum across town"). I guess it also means the GOP really, really doesn't like updating its scapegoat list.

ED GILLESPIE'S GOP FUND-RAISING LETTER

Since last night I've been reading about the White House's battle with NBC and I think I must be suffering from early-onset dementia -- I'm having trouble getting my mind around what the hell has the Bushies so worked up.

TVNewswer reports:

...White House counselor Ed Gillespie sent a letter to NBC regarding an NBC News report that used, "deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline."

Gillespie took exception with the interview by Richard Engel of President George W. Bush that aired last night on the NBC Nightly News. He says it was edited, "to give viewers the impression that (Bush) agreed with (correspondent Richard Engel's) characterization of his remarks when he explicitly challenged it." ...

At the TVNewswer link you can watch edited and unedited versions of the interview, and see the allegedly deceitful editing.

But what the hell is so deceitful? Gillespie says the edit gives the impression that Bush agrees with Engel, but the edited version includes Bush's sentence

You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has.

How does including a quote in which Bush says he's restating a long-standing belief deceitfully suggest the opposite point?

Here's what happens. Engel asks,

You said that negotiating with Iran is pointless, and then you went further -- you said it was appeasement. Were you referring to Senator Barack Obama?

Bush's answer as edited:

You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has.... And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously.

Here's the full Bush answer:

You know, my policies haven't changed, but evidently the political calendar has. People need to read the speech. You didn't get it exactly right, either. What I said was is that we need to take the words of people seriously. And when, you know, a leader of Iran says that they want to destroy Israel, you've got to take those words seriously. And if you don't take them seriously, then it harkens back to a day when we didn't take other words seriously. It was fitting that I talked about not taking the words of Adolf Hitler seriously on the floor of the Knesset. But I also talked about the need to defend Israel, the need to not negotiate with the likes of al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. And the need to make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon.

Where's the deception? Where's the manufactured storyline?

Gillespie's e-mail to NBC says:

This answer makes clear: (1). The President's remarks before the Knesset were not different from past policy statements, but are now being looked at through a political prism, (2). Corrects the inaccurate premise of Engel's question by putting the "appeasement" line in the proper context of taking the words of leaders seriously, not "negotiating with Iran," (3). Restates the U.S.'s long-standing policy positions against negotiating with al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas, and not allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Well, the edited version also makes point (1) clear. Point (3) is just additional information NBC reasonably chose not to include.

The only significant nuance lost -- perhaps -- is in (2). The Bushies want us to know that there are some circumstances under which they actually will negotiate with Iran. Gillespie goes on to quote a follow-up question and answer NBC edited out, about which he says,

This response reiterates another long-standing policy, which is that if Iran verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment program the U.S. government would engage in talks with the Iranian government.

So, OK: Bush doesn't think it would always be incredibly dangerous to negotiate with Iran -- Bush thinks it would be incredibly dangerous right now.

This is worthy of a vendetta?

****

First the Bushies ginned up a phony war, fought by pundit and blogger surrogates, in which charges of delusional thinking were leveled at any of us who uttered the plain truth that Bush's Knesset speech was aimed at Obama (a truthinitially acknowledged by White House aides themselves). Now it's clear that the White House is so invested in this phony war, so convinced of its usefulness, that Ed Gillespie is desperately trying to keep it going far past its expiration date with this message to NBC.

This is what these guys do all day, on our dime, instead of actually trying to run the country properly.

****

UPDATE: In comments here and in a post at If I Ran the Zoo, Aimai scratches her head in response to another part of the Gillespie e-mail, which decries NBC's references to an Iraqi "civil war." Aimai:

Do they seriously think that if NBC got on the air and said "there is no civil war" that people would go "oh, ok then!"? Plus the letter reaches right back tot he start of the war and references things that happened in the fall of 2007, it just goes to show how little they have moved, intellectually, while the country has just given up on their little war.

Or at least it shows that they'll grasp at any straw in their effort to pick this fight.

Also in the comments at IIRTZ, Julia links all this to the "O'Reilly/Ailes/Murdoch-Olberman/GE feud" -- which suggests (to me at least) that the White House thought it won the 2004 election in part by running against Michael Moore and thinks it can win this year running against Keith Olbermann (who's name-checked in the last paragraph of the Gillespie e-mail, along with, bizarrely,"Christopher Matthews").

KATHLEEN PARKER: GAY-BAITING TO SAVE OUR SONS?

Some people might argue that the gay-baiting column Kathleen Parker published in yesterday's Washington Post was especially inappropriate given the title of the book she's publishing next month: Save the Males.

You probably know what was in the column:

Well, at least they didn't kiss.

I was bracing myself for the lip lock Wednesday when John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama....

Obama and Edwards make an attractive picture -- Ultra Brite cover boys of youth and glamour united against old men (and women) who worship the status quo. Obama [is] the man who makes Chris Matthews feel a thrill up his leg....

Obama and Edwards look and talk pretty, but Clinton, unflinching and steely, exudes pure brawn. When the time comes to sit across from the likes of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a chill in the heart may beat a thrill up the leg.

Now here's an excerpt from the publisher's description of Save the Males:

...Save the Males is a shrewd, amusing, and sure-to-be-controversial look at how men, maleness, and fatherhood have been under siege in American culture for decades. Kathleen Parker argues that the feminist movement veered off course from it’s original aim of helping women achieve equality and ended up making enemies of men. With piercing wit, this nationally syndicated columnist shows us how the pendulum has swung from the reasonable middle to a place where men have been ridiculed in the public square....

The real losers, should we continue on our present course, are not just grown men and women but our children....

As I say, some people might argue that, if you're worried about doing harm on impressionable male youths, you might not want to bash adult men for being, in your estimation, inadequately manly. But Parker, I'm sure, would argue that she's doing the boys a favor -- she'll telling them to man up and stop being sniveling little girls. The culture, she'd say, actually encourages them to be sniveling little girls, so she's doing them a favor by smacking them around and telling them not to be such faggots.

****

Parker, of course, published something far more odious last week, a Buchananesque (Duke-like?) syndicated column defending a West Virginian who told a reporter recently that Barack Obama isn't "a full-blooded American." Parker wrote,

...We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

...What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative....

