My point was that she wanted credit for bravery, as if she might pay a price for rejecting the support of anti-Semites, when in a state with a large Jewish population, the exact opposite is true.

It seemed like she was trying to find a way to attack him, but that was a real stretch. Especially since, as Josh pointed out, she started off sounding like she was going to say something classy but instead took a cheap shot.

Posted at February 26, 2008 11:27 PM in response to Inane Question Of The Night! And Hillary Says Obama Didn't Denounce Farrakhan Forcefully Enough...

Wow, she bravely rejected the support of anti-Semites in a New York election. Not only that, she took a strong stand in favor of the Yankees despite all the Red Sox fans in the state.

Posted at February 26, 2008 10:36 PM in response to Inane Question Of The Night! And Hillary Says Obama Didn't Denounce Farrakhan Forcefully Enough...

The good professor's post brings to mind the question that while yes, Mrs. Clinton remains a playa despite the most potent propaganda money can buy, has she displayed the gumption to pwn the mighty wingnut machine? Any one-liner, riposte or comeback to ridicule the cretins? None that I've noticed.

Exactly. I call it Battered Democrat Syndrome. Hillary is by no means the only one to suffer from it -- in fact, it's afflicted most of the Beltway Democrats in the past 7 years. First, they cave to the GOP on things like the Iraq War or torture because they fear they'll be attacked as "weak" (even though caving probably does more to reinforce the "weak" meme than voting no would).

Then after giving in for so long, they turn around and talk about how THIS time, they're going to stand up to those nasty bullies. But the common thread is that they're still defining themselves in relation to Republicans. I mean, after all the crap the GOP has pulled this decade, now we're supposed to let them determine who we nominate?

What I like about Obama is that he doesn't seem caught up in this dynamic. He recognizes that the you don't neutralize bullies with bluster. You do it with confidence.

Posted at February 20, 2008 10:30 PM in response to A Clinton Attack Plan?

I think what this post demonstrates more than anything is that there is -- and should be -- no one single criteria for superdelegates. The chances are that, if this race goes to the end of the primary season, one candidate will be seen as being ahead by most objective measures. In that case, it will be extremely difficult for the superdelegates to hand the nomination to the second-place finisher.

On the other hand, if the race is really tight -- Obama has a couple more delegates, Hillary received more overall votes -- and is seen as being essentially tied, then superdelegates will have to provide a tie-breaking role. In that case, it will be hard to mandate exactly which criteria they should use to break that tie.

Posted at February 18, 2008 10:08 AM in response to Convention Math: What Adds up to Legitimacy?

Seems like lots of people are missing the point of this whole debate.

I do think it's worth considering how a potential nominee will do in swing states, but looking at it on a state-by-state level based on primary results is a fool's errand. Not only does winning the primary not guarantee a GE win, but losing it doesn't guarantee a GE loss. They're completely different elections, with different electorates and much lower turnout.

Consider New Hampshire 2000: Gore received 77,000 votes and won the primary by 4 points. Bush received 72,000 and lost by 19. In November, they each got nearly four times that amount, and Bush won narrowly, with 273,000 votes. (Furthermore, we could see the exact same thing happen this year if it's Obama-McCain.)

So it's silly to say that because Obama won Missouri, or Clinton won Arizona, it tells us anything about how they'd do in November. And yes, the Democrats will almost certainly not win Idaho.

That doesn't mean, however, that we should completely ignore Obama's success in some of these states. For one thing, there are down-ballot races to consider. Remember, in 2004 Kerry completely gave up on red states to focus on OH/FL, and as a result Democratic Senate candidates got wiped out across the South.

Second, the whole "red/blue" divide is not some immutable political reality, it's a function of the last two elections. In fact, it has been extremely rare in American history to have an electoral map look as similar for two straight elections as it did in '00 and '04. Bill Clinton won what are now considered solidly red states like Montana, Kentucky and Lousiana, and it was a big surprise when Gore lost W Va in '00, since that had been a solidly Democratic state for years. This year, Virginia, which hasn't voted for a Democrat since the '60s, is poised to turn blue.