My paternal grandparents were Italian immigrants. They sent two sons to World War II. My father made it back. My uncle didn't. My immigrant grandmother was a gold star mother.

Now, I don't know the answer to this, so I'm not jumping to conclusions, but I see that Kathleen Parker has three sons.

I wonder how many are of age to be in the military. And I wonder how many have signed up.

****

UPDATE: Aimai reviews the literary history of male-saving.

KRISTOL THE HACK TRIES TO DECEIVE US AGAIN

William Kristol, in his New York Times column today:

On Tuesday night, while the G.O.P. Congressional candidate was losing in a Mississippi district George Bush carried in 2004 by 25 points, Barack Obama was being trounced in the West Virginia Democratic primary -- by 41 points. I can't find a single recent instance of a candidate who ultimately became his party's nominee losing a primary by this kind of margin.

Er, John McCain lost this year's Arkansas primary to Mike Huckabee by 41 points.

Oh, and Jimmy Carter lost the 1976 California primary to Jerry Brown by 39 points.

And on March 7, 2000, John McCain beat George W. Bush in Massachusetts by 32 points, in Rhode Island by 33, and in Vermont by 35.

I guess Kristol just somehow couldn't "find" these.

Or, more likely, he used the weasel-phrase "I can't find" (rather than "There hasn't been") because he'd uncovered the facts but had no intention of letting them prevent him from catapulting the Obama's-a-loser propaganda, his plan being, once he was caught, to simply say, "Whoops! My bad! I guess I missed that in my painstaking research!"

Hackwork at its worst.

****

UPDATE: Whoops -- I skipped this year's Utah GOP primary: Romney over McCain by 85 points.

THE STUPID TEACHING THE STUPID

From a Washington Post article on Democrats who prefer one presidential candidate and really, really don't like the other one:

...To Veronica Tonay, 48, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Clinton supporter, Obama has become a pop star, the contestant on "American Idol" who wins votes because he's cute, while the best singer is eliminated.

"We are electing the leader of the free world, and that person has a finger on the nuclear launch code," she said. "It's not about likability." Her stance was cemented when a young woman in one of her classes declared that she wouldn't vote for Clinton because "she is not a beautiful woman."

If a student really said that, I weep for my country. But now here's that student's genius of a professor:

If Obama is the nominee, Tonay said, McCain will be just fine with her. "In the end, I won't vote for Obama because I don't know who he is, and I don't trust him," she said. "If McCain gets in, he would have a weak presidency, and we would have a Democratic Congress anyway. Obama could do more damage." ...

Yeah, because a president whose party doesn't control Congress is always weakened and unable to do much harm.

Like, y'know, that Nixon guy.

THERE'LL BE OTHER HILLARYS

I'll never persuade anyone with this post, but as one of those horrible men who abandoned Hillary Clinton to throw in his lot with Barack Obama, I have to say I simply don't agree with the gloomiest things said in this New York Times article about possible female presidents other than Hillary.

This, for instance:

...for many women, whether or not they support Mrs. Clinton, the long primary campaign has left them with a question: why would any woman run?

Many feel dispirited by what they see as bias against Mrs. Clinton in the media -- the "Fatal Attraction" comparisons and locker-room chortling on television panels.

"Who would dare to run?" said Karen O'Connor, the director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University. "The media is set up against you, and if you have the money problem to begin with, why would anyone put their families through this, why would anyone put themselves through this?"

For this reason, she said, she doesn't expect a serious contender anytime soon. "I think it's going to be generations." ...

The argument becomes nonsensical at a certain point: We're this close to electing Hillary Clinton president (she nearly beat Obama, and she leads McCain in the polls), yet we're too sexist to elect any other woman president for forty, sixty, eighty years? How can both of these things be possible?

And where are, say, Condoleezza's Rice's "Fatal Attraction comparisons"? Where is the "locker-room chortling on television panels" about her? Rice is a national figure, an architect of the worst foreign-policy disaster in living memory, a top aide to possibly the most hated president ever -- where's her nutcracker?

A lot of us keep saying this and it falls on deaf ears, but here I go again: Quite a bit of the nastiness that's uttered about Hillary Clinton is uttered specifically because she's Hillary Clinton (even if it relies on readymade sexist tropes) -- or because she's Bill Clinton's wife. (Remember, the people who helped paint the negative portrait of Hillary in the 1990s were painting one of Bill at the same time.) There'll be a woman in the relatively near future who hasn't been portrayed as a monster for fifteen-plus years -- it simply won't be the same for her.

She'll face sexism, yes -- but the Times article has an interesting set of statistics:

In December, a Gallup poll found that 86 percent of Americans said they would vote for a well-qualified candidate who was a woman (of course, that percentage has been in the 80s for much of the last three decades). Ninety-three percent said the same of a well-qualified candidate who was black; 93 percent of a Catholic candidate; and 91 percent of a Jewish one.

Why do I single out the Catholic number? Because we already elected a Catholic president -- nearly half a century ago -- and still 7 percent of the country won't vote for one. So you don't need to be in a group that's at 100% acceptance to win. You can face hate and still prevail.

I don't buy this, either:

..."No woman with Obama's resume could run," said Dee Dee Myers, the first woman to be White House press secretary, under Bill Clinton, and the author of "Why Women Should Rule the World." "No woman could have gotten out of the gate."

Women are still held to a double-standard, and they tend to buy into it themselves.

They do not have what Debbie Walsh, the director of the Rutgers center, says she used to call the John Edwards phenomenon and now calls the Barack Obama phenomenon: having never held elective office, they run for Senate, then before finishing a first term decide they should be president....

I just don't believe that will be true for much longer. Even now, I could easily imagine a Carly Fiorina, or someone like her, running for Senate or the presidency, based on achievements outside politics.

And if this seems unimaginable to you now, I don't think it will for long. I think we're seeing more and more young women amassing records of achievement all through high school and college, then heading into the work world full of energy and confidence (along with, if the kids in my office are any indication, quite a bit of "girliness," which stupid men need to see so they won't fear for the safety of their testicles).

What's going to happen is that these young women are going to help us form an image of what a very accomplished post-post-feminist young woman looks like, and we're going to get increasingly comfortable with that image. The peers and near-peers of these young women aren't going to know what it was like not to have such women around.

A female Obama would probably have to have an interesting, unusual backstory, plus charisma, plus political savvy. I can't believe that combination won't emerge. And I can't believe, once most of the electorate is born after, say, 1964 or 1970, it will seem in any way bizarre.

Whether it's an Obama-style phenom or just a political pro, there'll be another woman -- probably a lot more than one -- ready for the big job soon. Trust me.

(A female George W. Bush? A lazy, ignorant trust-fund incompetent with no qualifications apart from swagger? That will probably take generations.)

DEMOCRATS TAKE OWN SIDE IN ARGUMENT; REPUBLICANS CRY, "NO FAIR!"

You know that old saying: A liberal (or a Democrat) is someone who's too polite to take his own side in an argument. Well, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president clearly isn't following that script, and he's getting backup from fellow party members.

The right-wing response? "Hey, that's against the rules!"

Here's the extremely self-important right-wing pundit Mark Steyn discussing the response by Barack Obama (and other Democrats) to President Bush's decision to use a speech at the Knesset to score cheap domestic political points:

"That's enough. That -- that's a show of disrespect to me."

That was Barack Obama, a couple of weeks back, explaining why he was casting the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into outer darkness. It's one thing to wallow in "adolescent grandiosity" (as Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site called it) when it's a family dispute between you and your pastor of 20 years. It's quite another to do so when it's the 60th anniversary celebrations of one of America's closest allies.

President Bush was in Israel the other day and gave a speech to the Knesset.... Sen. Obama was not mentioned in the text. No Democrat was mentioned, save for President Truman, in the context of his recognition of the new state of Israel when it was a mere 11 minutes old.

Nonetheless, Barack Obama decided that the president's speech was really about him, and he didn't care for it. He didn't put it quite as bluntly as he did with the Rev. Wright, but the message was the same: "That's enough. That's a show of disrespect to me." And, taking their cue from the soon-to-be nominee's weirdly petty narcissism, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Co. piled on to deplore Bush's outrageous, unacceptable, unpresidential, outrageously unacceptable and unacceptably unpresidential behavior.

Honestly. What a bunch of self-absorbed ninnies....

First, the question of what Bush meant. I suspect right-wingers may be reading, so, to compensate for their slow learning curve, I'll try to use small words.

CNN, just after the speech was given, told us:

The president did not name Obama or any other Democrat, but White House aides privately acknowledged the remarks were aimed at the presidential candidate and others in his party.

On Hardball just after the speech, right-wing radio host Kevin James, just before he showed his complete ignorance of history, had this exchange with Chris Matthews:

JAMES: Well, I don't know who [Bush] was talking about for sure, Chris --

MATTHEWS: Take a wild guess.

JAMES: --but if he wasn't talking about Barack Obama, he should have been talking about Barack Obama. I hope he was talking about Barack Obama.

MATTHEWS: Do you think there was any doubt he was? Was there any doubt he was, though, sir?

JAMES: Not in my mind.

MATTHEWS: Is there any doubt?

JAMES: No. Not in my mind.

And Steyn himself does a wee bit of damage to his own thesis that the speech wasn't about Obama and other Democrats when he points out that, in fact, it was about Obama and other Democrats:

It says something for Democrat touchiness that the minute a guy makes a generalized observation about folks who appease terrorists and dictators the Dems assume: Hey, they're talking about me. Actually, he wasn't -- or, to be more precise, he wasn't talking only about you.

Steyn says Bush was also talking about other people -- among them ... er ... "the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party." Yeah, that's it -- that's the ticket! Silly Obama for thinking, in an election year, that he might be in the center of the bull's-eye! What about that Canadian over there?

But this a red herring. What's really bugging the right is that hit jobs like this on Democrats are always supposed to work -- Democrats are supposed to say, "Yessir! Hit me again, sir! I'm a miserable worm, sir!" Obama seems calm and non-combative, but he fooled these guys. He gets his back up. He defends himself. And that last word needs to be stressed -- he defends himself.

It's not narcissism. It's not arrogance (Karl Rove's favorite charge; talk about pots and kettles). It's just something internal that makes him believe that, even on hot-button issues, he can mount a defense of his own position. It's self-respect.

I like it. I like it that Republicans are fuming -- ineffectually. Among Democrats, maybe it can catch on.

I CALL BULLSHIT

The increasingly unhinged Clinton-or-death absolutist Larry Johnson "reports":

I now have it from two three four sources (three who are close to senior Republicans) that there is video dynamite -- Michelle Obama railing against "whitey" at Jeremiah Wright's church. Republicans may have a lousy record when it comes to the economy and the management of the war in Iraq, but they are hell on wheels when it comes to opposition research. Someone took the chance and started reviewing the recordings from services at Jeremiah Wright’s United Church of Christ. Holy smoke!! I am told there is a clip that is being held for the fall to drop at the appropriate time. The last thing Barack and Michelle need is a new clip that raises further questions about her judgment and temperament....

I could wind up with egg on my face, but sorry, Larry -- I don't believe it. You don't telegraph something like this and then hold it for months -- you either get it out there or you hide it and then spring it.

And you know what? This white guy doesn't care. Even with Sly and the Family Stone's equivalence lyrics now going through my head (Don't call me nigger, whitey / Don't call me whitey, nigger), I've never felt deeply abused or diminished by the word "whitey." It isn't an equivalent; it just doesn't represent the power of societal dominance.

And hell, we pale folk nickname some of our own Whitey.



Larry, let it go. To her credit, Clinton herself has been pulling her punches and giving Obama backup in response to Bush and McCain's appeasement-baiting. You're trying to be more Catholic than the Pope.

ONCE AGAIN, MURDOCH'S POST FAILS TO PUT THE BOOT IN

Did somebody switch New York tabloids on me when I was sleeping? Or did they somehow revert to the positions they held on the political spectrum a couple of generations ago? Here are the front pages of New York's two big tabloids:



The putative Democratic nominee for president is being charged with weakness, wimpiness, and threatening the security of the United States and Murdoch doesn't think it's front-page-worthy? That's kind of a change.