But IMO, the most important benefit to Obama's primary strategy is the mindset it represents. The past two elections, Democrats ran narrowly targeted, tactical campaigns that focused on eking out wins in a few key states. Gore pulled it off but lost anyway, and Kerry fell short, but both campaigns were tired, uninspiring affairs that left me (and a lot of other Dems) cold. By pursuing a 50-state strategy, Obama signals to me that he will run a national campaign that. And even if it doesn't lead to victories in Idaho this year, I have no doubt that it will pay dividends down the road.

And that the Clinton campaign would downplay this strategy tells me that either a) they're stuck in the same mindset that lost us the last two elections, or b) they're spinning so desperately that they're really not thinking about the logical conclusion to what they're arguing. Either way, it doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

Posted at February 17, 2008 10:12 PM in response to States that Count (Democratic Edition)

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that, after voting for Iraq in '02 out of fear of the GOP attack machine, Hillary now boasts about her ability to stand up to that machine? The common thread is that she seems to organize her political career around the Republicans. I guess that's somewhat understandable given how much they've oriented themselves around her, but still, the antidote to spinelessness isn't bluster. It's confidence.

Obama acts like someone who knows his positions have popular support. Hillary acts like someone who's afraid they don't. Or, as Obama himself put it, "Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we're worried about what Mitt or Rudy might say about us just won't do."

I want Democrats to stop being afraid of Republicans. Given how badly they've screwed things up, and given the beatdown they've got coming to them in November, Republicans are the ones who should be scared.

Posted at February 11, 2008 4:53 PM in response to Hillary Pollster Mark Penn: Obama More Likely To Suffer Fate Of John Kerry Or Al Gore

Matthew,

I don't think you're racist, or that you hang around with racists. In fact, I bet some of your best friends are black.

Posted at February 6, 2008 12:25 AM in response to Correction: Obama Wins Missouri!

My experience has been similar to Tamashawallah's. I generally hang with a pretty liberal crowd, and just about everyone I've spoken to about it seems to blame the union. The press has been hostile, too -- today's tabloids were viciously anti-union, and even the Times editorialized against the strike (although they did give Pataki a well-deserved slap for skipping town). I think mostly, people are just pissed that it takes them two hours to get to work in the freezing cold, and they want to blame somebody. But it also seems like Toussaint has badly miscalculated, especially in terms of lining up the parent union's support. My guess is that at this point, he'll have to settle for a face-saving climbdown at best, and a completely humiliating defeat at worst.

Posted at December 21, 2005 7:17 PM in response to Some Thoughts on the NYC Transit Strike

Overall, I think Fitzgerald made a tough, but ultimately correct call to subpeona reporters. But I don't think the distinction Matt draws between the identity of a source and the content of that source's conversation with a reporter is as clear-cut as he makes it out to be.

Consider the following hypothetical: Fitzgerald interviews Libby about Novak's outing of Plame. Libby mentions that he talked to Novak, Miller, Russert, etc. Fitzgerald asks what they talked about. Libby says, "We talked about the state of Jessica Simpson's marriage to Nick Lachey. I told them there was no way those two would stay together." Now, by Matt's definition, Libby has outed himself as a "source" for those reporters, but the question remains, a source for what?

I think the notion that simply knowing the identity of a source removes any presumption of confidentiality is dangerous. Both the identity and the content are important.

Posted at October 30, 2005 10:21 AM in response to What Number?

The "Afghanistan Effect" that Mr. Johnson talks about is what I find most troubling, because we will be dealing with this legacy regardless of whatever success we may have in Iraq. Even if the US were to go in tomorrow and crush every aspect of the insurgency, many of the foreign jihadis have already come and gone, after gaining valuable hands-on experience in urban warfare and terrorism.

In fact, the hackneyed phrase about the significance of the Iraq War has it exactly backwards: Fighting them in the streets of Baghdad makes it MORE likely we'll have to fight them in the streets of Boston.

Posted at September 24, 2005 6:29 AM in response to Endangering America