And which paper has the boldface headline "Why Terror Thugs Like Barack" featured prominently on its home page right now? Not the Post. It's a link to a News opinion column by Michael Goodwin (full title: "Middle Name Hussein Is Only One Reason Terror Thugs Like Barack Obama").

The Post has just refreshed its home page as I've been typing, with this:



That almost seems to be dignifying him, and the AP story to which it links hasn't had its headline rewritten for maximum partisan impact.

The News home page still has this:



As I said earlier in the week, I think Murdoch thinks Obama can win, and so he doesn't want to hit him too hard, purely for business reasons.

****

(Nevertheless, I'm still pleased that Cablevision rather than Murdoch is purchasing Newsday.)

HEAR ME (AND A HUGE GROUP OF SUPPORTERS WHO'LL BE ALONG ANY MINUTE NOW, REALLY) ROAR

Well, this, from ABC, makes me roll my eyes:

...Just talked to a 55-year-old Columbus, Ohio resident named Cynthia Ruccia, a spokesperson and organizer for a group calling itself "Clinton Supporters Count Too." She said the group -- numbering in the hundreds, and organized in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan -- stands ready to boycott the Democratic Party if Clinton doesn't win the nomination, and will work against superdelegates who support Obama over Clinton as a means of registering their displeasure with the party.

"We have a plan to campaign against the Democratic nominee," the group said in a press release Thursday. "We have the (wo)manpower and the money to make our threat real. And there are millions of supporters who will back us up in the swing states. If you don't listen to our voice now, you will hear from us later."

Ruccia tells ABC News that she believes "millions" of women share her group's views, though they have only begun to make contact with like-minded women....

"We're just at the boiling point," Ruccia said. "Women will sit back and be quiet about things for a while, but we've had enough. Unless Hillary Clinton is our nominee, we are not going to support the nominee." ...

There's definitely some fence-mending for Obama to do, but the notion that this group "numbering in the hundreds" represents "'millions' of women" is a crock -- according to the latest Quinnipiac poll, in head-to-head matchups against McCain, Clinton polls only two points better than Obama among women (Clinton 51%, McCain 36%; Obama 49%, McCain 36%). But Ruccia clearly knows how to use the media as a force multiplier -- ABC's writing about her, and here are Politico's Ben Smith and Beth Frerking writing about an appearance on Bill O'Reilly's show on Fox News.

Well, of course she knows how to work the press -- she's not just "a 55-year-old Columbus, Ohio resident," as the ABC story puts it. She's a former Democratic congressional candidate who once tried to unseat GOP congressman John Kasich by gay-baiting him:

...For almost 14 years it had passed without comment that the local Congressman, John Kasich, the powerful chairman of the House Budget Committee, stretches his paycheck by sharing a Virginia town house for the two or three nights a week that Congress is in session. His housemate? His male chief of staff. Last month Cynthia Ruccia, Kasich's Democratic challenger, called for a Justice Department investigation of what she said was "a serious appearance of impropriety" because Kasich, who is divorced, lived with someone whose government salary he controls.

That was the official question. What it unofficially implied was that the two men might be otherwise involved. Though Ruccia denies that she intended to leave that impression, Kasich's office inevitably found itself having to deny that either man is gay. No federal investigation is likely. (To begin with, the Justice Department does not examine "appearances.") As it happens, Ruccia had long been a high-profile supporter of gay rights and Kasich an occasional ally at best. (He voted yes on AIDS funding, no on gay marriage.) But by raising the issue, she stands to benefit from whatever doubt she creates in the minds of voters hostile to gays.

Even Democrats were crying foul. "It was the worst sort of gutter politics and gay baiting," says Bob Fitrakis, Kasich's 1992 Democratic opponent. And the gay community in Kasich's congressional district also sensed an invitation to gay baiting. "It's disappointing to see it from a party that has been the most progressive on the issues," says Phil Martin, president of Stonewall Union, Ohio's largest gay-rights organization, which counts Ruccia as a member....

Whatever your thoughts about this attempted outing, note that it (a) alienated allies, (b) got bad press, and (c) didn't work -- Ruccia lost. Ruccia went on to work as a Democratic motivational speaker delivering what she called "Wanna Win? Seminars," but in her big race, she didn't win, and her seminar company seems to be defunct.

UPDATE: Sorry, no -- it appears not to be defunct at all, but it doesn't exactly seem like the most sophisticated operation:



So I think this is a Potemkin protest movement -- unless Fox et al. decide to turn her and her backers into the Swift Boat group of '08.

****

UPDATE: Barbara at the Mahablog has the best post I've read debunking the argument that opposition to Clinton is a sexist injustice -- even though she sees quite a bit of sexism out there. Go read it.

Q: GAY MARRIAGE = McCAIN WIN? A: NO.

Instapundit:

CALIFORNIA'S SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN the state's ban on gay marriages. Did it just hand the state to McCain? ...

What, you mean the way overturning the Massachusetts ban handed the state to Bush in '04?

Kerry:
1,803,800
62%

Bush (Incumbent):
1,071,109
37%

(Yeah, I know: A local boy was on the ticket for the Dems in '04. Well, a local boy was on the ticket in '88, too, and Kerry's margin of victory was 17 percentage points higher than Dukakis's.)

***

Via Instaputz.

EEEK!

Calif. high court overturns ban on gay marriage

Oh, my God! That's 2 states out of 50! As a heterosexual, I used to feel 2% less married than I felt before Massachusetts, but now I feel 4% less married! Eeek! Eeek!

GEORGE W. BUSH IS ANN COULTER

Because he's still, by law, the president of the United States and the de facto leader of his party, we're all supposed to take seriously the fact that Bush just compared Obama's foreign policy to appeasement of Hitler.

I dunno -- my first reaction was, "What, him again? His approval rating is 28 percent. Everybody hates him except Joe Lieberman [who, of course, seconded what Bush said]. Does anybody else even care what Bush thinks?"

It was the same reaction I had last month when Ann Coulter compared Obama's first book to Mein Kampf. A righty blogger said, "Ann Coulter's gonna get yelled at again." I replied (correctly):

No, she isn't. Over here on the left, we just see her as a pathetic has-been shouting, "Why aren't you paying attention to me anymore?" This just seems like a Godwin's Law Hail Mary thrown in the forlorn hope that it will get her back into the public eye. I don't know about other lefties, but I sure don't intend to help her do that.

Paying no attention would be the ideal reaction to Bush's statement. In fact, that is going to be the reaction, except among Beltway journalists and those of us in the fever swamp of the political blogosphere. Who the hell in the real world takes George W. Bush's pronouncements even remotely seriously anymore? What is he but a male Coulter, a has-been wingnut provocateur, an arrested-development case who's overstayed his welcome?

THE ENEMIES LIST CHANGES; THE FIGHTING CONTINUES

In the last 24 hours, as you know from an earlier post, I've ventured into the world of the Clinton absolutists -- people who claim to be Democrats but whose comments about Barack Obama and anyone who supports him rely to a great extent on tropes I would expect from Free Republic and Lucianne.com (e.g., Obama's a corrupt crypto-Black Panther; Edwards is a wussy loser who lives in a big house and gets fancy haircuts).

I read this and then see that John McCain wants to give the back of his hand to congressional Republicans, whom he sees as millstones (even though he's one of them), while there's still quite a bit of evidence that many Republicans still aren't thrilled with McCain yet, either.

The Democrats nominated the guy who wants an end to partisan squabbling. The Republicans nominated the guy who wants to be known as a maverick. And practically everyone hates Bush now. We should be inching toward that moment when we all sing "Kumbaya" around the campfire, right? Instead, the amount of fighting hasn't decreased -- it's just that it's increasingly intramural.

Was that inevitable? I'm starting to think it was. I feel as if we're so used to fighting that we can't not fight, that we can't possibly have anyone as a winner without the sense among those who backed the wrong horse that the winner is the embodiment of evil in the universe, just because we're so accustomed to girding our lines against that kind of absolute evil.

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I think we're very resistant right now to the notion that we can be healed by anyone who wasn't our choice in the first place. Maybe that would change with an improved economy or an end to the war, but for now we seem to be in a political war of each against all.

MAYBE THE REPUBLICANS ARE IN TROUBLE FOR 2014, TOO

(UPDATE: Oops -- I meant 2010, didn't I? Math is hard!)

We get a peek into right-wing thinking from Hot Air, which links a clip from New York radio talker Mark Levin.

Levin accepts the notion that McCain is a "maverick" and -- ignoring the fact that the press is selling the public that line and it's basically working (McCain's numbers against either Democrat are about 20 points better than Bush's approval ratings) -- he makes the familiar but always startling argument that Republicans have been losing congressional elections because they're not conservative enough.



Well, let me give my two cents' worth to conservatives running under the Republican banner this year. If I were you, I would cut your ties to the Republican National Committee, cut your ties with the McCain campaign, because he's basically running a one-man race anyway, and run on your principles, come up with some creative policy ideas that promote your principles -- it's the only chance you have. Don't tie yourselves to a pre-Reagan, Gerald Ford-type philosophy in which you will lose. That is the lesson from the three House seats that have been lost. It's also common sense. When have you ever tied yourself to moderates, mavericks, and independents? They're unreliable. There will be no coattails in this presidential election. There'll be the opposite effect. Positive advice to our conservative friends who are running as Republicans? Run as conservatives, under the Republican banner, because it is our party, but distance yourselves from the -- I don't know what to call them. The mush Republicans? Or the Repubeicans, as I do like to call them from time to time. Distance yourself from the Repubeicans at the RNC, the Repubeicans around McCain and McCain himself. Do what's right, do what's in your soul and your conscience, and you'll have a shot. If you follow -- if you follow these other Republicans, you will go down. Just advi-- hey, look, take it or leave it, that's just Mark's opinion, and not only that, it's more honorable, isn't it? Why compromise your principles for -- well, for what, as a matter of fact? For nothing.

Please, Mark -- keep saying this. If it's a bloodbath for the congressional GOP in November, say it even louder. In fact, I hope all your right-wing colleagues say this. I hope it continues to be conventional wisdom on the right. I hope all other explanations are ignored and you all agree on this one.

And then let's make a date to do this again two years from now, OK?

****

UPDATE: Today's New York Times suggests that Levin will get his wish:

...Mr. McCain's advisers said the Mississippi race underlined his intention to distance himself as much as possible from Congressional Republicans....

So this may be a case of "You can't break up with me, I'm breaking up with you" on Levin's part.

JOHN EDWARDS IS AN ASSASSIN AND A GANG RAPIST

...according to the Democrats I quote in the update to this post.

RE: WHITE PEOPLE, UNIVERSALITY OF

According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, yes, it's true -- Obama loses the white vote to McCain. (We're doomed! We're doomed!) But wait -- Clinton loses the white vote to McCain, too. In fact, among whites, it's:

McCain 48%, Clinton 41%
McCain 47%, Obama 40%

But, astonishingly, both Obama and Clinton beat McCain overall -- because guess what? It turns out America isn't an all-white country! Yeah, I know -- who knew?

Either one of the two Democratic contenders, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, leads the likely Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. Sen. Obama leads Sen. McCain 47 - 40 percent while Sen. Clinton is up 46 - 41 percent.

Next up: Most Americans actually don't live in Appalachia!

****

Also see "Obama's Strength with White Voters" at Newshoggers.

IT'S NOT ABOUT 2012. IT'S ABOUT NOW -- AND 2012.

Charles Hurt on Hillary Clinton, in the New York Post:

... After last night's victory, she is free to quit.

Or she could see her way next week through Kentucky, which she'll also win handily.

Or, she could sprint all the way to the end on June 3.

...She expects Obama to lose in November precisely because of the weaknesses she exposed in this primary: He'll have trouble winning blue collar Democrats in swing states.

That opens the door to her return in four years as the party's prodigal daughter, saying: "As you recall, my worst fears came true. Now, it is my turn."

I don't buy that she's just going to walk away after the last primary. Not when I see Ed Rendell urging Obama to pick her as VP. I think she's going to keep fighting, quite literally all the way to the convention, unless she gets the #2 slot.

I just don't believe the Clintons will walk away. They desperately need to be vindicated -- but what if Obama wins without Hillary on the ticket? They would find that unendurable.

But if she's on the ticket, it's win-win for them: They'll give themselves the credit if Obama beats McCain, and if Obama loses, it'll be his fault.

BACK TO THE FUTURE? (Updated with Clinton absolutists' reactions to the Edwards endorsement)

Would this just seem like a stale rerun, or is it possible that Taegan Goddard is on to something when he suggests a Barack Obama/John Edwards ticket?

...Here's the case for picking Edwards:

1. He's already been tested on the national stage and not likely to cause a distracting scandal.
2. He appeals to the same working class white voters that back Clinton.
3. He favors Obama's new brand of politics.
4. He could put North Carolina and possibly other Southern states in play.
5. Clinton would probably support him. With more than 1,700 delegates in Clinton's pocket, Obama needs to at least get her tacit approval if he wants to have a unified party.

Maybe I'm just wishing that it could work, because it would annoy so many annoying people. There might actually be talk that "reasonable" pundits would describe as (gasp!) "class warfare." The winners would be "Obambi" and "the Breck Girl" (aka "the Silky Pony," the guy whose haircuts Beltway journalists can't stop talking about), so a victory would infuriate both the Lucianne.com crowd and Maureen Dowd. And it would be a Clinton-free ticket. (I don't believe point #5.)

In some early polls, Edwards outperformed other Democrats against McCain and other Republicans. He got 7% of the vote in West Virginia yesterday.

It would be nice, of course, to have Elizabeth Edwards on board -- a Democratic heroine who's strongly hinted that she favors Hillary's health-care plan. If she's cool with a ticket like this (hmmm, can she be the running mate?), that sends a lot of signals.

Is this a not complete crazy idea? Or am I just suggestible today?

****

UPDATE: John Edwards endorses Obama.

Which makes him a pariah (as well as an assassin and a gang-rapist, and a fool for not recognizing Hillary's inevitability) in Clinton-or-Death Country:

All aboard! All aboard this sinking ship!

****

I think that Edwards...

knows that the Obama ship is going down... and his endorsement is in exchange for Obama's support for the nomination when SDs start deserting Obama, and rather than face ignomineous defeat, bows out "for the good of the party" and endorses edwards.

****

He thinks he's endorsing the winner.

****

John Edwards, like so many others, has taken the route to endorsement that brings the most attention to himself.


****

I was for Edwards, but I'm also from NC and the thing that always bothered me about him was his ill-disguised ambition.

****

I guess Hillary's crushing win yesterday has everyone running scared. I mean, we just can't let this supremely qualified -- and popular-vote leading -- candidate compete. That is just too scary!

****

Have they all been bought? It looks like it.

****

Last night must have rattled the Washington establishment that supports Obama. And no doubt - Edwards got the memo - the working class has to be STOPPED from voting for Hillary.

****

Guess Edwards is like the rest of them - don't really have any principles.

****

With even NARAL stepping into the primary season, I'm feeling like one thrown-under-the-bus Democrat. It's a travesty that we've reduced a truly historic race to a virtual gang rape.

****

So John Plays Brutus in this scene

****

Et tu, John?


****

Hillary must have turned him down. Possibly the huge multi-million dollar house and $400 haircuts were just too much hypocrisy for her to stomach.


****

How many knives does HRC have in her back at this point? She's looking like a pincushion from where I sit.

****

this seems like it's all the guys ganging up on the girl, being directed by the DNC.


****

Now he's joined the ranks of "White Male Loser Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates for Obama". They should make themselves tee-shirts. Is Hillary really that bad or does the white boyz club simply hate uppity women?

Yikes.


****

UPDATE: This one's even worse. Samples:

….you like that black bastard so much then go see what pick up game he’s playing tonight and shoot some hoops with him….in other words, get the hell out of here…you creep!

****

Shrug. They think Obama is going to float to the oval office and skip a general election. The Republicans are all going to stay home too. And they are going to spot Barry some Affirmative Action points.

****

I will never vote for him. He is the scum of the earth. The dirty gum on the bottom of my shoes. Dog shit that gets stuck in the pattern of my sneakers. Unworthy of a vote.

****

speaking for myself, i absolutely believe obama is a figure head of some very radical, self serving, powerful individuals, with an agenda.

an agenda that does not work for me…

when i was young during the late 60’s i ran with people like this, panthers were from oakland, and we were all trying to be, radical in those days…

blacks brown red and white…

these people are no joke, i respect that they have a point of view, i just think it dont belong in the white house…
all these cute little white college kids, and starry eyed old ladies with their meditaion candles, are in for a rude awakening.

****

All Obama supporters are sexist.

The main thrust of this thread is that Obama and Edwards are abandoning loyal Democrats and that the only appropriate response is to go out and vote for (and campaign or) McCain (as, presumably, a sign of loyalty to the Democratic Party). Oh, and the post that inspires the comments tells us that Hillary Clinton "would be the best president we've had in at least the past century." Yeah, screw that FDR guy!

MURDOCH DOESN'T THINK OBAMA'S A LOSER

So how did Rupert Murdoch, who hosted a Hillary Clinton fund-raiser a while back, commemorate her big West Virginia victory in his New York Post?



A cabdriver and a local news anchor who uttered cusswords -- both bigger stories to Rupe than Hill's win. Primary? What primary?

Not much more at the top of the page at nypost.com -- just a tiny headline under "News Alerts," and it's "Clinton's W.Va. victory does little to slow Obama."

Murdoch isn't playing Operation Chaos games. He knows Hillary Clinton won't be the next president, and he knows Barack Obama very well could be. How he treats Obama in the future will depend on how likely, in Murdoch's estimation, Obama is to win in November, but right now it looks as if Rupe firmly believes Obama has a real shot, and is worth treating reasonably well (for business reasons, of course). Check out, for instance, the cool, flattering Obama-as-pool-shark picture accompanying this Post story (headline: OBAMA AIMS FOR NOV.: HILL HINTS SHE'S SET TO PULL THE PLUG). Oh, and did I mention this headline from today?

MOUNTAIN LANDSLIDE FOR HOPE-LESS HILL
W.VA. WIN IS MEANINGLESS

You'll hear a lot of people saying today that the West Virginia results mean that Obama is doomed as a general-election candidate, and you'll hear a few saying he could still lose the nomination.

Rupert Murdoch doesn't think so. And Rupert Murdoch, however loathsome he may be, is a very smart guy. And he sure as hell isn't some "liberal media" guy who's "in the tank" for Obama out of a sense that they share a worldview.

SO?

I just want to remind you that 80.3% of Americans live in metropolitan areas. Hillary Clinton just won a blowout in the second most rural state in America. Sorry, folks -- Hillary's America may be made up exclusively of white people in overalls, but the real America isn't.

****

My favorite statistic from the CNN exit poll (page 2): 35% of West Virginia voters said Hillary Clinton was not "honest and trustworthy" -- but 32% of that 35% (or 11% of the total electorate) voted for her anyway. ("Yeah, but she's white.")

DELIBERATELY APPEALING TO THE WORST IN PEOPLE

ABC on the West Virginia exit polls:

Racially motivated voting appeared to be running higher than usual: Two in 10 whites said the race of the candidate was a factor in their vote, second only to Mississippi. And only a third of those voters said they'd support Obama as the nominee against Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz....

Ross Perot, nutty as he may have been, used to say, "If you hate people, I don't want your vote."

I'm waiting to hear Hillary Clinton say that.

GROUP SLANDER: OUR BETTERS INSTRUCT US ON WHEN IT IS AND ISN'T APPROPRIATE

There have been a couple of stories today about overtly racist opposition to Barack Obama -- several incidents are described in this Washington Post story, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution tells us about a bar in Georgia that's selling T-shirts with "OBAMA in '08" printed under a picture of Curious George eating a banana.

In response to the WaPo story, we are informed by Carol Platt Liebau of the right-wing site Townhall.com that yes, racism is wrong, but we shouldn't leap to conclusions:

There's a lurking danger in these kinds of narratives, as well. When stories like these go into wide circulation, it's a sure bet that some on the left are going to start asserting -- not that America is a great country with (unfortunately) some racists (all of which is true) -- but that America is a predominantly racist country with some great people (i.e., those who support Barack Obama). If Barack loses in the fall, the USA will officially be labeled a racist country by many of its left-wing citizens.

This is one paragraph after Liebau tells us:

These incidents are deplorable, awful and totally wrong. Anyone who is refusing to vote for Barack Obama just because he's black is a racist, and should be ashamed. (And how shocking to learn that this is going on in a Democratic primary ... haven't we always been instructed that the Democrat Party is the party of the enlightened?!).

So it's wrong to look at these incidents and say the United States is lousy with racism.

But apparently it's perfectly fine to look at these incidents and say that about the Democratic Party.

Thanks for clearing that up, Carol.

OK, ONE MORE AND I'LL STOP

Jeralyn Merritt again:

...As for the speculation that Obama would convince Hillary's supporters to vote for him if he picks another female VP candidate like Napolitano or McCaskill, I highly doubt it. There is only one Hillary Clinton. Women are not interchangeable....

I think there's some truth to that. But you could also say that picking Janet Napolitano or Claire McCaskill would be Obama's way of saying that women aren't interchangeable -- and he's picking one who hasn't said, in a hundred different ways on a daily basis over the course of several months, that he's unfit to be president, rather than one who has.

NO, ANDREW, RESSENTIMENT IS NOT INEVITABLE

Andrew Romano, blogging for Newsweek, on why not ending the race is good for Democrats:

...If Clinton were to follow the peanut gallery's instructions now, the Democrats would wind up more--not less--divided as a result. The reason? It takes two. With their man at the helm, Obamaniacs are more than ready to "unite" with Clintonistas. But the reverse still isn't true. As Kenneth P. Vogel wrote yesterday in the Politico, "the legions of Clinton backers still investing their cash, energy and emotion into her faltering bid for the Democratic presidential nomination seem driven not by the reasonable expectation that she can beat Barack Obama, but by the emotional desire to see her through to the end of voting and stick it to those who have already written her off." Unless Clinton lets the race run its course ... many of her supporters will blame the media, the DNC, Obama and anyone else within spitting distance for pushing her out prematurely. And that means they'll be less inclined to "come together" than they are now--not more....

But this wouldn't be true if Hillary seemed to be leading the movement toward reconciliation. If she said, "OK, it's time now -- thank you, everyone, but we should all unite around our nominee," if she said everyone had fought the good fight but he'd won fair and square, if she said he was a good man and would be a great president -- if, in short, she said she'd lost the fight, but she wasn't being shafted -- the ressentiment would dissipate.

I'll repeat what I've been saying about the Clintons: yes, they have power, and if only they'd use it for good. Romano is right about the Clinton voters' feelings, but the Clintons can change that.

A SONG IN RETURN FOR JERALYN'S SONG

Barack Obama said this in West Virginia:

One of the saddest episodes in our history was the degree to which returning vets from Vietnam were shunned, demonized and neglected by some because they served in an unpopular war. Too many of those who opposed the war in Vietnam chose to blame not only the leaders who ordered the mission, but the young men who simply answered their country's call. Four decades later, the sting of that injustice is a wound that has never fully healed, and one that should never be repeated.

Jeralyn Merritt responds with a post titled "Obama Disses Boomers Who Opposed Vietnam War":

In other words, Obama intends to battle the war-hero McCain by throwing us under the bus.

Hilzoy responds:

Um: no. Not unless you were one of the people who did, in fact, shun, demonize, and neglect soldiers who served in an unpopular war.

Merritt adds to her denunciation of bus-throwing by quoting a Jackson Browne song -- but since her point seems to be that no one in the antiwar movement ever "chose to blame ... the young men who simply answered their country's call," I'll quote a 1960s Buffy Sainte-Marie song back to her:

He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years

...And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way

...But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on

He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.

Yup -- war is every individual's fault. The powerful don't have more power than we do. The fish doesn't stink from the head.

I'm also reminded of a line from a story a friend wrote for our high school literary magazine in 1974, in which the narrator, an anti-war high school kid, imagines the conversation of the Vietnam vet brother of a drinking buddy:

Hey, Ed, I ever tell you about the time, heehee, over in Nam, we pushed the three gooks out of the helicopter?

That was how a lot of people saw the soldiers then. Wishing that fact away won't work. And criticizing that misapplied blame is not the same as criticize opposition to that war.

****

UPDATE: There's a heated discussion going on in comments. (Hey, where were you all yesterday when I wasn't saying stuff that was ticking you off? I felt like a standup comic who was bombing.) Seeing some of what's being said there, as well as this Corrente post with its reference to dolchstosslegende (the "stab in the back" theory), I want to ask one thing: Where in that Obama quote do you see him saying the antiwar movement caused us to lose the war?

Show me the words.

****

Incidentally, while we're having a lovely little internecine squabble, I have to say I love being accused of backing right-wing frames by someone (see the link directly above) who then goes on to say that people who want Hillary Clinton to drop out are just part of the, er, "creative class" of TV pundits. Yup, it appears to me that I'm being accused of embracing right-wing frames by someone who's borrowing lines of attack from Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle.

NUMBERS THAT MEAN MORE THAN WHATEVER NUMBERS EMERGE FROM TOMORROW'S PRIMARY

From the ABC/Washington Post poll

In general election matchups, Obama leads McCain by 51-44 percent, similar to the last two ABC News/Washington Post polls. Standings in a Clinton vs. McCain race are 49-46 percent, again roughly similar to previous ABC News/Washington Post results.

Obama is electable -- this poll says more so than Clinton. He's electable and he's ready, and he's going to emerge with more delegates. So can we please just get on with general election?

(And yes, I know -- I'm quoting a poll that also finds most Democrats unconcerned with the length of the campaign. I don't care. Candidates routinely exit races when they technically can still win but have no reasonable chance of success. They don't hold a referendum before deciding to drop out.)

****

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot: we have to let all 50 states have their say, don't we? (Even though that rarely happens in any other primary season.) In this week's New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg responds to that:

"It would be a little strange to have a nominee chosen by forty-eight states," [Hillary Clinton] said, and her husband, in an e-mail to supporters, added, "People want Hillary to stay in this race until every last voter has a say." (Never mind that in January the Clintons' chamberlain, Terry McAuliffe, had called the race "a twenty-seven-state contest" that would be "over on February 5th.")

Ouch.

OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE ....

Yes, Bob Novak says that Mike Huckabee secretly doesn't want McCain to win and thinks Obama's election is destined by God (see my previous post) -- but now U.S. News says Huck is at the top of McCain's VP list.

Oh, I sure hope so.

Huckabee would definitely help McCain win states like West Virginia and Kentucky. He'd also assure that McCain doesn't have a chance of winning larger states McCain plans to contest, like New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

See, those states are full of swing-voting soccer moms and dads who might be receptive to McCain -- unless he picks a running mate who doesn't believe in evolution, which those soccer parents actually want their kids to learn. (They teach evolution at the Catholic schools that many of Hillary Clinton's voters in Philly attended, too.)

Also, Huckabee has actually preached at John Hagee's church and called him "one of the great Christian leaders of our nation." What's more, he has very close ties to the equally loopy religious-right leader Bill Gothard, who has denounced the evils of Cabbage Patch dolls and who thinks the beat of rock music is "evil in any form" (do you think Hillary's drinking partners chill out by listening to Bach vespers?) -- oh, and the shooter in last year's Colorado Springs multiple murder was homeschooled following a Gothard teaching plan.

Right Wing Watch notes that Huckabee is vehemently denying Novak's report:

...Where do people dream up this stuff? Forget the "anonymous" sources -- there's nothing anonymous about my stand and here it is. We don't "deserve" Obama -- we DESERVE a President with the character, convictions, experience, and wisdom to see the problems we face and try to lead us to solve them. We deserve a President who truly loves this country and from whom there is no doubt as to his respect for Faith, Family, and the kind of Freedom that those before us have given their lives to pass on to us. John McCain meets that criteria [sic] and that’s why I am campaigning for him and not hoping for Obama. The nonsense that I want Obama to win this year so I can run in 2012 is absurd....

Does this mean he wants the #2 slot? Does this mean he might really get it?

Could we be that lucky?

IS NOVAK LYING TO HELP McCAIN TRIANGULATE?

Even though I'm just a schmuck blogger and my betters are telling me to take Robert Novak's latest column seriously (Jonathan Marin of the Politico calls it "Novak at his best ... A great reported column"), I smell a rat:

...Some U.S. Christians are not reconciled to McCain's candidacy but instead regard the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as "God's candidate" for president in 2012....

... One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me that Huckabee, in personal conversation with him, had embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve....

According to this activist, at the heart of the let-Obama-win movement is longtime Virginia conservative leader Michael Farris -- the nation's leading home-school advocate, who is now chancellor of Patrick Henry College (in Purcellville, Va.) for home-schooled students....

In conversations with me, Huckabee and Farris both denied saying that an Obama presidency should be inflicted on the country....

Everyone's denying it, and in fact there's no evidence offered here except the statement of "One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used" -- but that's supposed to persuade us. Novak heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy, so it must be true, right?

Well, if this is nonsense, why would Novak say it now? Hmmm, let's see: Frank Rich led last week's column with questions about McCain's ties to nutjob preachers John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Newsweek published a column about McCain and Hagee last week. Bloggingheads.tv (now at The New York Times) just featured a discussion of Parsley. Videos of Hagee and Parsley are suddenly pping up here and there.

What's an apparatchik to do? Why, help McCain triangulate, by saying, "Look, here's a real right-wing looney who doesn't want to have anything to do with McCain! Two, in fact!"

At the very least, it seems likely that Novak is taking notions that are within the pale (this is the Democrats' year; Huckabee's nouveau-evangelical appeal makes him a front-runner for 2012) and tweaking them until they fit nicely under the banner headline "McCain's Christian Problem." Because that's a message designed to sell McCain to secular swing voters: Christian rightists don't like McCain ... pay no attention to those looney preachers who are embracing him.